BEYOND GRIMDARK
Grimdark was a revelation when it appeared on the scene in the 1980s. Fantasy had come to be dominated by the heroic, clean, corporate view most embodied by TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons & their top artists Larry Elmore & Jeff Easley. The whole thing was in desperate need of being dunked in filth.
Games Workshop released the wargame Warhammer 40,000 in 1987. It took the already wild world of Warhammer Fantasy into the future & gave it the tagline “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war”.
The year previous, Warhammer Fantasy Role Play introduced a “Grim World of Perilous Adventure”. Games Workshop employees report that Terry Gilliam’s “Jabberwocky” was an influence, specifically the shit covered Medieval times.
Time trundled on. Eventually Games Workshop grew to become a gigantic corporate entity producing played-out, unchallenged tropes. People yearn for the good-old days, when the company produced real, new & fresh ideas.
At this point, after decades of decline, the luxury of hopelessness is actually a comfortable position for people whose needs are being met. Yet still they moan.
There is an expectation of sameness in Grimdark. It doesn’t express that things change. They change quickly & no aesthetic or tone represents a totality of reality.
Moving beyond Grimdark requires a transition from the predictable rot of a dying world to the volatile, high-stakes electricity of true chaos, the actual nature of reality.
I can easily imagine the corporate office worker whose acquiescence to their humdrum life is continued in the hopelessness of Grimdark. Yes, there are more skulls, violence, blood & fire in the fantasy world but still, despite all the fighting, nothing changes.
I argue that things change whether you want them to or not. The sheer numbers of moving parts there are makes it impossible to determine outcomes.
Because of this, it is difficult to cause the change you want. The order you want to create is more like the limited control of a garden. It needs constant action or else it goes wild, quickly.
When you confront this chaos honestly, you begin to understand the shameless, degenerate spirit. The assumed control of the noble hero or the brooding anti-hero presuppose a stagnant world. The survivor sheds the assumption of order to stay in the game.
Chaos represents opportunity. The gatekeepers don’t know what to do, they just hold a gate, chaos is erupting on both sides. This opportunity means an ability to make a new order out of the raw elements that have been stirred up.
People that have lived amongst chaos for too long start to yearn for order, almost any order. Because of this, the tables turn & a period of order falls into place.
There’s this idea that the Mad Max world is what Libertarians want & the Star Trek world is what Progressives want. In reality, these things would coexist. Just like today you have the gleaming, futuristic Chongqing & the gang controlled, failed state of Port-au-Prince.
Of course we are talking about curated movies & TV shows. Those controlled realities represent archetypes that lay in people’s minds. The real world is far more complicated.
I’m trying to present the idea that a monolithic aesthetic doesn’t cut it. Grimdark often ignores the “incredibly good” to focus on the “horrible.” Both & everything in between are in constant existence.
We aren’t trained to work with the unexpected. True Chaos is scarier than Grimdark. In Grimdark, you know things will go wrong. In Chaos, a miracle might happen & the possibility of a miracle makes the threat of horror much more stressful.
High-stakes chaos means every moment is a gamble. If anything can happen you must be active rather than resigned.
The Devil is in the details. Every single thing that exists, down to the smallest unseen particle can be expanded into a world of understanding.
The constant contrast between chaos & order creates a parade of absurdity. In this world of possibility it is almost impossible to hold the self consciousness & shame that the assumed consistency of that grimness
Acknowledging true chaos is the rejection of the predictable void. It is the embrace of the messy, the beautiful & the foul.
Hopelessness is a luxury. Shameless jostling is the true way of nature. Life is defined by high-stakes engagement with the chaos rather than embracing & being overtaken by a bog of gloom.
True Chaos means that ANYTHING is possible - the incredibly good, horrible, everything in between & things that are truly unexpected. It is because of this that I ask you to go beyond Grimdark into the true realm of chaos.