There's this huge mythos around Dark Themes that posits that Dark Themes in writing are treated with disdain/suspicion, or that authors that write about Dark Themes are subject to substantially more investigation or criticism within the industry at large compared to authors that don't write Dark Themes. And like. Obviously if your story contains upsetting content, you're more frequently going to hear about people refusing to engage with your story out of hand, but... this is almost always based on personal comfort/preference, rather than Moral, Artistic Opposition. I know plenty of people who won't watch a movie if a dog dies in it, but you don't see swarms of people boycotting John Wick.
The conventional wisdom that stories with Dark Themes will be less popular is pretty obviously untrue if you consider anything about pop culture in almost any period of history. If we speak in recent pop culture (as is generally meant)... Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is incredibly well known for its depiction of rape/CSA/incest, as is Stephen King's It. Star Wars is subject to parody for its recurrent themes of incest. These are incredibly popular, socially acceptable, mainstream works, criticism of which (on the basis of their content) has done nothing to stop each from making completely insane amounts of money. Whenever I see people claim that a work is avant-garde for its Dark Themes, it's almost always a work that has been incredibly commercially successful with no large critical backlash-- take, for example, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, which occupies shelves upon shelves of display cases in Barnes and Noble despite its depiction of multiple explicit CSA and self harm scenes.
What works are subject to scrutiny ostensibly on the basis of their 'dark themes,' like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, tend to be far more tame by comparison-- The Bluest Eye contains one extremely short and exceptionally dry description of a man raping his daughter, and Lolita contains no explicit sexual scenes at all. Actually what causes these works to be subject to criticism is the fact that they depict child abuse in a way which causes reader discomfort, rather than excitement. Nabokov actually joked about how he was strongly criticized for the lack of child sex abuse scenes in his novel, and attempts to ban Morrison's novel are usually transparently racist.
And, I mean, sure, there is an extent population that will become strongly critical of a work after learning that it has themes of abuse, regardless of the actual execution of these themes... but somehow whenever I see authors talk about how they're basically Christ on the cross for including a child rape scene in their novel (or fanfiction), they do so from a place of artistic and cultural success, and are lauded for doing so. It's just... immensely tiring.
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
dededos
jacobvanloon
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
