Writing light-hearted fiction with dark undertones

[myuma]

Recently, I realised that I'm not going to be able to write certain stories because they topics they would cover would upset me too much - for example, characters with abusive relatives; I really like Lillie and N but would not be able to stomach writing about their experiences.

On the other hand, deciding I'm never going to write about N or Lillie when they're my favourite canon characters seems harsh. Plenty of shows aimed at younger audiences manage to pull off a balance between hinting at dark pasts and keeping the overall tone light; Avatar: The Last Airbender and MLP: Friendship is Magic have wars and murders as part of the world, but never dive into the horrific details.

So, here's some questions I have for my fellow writers on TR. Feel free not to answer any of them and just write your general thoughts on the topic too.

- What are your favourite examples of fiction with dark undertones, but a light atmosphere?

- What are some good ways of hinting that a character's past wasn't exactly pleasant, beyond them saying so?

- How can "dark" characters contribute to a light hearted plot, without ignoring their dark past?

- What are some good ways of coming up with plots that aren't too dark, but still have enough tension to be exciting?

 

[Sinderella]

Hi friend! I see you've been around for a while, but nice to meet you anyway! I think I have some insight on this because I'm a HUGE fan of the "light atmosphere, dark undertone" thing, so hopefully my thoughts might prove helpful!

- What are your favourite examples of fiction with dark undertones, but a light atmosphere?

I had to think about this one for a second, but the first thing that popped into my head was Akiba Maid Wars--it's quite literally about maids working in maid cafes in Japan, but the maid cafes sort of function like Yakuza/mafia groups, so they're constantly mugging each other or getting into literal gun shootouts...you know, all while they're fronting as these cute, innocent maid girls. Definitely a harsh contrast there.

Something more subtle would definitely be Fruits Basket. This might come from a more visual sense, but I'd say this falls in the category. Not sure if you've ever seen/read it, but the gist is that this girl, Tohru, lost her mother and is basically homeless, and ends up being taken in by a family who are cursed to turn into animals from the Chinese zodiac when they get too emotional (I believe, it's been years since I've seen it). It's definitely your standard shojou anime in where the MC is very cute, very innocent, kind of naive, very sweet and nice, and the characters surrounding her are definitely very comedic and do their own thing. But as the show goes on, it starts to come out that everyone's dealing with their own shit, some more than others, and I recall it getting pretty dark as the final episodes rounded out.

Soul Eater is another one! Though again, might be a visual thing. Soul Eater follows a lot of demonology, mythology, and occult lore so that's already starting off pretty dark. But the characters, their interactions, the situations they get into, and the way they handle them definitely spin those normally dark things into something more aesthetically light. Granted, there are DEFINITELY moments of "holy shit this is fucked up" but they're greatly contrasted with "lol Black*Star is a fucking chimp" or somebody getting an aggressive nosebleed because they saw some cleavage.

- What are some good ways of hinting that a character's past wasn't exactly pleasant, beyond them saying so?

This comes down to the art of "showing, not telling." It can be as simple as having a character react to things a certain way, to physical things they might suffer with. For example:

-I'm writing an original character in my fic who was raised by his father, who was basically some more fucked up incarnation of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, in which some days he was tolerable and other days he was a deranged menace. 30-something years later, said character now flinches involuntarily when people raise their voice at him, and he immediately tries to fight if people walk or run up behind him. Just long-term results of dealing with a genocidal maniac as a dad :>

-I'm writing Guzma in a more realistic take in my fic, and go about physically and mentally illustrating the fact he was abused by both his father and Lusamine in numerous ways. Physically, he wears a compression sleeve on his shoulder for burn scars caused by experimentation, and he has scars that he's hidden under tattoos from his dad's beatings. Mentally, he immediately reacts badly to parents yelling at/condescending their kids, his reaction to almost everything high stress is anger (granted, not in a violent way a lot of times), and he's very protective of his video game consoles and other electronics (because his dad used to smash them).

-In a webcomic I read (called 'Uriah' in case you're curious), there is a character who grew up mute. They're mute because as a baby, their mother was so overwhelmed by their incessant crying that she got high/drunk or whatever (I think, she might have also been sober and just tired) that she filled their bottle with boiling water and fed it to them, causing damage to their tongue and vocal cords, rendering them unable to speak upon becoming of age to be able to.

- How can "dark" characters contribute to a light hearted plot, without ignoring their dark past?

This can come down to characterization and generally how you "execute" it. Light-hearted plot doesn't mean it can't have its moments of "dark." Take Fruits Basket for example, the plot itself is very lighthearted, the characters tend to be very lighthearted and comic-relief-y, but they absolutely have their moments of angst and uh-oh. Ouran High School Host Club is another one I can think of where it's entirely made out to be a comedic anime but lo and behold, the last four or so episodes get pretty dramatic and start to delve into one of the characters more, and we find out his past/home life is pretty fucking dark.

Drawing from those examples, you can have the characters be like Kyo from Fruits Basket, in where they're the angry comic relief all the time while dropping hints here and there about WHY they're so angry. Or you can have them be like Tamaki from OHSHC, in where he's the dramatic leader of everything and gets hella worked up when his friends do shit without him, only to reveal he's like that because his family life blows.

My plot is by no means "light" so to speak, but I definitely have moments of "light" in where my characters, who have, in layman terms, been put through the fucking wringer, roll up and provide the comic relief while still shouldering their trauma from their past.

So all of this to say, think about how your characters deal with their baggage. If you're going a light-hearted route, you're probably not going to be delving too much into the weight they're shouldering at the moment. Characters who have endured trauma, once healed, might spend their days doing whatever it is they like to do, and might just act as any other person would. However, some might put up emotional walls. Some might get irrationally angry at things. Some might try to make everything a joke. Some might be nervous around other people. Workshop how the post-trauma manifests for them as they go about their lives, and go from there.

- What are some good ways of coming up with plots that aren't too dark, but still have enough tension to be exciting?

Hmmm I might not be a good source of advice on this one because I think every time I've attempted to come up with a lighthearted plot, SOMETHING dark ends up manifesting within it. However, I have come up with stories within the stories that are entirely lighthearted and just deal with really lowkey or mundane things (though sometimes not!).

I'd say start with competition. Maybe plot something around characters fighting for a thing. It doesn't have to be anything major or life-defying, it could just be a race to fight a region Champion, or who can catch/evolve a Garchomp first. Journeyfics are pretty good with this.

Maybe you could also work around a mystery? Perhaps not anything dark like murder or people going missing, but maybe something more benign like Pokemon suddenly not able to use their moves, or a shortage/complete outage of healing items at the PokeCenters. Or maybe a certain place is getting ravaged by an invisible force, and it turns out to be some angry ghost-type? Idk, I feel like there's a lot of options there but I immediately want to make them all convoluted and edgy LOL

Anyway, I hope this all helps in some way! Feel free to respond or DM if you have any questions/concerns, and I'll see you around!

 

[Negrek]

These are all great questions! And a very interesting topic of discussion in general.

What are your favourite examples of fiction with dark undertones, but a light atmosphere?

I struggled a lot to think of something here, heh--I think AtLA, as you mentioned, fits pretty well here, and I think media created for children is where you're most likely to find this sort of atmosphere. The first thing that comes to mind for me might be Calvin and Hobbes, which feels a bit weird for me to say, because it's in no way dark and is generally super funny and adventurous. However, the context that the comic doesn't really linger on but which is always there is that Calvin's an imaginative child who struggles in school, is bullied, and relies on his stuffed tiger for companionship. A lot of his antics are his way of coping with a world that isn't kind to children in general or him in particular, and with facts of life that are scary or alienating. And that's without getting into the comics that are explicitly about issues like environmentalism! All in all it's a series that's easy to appreciate on a surface level because it's funny and heartwarming, but which actually has a serious side that comes out swinging now and again.

What are some good ways of hinting that a character's past wasn't exactly pleasant, beyond them saying so?

I think Sind's spot on in talking about characters' reactions here. One other thing I'd say here is that it's great to have characters react to situations in ways that make it clear that their understanding of "normal" is skewed relative to other characters. For example, if a character grew up in a poor home, they might be shocked or disgusted when other characters casually throw away slightly worn or broken objects and then buy new ones instead of trying to fix or make do with the old version. Or, on the flip side, a character who tells what to them is a lighthearted anecdote, like "haha, yeah, we weren't allowed to visit friends or anything on the weekends, we had to stay inside and do chores or study the whole time, what a drag, right?" and then receives "dude wtf that's messed up" reactions from other characters can drive home that they've had bad experiences without even the character themself necessarily being aware of it, much less stating it.

What are some good ways of coming up with plots that aren't too dark, but still have enough tension to be exciting?

As Sind mentioned, there are a number of challenges that characters can face, or goals that they can have, that generate tension and excitement but which don't tend to be dark (unless you want to go there!) or necessarily call for the exhumation of all the participants' traumas. I'd echo her sentiment that journeyfics offer a great structure that can offer plenty of tension and excitement (battles, tough captures, environmental hazards, etc.) but which don't necessarily need to get dark. Certainly plenty of journeyfics take a grim direction and go into things like world-ending threats, serious crime, life-or-death situations, and so on, but it isn't at all necessary to write an interesting one. In that respect I think Pano's The Long Road provides a good example of a journeyfic where the main character encounters difficulties, faces real stakes, and which generally sticks to an action-adventure theme, but which doesn't come off as particularly dark.

In general, I think that it can help to remember that stakes are very personal to the characters they affect, even if they seem mundane or like small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. We all face challenges that seem dire and important to us, even if in retrospect they may not be that big of a deal: finding a job or landing a promotion, finding a date for the school dance, completing a tricky group project the night before the deadline. You can get plenty of mileage and tension out of these relatively small problems--as long as it feels like a big deal for the character, you can make it feel like a big deal to the audience, too!

I think that the darkness is also going to come a lot from framing and the extent to which you explore heavy themes, not solely to how serious/tense the plot gets. For example, you might have a character who is very protective of children, advocates for them very strongly, routinely tries to intervene if they think a kid isn't being treated well--and you could suggest based on a few hints here and there that this is in some way informed by their background, that they had an unhappy or outright traumatic childhood and want to try and prevent what happened to them from happening to anyone else. I think that as long as you don't go into the details of what exactly they experienced to make them respond this way (or get really intense with the sorts of scenarios they encounter where kids are in peril), it's not going to feel unreasonably dark or heavy. When the character's personal traumas inform the plot but are not its direct focus, I think you can often come up with a story that feels as though it has serious aspects without seeming especially "dark."

 

[BestLizard]

What are your favourite examples of dark undertones but a light atmosphere?

That's tough to answer, cause I find shows with light atmospheres but dark undertones eventually have dark atmospheres, just not all the time. I'm going to say PMD: Explorers of Sky though.


What are some good ways of hinting that a character's past wasn't exactly pleasant, beyond them saying so?

If your goal is to write about N and Lillie without having to face the darker elements, it may not necessary to hint at the unpleasantness of a character's past. That being said, they'll have aversions to things that remind them of their past. Lillie will probably loathe formal clothing while N will probably distrust authority.


How can "dark" characters contribute to a light hearted plot, without ignoring their dark past?

By having them contribute to a light-hearted plot. People with dark pasts still enjoy laughter, adventure, learning, happiness, etc. I'm also not sure why you think it's necessary to have their dark pasts be something that must be ignored; we've all had our worst moments in life but we're certainly not defined by them.


What are some good ways of coming up with plots that aren't too dark, but still have enough tension to be exciting?

Tension needs conflict and that's inherently dark, so it's a bit of an oxymoron to have a tense scene with nothing dark. That being said, maybe the answer you're looking for is to focus on personal drama instead of violence.



That being said, I don't think its quite right that N's and Lillie's backstories being dark meaning you need to have dark undertones may not be the best way to look at things. Case in point: Gen 7 itself. Lillie is largely positive and positive for most of the game, and its almost obscure Guzma has a past as dark as it is. I do think you have the option of not getting their pasts involved, especially if you write them during a phase where they're focusing on the present and future instead of the past, trying to find the bigger things in life.

 

[K_S]

(Appologies all formating options are greyed and my spell check isnt working for some reason so tjis is going to be a bit rough)

What are some good ways of hinting that a character's past wasn't exactly pleasant, beyond them saying so?

Contrast... Them breaking social rules and not getting why its a bad thing.

Ex:in a story i am editing "two paths" Ash sasses Giovanni sticking his tongue out... Indulging the full childish bells and whistles in a public setting...

Gio's response is a sincere "if you dont stop i will cut it off" and the rest of the cast freaks out because a) even joking about that's wildly morbid to direct at a twelve year old. B) most of the cast know he isnt joking. C) and his own narritive later confirms he doesn't get why people are freaking out and he sees nothing wrong with threatening sincere mutilation on someone who is both expendable and irritating.

- How can "dark" characters contribute to a light hearted plot, without ignoring their dark past?

Not to sound too troupe(y) but they do go out shopping. Most have lives outside of either thier brooding or murdering or trauma and focusing on thats a good starting point.

Plot points of "im taking the day off" "truce tuesdays" "this areas important to me so i wont fight here" are part and partial to villians or dark characters with standards, limits, and morals.

An example from my own work is when MANGA Gio from "Roost" has several scenes that would be considered "light" as part of his gym cover he runs a childrens event.. Gently coaching the kindergarden aged level crowd in basic trainer ediquite... Running a mock battle and hosting the winners to a public luncheon... whining and dining a forign power into his pocket to gently encourage them to consider comercial contacts with kanto... All topped off with visiting his "prozia" aka "zia" an elderly aunt figure who he clearly adores.

As for how he doesnt lose his dark parts... His zia is a crueler crime lord than he'd ever be and they both openly discuss crimes/shop. The charity event is a front and while he rolls with it he's blunt in his mental narritive and word play that hes only doing it for his own ends, and his efforts to charm the powers that be stem from him wanting to a) build alliences to dislodge FLAREshold on this spot. B) drive his more lawful enemies up the walls because they cant pin any of this on him and if they grumble its going to make them look bad. C) the powers that be are a pretty single woman who catches his eye and is smart enough to be worth the effort.

- What are some good ways of coming up with plots that aren't too dark, but still have enough tension to be exciting?

Honestly having some or most of the cast be oblivious to the scope of what theyre dealing with is easiest... It takes a nack but if the reader realizes how bad it is and the cast doesnt it can muffle the dark levels well but leave enough for the reader to put two and two together amd freak ojt a bit witnout you having to go into the nitty gritty details.