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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9630670" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean no insult by this but yeah - or your definition is very unconventional.That's not an issue that relates to grimdark specifically. That's a completely separate thing. In grimdark it's not that big threats can't be steamrolled, sometimes the full might and majesty of the Imperium descends on a Genestealer Cult and utterly annihilates it. What makes it grimdark isn't the Genestealer Patriarch putting up a good fight - he might get absolutely schooled in seconds by a team of Deepstriking Terminators. Rather it's that there's probably a Tyranid Hive Fleet headed there already, and maybe they won't arrive for 50 years, but will anyone be able to stop them when they do? All you're doing is buying time. In the grim darkness of the 41st century, there is only war.Additionally as I think you alluded to, grimdark is also not maximally serious, generally speaking. When it tries to be, it tends to fail as a tone for a variety of reasons. Thus a demon lord being steamrolled is within the bounds of grimdark (so long as it doesn't lead to long-term happiness and flowers), but it's definitely without the bounds of valour-oriented heroic fantasy, because valour-oriented heroic fantasy demands a good fight to vanquish the evil. It's definitely tonally dissonant if the demon lord gets curbstomped in that case (esp. without a speech, as I noted).It's worth noting that heroic fantasy isn't always like that - obviously Lord of the Ring isn't, but that's a separate and potentially interesting discussion, where Tolkien engaged in some very early "trope subversion", because he didn't want Frodo to engage in a heroic confrontation like Bilbo kind of had, and Bard definitely had, but rather to prove the worth of the little guy who believes in something.</blockquote>

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