How do you avoid the "edgelord" trope, when entering the "grimdark" subgenre?

Superfice (superficial) rather than substance (substantial).

 

Bands like Gwar just make me giggle.



Maybe they're supposed to, I dunno. They remind me of Power Rangers baddies.

 

^ Grimsilly

 

AND THAT reminds of that Mexican musician that internet sleuths thought killed that girl in the Cecil Hotel (if anyone recalls the elevator video) because he did the whole "dark" thing with his work. "He makes gruesome music videos, he must have done it!!" The guy was far away in Mexico when the girl went missing (in California)...

 

GWAR I consider to be the opposite end of the spectrum. They are edgelords to a satyrical degree. An edgy band might feature blood on stage, but GWAR sprays 10 gallons at the audience in a single song.

It's similar to Cradle of Filth. They had a concert where a dancer wore a metal bra, then used an angle grinder on it to spray sparks on the audience.

 

They're all ripping off Gallager.

 

Consequences.

In Game of Thrones, life sucks. Main characters die all the time. Everything is morally ambiguous, and the entire place is pretty much just a dumpster fire. In edgelord-type fiction, characters can run around doing really edgy stuff, but they don't see the consequences of those actions. There are always consequences in Game of Thrones and no one is safe.

 

Well talked about de-railed. I didnt know Martin wrote like that either and I think the poster who posted those quotes first was right in everything he said about it. I hesitate to out right call another writer's work trash but yeah stuff like that is awful imo. Lazy and uncreative. Like all smut.
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To the OP the only difference between a trope and an archetype is the time the writer took to flesh out the characters. You can have a nihilistic, bloody warmonger or whatever but don't just show him chopping heads. Wanna make his bloodthirsty side stick with a reader show him having dinner with his family and reading his daughter a bed time story. Add contrast and depth.

 

To clarify, when I say that Game of Thrones is a dumpster fire, my point is that the situation depicted in those books is a disaster that just keeps on going, and pulls everyone in. That's what Martin intends to depict and it is done effectively. Whether it's good or bad is definitely subjective, though my point is that it is dark, not edgy, because it shows a situation where no one is safe and terrible things continually happen to the characters. In edgy fiction, by contrast, characters could do terrible things but would generally be free of consequences.

 

I think the terms are subjective too. Though there is a distinction between the two, it all depends on who's defining what. Edgy is a cringe term to me, because I immediately think shock value. Dark, on the other had is vague as there's a wide spectrum of what could and couldn't be "dark."

I just know any book describing the creaking of a moving ship being akin to a bowel movement is not one I'd be interested in. As I'm sure, to me, the stuff that pulls people in is probably written in the same abrupt and tasteless manner.