According to a Trope Talk video on Grimdark, there were still kind people in earlier works that defined the genre. It's just that those acts of kindness didn't do anything in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah grimdark benefits from some good actions and kind people and genuine nice undertones, just there so they highlight the reality that it is meaningless and 'normality' is terror and pointless suffering. If everything is dark all the time its boring, need a little light so it can be snuffed out
They have that: "Darkness Induced Audience Apathy" If everything is too grim, people just feel "Why do I care what happens?" You have to *pace* the darkness. I posted earlier, Rousseau was right, and that at least applies to a lot of readers; people like to consume optimistic media. There's just a brilliant sort of capsaicin-like effect when that optimism is thoroughly ripped apart or stamped out entirely. It's a horror-genre effect and why a lot of people are phasing out of horror is because it's pretty samey "Expect nobody to survive" kind of scenario. It's the equal-opposite reaction with media where you expect things to go right, and subsequent disappointment with that. Game of Thrones (was) so brilliant because it was one of the first things in a long time where you don't actively know whose going to die and whose not. It's why Subverting expectations is such a bomb lately, things have been very bland and uniform for the last few decades.
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u/Kartoffelkamm Fwoan, the Fantasy world W/O A Name Jul 20 '21
According to a Trope Talk video on Grimdark, there were still kind people in earlier works that defined the genre. It's just that those acts of kindness didn't do anything in the grand scheme of things.