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View Full Version : Fantasy vs. Dark Fantasy vs. Horror



Blackhawk748
2016-01-20, 06:58 AM
So what makes each of these what they are? In other words, how Dark do you have to be to be Dark Fantasy? When does that become Horror? Can you be Dark Fantasy Horror? Yes, these are the questions that plague me.

Mr. Mask
2016-01-20, 07:29 AM
In some ways, it isn't how dark you are, but how depressing your tone is. Lord of the Rings has evil taking over and death and such, but people don't really think of it as dark fantasy. Conan the Barbarian probably counts, with it being filled with prostitutes and corrupt leaders and everything (and I mean everything) being pretty dark throughout, with few things you can consider good.

Horror, in some ways, takes an even darker perspective. The Lord of the Rings could be horror, in that evil powers are taking over the land, raiding, pillaging, and enslaving and torturing various peoples, but the emphasis is on the heroes' journey to stop this dark power, and not too much time is spent discussing their wounds and pains and fears.


That being said, subject matter does make a difference. As mentioned, Conan is filled with prostitutes and other seedy characters, to give the story a darker tone. It's not about saving the world for the good of all, but just adventuring for profit. Horror tends to be filled with more developed monsters, torments and challenges, with psychotics and torturers and things with many mouths, etc.. Horror settings also tend to not develop their characters as heroic and powerful like the other two types do, as they want the characters to seem weak and vulnerable compared to the monsters and challenges.

As for a dark fantasy horror, that's basically just combining the elements. Have less powerful, less super-moral characters in a dark, dirty world, who encounter horrific situations and monsters.


Those are the basics. If you're wondering about something more specific, I might be able to answer.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-20, 10:07 AM
Mr. Mask does a brilliant job of explaining there. To supplement that, I'd say that the difference in tone is often reached through having a difference in viewpoint. Horror often focuses on the people being attacked by (for example) the vampires, while dark fantasy is more likely to take the viewpoint of the vampires. They're struggling with the thirst within, but if they're too weak and the thirst takes over they end up feeling guilty, not getting torn apart. The difference between horror on one side and (dark) fantasy on the other is probably a bit like the difference between a slasher and a cop movie. The cops aren't nearly as powerless towards the attacker as the victims, there are more moments in their story where they're safe and will probably not be attacked and about half the time they get the drop on the masked murderer, instead of the other way around.

Segev
2016-01-20, 10:20 AM
That's actually a good way to distinguish it: the protagonists.

Fantasy is about Heroic Adventurers facing down monsters (horrific or merely fantastic) and powerful men.

Dark Fantasy is about Monstrous beings facing down their own nature as well as other monsters (again horrific or merely fantastic) and powerful men.

Horror is about normal people facing and usually trying to escape monsters (both men and horrific).

Red Fel
2016-01-20, 10:23 AM
That's actually a good way to distinguish it: the protagonists.

Fantasy is about Heroic Adventurers facing down monsters (horrific or merely fantastic) and powerful men.

Dark Fantasy is about Monstrous beings facing down their own nature as well as other monsters (again horrific or merely fantastic) and powerful men.

Horror is about normal people facing and usually trying to escape monsters (both men and horrific).

Or, to put it even more simply:
Fantasy: We are heroes fighting monsters!
Dark fantasy: We are monsters trying to be heroes.
Horror: We are all monsters, deep down.

Segev
2016-01-20, 10:25 AM
I have to quibble about the Horror definition, there. Horror doesn't always have to have monstrous protagonists, or even protagonists who combat "darker impulses." It just depends on the protagonists being in a "avoid the overwhelmingly dangerous threat" mode more than a "combat with the expectation of possible victory" mode.

Morty
2016-01-20, 10:30 AM
I don't see how those labels are in any way mutually exclusive, really.

Red Fel
2016-01-20, 10:37 AM
I have to quibble about the Horror definition, there. Horror doesn't always have to have monstrous protagonists, or even protagonists who combat "darker impulses." It just depends on the protagonists being in a "avoid the overwhelmingly dangerous threat" mode more than a "combat with the expectation of possible victory" mode.

Well, there are really two definitions of horror. There's the horror of the external monster, and the horror of the internal monster.

The horror of the external monster tends only to work when the external monster is so beyond what you can face. Either because of atmospheric elements, which can't be fought, or in terms of raw power that dwarfs that of the protagonists. The line between that and fantasy is a fine one, the key distinction being a certain sense of futility or powerlessness.

The horror of the internal monster, though, is the one that has been a cornerstone of horror as a genre. The horror of the mind. Madness. Rage. Fear. The fact that what the cosmos can do to us is nothing compared to what we can do to ourselves. Even atmospheric horror contains traces of this, inasmuch as we are essentially terrifying ourselves by coming up with horrific explanations for what could otherwise be simply unnerving coincidence. This kind of horror is fairly distinct from fantasy, which tends to deal with larger-than-life heroes overcoming larger-than-life obstacles, or dark fantasy, featuring grey-morality heroes overcoming their darker tendencies while analogously overcoming their darker-than-grey enemies. In this genre, the focus isn't really external at all, but internal.

Perhaps a better definition of horror, then, is "Nobody can stop the monsters."

illyahr
2016-01-20, 11:29 AM
Play the PS2 game Drakengard. Starts Fantasy, moves into Dark Fantasy, finishes Horror. One of the darkest games I have ever played. I absolutely loved it.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-20, 07:56 PM
I don't see how those labels are in any way mutually exclusive, really.

I don't think they are.

While there are some that are obviously one or another of them, many stories are somewhere on the spectrum between them. Plus - I don't think that the differences can be defined too objectively. It's like the difference between blues & jazz. Some songs are obviously one or the other, but there are quite a few which are somewhere in between.

goto124
2016-01-21, 12:12 AM
Any examples of external horror vs internal horror?

Florian
2016-01-21, 03:52 AM
Any examples of external horror vs internal horror?

External: The Ring, The Fog, The Birds, Nightmare on Elm Street.
Internal: Darkness Falls, most Lovecraft things, Vertigo, Rosemarys Baby.

Mastikator
2016-01-21, 04:24 AM
As mentioned the tone, but also the win condition. In fantasy the goal is to go on an adventure, experience a world full of wonder and defeat the evil entity. In dark fantasy the goal is to survive in a world full of wonder and perils, the antagonists you face aren't always much worse than you.

In horror on the other hand the win condition is surviving at all, and you're more likely to die horribly. Defeating the enemy is not really on the menu.

HammeredWharf
2016-01-21, 05:06 AM
The dark fantasy genre isn't well-defined. In its current form it's mostly a phrase people started using after ASoIaF became popular, but previously it was used to describe a whole lot of things, including horror. Horror is easy to define. It's intended to scare or repulse the audience.

Generally speaking, the genre of a story is often hard to pin down, because people react to stories in different ways. For example:

What genre does The Witcher belong to?

It has dragons and elves and other typical fantasy stuff, and is often light-hearted, so it's fantasy.
It deals with dark themes like racism, torture and the consequences of war, so it's dark fantasy.
It has scary monsters, and repulsive descriptions of limbs getting chewed off and the MC turning into spongy monstrosity, so it's horror.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter. Genre is just a tag people use to help describe what a story is like.

Florian
2016-01-21, 07:20 AM
Dark Fantasy is actually pretty easy. Itīs the difference between the "solution" and the "core of the problem". In a sense, that is akin to Cyberpunk, as that works of what could happen and what the costs are.

Letīs put it this way:
"High Fantasy" (aka D&D) is pretty technocratic as you look for magic to solutions.
"Dark Fantasy" looks for stuff like Magic to be the source of Power, as well as being the source of the actual problems.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-21, 07:54 AM
The dark fantasy genre isn't well-defined.

It's defined enough to get a shelf called that in the local bookstore.

It looks a lot like True Blood and Twilight, as far as I can tell.

(Though originally it was just used to mean fantasy with horror elements and themes).


By the original definitions, The Witcher is High Fantasy. High Fantasy is typified by magical occurrances being an accepted part of the norm. Everyone in The Witcher knows about magic and monsters, they're just part of the world, the commonest peasant knows that monsters are a thing and that Witchers are who you hire to get rid of them. Wizards or Sorceresses set up shop in towns and people all know who they are and that they can do magic.

The contrast with High Fantasy is Low Fantasy, which is a secondary world fantasy story where things like magic are uncommon intrusions into the life of the world. A Song of Ice and Fire is Low Fantasy, things like the White Walkers and Dragons and magic are rare elements that most people don't know about or believe in.


Whether a fantasy is Dark Fantasy or not (absent the fang-****er subgenre) really depends on what you use the classical horror elements for. If a Vampire is just something you have to stab up a certain way, it's not Dark Fantasy. If a Vampire is Strahd von Zarovich, monster that you can't really stop even if you can temporarily abate it, but who is bound to his own doom anyway, then it is.


As to when Dark Fantasy becomes horror, well horror is basically fantasy anyway, but classical horror is Primary World fantasy, whereas Dark Fantasy applies the horror elements to Secondary World fantasy instead. So it kind of always is horror and also kind of never is. At the same time.


(If you haven't heard the terms before, Primary World fantasy is a story which purports to be set in the same "real" world that the reader inhabits, whereas Secondary World fantasy is set in a seperate imagined world. Obviously the crossover is Portal Fantasy.)

goto124
2016-01-21, 08:28 AM
(If you haven't heard the terms before, Primary World fantasy is a story which purports to be set in the same "real" world that the reader inhabits, whereas Secondary World fantasy is set in a seperate imagined world. Obviously the crossover is Portal Fantasy.)

Primary World fantasy would be the Harry Potter world where wizards use all manner of spells to hide from Muggles, while Secondary World fantasy would be most DnD settings?

GloatingSwine
2016-01-21, 08:30 AM
Primary World fantasy would be the Harry Potter world, while Secondary World fantasy would be most DnD settings?

Yes.

Portal Fantasy is stuff like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, where a primary world individual enters a secondary world setting.

Beleriphon
2016-01-21, 08:58 AM
What genre does The Witcher belong to?

It has dragons and elves and other typical fantasy stuff, and is often light-hearted, so it's fantasy.
It deals with dark themes like racism, torture and the consequences of war, so it's dark fantasy.
It has scary monsters, and repulsive descriptions of limbs getting chewed off and the MC turning into spongy monstrosity, so it's horror.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter. Genre is just a tag people use to help describe what a story is like.

The Witcher is almost assuredly dark fantasy. It has a very distinct dark tone, Geralt is usually in it for himself. Even if he does end up saving people its for profit, or his own ends. There's a reason Geralt is known as the Butcher of Blaviken.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-21, 09:12 AM
The Witcher is almost assuredly dark fantasy. It has a very distinct dark tone, Geralt is usually in it for himself. Even if he does end up saving people its for profit, or his own ends. There's a reason Geralt is known as the Butcher of Blaviken.


Geralt likes to give the impression that he's in it for himself, and that he doesn't care about politics, but it's, well, bull****.

Geralt actually cares quite a lot, and barely makes enough "profit" to scrape by precisely because of that.

The reason he's known as the Butcher of Blaviken is that he kills a bunch of bandits threatening innocent villagers, but the witnesses didn't know that's what was going on so it just looked like he slaughtered a bunch of dudes.

HammeredWharf
2016-01-21, 09:23 AM
The Witcher is almost assuredly dark fantasy. It has a very distinct dark tone, Geralt is usually in it for himself. Even if he does end up saving people its for profit, or his own ends. There's a reason Geralt is known as the Butcher of Blaviken.

Geralt is a huge softie. He's constantly driven to help others even when he knows it's not worth it. The Butcher of Blaviken nickname is just a misunderstanding. In the end, he dies trying to protect nonhumans from oppression.

That's why The Witcher never felt like real dark fantasy to me. It's full of sympathetic characters and humor, and usually aims to be bittersweet rather than depressing. However, since the definition of dark fantasy is loose, one could call TW that and it would be pretty hard to refute.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-21, 09:39 AM
That's why The Witcher never felt like real dark fantasy to me. It's full of sympathetic characters and humor, and usually aims to be bittersweet rather than depressing. However, since the definition of dark fantasy is loose, one could call TW that and it would be pretty hard to refute.

Trouble is, the definition of dark fantasy isn't all that loose. It was always intended to refer to horror elements and themes in fantasy stories (and got taken up by the fang-****ers when that genre got popular).

It's not Dark Fantasy if the fantasy is covered in mud and blood and nasty things happen to people, it's still just fantasy (high or low depending on the commonality of magical elements) unless the theme of the narrative tends towards horror.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-21, 11:30 AM
That's why The Witcher never felt like real dark fantasy to me. It's full of sympathetic characters and humor, and usually aims to be bittersweet rather than depressing. However, since the definition of dark fantasy is loose, one could call TW that and it would be pretty hard to refute.

Really - The Witcher is a hardboiled detective story with a fantasy backdrop.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-21, 11:31 AM
Letīs put it this way:
"High Fantasy" (aka D&D) is pretty technocratic as you look for magic to solutions.
"Dark Fantasy" looks for stuff like Magic to be the source of Power, as well as being the source of the actual problems.

I've very dubious of those definitions. By that definition - Harry Potter is solidly Dark Fantasy.

Thrudd
2016-01-21, 12:39 PM
In my opinion, these three things are not a single spectrum of "darkness" in fantasy. Fantasy is pretty much anything that takes place in a world with magic.

"Dark Fantasy" seems to be fantasy that includes/focuses on creatures that were traditionally horror movie monsters: vampires/undead, werewolves, ghosts, Frankenstein type experiments, etc. It might also include Demons and possessions as well. I would consider the setting of those classic monster movies, in fact, to be "dark fantasy". The sole element which makes the setting a fantasy may, in fact, be the presence of one or more of those supernatural beings.

Horror describes how the audience is meant to react to a story. It is a subgenre of suspense, where the suspense comes mostly from unknown, unstoppable, or unconventional threats that are usually deadly. It needs to include scenes that shock and surprise the audience.

You can tell a horror story in almost any setting. We have them in totally mundane settings with slashers and serial killer stories. We have them in science fiction settings with alien creatures, artificial intelligence and strange science. You can have them in Dark Fantasy, of course, with people being stalked by those classic horror monsters. You can have them in any fantasy setting, with threats coming from either mundane or magical sources. The story of Theseus, the Labyrinth and Minotaur could be easily be turned into a horror story set in the fantasy world of Greek myth.

You can easily tell other stories besides horror in a dark fantasy setting, as well. Twilight is a teen romance in a dark fantasy setting. Ravenloft is often used for heroic adventure in a dark fantasy world. With the World of Darkness, you can tell almost any type of story.

Morty
2016-01-21, 12:42 PM
I don't think they are.

While there are some that are obviously one or another of them, many stories are somewhere on the spectrum between them. Plus - I don't think that the differences can be defined too objectively. It's like the difference between blues & jazz. Some songs are obviously one or the other, but there are quite a few which are somewhere in between.

Pretty much. I really don't think trying to nail down the exact difference, or a point where one becomes the other, is very useful.

Florian
2016-01-21, 02:35 PM
I've very dubious of those definitions. By that definition - Harry Potter is solidly Dark Fantasy.

HP is straight Dark Fantasy. Remove magic and you remove the problem as it is. Enhance magic and you enhance the problem. *shrugs* It all comes down to "Might makes Right".

Beleriphon
2016-01-21, 04:24 PM
Geralt is a huge softie. He's constantly driven to help others even when he knows it's not worth it. The Butcher of Blaviken nickname is just a misunderstanding. In the end, he dies trying to protect nonhumans from oppression.

That's why The Witcher never felt like real dark fantasy to me. It's full of sympathetic characters and humor, and usually aims to be bittersweet rather than depressing. However, since the definition of dark fantasy is loose, one could call TW that and it would be pretty hard to refute.

I think the big difference is that no matter what Geralt does he never really makes anything better. He fixes a few problems for local people, and is for sure a sympathetic character but there is no way to make the world better without massive upheaval. One of the core tenets of The Witcher seems to revolve that people are worse and more horrible than "monsters" are. Because at the core of it all of Geralt's stories the most horrible stuff is because people are terrible.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-21, 04:42 PM
I think the big difference is that no matter what Geralt does he never really makes anything better.

psst: That's because Ciri is really the main character of the novel saga.

Frozen_Feet
2016-01-22, 10:33 AM
Fantasy is a roof genre, and a very broad one at that. It basically only says that the setting includes supernatural stuff. Horror is a specific subgenre, telling which kind of stories (=scary ones) are being told.

Dark fantasy exists in the intersection of these two. As evidenced in this thread, people variably use it to denote one of two different things: cynical fantasy, and fantastic horror. As noted, these two are not mutually exclusive, so overall you could say: dark fantasy is fantasy with notable cynical or horror elements.

I do agree with assessment of Harry Potter as dark fantasy. The first two books might count as children's adventure, but Prisoner of Azkaban introduces strong horror elements (dementors) and brings very bleak themes to the fore, like an innocent person being accused and imprisoned.

I'll note that trying to retroactively apply genre labels to old works is somewhat futile. For example, Lord of the Rings is very bittersweet, and has some parts which are pure horror (Shelob's lair), but it obviously wasn't written as an example of "dark fantasy" because the concept didn't really exist back then. Ditto for Conan; when it was written, it was considered pulp fiction, and gave rise to the term Sword & Sorcery. If it's an example of a genre, well, it's that genre. Even if some Conan stories bear similarities to modern works which are considered "dark fantasy" or whatever.

Elderand
2016-01-22, 11:32 AM
Fantasy is a roof genre, and a very broad one at that. It basically only says that the setting includes supernatural stuff. Horror is a specific subgenre, telling which kind of stories (=scary ones) are being told.

Dark fantasy exists in the intersection of these two. As evidenced in this thread, people variably use it to denote one of two different things: cynical fantasy, and fantastic horror. As noted, these two are not mutually exclusive, so overall you could say: dark fantasy is fantasy with notable cynical or horror elements.

I do agree with assessment of Harry Potter as dark fantasy. The first two books might count as children's adventure, but Prisoner of Azkaban introduces strong horror elements (dementors) and brings very bleak themes to the fore, like an innocent person being accused and imprisoned.

I'll note that trying to retroactively apply genre labels to old works is somewhat futile. For example, Lord of the Rings is very bittersweet, and has some parts which are pure horror (Shelob's lair), but it obviously wasn't written as an example of "dark fantasy" because the concept didn't really exist back then. Ditto for Conan; when it was written, it was considered pulp fiction, and gave rise to the term Sword & Sorcery. If it's an example of a genre, well, it's that genre. Even if some Conan stories bear similarities to modern works which are considered "dark fantasy" or whatever.

I'm not entirely sure if you meant to imply that horror is a subgenre of fantasy. Whether you did or not I want to say that horror is definitly not a subgenre of fantasy. It's possible to have horror without any supernatural elements.

Florian
2016-01-22, 01:57 PM
I'm not entirely sure if you meant to imply that horror is a subgenre of fantasy. Whether you did or not I want to say that horror is definitly not a subgenre of fantasy. It's possible to have horror without any supernatural elements.

You can have a Horror subgenre of anything. Fantasy, modern, scifi, it doesnīt matter. That just becomes "Trappings" for the horror and thatīs it.

Morty
2016-01-22, 02:15 PM
Fantasy is a roof genre, and a very broad one at that. It basically only says that the setting includes supernatural stuff. Horror is a specific subgenre, telling which kind of stories (=scary ones) are being told.

Dark fantasy exists in the intersection of these two. As evidenced in this thread, people variably use it to denote one of two different things: cynical fantasy, and fantastic horror. As noted, these two are not mutually exclusive, so overall you could say: dark fantasy is fantasy with notable cynical or horror elements.

I do agree with assessment of Harry Potter as dark fantasy. The first two books might count as children's adventure, but Prisoner of Azkaban introduces strong horror elements (dementors) and brings very bleak themes to the fore, like an innocent person being accused and imprisoned.

I'll note that trying to retroactively apply genre labels to old works is somewhat futile. For example, Lord of the Rings is very bittersweet, and has some parts which are pure horror (Shelob's lair), but it obviously wasn't written as an example of "dark fantasy" because the concept didn't really exist back then. Ditto for Conan; when it was written, it was considered pulp fiction, and gave rise to the term Sword & Sorcery. If it's an example of a genre, well, it's that genre. Even if some Conan stories bear similarities to modern works which are considered "dark fantasy" or whatever.

Trying to examine the broader context, including historical context, before rushing in to apply labels? Crazy talk, I say.

Florian
2016-01-22, 03:54 PM
Maybe we can work with this:

Fantasy: We have a second set of physics there, the "fantastical", and it simply works for all who know how to access it.

Dark Fantasy: We have a second set of physics there, the "Dark" and it shows us that our regular set of physics is the inferior one. In the long run, the "Dark" will always win.

Horror: We are confronted with stuff that we canīt "beat", we can only "survive" it if we take the right measures.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-22, 06:03 PM
Right, okay, this is kinda complicated. There are various types of fantasy. Blah blah blah, umbrella term, I don't want to get into this thing of what fantasy is. I should get some sleep instead.

Dark Fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy with the key common trait being that the world isn't an awesome place, and things can have little chance of changing. But it's a spectrum, The Witcher is on the edge while ASoIaF is more firm, while GoT had too much female nudity in the first episode and not enough of the male variety to keep me.

Paranormal Romance is the term for fang****ers, to use a term another poster used.

Horror is a suspense subgenre. To use RPG examples, specifically CofD, Vampire: the Requiem is horror as you don't know when you'll become an inhuman monster, Changeling: the Lost is horror as you don't know when the monster will come back and 'play' with you again (...I so want to play a physically focused Fairest who spent their time as a Queen in a chess set, come on 2e).

GloatingSwine
2016-01-24, 07:11 AM
Dark Fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy with the key common trait being that the world isn't an awesome place, and things can have little chance of changing. But it's a spectrum, The Witcher is on the edge while ASoIaF is more firm, while GoT had too much female nudity in the first episode and not enough of the male variety to keep me.

Very few people actually use the term "Dark Fantasy" to mean that though. Rather more people use it to mean "fantasy with horror elements". Sometimes people use Low Fantasy to mean "fantasy but dirty", but that's not really accurate, even though A Song of Ice and Fire is Low Fantasy it's not because of all the sex and violence, it's because magic/magical elements is rare and mostly unknown.

The thing is that there isn't really a term for "fantasy but containing lots of sex and violence", it's just fantasy with a parental advisory sticker on it.


Horror is a suspense subgenre. To use RPG examples, specifically CofD, Vampire: the Requiem is horror as you don't know when you'll become an inhuman monster, Changeling: the Lost is horror as you don't know when the monster will come back and 'play' with you again (...I so want to play a physically focused Fairest who spent their time as a Queen in a chess set, come on 2e).

It is, but there's a lot of overlap. A large majority of horror stories have some fantastical elements, the difference between horror and urban fantasy is more often the philosophical approach to the same elements than what they actually contain.

Seto
2016-01-25, 10:32 AM
*I didn't read the whole thread, this may have been said already*

To me, fantasy (and dark fantasy) is defined by its universe and its themes, while horror is mostly defined by the effect it produces. They're not genres in the same sense.
For example, Discworld by Terry Pratchett, rest in peace, is set in a fantasy world while also being comic, a satire to be precise. It's fantasy because it talks about dwarves, trolls, werewolves, gods and magic, it's comedy because it makes people laugh, and it's satire because through that laughter it makes people think about actual society in a critical fashion.
Lovecraft's work, on the other hand, is arguably fantasy (although it also has elements of science-fiction) because it talks about the supernatural influence on great, long-forgotten beings on our world, while also being definitely horror, because it induces a sense of dread in the readers.

Fantasy, sci-fi, historical novels, realism... These are about introducing certain themes and taking place in a certain setting. (Is it our world ? What part of it ? Currently, in the past, or in the future ? Does magic exist ? etc.)
Comedy, horror... These are about achieving a certain state of mind in the reader, and using known devices in order to do so. Horror for example will focus on the world being alien to the protagonist, particularly familiar elements revealing their strange, unknown face. It will often thrive on darkness and isolation - if it's a novel, by using an internal point of view and relating the impossibility of communicating properly with the world, if it's a movie by taking small, mobile shots of secluded dark places. It will either include only one character (internal point of view), or separate and isolate the characters. It will also rely heavily on suspense : what might come out of the shadows ?

Thus you can have fantasy horror, sci-fi horror, historical horror (see XIXth century Gothic novels). Of course, it's rarely clear-cut, and great works are often defined by their ability to marry several genres or tones. Though a single passage cannot be at once comedy and horror, consecutive passages might be one followed by the other.
Here's a quick gradation from horror to non-horror to show how much you can mix-and-match :
- Lovecraft is fantasy/sci-fi horror.
- Henry James' Turn of the Screw is realistic horror.
- Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is realism/romanticism, but one character, Miss Havisham, is borrowed from Gothic horror.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer is based on the inversion of a horror trope, often uses techniques borrowed from horror movies, but is not horror at all. It's fantasy/high school comedy often obtained by a self-conscious play on classic horror devices. (Of course, there's more to it than that). As an exception, Hush (4.10) is a straight mix between horror and fairy tale.
- The Simpsons is a satire that has nothing to do with horror whatsoever. Except for Halloween episodes, because then they do horror (while staying in the same universe), and you can easily see the difference between a normal and a Halloween ep.
- My Little Pony really has nothing to do with horror, this time. I swear.

As for dark fantasy, I'm not familiar with the term and I can only guess. Fantasy often has an optimistic, manichean spin, as in The Lord of the Rings where it's pretty clear who's good, who's Evil, and what needs to be done. As a result, even if Frodo is in jeopardy, the reader is secure in their beliefs. Dark fantasy might blur the lines, feature villainous heroes, explore realistic consequences of things like mind-control magic or necromancy... Thus it would have a natural affinity with horror, but I see no reason why it couldn't be turned on its head and become comedy instead (probably in a parodic way) while technically remaining dark fantasy.

Mr.Moron
2016-01-25, 11:07 AM
Fantasy: There is magic & whatnot
Dark Fantasy: There is magic & whatnot, and also everyone is an *******
Horror: Things that are beyond your ability to deal with directly, and beyond your ability to understand want to kill you or at least mess with you really bad. May also be fantasy or dark fantasy.

Segev
2016-01-25, 11:41 AM
Dark Fantasy doesn't require the protagonists to be jerks. It only requires that the setting be a bit bleaker, the heroics more desperate or more morally gray. The hard decisions are more common than in normal Fantasy, and there's an overall sense that drawing on the magical elements pushes you closer to the darkness.

In Fantasy, you can be a mage without any worries that your power is inherently corrupting you. You've got temptations, sure, but no more than, say, a powerful fighter has (e.g. to be a bully or thug-like thief). In Dark Fantasy, your magical power probably comes from tapping dark forces.

Whether you're a werewolf struggling to hold on to your sanity, a vampire fighting to remain moral despite your urges (and thus having to constantly govern yourself when it comes to how much you eat and from whom), a sorcerer whose tainted bloodline grants magic but gives you a nature easily tempted towards evil, a wizard who pacts with terrible beings and strives to keep his free will in the face of those pacts while not letting the entities too much advantage...

In Dark Fantasy, power always comes at a price, and a hint that you're in some way serving SOME evil force, whether by giving it hooks in you or into the world. The challenge is finding a way to leverage what you get so that you (and, presumably, the side of Good) comes out ahead.

goto124
2016-01-26, 02:29 AM
Is it a requirement that normal Fantasy has black-and-white morality?

Logosloki
2016-01-26, 07:01 AM
Is it a requirement that normal Fantasy has black-and-white morality?

I would say the norm for fantasy is more Blue and Orange morality rather than black and white. Then again I would shy from calling anything normal fantasy because fantasy writing itself is a product of the time it is written rather than tradition.

To be honest all that is required to be a part of the fantasy genre is that the story either be about not quite this earth or not this earth at all and that the protagonists are either woven into the setting or are discovering about the setting. As long as the core elements are outside of the common belief it is fantasy.

Florian
2016-01-26, 09:52 AM
Is it a requirement that normal Fantasy has black-and-white morality?

Huh? Strange question.
Regular fantasy doesnīt need morality to function as that subject matter is nothing that a regular fantasy story should or would explore more in-depth. Black and white morality is just a shortcut, a way of answering difficult questions before they are actually posed and forestall them, as theyīd distract from the story.

For example, take the D&D alignment system: Itīs not there to giver answers but to forestall discussion. This is X, this is Y, they are polar opposites, so itīs ok to kill each other. End of story, nothing to worry about.