Tragic stories are better than happy ones at making sad people happy!
[Intro, how I got here]
I was chatting online with two randomly assigned teammates in a Space Marine 2 lobby. All of us knew the overarching story of the franchise and were “nerding out” discussing how elements in the story were depicted in this game. Then someone said something in conversation that immediately caught my attention! The conversation went something like this: “This game is super dark!” “It’s awesome right?” “Yea, I mean Warhammer 40,000 has been exploding in popularity recently.” “Yea it has, I feel like people like dark stuff like this more as the world around them feel darker!” “Wow, that is deep!” I said in response before filling in the rest of his implications in my head: What if people really are attracted to darker stories when they feel like the world around them is getting worse?
I began to think about things that support that. I remembered a good friend, that after trying to commit suicide, suddenly became obsessed with darker stories. I thought it was unusual, but I didn’t ask any questions about it. He at the time fell in love with The Witcher, a series of novels, videogames, and even a Netflix series. The story has a blunt tone to war. Its stories sometimes weave though dark or taboo family themes, but they handle it with the grace of an ice skater. The writing and dialogue and characters feel noticeably more alive and realistic than other franchises. And lastly it borrows fantasy elements from folk tales from across the globe, such as Hansel and Gretel. Many of these fables, without needing any additional embellishments, are already dark.
On a larger scale, one of the most defining movie trilogies of the 2000’s was The Dark Knight Trilogy. Recognized inside of theaters for its darker depiction of Gotham, Batman, and the Joker, while being recognized outside of theatres for the tragedy surrounding Heath Ledger’s death and the Oscar he would win posthumously for his performance as the Joker (Express, Heath Ledger’s Oscars). This newer interpretation by Christopher Nolan was not the “Adam West Batman” for general audiences, but instead a darker, morally grayer, and realistic imagining of what Batman would like in our modern world. The interesting part is this trilogy started playing in theatres right around the America was fighting its “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan (History Channel, War on Terror Timeline). The finally of the trilogy literally involved terrorism, which Batman had to fight against.
I then hung on to the word war. War led to dark humor shows and movies like M.A.S.H. and Full Metal Jacket. War led to the anthropomorphizing the atom bomb into a monster named Godzilla! War led to mobile suit Gundam, a “robot show for kids” featuring an unglorified depiction of war. Even the stuff for kids got dark!
[hypothesis]
Hypothesis: People who do not feel good about the world will feel better after consuming dark fictional media rather than bright stories.
[Breakdown and clarify]
Let’s go over a few terms here.
[Clarify dark]
What does dark mean?
Dark is found in well-known classical literature that everyone has heard of! Dark is found the paranoia and unexplainable uneasiness featured in the writings of Eger Allen Poe as thumps beat through walls and floors. Dark is when the Brothers Grim write a tale about parents that leave their children in the forest to get lost so there are less mouths to feed with the dwindling supply of food at home. Dark is when Emily Dickinson writes “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me–”.
In modern day dark looks like Warhammer 40,000:
[So what is Warhammer 40,000]
Warhammer 40,000 started as a wargame and a setting for imaginary battles to take place, but it is so much more today! It is now also an evolving story that has spanned literally hundreds of books and audio dramas, CG animations, videogames, crossover events with Call of Duty and Magic the Gathering, and a fanbase full of artiest, wargamers, and lore-keepers. It is also one of the darkest universes out there ever committed to paper. So dark is the continued story, that the company touts that they pioneered a new genre: grim-dark.
Warhammer 40,000 takes place in the 41st millennium. A great man known as the Emperor of mankind was able to unite all of humanity across the galaxy under a single banner, The Imperium of Man. He was however betrayed and killed, and now his corps sits immobile on a golden throne on Earth powering a beacon that allows interstellar travel, and to which a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may not truly die. However, the life support provided by the throne has shown signs of failing…
Mankind itself has regressed into religious fanatics that are equally superstitious and xenophobic. There is no freedom of speech, there is no tolerance, there is only worship of the Emperor of Mankind or punishment by death. Humanity ends up regularly killing each other as much as they kill their enemies!
War rages across the galaxy! Mankind is assaulted on all sides by daemons, xenos, mutants, and rebellions from within. Long gone is the promise of understanding, progress, and innovation, as the ability to make the technical marvels of the golden age has been lost! In the 41st millennium there is only war.
Despite the setting of the universe being obtusely bleak, this naturally sets up for very heroic moments that would grab even the attention of Hercules, Achilles, and Theseus. The stories also contain a good dose of irony, satire, and morbid humor everywhere. One particular book comes to mind stating trying to commit suicide is punishable by death.
“Planets are deemed unrecoverable and are completely destroyed on a whim. Everything sucks, but that’s like the charm of it!” -Bricky
It is this charm that I believe draw people to it despite them knowing the story may not have a traditionally happy ending. It is why I believe that as the world goes though turmoil, the newspaper headlines get scarier, more statics come out showing mathematically how people are unable to achieve the American dream, loneliness increases, virgins, non-married people, and married people choosing not to have children increases, misinformation and disinformation turn the internet to a toxic wasteland and mistrust of institutions is at an all-time high only topped by the U.S. government itself, as family have their own civil wars due to irreconcilable political differences,
[Transcendentalism vs Existentialism, realism, and existentialism]
[Before the civil war]
Before the American Civil War, American literature was full of optimism being pioneered by a sentimental or romantic style of writing. Writers like Walt Whitman have such an enthusiastic approach to life as displayed in Song of Myself. The optimism of Ralph Waldo Emerson who started the Transcendentalism movement was
[After the Civil war]
Emily Dickerson
[Popular books and movies on a time line]
[Study on sad music on sad people]
Study on happy music on happy people]
[Medical references on depression]
[Study on jealousy anger that social media causes when people look at perfect lives compared to their own]
[Medical references on existential crisis in people]
[Medical references on people that are suicidal]
[Medical references on people that are lonely]
[Rebuttal America is always in a war] [America has always had dark writers]
Between Vietnam and Desert Storm, and multiple campaigns fighting the War on Terror, I can understand the point of view that America has warlike tendencies every few decades. However, might I also point out that America also has suffered a “great” recession, a pandemic, and for dessert, political turmoil. None of this stops the American public from feeling anxiety or tension, if anything it only encourages more it! These bottled-up negative emotions only pave the way for more writers and directors to therapeutically express their fears on paper and sometimes make a lump some of money doing so. When the general public feels down about the things around them, we can see a general acceptance of these stories and movies by their popularity and profit.
[Rebuttal, if war hammer has always been dark why hasn’t it taken off until now]
You might counter argue that there were plenty of dark events between 1980 and now, therefore it had the chance to become big for time a dark event between then and now. Because it hadn’t then, it must either be a coincidence or is big now for another reason instead. I would respond by saying that there is one key difference between then and now and that is our pop culture had changed dramatically and therefore what is acceptable. Thanks to popular superhero movies of the 2000s through the 2010s paving the way, traditionally nerdier media such as Game of Thrones could now be an acceptable pastime for non-nerdy people to watch. I am modest of course, as Game of Thrones was an HBO blockbuster that had people on the edge of their seat every episode and leaving on a note that made people excitedly ready to devour the next episode, to the point they did not want to wait. The advent of nerd culture becoming pop culture in modern society has replaced the trends of past such as 80s action movies. In the 1980 is was widely accepted that nerds would be bullied for the media they consumed as well as other things like their appearance. Even I got teased for liking nerdy stuff that is now considered cool or nostalgic. “Nerd culture is pop culture” is what has enabled media like Warhammer to come into the spotlight, and because it is dark, amusing, or maybe even resonate in a few ironic instances with people who see the world as a dark place.
References
Pop culture
Warhammer
The Dark Knight
History
Literature
[hanging paragraph]
For those who are uninitiated, the original Warhammer was released in 1983 by Games Workshop. It was a game where two players would “play general” on a table and march toy soldiers into battle against a fantasy setting backdrop heavily inspired by works like Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons. Later In 1987 Games Workshop released a spin-off of Warhammer named Rouge Trader, which would later be renamed Warhammer 40,000. This spin off took place in a sci-fi universe 40,000 years in the future, however it wouldn’t stay a spin off for long before overtaking its predecessor in popularity. In this new setting the different fantasy species would be reimagined inhabiting a futuristic sci-fi setting, and as time went on would also borrow heavily from popular sci-fi movies such as Alien and Terminator. It was goofy and campy mess of fantasy and sci-fi tropes until the release of third edition (Bell of Lost Souls, History of Warhammer) which had a noticeably darker tone to the narrative and setting!
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
While it is tempting to match every period during which dark stories are ascendant with wars, civil turmoil, or terrorism, . . .
. . . you might also need to find an era or two when blissful or self-satisfied times entertained themselves with . . . something else.
What was the entertainment landscape of the American 40s and 50s, after WWII and before the assassination orgy of the 60s? Musicals? Science fiction that focused on the only enemies we could imagine . . . from “outer space,” not local? Science fiction now is almost always domestic in origin. We fuck ourselves up now.
I think your borrowed (discovered) observation that obliterating entire worlds is the “charm” of the narrative is another way of saying, “We’re screwed so all we have left is black laughter. That plus the grim satisfaction of being “in the know” about how bad things really are. Anything is preferable to being thought naive.
Still . . . why switch horses with just days left to you and a paper on phantom tastes so nearly ready to wrap?