Navigating the Gritty Realms of Grimdark Fiction: A Deep Dive into Darkness and Moral Ambiguity

In our latest episode, we're not just scratching the surface; we're burrowing deep into the heart of Grimdark's defining elements. This spirited conversation with fellow authors unveils a tapestry of perspectives on what makes a novel fit this slippery genre. From the misnomer of required nihilism to the essential complexity of characters and the unpredictable beats of their stories, we dissect the anatomy of Grimdark, showing how authentic conflict and the weight of consequence create an experience that resonates on a profoundly human level.
 
Intro 1:50 
Faye (Sienna Frost) 11:46
Krystle Matar & Angela Boord 16:36
Peter McLean 17:21
Anna Smith Spark 19:48
Zamil Akhtar 23:11
Armanis Ar-feinial 26:27
Holly Tinsley 27:33
Richard Nell, Sarah Chorn, Michael R. Fletcher, Faye and Slowly Red

Sienna Frost Interview Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793148/10...

PAGE CHEWING With P.L. Stuart & Guests Krystal Matar & Angela Boord Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793148/10...

Peter McLean Interview *Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793148/10...

Anna Smith Spark Interview *Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793148/ep...

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello friends, today we'll be talking about Grimdark.

Speaker 2: 0:11

Music.

Speaker 1: 0:19

So defining Grimdark is difficult because no one can agree on what it really means. Some people don't think it's even a thing. Some people don't think it's even a sub-genre of fantasy, so no one can agree. In a way, that makes it more interesting to me, because it's fun to have these discussions and fun to talk about it Now, before we get started, I have no authority on Grimdark or on fantasy or anything else. I have no idea what I'm doing. We're just having fun. We're just having a conversation. So if you don't agree with me, then let's talk about it. Let's have a fun conversation. It's just a discussion, so let's have fun with this. So I'm going to share with you the top five things I look for in a book that I consider Grimdark. My friend, yulien, from Yulien Reads, recently did a video similar to this one where she discussed what she considers to be Grimdark and not Grimdark. I'm going to leave that up above and down below if you want to check that out. Now, at the end of my portion, when I name the top five things I look for before I consider something to be Grimdark, I'm going to leave clips of conversations and interviews that I've done with people who know a whole lot more about Grimdark and writing and storytelling than I do from authors that I've talked to that when they define what Grimdark means to them. I think that'd be fun like a compilation of authors, because I've asked a ton of authors what they think Grimdark is and I'm going to leave that at the end of the video after I do my portion Now.

Speaker 1: 1:42

First let me name two things that I think a lot of people think Grimdark has to be that I don't think it has to be. So let's start off with two things. To get this out of the way Now. Grimdark can be these things, but it doesn't have to be in my mind to be considered Grimdark. The first thing is nihilism. I don't think a story has to be nihilistic to be Grimdark. Another thing is hopelessness. I don't think a story has to be hopeless to be Grimdark. In fact, there's lots of hope in lots of Grimdark stories that it may seem hopeless at first, but there is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel and I think that's important to note before I get into my my list of my top five things that I look for. So let's start off with that. I don't think it has to be hopeless, and I don't think it has to be nihilistic. So let's get that out of the way. So first of my list is consequences.

Speaker 1: 2:43

These stories have consequences. Things matter, things that happen matter, and things that happen in the books not only matter for a short period of time, but they create these mental and physical scars in these characters that they carry throughout the book, throughout the story. These characters change as we go through the story because of the events that happen in the story, so they just don't brush everything off and keep moving. These events have a major impact on the story moving forward. So if someone dies, that death is meaningful because it impacts the story. It's not just hope someone's dead, let's keep moving. That often will have consequences later. If a character chooses a certain path and they decide to do something terrible, those decisions matter. There's consequences to actions. There's consequences to what characters decide to do or to not do. So that's really important. That's the first thing that I look for is consequences, because a lot of times, in fact in fantasy, things will happen, people will die, decisions will be made and it doesn't really matter because you know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 3:50

Well, not so in grim dark, at least on my list. Now, number two on my list is morally gray characters. The characters are morally gray. There's not good versus evil. Oftentimes you find yourself jumping from character to character, trying to decide who to root for. So there's no black and white, it's everything is gray, characters are flawed, characters are damaged and it's a lot like life. I mean, everyone's damaged a little bit. Everyone has scars, everyone has issues that they're dealing with, and I love grim dark for that reason, because the characters are never perfect. They make mistakes, they make, they do dumb things, they do terrible things, but in those terrible things they do, there's oftentimes redemption, in those terrible things that we see later, or there's, like I said, consequences to those terrible things. So if the character does really terrible things, then something will happen because of those things, whether it's you agree with it or not. Those decisions, I guess that matter and these characters are not good versus evil, the the traditional fantasy model of good versus evil. You know who's going to win, you know what's going to happen and, yes, you can enjoy the right to get there and that's fine. But for me, I enjoy the ride of watching characters that are more true to life, more true to what would really happen, and that's really what makes grim dark so interesting to me is that you jump back and forth between different characters, because none of them are perfect, none of them are infallible. They all make mistakes and we'll talk more about that here in a minute. Now the third item on my list is unpredictability. You never know what to expect because the characters are all flawed, because these worlds have consequences. You never know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 5:33

Whenever I get into a grim, dark book, I expect in some ways to for my boundaries to be pushed. I expect for the story to surprise me. I expect for it to go places I didn't expect it to go and be surprised and shocked, or whether it's good or bad, I expect it to be dark and gritty and I also expect the atmosphere to be dark as well. Not only in the story telling that is dark and gritty, but also the atmosphere, the world. I expect to be dark and gritty and with that unpredictability, I expect it also to be unforgiving. If the story takes us someplace to where a character makes a decision with these consequences that there will be, things will happen, whether it's whether I agree with them or not, whether it's good for the character about. For the character, I expect it to be unforgiving when it comes time, when it's time, to pay the price for these actions that are taken.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Number four in my list are the themes. In addition for my boundaries to be pushed, I expect the themes to be thought provoking. I expect to think about it. I expect to question my own morality, my own decisions, my own thoughts. I expect to be conflicted and I expect to think about it long after I'm done reading the book. I expect these stories to have an impact on me, whether it's good or bad. I expect a reaction from these stories. I expect myself to be, like I said, in the process of reading the story. I expect to jump back and forth, I expect to be surprised, all these other things. But I also expect for these themes to be heavy. Heavy in themes, but not heavy-handed in themes. I don't want to be pushed on my throat, but I do want those things to be there for me to think about them long after I finish reading the book. And I can name off a ton of books that I've read that I've thought about long after reading them, but one that I've read recently is the Winter Road, which has a ton of themes in it, but it's not heavy-handed or even something like Gunmetal Gods with these characters that you jump back and forth because you're not sure who to root for.

Speaker 1: 7:36

And there's so many things you can do in this genre, so many boundaries you can push, so many characters you can create in these worlds that there's so many possibilities. And I feel like other sub-genres in fantasy are more rigid and you don't have as much wiggle room to create characters. You have, kind of you do have so a little bit of wiggle room there, but I think in Grimdark you have a lot more freedom to create these different stories and different characters with these different outcomes that you typically don't see in fantasy, just in traditional fantasy. Now let me just mention I'm not here trying to bag on traditional fantasy. I like traditional fantasy as much as well. I don't really like traditional fantasy, but I understand why people do like it. So I'm not trying to be insulting. It's just from just my perspective on Grimdark versus traditional fantasy. I get why people enjoy it. It's great. We all enjoy different things, just me personally. I don't enjoy traditional fantasy because it is more rigid. You do know what to expect. Things take a path most of the time things have a formula. It's like a cookie cutter that you just kind of cut the cookie and it's the same type of cookie almost all the time. So again, I'm not trying to be insulting, it's just my personal taste. I enjoy Grimdark a lot more because of reasons I just mentioned.

Speaker 1: 9:01

So my number five on this list I was a little conflicted about because I think it's not always so. This comes with an asterisk on this one. But the fifth item on my list that I look for in Grimdark is low fantasy. I think lots of times these stories have a low fantasy setting. They don't depend so much on magic and magic systems. It's more down to earth and grounded. There can be magic, but I think most of them are low magic. Now don't get me wrong. There's some great books, great Grimdark books, that have some really great magic systems in them. But I think most of the time it is more of a low magic, low fantasy type of setting, because it is more grounded and more gritty and dark. So those are the top five things I look for before I label something as Grimdark fantasy. Now again, that's just my list.

Speaker 1: 9:53

I'm curious to hear your list. What are the top five things you look for before you label something as Grimdark fantasy. So I'm going to leave you with some clips from discussions and interviews I've had with authors in the genre that have shared their thoughts on what Grimdark means to them. I hope you enjoy. Please let me know down below what you consider to be Grimdark. I think it's a fun conversation to have. Again, I am no authority on this, it's just for fun. But I hope you enjoy hearing so many different perspectives. We can all agree to disagree, or maybe Grimdark just isn't even a thing. It's just we're talking about nothing. So hope you enjoy. And here you go.

Speaker 3: 10:29

Yeah, I think for me that last bit is true Boundaries to be pushed, because you can't help but see that there's this comfort boundary to most books these days that writers are sort of tiptoeing around. They should I cross, should I not cross it, and Grimdark writers are just running out. But that's reality, that's what realistic means To me. If something bad that I happen, sometimes nobody's gonna save you. It's newspaper. Stuff Calls you to see reality at its worst and sometimes you get the best of humanity in the midst of that, and that's what I love about Grimdark. Yeah, I was so excited to have discovered that term. I've been looking for books like that without knowing what it's called, and then I ran into that till I started looking it up and, yeah, bingo, like every book that falls on the Grimdark definition has me.

Speaker 2: 11:46

I think Grimdark is built kind of on systems that support the difficulty and the bleakness and the ugliness, and so whether or not the characters are morally gray is kind of a sliding scale and whether or not it's super violent is a sliding scale. But it feels like what they're fighting against. If it's a big bad evil, that's very contained, it's not Grimdark. But if they're fighting against humanity's darkest nature in a way that's really widespread, it starts to fall into that category where Grimdark is a place where people kind of make eye contact with how ugly the average person is capable of being and asks some pretty uncomfortable questions. And I think, and so it's a spectrum, and some of us and a fortune's fool is really close to the far end of the spectrum where it's starting to toe the line a little bit. But it's kind of hard. Nobody seems to really agree.

Speaker 2: 13:11

And then you get into me at Brightwash where the system is very oppressive and very bleak and energy units, but there's still hope and there's still a lot of love. And then you get into Clayton Snyder's work and certainly he flirts with the idea of hope. But man, you really got to work for it, you've got to, you've got to suffer a lot to get it and so, and so I think Grimdark is is built on the wider system of how hard life can be, and that's not to say that other genres don't. It's just I think it's an important theme of core value of the genre that makes it slide into some uncomfortable things for people. So if, angela, you have anything to add, no, I mean because Grimdark is.

Speaker 4: 14:13

It's really hard to kind of you know like you get 10 people together who write dark and have different definitions for it and, like Crystal said, a lot of times, like when I was writing Fortune's Fool and after it came out, you know, I would say it's not that dark, Is it?

Speaker 4: 14:34

You know, people would be like, yes, those things in it are very dark, Angela.

Speaker 4: 14:42

But I do think that it has something to do, probably because you can have morally great characters, you can have grimy worlds, you can have all that and you can still have them in classic fantasy or high fantasy and I think it I don't know, but I'm sort of leaning toward a definition where it has to do, like Crystal said, with the institutions in the systemic nature of the world, where it's just the bleakness kind of through it and the characters may not have a lot of agency to change that. So they're sort of working towards something maybe, but what they're working toward may not lead to, like the standard you know, classic fantasy happy ending or happy for now ending even maybe much more conflicted, so that you're looking at, you know, like what the choices the characters make, where you're trying to figure out they're not there where the grayness comes in, they're not black and white, they're not definitively good or bad, they're some sort of mix and dependent on, you know, circumstance. So I think that people often try they kind of confuse grim dark with things that are really violent or stories that have just a bunch of awful people in them, and certainly I think some grim dark books can have that, but I don't think that that's really what the subgenre is all about. You know it's it's a certain set of books are like that, but they don't define grim dark.

Speaker 5: 16:36

To me it means consequences. It's kind of the antithesis of the.

Speaker 5: 16:42

You know rainbows and unicorns, everybody lives happily ever after, kind of epic fantasy where you know you can go fight a great big war and nobody's got PTSD afterwards and nobody's lost any limbs or anything horrible like that. Grim dark is the exact opposite of that to me. It doesn't necessarily mean horrible people doing evil things, but it means you know there are consequences to your actions and probably not everybody's going to get out alive because you know in history and real wars it doesn't work like that. No, that's kind of what it means to me, but as I say we've established it means a different thing to everybody, I think.

Speaker 6: 17:21

So I actually see it as not so much the kind of the violence, although obviously the the violence is a big part of it. So I think I mean a lot of something like the Weed of Time tends to kind of rather draw a veil over exactly what's going on and the fact that what the goodies are doing is also horrible. And there's that kind of glorification of war that helps, kind of those wonderful children's television programs you watch, whether these huge battles where you realize that no one's got killed. And if it's that kind of that sort of level of you, you're obviously you're kind of stride around killing a whole lot of people. We don't really see that. And yeah, so the violence is obviously a big part of it. But for me the point is the cynicism, or the kind of realism, the real politic, the kind of awareness that it's much more complicated than good versus evil. That kind of, even if you do have a character is good. What the things they're doing are going to have consequences which may be catastrophically bad, is that kind of real world. And yes, it does become cynical and it does become that sort of taking apart the great, the kind of concept of the leader really trying to take apart a bit what's going on, and I think it's very, very much.

Speaker 6: 18:41

It's some Terry Pratchett's books as profoundly grim, dark in some ways, because it's that constant kind of you know, you're here as a piece of clay, that one. There's a wonderful line, rinsewind has one somewhere which is like no who wants to die for their principles? You can only. You've only got one life being pick up. Another set of principles. We just turned down the next street. Is that kind of incredible cynicism, but also incredible kind of realism. That kind of what are you doing to attack on fanaticism of either side? That kind of. So I actually always say I just that grim, dark kind of. You look at when people at Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence first start writing Actually, though, it comes out of a kind of time when it feels a bit safer to be writing that very kind of deliberately writing the antihero, someone like George. We're deliberately writing a character who is absolutely pouring beyond any kind of in any kind of pale. He is so far beyond any kind of line anyone could draw.

Speaker 7: 19:48

I think one of the beauties of great characters is they allow you, as a reader, to question your morality through them, so you'll find yourself agreeing with something a character does and then on the next page.

Speaker 7: 20:00

You're like wait, what the hell? Like that, wait a minute, I don't like you anymore, right? So, but you find yourself with this struggle of you are able to understand the motivations of a character who's objectively not good and you, you allows you to reflect on that yourself. So, combining that with, like, the idea of religious being a societal construct of power and things like that, I really liked how you combined those two systems of, like great characters, morality with that, because kind of as Lana mentioned, I was also sitting with that when I was reading and that that also does lead into the idea of love as well.

Speaker 7: 20:40

You know what is acceptable and acceptable form of love, so, and what is not. And is love shown is like in the case of I think you said Mika is how you pronounce the same Micah, micah, micah, micah, micah, micah, micah. So in his case his form of love was quite violent, you know, and so it's just his way of showing that and you could kind of see why he does it that way. And then you're like wait a minute, why do I agree with this in this moment? So I really thought you did a really good job of showing great characters and using them in that potential. So I really wanted to make sure I said that before I moved on from that topic. But well, well done.

Speaker 8: 21:28

I had many thoughts inside my head doubting why I agreed with these people, so yeah, that always interests me because, like when I read history, you'll often see that a lot of people are a lot of the great figures that we talk about. They'll do something really terrible and we just won't be able to wrap our hands or heads around it. And I guess I kind of wanted to explore what would cause someone to do that. And one of the things I realized was that you know, if you're in a position of power, it's just not very simple Like I think in the book there's.

Speaker 8: 22:18

There's sometimes these situations where and this is kind of common in grim dark as well where a character has to choose between mercy and dealing out some kind of punishment, and sometimes they'll choose mercy and that will come back to bite them in the ass later, where the guy that they spared will come and try to kill them later or something. And you know. So I kind of. I kind of when, when you're in a position of power, you know if you yourself, if you allow yourself to get killed, your whole kingdom could destabilize and it could cause chaos. So I kind of really wanted to get into this whole thing where you know it's not always clear what the right thing to do is, because there's so many factors you have to weigh, and that's that's also one of my favorite things about grim dark is that it explores that. You know that whole aspect.

Speaker 10: 23:11

So, first things first, we need to address the elephant in the room which causes a lot of discourse with grim dark and that is warhammer 40k, particularly the fan base. So I'm sure you know, but for those of you don't know, grim dark was coined from the tabletop RPG warhammer 40k. I have not played it because it is expensive to get into. I will stick to D&D, but basically many fans of that game will not consider anything grim dark unless it's warhammer 40k. You know, like, like, basically that is, that is, there's requirement for it. But the general consensus between readers and writers, you know, outside the elephant of the room is that it has to have three characteristics, not one or the other, has to have all three. First one. First one is obvious violence. Violence means grit, means show me the blood on the walls, let me hear the bones crack, let me see the gurgling one of the person dying, that dying in the, you know, like dying in the tree top after he fell and broke his neck. Second is morally gray characters Not necessarily good, not necessarily bad. They'll do good things for bad reasons, they'll do bad things for good reasons, and yeah, so so you have that.

Speaker 10: 24:40

The third one is dystopian. Now, with the dystopian element. I usually describe this in more detail because in a lot of science fiction and I think that's one of the great writers who, when you think of dystopian, the thing of a kind of like a more or less like a dystopian society with, with some bleak elements off the side, which which causes usually the rebellion that happens within the middle of those books. So for dystopian it's basically the setting itself was bleak in some way. Now, in two, there is the physical setting and it's just bleak. You know in which case. It's just, you know, it's just a miserable place to live. We have those here in America, we have them all over the place. And Then there's the social, social aspect of a dystopian that is like the people around you are not pleasant to deal with, therefore, like you hate them and someone's bound to get stabbed anyway.

Speaker 10: 25:41

All sounds like real life when you really think about it yeah but you know, like, if you look at like Game of Thrones, as both of that, like, if you go up towards the north you have the, the setting it's like very, very cold, despite it not being winter, and you know it's just a general bleak setting, even though those probably have the most morally stable characters up there. And then you go down south where you're dealing with the Lannisters and then that's, you know that's a very comfortable place to to live, but socially it's very bleak because you never know when the kings decides to go and say, hey, we're gonna kill off all the orphans and the little children because of because of their power.

Speaker 1: 26:24

So yeah, there's always that.

Speaker 9: 26:28

I mean, do you know, a grim duck's a funny one, because I've had so many people said to me, like you do like your books, not a grim duck book, it's not that grim and dark.

Speaker 9: 26:37

And then I've had other people who have, like, messaged me and said, you know, why have you written this book? Like it's so dark and like room and horrible and I can't read it. So you know, it's one of those things where it's so personal and it's so down to the individual, like reader, but to define what grim dark is to them and what dark fantasies to them. For me I would say grim dark is it's a more gritty, it's a more realistic and style of dark fantasy. So it's very focused on the human elements. You know, there's lots of grim dark books out there that are magical, but for me the ones that really resonate are the ones that are very real world, very low fantasy. It's all about the Scenarios that people find themselves in, where there's like trauma and there's difficulty and how they, you know, either overcome it or they don't, you know, and and all the relationships that they build around these scenarios.

Speaker 10: 27:33

I wanted to ask you all you know, like how and why. Was this a coincidence? So it's just a choice, because you know the themes which you wanted to explore, where so grim, dark, and now it is what it is.

Speaker 11: 27:46

I think he's asking what the hell is wrong with us.

Speaker 10: 27:52

That was the subtext.

Speaker 12: 27:54

I.

Speaker 11: 27:56

Get there, go first I. It's even worse than that for me. I didn't. I had no idea I was writing grim, dark and I actually thought I was pulling my punches. So that turned out not to be true. So I guess for me was I was trying to reflect what I thought was the reality of a Iron Age Philosophy and technology world. That's really it. So, you know, I was trying to do justice to the world building of a, of a court, with, you know, kings and all the imperial powers and all the wonderful nonsense that monarchy gets up to, and the the reality of having scarce resources and the difficulty of life, really for all of human history saved for the last few hundred years. So that that's what I was going for and it just turns out that the average person thinks that that is very dark.

Speaker 10: 28:58

Who wants to go next? Sarah?

Speaker 13: 29:00

does Face?

Speaker 12: 29:09

I have two of your books right now and I could just like destroy them. So you, you want to be nice to me. That's what I'm saying. I I'm like Richard. I had no idea, as Sarah being as lament was grim, dark. And then the review started coming in and people said, oh, this is dark. And I said that's interesting, I didn't know that was dark. So it's kind of, you know, and then, the help of that, you write very emotional stuff and I said I didn't know that either. So when I released in that book, I learned a whole lot about myself that I never knew and I I think I gravitate towards darker themes because they're more interesting to me. I mean, like, happiness is fine, but you really get my attention when someone's in a lot of pain. So that's basically how I look at life. I don't generally start carrying until someone is hurting a lot somehow. So it was just really a matter of time.

Speaker 3: 30:16

What is wrong with us indeed?

Speaker 12: 30:21

Yeah.

Speaker 11: 30:23

Nobody read your story. That just starts with a happy ending, though.

Speaker 3: 30:31

I can go next. I just frustrate it as a reader because I reach mostly fantasy and I'm old. I'm too old to believe that life is going to be great, everything's going to turn out fine in the end. Everyone is in. You know that the heroes are incorruptible and it's just not believable to me anymore at this age. And I always say I write for me, because I write because nobody is writing this for me.

Speaker 3: 31:13

I have a specific thing I want to read. I know what I want to read and when I can't find enough books like that, I write them. Yeah, I think it's mostly age that has sort of made me feel like those, like I can't get into young adults a lot these days because some of them are really dark. But it's not grim, dark, it's not. It doesn't feel realistic, it's.

Speaker 3: 31:44

I wouldn't say that there isn't hope anymore in this world. I mean, there is, but it's going to be somewhat tainted and your expectation of the world has to be a little bit lower than that to survive well in it and not get disappointed by life all the time. And I don't want to read something that tricks me into thinking what I was thinking when I was a teen and then, having been disappointed with everything up to this point and yeah, so I'm. You know it's a frustration that gets me writing grim, dark, pretty much, and I found out the term and I found out all these authors that are doing it. I love it. That's what I want to hear from you.

Speaker 13: 32:36

Yeah, I mean, I think, like like everybody else, like I never thought I was writing grim dark. I thought I was writing dark fantasy, like CS Friedman kind of dark fantasy and similar. I mean I was disillusioned with heroic fantasy and all the guys have nice hair and washboard abs and all the women are gorgeous and the food is tasty and the beer is amazing and I was just like this is horseshit. I just wanted to write something where no one, you know like there was this huge quest and this adventure and no one learned anything and at the end, all the people who were shitty to begin with are still shitty. I was like that's life, none of this. Like, oh, I learned so much and now I'm a better person. I'm like fuck off. No, I mean, for me that was beyond redemption changed and said that I'm, you know, in a different place.

Speaker 3: 33:38

Well, I'm 30% into that book right now and I say you've achieved what you were trying to write.

Speaker 11: 33:47

I feel like I just learned the ending of the Blackstone heart.

Speaker 13: 33:54

That the obsidian path stuff, that's kind of it's written from a different place and the years, years and years later, like I wrote, beyond redemption in 2009.

Speaker 11: 34:08

That was a while ago. Yeah, so are you saying you've become more hopeful in your old age?

Speaker 13: 34:14

I'm like that's soft, cuddly teddy bear. Now, how many stories of happy endings. Everybody like hugs and they talk out their issues and it's touchy, feely and they're getting sick. Oh it's so good. He's out of the club. The heroes have nice hair.

Speaker 12: 34:31

Yeah, he writes some killer romance.

Speaker 13: 34:33

Excellent excellent romance.

Speaker 12: 34:36

Real hearts kind of stuff.

Speaker 8: 34:39

Yeah where you actually take out the heart, right.

Speaker 12: 34:41

Yeah, you gotta take it out first, yeah, when.

Speaker 8: 34:43

Plicchus says heart to heart. It is literally heart to heart, Literally.

Speaker 12: 34:47

yeah, stitch them together and yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1: 34:52

So, mark, why do you enjoy reading Grimdark?

Speaker 14: 34:58

Um, I well, I mean at this point, I think there is something that goes along with like the older you get it just like you become a little bit more cynical. Some of us become a lot more cynical, but there is something with getting older and it's just harder to bite into the heroic fantasy, I guess. But I've been kind of this way though forever. I would say I've always been a little twisted. I've loved the darker side of stuff.

Speaker 14: 35:26

I'm an 80s kid, so, like I grew up in, you know, horror, slashers, you know the heyday of blood on the screen and just people in danger and dying, and I watched a whole lot of shit I shouldn't have at a young age, you know. And even the stuff, even the stuff that was being put out that kids could watch, was still dark. Like go back and watch, like what is it? Crawl, and it's like a G rated movie. People are dying. When the slayers die they make the most god-awful sounds. You know, ridley Scott's legend is dark as shit. I'm pretty sure it's only PG, you know, but that movie specifically really fucked me up, like Blix Darkness and Meg Mucklebones were just terrifying and they haunted me as a kid. But that really fascinated me though, too, in some other way, right, and so now I'm interested in these things that are scaring the shit out of me, and I feel like I've always kind of held on to that. And Grimdark definitely is. You know, it has a piece at. You know, I also love punk rock stuff, and I feel like Grimdark is the subgenre that has a, you know, a fuck you attitude, so I can get behind that a lot more than other books. I just think that's the stuff that I'm going to go look for.

Speaker 14: 36:51

I kind of want an uncompromising take on storytelling, and that's something interesting, like Richard was saying, about just kind of trying to stay true to an era. But it's like, you know, history is pretty brutal, and so when you, when you like, stay true to it, now you have like kind of an uncompromising world, right, and that's awesome. I like that kind of stuff, like it. Once again, it rings true to that people are in danger. Oh shit, motherfuckers are getting cut up. This is fun. I don't know, I've always just dug it. I don't think I'll ever stop digging it. Yeah, people are always like oh man, do you ever need to read something else? I'm like, nope, nope, I really don't.