/lit/ - Literature

I dream of writing something that seamlessly mixes typical story tropes, especially those aimed at young audiences or that have an optimistic approach (anime, cartoons, comics) and the crushing, bleak, nihilistic darkness of reality.
I don't want to write an "edgy" story, I want something that feels truly bleak, something that leaves the reader with an empty feeling in their stomachs. But it's so hard.
I want to write a story with characters that have no redeeming qualities, a world that has no hope, a story where heroes bleed because plot armor doesn't exist, a story that can end abruptly and abominably despite the hero's best efforts, despite giving their all. I aim to imitate the amoral randomness of the world, the way it takes all of our values and cultural systems and drags them through the dirt of a lawless, savage world until you can see their raw, palpitating flesh. Beneath the disguises of man, we're all animals trapped in an animal world.
I want to reflect the most hopeless aspects of our societies, how a completely normal person can end up homeless, addicted, raped, a criminal, a killer. The thousand abominable possibilities that exist out there and we desperately try to suppress. I want to make a parody of our escapist fiction, by turning that same escape into nothing more than an ugly mirror.
I want to do what Mark Millar did in The Unfunnies and Wanted but better. I want to do all the things Garth Ennis did right in The Boys. I want to do what Miura did in Berserk but remove the remaining dignity, heroism and escapism from it. I want to do what Asano did in Punpun but with an even more savage and degraded view of society. I think Himizu by Minoru Himura comes really close to my ideal of a story about absolute, utter despair.


But everything I write reads like shit.