We used to recognize that "morally grey" stories existed on a spectrum of shades between black and white. Nowadays it's treatment feels more like a cynical, bitter, monotone sludge.
Great article! I confess that I'm not a fan of dark fantasy, being both a woman and a wimp, haha! But I hugely appreciate your unpacking of the genre here, and how you have to have that black and white spectrum. Gray goo doesn't make for compelling characters. Like you said, gray characters don't care about anything, so why should we care about them? I feel like I got enough of those kind of characters reading Hemingway in high school. (Mr. Hemingway, can one of your run-on sentences involve all of your characters dying in a fire? They all deserve it.)
Open as I am in professing my love of dark fantasy, it has a tendency to attract a certain kind of especially schlocky writer to it that takes far more interest in the trappings than the nuances needed to make the genre work. In short, a lot of edgelords love this shit, then fail to understand the real reasons why they like it so much. Similarly, a lot of would-be intellectuals see the subgenre similarly, only to again fail to realize what makes it work.
Regarding Hemingway, I have to confess it's been decades since I read his work. Not since either middle school or high school, I believe, so I really don't remember a thing about it other than the paragraph length sentences.
Great article! I confess that I'm not a fan of dark fantasy, being both a woman and a wimp, haha! But I hugely appreciate your unpacking of the genre here, and how you have to have that black and white spectrum. Gray goo doesn't make for compelling characters. Like you said, gray characters don't care about anything, so why should we care about them? I feel like I got enough of those kind of characters reading Hemingway in high school. (Mr. Hemingway, can one of your run-on sentences involve all of your characters dying in a fire? They all deserve it.)
Open as I am in professing my love of dark fantasy, it has a tendency to attract a certain kind of especially schlocky writer to it that takes far more interest in the trappings than the nuances needed to make the genre work. In short, a lot of edgelords love this shit, then fail to understand the real reasons why they like it so much. Similarly, a lot of would-be intellectuals see the subgenre similarly, only to again fail to realize what makes it work.
Regarding Hemingway, I have to confess it's been decades since I read his work. Not since either middle school or high school, I believe, so I really don't remember a thing about it other than the paragraph length sentences.