Embracing Darkness V - Why Dark Fantasy?
Asking necessary questions for myself.
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Thank you for your time and loyal readership. Now then, onward to the essay.
We writerly types can be an odd sort. We’ve got our projects that we want to work on, our stories that we feel this need to put to the page, and we’ll get ourselves all good and set to do just that. Then some invasive idea will come swinging in out of nowhere, slap the project out of your hands, and grab you by the scruff while demanding you write about it instead.
Or perhaps that’s just me.
In any case, here we are once again, revisiting this essay series for the fifth time in total, and the third time in the last week. I hadn’t anticipated this sudden sideways path I’d be taking. My plan after the third essay was to jump right back into writing The Jarl’s Son and leave this series at that for a while. Life, it seems, had other plans in store. The third essay led to some valuable discussions, which then led to yet more as the fourth was released and people started reading that and going back to some of the older entries they missed, and now here we are.
Speaking of those prior essays, if you’ve not yet read them, they’ll be linked below:
I recommend them. Personally, I feel they offer some of my very best observations and insights when it comes to my essay work.
That being said, compared to those previous essays, this one is likely to come out a bit different. Where my goal in those was to shine a spotlight on the best traits of the dark fantasy genre and provide what I hoped would be thoughtful guidelines on how to get there, (and based on the feedback I’ve been receiving, I think I’ve succeeded in that) this one is going to be much more introspective. Rather than getting into the field to start clearing the weeds as I’ve proverbially done before, I want to take a close examination of exactly why I find this genre to be so valuable and compelling.
In the interest of clarity, I want it known that I’m not writing this purely for the sake of entertainment. I certainly do hope you’ll all find this essay to be engaging and enjoyable to read, but that’s not its primary purpose. This is an exercise in combing through and understanding my own thoughts on this subject, that I might both better define and further refine the reasons why I’m so enthralled by the darker side of fantasy storytelling. It would be easy for me to chalk it down to statements like, “Oh well I saw Vampire Hunter D uncut and unedited when I was four.” or, “I read lots of horror and fantasy stuff as a kid, so it’s only natural.” Formative influences of this sort certainly have their part to play here, but they’re not enough on their own. I want to develop the most complete sense of understanding I can about this subject so that I, and hopefully you as well, can pinpoint in a definitive manner why I’ve come to love this particular genre as much as I have.
Well, I think that’s enough preamble. What say we begin, shall we?
The Gruesome Nature of the Nigh Insurmountable
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A band of would-be heroes come together through various means to stand fast against the forces of evil plaguing their homelands. Some serve out of a sense of duty and obligation. Some are thrust into this mess against their will. Some sought adventure, and found personal growth along the way. Some are destiny bound. And some merely wish to keep their home, family, and people safe. Whether they start off as experienced warriors, soldiers, magicians, or what have you in their own right, or they’re simple peasant farmhands taking the first steps on their hero’s journeys, we know these types. We know these ideas. These are staples within fantasy fiction, recognized and utilized by the likes of Tolkien, Lewis, Dunsany, and countless others. Their roots reach far and deep, all the way to the myths and legends of the ancient world such as Homer’s Iliad, the Poetic Edda, and the dragon slaying myth of St. George. Our understanding of this has only grown across the eras, which has allowed us to recognize similar elements in tales from the East as well, such as Journey to the West or the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Dark fantasy is no exception in this regard. As a branching offshoot of the wider concept of fantasy, its roots reach back to the same sources, and thus we see the repetition of similar patterns. Yet dark fantasy isn’t the same sort of beast as its contemporaries. While it’s certainly true that epic and mythic fantasy can and do delve into darker subject matter; and that heroic fantasy, or sword & sorcery as it’s also commonly known, rarely shies away from its depictions of violence, sexuality, and flourishes of mysticism and horror; these branches which emerge from the central tree of fantasy tend not to reach as far as dark fantasy in these respects. This is simultaneously what helps to give the genre its unique appeal, as well as the cause of the problems which frequently undermine it.
If you’ve read my prior essays in this series, then you already know that I’m of the belief that the true strength of dark fantasy as a genre lies in how it can, and in my opinion always should, present the idea of hope. It’s neither shocking nor revelatory to say that this genre has a bad reputation, particularly at the time of this writing. Stories of a darker persuasion currently oversaturate not just the fantasy market, but fiction and entertainment in general. Consider, for instance, what is currently one of the most popular fantasy books on the market today: A Court of Thorns and Roses. Frequently condensed down to its acronym, ACOTAR, if you know anything at all about this series, it’s most likely because of the various comedically tinged readings of its highly explicit sex scenes that were quite popular a couple years ago. I can’t begin to tell you how many shorts and compilations I ran across of comedians or impressionists cracking open the book to some of its raunchiest passages to give it the same treatment Gilbert Gottfried gave Fifty Shades of Grey about a decade ago. Likewise, I ran into a good number of candid capture videos of women listening to the audiobook only to have some error happen where their headphones fail or their Bluetooth activates and it starts pumping the audio into their Alexa or home sound system for all the family to hear.
Sex and sexuality is just one of the common facets of dark fantasy, though. While this is undoubtedly the part of ACOTAR that is the most well known, if this were all the story had in terms of being transgressive, as it were, then it wouldn’t be a dark fantasy story. It would just be text based hardcore porn with a fantasy veneer. I mean, it’s still that, but the presence of other aspects like its intense violence, use of blood magic, dark rituals, monstrous humanoid adversaries that are kind of like suped up vampire warlocks, and gore all work to alter the shade of said veneer to something distinctly on the darker side of fantasy fiction. It’s just that the pornography aspect is so utterly in-your-face that it overshadows everything else.
My point here is as follows: while its primary purpose is clearly to disguise literary pornography as a dark fantasy story, ACOTAR still stands as one of the most popular current representations of precisely the sort of story that gave the genre its soured reputation. Focusing in on the edgy, transgressive, and stylistic trappings of the genre, which is to say making the mistake of treating these aspects as the central point to the genre, is one of the most commonly made errors among the less experienced writers within it. This issue is then exacerbated by books written with the intent of being provocative in the extreme. Instead of focusing on telling a story, the goal becomes to shock, titillate, or both.
Note that in the past, I would’ve said there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, that there’s a space in the market for fiction of this kind. While there is still some truth to this, as said market has become progressively more oversaturated with this sort of low quality slop, I’ve subsequently found myself becoming distinctly less laissez-faire in my stance on this. For folks like myself who came to love the genre because we recognized how immensely powerful and affecting its very best stories were capable of being, to see it utterly overrun with so much poorly written and mindless garbage like this isn’t just incensing, it’s insulting. We could, and should, demand better.
Yet I digress here. Passionate as I am about the sorry state of my favored genre, I didn’t write this with the intent of further excoriating what has already been rightfully excoriated by so many others before me. My want is to discuss why I found myself so captured with this genre, why my love for it endured despite the long and torrid history of examples of poor quality shock jockery and nihilistic mewling. I want to talk about the genre’s capabilities when writers attempt to bring out their best for it. I want to discuss how the darker nature that lies at the heart of the genre can, when properly utilized, provide some of the most inspiring and thought provoking genre fiction around.
Consider, if you would, what it is that makes stories like The Lord of the Rings so enduringly compelling. Consider why characters like Conan continue to stand the test of time. Why The Chronicles of Narnia, or the Lankhmar books, or Lord Dunsany’s numerous short stories, remain such enduring fixtures in fantasy. At their heart, it’s because all of these stories touch on something that is very much human, a series of aspects and insights that run far deeper than their core narratives of action, adventure, heroism, hardship, and so on. Though it’s certainly true that a good many of the greatest stories in our history touch on distinctly human themes and ideas, there’s a certain unique kind of purity that comes out in great fantasy fiction that isn’t as readily present in other genres. For my money, this is down to those deep running roots that reach far into the various histories and myths that form the very foundation of the genre. These myths endure because they highlight irreducible aspects of our humanity in a manner that is often both exciting and enthralling. Fantasy fiction, when working at its very best, continues this tradition.
Thus, as a branch of fantasy, the very best of dark fantasy attempts to do the same thing. Over the last year or so, I’ve had numerous discussions with other fantasy writers on this platform. In those discussions, we often asked ourselves questions like what the point of fantasy fiction was, and why such stories when told well are so thoroughly compelling to readers. The consensus we largely reached was that fantasy has a unique ability to showcase the strengths of love, camaraderie, courage, and the enduring strength of the human spirit in the brightest spotlight possible.
The same is true of dark fantasy as well, particularly in the hands of skilled and talented writers. In fact, when properly handled, the darker elements common to the genre - those being things such as intense violence, body horror, blood and gore, torture, more explicit sex and sexuality, and other such things that one might traditionally view as evils or vices - have the unique capability of further highlighting the good that we can accomplish by presenting those darker elements as a contrast against it. When handled appropriately, which is to say when writers don’t needlessly indulge in these elements and instead take care to use them as tools which support a well thought out and well written central story, you’ll find that the various trappings common to the genre can help create more exhilarating and memorable stories via this contrast.
Put in simpler terms, when dark fantasy stories achieve this proper balance in the hands of skillful and talented writers, what results are stories with higher stakes and a deeper sense of investment. This is why I find the stories of characters like Solomon Kane, Elric of Melniboné, Vampire Hunter D, (in particular the second film, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which is a superior adaptation of its source book, Demon Deathrace,) and some of the darker Conan stories like “Tower of the Elephant” or “Queen of the Black Coast,” so thoroughly appealing. They present to us thoroughly dangerous worlds full of compelling characters who tend to have plenty in the way of personal stakes in the goings on of the world around them. They have motivations which we not only recognize and understand, but are often able to sympathize with.
Elric’s desire to see his world become more learned and peaceful, a place where the disparate people might live harmoniously, are anathema to his nature as a Melnibonéan but that doesn’t stop him from striving for it. Nor does the fact that both his runesword Stormbringer and Arioch, the Chaos Lord that is his magical patron, actively work against him in this. His yearning to see this better world come to pass, alongside his want to be free people from the yoke of these fickle greater powers and his unusual sense of duty that drives him to try and do what’s right even at great cost to himself, these make him immensely compelling.
The same is true of Solomon Kane, a devout man who is so firmly set on his mission of bringing justice to those who would enact evil on others be they man or monster, that he’s actively chosen an extremely difficult itinerant lifestyle that regularly sees him put his life on the line for people he usually doesn’t know at the starts of his stories. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Because standing against the great evils that hide in the shadowy places of the world is his calling, and he’ll see it through whether or not it means he will likely live and die alone. This is also very true of D the vampire hunter, which is quite unsurprising considering he’s a character that takes a great deal of inspiration from Kane.
Dark fantasy stories shouldn’t shy away from putting their more gruesome and discomforting elements on display, but neither should they swing for the fences with them. If we want the genre to be able to put its best foot forward, then the goal shouldn’t be to write something that is depressing, hyper violent, or highly sexualized just for the sake of it. The goal shouldn’t be to present the most extreme things you possibly can. This isn’t the same as saying you can’t do these things. You most certainly can, and it’s possible to make them work for the story at the heart of it all. And that’s what needs to be the goal: the darker elements must work for the story, not the other way around. Their job is to highlight and uplift the hopes, victories, and virtues of the goodly characters within the story, the people who are trying to live decent lives and do right by themselves and others. Their job is to create that powerful contrast so that the victories that come are that much sweeter.
Horrifying, But Not Horror
I’ve been asked on a few occasions what the difference between the dark fantasy and horror genres are. It’s a fair question to ask, too. When you sit down to look at it, the aspects that help dark fantasy stand out against most other fantasy subgenres have significant overlap with those you’d expect to see in various horror stories. The overlap is often so complete, in fact, that it can be extremely difficult to distinguish between the two.
Naturally, having the question linger like this begs for an answer to be given. While I don’t wish to claim I’ve come to the definitive answer on the subject, I do believe the one I’ve come to highlights the difference quite well. Not only that, I think it’s also indicative of a major reason why so many aspiring dark fantasy writers end up missing the mark with their stories.
So, what is the difference between dark fantasy and horror, then? From my perspective, it’s a matter of agency. In all of its best works, the dark fantasy genre is about heroes finding the ability to persevere against the horrors they’re made to face. This is most often done by highlighting people with the courage and strength of will to bravely stand up against the evils of their world, but it can also take the form of characters who go out of their way to do good in an effort to make their usually bleak worlds better places. Now, they won't always be successful in this. Much like horror, many dark fantasy stories are tragedies. However, it’s not the success or failures of your heroic characters which matter most here. It’s the fact that they took that stand and, through their perseverance, showed that they stood a genuine chance of succeeding.
By contrast, horror tends to remove agency from its characters. A common pattern visible in horror stories is that characters will be put in harrowing and dangerous situations and have their agency taken from them piece by piece as those situations develop. This means the viable choices they have become increasingly limited the further the story progresses, often leaving them stuck in life or death scenarios where survival itself is the most reasonable victory they can expect. That said, just as the heroism present in dark fantasy stories doesn’t mean the heroes will win, the removal of agency and ever increasing odds doesn't mean horror protagonists are guaranteed to lose in the end. Sometimes they'll come out on top and survive, but even a happy ending in a horror story isn't much of one because of how much the characters will usually lose along the way. This is why blatantly happy endings in horror stories often feel cheesy and out of place, because they actively go against the goals of horror.
Dark fantasy aims to present tales that are harrowing but ultimately heroic. Personally I find the end goal here to be perfectly clear: leave your audience feeling like they've witnessed your characters endure a struggle that they’re not guaranteed to overcome, but still feel capable of overcoming. Horror takes a different tack, seeking to dig inside our psyches and draw feelings of discomfort and unease to the surface, reflecting them back at us so that we're forced to confront them. Given how much the genres have in common, it’s only natural some overlap will exist in these goals, too. How successful any individual story within the genres is at accomplishing these goals can vary wildly as well.
These are the reasons why I’ve argued that dark fantasy, as well as horror, likely has the most challenging balancing act to maintain of any other genre. It's incredibly easy to accidentally stray into the realms of absurdist edgelord cringe by taking the darker parts of these genres too far. If you cross the line by just a little bit, only pushing a tad further than you should, you can still recover. However, the difference between “just a little” and “too much” is miniscule, and even then “just a little” might push you from the realms of dark fantasy into that of fantasy horror. Remember, you’re already walking at the cliff’s edge once you hit the former point. Once you’re there, a single misstep is all that’s needed to send you careening over the side.
Answering the Question - Why Dark Fantasy?
From my point of view, this question goes well beyond matters of aesthetics, style, and personal taste. I’ve enjoyed darker fiction for about as far back as I can remember. As I briefly touched on in the introduction to this essay, I was very young when I was first exposed to the dark fantasy genre in the original Vampire Hunter D film, which just so happened to be playing on TV very late one night. My Dad not being home at the time, possibly for a business conference but I don’t recall for sure, I snuck into his bedroom to try and watch cartoons past my bedtime. Well, young little me had no understanding that a film like Vampire Hunter D was in no way appropriate for a child of four to be watching. I saw animation, so I watched all those dark and violent things within it unfold.
I won’t try to pretend like that didn’t color my tastes some, but the fact is that I was already drawn to that sort of thing when I was young. Watching classic television and classic movies out in the living room with my Mom was one of the ways I bonded with her. Many of those shows and movies did cover darker subjects, but one thing they all had in common were heroes that tried to do the right thing. Perry Mason, Matlock, and Columbo. (She very much enjoyed her crime shows and courtroom dramas.) John Wayne’s square-jawed gunslingers fighting to uphold what’s right, though I admittedly didn’t much appreciate Westerns at that age. Luke Skywalker going from a farmhand to a great hero who not only helped save the Star Wars galaxy from the clutches of the Emperor, but did what both of his masters believed impossible by helping his father to redeem himself. Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, the scientist from the original Gojira who devised the means to kill the monster with his oxygen destroyer compound, who destroyed all his notes and sacrificed his life while deploying it in an effort to prevent anyone from recreating that catastrophic weapon.
Young as I was when I saw most of these things, they helped me to develop a good understanding of what heroes were supposed to do for people. Heroes fought for what was right and good. They tried to protect the people who couldn’t protect themselves, and when they couldn’t do that, they tried to bring about a sense of justice so that any wrongs committed against the innocent would be duly and appropriately punished. They sacrificed, made difficult choices, and did their best to stand by their principles. Vampire Hunter D is undoubtedly a considerably darker, more violent, and more transgressive story than any of the examples I gave above; but my young mind still recognized that this darkly cloaked swordsman who himself struggled with his own nature as a dhampir, the child of a vampire and a human, still chose to fight against the monsters that sought to prey on humanity, which includes his own vampiric thirst. He’s a grayer, colder, and more distant hero, but he remains a hero nonetheless.
As I aged and started reading and watching even more dark fantasy and horror - the latter of which also started at a young age thanks to the aforementioned Gojira as well as things like the classic Universal monster movies, Goosebumps books, and shows like “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” - I started subconsciously picking up on more of the nuances between the genres, but it wasn’t until I passed out of adolescence and into adulthood that my preference for dark fantasy over horror truly solidified. Heavy though their overlap is, the differences between them were becoming clear enough to me that while I couldn’t voice what I was seeing at the time, I still recognized that feeling of inspiration that comes when reading about heroes who stands up to odds that are often well beyond their scope, and then finding a way to succeed. The House of Serpents trilogy by Lisa Smedman, which I’ve previously reviewed, has remained a thoroughly enjoyable series for me since I was high school aged for this exact reason. Arvin, the central protagonist, is no warrior. He’s a thief who spent far more time weaving magical nets for the Thieves Guild than he ever did fighting, and it’s not until he’s well into his twenties that he ever learns about the rather meagre psychic abilities, or “mind magic” as Lisa likes to phrase it, that he inherited from his mother.
Arvin’s not an interesting character because he ends up fighting doomsday cultists and unraveling a conspiracy that seeks to upend life in his homeland. He’s interesting and memorable because he’s a very human character that readers can easily relate to. The dark and dangerous world he lives in works to highlight this fact. He’s a man, a human, who lives in a city-state that’s controlled by a ruling class of yuan-ti (serpent men) who see his kind as inherently inferior to them. On paper he’s a free man where others in the city of Hlondeth are slaves, but he’s bound to the whims of the Thieves Guild, and then further bound to the character Zelia, the yuan-ti who drags him into this conflict against his will. All he wishes is to leave the city and live his life as a free man. As the story progresses, that wish then grows into a desire to settle down and start a family with a woman whom he falls in love with. A woman whom he’s willing to give his life for, whom he’s willing to face down literal demons so that he might save her life.
We see similar in the likes of Elric, who ultimately wishes to see the world he lives in become a more peaceful place and who only desires to live a normal life free of the bindings of the greater powers that force him down a destined path. He denies his nature as a Melnibonéan, turns his back on the casual cruelties and excesses of the declining and eventually, and by his own hand no less, fallen empire he’s inherited in order to travel the world in the hopes of learning more about its peoples. And though the fickle and chaotic hand of his sorcerous patron, Arioch, remains on his shoulder, trying to force Elric down his own desired path, Elric consistently tries to fight against his dark influence.
This is the true reason why dark fantasy appeals so greatly to my sensibilities. While all of the best fantasy features the conflict between good and evil, light and dark, balance and disorder, the best of dark fantasy highlights it in a way that is so stark that I can’t help but get excited when I see it. It pits its heroes against the greatest of odds, showing this in the most intense way by choosing not to shy away from the grim and gruesome realities of these fantastical worlds. These are places which are rife with foul magics, dangerous monsters, and wicked people who would twist these powers to their own ends. They are ages and worlds cast in darkness, bleak and seemingly hopeless. Yet even in these places, good can still be found. Decency, honor, justice, family, love, fellowship; in the best stories of the genre, all of these are still present and fought for. Heroes still exist within it, the sparks of light which strive to drive the darkness back through good deeds and principled convictions.
I’ve said from the very start with this series that the darkness of dark fantasy isn’t supposed to be the point, but a contrast against which a core of hope is meant to shine. Far too many stories and writers within the genre have either forgotten this, or failed to understand it at all. The result is what we have today, a genre stuffed to the gills with writers who are far more focused on trying to shock or titillate than tell meaningful stories which will stand the test of time. Indeed it’s safe to say that those of us who love the best this genre has to offer, like myself, are living in dark times in this respect. Yet I remain hopeful because we find ourselves in the midst of a period of change. The desire to see this kind of hollow shock jockery is slowly diminishing. Every day I see more and more folks pointing out the absurdity of it, and not just in my preferred genre, either.
However, a change for the better won’t come without putting in real effort. Those of us who love this genre must continue to do our very best to put forth the most worthy and timeless stories we can manage. We need to fight to make that which is worthy be seen, and we need to learn from those greats who came before us, and the greats who came before them.
Can we succeed in this? I believe so. Will we? Well, that remains to be seen, but I for one am going to keep putting my best foot forward.
I hope you’ll do the same.
My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.
Purchase it in hardback, paperback, or digital on Amazon now:
“Oh well I saw Vampire Hunter D uncut and unedited when I was four.” or, “I read lots of horror and fantasy stuff as a kid, so it’s only natural.”
Umm. Let's see. The Dark Movies and horror I watched consisted of:
1) Jaws - I don't know about you, but after seeing that movie, I didn't want to go near the lake or sea shore for a year or so. The sight of that fin meant someone was gonna die.
2) Cujo - There's just something wrong about a dog that gets rabies and starts hunting people.
3) Christine - Haunted demon possessed car, do I need to say more?
4) The Original Stand was pretty dark.
Dark Fantasy is an interesting genre. The Idea that the world has fallen to darkness and the only hope is a plucky group of broken adventurers. :)
An interesting discussion comparing and contrasting fantasy, dark fantasy, horror and other stories with dark elements. I won't automatically write off dark fantasy anymore. By your definition, though, I'm still not interested in horror at all. Dark I can handle. Dark without hope is of zero interest to me.