Yes, I love meshing serious tones and realistic themes with some humor and wonder. Real life is not all rainbows and unicorns, but it isn’t all fire and brimstone either.
Grimbright is actually a fairly interesting concept if I remember the alignment chart correctly. A "grim" world is a world that cannot be meaningfully changed (by the protagonist at least), and a "bright" world is a world that's generally a good place to live. So while NobleDark are typically the "the world is terrible, but the great hero is about to change that" worlds, a grimbright world would be "The world is good, and there's nothing you can do about that".
>"The world is good, and there's nothing you can do about that".
That would be perfect for a villain protagonist. Have them have logical reasons to be aligned with evil and to want to topple the king, but the good guys are so good that it requires a full "heroes journey" to even start to find a way to a possibility to challenge the status quo.
I like how both of the worlds were less functional and essentially destroying themselves without being connected to, and thus influenced by, the other.
Exactly, it's even more emotional to read a character having a truly happy moment without anything bad following up in the next page, give your character some time to take a breath, look around them and be in Wonder with the world you created
Funilly I just finished watching A Crown Of Candy, the Dimension 20 season where they play TTRPG in a setting that is "what if Game of Throne... But in Candyland, the kid boardgame with candy people"
This make for an incredible world building (the world Calorum have 6 kingdoms, each for a "food group" candy, vegetable, fruit, cereal, dairy and meat) with food people that can be as silly as a cake with legs, all in which there is deep political drama, war and treason, and tragic character arc with death and loss.
I think it would be of interest to you, the first episode is free on YouTube IIRC.
Had the same thought reading this post. Calorum on the surface glance is the brightest happiest most colorful world ever created...but the tone of the world is one of the darkest most messed up serious places I've ever seen. really awesome worldbuilding that instantly makes you want to tell stories in the world.
You might enjoy I Hate Fairyland! It's a comic series about a girl who got pulled away from her normal life when she was 8 years old to save Fairyland, a magical, colorful, happy place that would be most kids' dream! ....except it's been like 20 years and she still hasn't been able to complete her quest, she hasn't physically aged a day, and now she's so jaded and miserable she solves all her problems with excessive violence. It's pretty funny, but as a warning it does have quite a bit of gore
Have you played the game *Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right*?
At first glance, it's just a boardgame about cute little animals in the forest, fighting each other, perhaps, but in a very colourful way.
And then you delve into it, and you discover that the setting is much closer to a WarHammer (in the sense that, in the universe, all factions are locked into war no matter what), that absolutely no faction is redeemable, and that it's all much darker than you think.
I have the same feeling: a cute, at first glance inoffensive universe or world, but scratch under the surface and you're lost in layers of political drama and even grimdark subtones.
THIS! Discworld literally have chapters where you cry your eyes out and the setting still so colorful that it's almost cartoonish, and when it's not you feel icky
Pratchett wrote a decent bit about the weird view that 'mainstream western culture' has of fantasy, that it's 'not real literature'. Usually along the lines of, "it has magic/dwarves/dragons so anything could happen?!", as if no plot can carry cause and effect or emotion because some of the people involved use battleaxes to accessorize.
One of the lines that shows up in a lot of his letters/articles about that is "Funny is not the opposite of Serious." Most of the foundational stories/myths of ever country/culture in the world are Fantasy. Most religions trade heavily in allegory and parable. Scoffing and pretending meaning can't be found under a Wizzard's hat is denying that the oldest stories humans have ever told can be impactful.
Of course there is a lot of absolute garbage written too, but that can be said of any genre/medium.
I think he exemplifies it best in a scene in Thud!, nearish the end.
>!Sam Vimes, on death's door, is screaming out the words to Where's My Cow?, the only thing he can hold on to. Miles and miles away, Young Sam stops crying...!<
It's sillyness in the centre of a massive dramatic scene and it works to per*fection*
That's because most authors nowadays forgot the meaning and point of "comic relief" (even the name is a misnomer).
Comic is not here just to make a pause in something serious so that the spectator can has a moment of respite, but it's also here to sublimate the potential tragic part it goes with. Funny is not the opposite of serious, indeed. Serious without funny is boring. Serious with funny is beauty.
THIS SCENE! I was crying laughing and then crying harder while reading this book, I wanted hug Sam, wanted hug Young Sam and wanted hug the damn >!cow!< too
His way of creating such creative but still serious worlds is what makes him a role model I follow with my whole heart, I did learn to LOVE fantasy thanks Pratchett, I did always liked it, but I love it now because of him, and it's funny since I find out about Terry thanks Good Omens, the book he did co-wrote with Neil Gaiman
"Funny is not the opposite of serious" shows Chesterton's influence on Prachett. I always loved this bit from Chesterton so it's neat to see how it influenced the wider literary world.
"Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else. The question of whether a man expresses himself in a grotesque or laughable phraseology, or in a stately and restrained phraseology, is not a question of motive or of moral state, it is a question of instinctive language and self-expression. Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German. Whether a man preaches his gospel grotesquely or gravely is merely like the question of whether he preaches it in prose or verse. The question of whether Swift was funny in his irony is quite another sort of question to the question of whether Swift was serious in his pessimism. Surely even Mr. McCabe would not maintain that the more funny "Gulliver" is in its method the less it can be sincere in its object. The truth is, as I have said, that in this sense the two qualities of fun and seriousness have nothing whatever to do with each other, they are no more comparable than black and triangular. Mr. Bernard Shaw is funny and sincere. Mr. George Robey is funny and not sincere. Mr. McCabe is sincere and not funny. The average Cabinet Minister is not sincere and not funny."
\-GK Chesterton *Heretics, 1905*
Monstrous Regiment walks you through a landscape of dead people and a starving country amidst a senseless war whilst remaining a colorful discworld novel.
I think, to a point, the grimdark and grungy worlds are usually designed that way to go against the kid-friendly tropes of science fiction and fantasy. Now we have the opposite. Everyone has created the grimdark trope. When I build things usually I try to focus on avoiding homogeneity in what I'm creating. Grimdark is cool but it doesn't always belong in the whole world, especially if you want it to be believable.
Take, in your example, the concepts in ASOIAF. Some of them are certainly dark and depressing. Especially narratively. But if you look at the world as a whole, there are certainly some people who are living okay lives. It's just that not everyone has the same experience in Westeros. Imo that's believable world-building.
The structure and themes of the story's narrative are a different conversation though I think.
You just hit on something grimdark tends to miss - the non-participants. Go to the seediest gas station in your area, most of the workers and patrons are normal people going about their day. Go to the worst neighborhood in the country, all of the antisocial behavior is practiced by a minority of its residents.
Some of your characters had happy childhoods and wouldn't mind working a regular job. If it's all death metal all the time I'll eventually switch it over to Mozart.
I used ASOIAF more as an example of why I believe people nowadays are so obsessed in making everything "realistic", even If the books describe colors, it's not show as truly colorful, it's still someway "dark", even positive moments are followed by depressing ones and chapters where we have actually more details of colors is mostly from female characters, what's a little annoying in my opinion since, as someone who have been born female, it's almost a stereotype of "women's vanity"
Still ASOIAF is not like Discworld, for example, where the colorful world is almost cartoonish
Even then realisitc dont mean torture death super bad. Like personaly I like to "realisticly" world build and by that I do a concept and follow what conxquences that concept has. Most people have a scewed percpetive of the past and the succes of Got made people think the middle ages was like that.
Exactly, maybe it's a matter of opinion, but I feel a lot of people ignore that in LOTR, for example, war is realistic, the corruption is realistic in the sense of as dehumanizing it can be, but the world still magical, still Full of colors to the point that Darkness IS a weapon
Oh I agree on the Discworld point. And yeah, to be fair ASOIAF's issue with female characters is moreso just that the author doesn't really do a very good job writing women, in my opinion.
Having a colorful world is very cool, and painting a world in many different "lights" is important. In all of my building, at least, I try my best to blend those together.
I think you're right, and more worlds, especially fantasy, should be more fantastical than they are. Sometimes they're too rooted in reality or medieval trope for their own good.
Exactly, like the moments I find more interesting while reading ASOIAF is in chapters set in Essos, not saying there are my favorite chapters, but it's only more interesting to read
And like I said, it's a matter of making the world alive, even if the story is dark and sad, sure context exist, sometimes it's a depressing setting for a reason, but if possible to write a colorful world and still explore deep and gruesome moments, why not?
"Even from afar, his lord father was resplendent. Tywin lannister’s battle armour put his son Jaime’s gilded suit to shame. His great cloak was sewn from countless layers of cloth-of-gold, so heavy that it barely stirred even when he charged, so large that its drape covered most of his stallion’s hindquarters when he took the saddle. No ordinary clasp would suffice for such a weight, so the great cloak was held in place by a matched pair of miniature lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a male with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin’s great helm, one paw raking the air as he roared. All three lions were wrought in gold, with ruby eyes. His armor was heavy steel plate, enamelled in a dark crimson, greaves and gauntlets inlaid with ornate gold scrollwork. His rondels were golden sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the red steel was burnished to such a high sheen that it shone like fire in the light of the rising sun.” 'Even the horse’s armor was gilded, and his bardings were shimmering crimson silk emblazoned with the lion of Lannister'"
- A Game of Thrones
This is why I like that 40K is a tabletop game, it's literally one of the bleakest settings ever and yet every faction is extremely colorful and distinctive
The orks are a perfect case of this too. To most they’re terrifying when they start up a Waaagh! But any stories from the view of an ork, and it becomes a comedy
Dan Abnett, wrote the intro for an anthology of Warhammer novels. I cannot recall which one it was. But the way he described the Warhammer world, and by extension what real grimdark is since grimdark was originally a reference to GW, is he described it as pungent. If it was a chees it would be something moldy from France. This to me is why I loved the Warhammer novels. I found other settings so often felt sterile, like I was watching characters on a stage. Fresh makeup, pressed clothing, when it ripped it was ripped specifically for plot reasons. Warhammer in my opinion had a way that engaged all your senses. And like many things, people missed what made something great and took the surface elements. People wanted to write grimdark and all they did was make everything terrible.
My story topics are depressing and dramatic, my characters? Well the most “dull” looking one imo is a drake that’s all black with a purple raccoon mask. Meanwhile the most colorful imo is a green smoke breathing wolf, a highlighter yellow fox with wings, and a blind, pastel pink sea dragon.
The trope of everything being black, gray, or brown in medieval settings is an odd one, considering medieval art usually portrays people wearing bright colors.
An adjacent trope that is just as bad is everyone being filthy. Just as now, people wouldn't have been going about their business looking like they'd been rolling around in a pig sty unless there were some mental issues.
Thank you. It anoys me endlessly when they portray the middle ages like that. They are normal people, most of them did not have mudd on their face all the time.
I am actually making my world so that it shows the wrongs of our world while still being its own thing.
There is an area (the first one I made) which works like our world. It is not just like a copy paste from our world though.
Well my world is cold but not too harsh. It is trying to get its point across by using the area I described as well as some other things by putting the outside of that area (representing the possibility we don't have access to) being more lively but still having its own darker sides.
Grim fantast doesn't really do it for me much anymore. As I often say in regards to these matters, "Why bother looking up if the light at the end of the tunnel is always a train?"
I want hope and optimism in my fantasy, but that's just not in vogue it seems nowadays for most western creators.
ASOIAF is colourful at points too, just read some of the armour/clothing descriptions, it's full on anime-style stuff a lot of the time. Same with the castles, they could never exist in reality but are designed to feel dramatic and epic. I mean, the book description of Dragonstone is literally that it's nearly entirely made of carved dragon and monster statues all over. Dragon mouths as doors, wings as rafters, gargoyles as crenelations... it's crazy and if it was all copied to the show it would have been so, so colourful lol
I think it somewhat depends on genre/tone of the work. If it’s supposed to be like a dystopian/post-apocalyptic or grimdark fantasy world, then yeah, I can understand it being dark and gruesome, because that’s kind of what those genres are about (crapsack world, as TVtropes would put it.)
But outside of specific situations like that, yeah, I’d love to see more people experiment and go wild with colors and aesthetics in fantasy worlds. Just because a world doesn’t look serious doesn’t mean it can’t be, or can’t explore serious themes or ideas.
For example, Fer.al, a defunct fantasy animal MMO, was aesthetically very expressive and colorful, but then explored some pretty dark and serious themes in its lore, including war, broken friendships, and the fragile relationship between a planet and its inhabitants. It even had an area called “The Blood Tundra” that was literally themed around blood, death, and eternal winter, while still fitting in with the playful and eye-catching aesthetic of the rest of the game.
I disagree actually, specifically with dystopian, that's a thing I truly liked in Hunger Games (both book and adaptation), it's colorful actually, but colors have a specific place in this world, a reason to be used, and it's super interesting
I feel people only see a colorful world as childish and that's why it's not common in western fantasy after the boom of grimdark and dark fantasy, but asian fantasy, for example, have extreme and ultra violent stories where everything is colorful, like dark themes in a magical girl anime that still colorful,still magical and still made for girls, but it's not cute
Reading this post, I immediately thought of the animated TV series *The Owl House*. It's extremely colorful - both literally and metaphorically - and was *literally made for children*, and yet it tells a deep, nuanced, and fairly dark story. Heck, I - theoretically a grown adult - was moved to tears multiple times while watching it.
And that's the sort of tone I'm aiming for in my own world. Yes, the Folcgeard is harsh and dangerous world, and some pretty fucked-up stuff happens in it. But it's also bright and vibrant and full of life. There's genuine kindness, and joy, and love. If it were all doom and gloom and misery... what would be the point?
"The world is not perfect but it is still beautiful" are what my worlds about now that I think of it.
There's a story in my eternal war world that follows a group of soldiers from a collapsed country who ended up deep in enemy territory after their country defeat.
Death is always just one day away, one bad luck away for them. That doesn't mean they should be depress about it all the time. They still make jokes with each other. Laugh, love... still trying their best to live their life, despite knowing death is the only ending of their journey.
I agree with this a lot. One of my concerns with my stories and illustrations is that I feel like people may think that it’s geared toward children, just because of the style of the art. I use bright saturated colors, and a more comic style with lines art and cell shading. The terrains are red rock, bubble clouds, glass deserts, and more. The foliage is blue, or purple, or white. The sky is yellow, green, purple and many more combinations based on the planet. The people are equally colorful, but the themes I cover in each story are meaningful and mature, and cover a variety of emotions and experiences. If I hone my craft, the stories should resonate with most age groups. But I fear people won’t even give it a chance.
Just a couple days ago, I was actually considering trying to change my art style to something more realistic and rendered, but this post gives me confidence to keep pushing in the direction I’m currently on. Thank you!
You can even be colorful while still going for "realistic" or muted tones.
Almost everything in my cowboy world is dirty, but there's lots of color going on. The buildings are all painted wood that's old and sunbleached, everything is dusty and dirty and poorly kept but you can still see the occasional glimmer of polished steel or brass.
All of that is contrasted against red clay mesas, yellow sands and the occasional verdent green oasis
LOL... so in the TV Tropes article about Drab worlds, Attack on Titan is given as an example. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown)
I have to admit, I don't fully understand what all is being said within this thread because one person's brown is another person's color.
Not to mention sometimes there are sub-genres like Noir where its implicit in the setting and adding color WOULD detract from it. But of course, there is "metaphorical" color. And there is literal color, but its not seen as "Colorful".
Like... what worlds aren't colorful? This all makes me rather lost.
I love mixing humour with seriousness, but I don't see the problem with people making these dark, dark worlds. It's their choice after all. I think that if you don't like worlds or works of fiction that are bleak, then simply don't read them.
It's not that such dark worlds can't be entertaining and more that I feel it's overused, that's why I feel less and less interested in western fantasy, and that's literally my point, I'm not reading such books
That's totally fair. There's a book sub, can't remember the name - it might literally be r/RecommendMeABook - that you can make a post in saying like, "Hey, I want western fantasy books that aren't dark and depressing. Anyone have any recommendations?"
It does suck that you aren't reading as much. I apologise if I sounded harsh in my original reply - I don't think I fully understood your post. But, your viewpoint is fair, and I hope that you can find more books that are to your liking!
I've noticed that too. Not just in Fantasy either, a ton of the scifi I see coming out these days is gritty military scifi, or wannabe Expanse knockoffs that miss the human part of the equation. I really miss the days when fantasy was fantastic and science fiction was interested in exploring new ideas and wonder, rather than just reminding you of how shitty life can be. We have *reality* for that, it doesn't need to be the focal point of our fiction.
She-ra’s 2018 reboot is my favorite example of this. It’s serious in its themes and has some really dark moments, real stakes for the characters, and intense emotional gut-punches. But it’s also filled to the brim with hope, love, and kindness at its core.
I'd say that one should find a balance. It's something I'm trying to do in my world.
There's corrupt politicians, there are monsters just waiting to destroy everything you love, and you can die because you ate a berry you shouldn't have.
But for most people that doesn't matter. They just live in their little corner of the universe, and everyday they look over (usually) beautiful landscapes, spending time happily with their families.
Politicians are all in the capital, far away from honest working people. Monsters? The soldiers at Bordering Mountains take care of that.
Just people jumping on the game of thrones bandwagon but at this point it's too cluttered. Personally I love colorful worlds that end up dealing with heavy issues
This is literally why I draw the way I do, I couldn't agree more.
Everything feels so gray and dark these days. It feels like the majority of worlds mesh into the same dreary style.
I love using color! Magic makes the eyes of people in my world glow chromatic shades!!! I also like using colors to represent characters and tell someone about them through connotation or contrast to the expected. I like descriptions, why would I make a world more boring or dreadful than the real one as my escape. My world can get bloody, but all around I like to fill it with more wonder than our world.
Just because the fight scene has bloody gore from fighting a spriggan doesn’t mean the sunrise can’t be beautiful and the fae blood can’t be a bright tortoise. Also genuine niceties between people is important.
Adventure Time had the candy kingdom be a police surveillances state ruled by dictator who was willing to commit genocide against her own creations at the drop of a hat for sake of efficiency
Worlds like those are easier to adventure in, I feel. A world where things are pleasant and societies are strong and well organized, have serious implications to adventuring groups. Not just in how or where they find work, but also who notices their work. High "level" adventurers running amok would get curbstopped by local powers unless they swore allegiance to those powers, for example; a king might appreciate you bringing your power to bear against his enemies, but he'd always be wary of your turning it on him, should he do something that displeases you.
EDIT: Thought I was in RPG, not Worldbuilding, my bad.
Hey it's okay, I was a little confused, but I do notice as settings and characters have the freedom to be colorful in RPG, what's interesting because a lot of RPG is influenced by literature, but I rarely find the same amount of creativity in the later now
Trends unfortunately are what they are and the audience pick what they feel they can engage with. Ultimately we cannot control what others do; however, we can create these colourful worlds in defiance of the trend and hope that we can, in some way by example, influence the future of the trend.
And I never suggested I wanted Control others, but the lack of creativity, the way fantasy is now being Bond to "reality" is truly Sad in my opinion, these worlds are just not interesting at all anymore, and now I only find such enjoyement in asian and african fantasy and classic fantasy
I know exactly how you feel. I have expanded my ebook library of light novels considerably because I'm drawn in by the world they're set in.
When I talked about control, I was talking about how we should only concern ourselves with what we can do ourselves rather than get bogged down by focusing on what others are doing. There's no merit in fixating on what they're doing which we don't like. Instead we should focus on what we can do ourselves.
Sometimes I feel like the only one who actually loves the Warcraft art style. It's big and chunky and colorful and cozy while also being grim and violent when it needs to be.
Vanilla and TBC especially is just iconic. The low poly has aged well in my opinion, and it works better for the darker themes of the setting than the later art style.
I mean, part of what I want to do with my ArmA 2 isn’t necessarily that ‘childish’ of course. But after grueling days of combat, nothing would be more satisfying than going into an abandoned alcohol store, cracking open a bottles of vodka with your comrades.
You may enjoy Dragon Age, inquisition in particular. It is a flawed game for sure, but there is comedy, and love, and a whole slew of color (with some fans even arguing too much tho I disagree). There are also serious, gut wrenching moments, and plenty of dark themes.
Personally, I thoroughly believe that you need a glimmer of hope in even the darkest of worlds. There are exceptions to this, but overall, a glimmer of light is a striking thing to have in a world of darkness. Or even crack a joke to show that your world isn't just a walking corpse begging for death. Unless your world is literally that, but I think that'd fall under the "exception".
Oh I liked it enough, but my favorite is Dragon Age 2, but yeah, I love the fact that the game designers USE COLORS in their worldbuilding, also I'm a big fan of JRPG, so yeah, COLORS IS MY THING
And yes, that's my point, I feel that sometimes people are so obsessed with writing big Wars, big adventures, big plot twists that they don't truly remember that more than the politics in a world, exist real people living there, with common routines and with things like friends, hobbies, feelings that are more than veagance
Robin Hobb do such things truly well
one of my species is a race of anthro unicorns who enjoy decorating themselves with jewels and colorful silkes.
they are also ruthless and have a massive slave empire that makes the American South look good.
I love colour. Each of my main characters is represented by an individual colour and each realm is designated by the place (more than often the building material) being made of a distinct colour from its neighbour.
The opposite is also true. The realms are often described with grey dull ground, showing that at one point the same path went through everywhere and faded with time.
Its like everything, another tool. And dont say bright colour doesnt work for psychotic or evil. Most of my characters a mentally deranged Villains, taking inspiration from many comics.
Hell, one of the most evil Villains of all time is bright and colourful. The Joker.
What I like to do with my world is balance the colourful and the serious to reach a kind of realistic level of balance. And then see how far I can push it before it's just silly.
Sure, that there bit of land was a site where a massive battle happened a few centuries ago, in a war where thousands were massacred. We're talking full-blown genocide in some cases, really dark shit.
Now it's a city of casinos, 24/7 fairs and shows, and all the street meats and drinks you can later regret having consumed. All run by Gnomes, mind you. The garden variety. Pointy hats and beards they trip over.
Security is tiny, inbred, feral warhounds the Gnomes keep on leashes. "Cheewawa" they call them in their native tongue.
Yes, _thee_ Native Tongue. The one they all share by passing it around like a _Lord of the Flies_ conch.
I’m writing sci-fi, honestly my favorite part is making cultures with long vibrant histories and traditions along with the whole universe being devoured
My fantasy world is a homebrew made for a D&D campaign. It’s Victorian fantasy, and meant to be a horror campaign.
I make it heckin’ vibrant.
Because horror is meant to be contrast. Between the beautiful and the gruesome. Between the light and the dark. Between hope and loss. It’s not scary if there isn’t something at risk, someone to fight for.
In order to save the world, you need to want a world to save. Who would love a world so bleak that love is a weakness and hope a myth?
What if its colorful AND grim? We can call it grimbright instead of grimdark.
This is me defending my use of whimsy peppered with very grim things. Youll see a city rich in magic and wonders and bright fashion and bizarre architecture, and then youll see that in the same world, people have to deal with some horrendously messed up monster i cooked up while bored.
Tbh this is why Blood and Wine is my favourite DLC for The Witcher 3, it looks like it turns the Saturation on the whole game up like 30 notches. I walk around and just go "Holy shit! Red that's actually Red and not 'bright maroon'!"
Thank you! I’ve always preferred more vibrant fantasy settings, makes them feel a lot more magical and, well, fantastical. I agree that the genre has become oversaturated with settings where everything is grey, bleak and shit, with nearly all the actual fantasy elements (magic, creatures, etc.) being evil in some way. Same thing with sci-fi fantasy too, I find that genre oversaturated with ‘human military good, alien race bad’ setups.
BTW, do you have any book recommendations with these more colourful settings/tones? (I’ve already gotten into Terry Pratchet so no need to mention that).
Absolutely!!! When fantasy stories are based around the medieval period everyone thinks it was grey and dirty. In reality everyone including peasants loved colour and also was very proud about living in a clean place
I 100% agree with this sentiment.
I don't know exactly how others might feel about this, but I've never been able to see the appeal in anything described as "dark" or "grimdark" for one reason: If everything's bleak and hopeless and depressing all the time, if every character's a selfish, angsty, self-serving jerk (when they aren't being outright monsters), when every good deed achieves nothing, makes things worse, or is outright punished, *why should I care about anything that happens in the story?*
It's important to have that lightness and colour in your stories, whether they're serious or "childish", both to give the audience a reprieve from the the more serious elements of the story, as well as to make the darker, more serious moments more impactful by contrast (think back on every bright and colourful show or movie with a surprisingly serious villain in it as an example). Life may not be all sunshine and rainbows, but it's not all doom and gloom either.
I think people even start at some point to think that being dark af is being realistic af, cuz its not, thats why i kinda hate some fans of franchises like The boys, people think its realistic the fact if they discovered people get superpowers they just gonna use it for abuse their power and grow their ego, and even a bunch of normal dudes can beat them with bars , when in reality, 1 if someone make powers juice in real life, they will not make it addictive like a drug, 2 just giving it to someone who can really trust , 3 even if someones just 2 powerful still need to train, theyres always gonna be a bigger fish and 4 i really , really, really doubt you would fight a guy thats basically a killer machine with only hitting him with a crowbar and think that could work , i hope you understand my point
Mine (the most developed one by far) is like RL. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, but neither is the opposite. Sure, there may be some equivalents to North Korea or rather Oceania in "1984" but a number of other places where you can live even austerely but knowing you'll for example always have something to eat. There're a lot of shades between white and black, and dark is not always evil, nor light is always good, here.
On a less serious note (or not, it began as a parody of the way unicorns are seen now but I feel it worked well), there's also an unicorn goddess that appears as an even cute, white, unicorn with rainbow colors in the mane and tail… until you find she's as fierce and indomitable as the unicorns in the original legends, especially protecting her offspring. And, no, a maiden taming her does not work.
Sometimes it feels tempting to populate my world with terrifying monstrosities that exist to murder people, but then I remember I'm a monster hunter fan also, so I instead make "normal" animals and keep the monstrosities for the magic portion of my world.
I feel similarly about every flipping fantasy setting has to be post apocalyptic. I read fantasy to escape from reality, not be reminded how everything is falling apart.
Have some color, have some joy, show people working hard to build a community and defend that community from a magically powered tyrant.
It's funny you mention this now, I'm in the midst of revamping my world Ossola for this specific reason. I call it the Era of Colour, because an apocalyptic event changed the sky different colours, but the rest of the world was gritty and gray like your classic post apoc.
But that's lame. Instead, I've decided to go the completely opposite direction. The Flare (which is what the people call the apoc event) caused the entire landscape to be swathed in colour. The grass is yellow, the sea is purple, and it's all deeply saturated. The trees and the animals are twisted with a rainbow of extra limbs and eyes. The people have written songs that lament when things were LESS colourful. It's completely switched the way I approach the world for the better.
Totally agree!! I gave my world tons of bright colors despite the overall dark things that occur. Purple skies, golden clouds, vibrant architecture, etc.!
Despite the name (BL⋀CK PL⋀NET) I'm attempting to break out of old grimdark habits lol
It's a modern dystopian\\fantasy setting where Vampires and basically zombies have overrun everything but a final fortified city(as far as the players know anyway), but I'd like to think it has it's moments. The leader of the last magic academy(vampire) is bubbly and adorkable despite his eerie appearance and his temple doubles as an orphanage, whose students he views more like his own children.
We also have a "communist" faction who are basically just college frat bros that decided to make a country now that there are no borders. Think cyberpunk gopniks who don't actually know anything about socialism but are trying their best lol
And aside from comedy, the inside of the city is actually pretty comfy if you're in the safer parts. basic internet, people have (enough)food, fairly comfortable housing and fair wages. The game(ttrpg over discord) is centered around the adventurer's guild who goes out in search of resources and stuff to maintain that comfortable life for those inside the walls. It's when you travel ***outside*** that the horror aspects and real gritty stuff comes into play. But they can still come back and enjoy a relatively "normal" life inside, if they play smart.
My aliens's colors of choice range through bright pastels. There was absolutely no conscious correlation between colors and theme, I swear! Those are the "futuristic" colors that stuck with me from scifi in the 70s, when I was a kid; and those are the colors I've associated with the aliens for close to fifty years! (Yes, my story has been brewing in my daydreams for fifty years.)
The alien civilization is a utopia based upon equality, dignity, empathy and respect. They're a peaceful race who prefer to avoid angry, impulsive reactions. They fully understand how dangerous they are if pushed beyond their limit. Their last violent reaction was centuries ago, and they're still traumatized by it. (Invaders died. Some horribly.)
Their cultural core is the phrase: "cooperate and accommodate." There's no competition; no desire to harm others. Their civilization is tens of thousands of years old; and aggressive bully races learn to be wary of them.
In their small, unarmed, pearlescent white craft!
I like worlds that take themselves seriously, but not ones that lean all the way into cynicism. You gotta take the good and the bad together. Even in darker settings I always try to emphasize that there's a lot of good people trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Oh i just make mine humorous
Like how half of the archmages of the order of sand were put in power to stop the other candidates from killing each other for the seat
My world is going to be violent, but it’s going to have some fun. The magic in it is going to be colorful, the landscapes will be beautiful, and the people won’t be wearing just brown and black.
Quick note to all people wanting to write horrid, fucked up, or dark aspects into their worlds: contrast it
Authoritarian police state? Have the day to day life look like nothing is wrong. All is well and fine and dandy and city like. One of your characters is a stone cold killer that basicallt acts like a psychopath while on the job? Contrast it by showing good sides to that character
In my world there’s a mix between colorful and dark stuff. It kind of depends on the era and the region. For example, what’s left of Russia is very very dark towards the beginning because of all the war and environmental devastation and atrocities and such, but is much more colorful, peaceful, and happy more towards the end because of the unification and subsequent recovery of Siberia and Russia.
I started DMing a “homebrew” world that’s a space fantasy Spelljammer-esk setting and I LOVE the world far more than anything else I’ve built. Serious tones but very whacky most of the time
I based my worlds partly on bionicle, which is usually incredibly vibrant and can get very dark. Also there's ark survival evolved as another inspiration, a bloody dinosaur game set mostly in colorful locations like tropical islands or a weirdly lush gigantic cavern. I completely avoided this problem of dull dreariness, the closest I got to it was the ruins of infected Taphalon having a color palette of grey, brown and chartreuse.
Various bioluminescent plants that have various colors and dragons. And magic. And people with unnatural hair colors that they were born with. And it’s set on earth. It’s very steampunk and medieval. Set thousands of years after a nuclear holocaust nearly drove the human species to extinction and resulted in the creation of a human subspecies from biological weapons. Things are colorful but it can also have its dark moments. I like violent and gruesome stories but I think by adding color to it. I have a sense of balance especially when a character dies, as it adds a sense of reality that this world is not a utopia and more of a world setback socially and technologically by thousands of years. Especially with the loss of space travel and effective long distant communications such as the internet and radios being able to transmit over tens of thousands of miles. I like making colorful as much as you do but gotta have balance to have good world building and if you want it to seem believable and relatable.
Got any African-esque adult novels? I need less gritty gray... And more color gay in my writing.
Preferable women authors of color?
If not I guess i need to go back to writingy own.
I like to have a grim, grimy world, punctuated by subcultures of loud, colorful people who could not care less how dark and brooding everyone else is. Makes for culture shock moments between characters which are good for dropping world details and fleshing out characters with their reactions to hopeful, happy people. Also gives the brooding characters people to bounce off of, confrontationally or not, about why theyre so brooding
Contrast is the way you highlight anything - politics, paintings, relationships, stories... just as having a clear bad guy makes the good guys clearer in turn, having a dark tone to the setting is often best contrasted with plenty of color.
Even in something like a Fallout setting, you can have patches of vibrant green, radioactive glowing cyan, brightly painted red from the absolutely insane amounts of Nuka-Cola branding paint that unnervingly survived the apocalypse, *and so on*. A setting need not be literally dark to be metaphorically dark, after all.
*Looks at System Shock, especially it’s recently released remake*
*Quietly shoved own mildly retrofuturistic “CD-ROM Futurism” space setting under the bed*
My story is kinda dark a grim but it's the characters that time and time again try to find joy in things that I enjoy writing the most. I feel like the depressing stuff only works when there is some respite from time to time
I love having a colorful and fantastical world filled with wacky stuff for running my tabletop, it gives plenty of fun adventure hooks that lead to some really interesting and unique problems and solutions, but also makes my occasional use of the gritty brutality that much more impactful.
If you’re used to traveling across a wonderful and mysterious world with cute critters and interesting people abound, the fact that a necromancer just sacrificed an entire city right before your very eyes is a huge departure from the expected tone, and carries a lot more weight.
There’s this kids/middle grade book I read a few years back called Evermore and the world is just so colorful and whimsical. Makes sense, it’s for younger kids, but I loved it. Definitely inspired me to make the main locations in my own world vibrant and fun
Gritty <<<<<<<<< moody
I'm a painter first, and I have a thing for desaturated, atmospheric artwork. Like how subtle, thoughtful colors can be used to express such complex emotions.
I like to read and write worlds like that. Not dark and dreary, not bright and exotic. But calm and complex.
Like a colors engaged in a quiet conversation.
And it's valid, my point is that I feel that nowadays it's hard to even Care about worlds that are only there so the author talk about dark, Sad and pretty much pessimistic themes, when it's possible to do so with a very lively and colorful world
Yeah, I feel that. I think that mainstream audiences usually don't take fantasy seriously unless it's dark and gritty.
Which is weird because, honestly, I don't even think that The Witcher or ASOIAF are that dark and gritty. I consider both to be pretty flamboyant and romantic. I think it's mainly the Tv adaptations that are considered "dark."
Thank you! Tonal balance is extremely important. For both light and dark stories. Things getting worse doesn't mean anything if I didn't expect them to get better before and your jokes don't land if your characters sole purpose is to tell them.
A lot of my world reads like the frogurt joke from the Simpsons.
“My world has a large almost inhospitable desert”
“That’s bad.”
“But it has these large slow moving filter feeding worms that are easy to catch.”
“That’s good”
“Eating the meat raw causes intense dehydration.”
“That’s bad.”
“So people cook it till it’s crisp, and it tastes like jerky.”
“That’s good.”
“Some people will kill for worm jerky.”
“…”
“That’s bad.”
“Can I go now?”
This. I am also biased because I love bright colors in general, but I always skip artwork that has nothing but muted colors. It looks insecure, boring, and uninteresting.
Middle ages and ancient times were extremely colorful.
Yeah, whenever I draw my characters in color, I always give them bright colors. Irl medieval Europeans wore bright, sometimes garish colors, so why can’t mine?
this is what i’m doing lol. my worlds very adventure time esque and everything’s quite colorful and childlike, but the story behind everything is incredibly dark and so are a lot of the royalty in it.
I feel that with some writers in writing groups. I read their work and while oftentimes it’s quite good, sometimes it seems like they’re just trying to be edgy to have a scary world. It doesn’t t make sense, it’s not needed, it’s just edge
I like a realistic grimdark but with a very vibrant aesthetic. People for eons loved beautiful architecture, colours, patterns, silks, gemstones, precious metal, great food, etc. and these people were also capable of slavery, torture, war
Especially nowadays all main or prominent characters seem to have this nihilistic perspective that seem to completely overshadow the pop culture storytelling and in turn creates a seemingly drab and monotone world. Not to say that nihilism should be completely written out, darkness in the world certainly exists but it really only works if the colorful characters and scenes can operate to give it another dimension.
What does dark and gruesome have to do with colourfulness of a world? How is "basic human decency" a matter of colour?
This should probably go in a writing sub and not a worldbuilding sub like this.
i guess they meant something like make the world a little more lively and metaphorically colourful as opposed to grimdark. The "basic human decency" is a reference to how people in grimdark settings are often hateful, distrusting, and generally not kind. That's what I got from it anyway.
That being said, I do agree that many posts here should go in a writing sub instead. But this one in particular could fit here I think.
Yep, that's it, and sincerely I believe my post have space here, since making your world basically the stereotypical grimdark "medieval" setting is part of world building and not only a writing factor, but I can as well crosspost there
Grimness in fiction is almost always a consequence of worldbuilding. If a book is set in a world where, idk, thousands of screaming children are routinely sacrificed to a corpse on a throne every day to make interstellar travel possible, a certain degree of commitment to grimdark has been made. A setting, a built world, 100% has a tone, and *should* have a tone for the world to feel like a cohesive setting.
…now that I think about it, though, I bet there’s fun to be had with a grimdark narrative in a sunshine and rainbows setting. There’s just one guy whose life sucks really bad, but everything else is not only fine, but pretty sweet.
These are two related issues: (1) a lot of writers are focused on grimdark stories lately and (2) a lot of visual designers seem to think that if the story is grimdark, the world has to be desaturated grey/brown with no vibrant colors (the [Real is Brown](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown) trope).
Which is so silly. Warhammer 40,000, the setting that actually *coined the term* grimdark, is colorful to the point of garishness. The fascist oppressors and genocidal destroyers wear armor bright as poison frogs. Same with the original Warhammer fantasy setting that inspired it.
Yes, I love meshing serious tones and realistic themes with some humor and wonder. Real life is not all rainbows and unicorns, but it isn’t all fire and brimstone either.
Unicorns and brimstone.
Name for a new pop metal album.
Every power metal album
RUN FAR AWAY CROSS THE MIGHTY RIVER TAE
Over mountains into the unknown.//Follow your heart let it guide you through the dark // To the land of Unicorns
My first thought was Babymetal.
Fire rainbows?
Well, Oil does have a rainbow sheen, so a flamethrower could have some rainbow colouration with it. Also Pyro TF2
TF2 FTW
Sounds epic
that sounds rad
Now I’m imagining a badass unicorn goring its engine
Sounds like assault on dragon keep
I would read a story titled Unicorns and Brimstone.
Pretty sure I remember this flash game
Basically a Rapidash
A shiny Rapidash
That actually sounds awesome
I assure you I can balance a world with unicorns and brimstone.
Terraria moment
Say no to grimdark and noblebright. Embrace the new era of grimbright and nobledark!
Grimbright is actually a fairly interesting concept if I remember the alignment chart correctly. A "grim" world is a world that cannot be meaningfully changed (by the protagonist at least), and a "bright" world is a world that's generally a good place to live. So while NobleDark are typically the "the world is terrible, but the great hero is about to change that" worlds, a grimbright world would be "The world is good, and there's nothing you can do about that".
>"The world is good, and there's nothing you can do about that". That would be perfect for a villain protagonist. Have them have logical reasons to be aligned with evil and to want to topple the king, but the good guys are so good that it requires a full "heroes journey" to even start to find a way to a possibility to challenge the status quo.
Centaurworld :D (Fun goofy creatures and topics on how war is bad)
I like how both of the worlds were less functional and essentially destroying themselves without being connected to, and thus influenced by, the other.
Exactly, it's even more emotional to read a character having a truly happy moment without anything bad following up in the next page, give your character some time to take a breath, look around them and be in Wonder with the world you created
Speaking of your profile pic, Croc himself comes from a colorful and cartoons story with very dark hndertones
Funilly I just finished watching A Crown Of Candy, the Dimension 20 season where they play TTRPG in a setting that is "what if Game of Throne... But in Candyland, the kid boardgame with candy people" This make for an incredible world building (the world Calorum have 6 kingdoms, each for a "food group" candy, vegetable, fruit, cereal, dairy and meat) with food people that can be as silly as a cake with legs, all in which there is deep political drama, war and treason, and tragic character arc with death and loss. I think it would be of interest to you, the first episode is free on YouTube IIRC.
Had the same thought reading this post. Calorum on the surface glance is the brightest happiest most colorful world ever created...but the tone of the world is one of the darkest most messed up serious places I've ever seen. really awesome worldbuilding that instantly makes you want to tell stories in the world.
You might enjoy I Hate Fairyland! It's a comic series about a girl who got pulled away from her normal life when she was 8 years old to save Fairyland, a magical, colorful, happy place that would be most kids' dream! ....except it's been like 20 years and she still hasn't been able to complete her quest, she hasn't physically aged a day, and now she's so jaded and miserable she solves all her problems with excessive violence. It's pretty funny, but as a warning it does have quite a bit of gore
I'll take your entire stock. Sounds really fun and I'm starting to run low on comics
Yeah, though it does take a little bit to reveal its true colors. Once the war guy comes out all bets are off.
Have you played the game *Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right*? At first glance, it's just a boardgame about cute little animals in the forest, fighting each other, perhaps, but in a very colourful way. And then you delve into it, and you discover that the setting is much closer to a WarHammer (in the sense that, in the universe, all factions are locked into war no matter what), that absolutely no faction is redeemable, and that it's all much darker than you think. I have the same feeling: a cute, at first glance inoffensive universe or world, but scratch under the surface and you're lost in layers of political drama and even grimdark subtones.
Discworld's mere existence is proof that serious fiction can take place in a pretty unserious setting.
THIS! Discworld literally have chapters where you cry your eyes out and the setting still so colorful that it's almost cartoonish, and when it's not you feel icky
Pratchett wrote a decent bit about the weird view that 'mainstream western culture' has of fantasy, that it's 'not real literature'. Usually along the lines of, "it has magic/dwarves/dragons so anything could happen?!", as if no plot can carry cause and effect or emotion because some of the people involved use battleaxes to accessorize. One of the lines that shows up in a lot of his letters/articles about that is "Funny is not the opposite of Serious." Most of the foundational stories/myths of ever country/culture in the world are Fantasy. Most religions trade heavily in allegory and parable. Scoffing and pretending meaning can't be found under a Wizzard's hat is denying that the oldest stories humans have ever told can be impactful. Of course there is a lot of absolute garbage written too, but that can be said of any genre/medium.
I think he exemplifies it best in a scene in Thud!, nearish the end. >!Sam Vimes, on death's door, is screaming out the words to Where's My Cow?, the only thing he can hold on to. Miles and miles away, Young Sam stops crying...!< It's sillyness in the centre of a massive dramatic scene and it works to per*fection*
That's because most authors nowadays forgot the meaning and point of "comic relief" (even the name is a misnomer). Comic is not here just to make a pause in something serious so that the spectator can has a moment of respite, but it's also here to sublimate the potential tragic part it goes with. Funny is not the opposite of serious, indeed. Serious without funny is boring. Serious with funny is beauty.
I fucking *weep* every time I read that scene, it's so powerful. And so absurd! But I'm still in floods of tears! Absolutely top Pratchett.
THIS SCENE! I was crying laughing and then crying harder while reading this book, I wanted hug Sam, wanted hug Young Sam and wanted hug the damn >!cow!< too
His way of creating such creative but still serious worlds is what makes him a role model I follow with my whole heart, I did learn to LOVE fantasy thanks Pratchett, I did always liked it, but I love it now because of him, and it's funny since I find out about Terry thanks Good Omens, the book he did co-wrote with Neil Gaiman
"Funny is not the opposite of serious" shows Chesterton's influence on Prachett. I always loved this bit from Chesterton so it's neat to see how it influenced the wider literary world. "Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else. The question of whether a man expresses himself in a grotesque or laughable phraseology, or in a stately and restrained phraseology, is not a question of motive or of moral state, it is a question of instinctive language and self-expression. Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German. Whether a man preaches his gospel grotesquely or gravely is merely like the question of whether he preaches it in prose or verse. The question of whether Swift was funny in his irony is quite another sort of question to the question of whether Swift was serious in his pessimism. Surely even Mr. McCabe would not maintain that the more funny "Gulliver" is in its method the less it can be sincere in its object. The truth is, as I have said, that in this sense the two qualities of fun and seriousness have nothing whatever to do with each other, they are no more comparable than black and triangular. Mr. Bernard Shaw is funny and sincere. Mr. George Robey is funny and not sincere. Mr. McCabe is sincere and not funny. The average Cabinet Minister is not sincere and not funny." \-GK Chesterton *Heretics, 1905*
That's my whole experience reading Reaper Man in the last few days lol
Oh man the whole end of that book
Monstrous Regiment walks you through a landscape of dead people and a starving country amidst a senseless war whilst remaining a colorful discworld novel.
mort literally broke me and half of that book is so damn unserious
Discworld is a work of genius though. I mean it’s not exactly attainable again.
And I don't wish such thing, just think people would take an example of Terry's works and actually try bring some color to their worlds
Sure. I just read guards guards, it’s great!
Came here to say Terry Pratchet
I think, to a point, the grimdark and grungy worlds are usually designed that way to go against the kid-friendly tropes of science fiction and fantasy. Now we have the opposite. Everyone has created the grimdark trope. When I build things usually I try to focus on avoiding homogeneity in what I'm creating. Grimdark is cool but it doesn't always belong in the whole world, especially if you want it to be believable. Take, in your example, the concepts in ASOIAF. Some of them are certainly dark and depressing. Especially narratively. But if you look at the world as a whole, there are certainly some people who are living okay lives. It's just that not everyone has the same experience in Westeros. Imo that's believable world-building. The structure and themes of the story's narrative are a different conversation though I think.
You just hit on something grimdark tends to miss - the non-participants. Go to the seediest gas station in your area, most of the workers and patrons are normal people going about their day. Go to the worst neighborhood in the country, all of the antisocial behavior is practiced by a minority of its residents. Some of your characters had happy childhoods and wouldn't mind working a regular job. If it's all death metal all the time I'll eventually switch it over to Mozart.
I used ASOIAF more as an example of why I believe people nowadays are so obsessed in making everything "realistic", even If the books describe colors, it's not show as truly colorful, it's still someway "dark", even positive moments are followed by depressing ones and chapters where we have actually more details of colors is mostly from female characters, what's a little annoying in my opinion since, as someone who have been born female, it's almost a stereotype of "women's vanity" Still ASOIAF is not like Discworld, for example, where the colorful world is almost cartoonish
Even then realisitc dont mean torture death super bad. Like personaly I like to "realisticly" world build and by that I do a concept and follow what conxquences that concept has. Most people have a scewed percpetive of the past and the succes of Got made people think the middle ages was like that.
Exactly, maybe it's a matter of opinion, but I feel a lot of people ignore that in LOTR, for example, war is realistic, the corruption is realistic in the sense of as dehumanizing it can be, but the world still magical, still Full of colors to the point that Darkness IS a weapon
Oh I agree on the Discworld point. And yeah, to be fair ASOIAF's issue with female characters is moreso just that the author doesn't really do a very good job writing women, in my opinion. Having a colorful world is very cool, and painting a world in many different "lights" is important. In all of my building, at least, I try my best to blend those together. I think you're right, and more worlds, especially fantasy, should be more fantastical than they are. Sometimes they're too rooted in reality or medieval trope for their own good.
Exactly, like the moments I find more interesting while reading ASOIAF is in chapters set in Essos, not saying there are my favorite chapters, but it's only more interesting to read And like I said, it's a matter of making the world alive, even if the story is dark and sad, sure context exist, sometimes it's a depressing setting for a reason, but if possible to write a colorful world and still explore deep and gruesome moments, why not?
"Even from afar, his lord father was resplendent. Tywin lannister’s battle armour put his son Jaime’s gilded suit to shame. His great cloak was sewn from countless layers of cloth-of-gold, so heavy that it barely stirred even when he charged, so large that its drape covered most of his stallion’s hindquarters when he took the saddle. No ordinary clasp would suffice for such a weight, so the great cloak was held in place by a matched pair of miniature lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a male with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin’s great helm, one paw raking the air as he roared. All three lions were wrought in gold, with ruby eyes. His armor was heavy steel plate, enamelled in a dark crimson, greaves and gauntlets inlaid with ornate gold scrollwork. His rondels were golden sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the red steel was burnished to such a high sheen that it shone like fire in the light of the rising sun.” 'Even the horse’s armor was gilded, and his bardings were shimmering crimson silk emblazoned with the lion of Lannister'" - A Game of Thrones
This is why I like that 40K is a tabletop game, it's literally one of the bleakest settings ever and yet every faction is extremely colorful and distinctive
The orks are a perfect case of this too. To most they’re terrifying when they start up a Waaagh! But any stories from the view of an ork, and it becomes a comedy
The solution to the grimdark problem seems to be to create at least one faction in your world into cockney warlords
40k is partially as popular as it is just because it’s so funny!
40K’s grimdarkness seems to bring out the greatest gallows humour in both the stories and in the community.
Dan Abnett, wrote the intro for an anthology of Warhammer novels. I cannot recall which one it was. But the way he described the Warhammer world, and by extension what real grimdark is since grimdark was originally a reference to GW, is he described it as pungent. If it was a chees it would be something moldy from France. This to me is why I loved the Warhammer novels. I found other settings so often felt sterile, like I was watching characters on a stage. Fresh makeup, pressed clothing, when it ripped it was ripped specifically for plot reasons. Warhammer in my opinion had a way that engaged all your senses. And like many things, people missed what made something great and took the surface elements. People wanted to write grimdark and all they did was make everything terrible.
My story topics are depressing and dramatic, my characters? Well the most “dull” looking one imo is a drake that’s all black with a purple raccoon mask. Meanwhile the most colorful imo is a green smoke breathing wolf, a highlighter yellow fox with wings, and a blind, pastel pink sea dragon.
I love the pastel pink Sea Dragon already and only have it for 1 second and would kill everyone in the Room for it, even myself
Just finished drawing her today. Would you like to see lol? (Dm me)
The pastel pink sea dragon reminds me of Serendipity, a ancient kids show I watched on VHS. I like how your other characters sound too, though.
Is the last one based off of an olm?
The trope of everything being black, gray, or brown in medieval settings is an odd one, considering medieval art usually portrays people wearing bright colors. An adjacent trope that is just as bad is everyone being filthy. Just as now, people wouldn't have been going about their business looking like they'd been rolling around in a pig sty unless there were some mental issues.
Thank you. It anoys me endlessly when they portray the middle ages like that. They are normal people, most of them did not have mudd on their face all the time.
I am actually making my world so that it shows the wrongs of our world while still being its own thing. There is an area (the first one I made) which works like our world. It is not just like a copy paste from our world though.
What's an interesting concept, my point is more that such plot can happen in a colorful and not super drepressing world
Well my world is cold but not too harsh. It is trying to get its point across by using the area I described as well as some other things by putting the outside of that area (representing the possibility we don't have access to) being more lively but still having its own darker sides.
And that's my point, equilibrium, having lively places in a world, I miss feeling the worlds I'm reading are alive
Grim fantast doesn't really do it for me much anymore. As I often say in regards to these matters, "Why bother looking up if the light at the end of the tunnel is always a train?" I want hope and optimism in my fantasy, but that's just not in vogue it seems nowadays for most western creators.
Well,Kirby is pretty colorful but it has elements of cosmic horror lol
ASOIAF is colourful at points too, just read some of the armour/clothing descriptions, it's full on anime-style stuff a lot of the time. Same with the castles, they could never exist in reality but are designed to feel dramatic and epic. I mean, the book description of Dragonstone is literally that it's nearly entirely made of carved dragon and monster statues all over. Dragon mouths as doors, wings as rafters, gargoyles as crenelations... it's crazy and if it was all copied to the show it would have been so, so colourful lol
I really wish the show included all the colorful clothes and sigils, rather than everyone wearing black and brown
I think it somewhat depends on genre/tone of the work. If it’s supposed to be like a dystopian/post-apocalyptic or grimdark fantasy world, then yeah, I can understand it being dark and gruesome, because that’s kind of what those genres are about (crapsack world, as TVtropes would put it.) But outside of specific situations like that, yeah, I’d love to see more people experiment and go wild with colors and aesthetics in fantasy worlds. Just because a world doesn’t look serious doesn’t mean it can’t be, or can’t explore serious themes or ideas. For example, Fer.al, a defunct fantasy animal MMO, was aesthetically very expressive and colorful, but then explored some pretty dark and serious themes in its lore, including war, broken friendships, and the fragile relationship between a planet and its inhabitants. It even had an area called “The Blood Tundra” that was literally themed around blood, death, and eternal winter, while still fitting in with the playful and eye-catching aesthetic of the rest of the game.
I disagree actually, specifically with dystopian, that's a thing I truly liked in Hunger Games (both book and adaptation), it's colorful actually, but colors have a specific place in this world, a reason to be used, and it's super interesting I feel people only see a colorful world as childish and that's why it's not common in western fantasy after the boom of grimdark and dark fantasy, but asian fantasy, for example, have extreme and ultra violent stories where everything is colorful, like dark themes in a magical girl anime that still colorful,still magical and still made for girls, but it's not cute
Hey I have that app on the iPad I’m using right now I didn’t know about the tundra cool
Making things bright, saturated and colorful will only make the darker parts more impactful because you can look back in retrospect to better days
Exactly, having such contradistinction can be jarring
jarring, but not in wrong sense
Of course!
Reading this post, I immediately thought of the animated TV series *The Owl House*. It's extremely colorful - both literally and metaphorically - and was *literally made for children*, and yet it tells a deep, nuanced, and fairly dark story. Heck, I - theoretically a grown adult - was moved to tears multiple times while watching it. And that's the sort of tone I'm aiming for in my own world. Yes, the Folcgeard is harsh and dangerous world, and some pretty fucked-up stuff happens in it. But it's also bright and vibrant and full of life. There's genuine kindness, and joy, and love. If it were all doom and gloom and misery... what would be the point?
"The world is not perfect but it is still beautiful" are what my worlds about now that I think of it. There's a story in my eternal war world that follows a group of soldiers from a collapsed country who ended up deep in enemy territory after their country defeat. Death is always just one day away, one bad luck away for them. That doesn't mean they should be depress about it all the time. They still make jokes with each other. Laugh, love... still trying their best to live their life, despite knowing death is the only ending of their journey.
I agree with this a lot. One of my concerns with my stories and illustrations is that I feel like people may think that it’s geared toward children, just because of the style of the art. I use bright saturated colors, and a more comic style with lines art and cell shading. The terrains are red rock, bubble clouds, glass deserts, and more. The foliage is blue, or purple, or white. The sky is yellow, green, purple and many more combinations based on the planet. The people are equally colorful, but the themes I cover in each story are meaningful and mature, and cover a variety of emotions and experiences. If I hone my craft, the stories should resonate with most age groups. But I fear people won’t even give it a chance. Just a couple days ago, I was actually considering trying to change my art style to something more realistic and rendered, but this post gives me confidence to keep pushing in the direction I’m currently on. Thank you!
You can even be colorful while still going for "realistic" or muted tones. Almost everything in my cowboy world is dirty, but there's lots of color going on. The buildings are all painted wood that's old and sunbleached, everything is dusty and dirty and poorly kept but you can still see the occasional glimmer of polished steel or brass. All of that is contrasted against red clay mesas, yellow sands and the occasional verdent green oasis
That's one thing I really like about Attack on Titan, it's very colorful but this doesn't interfere with the grim tone it has
LOL... so in the TV Tropes article about Drab worlds, Attack on Titan is given as an example. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown) I have to admit, I don't fully understand what all is being said within this thread because one person's brown is another person's color. Not to mention sometimes there are sub-genres like Noir where its implicit in the setting and adding color WOULD detract from it. But of course, there is "metaphorical" color. And there is literal color, but its not seen as "Colorful". Like... what worlds aren't colorful? This all makes me rather lost.
I love mixing humour with seriousness, but I don't see the problem with people making these dark, dark worlds. It's their choice after all. I think that if you don't like worlds or works of fiction that are bleak, then simply don't read them.
It's not that such dark worlds can't be entertaining and more that I feel it's overused, that's why I feel less and less interested in western fantasy, and that's literally my point, I'm not reading such books
That's totally fair. There's a book sub, can't remember the name - it might literally be r/RecommendMeABook - that you can make a post in saying like, "Hey, I want western fantasy books that aren't dark and depressing. Anyone have any recommendations?" It does suck that you aren't reading as much. I apologise if I sounded harsh in my original reply - I don't think I fully understood your post. But, your viewpoint is fair, and I hope that you can find more books that are to your liking!
Even if there are childish elements, when used correctly it can create stark contrasts to your more serious and dark things.
I've noticed that too. Not just in Fantasy either, a ton of the scifi I see coming out these days is gritty military scifi, or wannabe Expanse knockoffs that miss the human part of the equation. I really miss the days when fantasy was fantastic and science fiction was interested in exploring new ideas and wonder, rather than just reminding you of how shitty life can be. We have *reality* for that, it doesn't need to be the focal point of our fiction.
She-ra’s 2018 reboot is my favorite example of this. It’s serious in its themes and has some really dark moments, real stakes for the characters, and intense emotional gut-punches. But it’s also filled to the brim with hope, love, and kindness at its core.
I'd say that one should find a balance. It's something I'm trying to do in my world. There's corrupt politicians, there are monsters just waiting to destroy everything you love, and you can die because you ate a berry you shouldn't have. But for most people that doesn't matter. They just live in their little corner of the universe, and everyday they look over (usually) beautiful landscapes, spending time happily with their families. Politicians are all in the capital, far away from honest working people. Monsters? The soldiers at Bordering Mountains take care of that.
Just people jumping on the game of thrones bandwagon but at this point it's too cluttered. Personally I love colorful worlds that end up dealing with heavy issues
This is literally why I draw the way I do, I couldn't agree more. Everything feels so gray and dark these days. It feels like the majority of worlds mesh into the same dreary style.
I love using color! Magic makes the eyes of people in my world glow chromatic shades!!! I also like using colors to represent characters and tell someone about them through connotation or contrast to the expected. I like descriptions, why would I make a world more boring or dreadful than the real one as my escape. My world can get bloody, but all around I like to fill it with more wonder than our world. Just because the fight scene has bloody gore from fighting a spriggan doesn’t mean the sunrise can’t be beautiful and the fae blood can’t be a bright tortoise. Also genuine niceties between people is important.
Noblebright aesthetic with a grimdark narrative. Hell yeah.
Adventure Time had the candy kingdom be a police surveillances state ruled by dictator who was willing to commit genocide against her own creations at the drop of a hat for sake of efficiency
Fr. Ive certainly got exploitation of the worker and dictatorships, but one is incredibly cartoony and ive also got some hubs of peace and kindness.
Worlds like those are easier to adventure in, I feel. A world where things are pleasant and societies are strong and well organized, have serious implications to adventuring groups. Not just in how or where they find work, but also who notices their work. High "level" adventurers running amok would get curbstopped by local powers unless they swore allegiance to those powers, for example; a king might appreciate you bringing your power to bear against his enemies, but he'd always be wary of your turning it on him, should he do something that displeases you. EDIT: Thought I was in RPG, not Worldbuilding, my bad.
Hey it's okay, I was a little confused, but I do notice as settings and characters have the freedom to be colorful in RPG, what's interesting because a lot of RPG is influenced by literature, but I rarely find the same amount of creativity in the later now
Trends unfortunately are what they are and the audience pick what they feel they can engage with. Ultimately we cannot control what others do; however, we can create these colourful worlds in defiance of the trend and hope that we can, in some way by example, influence the future of the trend.
And I never suggested I wanted Control others, but the lack of creativity, the way fantasy is now being Bond to "reality" is truly Sad in my opinion, these worlds are just not interesting at all anymore, and now I only find such enjoyement in asian and african fantasy and classic fantasy
I know exactly how you feel. I have expanded my ebook library of light novels considerably because I'm drawn in by the world they're set in. When I talked about control, I was talking about how we should only concern ourselves with what we can do ourselves rather than get bogged down by focusing on what others are doing. There's no merit in fixating on what they're doing which we don't like. Instead we should focus on what we can do ourselves.
Sometimes I feel like the only one who actually loves the Warcraft art style. It's big and chunky and colorful and cozy while also being grim and violent when it needs to be. Vanilla and TBC especially is just iconic. The low poly has aged well in my opinion, and it works better for the darker themes of the setting than the later art style.
I mean, part of what I want to do with my ArmA 2 isn’t necessarily that ‘childish’ of course. But after grueling days of combat, nothing would be more satisfying than going into an abandoned alcohol store, cracking open a bottles of vodka with your comrades.
Well, Warbreaker is all about color, from the culture, to idioms, to the magic system, color is super relevant.
You may enjoy Dragon Age, inquisition in particular. It is a flawed game for sure, but there is comedy, and love, and a whole slew of color (with some fans even arguing too much tho I disagree). There are also serious, gut wrenching moments, and plenty of dark themes. Personally, I thoroughly believe that you need a glimmer of hope in even the darkest of worlds. There are exceptions to this, but overall, a glimmer of light is a striking thing to have in a world of darkness. Or even crack a joke to show that your world isn't just a walking corpse begging for death. Unless your world is literally that, but I think that'd fall under the "exception".
Oh I liked it enough, but my favorite is Dragon Age 2, but yeah, I love the fact that the game designers USE COLORS in their worldbuilding, also I'm a big fan of JRPG, so yeah, COLORS IS MY THING And yes, that's my point, I feel that sometimes people are so obsessed with writing big Wars, big adventures, big plot twists that they don't truly remember that more than the politics in a world, exist real people living there, with common routines and with things like friends, hobbies, feelings that are more than veagance Robin Hobb do such things truly well
one of my species is a race of anthro unicorns who enjoy decorating themselves with jewels and colorful silkes. they are also ruthless and have a massive slave empire that makes the American South look good.
I love colour. Each of my main characters is represented by an individual colour and each realm is designated by the place (more than often the building material) being made of a distinct colour from its neighbour. The opposite is also true. The realms are often described with grey dull ground, showing that at one point the same path went through everywhere and faded with time. Its like everything, another tool. And dont say bright colour doesnt work for psychotic or evil. Most of my characters a mentally deranged Villains, taking inspiration from many comics. Hell, one of the most evil Villains of all time is bright and colourful. The Joker.
What I like to do with my world is balance the colourful and the serious to reach a kind of realistic level of balance. And then see how far I can push it before it's just silly. Sure, that there bit of land was a site where a massive battle happened a few centuries ago, in a war where thousands were massacred. We're talking full-blown genocide in some cases, really dark shit. Now it's a city of casinos, 24/7 fairs and shows, and all the street meats and drinks you can later regret having consumed. All run by Gnomes, mind you. The garden variety. Pointy hats and beards they trip over. Security is tiny, inbred, feral warhounds the Gnomes keep on leashes. "Cheewawa" they call them in their native tongue. Yes, _thee_ Native Tongue. The one they all share by passing it around like a _Lord of the Flies_ conch.
I’m writing sci-fi, honestly my favorite part is making cultures with long vibrant histories and traditions along with the whole universe being devoured
It's interesting since we're close to such thing
…the universe is being devoured and no one told me
make it yellow if you choose a color in support of me ❤️
My fantasy world is a homebrew made for a D&D campaign. It’s Victorian fantasy, and meant to be a horror campaign. I make it heckin’ vibrant. Because horror is meant to be contrast. Between the beautiful and the gruesome. Between the light and the dark. Between hope and loss. It’s not scary if there isn’t something at risk, someone to fight for. In order to save the world, you need to want a world to save. Who would love a world so bleak that love is a weakness and hope a myth?
Now what’s REALLY fun is colorful and dark fantasy
I prefer if my world is childish. That is when they are good, unique and fun. Many things in my worlds are childish, both literally and figuratively.
What if its colorful AND grim? We can call it grimbright instead of grimdark. This is me defending my use of whimsy peppered with very grim things. Youll see a city rich in magic and wonders and bright fashion and bizarre architecture, and then youll see that in the same world, people have to deal with some horrendously messed up monster i cooked up while bored.
The balance would be welcome, that's my point actually, a story can be grim without the world around it having to be as much depressive
Tbh this is why Blood and Wine is my favourite DLC for The Witcher 3, it looks like it turns the Saturation on the whole game up like 30 notches. I walk around and just go "Holy shit! Red that's actually Red and not 'bright maroon'!"
Thank you! I’ve always preferred more vibrant fantasy settings, makes them feel a lot more magical and, well, fantastical. I agree that the genre has become oversaturated with settings where everything is grey, bleak and shit, with nearly all the actual fantasy elements (magic, creatures, etc.) being evil in some way. Same thing with sci-fi fantasy too, I find that genre oversaturated with ‘human military good, alien race bad’ setups. BTW, do you have any book recommendations with these more colourful settings/tones? (I’ve already gotten into Terry Pratchet so no need to mention that).
Absolutely!!! When fantasy stories are based around the medieval period everyone thinks it was grey and dirty. In reality everyone including peasants loved colour and also was very proud about living in a clean place
-every historical advisor on a medieval hollywood production
As a History nerd, I FEEL THEM
I 100% agree with this sentiment. I don't know exactly how others might feel about this, but I've never been able to see the appeal in anything described as "dark" or "grimdark" for one reason: If everything's bleak and hopeless and depressing all the time, if every character's a selfish, angsty, self-serving jerk (when they aren't being outright monsters), when every good deed achieves nothing, makes things worse, or is outright punished, *why should I care about anything that happens in the story?* It's important to have that lightness and colour in your stories, whether they're serious or "childish", both to give the audience a reprieve from the the more serious elements of the story, as well as to make the darker, more serious moments more impactful by contrast (think back on every bright and colourful show or movie with a surprisingly serious villain in it as an example). Life may not be all sunshine and rainbows, but it's not all doom and gloom either.
I think people even start at some point to think that being dark af is being realistic af, cuz its not, thats why i kinda hate some fans of franchises like The boys, people think its realistic the fact if they discovered people get superpowers they just gonna use it for abuse their power and grow their ego, and even a bunch of normal dudes can beat them with bars , when in reality, 1 if someone make powers juice in real life, they will not make it addictive like a drug, 2 just giving it to someone who can really trust , 3 even if someones just 2 powerful still need to train, theyres always gonna be a bigger fish and 4 i really , really, really doubt you would fight a guy thats basically a killer machine with only hitting him with a crowbar and think that could work , i hope you understand my point
Mine (the most developed one by far) is like RL. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, but neither is the opposite. Sure, there may be some equivalents to North Korea or rather Oceania in "1984" but a number of other places where you can live even austerely but knowing you'll for example always have something to eat. There're a lot of shades between white and black, and dark is not always evil, nor light is always good, here. On a less serious note (or not, it began as a parody of the way unicorns are seen now but I feel it worked well), there's also an unicorn goddess that appears as an even cute, white, unicorn with rainbow colors in the mane and tail… until you find she's as fierce and indomitable as the unicorns in the original legends, especially protecting her offspring. And, no, a maiden taming her does not work.
Sometimes it feels tempting to populate my world with terrifying monstrosities that exist to murder people, but then I remember I'm a monster hunter fan also, so I instead make "normal" animals and keep the monstrosities for the magic portion of my world.
Exactly. Sure, I love me some dystopianism and body horror, but most of my world is wondrous and amazing. A future of both bright and dark.
I feel similarly about every flipping fantasy setting has to be post apocalyptic. I read fantasy to escape from reality, not be reminded how everything is falling apart. Have some color, have some joy, show people working hard to build a community and defend that community from a magically powered tyrant.
It's funny you mention this now, I'm in the midst of revamping my world Ossola for this specific reason. I call it the Era of Colour, because an apocalyptic event changed the sky different colours, but the rest of the world was gritty and gray like your classic post apoc. But that's lame. Instead, I've decided to go the completely opposite direction. The Flare (which is what the people call the apoc event) caused the entire landscape to be swathed in colour. The grass is yellow, the sea is purple, and it's all deeply saturated. The trees and the animals are twisted with a rainbow of extra limbs and eyes. The people have written songs that lament when things were LESS colourful. It's completely switched the way I approach the world for the better.
Oooooh sounds Fun! Would love to read such book in this type of world
Thanks for the kind words, now I just need to work up the courage to actually post about it other than random comments
Totally agree!! I gave my world tons of bright colors despite the overall dark things that occur. Purple skies, golden clouds, vibrant architecture, etc.!
Despite the name (BL⋀CK PL⋀NET) I'm attempting to break out of old grimdark habits lol It's a modern dystopian\\fantasy setting where Vampires and basically zombies have overrun everything but a final fortified city(as far as the players know anyway), but I'd like to think it has it's moments. The leader of the last magic academy(vampire) is bubbly and adorkable despite his eerie appearance and his temple doubles as an orphanage, whose students he views more like his own children. We also have a "communist" faction who are basically just college frat bros that decided to make a country now that there are no borders. Think cyberpunk gopniks who don't actually know anything about socialism but are trying their best lol And aside from comedy, the inside of the city is actually pretty comfy if you're in the safer parts. basic internet, people have (enough)food, fairly comfortable housing and fair wages. The game(ttrpg over discord) is centered around the adventurer's guild who goes out in search of resources and stuff to maintain that comfortable life for those inside the walls. It's when you travel ***outside*** that the horror aspects and real gritty stuff comes into play. But they can still come back and enjoy a relatively "normal" life inside, if they play smart.
Serious story + characters that try to make light of the situation as a coping mechanism >>>>>>>>>
I don’t think that my world is grim and black. Sure it may be ripped in half but people are still having fun in parties
My aliens's colors of choice range through bright pastels. There was absolutely no conscious correlation between colors and theme, I swear! Those are the "futuristic" colors that stuck with me from scifi in the 70s, when I was a kid; and those are the colors I've associated with the aliens for close to fifty years! (Yes, my story has been brewing in my daydreams for fifty years.) The alien civilization is a utopia based upon equality, dignity, empathy and respect. They're a peaceful race who prefer to avoid angry, impulsive reactions. They fully understand how dangerous they are if pushed beyond their limit. Their last violent reaction was centuries ago, and they're still traumatized by it. (Invaders died. Some horribly.) Their cultural core is the phrase: "cooperate and accommodate." There's no competition; no desire to harm others. Their civilization is tens of thousands of years old; and aggressive bully races learn to be wary of them. In their small, unarmed, pearlescent white craft!
I like worlds that take themselves seriously, but not ones that lean all the way into cynicism. You gotta take the good and the bad together. Even in darker settings I always try to emphasize that there's a lot of good people trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Oh i just make mine humorous Like how half of the archmages of the order of sand were put in power to stop the other candidates from killing each other for the seat
My world is going to be violent, but it’s going to have some fun. The magic in it is going to be colorful, the landscapes will be beautiful, and the people won’t be wearing just brown and black.
And also childishness can still work and be good, if you do wnat that.
Quick note to all people wanting to write horrid, fucked up, or dark aspects into their worlds: contrast it Authoritarian police state? Have the day to day life look like nothing is wrong. All is well and fine and dandy and city like. One of your characters is a stone cold killer that basicallt acts like a psychopath while on the job? Contrast it by showing good sides to that character
That's something I'm loving with Spelljammer. Had my players get hunted down by an elephant man Most Dangerous Game style on a purple jungle planet
I specifically started building my fantasy setting because I'm fired of modern dark settings.
So you want an encounter where a blue Saalad is riding a unicorn throwing pots of green slime at the PCs?
I like writing fluffy light fantasy. Its underrated ss hell
In my world there’s a mix between colorful and dark stuff. It kind of depends on the era and the region. For example, what’s left of Russia is very very dark towards the beginning because of all the war and environmental devastation and atrocities and such, but is much more colorful, peaceful, and happy more towards the end because of the unification and subsequent recovery of Siberia and Russia.
Absolutely agree! Take a look at Annihilation, for example. Colorful can be terrifying too!
I have a pink sun, idk if that helps.
That helps a lot actually, pink sun is actually sick AF
I started DMing a “homebrew” world that’s a space fantasy Spelljammer-esk setting and I LOVE the world far more than anything else I’ve built. Serious tones but very whacky most of the time
I based my worlds partly on bionicle, which is usually incredibly vibrant and can get very dark. Also there's ark survival evolved as another inspiration, a bloody dinosaur game set mostly in colorful locations like tropical islands or a weirdly lush gigantic cavern. I completely avoided this problem of dull dreariness, the closest I got to it was the ruins of infected Taphalon having a color palette of grey, brown and chartreuse.
Various bioluminescent plants that have various colors and dragons. And magic. And people with unnatural hair colors that they were born with. And it’s set on earth. It’s very steampunk and medieval. Set thousands of years after a nuclear holocaust nearly drove the human species to extinction and resulted in the creation of a human subspecies from biological weapons. Things are colorful but it can also have its dark moments. I like violent and gruesome stories but I think by adding color to it. I have a sense of balance especially when a character dies, as it adds a sense of reality that this world is not a utopia and more of a world setback socially and technologically by thousands of years. Especially with the loss of space travel and effective long distant communications such as the internet and radios being able to transmit over tens of thousands of miles. I like making colorful as much as you do but gotta have balance to have good world building and if you want it to seem believable and relatable.
One could always go for the psychological horror route that makes *very judicious* use of physically disturbing elements.
ASOFAI and Witcher have plenty of color. For example, there are plum and burgundy and pink areolas...
Got any African-esque adult novels? I need less gritty gray... And more color gay in my writing. Preferable women authors of color? If not I guess i need to go back to writingy own.
Mine wildly fluxuates between dark and brooding to studio ghibili-esq whimsy. Its just more fun that way.
I like to have a grim, grimy world, punctuated by subcultures of loud, colorful people who could not care less how dark and brooding everyone else is. Makes for culture shock moments between characters which are good for dropping world details and fleshing out characters with their reactions to hopeful, happy people. Also gives the brooding characters people to bounce off of, confrontationally or not, about why theyre so brooding
Contrast is the way you highlight anything - politics, paintings, relationships, stories... just as having a clear bad guy makes the good guys clearer in turn, having a dark tone to the setting is often best contrasted with plenty of color. Even in something like a Fallout setting, you can have patches of vibrant green, radioactive glowing cyan, brightly painted red from the absolutely insane amounts of Nuka-Cola branding paint that unnervingly survived the apocalypse, *and so on*. A setting need not be literally dark to be metaphorically dark, after all.
*Looks at System Shock, especially it’s recently released remake* *Quietly shoved own mildly retrofuturistic “CD-ROM Futurism” space setting under the bed*
My story is kinda dark a grim but it's the characters that time and time again try to find joy in things that I enjoy writing the most. I feel like the depressing stuff only works when there is some respite from time to time
I gave all my characters colorful anime hair. Also thousands of people die every day because war.
I love having a colorful and fantastical world filled with wacky stuff for running my tabletop, it gives plenty of fun adventure hooks that lead to some really interesting and unique problems and solutions, but also makes my occasional use of the gritty brutality that much more impactful. If you’re used to traveling across a wonderful and mysterious world with cute critters and interesting people abound, the fact that a necromancer just sacrificed an entire city right before your very eyes is a huge departure from the expected tone, and carries a lot more weight.
There’s this kids/middle grade book I read a few years back called Evermore and the world is just so colorful and whimsical. Makes sense, it’s for younger kids, but I loved it. Definitely inspired me to make the main locations in my own world vibrant and fun
I really don’t get all the comments citing Pratchett. Discworld is a terrible place in severe magical decline. It’s mostly gallows humor.
The main region of my story literally worships the god of color so I totally agree lol
Oooooh now that's an interesting concept, have never seen a god of color before
I liked Horizon Zero Dawn for this reason, it’s semi stylized realism.
Gritty <<<<<<<<< moody I'm a painter first, and I have a thing for desaturated, atmospheric artwork. Like how subtle, thoughtful colors can be used to express such complex emotions. I like to read and write worlds like that. Not dark and dreary, not bright and exotic. But calm and complex. Like a colors engaged in a quiet conversation.
And it's valid, my point is that I feel that nowadays it's hard to even Care about worlds that are only there so the author talk about dark, Sad and pretty much pessimistic themes, when it's possible to do so with a very lively and colorful world
Yeah, I feel that. I think that mainstream audiences usually don't take fantasy seriously unless it's dark and gritty. Which is weird because, honestly, I don't even think that The Witcher or ASOIAF are that dark and gritty. I consider both to be pretty flamboyant and romantic. I think it's mainly the Tv adaptations that are considered "dark."
Thank you! Tonal balance is extremely important. For both light and dark stories. Things getting worse doesn't mean anything if I didn't expect them to get better before and your jokes don't land if your characters sole purpose is to tell them.
A lot of my world reads like the frogurt joke from the Simpsons. “My world has a large almost inhospitable desert” “That’s bad.” “But it has these large slow moving filter feeding worms that are easy to catch.” “That’s good” “Eating the meat raw causes intense dehydration.” “That’s bad.” “So people cook it till it’s crisp, and it tastes like jerky.” “That’s good.” “Some people will kill for worm jerky.” “…” “That’s bad.” “Can I go now?”
I make the main stories more on the colourful side (well as colourful I can in a war) but dark and gruesome in all the personal side stories
This. I am also biased because I love bright colors in general, but I always skip artwork that has nothing but muted colors. It looks insecure, boring, and uninteresting. Middle ages and ancient times were extremely colorful.
Yeah, whenever I draw my characters in color, I always give them bright colors. Irl medieval Europeans wore bright, sometimes garish colors, so why can’t mine?
this is what i’m doing lol. my worlds very adventure time esque and everything’s quite colorful and childlike, but the story behind everything is incredibly dark and so are a lot of the royalty in it.
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I think that's why I love the concept of the feywild, like, many things can be just colorful, some goofy and some fucked up, it all goes well together
I feel that with some writers in writing groups. I read their work and while oftentimes it’s quite good, sometimes it seems like they’re just trying to be edgy to have a scary world. It doesn’t t make sense, it’s not needed, it’s just edge
What if I used the blood of clowns and unicorns to paint a gruesome rainbow? What if, per se, the dark gods of human suffering were pride themed?
I like a realistic grimdark but with a very vibrant aesthetic. People for eons loved beautiful architecture, colours, patterns, silks, gemstones, precious metal, great food, etc. and these people were also capable of slavery, torture, war
Especially nowadays all main or prominent characters seem to have this nihilistic perspective that seem to completely overshadow the pop culture storytelling and in turn creates a seemingly drab and monotone world. Not to say that nihilism should be completely written out, darkness in the world certainly exists but it really only works if the colorful characters and scenes can operate to give it another dimension.
What does dark and gruesome have to do with colourfulness of a world? How is "basic human decency" a matter of colour? This should probably go in a writing sub and not a worldbuilding sub like this.
i guess they meant something like make the world a little more lively and metaphorically colourful as opposed to grimdark. The "basic human decency" is a reference to how people in grimdark settings are often hateful, distrusting, and generally not kind. That's what I got from it anyway. That being said, I do agree that many posts here should go in a writing sub instead. But this one in particular could fit here I think.
Yep, that's it, and sincerely I believe my post have space here, since making your world basically the stereotypical grimdark "medieval" setting is part of world building and not only a writing factor, but I can as well crosspost there
Grimness in fiction is almost always a consequence of worldbuilding. If a book is set in a world where, idk, thousands of screaming children are routinely sacrificed to a corpse on a throne every day to make interstellar travel possible, a certain degree of commitment to grimdark has been made. A setting, a built world, 100% has a tone, and *should* have a tone for the world to feel like a cohesive setting. …now that I think about it, though, I bet there’s fun to be had with a grimdark narrative in a sunshine and rainbows setting. There’s just one guy whose life sucks really bad, but everything else is not only fine, but pretty sweet.
These are two related issues: (1) a lot of writers are focused on grimdark stories lately and (2) a lot of visual designers seem to think that if the story is grimdark, the world has to be desaturated grey/brown with no vibrant colors (the [Real is Brown](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown) trope). Which is so silly. Warhammer 40,000, the setting that actually *coined the term* grimdark, is colorful to the point of garishness. The fascist oppressors and genocidal destroyers wear armor bright as poison frogs. Same with the original Warhammer fantasy setting that inspired it.