This isn’t the first time I’ve discussed the grimdark. I keep worrying the subject, like a bad hangnail. Part of it is because whenever a discussion arises about grimdark, I am asked to participate. I’ve noticed some readers tend to see an overlap between grimdark and horror. While there are numerous similarities between the two, grimdark and horror are not the same.
Since I don’t write grimdark—I write dark fantasy (what Charles L. Grant called “quiet horror”)—I wanted to discover the characteristics that sets horror apart from grimdark. However, before I could understand the differences between the two, I had to begin with clear definitions as to what constitutes horror and grimdark.
Horror is defined as literature which is written with the intention of inflicting the emotions of fear or terror. Not many will disagree with that definition. Horror can then be divided into two very broad camps of either supernatural horror or psychological thrillers. Since psychological thrillers tend to have no fantastical elements, I’m confining my discussion to the differences between supernatural horror and grimdark.
Unlike horror, grimdark doesn’t fall neatly into one clean definition. Whenever people are asked to define grimdark, the discussion frequently rolls around words like “gritty,” “nihilistic,” “realistic,” before finally descending into the classic pornography/obscenity argument: “I know it when I see it.”
I did discover two often cited definitions for grimdark—though I consider both of these definitions to be flawed.
The first comes from the Urban Dictionary, which defines grimdark as:
“An adjective taken from the root words of grim and darkness, both of which are featured in the tagline for Warhammer 40,000: ‘In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.’ It is usually used to describe a setting that would equal poor living conditions and life expectancies for those actually living in it.”
Of course, “… a setting that would equal poor living conditions and life expectancies for those actually living in it …” also describes just about every YA dystopian novel that’s been released since The Hunger Games.
However, none of us would actually classify YA dystopias as grimdark. These books generally tend to focus on young people bringing light out of darkness by having the courage to change the world around them. That is the precise opposite of the nihilism experienced in most grimdark novels. Therefore, the Urban Dictionary misses the mark for being overly broad.
The Wikipedia definition attempts to narrow the field somewhat with:
“Grimdark is a subgenre or a way to describe the tone, style or setting of speculative fiction (especially fantasy) that is, depending on the definition used, markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly violent or realistic.”
That is closer to the mark. I would have liked that definition better if the author had stopped at “violent.” I dislike the word “realistic” being attributed to grimdark fiction. Frankly, grimdark is no more realistic than supernatural horror. The difference between the two genres revolves not around realism, but around the use of the supernatural forces in the story.
No one argues that grimdark literature cannot feature fantastical elements such as magic. Joe Abercrombie has wizards and an entire hierarchy of Magi; Mark Lawrence gives us a Dead King, who is a necromancer; Michael R. Fletcher has delusions manifesting as living, breathing creatures. If I dig around some more, I’ll find others.
After reading several grimdark novels, and one most excellent supernatural horror novel that can stand up to the comparison, I realized something very important: what separates grimdark from horror is the agency given to the supernatural.
In most grimdark literature, the supernatural is a passive force controlled by humans, whereas in horror, the supernatural becomes an active entity with agency.
A good contrast is Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, or Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns against Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires. Abercrombie’s and Lawrence’s works are grimdark while Buehlman’s novel is clearly horror.
In both The Blade Itself and Prince of Thorns the antagonists are all quite mortal. Realism is negated by fantastical elements such as the commonplace acceptance of magic. However, in both novels, the magic is a passive force manipulated by the mortals.
A superficial examination of Between Two Fires might lead one to think of Buehlman’s novel as grimdark. It has some of the hallmarks of grimdark literature: a dystopian environment in the form of the plague blazing through France in 1348; a fallen knight; amoral people are everywhere, looking to take advantage of others.
The story satisfies the “realistic” aspect of the definition, in that the bubonic plague existed, fallen knights turned to marauding in order to survive, and a dystopian society began feeding on itself. Yet Between Two Fires is clearly horror, because the supernatural forces in Between Two Fires have agency.
The very first chapter describes the angels—not the humans—and these angels are not passive. They are actively attempting to destroy human beings in order to provoke God. Uzziel brings the rains down in order to drown the crops; Beliel rises up and blows pride into the mouth of a king, thereby starting a war; then Lucifer shows up and all hell breaks loose. The angels and their machinations remain an active force, independent of mortal interference, throughout the novel.
Having humans as the story’s focal points does not necessarily make the story more realistic. I mean, let’s face it—Buehlman’s Thomas is just as mortal as Abercrombie’s Logen Ninefingers or Lawrence’s Jorg. It is not the realism of their respective stories that separates them—it is the usage of the supernatural forces within these stories.
Perhaps a better definition of grimdark would be:
“Grimdark is a subgenre or a way to describe the tone, style, or setting of speculative fiction (especially fantasy) that is, depending on the definition used, markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly graphic in its depiction of violence. In most grimdark literature the supernatural is a passive force, controlled by humans—unlike supernatural horror where the preternatural forces are most often an active entity with agency.”
This would eliminate that niggling word “realistic” from the equation, and also establish the distinguishing traits between grimdark and horror. In the long run, a clearer definition helps grimdark to stand out as its own literary form. Once we know how to describe grimdark, we can then discuss the stories on their own merits, without confusing them with horror.
T. Frohock has turned her love of dark fantasy and horror into tales of deliciously creepy fiction. She is the author of the Los Nefilim series: In Midnight’s Silence and most recently Without Light or Guide. She currently lives in North Carolina where she has long been accused of telling stories, which is a southern colloquialism for lying.
When I first saw the title (Is it Grimdark, or is it Horror?), my immediate reaction was “Who cares? We love both! :)”.
Now that I’m totally opinionated before I read the article, I’m ready to read it.
Thanks.
Grimdark is the dismissal of the power of positive emotions, ideals, and morals often in favour of despair, militarism, and “badassery”. Dystopic settings often have grimdark built into them, but can be not-grimdark if they are about genuinely condemning the above criteria which led to the dystopia.
I’ve always thought of “The Road” as grimdark.
Hm. I never thought of grimdark as a genre itself, but just an attribute that could be used to describe various genres (grimdark sci-fi, grimdark fantasy…probably even grimdark works that don’t particularly involve the supernatural).
But that is an interesting theory about looking at the way the supernatural is used. I am not sure that is what defines or doesn’t define a story as grimdark though. Can there be ‘grimdark horror’ vs. non grimdark horror? I don’t read a lot of horror (and when I do, I tend to go for the more psychological type) so I couldn’t tell you.
I am not sure that I agree with this article. Why does grimdark have to be limited to stories with a supernatural element? Could American Psycho be considered grimdark? Sure, grimdark has become popular in fantasy (due to the influence of GRR Martin) but fantasy need not be inherent in its definition.
I would define grimdark like @2. No good deed goes unpunished and nice guys finish last. It is the opposite of the classic “Hollywood Ending”.
It is the Lord of the Rings without Gollum falling in to the Cracks of Doom. In grimdark, the Eagles are definitely NOT coming.
Horror is about fear. Grimdark is about despair
This article is saying true things, as far as it goes. I was nodding along, but find myself unsure.
I definitely think that horror is trying to scare the reader. That feels true to me. But I don’t think the difference is as simple as the agency of a class of characters. 40k is grimdark, or nothing is, and the supernatural has agency within it. Indeed, the setting echoes with the laughter of thirsting gods.
Rather, I think we need a sentence for grimdark that is similar to the the about horror. If horror is trying to scare the reader, what is a grimdark story trying to do?
It feels like in a horror story there is someone the reader identifies with and cares about, a Dudley Do Right or Final Girl to try and fight back against the onslaught of the unknowable antag. In a grimdark story they’d be in on it to some degree, or barely better than the alternative.
First of all, let me say that I respect Teresa Frohock tremendously as a writer. She is currently in the middle of a trilogy of novellas called Los Nefilim, and the second one, Without Light or Guide, will be available tomorrow (November 3); the first, In Midnight’s Silence is already available, and I recommend it unequivocally.
As for the definitions given here, I must respectfully disagree. As Ms. Frohock points out, a horror story is one that is intended to inflict the emotions of fear or terror. Why should we alter this long-standing definition to accommodate grimdark? I see no reason to exclude from the horror genre a story that terrifies, just because the supernatural elements in it do not have agency. There are, for instance, many horror stories with a human necromancer who controls an evil entity, or with mindless zombies who are controlled by a human voodoo master (see the movie White Zombie, or such novels as Legion of the Dead by Hugh B. Cave), or with a human who puts a supernatural curse on others. I would even argue that horror stories in which a human involuntarily turns into a killer werewolf when there is a full moon (as in the classic horror film The Wolfman) are ones in which the supernatural creature has no agency (instinct is not agency). Conversely, there are grimdark stories in which the supernatural entities have agency. Ms. Frohock gives the Dead King as an example of a necromancer manipulating magic in a grimdark novel, apparently in the belief he is a human necromancer manipulating the “agencyless” supernatural. This is unfortunately incorrect; without giving away any spoilers, I’ll just say that in the last book of The Broken Empire trilogy, we find out that the Dead King is a supernatural undead being acting with agency (in a grimdark story). The same can be said for the Others (aka the White Walkers) in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. The Valhalla Saga trilogy by Snorri Kristjannson has Nordic gods who act with agency, and this is quite definitely grimdark, not horror. Thus, I think her method of distinguishing between horror and grimdark is, I am very sorry to say, flawed.
Part of the problem I believe is looking at grimdark as never overlapping with horror, and seeing it as completely independent of it. Grimdark is not a subgenre; it is a “cross genre.” It’s pretty well established that it not only includes some fantasy stories, but also science fiction (the referenced Warhammer 40,000 stories). Thus, there is grimdark fantasy and grimdark science fiction; so why not grimdark horror? I wouldn’t say a grimdark fantasy story is not fantasy; so why would I say a grimdark horror story is not a horror story? And just as not all fantasy (or science fiction) stories are grimdark, neither are all horror stories grimdark. I agree that Between Two Fires is clearly horror, but it is also historical fantasy, so it is historical fantasy horror (more traditionally called historical dark fantasy). Other adjectives can be attached to horror as well; e.g., Between Two Fires can be called medieval horror. So why can’t it also be called grimdark horror?
I agree with Ms. Frohock that the “definitions” cited for “grimdark” in her article are flawed, if for no other reason than they are not actual definitions, but vague guidelines (one says “usually used” and the other “depending on the definition used”), and they are from crowdfunded sources that are not imbued with great credibility, nor do they necessarily come from people with a genuine interest in grimdark. In fact, it is often disparagers of the word “grimdark” who offer definitions of it. Another definition comes from Grimdark Magazine (which at least is very much invested in the notion of grimdark): “Grim stories told in a dark world [with] morally ambiguous protagonists.” By this definition, a horror story with pure evil or pure good protagonists would not be grimdark.
Ms. Frohock is right about realism being a knotty issue with defining grimdark. This results, I believe, from a misunderstanding as to the type of realism being referred to. It is not about having real-world phenomena and physics without the presence of magic or the supernatural, or about the presence of real-world unpleasantries like plagues, or realistic geography, or real-world flora and fauna. It’s about its human entities having realistic behavior and choice making (grimdark has psychological realism) and the realistic effects and consequences of these. Also, in a grimdark story, the outcomes are uncertain and not predetermined; the future is undefined and chaotic, just as in real life. There is no guarantee of a happy ending. In a recent online AMA, Joe Abercrombie, in talking about his writing said: “The point of it all, if there is one, is that sometimes in life there is no good and evil side, the powerful don’t always have everyone’s best outcomes at heart, that great battles don’t always change the world, that noble sacrifices don’t always have an impact, that men of violence can’t always escape their bloody pasts, that the special destinies of special boys are sometimes just [bull]…” Basically, grimdark takes the unpleasant aspects of the nonsupernatural parts of the story, and shows them in an uncompromising fashion, as they really might be, without avoiding them. This is the type of “realism” that grimdark deals with.
Like Ms. Frohock, I too have been “worrying the subject.” I’ve been honing what I think is a good definition of grimdark (expanding from the definition given by Grimdark Magazine), constantly revising it. I offer the current version:
Grimdark is gritty speculative fiction that focuses on the grim, disturbing, dark aspects of people, places, and things, and which has antiheroic or morally ambiguous protagonists who are forced to make difficult choices in a world with an undefined and chaotic future.
This may not be as simple as the definition of “horror,” but it is at least as precise.
I don’t think you can effectively discuss “grimdark” without looking at the Warhammer 40,000 books. The honest truth is they have done a great deal to define what it means to be grimdark. The way the term is being thrown around now, as a bizarre mark of pride is just people picking up a word without context. It’s an old name thrown over already established genres/forms: dark/low fantasy or gritty science fiction.
In the opening moments of Xenos by Dan Abnett, hundreds of people die as they are brought out of cryogenic slumber improperly, and the main character feels barely anything about it because its not important. in the opening of Grey Knights by Ben Counter, the opening planet is covered with million of living human bodies fused into ever growing trees, and no one bats an eye. The inciting incident of Dead Sky, Black Sun by Graham McNeil is a daemonic train (with daemonic conductor)bursting through a hole in reality, jamming meat hooks into the main characters, and dragging them into what is basically hell.
Grimdark is over the top violence and death. That’s the core. That’s its beating heart. Being grim and gritty isn’t enough, or having darkness or dystopic themes. They can have them. Warhammer 40,000 is built on tropes we’ve all seen in dystopic fiction: senseless violence, oppressive religion, and cruelly totalitarian governments. But slathered on top of that is blood and gore and body horror. It comes from all angles: the natural and the supernatural. In fact in, Warhammer 40,000 the supernatural is far, far from passive and is a vital, active and horrifying force. I don’t know why realistic was included in the urban dictionary definition, but it is most certainly wrong to use that word. The short life expectancy is on the nose, as the average person can expect to be snuffed in a heartbeat by forces they can’t control or by the needs of greater powers.
I think the real issue with the problem is that the books used aren’t truly grimdark. i’ll admit to not having read most of them. But it feels like the author of the article is trying to force them in, rather than letting them sit in preexisting genres. I wouldn’t call Game of thrones grimdark. if anything that’s an insult to the series. It’s an insult to most of those books just on principle. Grimdark is, at its best moments, glorious camp. At its worst, it’s boring regurgitated fights between vague character outlines.
Grimdark is getting attention because it catchy. But people using it, just as this article does, do so without understanding its history. Using it as an umbrella term for dystopic settings, gritty fiction or low fantasy is just silly.
Great article, and if you want to follow up more on the Warhammer 40,000 interpretation, check out some great discussions around gaming in a grimdark setting, at The GrimDark Podcast
You’re in luck as I happen to write both grimdark as well as horror fiction and have written a number of both. I think you’re right there’s some definite parallels between grimdark and horror. I also think the two can have a Venn Diagram where they occupy both. The Walking Dead, for example, is pretty damn grimdark while also being explicitly of the horror genre.
For me, it’s simply a question of literary intent. Horror fiction can be both science-fiction and fantasy with H.P. Lovecraft having done quite a bit combining but the intent is to frighten and revolt the reader. Jason Voorhees, post-resurrection, is a zombie and a monster but the Friday movies are not fantasy. His intent is to make us afraid for the characters and their survival and frighten us (as well as thrill) with his unstoppable ability to kill.
Grimdark, for me, is a descriptor which can only apply to science-fiction and fantasy storytelling (urban or otherwise) but the purpose is the same as the above two in escapism. To quote The Dark Knight‘s Scarecrow, “I said it’d take you places. I didn’t say it would be places you wanted to go.” Grimdark takes us to the seedy noir and nightmarish horrors of the fantasy genre. The purpose is to transport us to another world. Whereas horror is very much about bringing another world’s horrors to us.
This is grimdark in my opinion.
For anyone wondering, it’s from the Deadhouse Gates, Malazan Book of the Fallen series.
Grimdark is nihilistic. It is a rejection of the very concept of a happy ending, but also a rejection of the literary traditions of a Tragedy.
I think Skapusniak summed it up well – it is about despair.
Horror is about fear, about distaste, about all the things that lurk outside the edges of our reality.
Grimdark is about taking a particular environment, and riding it to the very depths of despair, without compromise, without those faint glimmers of hope.
It is taking the descent into darkness of Book 2 of a trilogy, but then not showing any redemption, compassion or joy. Any victory is tainted, and any triumph is inevitably brief.
It is also different to Tragedy, which is about Sorrow, in which the protagonist inevitably fails due to circumstance or their own inner failings.
In Grimdark the protagonist might succeed, but the world itself doesn’t care, and the success is irrelevant.
I’m liking that distinction. It’s much in the same vein as the way they separate high fantasy and low fantasy (which is also critically flawed, IMO) that grimdark shows you the horror of a fantasy world and takes you there, yet the horror genre itself brings horror home to Earth. Grimmedarke is forced to literally “ape” IRL and have ridiculously complicated choices, characters who don’t know if they are good or evil, and seemingly insurmountable odds.
“Horror is about fear. Grimdark is about despair” I agree with thus definition for the most part.
Grimdark seems to deny hope or beauty in the story of the fictional world and characters. That’s why I would disagree with the above poster who used the Malazan books as an example of grimdark.
In the Malazan world there is violence, despair, and amoral characters. There are few, if any, clear “good guys.” But there is also beauty and hope and growth and even grace throughout the story. I believe this is a big difference compared to the books of Joe Ambercrombie.
I’m afraid I think you’re engaged with the fundamental problem of trying to extract definitions left-to-right instead of the more sensible right-to-left approach.
If you start with a word and try to define it, you end up with dictionary definitions, which may or may not have any bearing on reality, and which many people will disagree with. The first question that actually needs to be asked is more along the lines of ‘Are these genres anything more than a cultural construct anyway?’ If they are, then they are as fluid as culture. Attempts at definitions will always fail, because the construct could change tomorrow.
To explain left-to-right and right-to-left definitions: a left-to-right definition starts with a word and tries to define the essence of the word. Popper’s example is the word ‘puppy’. You might start with ‘puppy’ and try to provide a list of what it is to be a puppy: playful, cute, young etc. But definitions constructed in this way are epistemologically meaningless because they are always based on individual experience and subjective application of ideas about properties.
If on the other hand you start with an identifiable thing: let us say we observe that there are young dogs and old dogs, and young dogs are behaviourally, morphologically and physiologically distinct from older dogs. We can then decide that we need a name for this category of thing, and we invent and apply the name ‘puppy’. This is why scientific species are never named before they are described.
I guess all I’m saying is that attempts to define words by starting with the word will always result in a personal definition that will not suit everyone’s prior experience. I guess these sorts of definition conjectures are fun, but they aren’t really meaningful, nor practical in any obvious way. Arguing that we need to agree on a definition for a word before we can discuss it is equally hopeless, because now every word used to define the word also needs to have an agreement on definition, and every word used to define those words and so on, to a point of either infinite regression or exhaustion.
Just my take on it. The reason people do fall back on ‘I know it when I see it’ is because there is no actual real category: it’s the product of individual experience and opinion.
Chris
Also, it seems to me that grimdark is anti-heroic. The individual has little or no power to impact the course of history. To me it seems even more bleak than the naturalism of the early 20th century, and the worlds presented often barely seem worth saving.
Grimdark, to my understanding, isn’t actually a genre. It’s a modifier.
You can have Grimdark horror, mystery, adventure, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. For certain things, you can even have Grimdark historical fiction and even non-fiction, because what defines it doesn’t really involve the supernatural. Grimdark has arguably been around since the ancient Greek Tragedies like Antigone. Even Shakespeare dabbled in it (Titus Andronicus, anyone?).
There are degrees of it, and the proportions are similar to the concept of the uncanny valley, where up to a point, some Grimdark can make a story better than it would be (seriously, when was the last time a story with the heroes always being 100% pure virtue with no doubts or flaws was considered great?), and then the more you add, the worse it gets, leading to the very bottom of that valley being what TVTropes calls “Darkness Induced Audience Apathy”, and the Eight Deadly Words of “I don’t care what happens to these characters”. This also means that yes, all those ninety-billion Dystopian YA books are actually Grimdark. Just not to a crushing degree.
Warhammer 40k, the source of the term, is so far past the other end of the valley that it becomes good again, and weirdly, ends up somewhat lighter than things in the depths of it. One of the descriptions I’ve read for the reason behind the phenomenon is that it happens because the settings takes things to massively over-the-top levels of “operatic darkness” and black comedy. Certainly not everything in 40k is great (CS Goto and Matt Ward stand out in that particular regard), but the missteps there aren’t generally because of the level of Grimdark.
But what IS Grimdark, at its core? What is the hue of the Grimdark paint slathered onto things in varying degrees? Mostly, it’s “Life sucks, people are bastards to each other, and even the ones that try not to be screw things up to tragic degrees”.
I would have to agree that the term GrimDark can be applied to more than just sci-fi/horror-type stories. As I’m reading the definition/discussion about it, I’m reminded of the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan Val McDermid books. These are very much set in a “real” world, with no supernatural at all, but otherwise have lots of the despair, very flawed heroes, and graphic depictions of violence that make me feel that I might not be “old enough” to read them, and I’m 37…
@18. Lyinar: “Life sucks, people are bastards to each other, and even the ones that try not to be screw things up to tragic degrees.” I think that can simply and succinctly be described as “characterized by cynicism.”
@9. usakar: “But people using it, just as this article does, do so without understanding its history.” You’re making an incorrect assumption. We understand the word’s history. But you apparently don’t understand the word’s currency. Over time, virtually all words add new senses and change both in denotation and connotation. Grimdark was once only a pejorative term for over-the-top violence and death that has gained, through an ironic use of it by Joe Abercrombie, a new non-pejorative sense which is still in an inchoate state of definition. You may not like it, so you don’t have to use it. But if others find its new use a useful term, they will.
http://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/wtf-warhammer-40k/1/
Here is where I personally first ran into the term grimdark. I’ve only ever used it as a pejorative. I didn’t even know anyone used it seriously. The word itself is redundant in order to match its definition of redundant amounts of horrifying imagery. My personal definition of grimdark is when a story begs the audience to be taken seriously while simultaneously being so over the top that you are either laughing or just don’t care any more.
The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones both tread this territory. There are only so many character deaths I can handle before I am emotionally exhausted and can’t care any more.
e.g. “By the third Death Wish, the series had become very grimdark indeed.”
i find myself agreeing with too many comments to list them all. put me in the “grimdark as modifier, not genre” camp, as well as the “grimdark = despair” camp. to me, grimdark means that a) there is no guarantee the good guys will win; b) not that the good guys are all that good anyway; and c) even if the protagonists prevail, in the end, there will be cost (tremendous cost) and no one, ever, will wind up happy with what happens.
Good read, and the most intelligent commentary I’ve read on the topic since Steve Erikson’s piece for r/fantasy last year.
But like some other commenters, I think you are specifically talking about the fuzzy boundary between “grimdark fantasy” and horror. The term “grimdark,” I think, more accurate refers to an aesthetic that can be found not only in any literary genre, but in any creative endeavor whatsoever. (The term was originally derived from Warhammer 40k culture to describe a certain *attitude*.)
Will Self’s novel My Idea of Fun and the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover are, to me, archetypal examples of the grimdark aesthetic outside SF/F literature.