Grimdark is No Excuse for Thoughtlessness

This post comes with content warnings for discussion of sexual assault and identity-based prejudices.

Alright, look. I’m gonna admit up front that this might become a bit of a rant-y post. But I’m gonna try my best to put my opinion across in a clear manner that takes into account different viewpoints.

The general discourse surrounding fictional portrayals of charged topics such as sexual assault or identity-based prejudices has evolved a lot over the years. And that discourse has, often, been really fucking messy. There’s no point sugar-coating that. There have been a few unfortunate and high-profile incidents where certain authors have been hounded because they have written about these topics, and the resultant shit-storms have played their part in changing and challenging commonly held opinions. Often at the expense of the aforementioned authors.

With all of this in mind, let’s get a few things out of the way first.

Challenging and transgressive fiction should undoubtedly be allowed to exist. A blanket ban on the writing of sensitive topics is silly, and runs the risk of smothering the perspectives of people who would not otherwise have a voice. It would lead to important stories not being told.

Simultaneously, people should have the opportunity to avoid such stories, whether due to personal trauma or just personal preference. There are discussions to be had on how content warnings should be delivered and how certain implementations can lead to some shitty outcomes for some authors (something which shouldn’t be waved away), but they are still very helpful for many readers. With that said, the existence of a given content warning for a given story should never in itself be used as a stick to break over the author’s head. Puritanical bullshit helps nobody.

Now. Too many people take the above two paragraphs as stances that are mutually exclusive. Which, I’m sorry, is a load of shite. Sure, there are a lot of niggling specifics that might need some messy conversations. But I see too many people these days conflating attempts at considerate behaviour with puritanism.

To give an example – let’s talk about reviews that highlight sensitive content. Just because a review mentions a rape scene or a depiction of prejudice does not necessarily mean the reviewer is condemning that inclusion. All that means is that the reviewer is giving their readers enough relevant information to make their own decision whether to pick up that book or not. Obviously the tone and context of a review will play a part. It’s very easy to project Western ideals onto non-Western stories, and there are some very puritan mindsets out there. A character kissing the villain doesn’t mean the author is advocating that you should shag Hitler, as some would have you believe. But I’ve seen one too many dog-piles sparked by poor reading comprehension. Just because overly judgemental people exist doesn’t mean that any highlighting of messy shit is a condemnation.

Now that all of that is on the table, let’s get to the meat of this post.

Let’s talk grimdark, and let’s talk about shit that deserves to be condemned.

To be clear moving forward, I’m not using the Warhammer style definition of grimdark that seems to solely include “everything is shit and then we die” type books. Those are part of the genre, sure, but in my opinion grimdark evolved beyond that years ago. My personal definition includes those books that are more “everything is mostly shit, but you have to cherish the little good that you find.” Which are the best kind, in my opinion.

I’m one of those lucky readers who is a huge fan of the grimdark subgenre and was around when it was dominating the release lists a few years ago. I’m also particularly lucky in that I love most books released during the post-grimdark era, too. These stories may generally have become a lot more optimistic, but a lot of them embrace the complicated shit, too. And while many readers might disagree, I believe these recent stories owe a lot to the grimdark years in terms of creating the space for them to be told.

But let’s take off the rose-tinted specs for a minute and be brutally honest. For all the great grimdark books, and for all the trailblazing the subgenre might have done… there was also a lot of utter shit. And those shitty books are a big part of the reason for the huge backlash to darker fiction that still exists to this day.

Because, look. We’ve established that the inclusion of sensitive topics in a book shouldn’t inherently be a bad thing. But go back a few years (not even that many), and the inclusion of one of those topics probably meant you were in for a bad time. Because often enough, the portrayal was awful. During peak grimdark, there were plenty of authors who weren’t writing dark shit to make any particular point, they were writing dark shit because dark shit sold. No nuance. No attempt to offer thoughtful commentary. Characters were raped because that was what happened in grimdark. In-world misogyny was rife because that was what happened in grimdark. There were still some great books released amongst the shite, don’t get me wrong, but we’d definitely hit the saturation point.

We’ve moved on from that now, obviously. We’re telling other kinds of stories, and the industry is slowly becoming a little less white and a little more queer. And with some distance from those peak grimdark days, we’re realizing that we do need space to tell challenging fiction. Not all stories have to be challenging (and fuck anyone who spews that particular brand of bullshit), but “challenging” fiction can hopefully now be held to a higher standard.

There are still problems with this. The demands for authors to out themselves, whether in terms of sexual/gender identity or experienced trauma, can quite frankly fuck off. That’s a perversion of an Own Voices label that was and is meant to lift up marginalised authors, not tear them down. Treating publicised trauma as a prerequisite for the portrayal of sensitive topics is not a path that will ever end well.

But this doesn’t mean we can’t have standards at all.

Bad / harmful portrayals of sensitive topics do exist. They are usually the ones that have the least thought behind them.

(Although it has to be said that dedicated thought, research, and lived experience don’t necessarily mean that a person won’t fuck up the writing of a thing. If only things were that simple.)

The question of who gets to decide whether a portrayal is “bad” or not is of course a complicated question. Similar experiences are rarely monolithic. Disagreement is basically certain. This shit isn’t easy. And I should recognise that while I’m trying to make a general point in this post, discussions around portraying topics like sexual trauma, domestic violence, queerphobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, etc should perhaps not be grouped together. Each will have their own important specifics.

However, sometimes the shitty portrayals are obvious. They’ve been obvious in the past, whether born from saviour complexes, lazy justifications for male revenge fantasies, or whatever. With this in mind, I want to address a specific subsection of writers here. Just because you’re an author writing what you think is a challenging book, that doesn’t mean you can thoughtlessly and tactlessly fill it with portrayals of horrible shit. “Grimdark” is not an exemption from criticism. If you want to use someone else’s trauma for flavour, please just… don’t. You are hurting, however indirectly, the authors who may be pulling from their own experiences. These authors are being hurt by your backlash.

I want to make clear that I’m not pushing any “stay in your lane” agenda here. I’m not saying that Person X shouldn’t write about Topic Y. What I’m saying is that there is a difference between a thoughtful / researched / experienced take on a thing, and a thing thrown in for sake of having it (which is what I mean by “trauma for flavour”). We talk about challenging stories being “important” because they have something to say. If you don’t intend to say anything, and purely want to include some controversial scene purely for aesthetic reasons… maybe don’t do that? Sensitive topics require sensitivity.

On the other side of the coin though… I’m a reviewer. And I know that I need to hold myself accountable here, too. I need to remember that I probably don’t really know the person writing a story. I don’t know who they are, what they’ve been through, what they’re pulling from. My own experiences and trauma are not a replica of anyone else’s, and likewise neither are any opinions formed as a result. As much as I want a base level of sensitivity attached to portrayals of certain topics… Considering all of the above, I need to offer some sensitivity to the writers of those stories too.

Honestly, I’m well aware that I’ve probably wasted my time writing this whole thing. It’ll likely peter out into nothing, and probably won’t help with a lot of the strange conflation and binary thinking that seems to be going on in social media circles.

But I just hope that if we are going back down the road to more challenging and transgressive fiction… there’s more thought put in this time than there was last time around. The backlash to grimdark didn’t come out of nowhere and it was not entirely unwarranted — as great as I think some books from that period are. There are some great stories that could be told in the coming years, with great authors posing great questions, and they don’t deserve to be drowned by thoughtless shite trying to ride the tide.