It's worth noting that if someone has a negative reaction to an event,

He hadn't. He said he liked the event in general.

"but the Ray/the-book says we should do it this way" isn't actually much of a counter-argument. If everyone was reacting negatively to the darkness I'd change the darkness.

If someone watches a horror movie and then criticises the movie for raising uncomfortable emotions, that criticism misses the point.

If you analyse indivudal elements of an event without looking at the purpose of why those elements are there, that often leads to flawed conclusions.

Raising uncomfortable emotions to release them at the end, can make the dark portion feel uncomfortable but make the following light phase feel awesome.