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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30883 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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I love the Black Company. If you enjoyed it check out Malazan book of the fallen by Steven Erickson. He was directly inspired by Cook.

As for your post, the Black Company is pretty transparently about subverting expectations in fantasy around good/evil. A lot of folks argue it’s responsible for the massive wave of anti-hero/grimdark works in recent years.

A more interesting question to me is why gritty, darker, and honestly kinda fucked up stories have become so much more popular and mainstream. As @fivehourmarathon mentioned in another thread, ‘adult’ shows and novels now seem to refer to pointlessly gross violence or sex or both instead of actual adult themes with regards to philosophy or complicated moral decisions.

I don’t know that I’d make the case that the anti-grimdark ‘trend’ is a nostalgic yearning for what was a sum product of Victorian (‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’) prudishness and scandal and 20th century American muh wholesomeness but sometimes it can seem this way.

I absolutely don't think that grimdark is too much or too gritty for a historical analysis. Rather I would argue that many modern fantasy authors have a sort of 'performative grimdark' aspect in their writings. Whereas for instance in a Sanderson novel it'll be bog-standard wholesome heroic journey, then there will be a jarring torture or rape seen thrown in to make it 'dark and gritty.'

In my opinion the best of these series have been the Black Company by Cook, Malazan by Erickson, A Song of Ice and Fire by GRRM, and The Second Apocalypse by Bakker. They all weave darkness and evil and moral ambiguity directly into the world - it's important, it's fundamental to the struggles of the characters. Again I'm not knee-jerking saying that 'oh man rape and violence that's bad!' I'm more arguing that if an author just throws in a rape scene or brutal, gorey torture scene out of nowhere in a world that has not been all that dark or rough to begin with is a bad trend.

From that reframing am I making more sense?

You're making sense and The Blade Itself from Abercrombie is also a good grimdark world and trilogy.

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