Fantasy Moods: Dark Fantasy

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy Presentation

Dark Fantasy –

·       Some will tell you that dark fantasy is fantasy and horror mixed together.  I don’t see it quite like that.  Too much of the dark stuff I’ve read doesn’t fit into that framework for me. 

·       Fantasy and Horror are on a continuum based on how stories are intended to make the reader feel.  Fantasy tends to be optimistic, horror pessimistic.  In fantasy the reader is pretty sure that things are going to turn out OK, regardless of the ups and downs of the story.  Even if a character has pretty much given up hope and is trudging on through sheer momentum, (think Frodo near the end of the ring quest) the reader, with her omniscient view, knows this is an event with an end and it will get better.  At the far end of Horror readers have no such assumptions.  Things look bleak because they are, and neither the characters or the readers have any real expectation that they’ll get better.  The monster will come back.  A character is irrevocably mad.  Dark fantasy rests somewhere on this continuum nearer the horror than the fantasy end, depending, of course, on the story and the author, but not giving up all hope that things will turn out as well as they can in the end. There is the hope of at least some redemption and healing.

·       Topics are no guarantee of dark.  Vampires, for instance.  I read a chapter on horror RA that classed Vampires as horror, period.  MaryJanice Davidson writes a series called Betsy the Vampire Queen that is about vampires with werewolves, ghosts, and zombies thrown in, but, while it has horrific moments and events, is anything but horror.  Betsy is a ditzy 30 something blond Minnesotan who dies in a car wreck and revives as the long foretold Queen of the Vampires.  She has no desire to fulfill this role, but if she has to, she’ll be a kinder, gentler Vampire Queen and drag the rest of the vampire world with her, kicking and screaming if necessary.  Again, full of humor, light reading, good outcomes, not horror by any stretch of the imagination.  This series was listed in this horror chapter because it has vampires. 

·       It can be hard to tell where dark fantasy leaves off and horror begins. My feeling is that a lot of it depends on where professional classifiers – publishers and catalogers – choose to put a particular title. Many authors write both, and win awards in both fields.

·       Another continuum in Dark Fantasy (and Horror) is the psychological. How much of the darkness is a result of fighting external monsters vs. internal?

·       Melusine by Sarah Monette is a really good example of more internal monsters than external. Of the two main characters, both were child victims of exploitation, and later assault. Both are stripped of the skills they’re proudest of and their chosen livelihoods, and both are forced to keep dealing with new, psychologically-scarring circumstances throughout the series.  Monette has a fascination with breaking her characters and seeing how they might heal and learn to live with the damage that won’t heal. They are dark.  And yet, there’s great beauty, too. She comes up with some breathtakingly lovely concepts that show that while there’s great dark, and it’s not an easy society to live in, there’s also great beauty if you know to look.  The dark is not all there is; there is hope. Monette is a fabulous writer, and her characterizations are amazing.  This is the first book in a long time that I got honestly angry over having to put down to go back to work after lunch.

·       A lot of it is much more external.  Great monsters to fight. Changing situations that are hard to handle.  Horrific situations.