The Dark and Gritty

You could say that there has been elements of dark and gritty in the fantasy genre for many years, with the past thirty years brewing the flavor of today’s edgy fantasy. From Glen Cook’s The Black Company, released in the mid-80’s, to George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones in the mid-90’s, to today’s popular authors like Joe Abercrombie (author of the First Law books), popular fantasy has moved away from the likes of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. The straight edge hero has been replaced by the anti-hero, a character that is capable of womanizing, stealing and killing, but could be our hero on the basis that there are people worse than they are.

Grey and flawed characters are the norm in today’s fiction, and it’s what readers desire the most. But, in dark and gritty fantasy, flawed protagonists can be too flawed. The whole purpose of producing imperfect characters in fantasy fiction is so that readers are able to relate more to the characters, but how many of us are assassins and mercenaries? How many of us are capable of rape and murder? Can we really relate to these troubled characters, or is it more like watching reality TV? After all, edgy fantasy is being called “Realistic Fantasy” now (which is oxymoronic).

I remember when the movie Million Dollar Baby came out, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. It starts out as a feel-good movie, almost like watching Rocky or the Karate Kid, yet the ending took us all by surprise. It was unexpected, shocking—depressing. But we all loved it, because of the unpredictability and the drama. Clint Eastwood directed another movie called Mystic River, which gave us another unpredictable, depressing ending. And, again, we loved it. I use these two examples in cinema, because they were critically acclaimed and award winning for having such dramatic, tragic stories. This same effect is sweeping the fantasy genre. Readers are craving for “realism”. Readers are longing for characters that they can either identify with, or love to hate, or hate to love. Readers no longer want to use fantasy as an escape from reality, but now they want the best of both worlds.

With all the above said, I still believe, that at the end of the day, no one (at lease most of us) do not want to be caught in a world where there is no hope and no redemption for the characters. Death and despair is a part of reality, but so is hope and triumph. Some of these worlds that we read about in these dark fantasy books are so depressing you almost wonder why the characters even bother to keep on living. There’s almost nothing worth living for. And if readers cannot balance between dark fantasy and not-so-dark fantasy, but only seek the gritty, then they kind of get caught into enjoying the demise of others, and never walk away from a book having some thought of redemption or the overcoming of a tragic past. A lot of readers cannot even return to the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien or Terry Brooks, because they are addicted to the edge in fantasy fiction.

Personally, I think a good story should produce a degree of trouble in a character—an inner struggle, an obsession, a troubled past, or a declining or deadly lifestyle. But the story should be about the character’s triumph over some part of their struggles. And if a main character dies, there should be a good cause to their death, where it is not just shocking and upsetting to the reader, but believable and bringing worth to the story.

I’ll use another Clint Eastwood movie as an example: Gran Torino. The movie gives you another element of unpredictability at the end, but it’s not tragic and depressing; it’s sacrificial and, to a degree, uplifting. A character’s unanticipated death was not just a scene to disturb us, but to show us that even a flawed character can have true heart and sacrifice.

So, if we’re going to start calling the dark and gritty fantasy “realistic”, because it has sex, rape, death, cussing, and characters with troubled pasts—like that which is common to mankind—then let’s not forget that mankind is capable of much more. There’s a lot of hope in reality, more so than one may think. Men and women throughout history have done great and horrific things, and fantasy can reflect such things in its pages, but let’s not lose the elements that the founding fathers of the genre brought us… KEEP HOPE ALIVE!  :-)


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