# Grim/dark = realistic? Where did this idea come from?



## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 20, 2019)

I remember after watching _The Shining_, I was surprised by how much I hated it. Wasn't this supposed to be a highly acclaimed horror film? Yeah, the cinematography and acting was good, but the plot was random (i. e. why is this man in a fursuit here?), I didn't like any of the characters, and its nihilism and general flatness left a bad taste in my mouth. But what really surprised me was the explanation given by a fan of the film for why all of these problems (as I saw them) existed. The incoherent writing and lack of anyone or anything admirable/valuable to root for were, apparently, intentional, because that is what "real" life is like. "Real" life (this cheerful admirer told me) is grim, arbitrary, and often doesn't make sense (not those exact words, but that was the idea I think). 

Now I really, really want to know where this idea came from. I hear it espoused _everywhere. _It's almost an assumption in some circles. Why is this rape scene here? "Realism." Why is the MC such a jerk? "Realism." Blah, blah, blah. 

Fantasy seems to be one place where this comes up a lot, probably due to the popularity of Game of Thrones. The idea's like, if you have a knight in shining armor fighting a dragon, that's not "realistic," but if you have a knight in *rusty* armor fighting a *morally ambiguous* dragon (and there's a brown filter over everything), THEN it's "realistic." Massively confusing in the first place that fantasy writers would be obsessing over realism, but, more importantly, the movement points to something in the authors' worldview. Liz Bourke describes it well: "[Grimdark's] defining characteristic lies in a retreat into the valorisation of darkness for darkness's sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action—in terms of personal morality[/FONT]—[FONT=&Verdana]as either impossible or futile."

And I think it's that, the nihilism, that really sets this particular movement towards the grim/dark/gritty (both in fantasy and in general) apart from previous works that _are_ darker in tone. Lord of the Rings is quite dark at points, and there is a near-constant sense of impending doom, but it never portrayed the heroic actions of its protagonists as futile or wrong. 

And that is what makes grimdark's claim to realism so strange. The "real" world, they appear to be saying, is sad, directionless, and lacking in real heroes. But this, though treated as a fact apparent from life, is clearly a value judgement. Of course, all writers are going to be making value judgments all the time, but why, in the reigning cultural feeling, do the "grim" writers get a monopoly on defining what the world "really" is? Sure, most people _like _lighthearted superhero movies, but they are treated as "escapism," while Game of Thrones, _The Shining, _etc. are treated as a serious portrayals of the "real world."

I, for one, find the baseline value judgement behind this type of writing to be obviously lacking. Why are splattered entrails "real" and happy babies not? Why is terror or despair "real" and beauty or heroism not? Take even some truly grim aspect of reality, like war, and you will find humor, flickers of light and beauty, and, yes, real heroes. 

Whew, I said a lot, but I really want to get a conversation started about this. Please disagree with me or it'll be no fun, haha!


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## epimetheus (Jun 20, 2019)

I'd counter by saying that 'escapism' films (and books?) only paint a picture of the world in one garish pallette. That's why i consider them unrealistic and can only look at the briefly before they hurt my eyes. 

Game of Thrones is the only work i've watched and read, that you mentioned so let's take that.

It's painted with the same breadth of colours as real life. You've highlighted some of the darker tones, but there are many vivid ones there too. Look at the redemption arcs of Greyjoy and, my favourite, the Hound. They are beautiful (ignore the hamfisted conclusion by the series), they are brilliant. Without the dark outlines to their stories, their stories would just be caricatures.

 Superhero stuff particularly just appears to be an attempt to have all the thrills of a rollercoaster ride without the tortuous assent. Life is ups and downs, and its reasonable to want that in your literature/film.

It is right that it should be so, man was built for joy and woe.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 20, 2019)

It's really only annoying because they claim it to be more 'realistic.' Elric subverts established tropes and replaces it with an anti-hero but Moorcock never claimed that Elric is more 'real' than Aragorn. They are both real, they both reflect archetypes that embody themselves in the real world. Some people may feel more of a connection to a grim antihero but that is purely a matter of personal taste, and sometimes, though not always, emotional immaturity.


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## luckyscars (Jun 20, 2019)

I have never heard anybody praise The Shining for realism particularly. Nor do I think it’s at all nihilistic. But anyway.

The world is mostly cruel and harsh. That isn’t really an opinion or a value judgment, it’s more of a statistical fact. Millions of people die yearly and a huge percentage of them in ways that are unjust and preventable. And that’s just death. What about the other copious miseries? Try telling a molested child or a swindled old person or a war refugee or a homeless person that the world is overall a pleasant, kindhearted place. Hell, try telling the average American office worker - we all have shit to deal with. 

Do you really think there are more happy babies than neglected or starving or abandoned or sick or dead ones? I hope not, because historically at least there sure aren’t. Not even close. The default state of the average baby is not “happy”. So why misrepresent “what it is to be a baby” by painting babies as happy? What purpose does that serve if we are trying to be “realistic”?

We ALL die eventually. Many of us die painfully or unpleasantly. What “dark” or “gritty” fiction does is try to explore these issues and provided it is handled well, then yes it’s pretty damn realistic.

That doesn’t mean focusing on bad things is necessarily the key to achieving realism and it certainly doesn’t mean you have to write about that stuff. Books that celebrate good things can be as realistic as books that fixate on not so good things. The idea is to include a rich mixture of reality. Ultimately of course the world is how you perceive it. But the point is that a novel that doesn’t address the harsh unpleasantness and tragedy of the human condition in some meaningful way is not going to be realistic to anybody, at least nobody but the most privileged of people. I believe most of us if we are honest are not happy a decent chunk of the time. Most of us find happiness in short, fleeting moments between the struggle of life. 

I don’t know how you could argue that a story that reflects this struggle, this war, accurately and consistently is in any way nihilistic. Maybe it’s a religious thing, not sure. My stories are mostly about characters going through some kind of horrible episode and there’s often not a happy ending, but I consider both the stories and my worldview more generally to be anything but nihilistic or depressing.


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## Aquilo (Jun 20, 2019)

It's like romance being seen as fluff reading for fluff women who have nothing better to do. Anything to put the genre in its place alongside the little women, bless their cotton socks for attempting to read or write it, because it's not 'serious reading' right? 

Fiction gets stereotypical tags regardless of whether it's fact-based or not, unfortunately. There's always someone there who wants you to feel as though your reading/writing isn't as serious as theirs. It's the rubbish side to human nature. In all honestly, it's all just guided subjective interpretation, like what makes a classic a classic: those who officially design the framework for judging what makes the classic lineup influence most others, and most follow their template blindly. Of course it's a classic -- it's marketed on the shelf as such. Of course it's only women's romance, because only a woman is soft enough to want in her life, right? It's mushy stuff therefore only good for those little mushy women.

I'm a core horror fan, but I also read thrillers, crime, suspense, romance, classics etc. I want realistic and gritty, but you can get that across all the genres. No one is less worthy than the other when it comes to hitting that reading spot. James Herbert's _Rats _was pure gore, but also gritty with showing the break down of society when it came to _Domain_, but _Atonement_ (a classic) showed the fantastic darkness to human nature.

I think they get the tags Light reading, dark reading for another reason, though. When going through publication, it's guided by tags, and novels have to slot into them in order to be sellable. So you get light romance v dark romance etc. But it also helps the reader. Some readers want romance, but they don't want gore, so they will look up light romance tags, which usually just means 'no gore,' etc. And publishers keep that in mind as well as authors. So it's a win-lose situation. Pandering to the stereotype tag helps but also curses you as the writer.


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## bdcharles (Jun 20, 2019)

I suppose it is just another way to appeal to readers / viewers, and their tastes, experiences, and so forth. People for whom that resonates will be more enaged with the work than they otherwise might be.


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## JustRob (Jun 20, 2019)

Where did it come from? Well, Cervantes is said to have put a substantial nail in the coffins of up-beat chivalry and old-fashioned romanticism centuries ago with his novel _Don Quixote_. Whether we can directly blame him for love at first sight being replaced by prenuptial agreements nowadays is doubtful, but the rot certainly goes way back. Personally I've found being quixotic to be an advantage as it provides opportunities that others miss. 

In my novel I did actually use the word "gallant" about my main character. Don't we all perceive ourselves to be gallant to some extent? I was once walking along when I found myself approaching a woman who was flailing at her head because a wasp had got entangled in her hair. With barely a thought I pulled out my wallet and used it to flick the insect out and we went on our ways with hardly a word exchanged despite the somewhat intimate nature of the act. Well, they do say that money can solve every problem although keeping it in one's wallet while doing so may be unusual. Hardly high on the "saving the damsel in distress" scale and it was an incredibly small dragon but every little helps. That's the reality of life just as much as the grim side.

When I saw my angel for the very first time all those years ago I immediately felt that she was the person to share my life. We spent a couple of hours talking continuously in a pub that evening. The next morning she was thinking about whether she liked me or not but the persistent idea that she was going to marry me overwhelmed that internal debate. Of course, with my present day belief that future experiences can influence past decisions if allowed to, almost half a century now subsequently spent living happily together probably prompted our behaviour then. That first conversation must just have seemed to be a continuation of all the others yet to come. A romantic notion worthy of Don Quixote maybe, but methinks he gave in to the allegedly rational thinking of others far too easily. Life is what we make of it.

As for the grim reality, despite all the optimism about turning global warming and environmental disaster around at the eleventh hour, the numbers just don't add up and the only viable future on this planet for mankind appears, certainly from the perspective of many fiction writers, to be a cataclysm that eliminates most of humanity and leaves the few remaining to valiantly try again. Maybe in this present age even Cervantes would have adopted a different attitude to novel writing.


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## Amnesiac (Jun 20, 2019)

"Natural Born Killers" was a romance. Just sayin'...


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## Terry D (Jun 20, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> I remember after watching _The Shining_, I was surprised by how much I hated it. Wasn't this supposed to be a highly acclaimed horror film? Yeah, the cinematography and acting was good, but the plot was random (i. e. why is this man in a fursuit here?), I didn't like any of the characters, and its nihilism and general flatness left a bad taste in my mouth. But what really surprised me was the explanation given by a fan of the film for why all of these problems (as I saw them) existed. The incoherent writing and lack of anyone or anything admirable/valuable to root for were, apparently, intentional, because that is what "real" life is like. "Real" life (this cheerful admirer told me) is grim, arbitrary, and often doesn't make sense (not those exact words, but that was the idea I think).



Maybe the things you complain about with the movie are why Stephen King didn't like it? If you've ever read _The Shining_ you'll know that none of the faults you attribute to the movie exist in the book. All of Stanley Kubrick's movies have that "flatness" you noted in _The Shining_, that sense of disconnectedness is one of his trademarks. In King's book the characters are well drawn and three dimensional, and the back-story of the Overlook Hotel is quite complete so you understand the visions the characters see. The movie is a far different experience from the book. 

I don't view the movie as particularly "realistic", or gritty, just mediocre. None of what you complain about are faults of the writing, but, instead, faults of the movie director's vision and execution of the story.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 20, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> The world is mostly cruel and harsh. That isn’t really an opinion or a value judgment, it’s more of a statistical fact. Millions of people die yearly and a huge percentage of them in ways that are unjust and preventable. And that’s just death. What about the other copious miseries? Try telling a molested child or a swindled old person or a war refugee or a homeless person that the world is overall a pleasant, kindhearted place. Hell, try telling the average American office worker - we all have shit to deal with.



My point is not that the world is overall pleasant. My point mostly swings on what separates the current "darker and grittier" movement from just dark fiction in general, which is the tendency (need?) to present right action or moments of hope as invalidated by the harshness of the world. I also see an invalidation of the meaning of the events of life. But that, I don't think, actually does represent the "real world." In the real world, pain and joy walk surprisingly close in step. If you talk to any of those people you mentioned--the homeless, the impoverished, the wronged--you will not find a grim monochrome of hopelessness. People respond to pain and struggle in many ways. My mom was molested as a child. She also grew up to be, quite literally, the most joyful person I have ever met. The value judgement comes in when someone looks at something like that and says the pain is "real," but the joy despite the pain is only naive idealism. 



luckyscars said:


> We ALL die eventually. Many of us die painfully or unpleasantly. What “dark” or “gritty” fiction does is try to explore these issues and provided it is handled well, then yes it’s pretty damn realistic.



Well, yes, death is inevitable and unpleasant, but why does "dark" or "gritty" fiction want to present the unpleasantness of death as its only aspect? True accounts of Christian martyrs always shock me into re-thinking death. Whether or not you agree with their beliefs, when a man who is _literally being roasted alive _cheerfully quips, "I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!" it's tough to agree with "gritty" fiction's dismissal of heroic or noble death. The image of a knight charging into battle with a hymn on his lips is not an idealistic fantasy, it's an image from reality.



luckyscars said:


> I believe most of us if we are honest are not happy a decent chunk of the time. Most of us find happiness in short, fleeting moments between the struggle of life.



I guess this is where some of the subjectivity comes in. I'm happy more than a decent chunk of the time, but that's not even the basis of my argument. You can count your blessings or your struggles, but the real question is whether any of it actually _matters_. 



luckyscars said:


> I don’t know how you could argue that a story that reflects this struggle, this war, accurately and consistently is in any way nihilistic. Maybe it’s a religious thing, not sure. My stories are mostly about characters going through some kind of horrible episode and there’s often not a happy ending, but I consider both the stories and my worldview more generally to be anything but nihilistic or depressing.



Yes, a story that is grim and contains horrible things happening is not necessarily nihilistic; that is true. One of my favorite albums is literally called _Holy Despair, _but I would not call it nihilistic because the general thrust of the album is that even despair has significance and can lead you to truth. But if accurately reflecting the struggle translates as presenting the struggle as in vain, then I would call that nihilistic. You can show the value and purpose of the struggle even without a happy ending (A Cry of Stone did this well).


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 20, 2019)

epimetheus said:


> [Game of Thrones] is painted with the same breadth of colours as real life.



Is it? It always looks so gray. . .:joker:



epimetheus said:


> Superhero stuff particularly just appears to be an attempt to have all the thrills of a rollercoaster ride without the tortuous assent. Life is ups and downs, and its reasonable to want that in your literature/film.
> 
> It is right that it should be so, man was built for joy and woe.



Yes, that is reasonable. That's part of what I'm arguing--life contains both joy and sorrow, and both the grim tropes and the heroic tropes are derived from reality. I'm not a big fan of most superhero movies, but even those contain ups and downs. I also would say that the "torturous ascent" itself can often contain both light and dark. A lot of my favorite works are that way. _The Man Who Was Thursday _is a wild, hilarious ride, but there's a kind of existential terror woven though it so it doesn't feel "fluffy." _Evil Dead 2 _makes you laugh one moment and hide your eyes the next. Those always seem to represent reality best even if they're not "grounded" in the traditional sense.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 20, 2019)

Terry D said:


> Maybe the things you complain about with the movie are why Stephen King didn't like it? If you've ever read _The Shining_ you'll know that none of the faults you attribute to the movie exist in the book. All of Stanley Kubrick's movies have that "flatness" you noted in _The Shining_, that sense of disconnectedness is one of his trademarks.



Yes, probably. I really should have read the novel first but my family was on a horror movie kick. It didn't strike me as being particularly realistic either but that was this fan's claim, and it's a claim I often hear used to explain disconnectedness, flatness, boring characters, jerk characters, etc.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 20, 2019)

> The world is mostly cruel and harsh. That isn’t really an opinion or a value judgment, it’s more of a statistical fact. Millions of people die yearly and a huge percentage of them in ways that are unjust and preventable. And that’s just death.


The idea that cruelty or harshness even exists is a value judgement. 


> Most of us find happiness in short, fleeting moments between the struggle of life.


I subjectively disagree. I think this type of grimness is a product of a society that has lost its way in the universe. It reminds me of a man wandering through a black forest, occasionally encountering light and taking joy in it, but never trying to follow the light itself. 


> It's like romance being seen as fluff reading for fluff women who have nothing better to do. Anything to put the genre in its place alongside the little women, bless their cotton socks for attempting to read or write it, because it's not 'serious reading' right?


I honestly feel like we learn more about human nature by reading pulp and fluff than we do from reading 'deep' intellectual writing. Another important thing to note is that 'gritty' and 'grounded' don't equate to grimdark.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 20, 2019)

We could shake our collective fists and decry the current state of art, or we could spend that emotional energy writing something better.
Personally I delight in watching many of these movies and shows that are being discussed. I have a massive appetite for media, and I also want variety.
So I gobble up the mass media, consume it, digest it, and try to write the nextgen. 


See, before Private Ryan, directors took great pains to stabilize cameras.
But then Spielberg showed them a new way to tell a gritty story...then all of a sudden everyone was using shaky cameras. 
That was nextgen for cinematography. 
I wanna do that to writing.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 20, 2019)

Ralph Rotten said:


> We could shake our collective fists and decry the current state of art, or we could spend that emotional energy writing something better.



Yeah, it's probably more productive to just write good stuff, but I enjoy analyzing other people's work. Especially if there's a movement or assumption that spans across multiple authors and genres. It makes me curious what the roots of it are.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 20, 2019)

BornForBurning said:


> I subjectively disagree. I think this type of grimness is a product of a society that has lost its way in the universe. It reminds me of a man wandering through a black forest, occasionally encountering light and taking joy in it, but never trying to follow the light itself.



That's the feeling I get, too. There's a kind of fiction that depicts life as an aimless wandering. And then there's a kind of fiction that, however dark, depicts life as a journey _towards _something.


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## Megan Pearson (Jun 20, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> ...but the real question is whether any of it actually _matters_.



Amen!


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 20, 2019)

"...but the real question is whether any of it actually _matters."

_
It does if you learn from it.


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## Megan Pearson (Jun 20, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> I, for one, find the baseline value judgment behind this type of writing to be obviously lacking. Why are splattered entrails "real" and happy babies not? Why is terror or despair "real" and beauty or heroism not? Take even some truly grim aspect of reality, like war, and you will find humor, flickers of light and beauty, and, yes, real heroes.



I would like to peg this on art and method of contrast, but it is really much deeper than that.

It goes back to the philosophical view of the writer/producer and of the consumers who drive this demand, all contributing to the normalization of values and moral expectations within society.

If there is no ultimate value, or if there is no such thing as truth or goodness or morality, or if this life is confined to the physical world, then we end up normalizing a fragmented view of the world. This, in turn, has generated a leisure culture of elitism that celebrates the powerful, the meaningless, or the grotesque. The result is that we relieve ourselves of the consequences for our actions because everything is then a construct of language or of the mind and nothing exists outside of ourselves.

However, if there really are things like ultimate value, truth, goodness, and morality, and if life is more than this physical world, then there exists the potential for us as human beings to become more than we really are. Then the normalization of values and morality comes from without; our standard is no longer ourselves. The result is, we become responsible for the consequences for our actions. Everything, then (by necessity), becomes accountable to something outside of ourselves. 

The truth is, our view of reality doesn't change reality. 

What matters is if we are in-line with that reality.


Soli Deo Gloria.


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## luckyscars (Jun 20, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> My point is not that the world is overall pleasant. My point mostly swings on what separates the current "darker and grittier" movement from just dark fiction in general, which is the tendency (need?) to present right action or moments of hope as invalidated by the harshness of the world. I also see an invalidation of the meaning of the events of life. But that, I don't think, actually does represent the "real world." In the real world, pain and joy walk surprisingly close in step. If you talk to any of those people you mentioned--the homeless, the impoverished, the wronged--you will not find a grim monochrome of hopelessness. People respond to pain and struggle in many ways. My mom was molested as a child. She also grew up to be, quite literally, the most joyful person I have ever met. The value judgement comes in when someone looks at something like that and says the pain is "real," but the joy despite the pain is only naive idealism.
> [snip]
> I guess this is where some of the subjectivity comes in. I'm happy more than a decent chunk of the time, but that's not even the basis of my argument. You can count your blessings or your struggles, but the real question is whether any of it actually _matters_.



I don't get why you seem set on conflating dark fiction with hopelessness. _Some_ dark fiction is...but believe it or not that isn't every story, or even most. It's certainly not the ones that are worth reading, IMO. 

Have you read King's original novel of The Shining? The ending is actually surprisingly optimistic. It's certainly not hopeless. Danny Torrance and his mother escape The Overlook and Danny, who starts off the book, makes a real friend in Hallorahan (not sure if I spelled that right) and with all things considered it's a happy ending: They start to rebuild. It's certainly not a monochrome and there are moments of joy in the novel, however few - it is a horror novel. 

It's always dangerous to conflate movies with writing, IMO. If the movie differs (and it does) that's a reflection on the problem of movies generally. They are short so there is less depth and nuance and more emphasis on shock.

I also don't understand why you seem to believe that reflecting happy or optimistic aspects of the world condemns your work to be labeled idealistic or naive. That's only true if you write idealistically or naively. One of my favorite books is Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea and it's a fairly optimistic, PG-13 friendly novel, on the whole. Arguably, it's actually a Christian novel - there's a lot of references and themes. But what's not arguable is that it hits home and is utterly authentic as a 'slice of life'. 

I feel that the main thing is to achieve balance. Idealism happens when your stories feature sappy love scenes with radiant sunsets and everybody is basically a good person with good motivations and the whole story is just unbalanced. Idealism is a Hallmark greeting card or a grocery store romance or the end of a 1960's Disney movie. Idealism is when there's no bite of real, practical problems - when the princess is always made up and the prince never has B.O. 

Avoiding that should be common sense.



BornForBurning said:


> The idea that cruelty or harshness even exist is a value judgement.




But it's also a widely accepted truth that is easily provable via statistics, unless you want to argue that the morality of things 99.9% of everybody agrees are cruel (such as murdering children) are somehow debatable. And that isn't an argument I personally am prepared to have. Certainly not on here.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 21, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> I don't get why you seem dead set on conflating dark fiction with hopelessness. _Some_ dark fiction is non-stop brutality and ugliness, and yes maybe nihilistic...but believe it or not that isn't every story, or even most. It's certainly not the ones that are worth reading.



A big part of what I'm trying to say is exactly that--dark fiction does not have to be nihilistic. I know that isn't every story. I like a good dose of darkness in fiction. But I see a lot of emphasis as of late on deconstructing heroic tropes but letting the classic evil tropes stand. The selectivity is just very, very, odd. And there are many flat-out nihilistic works, but there's also this general movement toward it which can only be gathered from looking at a bunch of different things. 



luckyscars said:


> I'm not sure if you have actually read King's original novel of The Shining but the ending is actually surprisingly optimistic: Danny Torrance and his mother escape The Overlook and Danny, who starts off the book, makes a real friend in Halloran (not sure if I spelled that right) and with all things considered it's a happy ending of sorts. It's certainly not a 'monochrome of hopelessness'. There's even a kind of redemptive arc with Jack - a lot of internal struggle and pathos. If the movie differs (and it does) that's a reflection on the problem of adapting a huge novel into a horror movie - there is less depth and nuance and more emphasis on shock. But we are talking about books, right?



I was responding to the movie, not the book. Would like to read it at some point. Screenwriting is writing, too. Mainly I was responding to what the person who liked the movie told me, which implicated that it was more "real" than, for example, _Nightmare on Elm Street_, simply because it was depressing.



luckyscars said:


> Similarly, I don't understand why you seem to believe that reflecting happy or optimistic aspects of the world condemns your work to be labeled idealistic or in any way 'lesser'. One of my favorite books is Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea. It's a fairly optimistic novel, on the whole. Arguably, it's actually a Christian novel - there's a lot of references and themes - and moments of joy. But it hits home and is utterly, in my opinion, authentic. It's not idealistic at all and nobody would say it's naive.



I see people dismiss stories, usually older stories, for being not "realistic" enough. In fantasy, Lord of the Rings seems to be the go-to, and is often dismissed for being too morally black and white, too idealistic, etc. (very strange for that particular mythos, which is actually rather melancholic and often dark). Game of Thrones is no more realistic than Lord of the Rings. Or, to use your example, any of the usual misery fiction I might read in a modern literary magazine is no more realistic than The Old Man And The Sea. 

Also, thank you for bringing up authenticity. I think this is probably a better word than "realism," because you could have a fairy tale set in a completely imaginary universe that still feels authentic.



luckyscars said:


> The main thing is to achieve balance. Idealism happens when your stories feature sappy love scenes with radiant sunsets and everybody is basically a good person with good motivations and the whole story is just unbalanced. Idealism is a Hallmark greeting card or a grocery store romance or the end of a 1960's Disney movie. Idealism is when there's no bite of real, practical problems - when the princess is always made up and the prince never has B.O. Avoiding that should be common sense.



Agree for the most part. Obviously fiction needs a conflict. Don't necessarily need to bring up every day problems like B. O., especially in fantasy, but even the old Disney princess movies had scary villains and intense scenes (other than maybe Cinderella blech. no offense if you like that film).


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 21, 2019)

Megan Pearson said:


> However, if there really are things like ultimate value, truth, goodness, and morality, and if life is more than this physical world, then there exists the potential for us as human beings to become more than we really are. Then the normalization of values and morality comes from without; our standard is no longer ourselves. The result is, we become responsible for the consequences for our actions. Everything, then (by necessity), becomes accountable to something outside of ourselves.
> 
> The truth is, our view of reality doesn't change reality.
> 
> ...



Yes! And it's that accountability that gives life, and fiction, its "bite." Without actions which have ultimate effects, not only is life meaningless, it's boring! And it makes for boring fiction.


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## luckyscars (Jun 21, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> A big part of what I'm trying to say is exactly that--dark fiction does not have to be nihilistic. I know that isn't every story. I like a good dose of darkness in fiction. But I see a lot of emphasis as of late on deconstructing heroic tropes but letting the classic evil tropes stand. The selectivity is just very, very, odd. And there are many flat-out nihilistic works, but there's also this general movement toward it which can only be gathered from looking at a bunch of different things.



Can you give me an example of a book (not a movie or TV adaption of a book - screenwriting is writing too but the director, not the writer, has creative authority over the tone of the film) that is you think is wholly nihilistic? 

The reason I ask is because I get a sense that possibly your definition of what constitutes nihilism is just very different to mine. I consider a story nihilistic if it promotes the philosophy that life is inherently meaningless. The key word there is _promotes -_ I think there's a really important difference between a dark fiction story that simply explores nihilism and a story that is actually nihilistic.

Example: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. That is definitely a dark story and various forms of post-apocalyptic inhumanity are ever-present (as they are in most McCarthy). On its surface, the book is fairly horrible. It's a really disturbing, horrible world and McCarthy pulls no punches/ I know several people who don't like it for exactly this reason. 

What those folks are missing (and, may I suggest, what you yourself may be missing) is that underneath all this, the story is not at all about hopelessness. On the contrary, the endurance of hope is actually the main theme. It's a story about family, love, bravery, etc...all those nice things that are the total opposite of nihilism. This strange contradiction is why it's a good book.

If more books seem nihilistic now than in the past I suggest it's because (a) There's a lot more books being published now, so there's more diversity of stories generally and (b) Readers expect to be challenged and in order to present a challenge the material needs to explore new things, and historically there has been a lot of censorship and antipathy toward sex, violence, etc.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 21, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> The reason I ask is because I get a sense that possibly your definition of what constitutes nihilism is just very different to mine. I consider a story nihilistic if it promotes the philosophy that life is inherently meaningless. The key word there is _promotes -_ I think there's a really important difference between a dark fiction story that simply explores nihilism and a story that is actually nihilistic.



Yeah, there is a difference between promoting and exploring. I mentioned earlier one of my favorite A Hill to Die Upon albums which explores nihilism but ultimately does not promote it. I'm talking more about a general drift towards nihilism represented by the claim (going back to the original argument) that "darker and grittier" equals real, and that heroic ideals are imaginary. It _is_ pretty hard to have a purely nihilistic piece of fiction because meaninglessness ultimately destroys narrative and you end up with art like John Cage's 4'33'' score. _Into the Woods _(the play, never saw the movie), maybe? "Everything is pointless, but I guess it's all okay, because... eff it it's a musical and we need a happy ending." That's what I got at least. 



luckyscars said:


> If more books seem nihilistic now than in the past I suggest it's because (a) There's a lot more books being published now, so there's more diversity of stories generally and (b) Readers expect to be challenged and in order to present a challenge the material needs to explore new things, and historically there has been a lot of censorship and antipathy toward sex, violence, etc.



Hmm I'm not sure that's the reason. Quantify what you mean by historically. . .there have been many periods over time when sex and violence were prevalent in art. It's not really a new thing. There's sex and violence in the Bible. . . I don't think people are writing grim stories just because they couldn't in the past.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 21, 2019)

I don't understand why everyone hates nihilism so much it's the closest thing to the truth that isn't _the _​Truth.


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## JustRob (Jun 21, 2019)

Ralph Rotten said:


> See, before Private Ryan, directors took great pains to stabilize cameras.
> But then Spielberg showed them a new way to tell a gritty story...then all of a sudden everyone was using shaky cameras.
> That was nextgen for cinematography.
> I wanna do that to writing.



What, shaky handwriting?


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## Amnesiac (Jun 21, 2019)

BornForBurning said:


> The idea that cruelty or harshness even exists is a value judgement.
> 
> I subjectively disagree. I think this type of grimness is a product of a society that has lost its way in the universe. It reminds me of a man wandering through a black forest, occasionally encountering light and taking joy in it, but never trying to follow the light itself.
> 
> I honestly feel like we learn more about human nature by reading pulp and fluff than we do from reading 'deep' intellectual writing. Another important thing to note is that 'gritty' and 'grounded' don't equate to grimdark.



I just finished Nora Roberts', "Sanctuary." I guess it's a romance, but really, it falls squarely in the camp of "Suspense/Thriller," but she's very typecast as a romance author. Not that it doesn't pay the bills for her, because it obvious does, but it was a book with some real teeth. I was pretty impressed.


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## JohnCalliganWrites (Jun 21, 2019)

I have a theory that some readers (like myself) have a relatively low tolerance for happenstance, and that grim dark provides a lot of randomness and chaos (or the appearance of such) that we become willing to turn a blind eye to the main tropes of the story (refusal of the call, mythical helpers, the inciting incident, a dark night of the soul matching a failure obtaining the goal, blah blah blah). Throw me subplot cutoff halfway by a murder or something, and I'll be delighted by the surprise and willing to go along with the main plot a little easier.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 21, 2019)

> I have a theory that some readers (like myself) have a relatively low tolerance for happenstance


A good writer should be able to avoid making their plot points feel like happenstance.


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## JohnCalliganWrites (Jun 22, 2019)

BornForBurning said:


> A good writer should be able to avoid making their plot points feel like happenstance.



No doubt


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## Megan Pearson (Jun 22, 2019)

JohnCalliganWrites said:


> I have a theory that some readers (like myself) have a relatively low tolerance for happenstance, and that grim dark provides a lot of randomness and chaos (or the appearance of such)...



Okay, ignorant question here. I thought 'grim dark' in the OP meant a movement, but here John uses it as more of a genre. 

So, which is it?


(Thanks ahead of time!)


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 22, 2019)

From my understanding, grimdark is the term used to describe "darker and grittier" fantasy (like Game of Thrones). I was more referring to the cross-genre movement towards grimmer material which doesn't really have a particular term.


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## Megan Pearson (Jun 22, 2019)

BornForBurning said:


> I don't understand why everyone hates nihilism so much it's the closest thing to the truth that isn't _the _ Truth.



Hi, BFB! Sorry to say, but your statement is self-refuting. Here's how:

First, let's grasp some definitions. What is truth? Truth is a justified, true belief. In other words, it is that which corresponds to reality. _Example:_ We can read this sentence. _Why is this true?: _If we have read it, then it is necessarily true that we can read it. The act depends on the ability. If we believe we can read that sentence, we can test that belief. We test that belief by acting upon it. If our ability matches up to what we believe we can do, then we have justified that our belief about that ability is true. It corresponds to reality. This is the classic view of truth. 

Since the nineteenth century, society has been gradually conditioned to accept other views of truth. The two I know of each begin with a rejection that reality can be known. One depends on the strength of relationships between things; the other, on the usefulness of things to the user. 

Nihilism is a different kind of thing than truth; it is a worldview. As a worldview, it employs beliefs. However, the main tenet of nihilism is "the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless" (Apple dictionary). Therefore, by definition, nihilism necessarily rejects truth. 

However, the reason why such a statement is self-refuting is because it claims to equate nihilism to truth. A worldview isn't a belief. 

Capisce? 


Part of this grim/dark debate, I think, comes from conflicting worldviews which employ conflicting belief systems that are broken apart & reassembled willy-nilly to the entertainment of a mass audience viewership. Basically, it's postmodernism.


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## JustRob (Jun 22, 2019)

Megan Pearson said:


> Therefore, by definition, nihilism necessarily rejects truth.



I didn't follow that conclusion. If truth is established by applying tests then religious and moral beliefs are surely beyond its scope because it is hardly practical to test them. One can test that they are beliefs by testing those who hold them, but that doesn't prove that they are truths in their own right. Hence by rejecting them nihilism does not reject truth, only unprovable beliefs.

If one applies the viewpoint of a "fair witness", as defined in Robert Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_, to your argument about truth then surely the argument fails. The fact that I _have_ read what you wrote does not prove that I _can_ because you may have edited the text by now. The fact that I believe that I _did_ read it doesn't even prove that I _could_ then because I may have misread it at the time. In the story this was the frustrating aspect of fair witnesses, that they did not establish any truth but took what might be regarded as a nihilist view. The well-known statement in the story about the house by the fair witness Anne that "It is white on this side" demonstrates this. Truth is a local phenomenon in space-time which cannot be extrapolated into a generality with total confidence. 

In answer to the OP "Grim/dark = realistic" is a cumulative belief arising from many sources over time. Hence it has a place in society, but not to the exclusion of other beliefs. I open doors for people regardless of their gender and when a woman appears to be offended by my behaviour I am saddened as she clearly lives in her own grim/dark world where a man who does that must be a male chauvinist. Equally society now has extensive safeguarding measures for children which appear to be based on the principle that all men are potential paedophiles, something that I personally find offensive as it implies that morality does not exist. It also means that a man accused of being a paedophile is tried by a judge and jury, many of whom, being male, are also potential paedophiles and hence untrustworthy to do so. Every attempt by society to shake off its grim/dark mantle actually seems to increase its embrace. The gun debate in America is similar. Its proper resolution is to my mind a purely local consideration which cannot be generalised. That is the tragedy, that society too often believes in universal grim/dark truths and thereby brings them about. This may well be a consequence of modern progress in communications. It is hardly surprising that fiction follows society, as it is always obliged to, in this respect.

The matter of beliefs, truth and testing them is something that I have had to contemplate in order to come to terms with my novel writing. I have been forced to accept that it most likely occurred as a result of my sensing events in my own future but belief, truth and the opportunity to carry out tests barely figured in that conclusion. In fact the paper that I wrote on the subject for the Society for Psychical Research emphasised that such phenomena may well not fall within the scope of such absolute philosophy and their scientific approaches to them may therefore fail.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 22, 2019)

> Hi, BFB! Sorry to say, but your statement is self-refuting.


I won't address the worldview/truth dichotomy. Needless to say, 'worldview' and 'truth' are not exclusive categories. 
In a linguistic sense, you are correct, the statement is self-refuting (all false belief systems are, actually). CS Lewis articulates a very similar position to the one you just articulated that I also happen to hold, which is that the mere ability to identify something as 'false' or 'evil' implies that the true and the good _must _exist. Things like symbolic logic are very good for testing whether an argument is linguistically sound but when it comes to articulating eternal spiritual concepts that are most likely out of our comprehension in the first place, it begins to break down. The self-refuting, devouring oroboros nature of false belief is a _true _facet of falsehood, in other words, it is true that all false beliefs devour themselves. This utter agony of following false (aka human) belief is best encapsulated with nihilism, where the philosopher finally throws up his hands, despairs and concludes that none of it ever mattered to begin with. His despair is a lie, but it is a despair born of having killed every other lie. True nihilism does not result in 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,' it results in an embrace of annihilation, because existence is simply to agonizing to bear. It is the truth that if we reject Truth, we are in hell. My beliefs on this topic, I admit, are the product of a largely romanticized view of nihilism I acquired due to listening to the band Entombed.


> Truth is a local phenomenon


No


> Truth cannot be extrapolated into a generality with total confidence.


Correct. This is one or perhaps the core moral truth- that we must put our trust in a thing we cannot see. Truth is not a local phenomenon. That text was arranged in a certain way at a certain point in time independent of your perception of it, BUT, we cannot know while relying on our own sight what precisely it was, or if it was even there. We must reject our sight and put our faith in Truth or risk becoming Hitchcock from _No Particular Night or Morning. _


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## luckyscars (Jun 22, 2019)

How is it possible to 'embrace nihilism' and also be a writer?


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## JustRob (Jun 22, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> How is it possible to 'embrace nihilism' and also be a writer?



It's probably a lot easier for a nihilist because they presumably don't believe in success. How can one even be a successful nihilist without violating one's own creed?

I once realised that in my perfect world I wouldn't exist, but I was a perfectionist then. That was my grim dark reality. I am now a reformed perfectionist, so it doesn't bother me any more.


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## Rojack79 (Jun 22, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> I consider a story nihilistic if it promotes the philosophy that life is inherently meaningless. The key word there is _promotes _


 
The Cthulhu Mythos comes to mind.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 22, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> How is it possible to 'embrace nihilism' and also be a writer?



Cognitive dissonance, I guess. Kind of like being a moral relativist and campaigning for justice (I see that a lot). Smart nihilists are probably aware of the dissonance but don't mind, because, well, they're nihilists. It strikes me especially in music. Dissection preaches self-annihilation and despair; meanwhile, the music itself is beautiful, coherent, and meaningful--and, um, it exists, which is in itself a defiance of nihilism.


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## luckyscars (Jun 22, 2019)

Rojack79 said:


> The Cthulhu Mythos comes to mind.



My understanding of Cosmicism isn't that it's necessarily nihilistic, although it definitely shares similarities. Cosmiscism is about the insignificance of human life in the larger scheme of the universe. That's only nihilism if you believe that meaning begins and ends with human beings. Otherwise, it's realism.


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## luckyscars (Jun 22, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> Cognitive dissonance, I guess. Kind of like being a moral relativist and campaigning for justice (I see that a lot). Smart nihilists are probably aware of the dissonance but don't mind, because, well, they're nihilists. It strikes me especially in music. Dissection preaches self-annihilation and despair; meanwhile, the music itself is beautiful, coherent, and meaningful--and, um, it exists, which is in itself a defiance of nihilism.



Cognitive dissonance is one thing, but writing requires effort. I wonder what the motivation to sit down and write entire stories, let alone novels, is if you are truly nihilistic?

I am aware, of course, that most people who call themselves writers don't write anything.


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## JustRob (Jun 23, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> Cognitive dissonance is one thing, but writing requires effort. I wonder what the motivation to sit down and write entire stories, let alone novels, is if you are truly nihilistic?
> 
> I am aware, of course, that most people who call themselves writers don't write anything.



This morning building heat and humidity have made the atmosphere oppressive and I woke up with a cloudy headache that seems likely to persist. Ever since joining WF I have denied being a writer even though I have written a few things along the way, but I am certainly doubtful that doing so serves any purpose. For today I am going to be nihilistic simply because my brain doesn't want to function. My angel has a similar feeling, so we have even postponed Sunday until tomorrow and agreed to this being Noday. She may put in an appearance on WF sometime today but I doubt that I will again. 

I was ... no, there's nothing else. I'm even having trouble deciding whether to hit the "Submit" button now. What's the point ... in doing so or not? My coffee's getting cold as well.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 23, 2019)

*Oh shit...they've started discussing...PHILOSOPHY!*

Someone hit the big red button, Helm, take us down, DIVE DIVE DIVE! Prepare to run silent, run deep, rig for depth charges!
Navigator, set a course for GTFO, maximum warp, and engage!










Scotty, I need warp power before they start talking about Nietzsche, or we're all dead!


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## JustRob (Jun 24, 2019)

Ralph Rotten said:


> Scotty, I need warp power before they start talking about Nietzsche, or we're all dead!



Actually Nietzsche, whose name I still can't spell, believed in eternal return, so it doesn't matter if we are. It's only temporary. Yes, I'm back.

I'd say that we need to fire up the infinite improbability drive to put us back on the right track. After my nihilistic day yesterday this morning when I woke I engaged my brain to test it with the following result.

There was a large woman in Perth
Who all of a sudden gave birth
To two pigs and a dog,
Three ducks and a frog,
Which made her exclaim "What on earth?"

Well, that proves that we're back in normal talk-space now I think. No flying whales or pots of petunias in sight. Bring on your grim dark realities then, you writers. I'm ready to face them.

Actually my angel and I have never watched any of _Game of Thrones_ yet. It's all fantasy, isn't it? Somewhere in a remote corner of WF there was once a picture of her sitting on an iron throne made out of swords that we found in a garden in Wales while on holiday there. Was that something to do with it? Her comment at the time was that it wasn't comfortable, but that was as grim and dark as our reality gets. In reality ladies need cushions.


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## BlackDragon (Jun 24, 2019)

Oooh, are we talking about Nihilism and Nietzsche, The Hardest Man (to spell) In Philosophy? Then allow me to put on my 'Correcting Popular Misconceptions' hat for a moment... (Ralph, I can only pray you've made it out of the Sector by now...)

Nietzsche, alas, seems to suffer under a terrible curse of having his philosophy routinely misused and misunderstood, starting with how his concept of a 'moral overman' who is capable of casting off the chains of conventional morality and establishing his own, internal sense of right and wrong, was perverted into the Nazi's propaganda-image of the 'Aryan Übermench'. Nihilism, likewise, is all-too-frequently misapplied, especially in fiction. Your average fictional nihilist is probably trying to destroy the world in order to end everybody's suffering, or something along those lines... but _actual_ Nihilism, as conceptualized by Nietzsche, is actually a fairly _optimistic_ philosophy. It essentially posits that there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell, and no 'meaning' to anything. You weren't born with any particular purpose, nobody's sitting around somewhere up in the sky judging everything you do, and there's neither punishment nor reward to be had after death. This, however, simply means that you are FREE. You may choose your _own_ purpose, and can find value in the things _you_ enjoy. Love, family, friendship, the simple pleasures of food and drink... these are things worth _living_ for. Nihilism simply calls on you to _find_ the things that make _your_ life worth living, rather than denying them because some established religion or conventional morality tells you to - to stop wasting your very limited life pursuing some random set of commandments and virtues that somebody else arbitrarily declared to be the 'right way' to live.

Right, that should do it - I'll just take my hat off again. None of this is exactly relevant to the original question posed by this thread, after all, beyond 'Nihilism' frequently being misused in relation to the whole 'grimdark' concept.

As for _that_ - the question of why dark, gritty, ugly stories are often claimed to also be 'realistic', well... I blame the internet. No, seriously. Well, more broadly, Information Technology in general. See, what's happened over the last couple of centuries is that the world, by and large, have gotten _better_ by virtually every possible metric. Less war, less poverty, less starvation, more openness, more freedoms, more luxuries, more rights, fewer dictators, fewer accidents, better health, lower infant mortality, and so on and so forth. The runaway climate-change is really the only point where things are going in the wrong direction. However, even as these changes have taken place, our ability to KNOW about any of these events have grown at a breakneck speed. We _know_, now, of EVERY disaster, EVERY psychopath, EVERY dictator... all the evils of the world are not merely at our fingertips, they're actively intruding on our daily life. They dominate the headlines of physical newspapers and digital blogs alike. If something bad happens on the other side of the planet, you will hear of it literally within hours. And it's hard to ignore - our brains, geared for survival as they are, have a natural tendency to focus on bad news. After all, if something _good_ happened to a neighboring tribe, well, that's nice for them and all, but why should _I_ care? If something _bad_ happened to them, though... I _need_ to know, so as to ascertain whether this thing may be a threat to _my_ tribe as well, and if so, how to best defend against it.

This, thus, creates the natural, instinctive perception that the world is full of darkness and evil. That it's all rotten to the core, with genuine goodness being a rare exception, the brief glimmer of a diamond in a septic-tank. This probably explains why the rate of depression has _exploded_ throughout the western world in the past few decades... and, more relevantly to the discussion at hand, why many have come to perceive stories filled with darkness and cruelty, set in a world that is cold, random, and brutal, to be 'realistic'.

Well, I suppose it's not _entirely_ wrong, in a sense. A plot filled with clear-cut black-and-white, where everything always works out in the heroes' advantage and all events move with the strength of some inexorable destiny are obviously unrealistic. But if the story outright denies any heroism, quashes all goodness, and conspires to prevent anything resembling a 'happy ending' for anyone... then it's just hitting the opposite extreme. This world, the REAL world, doesn't have any true heroes, nor true villains. There are no knights in shining armor, nor cackling villains carrying membership-cards of the League of Evil Bastards. But by the same token, while there is no great destiny or divine intervention propelling the heroes to a certain victory, there is also no cunning devil moving to block them. Some people actively try to make the world better. Some make it worse, if not on purpose then as a careless side-effect of pursuing their personal ambitions. Either may succeed or fail, depending on the choices they make, the resources at their disposal, their dedication and perseverance - and, ultimately, the roll of the dice, random chance.

...well, that's what I think, anyway.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 30, 2019)

BlackDragon said:


> Nietzsche, alas, seems to suffer under a terrible curse of having his philosophy routinely misused and misunderstood, starting with how his concept of a 'moral overman' who is capable of casting off the chains of conventional morality and establishing his own, internal sense of right and wrong, was perverted into the Nazi's propaganda-image of the 'Aryan Übermench'. Nihilism, likewise, is all-too-frequently misapplied, especially in fiction. Your average fictional nihilist is probably trying to destroy the world in order to end everybody's suffering, or something along those lines... but _actual_ Nihilism, as conceptualized by Nietzsche, is actually a fairly _optimistic_ philosophy. It essentially posits that there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell, and no 'meaning' to anything. You weren't born with any particular purpose, nobody's sitting around somewhere up in the sky judging everything you do, and there's neither punishment nor reward to be had after death. This, however, simply means that you are FREE. You may choose your _own_ purpose, and can find value in the things _you_ enjoy. Love, family, friendship, the simple pleasures of food and drink... these are things worth _living_ for. Nihilism simply calls on you to _find_ the things that make _your_ life worth living, rather than denying them because some established religion or conventional morality tells you to - to stop wasting your very limited life pursuing some random set of commandments and virtues that somebody else arbitrarily declared to be the 'right way' to live.



Yes, this was Nietchze's philosophy. I'm not going to argue about the technical definition of Nihilism; all I know is, the form of nihilism you describe has its logical extreme in the comic-book let's-destroy-the-world nihilism. Let me explain. The nihilist is "free" from the constraints of traditional morality, from God, heaven, hell, etc. "Free"? Free to do what, exactly? The Nietchzean philosophy as I understand it puts action in and of itself above all, but if no action can be better or worse than another, doesn't this annihilate the idea of choice altogether, which in turn annihilates the freedom of choice? The nihilist can choose to save a cat or kill a cat. But if, in a cosmic sense, saving the cat is no better than killing it, what would be the point of choosing anything at all? You list love, family, friendship, food and drink as the worthwhile things, but if there is no meaning, than already you have eliminated the concept of worth. You can't say, as a nihilist, that love is better than hate, or friendship better than war, or food better than starvation. You can only say that you, personally, happen to enjoy love, friendship, and food, which is not really sufficient, is it?

Essentially, your argument is contradictory, because you're saying that the will/pleasure of the individual is inherently worthwhile, while simultaneously arguing that nothing is inherently worthwhile. Nihilism in your sense is self-constructed meaning. But self-constructed meaning falls apart because a) it's contradictory, and b) the things that give you immediate happiness tend to stop giving you happiness if you're trying to extract your entire sense of existential meaning from them.  And when it falls apart it leaves the nihilist with nothing, not even destroying the world. . .because you can't even say that the end of suffering is better than its continuation. Read Ray Bradbury's "No Particular Night or Morning;" it's a great depiction of a character who loses all sense of meaning.

(sorry Ralph)

Okay, moving on to the actual writing segment. . .I think you could be right. We have a warped perspective when we take everyone else's problems on ourselves. I'd disagree though, about there being no knights in shining armor or cackling villains. These are spiritual concepts, I think, and sometimes they are embodied in real people.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 30, 2019)

> perverted into the Nazi's propaganda-image of the 'Aryan Übermench'


It wasn't perverted at all. Hitler simply expands moral primacy from individual desire to collective desire. Clearly you've never read Mein Kampf. How much Hitler was consciously influenced by Nietzsche, I have no idea, but their ideologies certainly contain many critical similarities. All three of the important modern philosophies (fascism, communism, capitalism) essentially place moral primacy on the individual, the collective, or something in between. Most of the big moral arguments of our time boil down to disagreement on to what degree morality is collectively or individualistically determined, which is ironic because both positions share the same fundamental flaw: that they outsource morality to _human desire._


> Your average fictional nihilist is probably trying to destroy the world in order to end everybody's suffering, or something along those lines


Anti-cosmic Satanism, by far my favorite form of Satanism. Finally, I've been waiting for an excuse to post this song.


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## Trollheart (Sep 1, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> Can you give me an example of a book (not a movie or TV adaption of a book - screenwriting is writing too but the director, not the writer, has creative authority over the tone of the film) that is you think is wholly nihilistic?


Apologies if this has been answered already (I haven't time to read the whole thread) but surely "Nineteen Eighty-Four" would qualify? Is there ANY space for hope, real hope, anywhere in that book? Other than a warning not to let this happen? Unlike "Fahrenheit 451", which I might class in broadly the same terms (dystopian fantasy/repressive govt/conformism etc) which does offer hope at the end with the starlings.


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## KenTR (Sep 3, 2019)

The grimness around us speaks louder than the lightness. We bow down before technology and allow it to cram our minds with useless information. Our newsfeeds confirm this by masquerading as fact. This has nothing to do with "fake news" (I had promised myself never to use that phrase. I'm sorry, self) and everything to do with sensationalism, because that's what sells. That's what we, a society of pearl-clutchers, want. Another mass shooting. Another celebrity found sticking his fingers into children. _Tsk tsk_, we say. _I'm glad I'm not part of that. _But we are_. _By consuming and reacting to news stories about the horrors around us, we become complicit in our own small way. We consume these stories while banner ads peripherally seep into our brains. We react by expressing our outrage on social media. That's why bad people shoot up malls and even badder people rule. We funnel our anger into an echo chamber. Look at all the social change that occurred in the 1960's. All of that was done without social media. We've become impotent. Indifferent to the horrors around us. We turn it all into a dopamine rush. All that's left is to say is, _well, that's life.

_But it isn't. One hundred years ago we'd ask our neighbor how things are going. They'd tell us _Well, the Johnson's just had the loveliest twins, the Miller's farm is yielding a bumper crop this year, and oh, the Smith's barn burnt down. But we're all pitching in to help. _Ask your neighbor today how things are going and you'll hear nothing but bad news. Complaints. Outrage. All peppered with well-meaning but impotent empathy because, really, who has the time to build a barn these days?  

Art reflects life, and when we live within a world where the bad outshines the good, it's going to find its way into our books and films and paintings. Add to this the common misconception that art influences life, and people are going to say that the darkness in our art/entertainment is what's real. Either way, you can't win. 

As far as books and films go, people prefer the darkness to the lightness because it makes their own lives seem better in comparison. I myself am a fan of what I call "feel bad" movies and books. I love horror movies. I consume stories of cruelty and hopelessness and despair because once finished, I can close the book or turn off the TV and say _Well, my life isn't so bad after all!_ Or, _Whew. Maybe that lump on my neck _isn't_ an ancient evil medicine man about to be reborn to wreak havoc upon the modern world _(my unyielding admiration to anyone who can name that story).

Finally, as a closet lowbrow semi-cinephile, I can't finish this post without weighing in on "The Shining", being a huge fan of the book and having just re-watched the film. To me, it's both a terrible film and a great one. A beautiful visual tone poem that succeeds brilliantly in creating an unrelenting sense of dread from the first frame until the moment when Jack Nicholson first swings that axe. From there on, it falls apart because Kubrick's skeletal screenplay is unable to connect the violent catharsis to the dread, and the accompanying visuals, in my opinion, only serve to expose his contempt for both the horror genre and the book. A ballroom of motionless cobwebbed skeletons? Please. That stopped being scary in 1964 and he knew it. I see it as positively _sur_real, in an ether-drenched kind of way, as well as, like most of his other films, a primer on How To Photograph a Movie. Those lamp posts that glide in front of the camera as he tracks Wendy and Danny playing in the snow are scarier than anything Jack does. Kubrick purposefully translates King's concept of the haunted hotel into a visual tome on the terrors of architecture. 

If you're a fan of "The Shining", you should *definitely* check out the paranoid documentary "Room 237".

As for nihilism, well, that just sounds exhausting.


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## Mish (Sep 5, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> Sure, most people _like _lighthearted superhero movies, but they are treated as "escapism," while Game of Thrones, _The Shining, _etc. are treated as a serious portrayals of the "real world."



I remember R.R. Martin commented that "Game of Thrones" is brutal on purpose as it is meant to be anti-war and show how brutal and senseless war is. Which is true in a sense. As nothing in the books or the show is as brutal as for example bombs being dropped on civilians, schools and hospitals, which still happens regularly in the modern world to the apathetic ignorance of most people. So I think grim/dark = realistic here is fit for purpose as it reflects the horrors of war that humanity appears to still have endless appetite for.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Sep 5, 2019)

Mish said:


> I remember R.R. Martin commented that "Game of Thrones" is brutal on purpose as it is meant to be anti-war and show how brutal and senseless war is. Which is true in a sense. As nothing in the books or the show is as brutal as for example bombs being dropped on civilians, schools and hospitals, which still happens regularly in the modern world to the apathetic ignorance of most people. So I think grim/dark = realistic here is fit for purpose as it reflects the horrors of war that humanity appears to still have endless appetite for.



Certainly Martin was intentional when he chose the tone and focus of his books. But what weirds me out is the insistence that Game of Thrones is more realistic than, for example, The Chronicles of Narnia. It really isn't. They're just reflecting different aspects of reality. 



KenTR said:


> As far as books and films go, people prefer the darkness to the lightness because it makes their own lives seem better in comparison. I myself am a fan of what I call "feel bad" movies and books. I love horror movies. I consume stories of cruelty and hopelessness and despair because once finished, I can close the book or turn off the TV and say _Well, my life isn't so bad after all!_ Or, _Whew. Maybe that lump on my neck _isn't_ an ancient evil medicine man about to be reborn to wreak havoc upon the modern world _(my unyielding admiration to anyone who can name that story).



Meh, that isn't why I watch horror movies at all. Horror to me isn't a way to feel better about my own life (I could just make a cup of tea if I wanted _that_). All good art is an enhancement of life, not just an escape from it. I like darkness in a story because of 1) the intensity, when I can feel the tension between good and evil so viscerally 2) the fear or awe created by an encounter with something much larger and stranger than myself. Really my favorite is when extremes of light and dark are woven closely together. That's what feels most real to me, as opposed to the monochrome that is the moral background some books and films (the kind where the good guys are only marginally less contemptible than the bad guys, or are considered "good" only because they're nicer. ugh)


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## shyla (Sep 9, 2019)

I think culture is a big part of the discussion. Westerners with a mechanistic or modernistic outlook on life tend to have this expectation that they are in control of their destinies -- and when they aren't able to succeed in whatever their goals were, the result can often be the nihilism you mentioned. I live overseas, and in my work with Syrian refugees I have been repeatedly surprised at how little they ask the "why" questions that we Americans would ask if our homes were bombed out. They don't have the same humanistic view of the self-made man. Everything is controlled by Allah, so it's more of a fatalistic or destiny-based view of life, and they figure that if bad things happen to them, Allah must have some good reason for it. They are definitely sad and frustrated, but they don't ask why or wallow in angst or nihilism like we would probably do. From what I have observed, people in this part of the world tend to watch a lot of comedy as their way of dealing with dark realities. They don't question it, they just escape it. Although there have been a few serious films that recently came out highlighting the darker side of Middle Eastern life, like Capernaum, which has a vaguely similar character arc to Slumdog Millionaire.

Anyways those were just a few thoughts that came to my mind. Like you, I'm not a big fan of nihilism for the sake of nihilism. Let there be a thread of hope _somewhere_ in the plot.


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## KenTR (Sep 9, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> Meh, that isn't why I watch horror movies at all. Horror to me isn't a way to feel better about my own life (I could just make a cup of tea if I wanted _that_). All good art is an enhancement of life, not just an escape from it. I like darkness in a story because of 1) the intensity, when I can feel the tension between good and evil so viscerally 2) the fear or awe created by an encounter with something much larger and stranger than myself. Really my favorite is when extremes of light and dark are woven closely together. That's what feels most real to me, as opposed to the monochrome that is the moral background some books and films (the kind where the good guys are only marginally less contemptible than the bad guys, or are considered "good" only because they're nicer. ugh)



That was another careless generalization on my part. People have all sorts of reasons for liking horror movies/books. Some people just like to be scared. I find that plain old thrillers are more successful in generating unease these days. I can't remember the last time I was truly frightened by a horror film. Jump scared just piss me off because they're a cheap shot, but they seem to be popular in the teen horror genre.

Blurring the line between that dark and the light is usually the mark of a good story, period. The first season of "True Detective" delved into this successfully.

If a cup of tea was enough to make me feel better about my life, I'd probably be screaming in pain from kidney stones right about now.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Sep 9, 2019)

KenTR said:


> Blurring the line between that dark and the light is usually the mark of a good story, period.



Mmmh... I disagree. I actually find blurred lines sometimes create eh stories. I'm more talking about _interplays _of light and dark, not moral greyness. It can be a flat-out conflict between good and evil (woo!), or more of an exploration, or a kind of "this thing you thought was evil is good" or "this thing you thought was good is evil," but I find that too much moral ambiguity leads to confusion or tedium. You don't want to _eliminate _the concepts of good and evil; you want to use them in interesting ways.


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## KenTR (Sep 9, 2019)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> Mmmh... I disagree. I actually find blurred lines sometimes create eh stories. I'm more talking about _interplays _of light and dark, not moral greyness. It can be a flat-out conflict between good and evil (woo!), or more of an exploration, or a kind of "this thing you thought was evil is good" or "this thing you thought was good is evil," but I find that too much moral ambiguity leads to confusion or tedium. You don't want to _eliminate _the concepts of good and evil; you want to use them in interesting ways.



Agreed. And I was wrong about "True Detective" too. That show was anything but morally ambiguous.


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## Drain_Fields (May 10, 2020)

There is a time and place for muckraking "realism"-type fiction that portrays and calls attention to real-world problems.

There is a time and place for "realism" in fiction so that impressionable consumers of fiction (I plead guilty to being one at times) don't get caught up in fantasy-like expectations of how real-life should go. (I for one love me realistic romance plotlines as opposed to the "struck by lightning, accidentally in love" stuff that is ubiquitous in fiction. As a young adult, I find that young adults get too caught up with all that, and with expectations of how social situations and relationships should be, in general.)

There is a time and place for optimistic writing and escapism. There is absolutely a time and place for heroic characters that the reader likes and cares about.

At the end of the day, especially if you are publishing, you are presenting your readers with a product, something that is to be used in a certain way. Something that they should invest in consuming. The purpose can be to entertain. The purpose can be to raise awareness to issues or argue a moral or philosophical point. The purpose can be to put something beautiful into the world that will make the readers sit back and be happy that they were alive to read awesome books like this. 

But gritty, dark, directionless nihilism for the sake of "realism" is not a good path imo. What do you want your book to accomplish for its readers? Pick a motive for the book (which does not necessarily have to be a "moral" or "message" within the story) and go from there.


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