I'm writing a dark fantasy combined with hope core. . . Themes of "a candle in the dark" and "If you are going through Hell, go THROUGH it" are the point of my story.
I like to flip good and evil on their head. In my worlds Virtues tend to be rather in the domain of evil, especially the altruistic virtues. Pondering the story of Pandora's Box is the root of my concept. When Pandora opened the box, all the evils that exist escaped and entered the world. She slammed the box shut, but it was already too late, all the evils already escaped, except for one: Hope. The story, by my interpretation, defines Hope as something evil, and it is a good thing that there is no Hope in the world. I have taken this idea and placed it on Mercy, Pity and Charity as well. They are concepts that place the responsibility for one's fate onto external forces, deminishing ones Agency, and therefor Personhood. Subsequently, the world is very Meritocratic, to a fanatical extend, with the few beacons of light being Elitarian, rather than Elitist, and Elitists are not even the Big Bad guys. The forces of Good drive and assist people to become strong, the forces of Evil keep people dependent on divine intervention and other people's kindness.
@@StarlasAiko- the Greeks actually saw hope as a doubled-edged sword. By some interpretations Pandora saving it from escaping so that humans still have hope is a good thing and by others it was the worst thing she could have done. After all, Zeus himself put hope in the box and the box was his punishment on humankind. The other Olympians contributed all the rest of the evils but he got the biggest. And Pandora was created specifically to unleash that punishment: the gods gifted her with all the highest virtues and then gave her insatiable curiosity. And when Athena breathed life into her the first thing the gods told her - the woman created to be the most curious mind in existence - was that under no circumstances must she open this mysterious unlocked unbelievably beautiful box that she was being given. And then they married her to Epimetheus knowing he woukdn't have the foresight to advise her not to open it. But they intended for her to open the box from the start. This was their vengeance on humanity for Prometheus tricking Zeus into picking bones, fat and skin as the due sacrifice to the gods, letting humans keep all the best bits of the sacrificed animals to feast upon. That and the fire thing. So they intended for her to open the box. They made it impossible for her not to. And hope was in the box because hope is the thing that makes humans endure all the endless evils and suffering that were in the box with it. Without hope, humans would kill themselves and rob the gods of their sport. But it's a double-edged sword, because hope is also what inspires humans to make themselves and the world better even as we're suffering endlessly.
I've always understood Dark Fantasy, to be where the problems, enemies and adversity the heroes face are a reflection of the dark sides of human nature, and at a minimum generally caused by that directly or indirectly.
Yeah, that and some aspects of horror. But genre is always a nebulous thing because its only real purpose is to help fans of a specific style identify entertainment of the same style. So genre is really all about the vibes.
@@JustInTimeWorlds well so far they had: - a dark magic werewolf pack wishing to bring the endless full moon - vampire high soceity massively benefiting from the disappearance of the Sun - after fixing that, they had to move against undead pirates. They were using a risen leviathans body as a ship - Recently they fought against an overzealous purifier church - Now they will have to face an eldritch entity , breaking out from the moon, where it was held prisoner.
Loved this video!!💗💞💖💕 Haven't really seen anyone else talk about just how torn Alucard is between his father and mother's legacies, and the parts about the importance of horror in the genre were such good points! Personally when I think Dark Fantasy, I think Brennan Lee Mulligan. The way he goes about exploring and exposing the "grey" in both he and his players' characters is masterful. I also think his penchant for towing the line between dread and comedy in his worldbuilding is really important to study for aspiring worldbuilders because I've rarely seen others in the genre utilize humor as a storytelling tool.
Humor is a fantastic tool in Dark Fantasy, it adds the metaphorical spoon full of sugar to help the deep thoughts of the genre go down. Glad you enjoyed it :)
I'm a big fan of Glenn Cook's Dark Company stories. The end of the first book has the heroes limping away, but with hope for the future. The end of the series... just kinda stops. But I still loved the characters and the worldbuilding.
I’ve read the first book which was great but I heard the series sags a bit, so I haven’t gone further yet. It’s an amazing demonstration of soft world building done right. Really excellent.
I’m planning on doing a dark fantasy d&d campaign in the Neolithic era of the world it’s set in. The players will canonically be among the first adventurers/wandering heroes/whatever. Suddenly, a lot of standard d&d and fantasy style threats become a hell of a lot more dangerous when the only place you have to return to is a village of a few thousand people that can be incinerated by a dragon overnight. With no grand institutions or armies or whatnot. And the gods being basically just as new to this as mortals due to backstory stuff. Starting from scratch (especially when the enemies haven’t) is a hell of a lot harder than starting with a civilization behind you.
What you've described is Epic Fantasy. It's worth pointing out though that the difference here is one of POV. Retell Lord of the Rings from Faramir's perspective, and you'd have a Dark Fantasy. Epic Fantasy is when there are elements of horror in the setting, but like you said: the characters CAN catch a break. There is still some place the bad guys can't get to, or something they can't do. The villains can't quite operate freely yet, for one reason or another. In LotR it's that Sauron doesn't have the Ring, and some of the heroic characters are packing enough magic to seriously hurt him so he has to operate through minions who aren't anywhere close to his power level. The heroes can catch some breaks because Sauron can't use his own power. But, if you think there aren't horror elements you've not been paying attention. There is some genuinely messed up sh*t in those books.
Hmmmm. It certainly has a lot of dark fantasy elements. There are no obviously good or obviously evil choices and characters are put into position to make terrible decisions. I believe it did actually start originally as a dark fantasy time travelling concept which then morphed into the post apocalyptic game, so that makes sense. Overall, yes, I think if you like Fallout, you probably like Dark Fantasy and that's the primary purpose of genre, to identify what you like :)
Thank you for this video 😊. I love dark fantasy and it’s one of my favorite genres. Sadly, that’s why I believe Castlevania is a very disappointing show. I was willing to accept that it would not be faithful to the original material, but I still expected a good show. Season one in my opinion was the only acceptable one. I thought the largest pitfall for the series besides poor voice acting by some of the characters was the protagonist (Trevor and the Magician I think Sophia is how you spell her name). I understood what they were going for but the dynamic fell flat and they became insufferable as the series continued. I just couldn’t find a reason to care about them but I did care for Dracula and Alucard that were written beautifully. The series is so strange because it has some beautiful lines like the examples you used, but the poor dialogue that made me cringe, such as the demon telling the bishop that he makes God “puck”….Uhhhh okay? Then at the start of season 2 committing one of writing’s biggest sins by having Dracula change his target from the country to killing the whole world off screen…why? What’s the catalyst to killing all of humanity? What made him broaden his web? We don’t know. Anyways I had a hard time stomaching the new characters which motives fell shallow. Only Alucard had depth. Thank you for highlighting the pitfalls of this genre and especially the poor ending to a series that had so much potential. Love your channel ❤
I do feel that good can also win at massive cost. Like when Alucard kills Dracula, that's a massive emotional cost to him. He does it and it's important, but it HURTS. That's the part I think that's important. The victory has to hurt.
I've seen a lot of dark fantasy since my teens: warhammer, dark souls and berserk are just the most well known, sadly a lot of them tend to lack creativity with the narrative and themes. Im kinda ashamed of having been invested into warhammer for so long, as now I realise its a complitely static rip-off war-lore p*rn, no actual story/meaning/goal, just a huge waste of time. The emphasis on edginess for the sake of it feeling mature can also backfire quite a lot... Since instead it just starts to feel childish and self-indulgent. The same problem as with most other fantasy in terms of being very formulaic, it rarely tries to focus on exploring very specific themes that aren't just culturally associated with the genre. Not gonna lie, I have a dark fantasy fatigue at this point ;-P However there is a very recent story that overwhelmed me so much and you could kinda-sorta call it a dark fantasy. But it also breaks so many genre conventions, uses tropes in such a unique/clever way and has such thematic depth that assigning it to a single genre is pretty hard. It's a visual novel - Slay the Princess. Tbh, it revived my faith in the interactive storytelling as a whole, even though there are still a few solid and focused stories out there, like the Plague Tales dilogy, but it has very few fantasy elements.
So, I'd personally classify warhammer as Grimdark (the difference being: Dark Fantasy has some optimism and generally ends on and upward note, grimdark is unrelenting in its pessimism) And I agree with you. Grimdark is not my favorite genre. Dark can be dumb edgy, but normally I at least get a happy or thoughtful resolution out of it.
@@JustInTimeWorlds The point is that all narrative in fantasy franchises like warhammer & 40k is entirely ornamental and irrelevant. They have no direction or end goal with any of their stories, while being dark and edgy on itself isn't a theme you can take seriously. The world in these kinda franchises is very static, every faction is an play asset that can't be destroyed or replaced permanenty because players will lose options. So it's quite ironic: while the setting itself is all about destruction, war and death... None of the factions can be permanently destroyed... Or if they do, everyone would be extremely unhappy about it.
Just because the protagonist is evil doesn't mean he's unlikable he could be cheeky good sense of humor vindictive fantasy maybe that could be the new genre
@@ronecotex true, but they’d need to be super likable. Prince of Thorns was like that and I quit the series after book 1. Of course, I’m just one reader so it doesn’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean there’s no market for it out there :)
Thank you for this video 😊. I love dark fantasy and it’s one of my favorite genres. Sadly, that’s why I believe Castlevania is a very disappointing show. I was willing to accept that it would not be faithful to the original material, but I still expected a good show. Season one in my opinion was the only acceptable one. I thought the largest pitfall for the series besides poor voice acting by some of the characters was the protagonist (Trevor and the Magician I think Sophia is how you spell her name). I understood what they were going for but the dynamic fell flat and they became insufferable as the series continued. I just couldn’t find a reason to care about them but I did care for Dracula and Alucard that were written beautifully. The series is so strange because it has some beautiful lines like the examples you used, but the poor dialogue that made me cringe, such as the demon telling the bishop that he makes God “puck”….Uhhhh okay? Then at the start of season 2 committing one of writing’s biggest sins by having Dracula change his target from the country to killing the whole world off screen…why? What’s the catalyst to killing all of humanity? What made him broaden his web? We don’t know. Anyways I had a hard time stomaching the new characters which motives fell shallow. Only Alucard had depth. Thank you for highlighting the pitfalls of this genre and especially the poor ending to a series that had so much potential. Love your channel ❤
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I loved this deep dive and I’d definitely be interested in more genre-specific videos
I'm writing a dark fantasy combined with hope core. . . Themes of "a candle in the dark" and "If you are going through Hell, go THROUGH it" are the point of my story.
Ah those are some of the best stories :D
I like to flip good and evil on their head. In my worlds Virtues tend to be rather in the domain of evil, especially the altruistic virtues.
Pondering the story of Pandora's Box is the root of my concept. When Pandora opened the box, all the evils that exist escaped and entered the world. She slammed the box shut, but it was already too late, all the evils already escaped, except for one: Hope. The story, by my interpretation, defines Hope as something evil, and it is a good thing that there is no Hope in the world.
I have taken this idea and placed it on Mercy, Pity and Charity as well. They are concepts that place the responsibility for one's fate onto external forces, deminishing ones Agency, and therefor Personhood. Subsequently, the world is very Meritocratic, to a fanatical extend, with the few beacons of light being Elitarian, rather than Elitist, and Elitists are not even the Big Bad guys. The forces of Good drive and assist people to become strong, the forces of Evil keep people dependent on divine intervention and other people's kindness.
@@StarlasAiko- the Greeks actually saw hope as a doubled-edged sword. By some interpretations Pandora saving it from escaping so that humans still have hope is a good thing and by others it was the worst thing she could have done.
After all, Zeus himself put hope in the box and the box was his punishment on humankind. The other Olympians contributed all the rest of the evils but he got the biggest.
And Pandora was created specifically to unleash that punishment: the gods gifted her with all the highest virtues and then gave her insatiable curiosity. And when Athena breathed life into her the first thing the gods told her - the woman created to be the most curious mind in existence - was that under no circumstances must she open this mysterious unlocked unbelievably beautiful box that she was being given.
And then they married her to Epimetheus knowing he woukdn't have the foresight to advise her not to open it.
But they intended for her to open the box from the start. This was their vengeance on humanity for Prometheus tricking Zeus into picking bones, fat and skin as the due sacrifice to the gods, letting humans keep all the best bits of the sacrificed animals to feast upon.
That and the fire thing.
So they intended for her to open the box. They made it impossible for her not to.
And hope was in the box because hope is the thing that makes humans endure all the endless evils and suffering that were in the box with it. Without hope, humans would kill themselves and rob the gods of their sport.
But it's a double-edged sword, because hope is also what inspires humans to make themselves and the world better even as we're suffering endlessly.
I've always understood Dark Fantasy, to be where the problems, enemies and adversity the heroes face are a reflection of the dark sides of human nature, and at a minimum generally caused by that directly or indirectly.
Yeah, that and some aspects of horror. But genre is always a nebulous thing because its only real purpose is to help fans of a specific style identify entertainment of the same style. So genre is really all about the vibes.
Great video, earned my sub
That sounds like a blast :D Hope the end is satisfactory for all.
@@JustInTimeWorlds well so far they had:
- a dark magic werewolf pack wishing to bring the endless full moon
- vampire high soceity massively benefiting from the disappearance of the Sun
- after fixing that, they had to move against undead pirates. They were using a risen leviathans body as a ship
- Recently they fought against an overzealous purifier church
- Now they will have to face an eldritch entity , breaking out from the moon, where it was held prisoner.
Loved this video!!💗💞💖💕
Haven't really seen anyone else talk about just how torn Alucard is between his father and mother's legacies, and the parts about the importance of horror in the genre were such good points!
Personally when I think Dark Fantasy, I think Brennan Lee Mulligan. The way he goes about exploring and exposing the "grey" in both he and his players' characters is masterful. I also think his penchant for towing the line between dread and comedy in his worldbuilding is really important to study for aspiring worldbuilders because I've rarely seen others in the genre utilize humor as a storytelling tool.
Humor is a fantastic tool in Dark Fantasy, it adds the metaphorical spoon full of sugar to help the deep thoughts of the genre go down.
Glad you enjoyed it :)
I'm a big fan of Glenn Cook's Dark Company stories. The end of the first book has the heroes limping away, but with hope for the future. The end of the series... just kinda stops. But I still loved the characters and the worldbuilding.
I’ve read the first book which was great but I heard the series sags a bit, so I haven’t gone further yet. It’s an amazing demonstration of soft world building done right. Really excellent.
I’m planning on doing a dark fantasy d&d campaign in the Neolithic era of the world it’s set in. The players will canonically be among the first adventurers/wandering heroes/whatever. Suddenly, a lot of standard d&d and fantasy style threats become a hell of a lot more dangerous when the only place you have to return to is a village of a few thousand people that can be incinerated by a dragon overnight. With no grand institutions or armies or whatnot. And the gods being basically just as new to this as mortals due to backstory stuff. Starting from scratch (especially when the enemies haven’t) is a hell of a lot harder than starting with a civilization behind you.
I'm preparing my 1st game session of Symbaroum, so this video was literally just in time
I knew reading that Toyota Way book would come in useful :D Hope your game session goes well!
Fantastic as always Marie! Yes, I have watched Castlevania and absolutely loved it
Thanks :) We'll see what Netflix says about the footage and see which one I release to the public :D Glad you enjoyed the content anyway!
Your videos are amazing!!! And they have been very helpful for my projects.
I would love to see a video of yours about low stakes stories.
I'll add it to the list :) Might be the motivation I need to read Legends and Lattes which has been sitting in my TBR pile for a while now.
please do more episodes on dark fantasy and grim dark fantasy.
Marie is the GOAT thank you for these
You’re very welcome ☺️
hahaha your restaging the scene with a filter is absolute gold
Thanks :D
If I had to go with dark fantasy I would prefer hidden Darkness that way you can get a break
What you've described is Epic Fantasy. It's worth pointing out though that the difference here is one of POV. Retell Lord of the Rings from Faramir's perspective, and you'd have a Dark Fantasy. Epic Fantasy is when there are elements of horror in the setting, but like you said: the characters CAN catch a break. There is still some place the bad guys can't get to, or something they can't do. The villains can't quite operate freely yet, for one reason or another. In LotR it's that Sauron doesn't have the Ring, and some of the heroic characters are packing enough magic to seriously hurt him so he has to operate through minions who aren't anywhere close to his power level. The heroes can catch some breaks because Sauron can't use his own power. But, if you think there aren't horror elements you've not been paying attention. There is some genuinely messed up sh*t in those books.
Very useful
I have a dark fantasy cyberpunk story on the back burner.
Great info
Would you consider a Fallout Dark Fantasy
Hmmmm. It certainly has a lot of dark fantasy elements. There are no obviously good or obviously evil choices and characters are put into position to make terrible decisions. I believe it did actually start originally as a dark fantasy time travelling concept which then morphed into the post apocalyptic game, so that makes sense.
Overall, yes, I think if you like Fallout, you probably like Dark Fantasy and that's the primary purpose of genre, to identify what you like :)
Thank you for this video 😊. I love dark fantasy and it’s one of my favorite genres. Sadly, that’s why I believe Castlevania is a very disappointing show. I was willing to accept that it would not be faithful to the original material, but I still expected a good show. Season one in my opinion was the only acceptable one. I thought the largest pitfall for the series besides poor voice acting by some of the characters was the protagonist (Trevor and the Magician I think Sophia is how you spell her name). I understood what they were going for but the dynamic fell flat and they became insufferable as the series continued. I just couldn’t find a reason to care about them but I did care for Dracula and Alucard that were written beautifully. The series is so strange because it has some beautiful lines like the examples you used, but the poor dialogue that made me cringe, such as the demon telling the bishop that he makes God “puck”….Uhhhh okay? Then at the start of season 2 committing one of writing’s biggest sins by having Dracula change his target from the country to killing the whole world off screen…why? What’s the catalyst to killing all of humanity? What made him broaden his web? We don’t know. Anyways I had a hard time stomaching the new characters which motives fell shallow. Only Alucard had depth. Thank you for highlighting the pitfalls of this genre and especially the poor ending to a series that had so much potential. Love your channel ❤
Dark Fantasy? Original pre-Grimm Brothers and pre-Anderson Fairytales! Especially the Slavic ones...
Fairytales are indeed OG dark fantasy :D Man some of those stories would make your toes curl in.
Good can win, but only by corrupting itself and taking on the essence of Evil.
I do feel that good can also win at massive cost. Like when Alucard kills Dracula, that's a massive emotional cost to him. He does it and it's important, but it HURTS. That's the part I think that's important. The victory has to hurt.
I love dark fantasy. Elden Ring, Van Helsing, and Warhammer the old world (grimdark).
I feel like Conan could be often considered dark fantasy.
I've seen a lot of dark fantasy since my teens: warhammer, dark souls and berserk are just the most well known, sadly a lot of them tend to lack creativity with the narrative and themes.
Im kinda ashamed of having been invested into warhammer for so long, as now I realise its a complitely static rip-off war-lore p*rn, no actual story/meaning/goal, just a huge waste of time.
The emphasis on edginess for the sake of it feeling mature can also backfire quite a lot... Since instead it just starts to feel childish and self-indulgent.
The same problem as with most other fantasy in terms of being very formulaic, it rarely tries to focus on exploring very specific themes that aren't just culturally associated with the genre.
Not gonna lie, I have a dark fantasy fatigue at this point ;-P
However there is a very recent story that overwhelmed me so much and you could kinda-sorta call it a dark fantasy. But it also breaks so many genre conventions, uses tropes in such a unique/clever way and has such thematic depth that assigning it to a single genre is pretty hard. It's a visual novel - Slay the Princess.
Tbh, it revived my faith in the interactive storytelling as a whole, even though there are still a few solid and focused stories out there, like the Plague Tales dilogy, but it has very few fantasy elements.
So, I'd personally classify warhammer as Grimdark (the difference being: Dark Fantasy has some optimism and generally ends on and upward note, grimdark is unrelenting in its pessimism) And I agree with you. Grimdark is not my favorite genre. Dark can be dumb edgy, but normally I at least get a happy or thoughtful resolution out of it.
@@JustInTimeWorlds The point is that all narrative in fantasy franchises like warhammer & 40k is entirely ornamental and irrelevant. They have no direction or end goal with any of their stories, while being dark and edgy on itself isn't a theme you can take seriously.
The world in these kinda franchises is very static, every faction is an play asset that can't be destroyed or replaced permanenty because players will lose options.
So it's quite ironic: while the setting itself is all about destruction, war and death... None of the factions can be permanently destroyed... Or if they do, everyone would be extremely unhappy about it.
What do you think about a story when the protagonist and the indigenous are both just pure evil
Everyone sucks? The problem with that is I do want to root for someone to win. And if everyone is the asshole, why am I reading the book?
Just because the protagonist is evil doesn't mean he's unlikable he could be cheeky good sense of humor vindictive fantasy maybe that could be the new genre
@@ronecotex true, but they’d need to be super likable. Prince of Thorns was like that and I quit the series after book 1. Of course, I’m just one reader so it doesn’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean there’s no market for it out there :)
Thank you for this video 😊. I love dark fantasy and it’s one of my favorite genres. Sadly, that’s why I believe Castlevania is a very disappointing show. I was willing to accept that it would not be faithful to the original material, but I still expected a good show. Season one in my opinion was the only acceptable one. I thought the largest pitfall for the series besides poor voice acting by some of the characters was the protagonist (Trevor and the Magician I think Sophia is how you spell her name). I understood what they were going for but the dynamic fell flat and they became insufferable as the series continued. I just couldn’t find a reason to care about them but I did care for Dracula and Alucard that were written beautifully. The series is so strange because it has some beautiful lines like the examples you used, but the poor dialogue that made me cringe, such as the demon telling the bishop that he makes God “puck”….Uhhhh okay? Then at the start of season 2 committing one of writing’s biggest sins by having Dracula change his target from the country to killing the whole world off screen…why? What’s the catalyst to killing all of humanity? What made him broaden his web? We don’t know. Anyways I had a hard time stomaching the new characters which motives fell shallow. Only Alucard had depth. Thank you for highlighting the pitfalls of this genre and especially the poor ending to a series that had so much potential. Love your channel ❤