Jump to content

The Grimdark Appreciation thread


C.T. Phipps

Recommended Posts

Grimdark does seem to me to be more of a reader thing than a writer thing. Like, maybe now it's going that way but I don't think anyone sets out to write a 'grimdark' story the way they would, you know, cyberpunk or high fantasy or what have you.

 

 

Also: does it have to have medieval fantasy elements? Like, by any definition using purely tonal judgements, Perdido Street Station would surely qualify, but I wouldn't think of it as such. Seems to me that (although it originally came from Warhammer 40k, so more-or-less a space opera) the term is now associated mostly with books that reject, probably deliberately, 80s-fantasy stereotypes by going darker (often deliberately spinning on their tropes in various ways), and are thus medieval themselves.

Of course, PSS fits under its own incredibly broad subgenre-label of New Weird, so there might be a bit of interference going on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is my working definition of grimdark:

 

Grim stories told from an adult perspective in a world with dark events that are emphasized, and which are about morally ambiguous characters who have agency; with more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and motives; with realistic behavior and consequences; and with the reader being uncertain that the story will have a happy ending.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hold the first unambiguous work of epic fantasy grimdark to be Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, which was published in May 1977 about two weeks before The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks.

 

Or to put it another way, grimdark is actually (marginally) older than the traditional post-Tolkien epic fantasy genre itself.

 

Yeah.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hell, if you really wanna get into it, large parts of the Silmarillion are as grimdark as they come.

I can't presently knowledgeably argue whether or not The Simarillion is grimdark (it's been way too long since I've read it), but I will say that there is a difference between being "as grimdark as they come" and being "as dark as they come." If a story is one in which good and evil are clearly defined (e.g., Melkor and Sauron are pure evil), and there is no moral ambiguity among the protagonists, then this could make such a story dark fantasy, but not grimdark. I also don't think it makes sense to say that parts of a story are grimdark (or very grimdark), but it does make sense to say parts of a story are very dark. This is a primary distinction between the two terms. "Dark" is a more general term and can be applied to the whole or the parts, but grimdark only to the whole. This is because inherent in the term "grimdark" is the amount of emphasis and focus that the overall story puts on the dark events within it; intrinsic to the term are also the overall setting of the world, the overall mood/tone of the story (grim), the sense of not knowing if the story will end happily, and the like. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Silmarillion is absolutely about moral ambiguity: Turin shags his sister (incest in Tolkien!), Feanor and Fingolfin start off as good guys who become very morally compromised, the elves and dwarves of Beleriand screw one another at every opportunity and pretty much hand victories to Morgoth through their own infighting instead of uniting against the common threat. And then they finish things off by defeating Morgoth but only at the cost of blowing up a third of the continent and killing tens of thousands of innocents.

 

Morgoth also stops being the focus of the story after the opening section and only briefly shows up in the Luthien and Beren story after that point, with the focus shifting to the elves, dwarves and men of Beleriand.

 

Hell, if you really wanna get into it, large parts of the Silmarillion are as grimdark as they come.

 

Yup, but The Silmarillion was actually published later (but written decades earlier), in September 1977.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To get back to the appreciation part of the thread, here's a list of my favorite grimdark series. Taking note, of course, grimdark is an inherently subjective term. Note, this not-so exhaustive list will also give some of my reasons why I love its grimdarkness.

Literature Series

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

The one that started it all. For me, I knew the books were special when Bran went out the window becaus, honestly, that wasn't something you saw very often--the heroes' 8-year-old child crippled in a setting where that was never going to get rectified. Ned Stark's death was a shocking moment for me as a reader, too, and helped solidify we weren't playing by the standard fantasy rules. There were places I cringed like with Tyrion's story and just about anything involving the Mountain but it was a setting which stuck with me when other fantasy series didn't because it was visceral and raw. Westeros was a crappy place to live during wartime and if it tried to shock you with stuff like Craster's Keep, it did so with the knowledge this was a shocking place. We're still far from done but there's a reason we've stuck with it for the decade.

The Witcher by Andrjez Sapkowski

I got started with the video games and then read the books but these are a kind of interesting tale in they're entertaining low fantasy short-stories with lots of humor but became grimmer and darker the further you get into them. We get a deconstruction of the "Evil Empire vs. Plucky Rebels" where the Empire is, yes, truly monstrous but the kingdoms in the North are just as horrible in their own way as well as racist to their subject. The elven resistance to humanity's encroachment is shown to be indiscriminate terrorists who, in many ways, have brought down the kind of atrocities which follow against their people. Ciri, the Chosen One, doesn't get any Rand al'Thor-esque benefits from her status, just misery and attempts at sexual assault or forced marriage or a destiny she doesn't want (and finally avoids--ruining everything). The books can be monstrously depressing at times and yet, also, deeply moving.

The Ties That Bind by Rob J. Hayes

I mentioned this in the opening post and the first book is kind of raw, clearly trying too hard in some places to establish, "This is some dark stuff, man." The Jezzet character is both awesome and deeply problematic with the latter elements being kind of embarrassing in restrospect. But I loved the kind of subversion of the usual Sword and Sorcery freebooting-hero stories. Our rag-tag bag of misfits do some genuinely disturbing and evil stuff in the course of their duties but we manage to continue on with them because the bond they form is a deep one. So much so when people die, and they do die, you actually feel like it's a kick in the guts.

Gentleman Bastard by Scott Lynch

The Gentleman Bastard series is an interesting one because Locke is such a funny, silly character you don't tend to think of him as grimdark. Except, well, the world he lives in is a ****hole. Horrible-horrible stuff happens to our teenage to young adult heroes' friends and it's a world every bit as dark as Westeros in many places. Locke is one of the nicest people in the setting and he can't do anything to make it better. He just makes it less awful by screwing over some of the worst people which exist within it. The horrific Grand Guginol fates of many characters are over-the-top and described in exquisite detail.

The Blood War Trilogy by Tim Marquitz

I was first made familiar with Tim Marquitz's work through his schlocky fun indie series DEMON SQUAD, which really is very very far removed from this work. The Blood War Trilogy is a deconstruction of the typical "Fantasy Alliance" story where elves, dwarves, and so on all get together to heroically repulse the invaders. It gives you a ground-eye view of just horrific your typical Chaotic Evil orc-like invaders would really be, turning them from walking EXP to a nightmare equivalent to the apocalypse. They're a raw and intense set of books, I felt, and ones which stretched the definition of grimdark for me. I think they're probably the author's definitive work, even if I also liked DIRGE (see below).

Ciaphas Cain by Sandy Mitchell

Ciaphas Cain - HERO OF THE IMPERIUM is, for me, a book series which changed the Warhammer 40K universe for me. While the books get a bit repetitive for me. The books use humor to allow you to root for people existing in an insane, hopeless, and terrible world where tyrants are the best thing you can hope for. Ciaphas Cain is a hero but who can never realize this because the cultural standards of the Imperium are so warped.

Literature Singles

Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Thieves, and Rogues by Various

I really liked this anthology, which has an opening by Glen Cook which is HILARIOUSLY over-the-top and inappropriate for the subject matter. Really, it has to be read to be believed. The majority of the stories within deal with lovable rogues but quite a lot of them take place in worlds I would classify as grimdark. There is a single story I genuinely HATED because the author went overboard trying to establish the protagonist was a complete bastard and well, succeeded in making a complete monster who I wanted to die, but just about every other story I really enjoyed. This book introduced me to Michael J. Sullivan's work as well, though he's not very grim or darky.

Mountain of Daggers by Seth Skorkowsky

This is actually a series but only one book is out so I'm keeping it as a single for now. It's an anthology of a Sword and Sorcery protagonist named Ahren done in a deliberately retro style. The reason I lump it under grimdark was that I really liked how dark and uncompromising the world was underneath the adventurer's surface. It's a kind of hellish world with unimaginably powerful, corrupt, and vile people ruling everything but our hero kind of shrugs it off because that's just the environment he lives in. I also liked how the lead character is so good at cultivating a dark and mysterious persona when, in fact, he's just a normal guy trying to survive in the strange environment he's in.

Dirge by Tim Marquitz (again)

The aforementioned author of the Blood War Trilogy also wrote a kind of video-game esque premise which still worked for me: a fantasy kingdom is being overrun by an endless horde of zombies in a genocidal apocalypse organized by necromancers. The thief protagonist is someone desperately just trying to get enough food and supplies to keep her family's struggling band of refugees alive until the war with them ends. It's alot more magical than is typical for the grimdark genre but given it's ZOMBIES, I feel there's an exception to be made. The heroine achieves catharsis at the end as well as revenge but, knowing the devastation which exists outside, it's a victory that's hollow to everyone but her.

Video Games

Thief

I think these introduced a lot of us to low fantasy and it's a crying shame the new Thief game by the people who did DEUS EX: Human Revolutions was such a disappointment. The old Garret is a thief who steals because, well, he wants to be rich. The new version steals because he appears to be Batman. You have nature-worshiping religious extremists, technology-worshiping religious extremists, tyrants, and a deconstruction of the whole "Balance between good and evil." Garret is a rogue who deserves better but, sadly, never quite got the mainstream attention he deserved.

The Witcher series

These games are, really, ones which have changed the nature of video game narratives for a lot of people because they're so unapologetically cruel to the world. The first Witcher had its flaws, chiefly in its "PAY ATTENTION TO US" sex cards, but subsequent ones really captured the magic of the books and in some places improved on them to my mind. The Flotsam pogrom is one of the most moving and unexpected events in a video game for me as well as the Bloody Baron arc from the most recent game. Ciri and Geralt get a potentially happier ending in the games than in the books but the world continues on, callous and indifferent to all.

 

Fallout 3

The original Fallout games were tongue and cheek fantasy sci-fi which parodied a lot of things from the Road Warrior to A Boy and His Dog. However, Fallout 3 was the first game which tried to treat its premise of, "this is humanity after a nuclear war between selfish ****wads" semi-seriously. I still remember my first view of the barren wasteland, the picket signs outside the Vault (saying things like, "We're dying ***holes!"), and the sheer bleakness of the setting. You can subvert it being grimdark, though, by being the Savior of the WastelandsTM. However, even that, was originally intended to be subverted as the game made it clear your story was supposed to end in death. Fan revolt, however, had better luck than poor Commander Shepard and the hero got to fight on a little longer.

Shadow of Mordor

I don't think J.R.R Tolkien is especially dark, let alone grimdark. I think Peter Jackson's movies deliberately emphasized the dark elements to try and get people to take fantasy more seriously. Shadow of Mordor is a game, more a system than a setting really, which took the Peter Jackson model and then made it much-much darker style. Talion is the tortured sole survivor of his Gondorian Rangers (based on the Night's Watch more than Tolkien's) who has made an unholy deal with an ancient Elven ghost. He must travel through Mordor as the local tribals are exterminated by Sauron's orc hordes and live with the fact there's no actual way to save these people--just get as much revenge as possible on an immortal invincible foe.

Which, as any fan of Middle Earth knows, is pointless and unfulfilling.
 

Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2

I'm stretching the definition of gridmark for Dragon Age: Origins because it's not, it's high fantasy and very good high fantasy at that. There's some grimdark moments, however, especially if you choose the City Elf or Dwarf Commoner origins, though. One element which later games de-emphasized was the idea of the Grey Wardens as the heroes who do whatever they can to stop the Blight, even if it means doing horrible things.

The game is a little too forgiving of finding a third option to save everyone but I loved it, nevertheless. Dragon Age 2, however, clearly WANTED to be grimdark and a kind of fantasy Detective Noir but didn't quite pull it off due to the severe cost-cutting measures they took to send out the game quickly. Hawke is a (wo)man who can't affect history, can't save those he loves, and can merely try to help a small number of people for as long as possible before history grinds them to dust. I admire the effort even if the execution was lacking.

Inquisiton was fine and fun but much-much less ambiguous than Origins, let alone DA2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What Wert said: the bad is pretty purely bad but the Sil is very ambiguous about the 'good' guys. And is very much about unhappy endings and phyrric-victories-at-best. Plus

 

I also don't think it makes sense to say that parts of a story are grimdark (or very grimdark), but it does make sense to say parts of a story are very dark.

 

The Silmarillion isn't one story. There's several and some of them are more definitely 'grimdark' than others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

The Silmarillion isn't one story. There's several and some of them are more definitely 'grimdark' than others.

Yes, I know. But they are intended to be an interlinked narrative in the same sense as stories in The Bible, to describe the invented universe that The Hobbit and LOTR take place in, which is why J.R.R. Tolkien wanted them published as a single entity. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Polishgenius:

 

 

Grimdark does seem to me to be more of a reader thing than a writer thing. Like, maybe now it's going that way but I don't think anyone sets out to write a 'grimdark' story the way they would, you know, cyberpunk or high fantasy or what have you.

 


I think that's because dark is a direction rather than an objective state. The Lord of the Rings is darker than the Hobbit but lighter than Conan which is lighter than Westeros which is lighter than Warhammer 40K which is lighter than, I dunno, something very very soul crushing. There's no "maximum grittiness" state which cannot become more gritty and edgy.

 

Grimdark is more a tool for fans to say, "Yeah, this is pretty serious." I think authors just sit down and write however dark they think the story should be.

 

 

Also: does it have to have medieval fantasy elements? Like, by any definition using purely tonal judgements, Perdido Street Station would surely qualify, but I wouldn't think of it as such. Seems to me that (although it originally came from Warhammer 40k, so more-or-less a space opera) the term is now associated mostly with books that reject, probably deliberately, 80s-fantasy stereotypes by going darker (often deliberately spinning on their tropes in various ways), and are thus medieval themselves.

Of course, PSS fits under its own incredibly broad subgenre-label of New Weird, so there might be a bit of interference going on.

 

Well, in addition to fantasy and sci-fi, I'm also a horror author so I'm kind of the mind that grimdark is a uniquely sci-fi/fantasy thing. The thing is, of course, you easily wander into fantasy from horror as they're adjoining neighborhoods. Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER is absolutely a fantasy novel series but it's made of individual horror stories linked by fantastic elements. Likewise, THE WALKING DEAD is a horror series because it's based on George Romero's novels but if you have a Fellowship surviving in a world populated by monsters isn't that, really, fantasy?
 

There's no gated community in genre anymore. It's all mixing up at the block party.

 

Puntificator:

 

 

Here is my working definition of grimdark:

 

Grim stories told from an adult perspective in a world with dark events that are emphasized, and which are about morally ambiguous characters who have agency; with more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and motives; with realistic behavior and consequences; and with the reader being uncertain that the story will have a happy ending.

 

It's a good definition, though I know plenty of authors who would just say, "So, grimdark is just good writing?" The issue of moral ambiguity is one that's also a bit iffy as grimdark fiction isn't exactly absent monsters. There's plenty of moral ambiguity about the Lannisters, atrocities aside, but there's nothing ambiguous about the Mountain or Mummers or even the Slavers of Merreen. They're just a bunch of asshats. In fact, I'd argue grimdark does a good job of making genuine evil FRIGHTENING again because it doesn't shy away from the consequences of the horrible actions but forces you, the audience, to see, "When you do a horrible thing, it is not cool. It is horrific and the trauma it leaves is severe."

 

Leo Bonhart, the Falconer, and others are orcs in their own way--just very very well-written ones.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Silmarillion is absolutely about moral ambiguity: Turin shags his sister (incest in Tolkien!), Feanor and Fingolfin start off as good guys who become very morally compromised, the elves and dwarves of Beleriand screw one another at every opportunity and pretty much hand victories to Morgoth through their own infighting instead of uniting against the common threat. And then they finish things off by defeating Morgoth but only at the cost of blowing up a third of the continent and killing tens of thousands of innocents.

 

Morgoth also stops being the focus of the story after the opening section and only briefly shows up in the Luthien and Beren story after that point, with the focus shifting to the elves, dwarves and men of Beleriand.

 

 

 

As I said, I can't knowledgeably argue about The Silmarillion because I read it so very long ago (about 37 years ago). I can only accept what you say. But my point was a larger one having to do with the terms in general, rather than specifically the nature of The Silmarillion. And, unlike the definition of "grimdark" that I offered, at least it got your attention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Silmarillion is absolutely about moral ambiguity: Turin shags his sister (incest in Tolkien!), Feanor and Fingolfin start off as good guys who become very morally compromised, the elves and dwarves of Beleriand screw one another at every opportunity and pretty much hand victories to Morgoth through their own infighting instead of uniting against the common threat. And then they finish things off by defeating Morgoth but only at the cost of blowing up a third of the continent and killing tens of thousands of innocents.

 

Then there's Túrin stopping a rape among the outlaws in Narn i Chîn Húrin. Eöl rapes Aredhel in the earlier drafts (Tolkien made the situation more ambiguous in the later version, and added that an Elf would sooner die than live with that), and in one late (and probably non-canonical) story, Melkor rapes Arien, the Maia of the Sun.

 

While we're at it, The Lord of the Rings has catapaulted heads at Pelannor Fields and an on-screen suicide.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Idk how many people on this board are into like anime or Japanese comics, but is anybody at all familiar with a series called Berserk?

 

It's hilarious, but I did that big list and right before clicking on this thread, I remembered, "Man, you know what I should have put down? BERSERK. Guts' series is some of the most epically dark and horrible **** I have ever seen. At least before he gained his cast of adorable sidekicks."

Then again, there was really nowhere to go but down after the Eclipse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, isn't the witcher older than berserk?

 

The Beserk Manga first started running in 1989 and the Witcher short-story was in 1990 but given Sapkowski is an old polish man who thinks video games are, "New fangled stuff which only can adapt works" he's not really the type of guy who strikes me as watching much anime let alone reading fan-translated manga. They're both Germanic-influenced works which have both been influenced by Moorcock according to interviews, though.

 

Here's a great Sapkowski interview (translated from Italian) which talks about some of his influences.

 

[url]http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/52785-Interview-to-Andrzej-Sapkowski-by-Daniele-Cutali-Translation-from-Italian[/url]

 

 

- Your first short story, The Witcher, which originated the entire Geralt's saga, saw the light in 1986 on Fantastyka, the first fantasy magazine ever published in Poland. Tell us how you got to the pages of Fantastyka: were you always a fan of fantasy literature?

With fantasy, it was love at first sight. I remember when I read Tolkien for the first time, in the 60s: Tolkien was published in Poland in the early 60s, pretty much at the same time as the USA. I was completely fascinated.

Then I read Earthsea's saga by Ursula LeGuin, The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, the series of Elric of Melniboné bt Michael Moorcock, the Lyonesse cycle by Jack Vance, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. When, in 1985, Fantastyka - the only fantasy and science fiction magazine in Poland - organized a literary contest, I decided, I don't know why, to write a story and participate. That's how it all began.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...