On Writing: The Darkest Hour Trope [ Avatar | LOTR | Doctor Who ]

Am I a family channel? AM I? What am I? Who am I?! Boy it sure sounds like I'm in a darkest hour and you can help by linktr.ee/timhickson

To whomever is writing my life: It's called darkest HOUR, not darkest decade, thank you very much

“I can carry you!” Is possibly one of the most powerful character moments in literary history.

The clever choice to call a cockroach a grasshopper to get hundreds of engagement comments correcting you is nearly as brilliant as the rest of the content of your video! Very well done, sir.

I feel like one massive video on dark and sensitive topics (not just mental illness, more like morality, abuse, cruelty, trauma and the like) and how to write them respectfully and intergrate them into your worldbuilding and characters would be so so wonderful and worthwhile to see

"much like Brad Pitts wife, it comes to you in pieces" is a brutal line. Very funny.

"Because Gotham gets only two hours of sunlight a day" Ouch

Tired: iT's NoT a GrAsShOpPeR iT's A cOcKrOaCh Wired: Calling it a grasshopper got lots of people to comment, very clever Inspired: It's a cockroach named "Grasshopper" because Wall-E doesn't have enough context about human culture and language to understand the difference

About the pet scene from WALL-E: The logic is still there. It's just that the pet is a cockroach, not a grasshopper.

"Do you have families? Are you friendly?" No, because I'am the protagonist of this universe. My family was killed by the Dark Lord, I was betrayed by those I called friends and all feelings of responsibility to give back to the world have been lost to me. I am no longer friendly. This... this is my darkest hour.

0:25 'The last piece of cake has been eaten, and the cake was a lie anyway.' Dude, you never fail to crack me up while simultaneously remain educational. This is just brilliant.

I always keep this line from Legend of Korra in the back of my mind: "When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change."

To me the version of the mental illness darkest hour is this. It’s not when they decide not to kill themselves but later one when they are trying to get better and they have to choose the hard way to get better instead of relapsing. It’s on the journey up but at the moment when they can either choose to let themselves fall back deeper into depression or do the hard personal work to reach out for help that is required for them to get better

So glad you mentioned that Doctor Who episode. It's absolutely iconic and David Tennant's acting is just chef's kiss

“It’s like in the old stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. Sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?” … “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!”

Oh god, I simply HATE stories where mental illness is magically healed by the main character finally getting together with their love interest 🙄🙄 MI isn‘t a switch that can be flipped on and off, yet some writers still think it is :/ Great video! Thanks :)

I think Sanderson made a great use of a darkest hour for a character with a mental illness in The Rhythm of War, that if done poorly could look like the thing you said shouldn't be done -emerging from a suicide attempt into a glorious climactic victory. But I think the key to make it right were a couple of things. Firstly, the depressed state that drove the character to try to end their life was not just the result of a bad thing that had just happened, but something that had been established throughout the whole book, and even in the previous ones. And second, even though there is a moment of emerging victorious right after, once the climax has passed it is left VERY clear that the character is not out of the woods, and that the progress they made is only the first step on a long road to recovery. So it doesn't become a magical solution that made depression go away instantly. Anyways, Brandon is awesome, so it's not surprising he was able to pull off such an impactful arc =)

Hey just wanted to let you know I really really appreciate your videos. I may not be a writer but i am making a world as a little passion project, and graham the wizard who likes cats many various journeys have been incredibly helpful! Thank you so much! I can’t wait to pick up on writing and world building 2. All praise Momo

The symmetry in that wall-e scene goes further, as Eve at the beginning is robot-like and the flip of that is heart wrenching. Just compounds the emotion of losing the character that has had such impact on the rest of the cast

I really appreciate the final point of how mental illness doesn't just "go away" after winning through the darkest hour. I'd add that if you want to end a story of mental illness with a character truly putting everything behind them to live happily ever after, the darkest hour is not them in their worst state, but rather them looking back at that state and falsely believing how a return to it would solve all their problems. Then the victory becomes the resolve to never go back