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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9734943" data-attributes="member: 7023887">Grimdark is not an entirely useless genre, but nihilism is entirely anathema to why I love, consume, and create fantasy media. Too many people and writers think grimdark means “no one can ever be happy, nothing matters, and any character that is momentarily happy or cares about anything meaningful needs to be abused by the plot until they get with the cool kids and become nihilistic naughty words like everyone else in the story.” If Homelander gets away with everything in Season 5 of The Boys TV show, it will ruin the entire series for me. I don’t want to consume useless garbage where the moral is “everything is and always will be awful, so there’s no point in fighting for what’s right.” I don’t want to consume books that read like novelized suicide notes. I don’t want to watch shows or movies that tell me humanity is a foolish endeavor and that we might as well give up in the fight for freedom, justice, and happiness. I would not want to run or play in a setting where there is no point. Where the group knows from the start that they have no hope of defeating the villains or improving the world and nothing of importance can be done. Stories of hope are always important, especially now when the world is rapidly getting worse. And nihilism helps those that are actively ruining the world by telling you there’s no point in fighting back. Dark Sun is and must be hopepunk. The heroes can overthrow the Sorcerer-Kings, slay the Dragon, and start to heal the world. If they cannot, there is no reason for the setting to exist. There is no use for a setting or story that tells you life is pointless and you were a sucker for caring. [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.stephenrdonaldson.com/EpicFantasy.pdf[/URL]</blockquote>

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