#realism and grimdark are not synonyms

[halogenwarrior]

I mean if they are using Grimdark as a pejorative than yes. But reality is large and complex enough that no one work of fiction is ever going to portray every truth about human nature and what tends to happen when humans form into various types of societies, with the restrictions of the natural resources around them. A "grimdark" work and a lighter/more idealistic work might be equally honest and realistic about how the topics and situations covered would play out with real human beings, it's just that the grimdark one focuses more on darker (realistic) situations and the other work on more optimistic (also realistic) situations. Just saying this because while the take of criticizing something as too dark when it always happens that way in real life, I've also seen the opposite take where "grimdark" is considered inherently more realistic and honest than other genres/tones, which falls into the trap of thinking cynicism is synonymous with the only form of realism.

3 for the asks!

Hmm, okay. Hot take-

I can’t really consider any series about war or violence morally/philosophically serious if the protagonists don’t just fuck up and get people killed, at some point.

Like, many, many stories are set during a war or have their major characters solve their problems with violence, but it’s all so much harmless fun and excuses for stylish action scenes to dramatize the emotional drama actually driving things/fill up screentime. That’s fine.

But there’s also a lot of stories that are not that, and either explicitly or implicitly trying to be about force and righteous violence and actually taking the genre’s action story trappings seriously. Or just darker and grittier stories that are ‘realistic’ compared to what they’re in conversation with.

And then their protagonists are still hypercompetent exemplars who always do exactly what they mean to, except what they ‘mean to’ sometimes includes killing dudes.

Like, there are many downsides to resorting to violence, but one of the bigger ones is that you can’t really take it back, especially once you get to the crippling and killing. The simplest and most pragmatic argument against vigilante justice is that even well-meaning and consciously heroic ones are going to fuck up, and if your gritty antihero never has to deal with accidentally blowing the head off an unlucky 16-year-old, you’re not even approaching ‘realism’, you just like the aesthetics of violence. Which, fair! John Wick is great! But no one calls it moral philosophy.

Similarly, with war stories. I’m not really a pacifist, but having people on the ‘good guys’ side in a war commit atrocities, or accidentally (‘accidentally’) bomb civilian targets, or respond to irregular attacks with brutal reprisals, or seize food for soldiers even if it leaves the peasants starving, or whatever, isn’t misery porn or black-on-black morality, or Grimdark, or whatever the term of the day is. It’s just making the barest acknowledgement of what every single war in history has been like. If you’re trying to say something profound about patriotism or sacrifice or moral clarity, or whatever, and you show war as having ever been clean, then you’re either entirely deluded or just completely full of shit.  

[lightdancer1]

The way I write Iroh and Azula in the Sins of the Fathers arc is also an aspect of how I approach realism in a fantasy setting:

Realism is not a substitute for 'grimdark.' Realism is allowing moments of reality ensuing in the subtle and small ways, like how much of a chaotic mess reality actually is and how the biggest impacts can be from the smallest and most unanticipated horseshoe nails. It's also an element of allowing Murphy's Law and for people to show their intelligence not so much by flawless near-omniscient planning but being able to prepare for the possibility things can go wrong and exploiting how and in what ways they do.

Realism and reality are not some 'make it horrible or boring' thing, they're providing realistic responses in certain aspects that ground characters and humanity in worlds that have more fantastic/empirically provable supernatural aspects to give the stories a grounded feeling that anchors the fantastic aspects. The more human characters feel and act like, the greater the impact of the fantastic/supernatural aspects.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

You write a bit of OT3- do you have some advice for someone looking into writing it- or any resources to look into? TIA

Ummm... online queer community resources are good? I don’t have any specific ones to recc, unfortunately, bc I did most of my reading while I was figuring out all my ace stuff, and not for writing purposes (which only started with the OT3 stuff years later). You’ll want to look into polyamory as a keyword, sometimes referred to more simply as “poly”. 

In terms of execution, communication is key. So is honesty. If there’s lack of honesty, then it needs to result in conflict. And honestly having all of them be totally into each other is my favorite arrangement to work with, but there are some relationships where that’s not the case-- again, honest communication is an absolute must in establishing and maintaining boundaries. 

And at the risk of getting on my soapbox: Let them be happy. 

Poly ships do not have enough representation in media to justify the “everyone cheats and is unhappy” grimdark trope that the hets love to push on us. Sure, that stuff happens in real life, even to poly relationships. But showcasing it in a poly fic only perpetuates the already-existing assumption that poly is synonymous with sexual greed, promiscuity, and adultery. 

Poly ships in fiction are still in their infancy-- give them their hundred years of happily-ever-afters, and then we can start talking about gritty realism.

Create responsibly.

[b0ytemper]

I hate how “realism” as a trope in fiction became synonymous with edgy grimdark when it really just means having realistic consequences for fantastical elements that are typically ignored in that genre. Because by that definition I fucking LOVE realism. I love intricate worldbuilding, I love complex emotional character interactions, I love seeing how fantastical things might change mundane daily life, I love seeing characters be psychologically affected by living through crazy fantastical plots. It’s the fucking best!!! Fictional realism fucking rules! But whenever something is pitched or marketed as “realism” all it ends up being is the worst possible thing happens all the time, everybody is cruel and irrational for no reason, and nobody loves or even likes anybody else. There’s no reason to care at all about the characters or plot because everything is already the worst it could possibly be and it doesn’t get better. FUCK edgy grimdark “realism” it’s total garbage

[warrenwaskilledbyadeer]

I don't want to argue with anybody, but let me just say

WFA is actually official! It's not a fanwork though you are absolutely correct that it goes with their like tumblr characterizations a lot of the time, though they did start to grow out of that eventually (to the person who said that in the tags)

Also, yes, superheroes are supposed to be silly and fun. They came about from comic books in the late 1930s, and I know nowadays comic book is synonymous with superhero but that wasn't true for decades after superheroes became a thing, and it obviously wasn't true before superheroes became a thing. Comic books were cheap entertainment which was their main appeal, it was up to whoever was writing whether they actually put effort into making a good story or not (and aren't we all eternally grateful Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Bob Kane and Bill Finger put their hearts into it!!) The first 60+ years of superhero stories were lighthearted, fun, and yes, silly. Does this mean they never took themselves seriously? Not at all! There are lots of famous character deaths even from the Silver Age of all ages, and in the 80s superhero stories gradually and naturally started to mature with stories like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Batman Year One, and then the early 90s gave us Knightfall and the Death of Superman. But even still those all felt like superhero romps, as they're supposed to. It wasn't until Hollywood gave us The Dark Knight and the MCU that the public's perception of what superheroes are supposed to be changed to... well, grimdark realism.

I made this post not from the POV of a moviegoing superhero fan, but a comic-reading superhero fan who wishes the characters and stories she and many others love would be portrayed more accurately on-screen

I sincerely hope Wayne Family Adventures and My Adventures With Superman is proving to execs that that's the kind of content people actually want to see from superhero media

Please no more gritty, grimdark, "down-to-earth," "realistic" versions

Let superheroes be silly and fun and have friends and family like they're supposed to

[lightdancer1]

One very important point for any aspiring author to grasp

Making things edgy and grim is not a substitute for an actual storyline. You can use those elements in any given story (and in say, a war-based setting any element of realism is by default going to escalate the edginess and the grimness because war is innately evil and destructive so....) but if it's the only idea of a contribution you can and will be more likely to produce an unreadable litany of horrors.

Not the Lovecraftian cosmic kind, more the 'OK *awkward backward walk away*' kind.

The good kind of stories that rely on this include moments of comedic catharsis and/or with it human kindness. The good things make the bad things stand out that much more, and can underscore them in a more profound way by decisively saying 'everything bad did not have to happen the way it did, that it did so was because of people who individually and collectively made it so.'

It also allows readers to take breathers and can even make the buildup to the more unpleasant things more suspenseful, because even if a reader knows beforehand that they happen, having characters, including the big bads, showing things could be or could have gone otherwise adds extra meaning to things in-universe and out of them.

[halogenwarrior]

I generally get annoyed with both "grimdark" and "hopepunk" fans seeing their favorite fiction as synonymous with "realistic" (yes the grim dark people do this too they often use it as synonymous with realism), reality is expansive and complex enough that there is very much room to write very hopeful and very grim stories and have both be very reflective of how the real world is.

And in the same way, both things written badly can be unrealistic. But there is no amount of grimness that is inherently unrealistic, real life can be absolutely horrific, just where the grimness comes from and how it's justified in the story which can be contrived if it's done wrong (i.e the whole "everyone who was previously kind turns mean after a disaster because humans are only out for themselves" which isn't borne out by real life). Likewise, you can put lots of hope and happiness in a story and have it be very realistic, but you absolutely can have hope coming from a source that is unrealistic and contrived, and even feeling propagandistic compared to reality (i.e some government military/paramilitary organization with no accountability is somehow entirely composed of good people fighting the good fight).

Ooo were doing hot trope takes? I hate the "dark storylines are for nihilistic edgelords who don't know anything, hopepunk is the bravest and most wonderful thing there is 🥺" shit that has invaded every online literature discussion. Even comics suffer from this. I write dark stories because I hate the world, obviously /s

I have ranted about this so much that I feel like if I went in depth about how much I agreed with you it'd seem like I sent this to myself :P

But like, god yes. If given absolute power I swear that everyone who posts about 'grimdark unrealistically depressing fantasy' will be forced to write an essay on one of a) the First Crusade b) the English Anarchy c) The Harrying of the North d) Chevauchée in the latter hundred years war or e) the sack of Magdenburg.