[content note: discussion of rape and other unpleasantness] This is about as subjective as it gets, but I would appreciate some insights and musings, because I've been struggling with this. From where I'm standing, there seems to be a sliding scale of grimdark in fiction. On the one end you might find things like the Wrong Turn or Human Centipede movies, that are clearly and unapologetically designed to make the audience cringe and squirm. On the complete other end of that spectrum you might find things like the opening scene of Antichrist, which deals with something absolutely atrociously dark without trying to impress its audience with how edgy it is. Both absolutely void the warranty on a human soul, but the intent and the effect couldn't be more different. (This scale itself is 100% subjective as well. Many consider Lars van Trier to be King Edglelord, and damn do I see what they mean. But if you get my general drift, please bear with me.) I'm usually not too bothered by how my stories come across, writing what I know and love and all that, but that gray area between those two extremes is my weak spot. I find it very, very hard to determine whether I'm veering into gratuitous grimdark territory. I'd be honestly upset if I made a genuine effort to describe something dark but relevant to the theme that ended up being regarded as gratuitous violence to cater to a certain gore crowd. (No offense to that crowd, btw. I'm a cinematic ghoul too.) Simply put, I don't want to be embarrassed should my mother ever come to read it. For example (and it is just an example) my current fantasy WIP deals with themes of powerlessness and defiance in the face of abuses of power. It features a rape scene that is very much thematically appropriate and reveals a lot about the world and the characters. There are other scenes featuring sexual activity, but my rule for those is the same as any other scene: if it doesn't further plot or character, skip it. So scenes of characters having a lovely sexy time with no conflict get a fade to black. A POV character being abused does not. It's sort of the most direct version of character conflict you can get. But it's also really unpleasant to read about in detail, and I feel the detail is needed. The scene designed to be unpleasant, because duh, but I wonder what other people might consider "too far." When is respectful distance worse than stark close-ups? So, what are your thoughts on dark scenes? What context do you need to suffer through unpleasant but impactful character beats? (Awkward request: obviously I'd be grateful any and all thoughts, but given the subject matter of dark fantasy fiction, can we leave Game of Thrones out of the discussion? I'm 100% unfamiliar with the books and show and have no interest in changing that. Examples or discussion of those stories won't help me at all.)
Well for me a dark scene is well made if there's a purpose behind it, while also considering the personality and motivation of the characters within the scene. I deem a gory and violent scene unneccesary if it doesn't fulfill these 2 criterias. For example, in a story, a king slashed the eyes of a little girl and then stabbed her to death. Sure the scene was powerful, but it was off because that action didn't suit the personality of the king and there was no clear purpose behind it. One might say that it was done to make people think he's really evil or for people to hate the character, but again, it was inconsistent with the king's personality. If the king was sadistic or that he had a good reason for doing so, then i can accept it.
This is something I've been thinking about lately, because I'm reading something fairly grimdark right now and do like writing ~edgy things myself. I have vague, general rules for myself when it comes to this sort of thing - one being "You may want to write this scene, but you may also do that, get to the end, and realize that it doesn't actually help the story, and then you have to cut it". IE, I may know there's a pretty graphic bit between scenes 4 and 5, but the story may be better served by glazing over it and informing the reader of it instead of showing it to them. Especially when it's something horrifying, not giving all the details can be just as impactful. It can be tricky if some of the details are genuinely important later on, though. I also consider how - when I write the scene itself, whether it stays in or not - I'm presenting the details. I unabashedly love gore, but the last thing I want is to come across as 'lovingly' describing a serious trauma. I think that brutal things should be described brutally, not beautifully, if that makes any sense. I grew up watching dumb gross-out horror movies, but I don't want the same "hahah, spewing blood and guts" feeling when I'm watching/reading something serious - or more precisely, I don't want to feel like that's what the writer wanted me to feel. I don't think it should feel like you're being shown this thing for amusement or titillation, which I think tends to be dependent on word choice, focus, and how long it goes on - you should be uncomfortable, but not with the writer. I don't want to get the impressing that I'm being made to read their own personal torture porn fanfic. Personally, I have a hard time turning off my writer brain when I'm reading or watching something, so I'm always thinking "What was the point of this?". If something makes me feel squicked out, but I get where it's going / why it needed to be there, cool. If, as far as I can tell, it's a graphic rape scene that's just there to be a graphic rape scene, then nah. Spoilers for Berserk because this is difficult to talk about without some sort of example, and that's the thing I've been reading / watching lately that got it on my mind: Spoiler At the end of the third movie, one of the main characters, Casca, is raped. It's somewhat graphic - these aren't pg movies and there's been nudity and violence before, so I don't think it's out-of-left-field graphic in context. But it does go on longer than I felt was really necessary. On the other hand it's a very important character beat for Casca, who blocks out the entire thing and also the entire rest of her life as a response to the trauma, as well as for the character who does it (moral event horizon) and the one who's forced to watch it happen (heroic blue screen of death). It's a gross scene because of the content, yes, but what made me more uncomfortable was how the movie presented it: it made the whole thing more about the other two involved characters - the dudes - and imo objectified Casca not in the traditional sense of gawking at her as if she was an object, but in that it turned her into a thing that the men were fighting over / that one was using to hurt the other. Was that what was happening, textually? Oh, absolutely. On that level, Casca's rape wasn't even about her. But that the movie supported this by showing how this was affecting the other two characters, and not so much the one who was actually being raped ... ehhn. As a different example from the same series, early on in the manga another character, Guts, is raped. It's not glazed over at all, but it doesn't happen on-screen (the manga being no less shy than the movies about sex and violence otherwise) - Guts is the sole focus as he tries to fight off the attacker, there's a 'fade to black' of sorts, and the next day he gets quite immediate revenge by killing the guy. It's entirely about him and his experience, and his agency is maintained. Like Casca, we see him responding to the trauma later on, and we know it affected him and shaped who he is as a person, but we didn't have to sit through a scene of him being objectified. We still know that it happened and enough details to understand why he turns out the way he does, but it doesn't feel gratuitous or like I'm supposed to've enjoyed it. It was a horrible, brutal thing that happened and was over, whereas the movie scene with Casca was a horrible, brutal thing that happened, and kept happening for a while. I don't really have a closing statement. I'm more talking about these as two examples of ways to do it, neither of which are necessarily wrong. The Casca scene certainly made me uncomfortable, as intended, but in that specific case not entirely for the intended reason. The Guts scene didn't trigger my empathy, but I do have sympathy for the character having experienced it. It is absolutely a very fine line.
I think you are right to be cautious as scenes like this if done insensitively can be really uncomfortable in the wrong way and make the author seem blasé about issues which to some, and maybe some readers, are extremely personal. That said, it's not as though it can't be done - The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo books are an example of where it is extremely explicit and horrific to read but it doesn't come across as gratuitous (to me anyway). The Lovely Bones are another good example, although in that case I believe the author had some personal experience with the issues. I would say make sure you do some thorough research beforehand to really understand the effects of this kind of trauma and make sure you don't try to put it across as entertainment for the audience - it sounds as though you are already conscientious about this. If you re-read it and it sounds shallow, gratuitous or unbelievable I would say leave it vague. Also remember for some people these scenes will always be a step too far, regardless of the way they are written. So take your target audience into consideration too.
Yes, I should have mentioned, I am writing from experience with that example, so no "sexy rape" cliches here. If any of it ends up sounding titillating, I've gone disastrously wrong. But it's fair to say my own standards for what is normal are severely out of whack, so I have a hard time determining what people find shocking in this regard. It's been said I can be weirdly casual about some dark stuff, so it's a not a straightforward theme to work with, let alone hand over for beta-reading and editing. Especially given the social context and the high-profile "sexy" novels of late.
When I read a dark scene, I find that I'm most interested in the consequences of that scene. I feel like I want the scene and its consequences to mirror each other in impact, such that if I have to read through something awful and uncomfortable, I will want the consequences of that scene to resolve my discomfort in favor of the protagonist. Whether that's through straightforward revenge means, or some sort of resolution that allows the character to conquer that scar, I want to feel like the character has both realistically and satisfyingly overcome the event. The darker the scene, the harder that is to do, at least to my mind. Opinions tend to be very black and white on these things and emotions run high. Some people will be turned off by the scene regardless of the the finesse and impact of the resolution, but I feel its imperative to make the resolution count for those who stick it out.
The most offensive rape scenes are the ones written to be exciting and sexy, or worse, rape scenes that the writer doesn't even realize he wrote: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/game-of-thrones-rape/361011/ For me, grim dark becomes a turnoff when the motivation for it is indulgence. Here is another example of grim dark I hate: 40k was originally suppose to be tragic, but often just serves to let people indulge in authoritarian fantasies. That picture above isn't suppose to be cool or inspiring. It should be scary. The third kind of grim dark I don't like is when the author tries to evoke some kind of cheap cringe by referring to real tragedies - child abuse, infanticide, torture. You can tell when all the bad guy needs to be hated is for him to kick a dog, and instead he's eating children or something. Why make it so nasty unless you just like it?