This week, I finished watching Warrior and the seasons of Brooklyn 99 on Netflix. I’m now watching Death & Other Details on Hulu (we’ll talk about that, I think) and Chef’s Table: BBQ. I’ve been meaning to watch more documentaries, so we’ll see how that goes! After that, I may re-watch The Librarians or Once Upon a Time (but only the first season).
In the past few days, I’ve had a sore throat. I’m not sick in any other way, just with the throat. It’s not much fun.
This is my sister’s birthday! I had a different Note lined up, but I went with this one because I thought it’d be more interesting for this day.
Greatcoats, Dresden Files, & Hope in Dark Fantasy
I think people are bad at recommending stuff to me.
People are often surprised that I haven’t read A Song of Ice & Fire or watched Game of Thrones; after all, it’s fantasy! It has dragons! I freaking love dragons! The tone not really being my thing is apparently not a factor people consider. Which they should because I don’t particularly want to go into fantasy with that kind of tone. It’s not just that it’s dark fantasy, it’s that it’s so grimdark, a deeply cynical view of humanity that I not only disagree with, but makes me wonder why I should keep reading at all.
It’s a huge factor of why I didn’t like the Witcher books all that much; I only got through them all because I really enjoyed one of the video games.
My problem isn’t dark fantasy; it’s the lack of hope.
Let’s talk about Greatcoats by Sebastian de Castell! A dark fantasy set in the country of Tristia, where nobles oppress the people and knights are bullies. Our protagonist, Falcio, was leader of the Greatcoats, a sort of King’s Musketeers who enforced the king’s laws, but they were disbanded and the king was killed by Tristia’s dukes, who rebelled because the whole idea of not being dicks to their people was the kind of thing that ticked them off.
It’s dark! There are horrible things happening in the story, and in the backstory! But our hero, Falcio, has hope, trying to fulfill the king’s last wish for him and fix the country over the course of the series. It’s not easy, and Lord knows that he gets plenty of setbacks, but the stories still have hope. There’s a running undercurrent of wondering if it really matters in the grand scheme of things, if the changes last, and the last book has a wonderful scene where representatives of the country’s people sit down and ask, “Hey, is this country really worth saving at all?” It’s not enough to care what happens, is it, if they’re not making an actual difference, is it? And as is pointed out by several characters, “The Good Old Days” weren’t actually as good as Falcio thinks, the Good King wasn’t always as wonderful as he remembers. So how does anything they do change things?
And yet it does make a difference; not always the difference the heroes set out to make, but it’s clear that they’re doing something good by their actions. There is evil, there is injustice, and yet there’s also the idea that our heroes are against all expectations making things a little bit better, one tiny step at a time.
Let’s talk about Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. This is an urban fantasy set in modern day, in which our Chicago wizard Harry Dresden fights against faeries, vampires, and demons. It’s a series that runs often on Rule of Cool and humor, but it also gets pretty dark. Most of the supernatural factions see humans as food or toys, there’s a lot of violence against and by our heroes, and wars are going on where people are killed in horrible ways. The humor and coolness don’t negate that! More and more as the series goes on, we get hints that things are going to get very, very bad soon.
And yet! The hero’s efforts make a difference! Harry establishes the Paranet to connect magic users and help them help each other. The cops of Chicago have become better at discerning and fighting supernatural threats.
And then there’s Michael Carpenter, one of Harry’s best friends (and the best character): Knight of the Cross, man of faith, and Fist of God. By his faith, vampires can’t even touch him without being burned. The man met his wife by saving her from a dragon. God guides his movements; he appears when he needs to.
And yet, even then! He’s not a perfect man; it’s shown that when his family is in danger, the gloves are off and he loses all sight of everything. One of the short stories makes it clear that he would have murdered some dude if Harry hadn’t stopped him, because the villain in that story kidnapped his daughter. And there’s a book where he’s worried Harry’s been taken by the enemy, so he prepares himself to fight and kill him if necessary.
That’s not very happy stuff. It makes for good storytelling, though, when put into the balance with the hope that the stories provide.
My problem is not with dark fantasy; darkness in fiction isn’t bad. Escapism is good and all, okay, but fiction is also meant to reflect the real world. And we know there are problems with the world. We flip on the news, or look at the computer, and we’re assaulted with headlines of terrible things going on in the world. Good fiction doesn’t ignore that bad things are happening, it recognizes that; however, it also gives us hope, and says, “Yes, there are horrible things going on in the world out there–but there are ways to fix it.” Sometimes those ways seem distant and difficult, because they have to be. The real world isn’t easily fixed, either! Stories that give you quick, easy solutions always feel like cop-outs, too. There are answers there, though, if we work at them.
We also forget that stories like Lord of the Rings and Grimm’s fairy tales aren’t easy, either! They’re stereotyped as such because pop culture is bad at representing them, but things get pretty dire in those stories, too. Those authors knew that the darkness, and overcoming the darkness, is what made those stories good!
When done right, dark fantasy is excellent. It just needs hope. Not easy solutions, just genuine, honest, hope.
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