A Brief Look at Grimdark Part 2

Please read my last post before reading this one, I’m kinda jumping in the middle of a train of thought.

A train of thought that began: in Grimdark Future, you can make the argument that anyone can be a “good guy,” depending on your perspective. Good’Nuff Gaming mentions this as a pretty key point for grimdark, as you aren’t supposed to have good guys in the grimdark genre.

Now, in Warhammer 40k you could make the argument that the Space Marines are the “good guys,” or are at least not nearly as “bad guys” as everyone else. Sure, they’ll burn heretics, discontents, and entire planets with a shrug; but the Tyranids, Necrons, and Orks want to wipe out humanity. The Chaos Gods have plans that are even worse than genocide, so being alive in an Imperial dystopia is better than death and/or eternal torment, right?

In a pure Grimdark setting, that would be an open question. The peace of the grave might be preferable to the unending machine of the Imperium, and the torment of the Chaos Gods little different than the dead Emperor’s oppressive fist. Either way, the universe will look pretty much the same no matter who “wins.” In a weird way, constant war is the ideal in the universe of Warhammer; the instant someone wins, this dystopian universe will get even worse.

In Trench Crusade, the two sides are literally heaven and hell. When you see the twisted and horrific monstrosities that fill the satanic ranks, it’s hard not to see the other side as “the good guys.” Granted, I know very little about the lore of Trench Crusade, and what makes either side good or evil might get blurry down the road, but at the moment, there are clearly “good and bad guys,” even if the good guys don’t look it.

This is Good’Nuff Gaming’s claim to grimdark for Trench Crusade. It is clearly grimdark because the two sides both look gritty and monstrous. The forces of Heaven might be fighting an eternal war to protect the souls and lives of millions while the forces of Hell will use those souls for fertilizer, but if the forces of light “look evil,” that’s grimdark.

Can a genre be built exclusively on aesthetics? “Stick a gear on it” is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the aesthetics of steampunk, intended to highlight that there is more to the genre than just brass and steam, much like there’s more behind Goth culture than black eyeliner and lace gloves. But it does suggest the question: can we have steampunk without the brass and steam? Could we call any alternate Victorian history story “steampunk” if all the clockwork and steam is hidden behind sleek and quiet steel? If the story is held exclusively in drawing-rooms and carriages, is it still steampunk?

If no, then we’re done here. Grimdark is an aesthetic of gothic despair and gritty violence. If that’s not there, it’s not grimdark.

Except aesthetics can be used in very different ways. The aesthetic of American McGee’s Mad Hatter is certainly steampunk, as is the whimsy of Girl Genius; but one is designed to disturb while the other to delight. Edward Gorey proved a dark and gothic style can be made to elicit laughter. Besides, I don’t think locking down grimdark to one kind of aesthetic is particularly interesting. Sure, the black splotches and messy shades of Saturn Devouring His Son make for a pretty grimdark painting, but I get the same discomfort from the clean bright lines and hopeful colors of Nazi propaganda posters.

I like the metric of “would you want to live in this world.” Not because it’s particularly accurate,¹ but because it says something about our relationship to the setting. There is no joy in Trench Crusade. Your life would be nasty, brutish, and short. Similarly with Warhammer 40k.² With Grimdark Future, however, there is complexity. It could be brutish and short, or you might be able to eke out a living, if always under the constant threat of sudden violence from a roving band of warriors who need your land to survive, or have prior claim, or praise their god through violene, or…

Okay, so, with all that, let’s be our Better Socrateses and say: it is not our place to dictate whether your claim to grimdark is legitimate when we might not entirely understand grimdark as a genre. Instead, we can ask the following: if all three of these settings correctly lay claim to the grimdark genre, what does that say about grimdark?

It says that grimdark is about limited hope for the future. It is a setting where idealism is impractical and joy is rare. Grimdark is sometimes characterized as an “Anti-Tolkien” genre, being dystopian and violent as opposed to the more idealistic Tolkein.

Ah yes, that Tolkein idealism. You remember, that idealism that created a setting where the whole of Middle Earth was collapsing into war and suspicion, where the greatest heroes of men fell to corruption, power-lust, hatred, and suspicion, while the elves and dwarves cut themselves off from the world to brood and be smug about themselves? Where the armies of light were outnumbered, out-gunned, and their end was inevitable? Where even the protagonist lost his way to the power of the One Ring, and it was only because of a fluke that the bad-guy was defeated in the end? Where the heroes defeated their foes with the aid of a cursed army of the dead? Remember that bright and happy setting?

Let’s not mince words, Tolkein was an optimist, both in that he sincerely believed that the hobbit way of life was the best life, and that the tools of fascism were doomed to fail. Nevertheless, I find it reductive to say that the difference between high-fantasy and Grimdark is whether there is a happy ending or not.

One of the more interesting (to me, at least) definitions comes from Liz Bourke: “[Grimdark is] a retreat into the valorization of darkness for darkness’s sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action…as either impossible or futile.”³ I like this definition because it includes authorial intent. This isn’t just a valorization of darkness, but a retreat into valorizing darkness. A text that explores the many different ways “darkness” can be important to our lives, whether as a balancing factor, a cautionary force, or a method of instigation, isn’t Grimdark; what makes a text Grimdark is the text’s level of nihilism, cynicism, and scorn.

This makes the Warhammer and Trench Crusade style of grimdark almost juvenile. It taps into that primal Gen X-er in all of us, the edgy “nothing-matters” part that relishes in depression, and the grotesque aesthetic that seeks to repulse, rather than attract.

Grimdark Future, on the other hand, suggests that right action is impossible not because everyone’s evil and nothing matters, but because everyone is good and violence is a tragedy.

Does grimdark need a couple of sub-genres?

Either way, grimdark slots more easily into the “uncomfortable” genres along with horror and tragedy. Enjoying Grimdark is like enjoying the soreness of a good workout or the fiery pain of hot-sauce. It’s not pleasant, but we enjoy it anyway.

To quote a quote from the Freefall webcomic, “when something is fun, it only hurts for a little while.” This suggests the appeal of Horror, Grimdark, and similar genres are a kind of play, a testing, practicing, and preparing for the bad. As suggested above, an important part of Grimdark is the fans don’t want to live there. It’s only enjoyable because it’s temporary.

There is something at once uplifting and terrifying in that: the idea that the grimdark genre allows us to play in a world where hope is rare and heroes rarer before coming back to the world where hope is real and powerful. It suggests we still have hope in us, that in spite of everything out there in the world we still believe in the future.

At the same time, it’s worrying that part of us feels the need to practice for this world. If play really is a kind of training, are we preparing ourselves for something horrible?

For the moment, I choose to fight that view. Play is not prophesy, and part of what I like about Grimdark Future is its more realistic take on grimdark. In Warhammer, the lore is full of individuals and their personal failings and flaws. It is the Primarchs, Overlords, and “heroes” who guided history, and their sins that caused the universe to burn. In Grimdark Future, it is the ebb and flow of galactic empires that brings tragedy to the sector. There is joy and pain in equal measure, but not equal distribution. You can tell any kind of story in that setting, but the future will always be in doubt.

In Grimdark Future, it is a future that can be fought for. It is a fight worth fighting.