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There's a trope on tvtropes.com called Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, and it's basically about how audiences get turned off when the story they're reading becomes so dark that they end up disliking and/or not caring about whatever happens to the plot or the characters.
In my story, the protagonist enters a glamorized Battle Royale-type death game, which is already a pretty dark premise. Sure enough, within the first three chapters, I've already found myself in two massacres in total. The first massacre has quick, almost clean kills, but at least twenty deaths. The second massacre has twenty-five victims and more brutal deaths. The gore factor comes with the drawn-out death of the twenty-fourth victim, who was in a duel with the protagonist. The point of that duel was to show how the protagonist's drive for victory triumphs over her opponent's. Lots of stabbing involved, which I allowed because both the protagonist and the opponent are inhumanly sturdy. I'm wondering, if ever, there might actually be a way to deliver the same I-am-more-resilient-than-you message without so much gore.
Besides the above, I'm also wondering if Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is also beginning to apply to the characters. The protagonist is steadfast on her goal of winning the death game. Killing is trivial to her if the person she's killing is, say, a criminal, or someone who tried to kill her in turn. She's also a bit cynical. The only positive traits she's shown so far is a hatred for senseless murder and a humorous side. Other characters introduced so far are staff behind the death game who act fake-polite even though they're helping a death game happen in the first place. The twenty-fourth victim that I mentioned earlier - the one who dueled with the protagonist - is a smug, cryptic bastard who wants riches when he wins the death game. The character with the least 'grim' traits is a boy who works for the staff behind the death game, but he looks after the protagonist's well-being and generally behaves like an annoyed older brother. I wonder if even his description might put someone off, since he's with the death game staff so there must be something wrong with him (I genuinely don't intend to write him as someone who's shady or untrustworthy, though).
It would be great if anyone could give me some advice. I'm open to ideas. Thanks!
