Realism vs enjoyment

[Warmmedown]

Assuming the majority of the story is otherwise realistic: would you rather read or watch a series that maintains realism to the point of being depressing or have the series sacrifice some realism or choose a happy (but perhaps less probable in the real world) realistic event over sad or tragic ones, in order to make the series more enjoyable.

For me I feel like the fully realistic, negative series would be more highly rated in my mind (partly because I favour realism and more so because it's a path so rarely chosen for portrayal in fiction) over something that chooses happier events, but at the same time when reading a series I still hope for the series to take a slightly happy turn, even if it could lower my view of the work from a critical perspective.



Inspired by Chi no Wadachi

 

[SSJ2]

I definitely prefer realism, but I think a mixture of both works the best. Generally speaking, as long as these "happy" events don't become recurring in the story and can be explained somewhat validly, I'm ok with it.

 

[sei'taer]

A mixture of the two is best.

I don't want all stories to be either extreme. If no one dies (Bantam Star Wars EU) the threat of everything is minimized because there's no suspense. If people always die (A Song of Ice and Fire) then I don't even care about new characters when they're introduced. Just the right amount of character death makes you fear for characters in tense situations, but still believe that they can miraculously make it out.

 

[Classic Adamas]

There's room for both. I wouldn't recommend too much without the other.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

It depends what type of "realism" is being discussed. If the setting is one of the real world, maintaining realism is far more important than a positive outcome with the threshold for suspension of disbelief being relatively low. There are obviously cases in which miraculous events or those of very low probabilities can happen, but using them as the basis for one's fictional story can be a difficult tightrope to go across with how easily such things can be turned into deus ex machinas.
Something like a fantasy or sci-fi series, meanwhile, can afford a lot of suspension of disbelief with realism in things such as what situations a character can survive, so long as the rules of its world's mechanics remain consistent and the world building in general has some logic to whatever outlandish ideas it may present; to which I'd cite as "non-fictional realism" not mattering as much as "internal realism".
The latter can also work for series that seem closer to the former type. For example, Ashita no Joe presents a boxer like Rikiishi as capable of OHKOing bulls. This is obviously unrealistic by real world standards and AnJ is set very much in an ordinary Japan, yet this isn't an issue for the series as it never presents far more limited feats from boxers of the same calibre to make this inconsistent.

Tl;dr internal consistency matters more than standard realism or positivity. As long as it sticks to that rule, I don't mind which side it leans more to, so long as the story is good enough (though I'd definitely take gritty realism over forced positivity).

 

[Warmmedown]

To everyone

Can a story get to the point where its realism makes it too tragic or sad, turning you off from the series?
Being willing to show sad events and outcomes is often seen as superior writing, but for you at some point would you rather have happier outcomes for the sake of emotional enjoyment and to leave you feeling happier after reading a series rather than sad?

If you were reading a series and you can imagine a sad outcome in the equivalent real life situation being 70% likely and a happy one being 30% likely, which would you be hoping for?