This video was sponsored by World Anvil!
A bright spark of hope in an otherwise cold and uncaring world.
(Impact followed by falling glass)
The dark age of comics officially began in 1986,
The year that saw both Frank Miller's "The Dark Night Returns"-
-and Allan Moore's "Watchmen"
Superhero comics had touched on dark themes before.
Chris Claremont's "God Loves, Man Kills"-
-An X-Men comic that handled themes of religious zealotry and full-on genocide-
-came out in 1982.
And Alan Moore's take on "Swamp Thing", which is deeply grotesque and unsettling-
-also came out in the early '80s.
But this is when comics started getting dark overall.
The grittiness became the rule, rather than the exception.
There was a bit of an arms race, honestly.
By the '90s it almost felt like comic writers were trying to one-up each other-
-in how dark, gory, and morally ambiguous they could make their "Heroes".
This is the era that saw such developments as the characters of:
Cable, Lobo, Spawn, and John Constantine,
And
An attempt at rebooting the entire space of DC Comics-
-that killed off hundreds of characters,
most notably Supergirl and The Flash.
And some say is still f*cking up canon to this very day.
As the '90s rolled on, the comic book Dark Age kept on trucking
The stories got darker, the characters got meaner
And there was this oddly pervasive feeling of embarrassment with the previous eras-
-of comic books.
All those colorful spandex superhumans-
-with wildly unrealistic power sets saving the day for truth and justice?
How childish! How implausible!
Now we had dark spandex superhumans
-people with their wildly unrealistic power sets-
-for personal reasons!
See, that's much more believable :)
Who needs to grow up now, mom?
This was the broad beginning of "Grimdark",
a space of stories that, true to the name-
-are grim, and dark, and nothing else.
Grimdark is hard to solidly define, but before we try,
we need to dive into the other major contributing factor for the genre:
Warhammer 40k!
A tabletop minis game first published in 1987.
This game is the source of the term "Grimdark", The game's tagline is:
"In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war."
And it's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin,
it's the far future, everything sucks, and everybody's fighting all the time
There are no heroes, there's no happy ending,
"There is only war"
So here's the quick rundown: In Warhammer 40k,
you pick an army, you spend way too much money buying and painting the minis,
and then you use them for tabletop war games with other people and their armies of minis.
Most people play as "The Imperium of Man"-
-specifically the Space Marines.
But if you'd expect them to be the "good guys", you are sorely mistaken.
In the lore of the game The Imperium of Man is an authoritarian nightmare-
-that worships the mummified husk of a god-emperor who they keep running-
-with daily blood sacrifices.
It's got the propagandistic "No free thought allowed"-
-vibe of 1984, with exactly none of the subtlety.
And the other options aren't any better.
There are
Demons from a parallel universe known as "The Warp",
Where the psychic emanations of sentient beings from our universe produce-
-twisted monomaniacal demons that rip through the fragile skin of reality-
-to ravage our world. Fun Stuff!
They're in good company with the Tyranids:
A massive psychic hive-mind from another galaxy that is-
-systematically using their massive xenomorph-style biomass of murder-critters-
-to chew through entire planets,
and appear to have the galaxy completely surrounded.
I mean between those two forces everyone's pretty much boned already.
The Tyranids are chewing through space and-
the Forces of Chaos are punching big holes in it every time a psychic gets a headache.
But it doesn't stop there!
You can play as the Necrons, the last remnants of an ancient empire-
-that tried to escape death and instead turned into Terminator space-zombies.
Or the Orks! Green-skinned space football hooligans that have literally no priority-
-besides war.
Or you can do what I did and play The Eldar;
Gorgeous, elegant, psychic space-elves whose massive space empire was-
-pretty awesome until they partied so hard they created a chaos god that shattered-
-their empire and turned half of them into bondage-y-murder-space pirates.
Leaving the rest wasting away on massive spaceships;
recycling their souls into giant robots because there aren't-
-enough of them to fight otherwise.
Or maybe you wanna play as the Tau!
Fresh-faced alien newcomers who are looking to build a pan-galactic space empire-
-by subjugating all other races using mind-control.
Ah beans, it's always something.
There really is no winning.
Warhammer 40k is kinda the platonic ideal of grimdark,
there are literally no good options.
And thanks to the infinite forces of chaos, there's really no winning.
There's no heroes, no unified "Bad Guy" to target, no Death Star to destroy.
There is just war, And plenty of it.
And
-Warhammer 40k exploding onto the scene, the shared aesthetic of Grimdark got-
-mad popular starting in the 90s.
This is also, not-coincidentally, around when White Wolf started publishing their-
-notoriously grim "World of Darkness" games.
Now since Grimdark is more of a vibe than a genre-
-it's a little tricky to strictly define,
but there's a few key factors that help narrow it down.
See, lots of stories are gritty and dark without going full grimdark,
which is a totally different ballgame.
But it can be very easy to get them confused.
For one thing, Grimdark has no heroes; it can certainly have protagonists but-
-those protagonists aren't heroes.
Their motivations are usually entirely self-centered and morally dubious,
their methods are deeply unpleasant, they're typically quite self-destructive,
and overall they're not what you'd typically think of as a "good person".
They can be very sympathetic and relatable,
But they're not someone you'd look up to, exactly.
Heroes often represent ideals, Grimdark protagonists don't.
There are plenty of gritty, dark protagonists who are full-on heroes-
-with paragon ideals or a strong sense of justice, and those guys aren't grimdark.
And when they get rewritten as grimdark, it feels weird.
If you take a grimdark setting and put a hero in it, they don't fit,
Either the world bends around them through the sheer force of their protagonist-ness-
-and un-grimdarks the setting, or the grimdark wins and they die;
Usually very nastily.
Grimdark and heroes, can't coexist.
This is a case where Warhammer 40k has kind of an advantage:
For the most part, as a war game, individual characters don't matter.
There are a few special units with names and backstories,
and the lore has plenty of characters in it;
But no matter how cool their alleged narrative accomplishments might be,
when the game gets going they usually die pretty quick anyway.
However, there are some tie-in novels that put focus more on individual protagonists,
and those novels tend to have a much less overwhelmingly gritty tone than-
-the actual game lore does.
The world is still a hot mess, but the characters do heroic things-
-and care about each other on a very deep level,
and forge genuine lasting friendships,
and other such hopeful things that don't normally feature in grimdark narratives.
While the game is grimdark, it's hard to write a compelling story in that setting-
-so the books end up being not-quite grimdark.
Now another key factor is that grimdark has no real hope for a happy ending.
Some stories come with clean solutions;
Blow up the death star, destroy the artifact, defeat the evil emperor,
put the one true king on the throne, return with the elixir,
a simple goal that our heroes have to accomplish to win.
Grimdark doesn't have that simple fix, if the world is unpleasant and broken-
-our protagonists have no simple way of improving it.
Maybe the government is corrupt all the way up,
or the deities themselves are evil,
or the world is just boned in a thousand different ways-
-and fixing one won't do anything for the other 999.
Saving the world isn't on the table.
In absence of a clean solution, grimdark narratives can still have smaller scale-
-victories on the table.
Maybe our protagonists will never overthrow their authoritarian regime,
but they can successfully dissuade small-scale agents of that regime from-
-messing with their little corner of the planet.
Or your cosmic horror setting doesn't really give you the option of-
-defeating the elder gods, but you can still outrun their cultists.
Still, despite the small-scale victories, grimdark makes sure our characters-
-will have to deal with this pervasive unpleasantness, basically forever.
And the last staple of grimdark is grey-and-grey morality.
Some stories have black-and-white morality where the heroes are good, and therefore-
-everything they do is good, and the villains are bad,
and thus do only bad things.
Most modern media avoids full-on black-and-white morality,
and will allow their heroes to do questionable things, and their-
-villains to be a bit more nuanced and sympathetic,
but it rarely dips into full-on grey-and-grey morality;
Where all the characters are working in a very murky area.
In grey-and-grey morality, the righteous- ness of an action becomes irrelevant,
some other paradigm is in play.
Maybe all that matters is survival, or revenge,
or some other fundamentally self-centered goal.
The morality of what the characters do in pursuit of that goal isn't a factor,
or at least not one that matters to them. Pointing it out to them is pointless.
"Gee Mr. Punisher, did you know that murder is
"Oh golly! I hadn't considered that!"
"Guess I'll leave my dead family unavenged."
See that's not the paradigm they're working under.
Even if there is a grand-scale good vs. evil conflict going on,
these guys aren't invested in it.
Now one of the more interesting and frustrating things-
-that grimdark is inherently more realistic than other genres.
I talked about this
so I'll try not to get too far off track, but the short of it is;
Grimdark was a bit of a direct reaction to the more light-hearted,
optimistic stories of the pre-dark-age.
Those stories had heroes, and happy endings,
And grimdark said: "That's dumb, and also for babies."
"Check this out!"
And then started telling stories without those things.
This ties into the general idea that optimism is naive,
something you're supposed to grow out of.
And pessimism is real, the state you grow into.
And that's a load of hooey.
Yeah I said it! What're you gonna do, be sad at me about it?
Optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same concept;
One anticipates a good state of being,
The other a bad one.
Half full vs. half empty.
Ultimately it's the state that matters, not what you expect it to be,
so for the most part optimism and pessimism are just personal attitudes,
and don't matter that much.
But, optimism and pessimism, when expanded into universalized concepts,
produce two very different world views;
The optimistic world view believes that things can go well,
that the world can be better.
The pessimistic world view believes that they can't and won't.
And in this case? The optimists have it.
The world can improve, and has several times.
Heroes have existed, and the world has been, on occasion saved by them,
or at least greatly improved.
This is the concept highlighted by classic fantasy authors, like Tolkien.
Grimdark is part of the counter-argument put forwards in response to that-
-by more jaded authors, like George R. R. Martin.
Now this counter-argument isn't
at it's most sophisticated, it's more of an attempt to humanize these otherwise-
-mythologized heroes.
To point out that the people who changed the world, even for the better,
were still people and thus probably at least kind of an asshole.
Now Tolkien and Martin are actually really good examples here because, for one thing,
they both did a really good job presenting their world view;
And for another, they're really not as opposed as people seem to think.
And here's the kicker, they both delved into realism. Yeah, really!
While Game of Thrones is more low fantasy and low magic than Lord of the Rings,
neither author shied away from the realistic human element-
-of their respective adventures.
George R. R. Martin doesn't shy away from showing a character pooping themselves,
but Tolkien also delved into some pretty intense psychological misery,
when he wrote Sam and Frodo struggling immensely to make their way through Mordor;
Tired and miserable and forgetting the taste of food.
The scenario was fantastical, but the characters reacted in very realistic ways.
And someone who fought in World War II would be pretty qualified to describe-
-the malingering effects of dragging yourself through a warzone,
and forgetting what it felt like to be anywhere else.
Plus if you've ever read the Silmarillion, Tolkien's not exactly an idealist,
and he certainly doesn't shy away from the gross stuff.
There's plenty of incest and murder, I mean he did base it on Norse mythology.
The only real difference between these two is the framing of the world:
Tolkien's fantasy world can be saved;
Heroism and moral righteousness pay off, and the good guys save the day.
Martin... not so much.
Delving into court intrigue and political power plays mean a lot more assassinations
and a lot less actual good getting done.
Can this world be saved? I mean probably, but not by any of these guys,
who are so caught up in their personal squabbles they literally can't agree-
-if fighting the endless zombie death-army is a good idea or not.
(any other year I'd call that unrealistic)
While Martin fits the grimdark aesthetic more,
he's really not as steeped in it as some people think;
And the idealist high fantasy he's pitted against-
-has a lot more in common with his work than some people would like to admit.
Now there's one very interesting thing about grimdark:
Since the "no real happy endings" rule is pretty definite,
that kind of rules out most plot-driven storytelling.
It's hard to get an audience invested in the outcome-
-if it's guaranteed to be unpleasant.
In light of that, most grimdark narratives end up being either-
-character-driven, or theme-driven.
We can get invested in characters no matter how morally dubious they might be,
and a lot of grimdark stories sell us completely on the character dynamics,
and convince us to root for an ending that has no good impact on the world overall,
but provides some kind of closure for the characters.
The ending doesn't even really need to be that satisfying-
-if it leaves us feeling the right kind of unpleasant.
For instance, The Last of Us got the audience to root for Joel and Ellie-
-to get along.
From the beginning, we sympathize with Joel, but he still acts like a jerk.
And we like Ellie because, let's face it, she was hand-crafted-
-to be sassy and lovable.
This causes us to root for Joel's character development,
to make him less of a jerk 'cos we wanna see Ellie happy-
-and she's invested in him being nicer to her.
And when Joel starts opening up, that lets us get invested in their dynamic,
and root for it to improve.
Some grimdark goes even darker for the resolution;
Various issues of Sin City successfully guide the audience-
-to root for the protagonist to die.
Yeah.
It mostly works because the characters come across as very lost and purposeless;
Except for their gritty determination to either murder somebody,
or protect somebody at all costs.
They convince you over and over again that for these characters,
dying after successfully doing their one thing is the only satisfying conclusion.
How grim. And dark.
And then there's theme-driven grimdark:
Where the characters are basically exemplary victims-
-of the horribleness of the scenario they're stuck in.
Grimdark themes often explore cosmic horror,
hopelessness in the face of overwhelming force,
The terrors of authoritarianism,
and basically anything that boils down to:
"This sucks and I can't do anything about it".
These stories are ways to explore deeply unpleasant scenarios;
books like 1984 do so specifically as a political warning.
And many post-apocalypses are similarly theme-driven to get across that:
"Hey kids! Destroying the world is probably bad :)".
But you also get a certain amount of overlap,
where a character-driven narrative still explores a central theme;
Like humanity, or the loss of humanity, which is quite popular,
or even something really specific.
Like how Mad Max: Fury Road is about the pointlessness of searching for a-
-perfect promised land instead of putting in the hard work to build the best life-
-you can from what you have.
But for all that, it can be kind of hard to see the appeal of grimdark.
Like for me, personally.
I have pretty simple tastes. I like heroes, and I like happy endings,
and I don't really have that much patience for edgier-than-thou nihilism.
I can understand the appeal of more nuanced stories,
with bittersweet endings or unconventional protagonists.
But grimdark as a genre kind of strips away everything that I personally-
-like about stories and storytelling.
It's hard for me to get invested.
I want characters that I can root for,
playing out arcs that I wanna see resolved.
For the longest time, I didn't get the appeal at all.
And then, I watched Chicago.
Now I'm gonna be clear, Chicago does not fit the grimdark aesthetic;
It's a dang movie-musical, it's all glitz and glamour and all that jazz,
but there are no heroes, every single protagonist is a terrible human being.
There's no interest in morality, the protagonists are all-
-murderers trying to escape legal consequences for their actions,
and the lawyer helping them do it.
And the outcome that you're theoretically rooting for is-
-a total miscarriage of justice. And there's really no hope for a happy ending,
because it's clear from minute one that the protagonist Roxy kinda sucks, and-
-really can't make it in showbiz like she wants,
and that what she's mistaken for her fame is just her 10 minutes in the spotlight-
-because of the murder she did.
There's no-one to root for, and there's no happy ending.
I should have been clicking back over to Dragon Ball Z 10 minutes in.
But I didn't, and it took me a little while to figure out why:
It's because the characters were well- written and inherently compelling.
And while none of them were heading for a happy ending,
some of them were heading for karmically satisfying ones.
Watching these terrible people from a third-person omniscient perspective-
-lets you really appreciate how terrible they are, and then you get to watch-
-their dreams die as they crash and burn.
It's... oddly satisfying?
Like a story without heroes that still lets you watch a villain-
-get their third-act comeuppance.
Now that's one reason grimdark can be appealing, but it's not the only reason.
I asked twitter for some thoughts on the appeals and pitfalls of grimdark, and-
-found a few recurring themes in the answers.
One of those themes is catharsis by proxy:
When a character we relate to on any level goes through something emotionally intense
-we, the audience, feel it from a distance.
Catharsis, the process of releasing very strong - or repressed - emotions,
can feel very freeing or satisfying, even if the emotions involved are-
-miserable or exhausting.
So a character in a grimdark narrative going through the-
-absolute emotional wringer, can provide the audience with a feeling of catharsis,
without having to go through the actual bad stuff.
Of course, this isn't unique to grimdark; any story can do it.
Even one as quote-unquote "idealistic" as Lord of the Rings,
or as child-friendly and simplistic as any shōnen anime.
But it is an appeal, and shouldn't be discounted.
Now the other common theme I found was perspective:
A character in a grimdark narrative goes through a lot.
If the audience compares the character's experience to their own life,
instead of relating to that character and feeling for that character,
they might end up feeling a sense of relief.
Like, "Hey, things are lousy but at least I didn't just get stabbed by my own dudes"
"Or bitten by zombies".
It's like the relief from waking up from a nightmare;
The nightmare sucked and you don't wanna do it again,
but realizing it's not real can be very soothing.
A whole lot of things you were worrying about suddenly don't matter any more.
Now while this can work, it only really works if the audience doesn't care-
-about the character,
audiences can get very invested, and it doesn't necessarily matter if their own-
-life is very comfortable if their favorite fictional character is having-
-a really bad time.
They might go "Better them than me", or they might send the author death threats.
It is interesting to note, by the way, that both perspective,
and catharsis by proxy, only work if they're a form of negative escapism.
People who actually deal with very upsetting stuff on a daily basis,
like grief counselors, people struggling with personal trauma, et cetera;
often actively avoid all things grimdark-
-in favor of much more light-hearted, optimistic media.
If grimdark is like a cold shower,
a quick bout of misery to energize you for the rest of the day,
then you can see why it wouldn't seem too appealing for someone who spends the rest-
-of their day in the emotional equivalent of an ice bath.
There was also an interesting answer I noticed where some people suggested that-
-seeing people struggle, even in the face of utter hopelessness was encouraging,
and... I'm gonna be honest, that one doesn't make any sense to me.
Because grimdark prides itself on screwing over those exact characters;
If you wanna see persistence in the face of hopelessness be rewarded-
-you can look to any other genre of fiction.
Grimdark is pretty much the only one that will swat you in the face with a wet-
-towel and call you a dork for believing the universe would ever-
-reward a heroic effort.
And if it doesn't do that, it's not grimdark.
I guess the bottom line is: Grimdark has appeal.
I mean obviously, enough people like it that it has to be doing something.
Even though it's precision crafted to be generally unpleasant and miserable,
it really does work for some people.
And sometimes you're in the mood for a little catharsis-by-proxy,
but it works best in moderation, and it's definitely not the be-all end-all-
-pinnacle of fiction.
It has it's place, but so does the stuff it's a reaction against.
Grimdark can be aggressively nihilistic,
but the purpose of fiction is - in many cases - to inspire,
and nihilism generally doesn't do that.
In his 1993 essay "Let There Be Dragons", Acclaimed Discworld author and all-around-
-excellent dude Sir Terry Pratchett, said something that I personally think is-
-unimaginably beautiful, and incidentally also describes 100% of my thoughts-
-on grimdark, the quote goes like this:
"Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old-
-woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country?-
-Why does Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it-
-goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards?-
-Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place.-
-Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats,-
- let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope.-
-It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset,-
-but let us know that we do not live in vain."
Hope is the ultimate motivator. On some level, it's the only motivator.
If it seems like I have personal beef with grimdark as a genre,
it's only the same beef I have with everything that treats hope-
-like a dumb, childish concept;
Rather than the fundamental core of human experience.
Hope makes us believe things can be better.
Once we stop believing that, we stop trying to make things better.
And guess what? Then things don't get better.
Pessimistic nihilism is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy, and-
-maybe it's the 2020 talking, but
-with people who give up a better world, and then have the audacity to tell-
-other people that they're naive or stupid for still trying.
The grimdark world-view preaches that everything sucks-
-and nothing will make it better.
If the ideal of the grimdark genre is really struggle in the face of hopelessness-
-then act like it. Dare to believe the world can be better and fight for it.
And if that's really the ideal of grimdark, then why does every other genre-
-do a better job of inspiring it?
Grimdark can totally be fun, but man, don't let it define your world view.
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