My name is Gal (she/her) and it is a pleasure being here!! I usually write dark fantasy stories, but I wanted to dip my whole foot into the cool fantasy sub genre, which is called Grimdark Fantasy. So look forward for lots of posts and things related to the subject. So it's very appreciated if everyone helps me with writing Grimdark Fantasy stories (because I am STRUGGLING ) so please, don't be scared to lend me a helping hand :') ❤️ Also, I don't mind dming and talking about grimdark fantasy since I'm a huge fan of it in general, so please, if you like to talk DM me!! And that's all, I look forward to knowing this community. ❤️ Ps. Also MINORS UNDER 21 DNI
Hello and welcome Gal, sorry I am not familiar with grimdark fantasy, but it sounds intriguing. Looking forward to seeing you in the forums!
Welcome Gal, Like with Louanne, I wasn't familiar with the Grimdark genre and had to look into it a little. I do think I understand the broad sense of it and am excited to see your work. I hope coming here helps fix what you're struggling with in your writings.
Hello, I'm glad you got the gist of it, and I'm glad being here, and me too, hope I get a lot from this site!!
Hello and welcome, Gal! I'm not too familiar with the Grimdark subgenre, but from what I know, the name stems from Warhammer 40,000, I think - am I right? It seems to me like speculative fiction, but also very dystopian, amoral, and violent. (Yikes). To me, it looks like gray-and-gray morality plays a big part, and kings are useless, and heroes are flawed. OK, I can get down with that. I used to play a lot of D&D, and heroes/heroines there are flawed all the time, and there's lots of hard choices there, and royalty there isn't always useful. But then, I saw Damien Walter's article in The Guardian (2016) that summarised what he considered grimdark fantasy as "bigger swords, more fighting, bloodier blood, more fighting, axes, more fighting", and a "commercial imperative to win adolescent male readers". *shrug* So, I'm curious: is that what grimdark is? (I don't think so, but I'm sure you know best!) Anyway, thanks! Welcome again.
Hi, thank you for the welcome!! And yes, you are correct, the term does come with that yes, but also know that the term "grimdark" has been a very debatable loose term for decades. No one truly knows or can stan on what grimdark truly is. So to me, the whole first latter you describe as "the kings are useless, and the heroes are flawed" IS grimdark to me so to me that definition is correct.
Fair enough. So ... I wonder where this guy from the Guardian got his info from. "BIG swords, more fighting, more blood, more axes" etc., all to "win adolescent male readers". *shrug* That sounds ... puerile and immature, really. Maybe some computer gamers like that sort of thing? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that neither Grimdark nor any other fantasy subgenre is about "big swords", no matter how much some teenage boys might want it to be. It would be very strange if it was!!
Have you seen Warhammer? Actually, if you ignore that aspect of it, I guess you could say Cormac McCarthy wrote Grimdark. His stories tend to be dark, amoral, and grim as hell. At least the ones I've seen so far. They're also on the litfic end of things, so maybe grimdark doesn't extend out there?
Classics Review: Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy The author of this article claims some of McCarthy's stories can be (aguably) claimed as Grimdark. I'm not sure. Yes, some of them have a more fantastical setting, but I believe they're still more-or-less litfic, and the fantasy is used in a more symbolic/literary way rather than to be taken entirely at face value. I don't know though, I haven't read any of those particular stories.
Outer Dark is a seriously fucked up novel, even by Cormac's standards. I won't consider it Grimdark because he's about as literary as it gets, but they didn't have many genre classifications 55 years ago when it was written, though it is considered Gothic, though that genre seems to have been obviated. Now, well, everything needs to be at least a genre and a half, so who knows? If that's the case, Cormac is the king of Grimdark because that shit is... grim. ETA: I should add that I absolutely loathe the taxonomy of literature these days. Just in case that wasn't clear.
Yes. Whenever I walk by the local EB Games (retailer for gaming merchandise, video games, and RPGing comics), I can see the posters for Warhammer 40K. So I know that it's also a minis-wargame (produced by Games Workshop, IIRC). I never got into playing with minis -- sorry -- but I used to play D&D for years and years, back in the AD&D days (and also during the 3rd ed years). The only thing I'm trying to say (and sorry for taking so long about it!) is that Grimdark doesn't have to be about "big-ass" weapons, or at least, it doesn't have to be exclusively about them. In Dark Fantasy, you would expect to see a Victorian haunted mansion with (maybe) a dragon sitting on the roof. Grimdark features Fantasy societies in depressing dystopian worlds, where the government is heavily suppressing the freedom of the citizens (and magic is rarely seen). I found this article interesting: What is Grimdark, and who does it belong to? It's a very fine summing up of what Grimdark is, and how it evolved over the years.
