How to Write Dark Fantasy that isn't Hopeless

I'm finding a time to get into more dark fantasy

Berserk?

Choice.

Usually in Grimdark setups your characters have little to no control over what happens around them.

But the one thing that they can control is the choices they make.

But it's important that the choice makes sense for the character because if your morally grey protagonist decides to do good for no reason it's just plain ridiculous and it yeets you out of the immersion instantly XD

There's a movie from my country where the setup is as grim as it gets.
The protagonist is an orphan that went to prison as a minor but was judged as an adult so when his sentence finishes he is released out in the wild to fend against literally everything, corrupt cops, poverty and crime. At the end his best friend is stabbed in a public bathroom 37 times. And his female childhood friend who fell hard into drugs is pregnant and about to give birth in an abandoned house.

The protagonist decides to take her to the hospital where the doctor mistakes him for the father and before he can correct him he tells him that the mother died while giving birth and on top of that the child was born with abstinence syndrome so they have to administer small doses of drug to make him survive.

There he can chose to just leave, after all the system can take the kid into their care just like they did with him but then they will fail the child just like they failed him.

So it's obvious what the protagonist is going to do there was only one choice he can take at that crossroad and let the doctor be mistaken and claims the child as his own.

Man, what an end. And it was a movie from the arguably worst cinema age of my country XD.

I made a dark fantasy feature film. I made a dark fantasy comedy about being schizophrenic called SCHIZOPHRENIA—the movie.

https://youtu.be/weFK9UFLA2g?si=n9Ir_zqvjCGDj_sa

Would you like to collaborate. I want you to look in my office space. I organized my work in my playlist.

the idea that "world wasn't ready" for dark fantasy when Tolkien was writing LOTR is strange, if you consider famous Tolkien's contemporaries who often wrote a lot of dark humor / grey morals into their books (think Jaroslav Hasek, Mark Twain, Franz Kafka, Mikhail Bulgakov, etc). i think a black & white setting of LOTR has a lot more to do with in Tolkien's own ideology (Christian, moderately right-wing) than with "world's readiness".

Good ramble. Been working on a series of fantasy stories for a while now, and it's a tricky thing, to try to balance the dark aspect with a hopeful thread in the main cast. I've had to make a subtheme throughout all of it about balance; BBEG can muck up anything, anytime, anywhere, but good can rebalance all things, too.

I wouldn’t say Tolkien wasn’t realistic in his morals for characters, Gollum, Boromir, Denethor, even Sauron to some degree were all complex characters. Tolkien spent time in one of the darkest periods of human history, he fought in the First World War. Tolkiens fantasy is very dark especially if you read his other works like the silmarillion.

I love hopeless

This is the first time I've seen this channel, and that is an absolutely EXCELLENT last name. 😂

Aren't you the guy who made the Pixar Theory?

Also it was expected for nobles to rebel against tyrannical kings
In the eyes of a medieval noble an Oath of Fealty is not absolute if a king himself betrays the laws

I guess ancient tragedies I studied in Greek and Roman Studies at Uni, like Oedipus Rex or The Bacchae (my personal favourite) would probably fall in the realm of Dark Fantasy going by your description...
Mind you; tragedies like that usually be "damned if your do and damned if you don't" if you try to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes.

100% keep reading abercrombie, I think when you finish the 2nd book the hype will make more sense. Ambercrombie's juxtaposition of dry comedy and downbeat plot conclusions creates the perfect tone IMO. It's not really setting-driven grimdark, but rather character-driven grimdark, if that makes sense.

Honestly, and I know this is a meme comparison at this point, but the style reminds me a lot of Fromsoft's approach in the Dark Souls series, where there's this unique balance between bleak tones and delightful characters/situations—a giant dog that swings a sword around in his mouth, an enigmatic man staring at the sun all day who flirts with you, a talking cat you can form covenants with, etc. Tonally speaking, that game rises far above edgy and indulgent tier grimdark because of its whimsical/absurd elements. It engenders that feeling of 'oh the author really does care about this world, and isn't just venting'.

I am writing a fantasy thats grimdark but I don't have that the focus so much as an element? and that element is more present in the later half...though its there throughout, I guess. I am very concerned about the beginning as I'm throwing in the lead-up to the main events now. I had it starting too soon and trying to build the back half of the book, and its hard to do.

great vid again. personally i heavily preger the visual version of the podcast so i appreciate the extra effort to post them.

if the question asker or anyone else wants a good example of dark fantasy with hope, i recommend the darkest dungeon series. heroes dive into dungeons to combat an eldritch god while its still growing, pretty hopeless but with good moments that go past writing and into gameplay to make you feel hopeful even in the worst scenarios. the second games core mechanic is the world has descended into eldritch madness and you receive the very last, physical piece of hope. it may be a good example of dark fantasy. has crazy prose and a sick narrator, too. great question, great answers, always a fun watch.

P.S... are second emails against the rules? watching these gives my creative bones a tap and always makes me want to ask more questions...

Dark fantasy isn't grimdark. Dark fantasy has horror/gothic elements, and grimdark copies the WH40k "in the grim darkness of the future there is only war" to create nihilistic worlds with villain/antihero protagonists.

You should listen to Abercrombie instead of read the books. The narrator is insanely good.