Dark, Angsty, Cynical
As a writer, I tend to produce dark stories. Not always, not inevitably, but more often than not. As a reader, my tastes are more catholic. I enjoy some dark stories, some much lighter stories, and plenty of the in-between. But there are a lot of dark stories I simply can't stomach.
Why is that? Firstly, I don't tend to enjoy flat-out horror. That's partly because of the kind of imagination I have; I can't let a story go. If a horror story is open-ended (ie. not resolved), I tend to obsess over it. I see shadows in the corners and Stepford smiles on the faces of the people around me. So open-ended and psychologically intense horror is out, I hate scatatological imagery, and I simply have distaste for blood and gore.
Dark fantasy is a different matter. There's some of it I find amazing, and some that I can't stand. Trying to figure out a rationale, I came up with some thoughts on the issue. What is it that makes a story compelling or unpleasant to me? What are the distinctions?
A lot of it has to do with the characters. Characters that feel sorry for themselves all the time; characters that revel in angst; characters that exist to suffer; those are viewpoints I can't stand. I'm willing to put up, as a reader, with a character feeling sorry for him/herself at some given time, but at the point I feel like they're whining, they've lost me. Sometimes the whining is subtle. Sometimes it masquerades as "character development". I think the real flag for me is the question of whether they address their problems, or whether they prefer to moan about them. It can be a fine line, which is how I sometimes end up being drawn into a story for quite some time before I realize what's going on. Pain is one thing. Self-pity is another.
A lot of time angsty characters use their angst for the purpose of doing things that I really abhor, using their angst as the excuse. I can't say how much I really hate this, starting with the very famous character in a very famous book series who uses angst as an excuse for rape. No, it's not the rape itself that bothers me -- it's the fact that he excuses it on several bases which really boil down to: "I'm in pain, so I get to do what I want." The guilt over the rape actually becomes another excuse for him to feel sorry for himself, rather than dealing with his actions. This is the sort of character I will never be able to identify with, care about, or even tolerate, and it unfortunately taints everything else in the story with a repulsive quality that means I won't enjoy the story, no matter how amazing the rest of it may be. (This is also a fault with a number of current tv shows, which is one reason I watch a lot of the Weather Channel and Discovery ID).
There's another type of story I dislike: the cynical story. This is a story that has, at it's core, the idea that people are horrible or venal, and that the world is inherently a terrible place where good will only become corrupted. I know plenty of people love this sort of story, but I don't. However much I can understand it, I don't myself feel that way, and it tends to make me feel like I need to go take a long, hot bath. (With bubbles.) I'm an unashamed optimist, which has gotten me through a lot of terrible things.
So now you may be thinking -- dark? What kind of dark can a bubble-bath optimist enjoy? Hasn't she just said that she hates all this dark stuff? How can she enjoy dark if she's throwing out all these stories?
The answer isn't complex. I read about (and write about) a lot of issues with sexual and emotional abuse, evil things happening to good people, and good people dying. Etched in Fire is chock-full of terrible things. But, like Pandora's box, the thing I keep in my stories is hope. Good people fight the impulse to become corrupt. Evil may happen, but it does not consume everything. I don't deny, nor I hope minimize, the evil that is in the world and in the hearts of many. I simply refuse to let it overwhelm the story with nothing but misery. Besides, from a writer's point of view, it's easier to see darkness in a story as truly formidable if there is no contrast of light. One becomes inured to, even bored with, constant pain, constant death, constant evil.
Basically, I'm a hopeful person, so I write stories that keep a vestige of hope even in the direst of circumstances. My characters may be flawed, damaged, or hurt, but they struggle through and try to do the best they can. When people are faced with moral choices, they wrestle with them, and try to make the right choices. They don't always succeed, and they're not always right, but they try. And that, to me, is what characterizes the stories I like to read as well as the ones I write.