Mature Misconceptions.

[VikingKing]

The Joker's face being put back on with belts, Lara Croft's prequel game where she is constantly made the victim, and that whole mess with the Transformers movies by Michael Bay are all examples of how serious topics like violence and trauma and sex can be mishandled badly.

It's a common misconception that young adults will only think a work is mature if there is no levity, lightness of tone, or sense of hope for the vast majority of it. And it's true, many young adults do fall into the mistake of believing this is how the world operates. It's not a mature mindset. When someone can recognize that just because something bad happens does not negate or even lessen the good things, then that is when they have grasped the truth.

So, just for fun, folks who comment are encouraged to list at least two pieces of fiction. One piece of fiction that handles darker subject matter well and one that does not.

Given I listen a few examples on what not to do, I'll put up one that does.

The Crow.

For those of you who haven't watched this movie, it's a piece all about a corrupt world being made into a better place. Violent, brooding, and grungy city avenger taking on rapists and murders and drug dealers. Frankly the Crow is a better Batman then a lot of attempts at Batman.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Grave of the Fireflies does an incredible job of making poverty and the struggles of ordinary people harrowing and gripping.

The Grapes of Wrath does the opposite, and makes them horrendously boring and a chore to get through.

 

[Muspelheim]

The Crow is revenge porn. Quite delightful revenge porn. Breaking out the guns and ushering the scum of mankind to their graves does not work in reality, but it's a pleasant fantasy to indulge in.

Now, I play (or played, I might be back, but it's not impossible I won't) WoW entirely for the roleplaying. And Warcraft is not a very dark world, thankfully. I've never been a huge fan of "dark", miserable fantasy. At least not the kind that is dark and terrible for its own sake. Unfortunately, people seem to think Warcraft is indeed a dark setting, and roleplay thereafter. That is, playing haggard old veterans with eyepatches that have lost all compassion and hope in some bloodied battlefield or an enemy torture chamber. They are mainly standing about being aggressive and shout "Harlot!" in the taverns. That, or they pretend it's Game of Thrones they're actually playing. The term "grimderp" was very, very fitting.

Everything is dark and horrible, no one likes anything or anyone or did once but lost it. It's like the boring parts of Warhammer 40.000 put forth as an ideal.

It's attempts at being "mature" immediately foiled by the fact that the forests outside are filled with colourful cartoon Hyenamen, battling with the gurgling fish people in the ponds for turf.

Speaking of flippin' Warhammer 40-flippin-K... Both its audience and the writers, I feel, focus far too much on how terrible everything is. It's an interesting universe, but we never get to see anything but the bog standard suffering, war and big men in armour hitting each other.
At least give us a glimpse of something pleasant. There must be planets that are rather nice, or something that makes fighting worth it. If there is nothing worth defending, then why fight at all?

Now, I understand why grimderpness can seem like the pinnacle of maturity. Hell, I was like that, once. I had it all figured out, at last. Everything was rubbish, and portraying dark realities was the only thing that resonated with any sort of truth to it. Then I outgrew it.
Dark and grim storylines and elements lose their impact without anything light and cheerful to contrast them with.

 

[Muspelheim]

I think for the most part people are "grimderping" because they're playing a race or class which pretty much can only act grim and serious all the time without being lorebreaking (which is quite heavily looked down upon, which I find extremely amusing when they're playing WoW, who is the most lorebreaking sequel I've ever heard of).

I mean, if you're a Death Knight you're pretty much relegated to being depressed and scowling and antisocial. Same with the Forsaken, really. If you're an Orc you have to be "grarghleghe! War and fighting and RARGH!". Humans are boring as fuck so count that out. Worgen are generally pretty serious since their homeland somehow got wrecked (even though they basically won every fight, but whatever). Blood Elves got that whole forever draining magic or become some kind of cannibal junkie stuff, and I don't think Night Elves has that much of a humorous side also, the Draenei, despite being Russian Spacegoats from hell (or rather, warcrafts version of hell) still try to play it dignified and cool.

In fact, the only fun races honestly are Gnomes, Dwarves, Goblins, Trolls and Pandas. And you can basically can't play a warlock, Death Knight, Warrior, Priest or paladin with any of these without being serious. There's actually very little room to wriggle around, unless you wanna be one of those nasty lorebreakers and be considered on the same level as people who pretend to be Arthas and Illidan's secret lovechild, or something.

Thing is, there is an art to that, acting like a darker figure without it being shallow and meaningless. The grimderpers simply don't do it terribly well. Certainly, Death Knights will be defined by what they have become and what they have experienced, but there is a character beneath all that, which should still shine through. Surely, they've got some plan, or at the very least a purpose, even if it's just finding a one, for instance. That's a good place to start, to get out of the being grim and grumpy in public-routine.

A Forsaken, for instance, being cheerful at times isn't really lorebreaking, either. Even they have their moments, even if it's just a cackle to celebrate the success of an experiment they've been doing. Similar with Orcs, they have moments when they think of something else than war. Like an Orcess or somesuch, even if their line of thinking will be one inspired by their martial tradition.

It's possible to do a dark or violent character very well, but it needs to be done in a way that allows it to be a character of its own, where the more grim parts of its personallity colours and influences its line of thinking and acting. There isn't terribly much room, but more than enough to make a character that is more than simply dark. That is the root problem, I think, that some think "Dark" is a good defining character trait all of its own.

Thing is, serious isn't neccessarily dark, and light tones don't neccessarily make something lose seriousness. A bright and happy gnome character can certainly have some genuinly serious moments or events to it, if those are written well and contrast well with the rest of the character. Hell, a well acted Gnome frost mage selling ice cream makes a million times more serious impression than the generic cardboard cut-out veteran beside it being a drunken racist for its own sake.

I can understand why it happens, but it's not too hard to avoid, with some practice. As long as the grimderp does not get to set the example.

 

[Muspelheim]

Speaking of flippin' Warhammer 40-flippin-K... Both its audience and the writers, I feel, focus far too much on how terrible everything is. It's an interesting universe, but we never get to see anything but the bog standard suffering, war and big men in armour hitting each other.

More and more I am beginning to disagree with that bit about it being interesting, but you're absolutely right.

One of the things that I think would actually make WH40K dark (as opposed to grimdark) is if part of the modeling aspect of the game showcased the consequences of near-constant warfare. If those brightly-technicolor Spehss Mahrine! everyone loves were painted up to show the real effects of a lifetime of warfare. If the battlefield was strewn not just with stock crumbly cathedral walls, but with civilian casualties and evidence of previous human occupation. A few ruined children's toys next to a blast crater would probably do loads to make the battles seem like they would matter, but that would take time to model. And that would distract from putting piles of skulls on top of tanks for no good reason at all.

Agreed. There is never really any sense of loss to it, or rather the sense of loss isn't demonstrated in a way that makes it significant when another factory planet is lost. Now that you say it, it's a very... Sanitized and sugarcoated form of dark, ironically. One that looks dark but doesn't actually challenge any thought or uncomfortable feelings. It's as if civilians or innocent little children or anything else to defend doesn't actually exist.

Another thing that would help would be if we were shown a slize of life in the Imperium away from the battlefield. I rather like how it is a bureaucratic nightmare where nothing ever gets done with ease, and where entire planets exist just to go through the fragmented and outdated paper work. It's like something out of Brazil at an intergalactic scale. Imagine a poor scribe, trying his damndest to find the taxation records of a planet, and then find out in the canteen that the planet has been dead for centuries.
As he types up the report, the logic machine (decorated with winged skulls that he keeps snagging his robes on) breaks down, and he have to journey through a maze of inefficient cathedral offices to find the technichian, who sprays it with holy water to appease the disgruntled machine spirit causing the problem.
It'd be a jolly good beginning for a comedy, I'd say. One that could have some dark points that has more meaning when they are better contrasted.

 

[Latinidiot]

Speaking of flippin' Warhammer 40-flippin-K... Both its audience and the writers, I feel, focus far too much on how terrible everything is. It's an interesting universe, but we never get to see anything but the bog standard suffering, war and big men in armour hitting each other.

More and more I am beginning to disagree with that bit about it being interesting, but you're absolutely right.

One of the things that I think would actually make WH40K dark (as opposed to grimdark) is if part of the modeling aspect of the game showcased the consequences of near-constant warfare. If those brightly-technicolor Spehss Mahrine! everyone loves were painted up to show the real effects of a lifetime of warfare. If the battlefield was strewn not just with stock crumbly cathedral walls, but with civilian casualties and evidence of previous human occupation. A few ruined children's toys next to a blast crater would probably do loads to make the battles seem like they would matter, but that would take time to model. And that would distract from putting piles of skulls on top of tanks for no good reason at all.

Agreed. There is never really any sense of loss to it, or rather the sense of loss isn't demonstrated in a way that makes it significant when another factory planet is lost. Now that you say it, it's a very... Sanitized and sugarcoated form of dark, ironically. One that looks dark but doesn't actually challenge any thought or uncomfortable feelings. It's as if civilians or innocent little children or anything else to defend doesn't actually exist.

Another thing that would help would be if we were shown a slize of life in the Imperium away from the battlefield. I rather like how it is a bureaucratic nightmare where nothing ever gets done with ease, and where entire planets exist just to go through the fragmented and outdated paper work. It's like something out of Brazil at an intergalactic scale. Imagine a poor scribe, trying his damndest to find the taxation records of a planet, and then find out in the canteen that the planet has been dead for centuries.
As he types up the report, the logic machine (decorated with winged skulls that he keeps snagging his robes on) breaks down, and he have to journey through a maze of inefficient cathedral offices to find the technichian, who sprays it with holy water to appease the disgruntled machine spirit causing the problem.
It'd be a jolly good beginning for a comedy, I'd say. One that could have some dark points that has more meaning when they are better contrasted.

To be honest, what you just described sounds like a Terry Pratchett novel, only thing you need as well is some observations of human life and the human condition and you've got a discworld novel.

 

[Muspelheim]

To be honest, what you just described sounds like a Terry Pratchett novel, only thing you need as well is some observations of human life and the human condition and you've got a discworld novel.

Heh, I wonder if that could sell on that Black Library thing they've got. Would certainly be worth a shot.

 

[Westonbirt]

Well, there are two sides to this : I think that the Brown-Gray misery spawns from both the attempt by game developers to lend credibility to their work, and, as we know, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsAngsty, but there is also the demand from video games nerd to have the same credibility, insisting that http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MaturityIsSeriousBusiness.

This is eventually going to sink the industry, because at some point we will reach http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy

TVTropes has so ruined my life.

 

[BreakfastMan]

While I disagree with your assessment of the new Tomb Raider game (she isn't "constantly made the victim" anymore than Nathan Drake is; she stops being a victim and powerless when she kills her first deer, going from victim to survivor), I think it is a fair assessment that many teens n' such misunderstand what "maturity" means. I think it is one of the reasons "misery porn" is as popular as it is, because people mistakenly think it is mature, adult, and important because everything is relentlessly sad and terrible.

Anyway, a piece of fiction that I feel is truly mature would probably be Persona 4. Is there a lot of darkness and pain? Hell yes. But the game doesn't bog itself down by focusing on darkness and pain. The game is about getting over that and becoming a better person in the end.

And a piece of fiction that I feel wants to be mature, but isn't, is Elfen Lied. It is just pure misery porn, from start to finish. It is so relentlessly awful, I have no idea how it got the following that it did. :\

 

[Westonbirt]

Expanding on my previous post, the issue is that who controls the levers of power in the video game industry is not young adults but 12 to 14 years old boys, for whom the main goal is to appear "mature" and "big". They are the one who, focus-tested on everything, ask for Brown Shooters and Dark, Gritty Worlds. But they have no reason to, and the AAA industry just brews a perfect pasta sauce from all of that, without putting any meaning into what it does. It's just gritty for grit's sake, dusty and torn off because young idiots who don't know any better like this, because they haven't reached college yet and still think that smoking a cigarette makes them more mature and respected.

Bizarrely enough, this sentiment still exists in another form higher up the echelons of age. You have basically two stages of meaningless "maturity" in teens ; meaningless violence, sex and drugs and then meaningless angst. When you come onto adults, their reaction is the opposite, they want psychological conflict and angst for the same reason, just because it looks and sounds more legitimate than blood and guts, which, at this point in their life, seems a bit quaint. But they are wrong too, because once again, things need to have actual underlying depth and complexity, real reflection, not just be a perspective on a pavement.

Things are more mature because they are more worked upon and propose complex aspects that make people uncomfortable, but not because there is blood and guts, but because it makes meaningful drama that is legitimately complex and intelligent.

Once again, this can be done right, Spec Ops showed us ; you blur the lines and make the player question underlying issues, not in a lazy token way, but by actually building meaningful drama using concrete characters. The problem is that more often than not, game devs will not be asked and simply manufacture angst like they manufacture blood and laughs.

 

[Fox12]

Bad:
As I've mentioned before, Game of Thrones offered one of the worst depictions of "dark and gritty" subject matter that I've ever seen. The general consensus of the series is that if you are an optimistic individual, then you must be naive. Some people have told me that Ned Stark died because he was unwilling to compromise his noble beliefs. The truth is that he died because he was foolish. Honestly, the books were heavy handed and thematically poor. Martin doesn't understand how tell a dark story without killing people. If the only way you can tell a dark story is by killing people, then I have to question your merit as a writer. I've actually read darker books in which no one died. I've come to the conclusion that he has a very dark, and frankly juvenile, outlook on the world. Though evil exists in spades, to assume that someone who is optimistic just doesn't know any better is foolish. Ultimately Martin attempts to deconstruct fantasy tropes, but he does a very poor job of it. He also fails to rebuild the genre into something more concrete once he deconstructs it.

Good:
There are several stories that handle dark material very well, but I think I'll focus on Berserk. Berserk is arguably darker than Game of Thrones, but it handles the themes very well. Guts loses his friends and family during the eclipse, and immediately goes on a quest for revenge. However, as time goes on, it becomes clear that Guts is in danger of becoming the very thing he wants to destroy. He is eventually forced to choose between seeking personal revenge or protecting the last person he cares about. He ultimately chooses to protect Casca, his loved one. In so doing he is forced to accept several followers, who can help him look after Casca. He eventually learns to care about people again. This is important, because as he gets closer to insanity, it is his love for others that keeps him from going mad with grief. Another character, Schierke, a naive young girl, actually prevents him from going crazy. Her naive and optimistic nature works well with Guts's hardened, world weary outlook. Neither character is portrayed as right or wrong. Berserk doesn't ignore all the evil in the world. Rape, murder, and graphic torture are regular occurrences. However, despite all of this, it still acknowledges the good in the world, and shows the audience that optimism has a place in the world. Berserk deconstructs the glamorous fantasy image, just like GoT, but it also rebuilds the genre after it deconstructs it. Guts loses everything, and the story is brutal, but the story then becomes an epic story about a man struggling to overcome his grief and realizes that there is, in fact, good in the world.

Edit: I'll add Lord of the Flies. The story barely kills off anyone. Instead it's a dark look into the madness and evil inside every human heart. It acknowledges both good and evil. Ultimately the children on the island descend into madness, leaving only a handful of people to resist the insanity with reason. One of the most powerful books ever written.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Well, there are two sides to this : I think that the Brown-Gray misery spawns from both the attempt by game developers to lend credibility to their work, and, as we know, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsAngsty, but there is also the demand from video games nerd to have the same credibility, insisting that http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MaturityIsSeriousBusiness.

This is eventually going to sink the industry, because at some point we will reach http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy

TVTropes has so ruined my life.

I certainly don't like something that is completely dark, Psycho Pass almost sunk into the apathy you mentioned if it weren't for the fact that that was intentional for the sake of exposing the effects of a overbearing society. But I believe that there is a reason that people don't want funny or light hearted, at least from an anime perspective: the moe boom.

God, when the boom happened, we got flooded with so many cute shows and slice of life shows that it was nauseating and I had to pull out for a few years just to get my head cleared. I guess that I and anyone else that wants dark material just wants a reprieve from the overly cute.

As for the Op, any misery porn like Elfin Lied will pretty much work for the bad category(Christ, we did not need animal abuse to show how badly Lucy had it). As for Good examples: Psycho pass used it's dark oppressive setting to comment on what would happen if we make an anti-crime Big Brother but it also had a few small funny moments and a fair amount of the characters have some sense of justice under their bitterness

Edit: a question for everyone, Does Evangelion fall in the bad or good category because the show in the first half did have it's funny moments despite the pain some go through but the second half is just depressive as hell: it worked to deconstruct what an actual pilot might have as baggage as they fight but jeez, Anno, provide some hope and not just an ending that is ambiguous as hell and an ending movie that just rips into any sense of redemption for your main charcter

 

[Nouw]

As much as I loved Fate/Zero, I think Kiritsugu's character falls under the 'bad' of trying to be mature. From the get-go we learn that he's a troubled guy with ambitions to change the world, kinda like Ozymandias from Watchmen but without charisma and facial expressions. I was down with that, curious to know where they'd take him. Unfortunately, it was just too much. The fact that he was always a different flavour of sad was a little off-putting but I figured they'd at least balance it by either giving him less screen-time or showing a different side to the shell of a man he is. By the end of the first season however, the moment when I could have empathy for him never came. I was silly to not realize it earlier but Kiritsugu is the main character so the focus was inevitably going to be on him the most, no matter how many POV changes there are. I guess in this way he serves as an emotional anchor in the show and needless to say he's also supposed to be someone we can root for and if we're ever in doubt they'll remind us how tragic he is with an allusion to his past or a close-up shot of his face. Kiritsugu is oversaturated and this overexposure serves little to his favour. Instead, I was left fatigued. A character like him can work but when he's the main character, it just doesn't. Doesn't ruin the show but it just holds it back so much.

 

[norashepard]

Bad: Blue Is the Warmest Color. Like, seriously just a freaking juvenile fantasy film parading around as mature and edgy. It's not. It's just an excuse for porn. It makes me very mad that the comic version (which wasn't idiotic) was so extremely destroyed by the movie version.

Good: Do the Right Thing. Probably the best, most understated movies about race in America of all time. Everyone is sympathetic and even their most difficult decisions are immediately understood by the viewer. For a movie that revolves around Pizza, it's surprisingly direct about its message. I can't say much more without ruining it for people who haven't seen it, but yeah damn this movie is beautiful. Definitely see it if you haven't already.

 

[Cecilo]

The Crow is revenge porn. Quite delightful revenge porn. Breaking out the guns and ushering the scum of mankind to their graves does not work in reality, but it's a pleasant fantasy to indulge in.

Now, I play (or played, I might be back, but it's not impossible I won't) WoW entirely for the roleplaying. And Warcraft is not a very dark world, thankfully. I've never been a huge fan of "dark", miserable fantasy. At least not the kind that is dark and terrible for its own sake. Unfortunately, people seem to think Warcraft is indeed a dark setting, and roleplay thereafter. That is, playing haggard old veterans with eyepatches that have lost all compassion and hope in some bloodied battlefield or an enemy torture chamber. They are mainly standing about being aggressive and shout "Harlot!" in the taverns. That, or they pretend it's Game of Thrones they're actually playing. The term "grimderp" was very, very fitting.

Everything is dark and horrible, no one likes anything or anyone or did once but lost it. It's like the boring parts of Warhammer 40.000 put forth as an ideal.

It's attempts at being "mature" immediately foiled by the fact that the forests outside are filled with colourful cartoon Hyenamen, battling with the gurgling fish people in the ponds for turf.

Speaking of flippin' Warhammer 40-flippin-K... Both its audience and the writers, I feel, focus far too much on how terrible everything is. It's an interesting universe, but we never get to see anything but the bog standard suffering, war and big men in armour hitting each other.
At least give us a glimpse of something pleasant. There must be planets that are rather nice, or something that makes fighting worth it. If there is nothing worth defending, then why fight at all?

Now, I understand why grimderpness can seem like the pinnacle of maturity. Hell, I was like that, once. I had it all figured out, at last. Everything was rubbish, and portraying dark realities was the only thing that resonated with any sort of truth to it. Then I outgrew it.
Dark and grim storylines and elements lose their impact without anything light and cheerful to contrast them with.

I understand your points, however there really isn't that much to celebrate in the Imperium or in Imperial Space. Most planets are constantly working to meet their Imperial Tithe, either in forces, food, goods, weapons or Armor. Many worlds have a festival near the time that ships come to take the Tithe, but really life in the Imperium sucks.

You either live on a forgeworld, which is a world that is loaded with manufactures and is polluted to all hell, you'll probably die either from an invasion or a factory accident.

A recruit world, in which case your life probably sucks already, because it is a desert, barren ice land, or such.

A Hive World, in which case if you aren't rich you are fighting for your life every day on the streets.

And if that wasn't enough, for every million guardsmen that die, they take another two million in recruits. You will more than likely be drafted or incentized to sign up, if the Tech Priests, or Space Marines haven't taken you. Otherwise you are a farmer or factory worker, more than likely to be killed in the event of an invasion.

Life in the Imperium Sucks and the only reason you, your family, and your friends exist is to do your job, breed, and probably die for the Imperium, So humanity can survive, so the Emperor can someday be revived somehow, so he can kill the gods of Chaos, so he can kill off all the Psykers, so Chaos doesn't get reborn and Humanity, Finally, at that point will kill off all the Aliens, except possibly the Tau since they are lacking Psychic powers. So People can live in peace.

Thats the Point of the Imperium, to kill all psychic people. Possibly so the Emperor becomes a real god. they weren't really clear on what the Emperor would do after all is said and done.

 

[likalaruku]

Mature, like "cute" is just one of those words that has two or three completely different meanings that f**k with us all. Oddly enough, another definition of both Mature & Cute happens to be Sexy, go figure.....

 

[Candidus]

Handles it well: The Witcher 2, never mind what the trolls say.

Handles it badly: Beyond Two Souls, and everything else written by that disgusting idiot.

Personal peeve about misconceptions regarding the word "mature":
When a snotty, painstakingly moderate and high-handed attitude toward sexual content is mistaken for being grown up about it. Includes looking down on gratuitous content as `immature` and those who bask in it as `adolescent`. Usual culprits are fricking teenagers.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Well somebody already brought it up before but the Persona series pretty much dominated the maturity category.
You have characters that go through some very VERY dark times in their lives, so what do they do? They fight it, they become better from it, and they never stay too angsty when they're reminded of their issues. As soon as good light is on them, they're back to cracking jokes and staying optimistic unless the serious tone is brought back up.

It still boggles me that no one can write real mature themes.

As for bad, just the basic AAA dark n' gritty gray and black blood and gore man fest of any proportion. Basically a dense teenager's idea of maturity.