Special:Badtitle/NS90:Trope Workshop talk:Grimdark/differences/reply

Now that I have taken a good look at the Crapsack World page I can see that it is indeed very similar to Grimdark. The difference is that Crapsack World is a setting while Grimdark, an established term used in the real world, describes the tone of the work and has become an effective subgenre in science fiction and fantasy.

Crapsack World is more or less an absolute requirement for Grimdark, but not every story set in a Crapsack World is Grimdark. Some Crapsack Worlds get changed for the better by the actions of the heroes, and it is also possible to have small-scale positive stories set in worlds that are objectively horrible. For example (and I know I'm getting obscure and spoilerish here, but this is what comes to mind) the short story Crying in the Rain by Tanith Lee is set in a world devastated by nuclear fallout, but the title is there to mislead the reader. Instead it turns out that every character involved in the plot is a nice person and the main character ends up well and neither crying nor in the deadly radioactive rain.

In any case I think Grimdark's current status as a redirect to Darker and Edgier needs to be changed. The trope page also needs a lot of work still.