Mature Misconceptions.

[Specter Von Baren]

One that does it well, Corpse Party.

As was mentioned by others, just having an endless parade of grimness and darkness gets tiring after a while, Corpse Party, for better or worse, knows how to avoid that. It doesn't just set up the characters to be killed with little thought or reason, instead, it likes to sprinkle all these nice heartwarming moments through the game that make you care about the characters and then it thrusts a knife into your gut and twists it around when it kills one of them. The best example is the sequel(I'd more call it an expansion pack though) Book of Shadows, which shows you a lot more of the characters that weren't touched on much in the original game and make it so you now get to know these other characters that died so that their deaths have a deeper impact on you. Most horror just tries to be scary, Corpse Part is actually horrifying.

As for bad... Hhm.... Advent Rising.

One of the things the game does is introduce you to two characters that are close to the main character, his fiance and his brother, you barely get to know these two (The fiance especially) before you get this scene where you have to choose to save one or the other. For one, you barely know the two because this choice happens right at the start of the game, and for another, it does bugger all. Halfway through the game, the person you save is killed off unceremoniously and with no character development along the way (Even worse is if you saved his fiance because they have a romance build between him and another woman even before she would die) and the person you don't save does have more of a role but it only comes up at the very end of the game (And this is one long slog of a game). The entire game also thinks it's grander and smarter than it actually is. Things like the fate of the universe and such just come off as hollow and pretentious bull. And that's the main problem with the game, it thinks it's more than it is.

 

[skywolfblue]

a discworld novel.

Actually, that would be what I'd list for a good story with "dark" themes. Discworld isn't exactly a happy place, there's murder around every corner, sexism, racism, etc. It's comedy but the world is kinda dark. Despite all that's wrong with the world around them, the characters strive to make it better, and have fun doing so. Rather then act broody and depressed by what's going on.

Another would be God Emperor of Dune. A human becomes an immortal and invincible halfworm monster, and basically enslaves all of humanity, chaining them by their use of the spice, the one resource he has absolute control over. His all female army is fanatical and doesn't hesitate to wipe out whole worlds. Except, as you read the book, you come to realize this "monster" is both villain and hero, teaching humanity a hard earned lesson "Scatter, diversify to survive, do not be tied to one thing" that they will remember forever, and to save them from future prescients. Behind all the darkness lies hope.

A third would be the Mistborn Trilogy. Probably the darkest story that I love. It starts with the world in ashes, governed by an invincible and evil emperor, then the hero dies, and from there on it gets worse, the villain killed in the first book was actually keeping something far, far worse at bay (though for selfish reasons). Things just get worse and worse and worse. But despite the utter bleakness of their circumstances, hope always remains, the characters never give up on themselves or their friends.

As for a badly done example, Game of Thrones has already been mentioned, but I'll second it. Simply killing off the "good" characters does not a good story make. He kills off characters, and doesn't have anything compelling to replace them with, the story doesn't move forward each time someone is killed, it only moves sideways, no progress is made. In comparison, Mistborn knows how to kill off major characters right, every death has meaning, all the characters are shaped by each death, and the story in turn moves forward.

 

[beastro]

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

What works with it is that, while Geralt is neutral, he's not amoral.

While it's the less satisfying of the two branches, going with Roche provides a more political outlook from Geralt's perspective as he's outraged that he has to compromise with Heselt.

 

[Latinidiot]

a discworld novel.

Actually, that would be what I'd list for a good story with "dark" themes. Discworld isn't exactly a happy place, there's murder around every corner, sexism, racism, etc. It's comedy but the world is kinda dark. Despite all that's wrong with the world around them, the characters strive to make it better, and have fun doing so. Rather then act broody and depressed by what's going on.

Another would be God Emperor of Dune. A human becomes an immortal and invincible halfworm monster, and basically enslaves all of humanity, chaining them by their use of the spice, the one resource he has absolute control over. His all female army is fanatical and doesn't hesitate to wipe out whole worlds. Except, as you read the book, you come to realize this "monster" is both villain and hero, teaching humanity a hard earned lesson "Scatter, diversify to survive, do not be tied to one thing" that they will remember forever, and to save them from future prescients. Behind all the darkness lies hope.

A third would be the Mistborn Trilogy. Probably the darkest story that I love. It starts with the world in ashes, governed by an invincible and evil emperor, then the hero dies, and from there on it gets worse, the villain killed in the first book was actually keeping something far, far worse at bay (though for selfish reasons). Things just get worse and worse and worse. But despite the utter bleakness of their circumstances, hope always remains, the characters never give up on themselves or their friends.

As for a badly done example, Game of Thrones has already been mentioned, but I'll second it. Simply killing off the "good" characters does not a good story make. He kills off characters, and doesn't have anything compelling to replace them with, the story doesn't move forward each time someone is killed, it only moves sideways, no progress is made. In comparison, Mistborn knows how to kill off major characters right, every death has meaning, all the characters are shaped by each death, and the story in turn moves forward.

I guess discworld novels could be seen as dark, I never really made that association. I think that because of the abundance of supergrit everywhere I have started to associate 'dark' with 'melodramatic non-characters' instead of what it means. I've been thinking about it, I think the books by David Gemmel, while simple, are dark but not tiresomely so.

Also, apparently I need to read Dune.

 

[Terratina.]

One that does it well, Corpse Party.

Ah, Corpse Party...

Spoiler

...Where it can go from joking about ass cream and asses in general to suicide in about 5 mins.

OT: Anyways, the one thing that has to be kept in mind is "everything in moderation", gotta have the light and the dark, otherwise it's just a one-sided piece. However, there are times when they fail to mix things up and the contrast just, frankly, is extremely jarring.

For example, in the second half of .hack//Roots's tone is basically the complete opposite of the first. No happy guild moments for you. Hell, even Haseo's hair looks a little bit on the dour side in the second half.

In contrast, Higurashi's pacing is very good - it gradually eases you into the horror. However, there are plenty of lighthearted moments alongside it such as the club activity shenanigans, etc.

 

[Vegosiux]

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

Did you just call everyone who has a different opinion than yours on the matter a troll?

I'd really say that's not a good idea.

 

[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.

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
charcter

Fully agree. But we shouldn't have to chose ; we should expect writers to be able to do competent drama and tell good stories.

Also just remembered that our lord an saviour Jimothy Sterling Dalai-Lama-Christ has back in the antique past of 2012 left words of wisdom on this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5a_LiiC92I

 

[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
charcter

Fully agree. But we shouldn't have to chose ; we should expect writers to be able to do competent drama and tell good stories.

Also just remembered that our lord an saviour Jimothy Sterling Dalai-Lama-Christ has back in the antique past of 2012 left words of wisdom on this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5a_LiiC92I

Yep, Jim has a very good point, You elevate the audience up to a positive degree before you send the audience down further. That's why I think the first half of Eva was good while the second half is more muddled; The first half made Shinji had many happy moments of success before his life just goes to hell while the second half just makes everyone go from bad to worse(though it does serve its purpose of showing the damage a pilot will have if they actually are fighting in a war)

 

[rasputin0009]

Ip Man (2008) is a semi-biographic of the early life of Bruce Lee's kung fu master starring Donnie Yen. It's really, absurdly happy at the start and then quickly switches to WW2 and Japanese oppression of China. Amazingly well done and one of my favourite martial arts and WW2 movies. It's not all nationalistic pride (still pretty anti-Japanese, though) and touches deeply on the characters of the movie as a smaller group, too.

Something that covers dark subject matter, but is terrible at it? Olympus Has Fallen (2013) with Gerard Butler. Entertaining bad-ass moments sure, but it tries to be all serious and then ends up being an American jerk-off session. Can't take it seriously at all when every 5 minutes it shows the American flag being "disgraced" in some way in order to invoke the "feels" of the audience. The only reason I was rooting for Gerard Butler to save the day was so he could stay alive for his wife.

 

[dangoball]

For the good:
Life is Beautiful (La Vita è bella) - one of the most touching and insightful movies about human nature I ever saw. It's about a Jew during WW2 who gets sent to a concentration camp with his son and even through all that suffering he tries to make it a game for his boy and bring a smile to the faces of his fellow prisoners. And that ending was just...

Full Metal Alchemist - the story is dark as the night with (one example for all) a kid whose existence is reduced to (an echo of) a soul in a suit of armor but it also has many lighthearted moments that are made more significant by and in turn increase the impact of all the suffering going on.

For the bad:
Other than what has already been mentioned... I don't know, 50 Shades of Gray? Yes, a cheap cop-out. (Does it even play at being mature? I don't know for I haven't read it )

The I Don't Even Know:
Serial Experiment Lain - I'm still too confused by that to actually say but I would put it with "the good"

Also, apparently I need to read Dune.

Yes, yes you do. But read what Frank Herbert wrote first. When his son and Kevin J. Anderson took over, the series lost something (History of the Dune felt too different in tone and for the love of God do not - DO NOT - read Prequel to the Dune before the original).

 

[Latinidiot]

For the good:
Life is Beautiful (La Vita è bella) - one of the most touching and insightful movies about human nature I ever saw. It's about a Jew during WW2 who gets sent to a concentration camp with his son and even through all that suffering he tries to make it a game for his boy and bring a smile to the faces of his fellow prisoners. And that ending was just...

Full Metal Alchemist - the story is dark as the night with (one example for all) a kid whose existence is reduced to (an echo of) a soul in a suit of armor but it also has many lighthearted moments that are made more significant by and in turn increase the impact of all the suffering going on.

For the bad:
Other than what has already been mentioned... I don't know, 50 Shades of Gray? Yes, a cheap cop-out. (Does it even play at being mature? I don't know for I haven't read it )

The I Don't Even Know:
Serial Experiment Lain - I'm still too confused by that to actually say but I would put it with "the good"

Also, apparently I need to read Dune.

Yes, yes you do. But read what Frank Herbert wrote first. When his son and Kevin J. Anderson took over, the series lost something (History of the Dune felt too different in tone and for the love of God do not - DO NOT - read Prequel to the Dune before the original).

How dare you mention La Vita è Bella, I'm welling up at the merest mentioning of it. You monster.

 

[dangoball]

How dare you mention La Vita è Bella, I'm welling up at the merest mentioning of it. You monster.

I'm sorry...
Here, have Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain to brighten up your day!

 

[Latinidiot]

How dare you mention La Vita è Bella, I'm welling up at the merest mentioning of it. You monster.

I'm sorry...
Here, have Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain to brighten up your day!

It's okay, I got myself under control through the happy dark movie called Wall-E.

 

[Mick Beard]

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.

really? have you even seen The Crow movie? the one with Brandon Lee, anything after that movie is bullshit and should be avoided (sequels and tv series)

The Crow is a story about a couple who refuse to move out of their apartment thus setting back some development plans.
so the big boss ordered them to be dealt with. they are attacked and he is forced to watch the thugs beat and rape his fiancée and after they are finished they kill her. after he witnesses all this they then shoot him up a bit and throw him out the window to die.

due to all this he was so distraught that his soul could not find peace in the after life so a crow brought his soul back so he can right the wrongs done to him and Shelly.

he is undead (the crow is his link to the living world) and thus canto be killed (unless the crow is killed)

in the end he kills all the people involved his and Shelly's murder and once again dies and meets her in the afterlife.



hardly batman like at all. its a movie about the power of true love and revenge

 

[VincentMm]

As bizarre as it sounds about a comedy pirate nonsense anime, One Piece does dark bits really well.
Every bit of Nami's history in Cocoyasi village is played out well and...

...damn, that scene where she's asking Luffy for help before he heads to Arlong park. Makes me cry every time.
Ties with The West Wing for best exposition of PTSD I've ever seen on screen.

 

[ezaviel]

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.

Have you read many of the 40k books? Yeah, lots of them are just "planets die, giant warriors smashing aliens", but a lot of Imperial Guard ones show exactly this. I recall the Guants Ghosts series touches on this a number of times, especially the Seige of Vervunhive. Hell, the Gaunts Ghosts series is all about loss, its about a regiment whose planet is wiped out focuses a lot on how effects the regiment and the members. It's much more about the cost of war then a lot of other 40k series. It even has a lot of "slice of life" in the flashbacks etc of the Ghosts about their planet before they joined the Guard.

It really depends on the book and author as to how much "life in the 40k universe" there is and how much "Genetic Supermen crushing things with their manly bare hands" there is.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Have you read many of the 40k books? Yeah, lots of them are just "planets die, giant warriors smashing aliens", but a lot of Imperial Guard ones show exactly this. I recall the Guants Ghosts series touches on this a number of times, especially the Seige of Vervunhive. Hell, the Gaunts Ghosts series is all about loss, its about a regiment whose planet is wiped out focuses a lot on how effects the regiment and the members. It's much more about the cost of war then a lot of other 40k series. It even has a lot of "slice of life" in the flashbacks etc of the Ghosts about their planet before they joined the Guard.

It really depends on the book and author as to how much "life in the 40k universe" there is and how much "Genetic Supermen crushing things with their manly bare hands" there is.

To an extent, most 40k stuff seems to run along the lines of "The inquisitor was really a heretic, but the marines win cause they are awesome". Sure, the Ghosts lost their homeworld, but it's not really driven home, IMHO. In fairness Abnett sticks some in, but not really that much, or that well done, IMHO, the emphasis is much more on heroes being heroic.

OTOH, some of the older Warhammer stuff could get the bleakness right. Plague Demon, by Brian Craig, comes to mind.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I think, judging by certain people?s interpretations, Black Swan does a fairly mature job of handling a woman who?s been a victim of repressed mother-daughter sexual abuse and developed, as a result, bulimia, schizophrenia, and perfectionistic low self-esteem. (Of course, it jumped the shark a little bit when Nina?s legs somehow snapped into the shape of a swan?s and she started fucking growing wings, but I can take it as ?Hollywood symbolism?).

For the opposite, The Book of Eli. Such a boring film that doesn?t even make any sense, with no likeable characters, and comes off as pretentious Christian propaganda.

 

[gargantual]

I know the rules are two but there are so many examples to give.

Good: Akira (i know the manga's more conclusive than the film) but still addresses character, youth alienation, political corruption, and a struggling post nuke society. Everything that happens is reflective of those themes and consequential. Events that young minds aren't ready to understand the context of

Poor: TV version of the Walking Dead after Frank Darabont left. I'm sorry, this turned into terrible exploitation of the 'fall of man, and social group' ideas that zombie fiction explores. Should've just stayed close to the comic.

I think the key difference to note here, and this is something that we should take note of in all fiction. Good mature is more than the eye candy and shock. Its 'genuinely' out to just 'explore an idea. another viewpoint of an idea, or pose a question, maybe answer it' on a level that underdeveloped minds aren't ready for. Poor example of mature is out to just exploit viewers with imagery, but really has no more to say than a street peddler.

 

[Agayek]

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?

That's kinda the original point of the setting. That there's nothing pleasant and the whole universe existed to grind out optimism and hope from existence.

It started as a big joke, where literally everything was utterly and completely crapsack and nothing could ever get better, purely because that would make it so over the top and ridiculous in scale that people couldn't help but not take it seriously. Just look at it. You've got walking death cathedrals, an entire species of football hooligans, anything and everything in existence can and will be infested by Chaos, and the fucking Space Nazis are the good guys. It's so absurd that it can't possibly have started from a serious premise.

Unfortunately, cultural attitudes shifted a bit shortly after it was created, and people started taking it seriously. And once that happened, it just spiraled away into the cesspit that it (mostly) is now. Caiaphas Cain is pretty much the only aspect of the fluff that still remembers its roots.