Writing Tips and Reviews

Dark VS Whiny

There's a difference between dark and edgy, and stupid and whiny. Unfortunately, I see the two combined by many kids who don't know how to write. Making their character an over the top edgy and dark character, mixed in with "killing is cool" and "I'm insane", and ending up with the character actually being a whiny baby.

Since I'm going to lay down the examples of how to separate being dark and edgy from stupid and whiny, I'm going to mention a certain person who knows what they're doing. Garrulous64 on YouTube with their video "Let's Fix Infinite". I'm not a Sonic fan myself, I've never played any games, I just ended up seeing a video that was recommended after my long binge of Kingdom Hearts and finally decided to check it out.

Now, these types of characters can be rewritten completely, or slightly depending on how bad it is. In Infinite's case, his backstory and relationships are changed, he goes from stupid and whiny to tragic. He didn't have to be tragic, but it definitely makes more sense than being a cry baby who lost it when they got beat up.

If a character goes on about how much better they are than everyone else, mixed with "I'm going to kill you", it turns into a disaster. No one wants to read about how great a character thinks of themselves while they do nothing to earn it. Gilgamesh from the Fate series. He's a bit like this but he has reasons that make sense, he's a king after all and he's one of the strongest servants, he can get away with it. But he also has his other sides, he's not just fully a narcissist that needs to be put down.

I don't want to hear long stretches of "I'm going to kill you", "I'm so powerful" blah blah blah, then when something actually happens where the character can live up to their words, they cry about not being the center of attention. It goes from annoying badass wannabe, to actual cry baby. This, is not a dark edgy character folks, this is an attention seeker. Know the difference. Excuses also make the character more pathetic, "I'm immortal" so no one can hurt them, "I had five years of street fighting" the bare minimum, not even close to being able to fight a real fighter.

Infinite, while whiny, still had the skills to back up his words. It was his backstory that made him a whiny cry baby. When that was changed, he became a better villain. The player could feel for him instead of being done with him whining. The super over the top edgy personality became a use for comparison to who he was than just being edgy for the sake of being edgy.

Getting rid of the stupid and whiny personality make a dark character look better. Characters that are dark but also whiny are just annoying, the whiny over shadows the dark and the character just becomes whiny. Nothing else. They're all talk no walk, making excuses to why they can't be hurt and also not doing anything to live up to their words.