On realism, grimdark and childishness

[Darth Richard II]

Really? Anything not realistic is fantasy now? Come on.

[C.T. Phipps]

I'm confused why "gritty adult dark fantasy" is a bad definition for grimdark.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm confused why "gritty adult dark fantasy" is a bad definition for grimdark.

 

Because it's inherently subjective.  What's 'dark?' or 'gritty' actually mean?  

[Larry of the Lawn]

If the Scarlet Pimpernel is fantasy anything is fantasy.  

Eta: hot take:

Die Hard is a Christmas Fantasy.

[HexMachina]

2 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm confused why "gritty adult dark fantasy" is a bad definition for grimdark.

 

Because it’s utterly meaningless

[Darth Richard II]

I can think of a few dragonlance novels that are both gritty and dark. They are in no was grimdark.

[Green Gogol]

4 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm confused why "gritty adult dark fantasy" is a bad definition for grimdark.

 

Because it’s your own definition and it’s so general as to include most fantasy. 

 

Here’s the Oxford dictionnary definition. And it is a bit lacking in my opinion

”A genre of fiction, especially fantasy fiction, characterized by disturbing, violent, or bleak subject matter and a dystopian setting.”

The Wikipedia article is also an interesting read on the subject. 

And you might read the article on 1d4chan. However in the stuff considered grimdark section, the tend to include eveything and the kitchen sink. So take that with a grain of salt.

 

[C.T. Phipps]

6 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Because it's inherently subjective.  What's 'dark?' or 'gritty' actually mean?  

That's exactly why I (and other writers) chose it as a definition after studying the subject. People keep trying to assign these weird specific elements to it and philosophies. When you can't do that because people's levels of darkness vary from person to person. One person may think ASOI&F is incredibly nihilistic, superviolent, and horrifying in its bleakness while another person thinks its a bright and optimistic series. Tastes vary. Genre is a subjective descriptor to begin with and the whole point of grimdark is that it is meant to illustrate a work is darker material but doesn't otherwise contain any descriptor elements. Some people will think a work is tame by comparison to their own tastes.

Still, grimdark isn't going anywhere. Matthew Johnson (Professor Grimdark) here presents it for his Masters degree thesis.

 

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Really? Anything not realistic is fantasy now? Come on.

What do you call fairy tales with the cleaned up for modern, as opposed to the folk audience, that conclude with "They lived happily ever after?"  

Your view looks too narrow and flat for the way real and effective story telling works.  Which is why so many, including yourself it seems from other of your posts, dislike these arbitrary publishing industry marketing generic divisions. This is particularly so as genre, being generic, grabs from every other sort of story telling trope as from a rag bag to create it's own pop culture flavor.  The tropes of the Hero, the Aristocratic Hero, just beginning with the aristo baby that was lost, stolen or supposedly killed, has been the basis of myth and epic, biblical stories, folktale, fairy tale, the Romance (don't mean what publishing means by it, but works such as Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristram, courtly love Romance authors, and Mallory and  -- now there is found some gritty and dark -- genre fantasy forever.  As well as adventure - historical fiction too.  The Discovery of the Hero's True Identity being the restoration of order and a dawn of a new golden age.  Genre fiction didn't create that! Nor did it invent that, though certainly super hero genre has run with it forever, even before Tarzan (a British aristo sort) and John Carter (a confederate aristo)  and Look Up Into the Sky!  It's SUPERMAN!

What is really interesting about all this in terms of Fantasy is that the restoration of a golden age and order, or at least stability and a silver waning nostalgic sweetness of LoTR's conclusion with the crowning of Aragorn, is the perfect booked to ASOIAF, even as it stands w/o ever being finished.  Whoever take the Iron Throne -- or doesn't take the Iron Throne -- there will be no golden age restored, any more than when Henry Tudor took the throne in England, or when the second Valois followed the feckless King Jean.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* As mentioned here before, when reading the history of the 14th and 15th century in France, ASOIAF seems to follow those events a whole lot more closely than anything to do with the English Wars of the Roses -- including wholesale pulls of proper names, events -- even a version of the Red Wedding, though that trope too is ancient and found in myth, the Old Testament, and historically, from Nordic to Italian city states' conflicts, to Native Americans enclosed and set on fire at a celebration. GRRM has talked frequently about the Maurice Druon historical series set in that era from which he drew a great deal of inspiration.

 

[polishgenius]

45 minutes ago, Zorral said:

the restoration of a golden age and order, or at least stability and a silver waning nostalgic sweetness of LoTR's conclusion with the crowning of Aragorn,

I mean like the entire point of the ending of LotR is that the golden age must end even though they won. It was also about how the personal damage the main hero suffered was so devastating that he could certainly not enjoy any golden age. It's like the definition of a bittersweet ending.

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I mean like the entire point of the ending of LotR is that the golden age must end even though they won. It was also about how the personal damage the main hero suffered was so devastating that he could certainly not enjoy any golden age. It's like the definition of a bittersweet ending.

I thought I was saying that? by using  silver instead of gold, and nostalgia instead of bitter, but what the heck.

  But clearly it was still so much better than a world divided between Hitler and Mussolini. 

[C.T. Phipps]

Aragorn is going to bring back some of the glimmer of ancient glories but it's not going to be as grandiose. It's a melancholy that has been perhaps too commented on as certainly the world of the past wasn't particularly awesome by comparison. The Gondorian reverence for the past is actually unhealthy as Pharazon was a human-sacrifice practicing Satanist but they ignore the bad to focus on the good--perhaps showing Tolkien knew nostalgia was foolish.

Mind you, I find a lot of literary criticism of LOTOR more or less ignores the Hobbit exists and assumes that Tolkien was a closet monarchist and nostalgiaphile while ignoring that the Hobbit is about 30% taking the piss out of nobility as well as war.

[Zorral]

22 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Aragorn is going to bring back some of the glimmer of ancient glories but it's not going to be as grandiose. It's a melancholy that has been perhaps too commented on as certainly the world of the past wasn't particularly awesome by comparison. The Gondorian reverence for the past is actually unhealthy as Pharazon was a human-sacrifice practicing Satanist but they ignore the bad to focus on the good--perhaps showing Tolkien knew nostalgia was foolish.

Mind you, I find a lot of literary criticism of LOTOR more or less ignores the Hobbit exists and assumes that Tolkien was a closet monarchist and nostalgiaphile while ignoring that the Hobbit is about 30% taking the piss out of nobility as well as war.

Well, there is that entire Denethor - steward vs. rightful king thing subplot.  The Rightful King never gives up, while the lesser born, i.e. less entitled, less noble fellow falls into arrogance, depression, loss of faith and hopelessness.

In the Hobbit the only real monarchy with which the story is concerned is the King Under the Mountain, and as being the Dwarf Kingdom, well, it isn't so surprising that betrayal, conflict and destruction follow, presumably.

Not saying Tolkien was a monarchist or anything of the sort, per se, but he was in love with the past.  Which isn't necessarily a terrible thing, particularly since it feels so founded in the love of and concern for the present's destruction of the natural world, whether in his own fantasies or in what he saw in war and saw going on around him.

That is missing from ASOIAF, and certainly from grimdark.

[C.T. Phipps]

9 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Well, there is that entire Denethor - steward vs. rightful king thing subplot.  The Rightful King never gives up, while the lesser born, i.e. less entitled, less noble fellow falls into arrogance, depression, loss of faith and hopelessness.

In the Hobbit the only real monarchy with which the story is concerned is the King Under the Mountain, and as being the Dwarf Kingdom, well, it isn't so surprising that betrayal, conflict and destruction follow, presumably.

Not saying Tolkien was a monarchist or anything of the sort, per se, but he was in love with the past.  Which isn't necessarily a terrible thing, particularly since it feels so founded in the love of and concern for the present's destruction of the natural world, whether in his own fantasies or in what he saw in war and saw going on around him.

That is missing from ASOIAF, and certainly from grimdark.

I'm just pointing out that while Aragorn's story is one of a rightful king returning, Thorin Oakenshield's story is the exact same thing and he's shown to be a (near)complete incompetent until the very end.

Famously, he's not even the man who kills the dragon.

The rest of the journey is just him getting his ass into trouble before Gandalf and Bilbo bail him out.

And Thorin is every bit the "rightful" king that Aragorn is.

Edit:

Mind you, the joke is that the humans of the LOTOR aren't the humans you're supposed to identify with. The Hobbits are. The humans are every bit as alien as the elves as they're essentially storybook characters compared to the "real" people who have wandered into their story.

[SeanF]

5 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm just pointing out that while Aragorn's story is one of a rightful king returning, Thorin Oakenshield's story is the exact same thing and he's shown to be a (near)complete incompetent until the very end.

Famously, he's not even the man who kills the dragon.

The rest of the journey is just him getting his ass into trouble before Gandalf and Bilbo bail him out.

And Thorin is every bit the "rightful" king that Aragorn is.

Edit:

Mind you, the joke is that the humans of the LOTOR aren't the humans you're supposed to identify with. The Hobbits are. The humans are every bit as alien as the elves as they're essentially storybook characters compared to the "real" people who have wandered into their story.

Yes and No.

Aragorn is the rightful heir.  But, he's also "last of a ragged line, long bereft of lordship and dignity" in the eyes of blue-blooded Denethor.  It's really his ability as warrior and general that takes him to the top.

[Zorral]

25 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm just pointing out that while Aragorn's story is one of a rightful king returning, Thorin Oakenshield's story is the exact same thing and he's shown to be a (near)complete incompetent until the very end.

Famously, he's not even the man who kills the dragon.

The rest of the journey is just him getting his ass into trouble before Gandalf and Bilbo bail him out.

And Thorin is every bit the "rightful" king that Aragorn is.

Edit:

Mind you, the joke is that the humans of the LOTOR aren't the humans you're supposed to identify with. The Hobbits are. The humans are every bit as alien as the elves as they're essentially storybook characters compared to the "real" people who have wandered into their story.

And the not so jokey-joke, which probably is part of the accusations of LOTR as anti-semitic -- the dwarves and their love of money ancient hebrew caricature which has led over and over again to pogroms and genocide; one really sees this for instance in the Children of Húrin -- which as much as I admire that work and what the younger Tolkien did with it -- did kinda, yanno, leap out.  Whether or not Tolkien himself actually was anti-semitic -- which seems not so likely, certainly not in any obvious way in his living life language and actions -- still the heroes of The Hobbit are straight forward 'commoners' and their better sort of yeomanry, as opposed to quarrelsome, scheming and greedy dwarves.

Or! in other words, Tolkien's great talent is showing, because things aren't all so straight up as they might seem when one first reads his works as a much younger and less well-read person?  I.e. more complicated, more nuanced, and finally, despite the magic and mythology, more realistic?  Like the Bible and Shakespeare, we can all find anything in LOTR that we want or need to find? except maybe women and other others? yet, maybe the argument against the Dark Lord is that he was attempting to colonize the lands that didn't belong to him, and was even using natives to do so, as colonists so often do?

[C.T. Phipps]

10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

And the not so jokey-joke, which probably is part of the accusations of LOTR as anti-semitic -- the dwarves and their love of money ancient hebrew caricature which has led over and over again to pogroms and genocide

Dwarves are definitely Tolkiens' conception of Jews. However, I also think this is a case of a "ehhh" because while Thorin Oakenshield is a fool, the other 11 dwarves are likable supporting characters. Thorin also gets a redemption at the end of the story with Bilbo's relationship with him growing over the story. He's meant to be a flawed character but not an evil or even irredeemably flawed one (and the elves and humans ALSO display gold fever).

Tolkien made his dwarves from a bunch of Jewish stereotypes as well as mythological Norse references fused together but these include positive ones as well as negative: a proud, honorable, hardworking warrior race.

I.e. Tolkien wasn't deliberately setting out to be negative.

The dwarves in the story also break the stereotypes of them in-universe as often as they are reinforced. So I think it perhaps falls under Fair for its Day.

Edit:

Bilbo is a landed gentleman on his mother's side so he's not much of a commoner, just a different sort of aristocrat than the actual feudal nobility. The Dwarves are an interesting mix of royals and commoners who are more or less equals.

[SeanF]

25 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Dwarves are definitely Tolkiens' conception of Jews. However, I also think this is a case of a "ehhh" because while Thorin Oakenshield is a fool, the other 11 dwarves are likable supporting characters. Thorin also gets a redemption at the end of the story with Bilbo's relationship with him growing over the story. He's meant to be a flawed character but not an evil or even irredeemably flawed one (and the elves and humans ALSO display gold fever).

Tolkien made his dwarves from a bunch of Jewish stereotypes as well as mythological Norse references fused together but these include positive ones as well as negative: a proud, honorable, hardworking warrior race.

I.e. Tolkien wasn't deliberately setting out to be negative.

The dwarves in the story also break the stereotypes of them in-universe as often as they are reinforced. So I think it perhaps falls under Fair for its Day.

Edit:

Bilbo is a landed gentleman on his mother's side so he's not much of a commoner, just a different sort of aristocrat than the actual feudal nobility. The Dwarves are an interesting mix of royals and commoners who are more or less equals.

An anti-Semitic work would have made the Dwarves moneylenders or tax collectors, battening down on hard-working peasants

Whereas, they are craftsmen, artists, and warriors.

[C.T. Phipps]

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

An anti-Semitic work would have made the Dwarves moneylenders or tax collectors, battening down on hard-working peasants

Whereas, they are craftsmen, artists, and warriors.

Mind you, we also have Tolkien's rebuttal to Nazis asking about his heritage. Still my favorite of his writings even above the LOTR.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-classier-than-j-r-r-tolkien-telling-off-nazis-a-5892697

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

[SeanF]

7 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Mind you, we also have Tolkien's rebuttal to Nazis asking about his heritage. Still my favorite of his writings even above the LOTR.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-classier-than-j-r-r-tolkien-telling-off-nazis-a-5892697

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

That letter is awesome.  Just dripping with justified sacasm.