Grim or dark too often treated as realistic...

[Darth Angelus]

Hi!

Most people reasonably familiar with speculative fiction will have noticed the trend of fictional worlds which are increasingly grim and dark. It has been discussed before, and it is not quite the purpose of this thread, but a somewhat related of how that which is dark is very often easily accepted as realistic.

It seems to have reached a point "dark" and "realistic" are treated as synonymous in a lot of people's dictionary, which means that grim events in fiction aren't often questioned as hard as happier ones. I know it is likely a counter-reaction to the unrealistic, constant happy ending, heroic fiction where the protagonists rarely if ever get seriously hurt, and I am certainly not saying that is how the world. The question is whether some fiction isn't swinging to an equally unrealistic polar opposite.

It is fairly obvious that events, good and bad alike, tend to have causes (that is not the same as meaning, and just means that it can be traced back to a cause), and that causality has no inherent good or bad allegiance. Realistically, this means sometimes good things happen, and sometimes bad things do.
Now, I have not read every piece of grim and dark fantasy, and obviously I cannot comment on the specifics of a world I am not familiar with. Yet I have seen a strong tendency of a belief that darker is more realistic in discussions about fiction. I have also seen quite a bit of fiction trying to pass unlikely or even absurd events, and get a lot of leeway because those events were dark or grim. Despite making little sense when analysed thoroughly, they get away with it simply because a lot of people seem to think that their inherent grimness makes them almost immune to questioning.

Come on, the fact that bad things happen to good people in real life does not mean that everything that is grim can be regarded as plausible. I could come up with the fictional event that the entire humanity dies painfully, simultanously, with no cause whatsoever. That would undoubtedly be grim and dark. It would also be extremely implausible.

Another dark event occasionally taking place in fiction is that things are tough for the heroes, even when it shouldn't be. It can be that they are having trouble with a foe, who should be a pushover for them, based on earlier continuity. Sorry, it is unrealistic that characters are having serious trouble with adversaries with greatly inferior skills (relevant to the situation). I know many readers or viewers get bored when things are very easy for the heroes, but sometimes that is exactly what would be the most realistic, again based on what has been established earlier in the narrative. I am not talking about a little underdog winning, but rather enormous skill gaps, here...
What do you think would happen if an Oxford professor in English faced a fairly average person from a non-English speaking country, in a contest of any skill or knowledge regarding the English langauge? Fairly obvious, is it not? Now what if the Oxford professor were the good guy in a piece of fiction, and the non-native English speaker were the bad guy (and perhaps, rather than English, it was another skill, but with a gap equivalent to that one)? It may be darker if the Oxford professor faced a challenge in the contest. Anyone who thinks the Oxford professor in English would be up for a serious challenge from a non-native English speaker, though...
Again, a lot of people prefer when the heroes have a bit of a hard time, which means that they are more accepting to a story of heroes being challenged in a scenario equivalent of the Oxford professor one above than they should be if merely looking at the realism aspect of it. I may not have seen examples quite that extreme, but sometimes they aren't far from it, to be honest.
In the past, when questioning such scenarios, I tended to get evasive answers, just reiterating that it is boring when heroes have a too easy time. That may be the case, but come up with worthy villains, then, instead of pretending what should clearly have been a pathetic foe (relatively to the hero, continuity-wise) could challenge the hero, in the mistaken belief that no one would notice.

Now, most dark events in fiction are not that absurd, but the point is that the threshold where a lot of people start to question the believability seems significantly higher than if it were a happier event. That shouldn't be the case. Causality and realism does not have an alignment. It doesn't concern itself with whether some event is good or bad, just how probable the event is in the given overall situation and how well it fulfills the prerequisites for the event to occur.
So, people who are after realism should question the good and bad events in fiction equally, not be far more questioning towards happy events and accepting to grime ans dark events, given equal probability for them to take place...

 

[Brian G Turner]

The main problem I have with discussions on what is "grim" and "dark" is that they tend to be vague on examples, resulting in people agreeing that their personal boundaries are shared, when significant differences probably exist.

It would be really helpful to mention specific books in any such discussion.

 

[Darth Angelus]

A good point. I wasn't really talking less about works of fiction than attitudes towards fiction.

The point I was trying to make was that it appears as if a lot of readers/viewers seem a good bit less sceptical about events in fiction if they suck for the protagonists.

But if I was to mention one example it wouldn't be George R.R. Martin's works so much as the Star Wars Prequels. Now, it may be a bit of beating a dead horse to criticise the plot of those films, but they end in a very dark way, and George Lucas pulls off some very unlikely events for that to happen. The Jedi, supposedly among the wisest in the galaxy, seem to suffer from severe mental retardation, and lose potent combat abilities whenever it is convenient for the plot to take them out (look at Order 66). Anakin's turn to the dark side seems to be in a causal loop.
There are other cases in speculative fiction, too many to mention, where heroes have proven themselves equal or almost equal to the most potent villains in their universe, only to later be challenged by clearly much weaker foes than than that.

 

[Laeraneth]

In fact, it happens almost all the time in episodic TV involving anyone 'special', be it clever, strong, gifted or otherwise special.

I remember several times in the last year or so that while my wife and I have been watching shows (even ones we genuinely enjoy!) and both found it hard to believe that the hero (or heroine) in question has suddenly come over all stupid, clumsy, or otherwise acts out of character, when it's clearly just to force a plot point, and often one of the 'cliffhanger' moments leading into adverts, or the next episode, or whatever. If it's something you like 90% of the time, it's easy to forgive, but it does annoy!

This isn't a grim or realistic example, but I'll take one that stands out for me from the last year or so.
The Avengers movie. Fairly lighthearted, fairly silly, but thoroughly entertaining and a good movie for it.
(For anyone who gets upset by spoilers... look away now!)

Near the end, Loki is beaten up by the Hulk. Literally, he wipes the floor with him.
This is wrong on so many levels...
Yes, the Hulk is nigh on unstoppable. Yes, he's immensely powerful. Yes he would hurt if he hit you.
But he is not subtle...
Loki can disappear and reappear at will. Loki can translocate himself around as much as he wants. Loki can be appear to be in twenty places at once if he wants to! Loki had been shown no more than half an hour earlier in the movie to basically be in two places at once, using exactly that ability to avoid harm and harm someone else. That's how quick and powerful he is.

And yet... this is how Loki is defeated in the film. This is his final effective scene as a bad guy. The hulk just picks him up and beats him to a pulp.

He SHOULD blink away from the Hulk with barely a thought and go off and do something menacing, but he suddenly just becomes useless. it's so stupid!

Anyway, to get back to the point you first made about grimness being easily accepted as real.
I think it's probably just because peopleexpect conflict and pain in their stories, be it TV or books. They expect to see characters put through total hell only to come out at the end of it victorious. I suppose in some ways it's an easy way of putting emphasis on the victory when it final comes. If your hero is beaten down continuously (even if they probably shouldn't be) it makes the victory, when it happens, seem even better and greater than it actually is.
I suppose it's an 'easy' (though perhaps clumsy) way of trying to force your reader to feel something as it amplifies the impact of the good event when it finally happens. I have little doubt it could work the other way to good effect too (ie, good things happening continually until something catastrophically bad happens by chance)

I think, in some ways, it sort of links to what I was saying in your other conversation thread. Some times, people just want to be entertained, and aren't thinking that hard about whether something is really believable or not.

I try to make sure I insert a smattering of everything into events as I go along. Sometimes my protagonists have good luck, sometimes they have bad luck. Sometimes things just go their way, even though they didn't expect it to. Other times they'll plan everything perfectly and something will go wrong and they'll end up in terrible danger.

Because that's what life is like... it's unpredictable

 

[Parson]

If I were to play amateur sociologist here, I'd suggest that the reason the threshold of believability is higher for "good" things happening than "bad" is that people spend most of their time concentrating on the problems in life, (Most of which are not solvable in the short term anyway) rather than enjoying the things that are good and right in their lives. We have a "Murphy's law," but there is no corresponding law of fortune.

Think about the response to the following trite phrases: "Waiting for the other shoe to drop." --- This is considered a sensible and inevitable fact of life. While the phrase "Waiting for her ship to come in." is considered Pollyanna thinking.

I often see my job as trying to help people see the hope and goodness that there is in the world in spite of the overload of despair and degradation that is pushed on us by mass media and the so called entertainment media.

 

[Ursa major]

I think sometimes dealing with the grim is being more realistic. Well, it can and perhaps should be. (By the way, I don't think that this has much to do with swapping a downbeat ending for an upbeat one, or with swapping heroes who are never in danger for those lucky to survive to the end of the first chapter. In fact, I would argue that worrying about the ending (of book or hero) in that way is missing the point.)

As the 70th anniversary of D-Day arrives in a couple of days, and the commemoration of the First World War is starting its build up, it's worth remembering that many of those involved in these, and other terrible conflicts, chose to remain silent about what they had suffered and what they had witnessed. (Whether they were saving the feelings of their families or simply unable to comprehend what they'd been through is immaterial, I think.) And in depictions of those, and similar events, too often has the focus been on the actions (and travails) of the hero and the eventual winning**, and very little on the aftermath for everyone else affected. I think changing that, showing that actions (or inaction) has bad consequences, is what fiction can show; but only if we let it, and only if we don't get too squeamish about it. (And I'm not talking about being squeamish about the physical horror; I mean being squeamish about what sometimes has to be, or simply is, done to win, and the moral consequences.) That the hero/heroine is dead or alive by the last page is only a small part of the picture. Yes, defeating evil is a good. But if it comes at the cost of total annihilation, is that a good result? And if it is not, at what point does the devastation cease to become worthwhile?

When a war is being fought, it's easy to imagine that those in the thick of the fighting (in the field or at the centre of operations) will focus more on the here and now than they do on the long term. And even if they are not so focused, the lure of "if we just do this one more thing" or "if we don't do this, then all is lost", even if that thing is awful, is very powerful. Flattening cities and killing much of their populations is an example of this, and that's without wondering whether the assumed benefits of these actions were real or imagined. (I'm thinking more of Dresden here than Hiroshima.)

Fiction allows us to see the choice that characters make, good or bad, wise or not. But it can -- and sometimes should -- look further than that. Some of this will inevitably look like "grimdark", because bad things happen to bystanders and other innocents in wars and other armed conflicts. But it's important that someone shows these; otherwise the armchair generals, and armchair revolutionaries, will be able to sell their simplistic solutions to people who have had no recent experience of war or civil conflict***.

Of course, if one's motive is simply to increase the gore and the suffering to "heighten" the reading experience, then I don't agree with it. By definition, that's simply gratuitous. But showing the horrors away from the heroism is valid if we are to see what is risked and what is destroyed -- as well as what is preserved -- by that heroism****. (You perhaps may not be surprised to find that I like, for instance, A Feast for Crows, perhaps for the very reasons that others don't: that we often see the consequences of war without much heroic action to somehow justify it.)


** - In the countries on the winning side, that is.

** - As I said in a post not on the Chrons, it's often easier to get men with guns (particularly irregulars, whose chains of command are either poor or missing altogether) on the streets than to remove them; easier in the sense that some of them will come to like the way they can order others around; easier because the path to returning the streets to peace may pass through increased -- perhaps terrible -- levels of violence, and the death of, and injury to, many people, innocent or not. (It's surprising to me how many people appear to think that dropping a bomb from a plane, or setting the streets on fire, is the obvious answer to most of the world's problems.)

**** - And if there isn't much heroism being shown, I think the author is honour bound to have, and to give, a bl**dy good explanation for what's driving their protagonist(s).

 

[Mirannan]

Not just in fiction do people do stupid things, either. There's a programme on TV in the UK at the moment called simply "The Island" in which 13 men were dumped on a jungle island with only basic tools (3 knives and 2 machetes) after a basic 3-day survival course and left to it, the idea being to survive for 4 weeks. As it happens, the island's shores were strewn with rubbish - fishing nets, old plastic bottles, that sort of thing. 2 of the men wore glasses, and that's relevant.

The first challenge was to get a fire going; three of them spent a day and a half just doing that. But the only way they tried was a fire drill. Apparently, nobody thought to use the lens of the glasses to start a fire; also, nobody thought to use one of the knives and a convenient rock to strike sparks.

Was this just the guys being stupid, or was the whole thing staged?

 

[Ursa major]

Was this just the guys being stupid, or was the whole thing staged?

The show (which I haven't seen and won't be) was in control of the selection process. They'd hardly have been looking for real survivor types and their desire for drama -- why else would anyone watch it? -- probably led them to select candidates who would struggle in that environment (with the excuse that they we're looking for people who would "grow" with the situation and so make the whole endeavour "heart-warming").


But then I'm cynical about such programmes.

 

[Brian G Turner]

If I were to play amateur sociologist here, I'd suggest that the reason the threshold of believability is higher for "good" things happening than "bad" is that people spend most of their time concentrating on the problems in life,

I would suggest there's also an argument that fiction reflects the mood of the time.

We've seen various periods of hope and cynicism in literature over the past 100 years, especially.

I think we can safely say we're in a period of cynicism - it is not good enough for someone to present a character and say "Here is a hero!". We demand that character justify themselves as heroic.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Completely agree, Darth Angelus.

I will say that, originally, the gritty style was positioned as realistic in relation to the absolutes and romanticisms of traditional (i.e. Tolkeinic, heroic) fantasy. And in a sense the world of ASOIAF feels "more real" or "more authentic" than the world of TLOTR.

But it isn't real and it isn't "historically realistic" either. It's fantasy, and very unlike human history in a lot of significant ways. It's selectively realistic, as Daniel Abraham says, and is less in conversation with history as with fantasy literature.

(Note: Abraham is a protege of Martin's and the two are members of the same writing group.)

 

[Parson]

I would suggest there's also an argument that fiction reflects the mood of the time.

Exactly what I meant to say and you said it in one sentence. [Sigh!]

 

[Brian G Turner]

Slightly tangential to the subject, but I liked a comment in this short piece:
[GUEST POST] Clifford Beal on Balancing Fact And Fancy In Historical Fantasy - SF Signal

No one writing in this genre has to be a slave to historical fact and there’s nothing wrong with stretching the truth or bending the rules if it adds to the storytelling. But when a writer stays true to the mind-set of the era he is delving into, then characters, plot, and believability can all blossom in a way that does justice to both the truth of history and the fantastical.

 

[tinkerdan]

I recently read something that qualifies as grim and dark and I would tend to disagree that people accept absurd more easily.

The book I read clearly reads well three quarters of the novel through with lots of good grim and dark and then it digresses to absurd levels of grim and dark for the ending and many, though not all, readers called the author out on this and rightly so.

Grim and dark does work well and it evokes emotions when it is done well and it can often bend the boundaries simply because of the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction and most people will believe that up to a point but when it becomes utterly absurd I think a lot of people draw a line and say the grim stops here.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Some of this will inevitably look like "grimdark", because bad things happen to bystanders and other innocents in wars and other armed conflicts.

But to what extent do these books really show the consequences to the bystanders? If women are being raped, do we see their stories afterward: the pregnancies, the struggles to bring up fatherless children? Or do we do we just see the men move on to whatever comes next for them?

(I'm asking, because I genuinely don't know the answer.)

If the crops are burned and the livestock slaughtered when an army goes through, are we given the stories of the ordinary folk left behind to find a way to scratch out a living when they can barely find enough food to survive on now and no seed to plant for the coming year? Do we see the suffering of the refugees in their crowded and filthy camps? What about the everyday heroism of the men and women who work and suffer and contrive and sacrifice so that their families can, nevertheless, survive. Even in the most unrelentingly savage times, there are uplifting stories to be told.

If it is supposed to be about showing the reality of wars and armed conflicts, how many of these stories are so selective that they show only the stories of the fighting men (and women, if appropriate to the setting) and only a brief glimpse of everyone else?

 

[svalbard]

But to what extent do these books really show the consequences to the bystanders? If women are being raped, do we see their stories afterward: the pregnancies, the struggles to bring up fatherless children? Or do we do we just see the men move on to whatever comes next for them?

(I'm asking, because I genuinely don't know the answer.)

If the crops are burned and the livestock slaughtered when an army goes through, are we given the stories of the ordinary folk left behind to find a way to scratch out a living when they can barely find enough food to survive on now and no seed to plant for the coming year? Do we see the suffering of the refugees in their crowded and filthy camps? What about the everyday heroism of the men and women who work and suffer and contrive and sacrifice so that their families can, nevertheless, survive. Even in the most unrelentingly savage times, there are uplifting stories to be told.

If it is supposed to be about showing the reality of wars and armed conflicts, how many of these stories are so selective that they show only the stories of the fighting men (and women, if appropriate to the setting) and only a brief glimpse of everyone else?

You get all that in A Feast for Crows as the consequences of war are not witnessed through the POV of a general or a lord, but mainly through the eyes of a female character on that most traditional of fantasy tropes, a quest. Good 'grim-dark' fantasy combines the best elements of 'traditional fantasy' with the current trend.

As for it's popularity? Think of the horror genre. Why would anyone want to scare the pants of themselves? Is it because we enjoy that frisson of excitement and fear when we read a good horror? The same goes for 'grim-dark'. Do we live vicariously through the eyes of the character, loathing, but excited by the element of risk in the story? But all the time knowing it is fantasy\fiction.

Ultimately it is down to good storytelling. Bad horror is just schlock! Great horror is terrifying and fun, even thought provoking at times. The Sixth Sense springs to mind as a well told horror movie, or on the more gorier side Event Horizon. The same goes for 'grim-dark' fantasy. There is good and then there is bad just like any genre.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I would suggest there's also an argument that fiction reflects the mood of the time.

You could make the argument that, in Britain and America, heroic/Tolkeinic fantasy fit the zeitgeist of the Cold War, and gritty/grimdark fit the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 years. But...

...there was a gritty/grimdark movement in independent film in the 1990s, but it had mostly run its course by 2001. So I'm not sure about that.

I tend to favor the notion that gritty fantasy emerged in large part because the institutional center of the genre (heroic, Tolkeinic) had gotten really stale. That would be more of a "paradigm shift" kind of argument, that there were authors chipping away at the heroic/Tolkeinic consensus for some time until that consensus suddenly collapsed and a new consensus emerged (until that time when it is supplanted by something else).

 

[Darth Angelus]

Loads of interesting replies.
I guess when a work of fiction includes the grimmer and darker aspects of its world because it aims to portray the whole picture of what war is like (and it is not just to be gratuitous), then clearly it is more realistic, at least in that particular aspect (I am referring to your first post, Ursa). I have never doubted that the classical heroic tale fails at realism simply by omitting some truly unpleasant.
The dilemmas and choices good (relatively speaking, anyway) people face in war seems related to the classical discussion about whether the end justifies the means. Sure, most people will (thankfully) reject that notion in times of peace, but witnessing horrible things in war could cause even decent people to re-evaluate strongly held beliefs that certain acts are always wrong.
The phychology of this bending of people's moral beliefs under severe mental stress is fascinating, and certainly wasn't what bothered me.

Basically, it is not that grim or dark fiction is written that bothers me, especially when its purpose seems to truly be about portraying all aspects of a armed conflict. I suppose it is when the dark stuff is done for its own sake that I am bothered by it, especially since a certain subgroup of the fanbase of speculative fiction seems to think it is almost beyond criticism. It is also that these people seem to mix up their preferred drama structure of a story with realism.
Then again, I may have encountered odd types.

The show (which I haven't seen and won't be) was in control of the selection process. They'd hardly have been looking for real survivor types and their desire for drama -- why else would anyone watch it? -- probably led them to select candidates who would struggle in that environment (with the excuse that they we're looking for people who would "grow" with the situation and so make the whole endeavour "heart-warming").


But then I'm cynical about such programmes.

I tend to agree with this. If they didn't even think of trying to use the glasses to light a fire, then clearly they weren't really experienced survivalists.
We have had "survival" programs in Sweden, too. They were picking a mixed lot of people, and it clearly became more of a social game than a real survival contest.
Sure, there were people with some survival or at least outdoors experience, but they were far from a majority of the participants.

In any case, this isn't the equivalent of very highly skilled people failing at very simple things within their area of expertise.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

You get all that in A Feast for Crows as the consequences of war are not witnessed through the POV of a general or a lord, but mainly through the eyes of a female character on that most traditional of fantasy tropes, a quest.

Since she is on a quest, rather than one of the farmers or refugees trying to survive the ravages of war, am I right in assuming that she is merely an observer of these things? Or is she pregnant as a result of a rape? Is she travelling with one or more children and forced to put their needs ahead of the urgency of her quest? Is there at least one continuing storyline where one of the common people suffering through the consequences of war is used as a viewpoint character? Because otherwise (I may not have made it clear what I meant) this is not what I was looking for.

I would suggest there's also an argument that fiction reflects the mood of the time.

I agree that this is true, but I also believe that it is one factor that shapes the mood of the time.

 

[Mirannan]

Darth Angelus - I'm no survivalist either; I've never even been camping. Not since I was about 6, anyway. But using a lens (and yes, they were convex) is just so fracking obvious!

I'm inclined to agree with you about the emphasis on the social side, too. Loads of time spent rabbiting on about group dynamics, and no time at all spent on the fact that they got hammocks of some sort built.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I tend to favor the notion that gritty fantasy emerged in large part because the institutional center of the genre (heroic, Tolkeinic) had gotten really stale.

I would also suggest that fantasy - in general - has become far more mainstream over the past 20 years or so.

Which has resulted in far more people coming to the fantasy genre through film, TV, and comics - and demanding more from it.

Hence why over the same period we've seen a proliferation of the genre.