elanor_x

"They don't want to spill too much pure blood, so they'll torture us a bit if we're mouthy but they won't actually kill us."

Harry didn't know what was worse, the things that Neville was saying or the matter-of-fact tone in which he said them.

                                             [Chapter 29: The Lost Diadem]

The above "HP and the Deathly Hallows" passage made me think about so-called "dark", "serious" fantasy and what's supposed to accomplish.

Declaration: I haven't read much fantasy, except HP, The Hobbit & LoTR, Terry Pratchett and George Martin's SoIaF, so if I am mistaken, I would love to see counterexamples. 

In my search for truth I re-read limyaael's  Dark fantasy and Brutal fantasy rants. From the latter:

Several of the brutal fantasies I like—especially Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series—get slapped with the labels “depressive” and “horrible.” But that’s the point of not flinching, of stirring up the shitstorm and then facing it, of using dilemmas instead of imagining a way out of them. There’s plenty of comfort-oriented and happiness-oriented fantasy out there. I think this subgenre deserves a place, too.

Depressive? Horrible? Arthur Miller's "Incident At Vichy" was so depressive that I haven't ended reading it. Even comparing the play to any fantasy feels sacrilegious. The same is true for several Lion Feuchtwanger's novels. The subject doesn't have to be WW2 horrors , f.e. the Transformers fanfic "Break" recommended below, written as "an homage to my brief career as an Army interrogator" is truly dark in places too and made me feel worse than any of the published fantasies above.

May be writers, intending to tackle challenges of the modern world, (rightly?) turn to other genres, thinking castles and swords would only diminish the book's impact (partly since less people will read it), and fantasy writers want to write a fairy-tale in the first place? Pratchett can humorously comment on RL matters, yes, but it's different from serious, realistic depiction, like in "Break".

From what I've seen, fantasy resembles longer, more finely crafted, adult-oriented fairy-tales, while dark fantasy is the same fairy tales, only in the original version. If so, then why call SoIaF depressing & brutal? Are real fairy-tales so horrible? Or does being raised on sugarcoating Disney and the like play a role too? 

In the end, I could only conclude that "dark" in "dark fantasy" stands for "letting the heroes face some RL consequences ", which isn't insulting for the genre in the slightest. After all, one can say "I was horrified" both at "Dracula" & "Incident At Vichy", but the horror is of fundamentally different kinds.

Following this logic, "not imagining a way out of dilemmas" equals "not using a deus ex machine"   and "stirring up the shitstorm" is "having at least "The Three Little Pigs"" level of conflict. Who would want to read a quest without those elements? Why not open romance or Gaskell's "Cranford"(*) instead?

(*) Haven't read it myself, but it's about quiet lives of quiet spinster sisters in a quiet town.

I hope I haven't hurt any fantasy lovers, especially since I love fantasy too! I just love it for its' mysteries and adventures, like the secret haunted diary in the CoS, not expecting it to truly horrify me. And "The Three Little Pigs" has quite a conflict. At least, the original tale does. For all I know in the Disney version the wolf keeps pestering the pigs until they accept him into their music band. 

Recommendation: "Break" by antepathy. No previous knowledge about Transformers necessary. 

Break is really an homage to my brief career as an Army interrogator. I got tired of reading 'interrogation' stories that are really just torture tales. Owie owie ouch--pull out fingernail--spill the beans. That's so not how it works. People LIE under torture--you would too. You'd do anything, say anything to get the pain to stop. So my sweet little 'Cade is going to interrogate the 'nice' way. The real way, not some stupid Hollywood fantasy of sadomasochism. Don't get me wrong: it's pretty ugly. Just...not the way you think.