You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Nornagest comments on How to Write Deep Characters - Less Wrong Discussion

45 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 June 2013 02:10AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (68)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Nornagest 16 June 2013 11:08:09PM *  10 points [-]

Strongly disagree. That page is a list of works that contain conflicts between parties that count as evil by the site's fairly shallow standards, and that's it; it makes no individual claims about authorial motivations. Though if the first few works on the example list that I recognize are anything to go by, comedy, parody, and schadenfreude are more likely as motivations than a cheap play at worldliness.

I doubt you'll find a trope that gives you exactly what you're looking for. Darkness Induced Audience Apathy might be the closest one I can think of, although Eliezer may have been shooting for something more along the lines of True Art Is Angsty; personally, I wouldn't trust either one. TV Tropes isn't especially good at thematic analysis, especially as it touches on "serious" literature.