ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This post does a great job of explaining what makes a story dark, when to recommend or not recommend such stories for different types of readers.  When I say "dark," I usually mean a combination of those and/or other elements, because if it's purely one thing -- such as "gritty" -- then I'm more likely to say that in particular.  *chuckle*  The show Dark Matter is well and truly named; it hits all the listed aspects at one time or another.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-07-25 02:43 am (UTC)
siliconshaman: black cat against the moon (Default)
From: [personal profile] siliconshaman
You know.. maybe it's a function of who and what I am.. but I've never successfully written a completely dark story.

Oh well, chucking molotov's into the abyss... someone has to do it.
Edited Date: 2018-07-25 02:44 am (UTC)

Re: Thoughts

Date: 2018-07-25 09:46 am (UTC)
siliconshaman: black cat against the moon (Default)
From: [personal profile] siliconshaman
True, but.. well.. Ashley! It would seem pretty weird to write her and not have some darkness there!

But I can't help myself, I always throw in something to leave a spark of light there.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-07-25 02:51 am (UTC)
peoriapeoriawhereart: Blair freaking and Jim hands on his knees (Jim calms Blair)
From: [personal profile] peoriapeoriawhereart
There is a comic that's made the rounds on tumblr, of story orcs and most of the stories float but one of the orcs creates fics that plunge down into a crevice and other orcs are wondering why he would bother.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-07-26 12:21 am (UTC)
stardreamer: Meez headshot (Default)
From: [personal profile] stardreamer
I've seen that one! Avoiding spoilers, it does turn out that he has a Damn Good Reason for doing that, and it's a dark story with a less-dark ending.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-07-26 02:38 am (UTC)
peoriapeoriawhereart: line art Ecto-1 (Ecto-1)
From: [personal profile] peoriapeoriawhereart
Indeed, I didn't want to spoiler it, but wanted to give people some chance of finding it.

Tumblr reminds me a of short story that had these little camera drones, back when that was pure science fiction. But there was no indexing.

Re: Yes ...

Date: 2018-07-26 05:23 pm (UTC)
peoriapeoriawhereart: Blair freaking and Jim hands on his knees (Jim calms Blair)
From: [personal profile] peoriapeoriawhereart
A certain site is apparently more sporked than usual, since searching my commonly used tags doesn't find anything.

Yeah, sure.

Do you recall the name of the short story (science fiction) with the photographing drones? It was in whichever digest of ilk (Analog etc)

Re: Yes ...

Date: 2018-07-30 04:11 pm (UTC)
zeeth_kyrah: A glowing white and blue anthropomorphic horse stands before a pink and blue sky. (Default)
From: [personal profile] zeeth_kyrah
Akimbo Comics .. I don't recall which of the comics it is, but that's the website.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-07-26 12:29 am (UTC)
stardreamer: Meez headshot (Default)
From: [personal profile] stardreamer
The dark stories I don't like are the ones best summed up as "life is shit, and then you die". I don't absolutely insist on a happy ending -- sometimes there just ish't any way to get there from here, and I'm fine with "there wasn't any good choice, but we did the best we could and some people came out better for it" -- but I do want to see that not all hope is lost. Also, a balance of darkness and humor (such as BTVS) makes it much easier for me to read.

This is brushing up against my personal definition of the difference between dark fantasy and true horror. In the former, bad things can happen, and the outcome isn't always the greatest, but things generally end up better than they started out. In the latter... "rocks fall, everyone dies", or the characters end up trapped in a horrible situation with no way out ever, and I can't deal with that.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-07-26 05:27 pm (UTC)
peoriapeoriawhereart: Cartoon Stantz post-kafoom (Default)
From: [personal profile] peoriapeoriawhereart
Yeah, apocalypse scenarios are really only something I read as fanfiction AUs.

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ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
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