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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 2279670" data-attributes="member: 6533">I don't know much, but I am certain that if gritty is the level at which things are unrealistic, then grim is the level at which you qualify unrealistic things as belonging to the club.  At the same time I think that because grim is the exception it's the stricter aesthetic sense.  As even Inspiration-seeker's prohibition based idea of gritty implies there is a range on gritty.  I think that because grim is inherently a poor partner to gritty people want less of a range on it.  I do think that where gritty seems to have two related concepts at included in it, Grim seems to have two related but exclusive meanings as used by its afficianados:Grim as something very specific - ie, X-files with fewer ties and more swords and bulging muscles.  Where things are mostly actually rational even where they seem not to be and where they aren't there lies terrible terrible madness!-note that I even think that rational means something very very specific in this sense of Grim.  Sea monsters that are actually dinosaurs, invisible sex-starved space smurfs that live on the top of mountains, and gods that are actually gorillas aren't rational either, but it's in the style to call them so.Grim as something more in the line of flavor.  The Black Company would not be considered grim in the above sense, but it does fit in this more general sense of doomitude.  At the same time Wuxia has many or most of the qualities listed for grim even in the above post but this idea of Grimm is still exclusive enough to kick it out.  I would actually say that there are a number of things from the above idea of gritty that probably belong in this sense of Grim.I think the reason they aren't reconciled is that its pretty easy to switch between them at your leisure and according to the necessities of your argument.  I do think the first definition has a higher level of prestige than the second.Wulf Ratbane implied an ultra-violent aspect to Grim in the other thread when discussing why Zorro wasn't Grim (which would also presumably disqualify his knock-off Batman though I don't know that Wulf would actually say that).  The ultra-violent qualification is a problem for me, since I think it would disqualify Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser which is the other half of the commonly used hardcore grouping of Conan and F/GM.  That wouldn't be a problem if ultra-violence goes in the gritty category but, strictly speaking, ultra-violent is a style of rather than strict necessity of reality.  I mean regardless of the consequence of putting a sword through a guys heart, by the reality standard falling down when someone shoves you is an even more basic consequence of reality but fighting styles that have a focus on pushing people over rather than running them through seem to be innately un-GnG so there has to be a stricture somewhere.It may simply be that F/GM is less strictly hard core GnG than I thought and goes into the second sense of GnG rather than the first.  Which would also support Wulf's assertion that Zorro is very very un-GnG in light of my argument that he had to go into the same category of something as F/GM and Conan since I'm pretty willing to say that where all of them are pulpy only Conan is ultra-violent but both F/GM and Conan are grimly supernatural where Zorro is not or only rarely so.Sorry about the length of this, I definitely have a better handle on gritty.</blockquote>

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