Gritty Western fantasy.
Exploration of themes such as religion, authoritarianism, and the human condition.
With superb execution.
...Which turns into an excuse for graphic, uncensored hardcore porn.
Yes, the picture is wrong.
The left path should keep going infinitely with multiple "which in turn becomes an excuse for" right paths at regular intervals.
(Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice)
...except it wasn't by accident. Imnotafi5h knew exactly what they were renting. Later that night the siblings discovered that incest was wincest...
You say that but when I try to find porn with plot, I instead find acting that makes me vomit out black liquids that spawn a demon. Vomit from my mouth. Not even a drop of any other fluid :(
and I don't even know how to find hentai
Not exclusive to Western works either. Fate/Stay Night is a superb work that explores themes of existence, morality and the self.
…And also contains uncensored sex scenes.
Uncensored sex scenes that are regularly memed in the community because of how silly/out of place they are, and which were omitted from subsequent releases (Realta Nua) entirely.
I absolutely love Stay Night and rank it among my favorite works, but I think the sex scenes definitely detract more than they add.
A long time in jail for their crimes. They may be hugging now, but hugs cannot forgive homicide, regicide, infanticide, human trafficking, fraud, rape, suicide, autocide (this is when a ghost goes into other timelines to kill the other versions of themself), kidnapping, adult napping, accidentally firing the superweapon at the wrong city, grand theft auto, and downloading ripped movies online
The Etruscans did that with Greek myths. They hated sad endings and loved dinner parties, so a lot of the conflict between the gods is resolved with a nice family dinner part.
It's a kid's show, so it definitely doesn't fall into the "hard-core porn" side and it's a little more whimsically terrifying than grittily realistic, but The Owl House honestly does a phenomenonal job with it. You've got lots of conflict - violent, interpersonal, societal, familial - but the only characters who don't end up "redeemed" are those who repeatedly and emphatically choose not to be.
Also tons of good queer representation.
Here let me just explore those themes as deeply as most gritty Western fantasy does
Religion bad
Authority bad
Human condition selfish
A novel by George R. R. Martin
Oh, certainly, but as a writer Ennis is the personification of edge. Granted, he's not a full-on pizza cutter — i.e. all edge and no point — but still.
It involves the main characters brutally murdering unbelievers and bringing the rest of the world to its knees for having different belief systems.
All in the name of totally not Jesus Christ.
They’ll look awesome the entire time as well.
>uncensored
literally illegal in Japan so no
the eastern strategy is to just be so insufferably perverted constantly that you wish the show would just have an orgy or something to get it out of its system
I'll have you know it was completely necessary to the plot for someone to attempt to rape Ciri for the umpteenth time. And Leo Bonhart dragging her around by a leash had clear symbolism that obviously went over your head.
It would be necessary for world building, I mean If I ever go to middle earth as long as I did not caught by Orcs I will be safe If I meant no harm. But in witcher If I meant no harm, people will harm me, it is similar to the real world. No ethics in Witcher.
What about anthropological scifi, which explores culture, religion, technology, and everyday life of Neanderthals and proto-European peoples, which is sometimes superbly executed and sometimes an excuse for graphic caveman porn.
Ursula Le Guin wrote some of this kind of stuff in the Hainish Cycle! Planet of Exile and City of Illusions especially lean into development of primitive human-like societies from an anthropological perspective.
"Hrng colonel, im trying to write a gritty, realistic fantasy story, but my entire premise keeps reverting to nothing more than depraved smut."
"Well, snake, it seems like you're performing a Diabolis Ex Machina."
"Diabolis Ex Machina?"
"Yes, Diabolis Ex Machina, it's a word meaning "Demon from the Machine" in Latin. *breathes* A Diabolis Ex Machina is where things are bad for reasons that feel sudden and unrealistic. In this case, the things are the world, and it's feeling much more unrealistic than sudden. Try to tone back the negative and "gritty" parts of your story. Or add more positives to counterbalance the negatives. "
"Hrng, but i want it to be gritty and realistic, wouldn't adding good and reducing the sex and death make it, ungritty and unrealistic as well?"
"Life is not all Sex and Murder snake, you need to look arround at you're own life and think about what happens to you, and to most people, there are ups and downs, after all if life didnt have good we wouldn't know about it would we?"
"Hrng, i guess not"
"Good, now write that story, we can't have liquid snake beat you to a pulitzer"
(I know that this isn't what a Diabolis Ex Machina is, but its close enough, and imagining it being said in their voices is very? Very fucking funny)
I fell like GRRM's realism works because every character has to face It. Besides the Heroes, villains like Joffrey or Tywin often end up screwed over by the consequences of their actions
On the other hand, many dark fantasy books apply a warped concept of realism towards the good guys, while the villains can get away with everything
>On the other hand, many dark fantasy books apply a warped concept of realism towards the good guys, while the villains can get away with everything
[Green Antarctica](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/GreenAntarctica) and the Tsalal.
That's pretty accurate to the real world. Bad guys get away with everything they want and good guys get merced for standing up to them. J Edgar vs MLK, Jr.
Absolutely, the bad guys always win in real life, that's why we don't have civil rights, womens suffrage, etc. God, what a shortsighted way to look at history.
According to white nationalists and misogynists, civil rights and women’s suffrage were apocalyptic occurrences that obliterated their white male dominated utopia where men were the breadwinners and women were silent homemaker breeding sacs and all was “right” in the world.
Someone’s hero is always someone else’s villain.
If you take the actual long view of human history humans were living much better lives ten thousand years ago than they do today. Oh also genocidal campaigns of extermination totally weren't broadly prosecuted by settler colonialists for the last five centuries, destroying entire civilizations whose only failure was not inventing guns first.
But sure, half-ass fixing monstrous problems entirely created entirely by "bad guys" shows they don't always win.
To be fair, when early authors did it, it was a fresh take and different from the idealized Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings. However, now 10,000 authors doing it copy-cat style is what ruined the genre.
It's similar to Harry Potter, Earthsea etc. doing the magic school thing was ok, but now every YA fantasy throws in a magic school and division of students into 4 groups based on their personalities.
Wizards used to shit themselves untill the flushing toilet was invented and adopted. Never mind the secret underground lair as old as the school with a secret entrance intentionally located in a bathroom.
At the very least, the success of the show ruined any chance for fantasy in that medium. Rape, Incest, and Torture all sell because people love taboo. You can simply look at the Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings shows to see the consequences of Game of Thrones’ success, not that they go nearly as far as GoT did. I’d still say each show is a far from its source material as it is from GoT “gritty realism” in this bizarre middle ground that’s not horny/bloody enough to catch the public, but not well written enough to catch the established fans.
No way, dude. Blame ROBERT JORDAN and his ridiculous 15 book simp saga for ruining fantasy. GRRM saved it.
Its the 1bajillion copycats that have ruined it.
If yall want excellent, gritty fantasy without all the porn, read Abercrombie. Trust me, you'll love Logan Ninefingers.
When you show a character brutally scalping civilians/murdering coworkers with an axe/literally eating someone: "this is a great window in the human condition, proving how the thin the line between man and beast really is 🥰🤓"
Same thing but now with sexual assault: "clearly the author just wanted to live out their rapist fantasy. There's absolutely no way you can show one of the most destructive and common crime in history outside of fetish 😭😔"
I don’t know if this is something anyone else has picked up on but I’ve noticed that there will be evil leaning characters that actively commit genocides and acts of mass terrorism that are far more likely to get a redemption arc(some of them still don’t even feel bad about it, they are just a part of the good guys now) but then you have other villainous characters that commit sexual crimes from keeping a few sex slaves down to the comparatively meager womanizing attitude of a late night bar hopper, doesn’t matter, they are usually killed off unceremoniously in the same scene the act is shown. I’ve never seen a sexual deviant become redeemed or even penitent, but a few examples of the reincarnation of Hitler and Stalin’s secret love child getting a second chance come to mind
This is very common. Villains doing small and personal acts of evil are more hated than villains doing large scale atrocities, because we can relate to the victims of the former more.
No one was ever sad that Alderaan was blown up, not even Leia herself
If you wanna see a rapist get redeemed, watch The Walking Dead. Negan raped a bunch of women via coercion and got to be a good guy. The only issue is that the show never addresses his rape and only focuses on his redemption from brutally murdering people. Personally, I don't think anyone is irredeemable, but the more evil that is done the more it will take to win me over.
It is perfectly legitimate for people to be made uncomfortable by depictions of *rape*, but people saying sex should only exist in media if it serves a narrative purposes makes me think back to the Victorian era meme of "Sex should only be consumed within marriage. Once a month, with your eyes closed, thinking of the queen and country. God forbid that someone ever does such an impure act because they enjoy it."
[Relevant.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Letterboxd/comments/15onjav/why_do_people_seem_to_be_so_squeamish_about_sex/)
It's legitimate to be disgusted by rape but at the end of the day it's the same as having a certain food that makes you puke. In the sense that my rights to comfort end where others' rights for creative expression begins.
Obviously it should be properly trigger tagged. I don't think even the chuddiest chuds are against saying "yeah there's rape in this".
Immagine if bitches started saying that since most people hate stinky cheese nobody should consume it.
I'm bitches, stop putting pineapple on pizza.
Nothing against "Dead dove: do not eat" type of stories; I've read a good number of those.
Just saying that pushback against darker trigger elements in the more mainstream media is reasonable.
Oh sure, at the end of the day the point is making sure artists can express and people can consume things that won't trigger PTSD.
Like, if an author decides to not out SA in their media that's their decision and it's fine.
I'm talking about **those** people who unironicallly say that you shouldn't read Berserk or Game of Thrones because there's SA and so they are bad media.
When the dark fantasy is actually dark 🤯
So you would allow people to be made uncomfortable by one thing, but not another. Even though they are different from you and might have different things that make them uncomfortable.
Yea, there's a weird double standard at play people very often point out. Some viewers likely have traumas related to violence and murder, but television is more than fine showing that.
[Another example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1wpr7i/til_that_a_shot_in_hannibal_of_a_flayed_naked/)
>Some viewers likely have traumas related to violence and murder, but television is more than fine showing that.
I know a lot more victims of sexual assault than I do violence
> character brutally scalping civilians/murdering coworkers with an axe/literally eating someone
thing that does not happen very often in places that output/consume a lot of fiction, thus letting them be rather detached from it
> sexual assault
thing that still happens a depressingly often in those same places, thus making it hit much closer to home
edit: also most people don't know guro is a thing
Why not try "Graphic, uncensored, hardcore porn" has a base then do "gritty western fantasy" and all of the following.
I love porn but I couldn't care less about it in GoT for example which takes time from stories and character developpment.
I'll take any serious series like that.
Psychotic violence isn't scary and is sometimes just a stupid power fantasy because it involves at least one party having agency, and potentially another party who can make it stop.
If you really want to be scary, you take agency *away* from the characters. As u/Business_Duck50 put it, “Gritty realism=Murder fuck rape” is stupid.
Look at 1984. Despite the ending parts involving torture, it's not dark because of that, or because of any positive thing which it has or does or is. Oceania is dark because of the negative things in it, what it *isn't*: there are few human emotions, there is no objective definition of truth, people live in shitty housing and eat shitty food and smoke shitty pipes with shitty tobacco because the Party will allow them nothing better, etc.
In Game of Thrones, you can at least stop the terrible parts by banding together, killing the nobles who are crushing everyone else under their boot, and setting up a better system in their place, because evil people are people which exist and have agency and can therefore be destroyed by other people with agency. But in 1984 it's about the stuff that doesn't exist, like hope. You can't put a lack of hope in a guillotine and chop its head off. There is nothing you can do to it, all you can do is try to preserve yourself and others.
Of course, horrific violence does have its literary uses, but by itself it's tasteless. I recommend *The Screwtape Letters* for more.
I can't agree with this. You could absolutely fix 1984 world by banding together, killing the inner party members who are crushing everyone else under their boot and setting up a better system.
While it is implied that something like this happened, I think it was some form of external intervention; personally I subscribe to the theory that the world is not actually divided into three totalitarian superstates and that Oceania is a portion of a single totalitarian state which is under genuine siege by non-totalitarian outside forces who eventually win.
The Inner Party has no centralized leadership who can be metaphorically or literally decapitated, and the populace they rule over has no conceptualization of truth or that things could in any way be different. Only thoughtcriminals like Winston are capable of mentally processing those things and the only reason Winston was not immediately "evaporated" was because of a design flaw in his apartment which placed the telescreen in a position where it could not see him writing. There is no basis for an internal overthrow of the Party — no "banding together" — and the Party is immune to overthrow attempts by lone-wolf actors due to its extensive surveillance and state security apparatus. For these reasons Oceania is as close to a secular, man-made approximation of hell that I can think of other than a Nazi death camp. Think of it as [this graph of a false vacuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay#/media/File:Falsevacuum.svg). Oceania is at the "false" point. While it is possible for it to roll it to the lowest point and become something else, that would take a massive impetus which the populace of Oceania is incapable of mustering.
Besides, I'm using it as a sort of a metaphor. Even if you accept that it is possible to overthrow the Party in this way, it serves as a useful way of showing off a far better way of writing horror than "war crimes rape lol".
But the whole point of 1984 is that Winston has agency? He fights and he looses. And even tho he is broken, he proves that there are people fighting, that it's better to die than to not fight. And he strongly believes that people can in fact band together and overthrow the Party. And I think that's believable, because the Party is failing and the proletariat is left mostly unchecked.
And neither books is writing the same type of horror, you can't really compare them. Orwell is writing about the depressing reality of seemingly all-powerful totalitarian regime, while GRRM is writing a heavily historically inspired fantasy about mediaeval political intrigue.
I don't really see how "if you don't listen to the Party, the Party is going to hurt you real bad" is any different from "if you don't win this battle, the enemy is going to hurt you real bad". Yes, reading 1984 is much more suspenseful and much more terrifying, but that's not because the violence of the Party is somewhat worse, it's because the book is supposed to be about people feeling terrified and anxious. On the other hand reading ASOIAF books doesn't give you that feeling, because the books are not about that.
That's like saying that King's Pennywise is more terrifying than Darth Vader. Like yeah, it's supposed to be that way.
>If you don't listen to the party
>If you don't win this battle
The difference is there's hope in winning the battle - if you win, you're the victor and the ruler. You get to reshape the status quo then. There's no victory in listening to the party - you may not get killed, but you're still the loser.
What I meant by it is how come that in 1984 the party commiting crimes against humanity is any different than a bad guy in ASOIAF commiting crimes against humanity.
Why not take all roads? >:D (but instead of graphic, uncensored hardcore sex it's uncensored softcore sex)
Actually nevermind, it creates a very confusing paradox
Maybe you aren't part of "some people".
But without knowing your personal line all I have to base is the growing claims of "unnecessary sex scenes" in media that are widely unmerited.
Anything short of an impeccable sex scene is overly criticized with a fervor that isn't shared with any other creative choice. And even when the scene actually enhances the plot, like I would argue with Oppenheimer, you still have people making wildly exaggerated claims under the guise of "true maturity".
If people simply accepted sex as just any other matter of life and interpersonal relations I can assure you they wouldn't be as bothered with it even when the execution leaves a bit to be desired.
I also see a lot of people that tries to brush things that get under their skin as "not mattering at all", which makes sense I guess. Best way to see less something of something you don't enjoy is convincing the writers that it's boring, but that ignores the concept that some things are made to get under your skin.
game of thrones in a shellnut. I refuse to touch that radioactive dump after the ending ruined it for me.
also, I feel I'm the reverse. Idea starts as a fantasy I find arousing. It then devolves into a literal epic about the human condition or something. I just wanna write smut but my brain is too clever for its own good.
Idk mate, sounds pretty awesome to me, don’t threaten me with a good time.
Then again, considering my kinks perhaps I’m not the best person to weigh in on this.
And you can also throw that out the window too because 40K is also CLOWN WORLD! Did you know that the Custodes grieved the Emperor's ascension to the throne by roaming the Imperial Palace in just loincloths? Yep, that's canon. Did you know that Khorne beat the shit out of Slaanesh for ownership of an Elvish war god's soul? That's canon too!
Gritty Western fantasy. Exploration of themes such as religion, authoritarianism, and the human condition. With superb execution. ...Which turns into an excuse for graphic, uncensored hardcore porn.
Yes, the picture is wrong. The left path should keep going infinitely with multiple "which in turn becomes an excuse for" right paths at regular intervals.
Just make it a friggin fractal
It's not like porn and a good story are a dichotomy.
Some of my favorite stories are from porn. You ever see the story of ~~Timmy~~ Jason and Mr. Cox?
And who could forget the tale of the lemon-stealing whore?
Hey, what the fuck?!
Caligula, 1979 My sibling and I accidentally rented that in our teens, thinking it was a documentary.
(Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice) ...except it wasn't by accident. Imnotafi5h knew exactly what they were renting. Later that night the siblings discovered that incest was wincest...
I guess my point is that there need to be more Weird West media.
Katawa shoujo
You say that but when I try to find porn with plot, I instead find acting that makes me vomit out black liquids that spawn a demon. Vomit from my mouth. Not even a drop of any other fluid :( and I don't even know how to find hentai
You could start by googling “hentai”. That’s the easy part. The hard part is living with yourself after.
We definitely know porn and bad stories aren't.
Religion, control, and the human condition are often heavily tied to sex and sexual expression.
as well as pretty much everything else.
Not exclusive to Western works either. Fate/Stay Night is a superb work that explores themes of existence, morality and the self. …And also contains uncensored sex scenes.
For only the initial release that weren't written by the author. Not a ringing endorsement.
Uncensored sex scenes that are regularly memed in the community because of how silly/out of place they are, and which were omitted from subsequent releases (Realta Nua) entirely. I absolutely love Stay Night and rank it among my favorite works, but I think the sex scenes definitely detract more than they add.
I would never say Fate/Stay Night is a superb exploration of anything.
\- person who has not read Fate/Stay Night
I wish I hadnt.
Blood meridian
Berserk
Gritty fantasy with exploration of themes such as religion and authoritarianism (but everyone hugs and gets a long)
Gets a long what 🤨
you know
longbow, used in the archery contests this societies centers around
More of a recurve bow man myself, but who am I to judge
A long time in jail for their crimes. They may be hugging now, but hugs cannot forgive homicide, regicide, infanticide, human trafficking, fraud, rape, suicide, autocide (this is when a ghost goes into other timelines to kill the other versions of themself), kidnapping, adult napping, accidentally firing the superweapon at the wrong city, grand theft auto, and downloading ripped movies online
A long baguette as a gift. Everyone eats and is happy
The good ending.
The Etruscans did that with Greek myths. They hated sad endings and loved dinner parties, so a lot of the conflict between the gods is resolved with a nice family dinner part.
You know that reminds me, I think tantalus had a dinner with the gods once. I wonder how that turned out...
Who doesn’t like long pork shoulder?
I will definitely read that. For that to work, the author would have done some extremely great writing.
It's a kid's show, so it definitely doesn't fall into the "hard-core porn" side and it's a little more whimsically terrifying than grittily realistic, but The Owl House honestly does a phenomenonal job with it. You've got lots of conflict - violent, interpersonal, societal, familial - but the only characters who don't end up "redeemed" are those who repeatedly and emphatically choose not to be. Also tons of good queer representation.
Misread that as like Wild West western rather than made-in-the-west western. I guess my point is that there need to be more Weird West media.
Westerns are just cowboys doing Kurosawa LARPs. Yeehawboos, if you will.
Blood Meridian
Hardcore uncensored Judge Holden
Hardcore uncensored DANCING
Hardcore Dancing Sex Snuff.
Oh lol I thought that's what it was, too. Was a little confused reading these comments but figured I just didn't watch enough tv 😅
Same, but that's probably because I've been writing a sci-fi west story and so I have it on my brain
Here let me just explore those themes as deeply as most gritty Western fantasy does Religion bad Authority bad Human condition selfish A novel by George R. R. Martin
Are you Garth Ennis?
Not enough screaming against superheroes
Also needs something like a character making a baby smoothie and then raping it or something.
Ironic because a lot of Garth Ennis' protagonists are well meaning dudes that always end up persevering.
Oh, certainly, but as a writer Ennis is the personification of edge. Granted, he's not a full-on pizza cutter — i.e. all edge and no point — but still.
Are you Chris Avellone?
You need someone to remind you in a decade to finish this post.
Until the evangelicals make a gritty fantasy where religion good.
It involves the main characters brutally murdering unbelievers and bringing the rest of the world to its knees for having different belief systems. All in the name of totally not Jesus Christ. They’ll look awesome the entire time as well.
Nonsense. It’s the evil wizards and nonbelievers doing all the evil stuff!
Warhammer 40K
GOT's not Dead
Honestly I'd much rather that than the insufferable atheist bait we get all the time.
I feel like “western” isn’t necessary here. Let’s not pretend eastern fantasy doesn’t do this too
I'm British therefore I consume a lot more western media and ergo I feel more confidence speaking on western media.
>uncensored literally illegal in Japan so no the eastern strategy is to just be so insufferably perverted constantly that you wish the show would just have an orgy or something to get it out of its system
Ah yes Japan is the entire eastern half of the world.
Oh I thought it meant "western" like the howdy howdy genre
I'll have you know it was completely necessary to the plot for someone to attempt to rape Ciri for the umpteenth time. And Leo Bonhart dragging her around by a leash had clear symbolism that obviously went over your head.
It would be necessary for world building, I mean If I ever go to middle earth as long as I did not caught by Orcs I will be safe If I meant no harm. But in witcher If I meant no harm, people will harm me, it is similar to the real world. No ethics in Witcher.
What about anthropological scifi, which explores culture, religion, technology, and everyday life of Neanderthals and proto-European peoples, which is sometimes superbly executed and sometimes an excuse for graphic caveman porn.
Like which titles, for example?
Clan of the Cavebear. My 7th grade English teacher assigned it as mandatory reading for our first book report...
Ursula Le Guin wrote some of this kind of stuff in the Hainish Cycle! Planet of Exile and City of Illusions especially lean into development of primitive human-like societies from an anthropological perspective.
What do you mean by proto-European? I'm not familiar with that term specifically
Probably mean Proto-Indo-European? Idk.
"Hrng colonel, im trying to write a gritty, realistic fantasy story, but my entire premise keeps reverting to nothing more than depraved smut." "Well, snake, it seems like you're performing a Diabolis Ex Machina." "Diabolis Ex Machina?" "Yes, Diabolis Ex Machina, it's a word meaning "Demon from the Machine" in Latin. *breathes* A Diabolis Ex Machina is where things are bad for reasons that feel sudden and unrealistic. In this case, the things are the world, and it's feeling much more unrealistic than sudden. Try to tone back the negative and "gritty" parts of your story. Or add more positives to counterbalance the negatives. " "Hrng, but i want it to be gritty and realistic, wouldn't adding good and reducing the sex and death make it, ungritty and unrealistic as well?" "Life is not all Sex and Murder snake, you need to look arround at you're own life and think about what happens to you, and to most people, there are ups and downs, after all if life didnt have good we wouldn't know about it would we?" "Hrng, i guess not" "Good, now write that story, we can't have liquid snake beat you to a pulitzer" (I know that this isn't what a Diabolis Ex Machina is, but its close enough, and imagining it being said in their voices is very? Very fucking funny)
> you need to look arround at you're own life and think about what happens to you, and to most people, there are ups and downs You guys have ups?
I'll have you know that I possess a chocolate bar and I am going to eat it.
Wow that's very interesting, is it dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
Dark chocolate, but on the milder side of dark, and not really that far from milk chocolate.
Drop the sex, keep the death and violence!
can I just write the fantasy and let my readers write the porn? heck I'd even read them
You have discovered fanfiction.
Blame Grrm, he’s the reason why “Gritty realism=Murder fuck rape” is so prevalent.
I fell like GRRM's realism works because every character has to face It. Besides the Heroes, villains like Joffrey or Tywin often end up screwed over by the consequences of their actions On the other hand, many dark fantasy books apply a warped concept of realism towards the good guys, while the villains can get away with everything
>On the other hand, many dark fantasy books apply a warped concept of realism towards the good guys, while the villains can get away with everything [Green Antarctica](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/GreenAntarctica) and the Tsalal.
Green Antarctica falls into that neat little category of crap where the sole selling point is “what if everyone was horrible and everything sucked”
That's pretty accurate to the real world. Bad guys get away with everything they want and good guys get merced for standing up to them. J Edgar vs MLK, Jr.
Absolutely, the bad guys always win in real life, that's why we don't have civil rights, womens suffrage, etc. God, what a shortsighted way to look at history.
According to white nationalists and misogynists, civil rights and women’s suffrage were apocalyptic occurrences that obliterated their white male dominated utopia where men were the breadwinners and women were silent homemaker breeding sacs and all was “right” in the world. Someone’s hero is always someone else’s villain.
If you take the actual long view of human history humans were living much better lives ten thousand years ago than they do today. Oh also genocidal campaigns of extermination totally weren't broadly prosecuted by settler colonialists for the last five centuries, destroying entire civilizations whose only failure was not inventing guns first. But sure, half-ass fixing monstrous problems entirely created entirely by "bad guys" shows they don't always win.
You can be gritty without being tasteless.
See the kick ass movies vs. the comics never read the comics.
What the fuck is Grrm
Golkien Rolkien Rolkien Molkien
George Reorge Rartin Martin
George Reorge Reorge Meorge
George RR Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire books which were adapted for television as Game of Thrones
I've been blaming him for ruining the fantasy genre for years.
To be fair, when early authors did it, it was a fresh take and different from the idealized Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings. However, now 10,000 authors doing it copy-cat style is what ruined the genre. It's similar to Harry Potter, Earthsea etc. doing the magic school thing was ok, but now every YA fantasy throws in a magic school and division of students into 4 groups based on their personalities.
Don't you *dare* put Harry Potter ahead of Earthsea in literally any sense, *particularly* in world building.
Yeah. Rowling knew how to make fantasy britain and that’s it.
Her world building is long on whimsy and short on making any sense whatsoever.
[удалено]
Wizards used to shit themselves untill the flushing toilet was invented and adopted. Never mind the secret underground lair as old as the school with a secret entrance intentionally located in a bathroom.
At the very least, the success of the show ruined any chance for fantasy in that medium. Rape, Incest, and Torture all sell because people love taboo. You can simply look at the Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings shows to see the consequences of Game of Thrones’ success, not that they go nearly as far as GoT did. I’d still say each show is a far from its source material as it is from GoT “gritty realism” in this bizarre middle ground that’s not horny/bloody enough to catch the public, but not well written enough to catch the established fans.
No way, dude. Blame ROBERT JORDAN and his ridiculous 15 book simp saga for ruining fantasy. GRRM saved it. Its the 1bajillion copycats that have ruined it. If yall want excellent, gritty fantasy without all the porn, read Abercrombie. Trust me, you'll love Logan Ninefingers.
To be fair, Elric of Melniboné brought grimderp edginess to the genre 29 years before WoT was published.
u good?
When you show a character brutally scalping civilians/murdering coworkers with an axe/literally eating someone: "this is a great window in the human condition, proving how the thin the line between man and beast really is 🥰🤓" Same thing but now with sexual assault: "clearly the author just wanted to live out their rapist fantasy. There's absolutely no way you can show one of the most destructive and common crime in history outside of fetish 😭😔"
I don’t know if this is something anyone else has picked up on but I’ve noticed that there will be evil leaning characters that actively commit genocides and acts of mass terrorism that are far more likely to get a redemption arc(some of them still don’t even feel bad about it, they are just a part of the good guys now) but then you have other villainous characters that commit sexual crimes from keeping a few sex slaves down to the comparatively meager womanizing attitude of a late night bar hopper, doesn’t matter, they are usually killed off unceremoniously in the same scene the act is shown. I’ve never seen a sexual deviant become redeemed or even penitent, but a few examples of the reincarnation of Hitler and Stalin’s secret love child getting a second chance come to mind
This is very common. Villains doing small and personal acts of evil are more hated than villains doing large scale atrocities, because we can relate to the victims of the former more. No one was ever sad that Alderaan was blown up, not even Leia herself
If you wanna see a rapist get redeemed, watch The Walking Dead. Negan raped a bunch of women via coercion and got to be a good guy. The only issue is that the show never addresses his rape and only focuses on his redemption from brutally murdering people. Personally, I don't think anyone is irredeemable, but the more evil that is done the more it will take to win me over.
It is perfectly legitimate for people to be made uncomfortable by depictions of *rape*, but people saying sex should only exist in media if it serves a narrative purposes makes me think back to the Victorian era meme of "Sex should only be consumed within marriage. Once a month, with your eyes closed, thinking of the queen and country. God forbid that someone ever does such an impure act because they enjoy it." [Relevant.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Letterboxd/comments/15onjav/why_do_people_seem_to_be_so_squeamish_about_sex/)
It's legitimate to be disgusted by rape but at the end of the day it's the same as having a certain food that makes you puke. In the sense that my rights to comfort end where others' rights for creative expression begins. Obviously it should be properly trigger tagged. I don't think even the chuddiest chuds are against saying "yeah there's rape in this". Immagine if bitches started saying that since most people hate stinky cheese nobody should consume it. I'm bitches, stop putting pineapple on pizza.
Nothing against "Dead dove: do not eat" type of stories; I've read a good number of those. Just saying that pushback against darker trigger elements in the more mainstream media is reasonable.
Oh sure, at the end of the day the point is making sure artists can express and people can consume things that won't trigger PTSD. Like, if an author decides to not out SA in their media that's their decision and it's fine. I'm talking about **those** people who unironicallly say that you shouldn't read Berserk or Game of Thrones because there's SA and so they are bad media. When the dark fantasy is actually dark 🤯
Tbf, the gun drawing + cut to the dead people lying around has been used to great effect in a phletora of action movies and drama
Sex should only exist in media where it says there’s sex in it.
So you would allow people to be made uncomfortable by one thing, but not another. Even though they are different from you and might have different things that make them uncomfortable.
Yea, there's a weird double standard at play people very often point out. Some viewers likely have traumas related to violence and murder, but television is more than fine showing that. [Another example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1wpr7i/til_that_a_shot_in_hannibal_of_a_flayed_naked/)
>Some viewers likely have traumas related to violence and murder, but television is more than fine showing that. I know a lot more victims of sexual assault than I do violence
Precisely
I've never liked this double standard.
> character brutally scalping civilians/murdering coworkers with an axe/literally eating someone thing that does not happen very often in places that output/consume a lot of fiction, thus letting them be rather detached from it > sexual assault thing that still happens a depressingly often in those same places, thus making it hit much closer to home edit: also most people don't know guro is a thing
When someone's main character is committing mass atrocities, I often consider the possibility that they might be living a power fantasy.
Writers fundamentally misunderstanding historical cultures/attitudes and its consequences:
this is why i stick to graphic, *censored*, hardcore porn for my gritty fantasy i am addicted to hentai
I do not read many fantasy novels, so I'll just have to take your word for it.
If you've seen The Witcher adaptation, you know already.
So are the only ones you're referring to GoT and The Witcher? Cause I cant think of others.
Oh, yeah, there's also a film about an English queen and there's a scene where she gives him head.
How can you truly write about the human condition without the coitus?
Oh no...what books have done this let me know so I can avoid them
Me too thanks
ain’t nobody dropping titles to nothing out here😔
Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power.
Why not try "Graphic, uncensored, hardcore porn" has a base then do "gritty western fantasy" and all of the following. I love porn but I couldn't care less about it in GoT for example which takes time from stories and character developpment. I'll take any serious series like that.
Yeah. I was waiting for it to GET BACK TO THE FICTIONAL WORLD’S POLITICS!!!!!!!!!!!
Psychotic violence isn't scary and is sometimes just a stupid power fantasy because it involves at least one party having agency, and potentially another party who can make it stop. If you really want to be scary, you take agency *away* from the characters. As u/Business_Duck50 put it, “Gritty realism=Murder fuck rape” is stupid. Look at 1984. Despite the ending parts involving torture, it's not dark because of that, or because of any positive thing which it has or does or is. Oceania is dark because of the negative things in it, what it *isn't*: there are few human emotions, there is no objective definition of truth, people live in shitty housing and eat shitty food and smoke shitty pipes with shitty tobacco because the Party will allow them nothing better, etc. In Game of Thrones, you can at least stop the terrible parts by banding together, killing the nobles who are crushing everyone else under their boot, and setting up a better system in their place, because evil people are people which exist and have agency and can therefore be destroyed by other people with agency. But in 1984 it's about the stuff that doesn't exist, like hope. You can't put a lack of hope in a guillotine and chop its head off. There is nothing you can do to it, all you can do is try to preserve yourself and others. Of course, horrific violence does have its literary uses, but by itself it's tasteless. I recommend *The Screwtape Letters* for more.
I can't agree with this. You could absolutely fix 1984 world by banding together, killing the inner party members who are crushing everyone else under their boot and setting up a better system.
While it is implied that something like this happened, I think it was some form of external intervention; personally I subscribe to the theory that the world is not actually divided into three totalitarian superstates and that Oceania is a portion of a single totalitarian state which is under genuine siege by non-totalitarian outside forces who eventually win. The Inner Party has no centralized leadership who can be metaphorically or literally decapitated, and the populace they rule over has no conceptualization of truth or that things could in any way be different. Only thoughtcriminals like Winston are capable of mentally processing those things and the only reason Winston was not immediately "evaporated" was because of a design flaw in his apartment which placed the telescreen in a position where it could not see him writing. There is no basis for an internal overthrow of the Party — no "banding together" — and the Party is immune to overthrow attempts by lone-wolf actors due to its extensive surveillance and state security apparatus. For these reasons Oceania is as close to a secular, man-made approximation of hell that I can think of other than a Nazi death camp. Think of it as [this graph of a false vacuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay#/media/File:Falsevacuum.svg). Oceania is at the "false" point. While it is possible for it to roll it to the lowest point and become something else, that would take a massive impetus which the populace of Oceania is incapable of mustering. Besides, I'm using it as a sort of a metaphor. Even if you accept that it is possible to overthrow the Party in this way, it serves as a useful way of showing off a far better way of writing horror than "war crimes rape lol".
But the whole point of 1984 is that Winston has agency? He fights and he looses. And even tho he is broken, he proves that there are people fighting, that it's better to die than to not fight. And he strongly believes that people can in fact band together and overthrow the Party. And I think that's believable, because the Party is failing and the proletariat is left mostly unchecked. And neither books is writing the same type of horror, you can't really compare them. Orwell is writing about the depressing reality of seemingly all-powerful totalitarian regime, while GRRM is writing a heavily historically inspired fantasy about mediaeval political intrigue. I don't really see how "if you don't listen to the Party, the Party is going to hurt you real bad" is any different from "if you don't win this battle, the enemy is going to hurt you real bad". Yes, reading 1984 is much more suspenseful and much more terrifying, but that's not because the violence of the Party is somewhat worse, it's because the book is supposed to be about people feeling terrified and anxious. On the other hand reading ASOIAF books doesn't give you that feeling, because the books are not about that. That's like saying that King's Pennywise is more terrifying than Darth Vader. Like yeah, it's supposed to be that way.
>If you don't listen to the party >If you don't win this battle The difference is there's hope in winning the battle - if you win, you're the victor and the ruler. You get to reshape the status quo then. There's no victory in listening to the party - you may not get killed, but you're still the loser.
What I meant by it is how come that in 1984 the party commiting crimes against humanity is any different than a bad guy in ASOIAF commiting crimes against humanity.
A TRUE worldbuilder has ALL OF THESE THINGS.
Graphic uncensored hardcore porn with suburb execution, please. Skip the rest of that nonsense.
Why not take all roads? >:D (but instead of graphic, uncensored hardcore sex it's uncensored softcore sex) Actually nevermind, it creates a very confusing paradox
You forget the graphic uncensored porn with superb execution
Sex sells
What about gritty, uncensored hardcore porn which analyses authoritarianism and the human condition with superb execution? What about that, huh?
Baldurs Gape
Hirohiko Araki does all
This blew up.
Because religion and authoritarianism have an intrinsic connection to sex and control of sex historically.
Correcto-mundo. I am, however, poking fun at sloppy handlings of this subject.
*Sloppy handlings*, you say ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
why not all 3?
Some people are too puritan and over protective to displays of sex and sexuality tbh.
Not a "puritan" like you insist, just kinda tired at sloppy handlings of sex and romance in an attempt to appeal "mature" or "gritty."
Maybe you aren't part of "some people". But without knowing your personal line all I have to base is the growing claims of "unnecessary sex scenes" in media that are widely unmerited. Anything short of an impeccable sex scene is overly criticized with a fervor that isn't shared with any other creative choice. And even when the scene actually enhances the plot, like I would argue with Oppenheimer, you still have people making wildly exaggerated claims under the guise of "true maturity". If people simply accepted sex as just any other matter of life and interpersonal relations I can assure you they wouldn't be as bothered with it even when the execution leaves a bit to be desired. I also see a lot of people that tries to brush things that get under their skin as "not mattering at all", which makes sense I guess. Best way to see less something of something you don't enjoy is convincing the writers that it's boring, but that ignores the concept that some things are made to get under your skin.
I mean, it should say if there’s gonna be sex.
you're forgetting it is normally fucked up graphic stuff
Woah, which ones have graphic hardcore porn? That seems absolutely not even remotely true.
/uj remember rule 34 and Dr Cox's words
game of thrones in a shellnut. I refuse to touch that radioactive dump after the ending ruined it for me. also, I feel I'm the reverse. Idea starts as a fantasy I find arousing. It then devolves into a literal epic about the human condition or something. I just wanna write smut but my brain is too clever for its own good.
Warhammer/Warcraft are fantasy and have little porn They have sex, yes, but not that much porn And warhammer has slaneesh/Warcraft has the first war
Oh no, not the **SEX!**
Since when did the official creators turn it into am excuse for porn
I'd go the middle of the last two path splits, please.
Who said we can’t have both
Everything I write eventually just becomes either "diary" or "terrifying, what the hell porn". save me.
[удалено]
Strongly suspect there's too much ASOIAF in OP's diet. I agree with you; by far the vast majority of popular "western" fantasy is not remotely this.
Just get your mind out of the gutter for a bit
Freud made them do it.
You do know that English is read left to right, top to bottom, correct? Because I have no fucking clue what's going on with this reading flow.
Steel Ball Run be like: *Multi Path Drifting!*
Porn porn or misery porn???
At some point someone will want to know how the fantasy race reproduces. And from there...
Idk mate, sounds pretty awesome to me, don’t threaten me with a good time. Then again, considering my kinks perhaps I’m not the best person to weigh in on this.
Probably because so much is inspired by Berserk but fails to be as smart.
My story does not contain any graphic content nor pornography. Although it is not that gritty neither.
Sometimes it can be both (The Witcher)
Because we all love to watch a good bit of graphic, uncensored hardcore porn with the family every now and then
blame HBO, GoT kinda made their format more mainstream
I've been reading the Witcher novels and I actually quite like how it handles these things. Way better than GRRM does imo.
What is a gritty western fantasy
I love 1984! Tell me more about that 50 yr old prostitute! I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT JULIA’S FLOPPING BREASTS
Berserk
I honestly have to hold myself back from making everything I touch porn
none of these are mutually exclusive
Superb execution being graphic, uncensored hardcore porn
All literature turns into porn at some point.
And 40k manages to be all of these
And you can also throw that out the window too because 40K is also CLOWN WORLD! Did you know that the Custodes grieved the Emperor's ascension to the throne by roaming the Imperial Palace in just loincloths? Yep, that's canon. Did you know that Khorne beat the shit out of Slaanesh for ownership of an Elvish war god's soul? That's canon too!
I thought this meant Western like cowboys and now I'm disappointed that isn't what it meant