Post #1543240

I have a particular term for certain kinds of edginess I just call “Shadow the Hedgehog writing”, where it’s more likely to come from a teenager trying to seem grown up/cool than an actual adult. Plenty of anime/VNs have fallen in this category, giving early content warnings that the content will be dark; and then just having non sequitor turnouts like “And then the heroine stepped in a trap that severed her spine. She screamed for hours, praying for help, but none came.” There’s a particular game whose name rhymes with “Tomato” that did this for me once. You bring some children to safety, and then go fight the attackers sending *tanks* after them. I came back to the kids, joking to myself “Sorry, hero, it’s too late; we already drowned in our own fear and sadness…!” And then I laughed out loud when my joke turned out right. Worst part is, there *is* some grim and depressing stuff in the world, and yet so many grimdark writers don’t see any nuance in it.