"gritty" and "real"

[telecom_goddess]

not until I finish building mine.....erm....nevermind....

well hurry it up man.....

[BlaqueKatt]

what? death rays aren't real?

not until I finish building mine.....erm....nevermind....

[telecom_goddess]

what? death rays aren't real?

[Rageaholic]

That's one of my biggest pet peeves with regards to art. People excuse piss poor writting by claiming it's "gritty" and "real". Uh sorry no, it's piss poor writting. You need to EXPLAIN certain things so it will make sense to us. We may not get all of our answers in real life, and real life may not be as climatic, but that's irrelevent!! FICTION ISN'T REALITY!!!

I especially love when someone claims something is more realistic because everyone dies and apparently reality is depressing. Yet fails to take into account that it was a death ray that killed everyone. Cause death rays are so realistic.

[lordlundar]

Gah! I'm so sick of those terms as a justification for lack of creativity in comics, film (large and small screen, real and animated), and video games.

Basically, they make a visual media, populate it with largely monochromatic environment (usually yellow/brown) and barely two dimensional characters, then release it out under the terms as being "realistic" and/or "gritty. Made even worse when it's an established character that they make this way when it was never done so before.

Sorry, no.

The world is not East-Central LA in the height of the gang wars and "tough statuesque" is not the common emotion in the world. I had a talk with a former co-worker who works in a game retail store and brought up the brown that was prevalent in games and he replied "well it's realistic." I told him to look outside sometime, there's more than one color out there. (well, okay, in winter up here, white is the most common, but that's not the point)

I can understand if the creators point out that they don't have the time or desire to put the necessary depth into the media, but don't try to disguise your lack of creativity or laziness by calling it "gritty" or "real". All that shows is that your marketing department is just as lazy as you are.