Tired of the basic 'warhammer' theme... Attempting different avenues of dark fantasy.

[Omera]

So, I want to keep the dark brutality that is common among fantasy setting such as Warhammer, Conan, etc, but I've found that the typical overpowered warrior scenario is ill fitting for any improvisation. Additionally I think the manner of the settings telling is dependent on what my own personality traits are best at terms with; the occult, the themes and meanings behind esoteric mysteries (not just throwing fireballs, but a legitimate fictionalization of esoteric practices as they were really done- qaballah, hermeticism are subjects of interest here). On the darker side, focus on reptilian cults, conspiracy, murder, political powergames (and here we find useful knowledge in works like the 48 laws off power).



When it comes to the writing of actual conflict, I think more focus should be done on the descriptions that bring war to its highest literary life; sound of armor clashing (in fact, this is important to me, the writer should go into lengths to describe a conflict, where weak spots are struck etc). I think too often the 'warrior' is just some conan-clone who is able to kill everything and than get mad and kill it when it looks like he can't. Barbarians should be portraid more from the survivalistic side, and life SHOULD look hard for the tribesman- he should be skinny because he fights for his food regardless of muscle tone. Replace the hulking juggernaut height with descriptions of various cultural body builds- historical documents on roman occupation of barbarian cultures serves well here. Even knowledge of anatomy would help to be precise about how lethal an assault ends up. The next important factor for combative themes would be based on emotions: Characters in war may be shown in the beginning of a skirmish to be fresh for fighting, and as the battle progresses and adrenaline pumps, moods change to 'seeing red', patience is gone and everybody becomes more intent on killing warriors on the other side, until a the 'rising action' of a battle leads to both sides being more or less worn and tired, etc. BASICALLY, One must be careful of the godmoding of characters.

 

[Omera]

No attempt should be made to hold back, either by empathy for characters or guilt on the part of the writer to display scenes off brutality and as an ammoralist I think this is where most 'dark' writers are lacking. In the case of brutality, it shouldn't merely be the 'mean tough guys' dying, but woman should be brutalized by plundering warriors, children beat and thrown into slave wagons, etc. On the occult side, this gives room for the author to play around with what I called 'Word Bearer fanaticism' in reference to 1 faction from Warhammer which is known for cultic warrior-priest psychopathy; flayed human skin is inscribed with bloody symbols, rotting heads dangle from the candleabra on the ceiling, and one should make the victims of these cults truly damned by infernal followers; faces of twisted souls should contort from walls, and shades of half-alive people might have their spines fused to ceiling columns as they uplift a flesh-infused candle from fused hands toward the horned skull glasswork off the ceiling of a black church.


In essence: when you right dark, remember these acid bath lyrics:

We wanna see some blood
We need a new whore
We don't give a ****
We just want more
Blood
We want
Blood
We want blood


=]

 

[Feo Takahari]

This might be a stupid question, but do you have a way to make the reader care? I've put down more than one story that began with the brutal slaughter of women and children*, because as callous as this may sound, I wasn't given any opportunity to bond with those women and children. It sounds like you've got something in having the protagonist not be an unstoppable mass of frenzied flesh, but if it doesn't feel like he'll be able to do anything to change the setting he's in, there's a limit to how many novels you can get out of that. (Note that Conan became a king and actually ruled well, and compare Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star, who was basically kung-fu Jesus.)

P.S. If you really want grim and gritty, I think excrement might be the way to go. No matter how "realistic" gore-porn stories get, I've never seen one reference people crapping their pants on death, and I think it would gleefully undermine the entire concept of violence fetishism--you can have blood and heroism, and you can have blood and excrement, but when you have excrement, heroism goes bye-bye.

* Irredeemable, how I loathe thee.

 

[Abbas-Al-Morim]

I don't really see what's so different about it...

 

[shangrila]

What you're describing isn't anything new and is a general no-no in any kind of fiction. Mary Sues and Gary Stus, or "God Mode" characters, should be avoided no matter what. This is particular in fantasy or sci-fi where physical conflict is more common.

As far as dark fantasy goes, it tends to be more realistic. Crapping your pants in death is a good example, but really anything that paints the world in a darker light will work. War is bad, killing is bad, warriors are only destroyers, etc. It's actually found in more than a few books on the market already.

 

[Abbas-Al-Morim]

I don't know a lot about Conan but I've read quite a lot of Warhammer fiction and I haven't really encountered a lot of godlike characters. I also don't see the similarities with Conan the Barbarian. It's an entirely different world. Conan the Barbarian is classic Sword&Sorcery while Warhammer is Dark Fantasy.

 

[Steerpike]

Yes, I agree regarding Warhammer. There aren't a lot of god-like characters running around.

I disagree with the statement above that Mary Sue characters should be avoided "no matter what." There are plenty of successful books and series featuring a Mary Sue character. If that's what the author wants to write, so be it. The danger, as with most such things, lies in stumbling into it inadvertently, where the author doesn't know what he is writing and doesn't do it well.

 

[Chessie]

To answer Feo's question, writers have the ability to make readers care about characters through the bonds they have with other characters (and their home/environment) at the beginning. There has to be a fine balance between the gore and the love.

 

[shangrila]

Mary Sues are cheap. Being good at everything, never being challenged...it doesn't make for a good character. Even someone like Superman has flaws that challenge him. Can it sell? Sure, Eragon is proof of that. But it doesn't mean any writer should aim for it.

So I stick by what I said; avoid them, no matter what. Having powerful characters is fine but if they're a MAIN character that's never challenged then they're a bad character.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Mary Sues are cheap. Being good at everything, never being challenged...it doesn't make for a good character. Even someone like Superman has flaws that challenge him. Can it sell? Sure, Eragon is proof of that. But it doesn't mean any writer should aim for it.

So I stick by what I said; avoid them, no matter what. Having powerful characters is fine but if they're a MAIN character that's never challenged then they're a bad character.

Some Mary Sue characters are cheap. Not all. Don't fall into the trap where you think that your typical Mary Sues are all bad characters. This has been proven wrong again & again. Most recently by Patrick Rothfuss's character Kvothe, in The Name of the Wind, a runaway hit with two sequels & an upcoming TV series.

All you really need to do is make that character interesting & engaging.

 

[Queshire]

I'm not quite sure what this thread is about. Is there a question? Are we just discussing? Well, I suppose it doesn't matter in the end. Ummmmm..... Well, I don't read much dark fantasy, but some of the stuff the original poster talked about seemed more metal than dark to me. When I think of Dark Fantasy I think of despair, and hardship. I think of a world where humanity isn't the alpha species, not anywhere close. A world where it takes guts and determination just to survive. Personally, I think that to achieve that feel, sometimes less is more. A single human sacrifice done in the dead of night that no one talks about the next day, made to ensure good harvests seems darker to me than some death metal church or something. Well, that's just my opinion.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I suppose we can make a three-way division.

There's dark fantasy, which has a lot of magic and strong elements of horror. Humanity is, as Queshire points out, completely outgunned by the things in the shadows, and the people who have the best chance of competing are often so hopped up on dark magic that they barely qualify as human themselves. Survival in such a setting requires a great many sacrifices, some of them literal.

There's low fantasy, which puts magic outside people's daily experiences. Conflict is typically between groups of normal humans, with a few mages playing their games of power in the background. There's often an emphasis on human greed and corruption, but there's still room for acts of small heroism.

Then there's fantasy that throws more and more sex and blood at you in the hopes of finally finding something you're not desensitized to. Richard K. Morgan, the self-appointed trailblazer of the subgenre, refers to it as "f**k fantasy" (asterisks mine, not his), and seems to think it's the wave of the future. Morgan, at least, is pretty good at making sex and violence feel like a natural and necessary part of his worlds, but most of the other authors I've seen try to do the same thing haven't been able to pull it off properly.

P.S. There is such a thing as metal fantasy, although it's not a full genre. Brutal Legend combines the metal tradition with the heroic fantasy genre, with pretty good results.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Personally, I think that to achieve that feel, sometimes less is more. A single human sacrifice done in the dead of night that no one talks about the next day, made to ensure good harvests seems darker to me than some death metal church or something. Well, that's just my opinion.

I'm with you on this. I think the saying "One death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is statistics" can apply in literature as well. Telling of small sinister incidents that people can sort of relate to may have a lot bigger impact than epic feats of blood and gore, no matter how well described and believable.

 

[Steerpike]

Some Mary Sue characters are cheap. Not all. Don't fall into the trap where you think that your typical Mary Sues are all bad characters. This has been proven wrong again & again. Most recently by Patrick Rothfuss's character Kvothe, in The Name of the Wind, a runaway hit with two sequels & an upcoming TV series.

All you really need to do is make that character interesting & engaging.

Yes, I think this is right. This is another example of why it is bad to present a "rule" as an absolute. Any time you do that you're immediately limiting yourself and giving yourself a narrow viewpoint that doesn't correspond to the breadth of the body of literature out there.

Eragon is a terribly-written book. It's just crap, and the reasons for Eragon being a Mary Sue are all the classic reasons for not having them. The author just didn't know what he was doing. Or so it seems.

On the other hand, you can do a Mary Sue character very well. As noted, many consider Kvothe to be a Mary Sue. For a non-fantasy character, I think I've mentioned before Lee Child's Jack Reacher character. The books are well written and great fun, and without Reacher as a Mary Sue you couldn't have that series (you could have a different one about a guy named Reacher, but it wouldn't be that one).

So, yes, if you want to use a Mary Sue character, fine. Just be sure you know what you are doing and do it well.

 

[shangrila]

Some Mary Sue characters are cheap. Not all. Don't fall into the trap where you think that your typical Mary Sues are all bad characters. This has been proven wrong again & again. Most recently by Patrick Rothfuss's character Kvothe, in The Name of the Wind, a runaway hit with two sequels & an upcoming TV series.

All you really need to do is make that character interesting & engaging.

How is Kvothe a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu)? He's not all powerful. He makes mistakes, and sometimes he's wrong. He doesn't suddenly manifest perfect mastery of an ability just because the story dictates it. He has enemies, and doesn't instantly make friends with everyone he meets. I've only read the 1st book, so maybe I've missed his evolution into Superman sans Kryptonite, but I kind of doubt it. Rothfuss is too good of an author for that.

Mary Sues are characters that face no challenges because they're simply too freaking "awesome" to bother with them. They're the Eragons, Edwards and Richards of the world. They can do no wrong because, well, just because. And I don't see how anything like that could be remotely interesting, since pretty much anything resembling character development would feel contrived.

It seems this might just be me though.

 

[shangrila]

Richard K. Morgan, the self-appointed trailblazer of the subgenre, refers to it as "f**k fantasy" (asterisks mine, not his), and seems to think it's the wave of the future. Morgan, at least, is pretty good at making sex and violence feel like a natural and necessary part of his worlds

Yeah, that was an...interesting read. I didn't pick that book up expecting to read several rather descriptive scenes of sex between two men.