Grimdark in Fiction

[PFA]

I actually have heard that about Dark Souls before. Building off what Celes said about it, I think it being a video game kind of gives it a unique advantage on that front, because video games are meant to give the player a certain amount of agency. Even if everyone and everything in the game world is persistently telling you that there's no hope, that there's no point in continuing, the player has the option to either give up then and there, or to keep going in spite of all that. And because it's a video game, and you know there's a programmed ending to it, some part of you is always going "okay, this seems impossible, but there has to be a way to beat this."

Meanwhile with books or movies, you don't have that kind of control over the main characters, you just have to sit there and watch how they react to the world around them. (Which has its own advantages too, of course, but basically what I'm saying is that video games can present their stories a bit differently because of that choice thing.)

[Joker]

Shinko - Gotcha If all you mean is that character actions should have logical/realistic consequences, then I'm certainly with you there.

Jan 21, 2017 16:25:22 GMT -5 Celestial said:

I do not think it is a good representation of medieval times. It was, in essense, too misanthrophic and nihlistic, and really gave me more of an impression that the author hated everything and saw the world in very dark tones instead of trying to represent history as it really was. However, that's just what I got out of it. Maybe others, including yourself, were different.

I guess this is where the subjective component comes in. I didn't get this dark tone from ASOIAF at all - I thought that there were actually quite a lot of uplifting moments, much more so than in a lot of books I've read. Does the author enjoy the violence? Sure! I enjoy a good (fictional) gore-fest myself. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm not picking up on this really dark, nihilistic view of the world from that particular series at all. So, it seemed ironic to me that it kept popping up on this thread.

As to representing how history "really was" - I think at any particular moment in time that depends who you ask. I imagine there are widely differing opinions about the present era, for example, ranging from "awful and terrible and bleak" to "bright and cheerful." I wasn't trying to say at all that medieval times were uniformly terrible and no one ever had a good time, just that compared to modern life in Western countries there was more war, sickness, and lots of bad things (especially nasty physical ones).

[Komori]

Jan 21, 2017 0:22:50 GMT -5 Breakingchains said:

Jan 20, 2017 2:00:10 GMT -5 Blueysicle said:

In the absolute bleakest of pieces, the world is a horrible place and there's nothing anyone or anything can do about it. Endings are bittersweet at best and downright depressing at worst. "Heroes" often have very little heroic about them. Characters that try to instill hope meet grim ends.

...if you need an example, that aptly describes Dark Souls. (And listen, I know I can't shut up about this game recently, but indulge me here because I think it fits the discussion. Very mild spoilers?) For those unfamiliar, this is a game... starring a zombie... who is doomed to eventual insanity... dealing with what is perhaps best described as a magical version of the heat-death of the universe. Even the gods are scrambling for a solution and they sure as heck don't mind if it means throwing you under the bus. In fact, everyone is either evil, or adorable but in danger of dying horribly, or manipulating you. Oh, and you're not even the only one they've tried it with--everyone is calling you "Chosen" but you're, like, Chosen #4829, you ain't special. Little is resolved, even less is explained, and whatever you choose, you're never quite given an honest clear 'attaboy saying you did the right thing.

So one wouldn't guess on the surface that this game has this weird habit: pulling its players out of suicidal depression. Seriously, I didn't have that kind of earth-shattering experience with it, but it's a strangely widespread phenomena that I stumbled across by accident while wiki-walking and such. People apparently routinely find themselves spoken to by this seemingly malicious little video game when nothing else was even cracking the shell.

And it's because there is so little hope. It's because it doesn't blind the player with pretty sparkles and try to tell them things aren't so bad. It meets the player where it knows that many obsessive gamers are (sadly) actually at, and it shows them a wall to beat their heads against, and it says "Now, let's beat our heads against this wall until it falls down." It acknowledges just how bad things are, willingly flirts with the sickening possibility that maybe there isn't even a point, and then rather than trying to artificially reassure you, it teaches you in baby steps to derive your own point from the pointlessness you see. That's a very rare thing for popular media to attempt, and if it was set in a hopeful universe, it wouldn't even begin to work.

Mmm, I'd probably disagree with you on that front. Mechanically yes, it's a struggle of a game that you beat against again and again, BUT I would say that the narrative doesn't tell you it's futile. In fact, the friendly NPCs encourage you constantly. "Don't you DARE go Hollow." Everyone's been inflicted with this sort of miserable curse, but they're all striving against it, and they encourage you to find a solution to help. Your ultimate goal is just to prolong the tiny bit of fire that's left in the world before everything is claimed by darkness, even though it too will eventually burn out and die. It's kind of that "we have to keep moving forward and struggle against the tide" sort of hope that keeps you from just quitting the game outright. Because if it's impossibly hard AND they tell you everything is pointless forever, then who'd even play it?