Yeah, I'm inclined to degree: Ursa, I don't see a conversation about whether grimdark or gritty fantasy is "good" or "bad," but rather one centered on the question(s) of whether it is "realistic" and/or whether it is inherently "more realistic" than other forms or styles of fantasy. Because many people have in fact made both of those arguments.
Yes and no.
What I was more reacting to (and should have quoted
) was this:
Which to just come right out and say it, really means they're not realistic at all.
which is a blanket statement if ever there was one, particularly without citing any specific examples (but which, by definition, would seem to include every grimdark novel written or yet to come). It was in response to your own comment, that
To the jist of this thread, the fact is that some people claim works of fantasy like ASOIAF are good because they are "historically realistic." I'm saying that is an inherently untenable claim. They are good for other reasons, because at most they are selectively realistic.
While I'm not sure the term "historically realistic" is useful outside of reviews of books trying to capture -- in a sort of literary docudrama way -- real historical events, I would agree with "selectively realistic", i.e. where fictional events are similar to ones that have occurred in reality, perpetrated by real humans against other real humans. To say, though, that fictional events based on historic ones are, by definition, unrealistic is going too far. This was why I brought up the unrelenting realism of every dull minute. For how else are we to allow ourselves the luxury of achieving any sense of realism -- in the face of ignoring that humans in fiction can't possibly be realistic if they do what real humans have done, that is -- unless we provide the complete historical context. (*Sarcasm Alert*)
But then we had:
They choose not to depict real things in a realistic way, rather they glorify and sensationalize a few select things (rape and violence) that happen in the real world, without actually handling them realistically. So in ever sense of the word "realism" they fail, miserably. That doesn't mean they're bad fiction, just that to call them in any way "realistic" or to associate these works with "realism" is to fundamentally change the definition of "realistic" and "realism".
without any examples of how such scenes might be portrayed realistically. I have no doubt that many books, grimdark or otherwise, handle such scenes badly, indeed gratuitously. And as nearly everyone has agreed, when something is gratuitous it is, almost by definition, bad, because it veers from the story; and if it stuck to the story, it wouldn't be gratuitous.
Probably no one wants to read something that's literally realistic, as in you read each and every moment of a person's life or day, no. But a large part of this thread, at least to me, is backlash against grimdark fans and authors mislabeling the subgenre as somehow "realistic" in any way, which it's clearly not.
I don't see the point of a backlash. And if a backlash is directed at authors (not their writing) and fans (not what they're reading), I think it's heading somewhere I wouldn't want to go. Ad hominem attacks on groups of people is no more acceptable than on individuals. That authors and fans have not necessarily been identified is no excuse.
If Tolkien claimed his Lord of the Ring series was realistic, most people would smirk and wonder what the old man had got in his pipe. When grimdark fans and writers make the same claim about their subgenre of choice, I have much the same response as the hypothetical people above.
But there is no comparison, is there? If Tolkien had said such a thing, he'd have been ridiculed about his apparent belief in the existence of orcs and elves and talking trees, not his view of good and evil (where orcs are always innately evil in some way or other). That has nothing to do with saying that, in war, people are abused and raped. It's denying such sad truths that is unrealistic. (But again, that doesn't mean that the scenes have to be depicted, or depicted graphically, unless there is a wider story point being made.)
Tastes are tastes. There's no right or wrong, no debate possible on the that topic. But that's not what the OP commented on, nor what most of the thread has been about, save when it has been intentionally shifted there to derail the conversation.
I agree that there is no right and wrong here (particularly about whether certain scenes in grimdark can be realistic or not). But I don't think that there has been any derailing. After all, while some of the discussion has been about the odd ways characters behave to make the story work, we have had people -- I won't name names -- declaring that grimdark is inherently unrealistic, by definition.
Well, as above, most of the comments aren't about whether people like it or not, rather they're sticking to the OP's topic of the misapplication of the label "realistic" to the grimdark subgenre. Sure, there are a few people commenting on their like or dislike of the subgenre, but thread drift exists in any online forum.
There's drift, and there's making unsubstantiated statements, and then calling a response a derailment.
Given that this is in a Writing sub-forum, I would have liked to see more examples of where an author has avoided the trap of becoming gratuitous. And it would help if the examples that have been provided were more specific than a whole series of books, though I can accept that perhaps the complete (story) context is what makes it work. But saying that, in the unlikely event of me writing some grimdark, I am by definition writing something that will lack realism, is not at all helpful.
