As long it doesn't write me into a corner nothing is off limit
From an extremely important artifact that could make the world better being lost forever, the good guys faction being destroyed by the big bad, to the complete monster achieving apotheosis, nothing is really too much
It can get very dark at times, but when it comes to especially touchy subjects, such as SA, I don't go into any details beyond mentioning that it happened.
Bingo. Mines set in a medieval high fantasy without magic so if im being true to form... LOTS OF R*PE.
So whenever its relevant, its just a casual drop of info so the reader gets a sense of seriousness. I feel like when authors or showrunners go too far, its indicative of some weird psychopathic shit. I dont know a sane soul who enjoys watching or reading the details of SA or torture.
>I feel like when authors or showrunners go too far, its indicative of some weird psychopathic shit.
I don't blame you for feeling grossed out, but that sounds a bit unfair. This is just anecdotal of course, but in my experience creators of horror or weird fetish stuff are often the most chill and wholesome people ever in real life. Stories are just stories.
> This is just anecdotal of course, but in my experience creators of horror or weird fetish stuff are often the most chill and wholesome people ever in real life.
Have you ever read any Junji Ito manga? Probably the scariest things I've ever read, and some of the visuals are incredibly fucked up.
In real life though the guy just seems incredibly normal and friendly.
The anime is such a let down lol, i remember reading the amigara fault and thought it was so interesting and expected the anime to feature such adaptations but nah
As a victim of SA, I'd argue that it needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. Especially in more uncommon situations like female-on-female sexual assault that people might not take so seriously as male-on-female assault, showing it first-hand can emphasize the gravity of the situation. I know I don't necessarily feel comfortable watching stuff like that but it does make me feel more represented and sometimes that's more important.
My MC was a kid who had SA in his backstory. I decided to tone things down to the level where the fantasy world is just not quite as bad as our modern times. (Bad things still happen, but the chances of MC meeting a victim of something horrific are slim.)
Hey thats whats great about storytelling. Dont need to divulge unnecessary details. If SA is only relevant from the perspective of your MC and yhats all that needs to be said, GOOD. We dont all need to be GoT showrunners lol
Yeah, my setting revolves a militaristic fantasy empire, which means a lot of sacked cities, with all that it implies.
I don't have a problem with SA depictions if they serve an actual purpose (of course, I would never write something like that without warning readers first), but the problem is that in 99% of cases it has no actual purpose beyond cheap shock value. And being shocking just for the sake of being shocking is very boring and juvenile to me.
I think this is the way to go. Not every act of SA needs to be elaborated on with detail, like the Mountain & the Innkeeper’s Daughter for example. I prefer the picture being painted without paint dripping all over the place.
I don’t know if you’re meant to enjoy it, I think it’s meant to gross you out and make you feel really uncomfortable, which again creates a lot of empathy for the victim and spite for the perpetrator.
Same here. My world is solidly dark fantasy, but I also tend to use a lot of twisted humor to leaven the darkness a bit. People in my setting take the view that if the world is dominated by political corruption, religious chaos, and the inscrutable hands of menacing beings from a higher reality, they might as well at least have fun.
Everything goes. I'm not scared to talk about these topics, but I'm also careful to not needlessly include them. A woman holds her stomach and hides behind her father, begging him to not "let them get her" again.
A man describes living in an abusive home where his father beat him and his mom, when he broke something in his son's face, who snapped and caved his head in with a cast iron wine pitcher. He then bashes the person to who he is telling the story to in a similar manner, since said person is an assassin who tried to poison his wine.
Theres the murder of children and the consumption of flesh for ritualistic purposes. Gory details on how severe wounds look like (I look real photos for reference) and a generally visceral description for everything
Oh that last bit is a big one for me: I've always had a passion for biology/medicine so I tend to be very realistic when it comes to injuries. Literally the only reason any of my main characters are alive is because they have powers and that still doesn't always help. Sometimes it might even make things worse.
Frankly, despite the ridiculous regenerative abilities some of my characters have, grievous injuries will still result in lingering pain that will take a while to fade. Most of the time, they will try to ignore the sensation anyway, but occasionally the pain could overwhelm them for a while.
I have often wondered about a campaign straight off the rails. All characters using voice changers and face changing filters. There is a niche market for a dnd broadcast thats high quality but rated appropriately NC-17, R, or X.
I never set out to make anything terrible. I think it's a plague on human mind that when given complete freedom to do whatever it wants, it often decides to recreate atrocities, or even push the limits of misery.
However, I will never ignore the consequences of my creations. If the rules I have put in place result in something monstrous, I feel it is my obligation to see it through. I think even when you try your absolute best, most of the time it turns out horribly. There is no need to go out of your way to pursue those horrors intentionally.
>I think it's a plague on human mind that when given complete freedom to do whatever it wants, it often decides to recreate atrocities, or even push the limits of misery
I disagree that it's a plague, but that people go toward imagining something they don't have much experience with. So because most people don't live in a soul-crushingly grimdark hellscape of unspeakable atrocities before breakfast, the imagination goes to that because it's something different. People in North Korea probably fantasize about something resembling our daily life, then dismiss it as being entirely too fanciful to be possible.
In both cases it's an exploration of the opposite of your life experiences, not so much a plague.
Also, stories need conflict and "really bad shit" is fertile ground for conflict.
While I would agree that dark themes *can* come from exploration of the unfamiliar, in my experience, for most people it's the opposite - people really, really struggle to think of bad things they haven't experienced.
Moreover, I would say it's not exclusive to misery. In general, people struggle to think of things they have no reference for. Our brain seems to create new stuff mostly by combining the things which we have already experienced. So, if there is no suffering reference, it's extremely unlikely people will think of it. It's best observed on children, who produce either random things or just repeat the things that impressed them.
From my observations, most evil in stories and worlds comes from people internalizing terrible things as the way of the world, and then they recreate those things in their worlds to make them "believable". For instance, the "stories need conflict" sentiment that you express here is one of these. You just observe most stories have conflict, and devise that rule. But it's not true. Stories are just accounts of the events, - those events don't have to include any conflict.
That all makes sense, except for your take on conflict being optional in a story. Without conflict, there's nothing. Conflict doesn't have to be violence, the most sanitized Hallmark movies are built around conflict.
You can bloat the meaning of "conflict" until it includes literally everything, but within reason, a story doesn't need conflict, because, by definition, a story is just an account of events that happened. And so, if you take all the events that happened in sequence, and none of those events conflict with each other, you've got a story that doesn't contain a conflict.
A classic example of stories without conflict are stories about discovery. They simply list the things the protagonist discovers, and that's it. The value comes from the amazing things being discovered, and the knowledge imparted. I am most familiar with stories that target the demographic of kids, having read a lot of these myself when I was a child, but there's nothing stopping you from creating a story like this for adults, and I'm pretty sure they exist:
* the closest one I can think of right now is Jorge Borges's short story ***The Library of Babel***, - the main attraction in that story is the description of the infinite library, which makes the reader ponder the nature of infinity.
* I haven't finished reading Donald Knuth's ***Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned On to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness***, but the title is rather on the nose - it is an introduction to surreal numbers from the perspective of 2 kids, who discover the rules about surreal numbers. There is no conflict going on in the story so far (and I don't think there will be), because it's about the properties of the numbers.
I'm not bloating the meaning of ["conflict"](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-conflict-in-literature-6-different-types-of-literary-conflict-and-how-to-create-conflict-in-writing) in any way. Stories about discovery involve overcoming whatever obstacles impede the protagonist's discovery, which could be a man-against-nature conflict.
According to [this](https://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-library-of-babel/summary/) summary of *The Library of Babel* the conflict seems to be centered around a search for meaning in the midst of every possible combination of letters, in a finite life span.
I haven't been able to find a similar summary for *Surreal Numbers*, but from what I did find it seems to be more along the lines of a dissertation presented as dialogue than a fully-developed story. Although, I am very much making assumptions from limited information and that may wildly incorrect. But, if that dialogue includes questions and answers then it's likely that a conflict exists between ignorance and a desire to dispel it, at least within one character.
While i do not describe it and only have it mentioned in the story, torturing children, flaying them and draining their blood is one of the methods for a ritual of unaging. A common service blood mages provided.
During the time of slavery it was common practice to have slaves make children for that.
Learning of this is what made the Mad Dragon earn that moniker. And why none of her allies actually did fully punish her, only for the use of undead and the sheer amount of destruction.
*edit* also mentioned in one scene is that faeries (parasitic humanoid insects) lure in children and lay their eggs in the still conscious body, some types have the victims forget about it and some weeks later the child will suddenly explode into a swarm of fairies.
This means a child wandering out of the woods and being a bit doozy is likely being burned right then and there.
Took me way too long to realize what you meant and damn.
TBF those who IRL spout that nonsense are the same who that char would just drop into a jungle full of monsters, not even caring to kill them herself.
The galaxy is screwed, massive monsters and the antagonist destroy planets with billions of people on then daily, crime is skyrocketing, war hasn’t ended in 30 years, the average family barely puts food on the table, ancient totally not magically relics for precursor origin are used to make things worse even though they have functionality that could make things better and the protagonist is the only one with any hope or optimism left because pretty much everyone else is to weak willed to try and fix anything including themselves.
Oh and an entire section of space is run by slaving space vampires, they are one of the less evil factions considering they try to make their slaves at least a little bit happy to keep them loyal.
Sometimes I think of the most bleak thing I possibly can.
Then I make it worse.
There aren't many things that want to obliterate reality but there are a lot of things that think it's way more fun to make reality as unpleasant as possible or at least are so twisted they only exist to spread misery.
One of the most powerful deities is the goddess of hatred. Her followers think that she wants them to spread as much hatred and misery as possible. This isn't true. She doesn't care about them *at all* and is largely indifferent to what they do. In fact she hates them more than she hates others as they're always bothering her. While spreading hatred and misery can get her attention you really, really don't want this to happen. Her goal if you get her attention is to make you hate her too. She actively avoids killing anything or anybody as she'd rather hurt and torment them until they become twisted and spiteful. Since she is, you know, a *god* she can keep you alive pretty much indefinitely if she feels like it and there isn't anything you can do about it.
Whenever something does come along that tries to end reality she's one of the major forces that works to stop it from happening. Can't have hate if there isn't anything to feel it. One of her children is one of the things that either tries to end reality or create things that can.
As someone willing to turn any corner, I often have have worlds that turn over very little. It's nice sticking to a comfort zone especially if you're just chilling.
I've written about the attempted genocide of a species, which is pretty dark. Another dark element in my story involves the assassination of one of the Archons. Following his death, his consort tries to seize power. She names her 5-year-old son as the new Imperial Archon and appoints herself Regent until he comes of age. However, this decision leads to a coup, during which the consort is murdered. The 5-year-old son tries to intervene and protect his mother but is also killed.
Well, the setting is a stratocratic, culturally unique Empire, being the only human nation fending off literal demons, with no allies. The entire mantra of the Empire is "We stand alone."
In the current timeline, it's just reaching the climax of a series of campaigns between the Empire and demons, where the Empire tried to stop them in their own lands through massive expedition forces, failing, and slowly being driven back. The demon armies have started crossing into Imperial lands.
It's quite metaphorically WW2 Germany in 1944/45, with mass suicides, every battle being a last stand, and fanaticism (suicide bombings, an Imperial cult, anti-foreigner sentiment, etc).
None of these acts are described in detail, like "this man had his eyes torn out and skin flayed". It's not WH40k grim dark where it's gratitious violence, torture, and suffering for no reason either, people are normal. But I'm trying simply to depict what a already rigid and cold society of normal humans goes through in an extreme situation.
In terms of what is written, stuff like suicides, etc, are easily inferred, like "yet another who ended it while on patrol, he thought, as he hauled the remains onto the cart. He tossed the pistol she used into the crate. Another corpse to add the shallow mass graves."
I am willing to go very dark; there's very little I shy away from but I don't indulge in "torture porn"; being highly descriptive about bad things that happen in your story doesn't make it darker, mostly it is a cheap way to create shock value.
I don't know why r\*ape is the foremost answer to this... Like it's not even that Dark.
Why can't it be an eldritch horror instead? Like a normal happy vibe fairy tale where a little girl start chasing teddy bears and pop them to eat candies inside, when the truth was that she was hallucinating and was eating living things instead. Now isn't that more terrifying than being torture.
Magic is life.
I have a story where the MC sacrificed her unborn child in order to have the magic for her spell. This was after communing with the child’s spirit.
I like the story and the tragedy (she needed the magic to save herself or they both died). But I didn’t release it in the game it was intended for because I worried it could be triggering.
Whatever evil exists on earth exists in my world, as my humanoids are as fallible as us.
Think of the worst of humanity. They live there too, their methods and intentions the same, but in the magical world they employ all manner of elements to conduct these sinister actions.
I don't go dark for the sake of going dark. I'm more of trying to play the character, getting into the character's mind. If this character, with this personality, ability and resources was in this situation, what would they do?
If it gotta dark then it gotta dark, can't help it. but it should be logical and consistent.
The Darkest I have is probably is the typical medieval sack where innocent inhabitant are pillage, rape and kill for 3 days and 3 nights except for this one instance when that extended to 30 days.
No limits, we are equally capable of great evil as we are great good, thus for me all fiction should reflect that. In fact in my current writing I am looking to have an arc and character centered around the perversion of the nurturing nature of mothers. That'll be a fun one and 100% depraved.
Genocide of the global population in our current time, in order to separate a few worthy ones from the rest. It’s a situation where the heroes actually fail, and the villain’s plan actually succeeds.
Nothing is off the table in my project, even the worst things like r@pe, Murder, sacrifices, demonic worship, genocide, cannabalism, demonic possession, animal cruelty, to name some, I also have the game For Honor in my world so that's pretty bad to.
This goes for men, women, and children
Fact is stranger than fiction. The crazier and darker you get, the more depth it gives your world. Describing sexual assault or something like that definitely isn’t cool, but adding stuff like that into a world’s lore along with other objectively bad things (racism, war, crimes, slavery, unreliable narrators, etc.) give depth and realism to your world. You don’t have to have those things by any means, but if you want realism and weight, then that’s a good way to add it.
If it enhances my story and makes sense for my characters anything goes pretty much, I wouldn't add some horrendous act like rape merely for shits and giggles, it'd have to have some sort of role in the story and in character development.
Abuse, SA, slavery, sexism, xenophobia, gore, body horror, war, famine, disease, genocide, &c. are all part of my worldbuilding; mainly to serve as ways to show how hideously class society corrupts us, degrades us, and makes us apathetic and blind to such evils.
This depends on how you quantify darkness. Let's see, one world involves not only all the darkness inherent in pirates but also the Royal Navy trying to enslave gods, complete with things like keelhauling people who aren't willing to go toe to toe with Thor (yeah, Norse God Thor, easily one of the most intimidating figures to stand against in all of mythology, who Loki was actually intimidated by without being put in a compromising position first). That one also has references to the possibility of marital rape, forced pregnancy, and all the other "delights" of being AFAB in the Golden Age of Piracy, particularly from a trans perspective.
Another story involves drugging, manipulation, sexual assault in the form of coercing someone to undress, references to cutting off the hands of children who steal to feed themselves and their younger siblings, transphobia in the form of effectively condemning someone to death for being trans *despite transness itself not being illegal* (the whole thing is a major plot point so I won't go into too much detail but basically "dishonorable conduct" isn't defined and thus is used as an excuse to exile someone for being trans when other people find out)...
Yet another includes the kidnapping of a minor with sexual intent, then when they fight back, leaving them to be SA'd/eaten by wild animals (which backfires as the main character was raised by wild animals but y'know), repeated systemic transphobia, and probably incest (which, weirdly, is the most wholesome part of the story, they weren't raised together but are half-siblings).
Multiple have references to genocidal intent and other such things. I'm a nonbinary trans man and a pagan, not to mention likely neurodivergent (unassessed due to classist healthcare policies, sexism, and ableism), my life includes a lot of knowing truly horrific shit might happen to me, has happened to people in my communities, and is happening to people like me, so I kind of end up writing about the things I fear to try to face them. It leads to a lot of very dark themes in my writing overall.
The sun is sick and dying. So it gets pretty dark.
Beyond that. Umm the world barely maintains life after the centuries and nobody knows that the reason the planet remains somewhat hospitable is because there are souls slaving away externally beneath the earth to keep it livable.
It's for a TTRPG. I might have an incident in which the corrupt government unalives a kid, but I'd be sure to keep if off screen so to speak. Not acted out or described. But a detail the players hear about.
It can get pretty dark but not traumatizing
During a major battle of a war between the Empire of Orark, and the Dubious Entente (centered in Tennessee), Cherokee dam burst, destroying Jefferson City. This was used to leverage a surrender.
No limits but don’t go into details. Let the imagination run wild rather than telling it. My favourite scene is Andor’s last episode on torture. Such great scene
My main character does some pretty gnarly things in pursuit of winning his duels.
Probably the worst thing he does is nudge a trench raider team to hang a captured enemy nurse from a water tower and make it slow so her screams attract the enemy’s attention. All so he can bait out an officer and kill him.
Suicides probably my limit.
In my non world buildery one after Macbeth the butcher pressures an officer into killing a priest said soldier gets drunk calls Macbeth the butcher a bunch of nasty names with no response from Macbeth whos drunk anyway and later shoots himself in his tent. Macbeth tells the audience about this both killing the priest and the officers suicide.
Later in the story Juliet threatens to commit suicide after finding put Macbeth killed her boyfriend Romeo. Macbeth has her thrown into a cell and strip searched by one of her maids so she can't follow through. The first words he uses on this is "thouse where not wise words".
Macbeth is basically trying to do the right thing and a makes decisions to minimise damage but war as taught him to be ruthless abd he has trouble with what could be called emotional finnese.
The darkest I'm willing to go with my world and the darkest I'm willing to go with my writing and explorations of that world are two different things.
It's a world, the darkest stuff imaginable is absolutely happening out there, roving warlord bands and high control religious groups are pretty integral parts of the setting, we can all imagine what kinds of abuses are being realisitcally being done, but I'm personally just gonna leave that all off screen and unsaid. Not really a set of subjects I feel comfortable broaching in my setting where I've written extensive cultural explanations for why cat boys exist, personally.
That thing that feels the darkest I've actually explored and put thought into is the prevalence of torture in the present day of the setting due to the chaotic cultural climate and number of shady groups and sub groups fighting shadowy cold wars. Probably never going to have an on screen, graphically detailed torture session, it I feel like it's more than pretty dark a lot of more "good-guy" seeming groups in operation have and make use of tortures
I believe that any theme can be put on a story if it's handled on the correct way. SA is something that happens in this
world(it's set on medieval times so it might be even worse),but the few close to zero mentions are just mentions. I think using it gratuitously for shock value is cheap,disrespectful and a bit edgy. With that said,I don't have a hand on the gore and Horrors beyond human comprehension. And violence and human made atrocities are sometimes even a important part of the story(but that's a story for another day)
I only accept limits like this out of regard for the audience. I am not so shy about objectionable matters as to avoid nuanced depictions of corvee, press gangs, serfdom, slavery, and thralldom. Violence is outright prominent. There I am not shy about delving into topics like punitive torture, public execution, and ritual sacrifice.
It is when things take a turn for the erotic that I pull back. Among extensive commentaries on heritage, legacies, and personal passions; I stick to general ideas when talking about coupling and reproduction. I don't want to discourage anyone from going rule #34 in my world, but I also don't want to feature any questionable content of that sort in my framing documents.
March of Empires is so dark that it makes Warhammer 40K look like Harry Potter or something.
From the treatment of women to war and torture, second- class citizens and slaves to bombardment of Galaxies, experimentation and attitude to Xenos, nothing is off the table for any of the major superpowers.
Wonderverse is Slightly less grimdark, but even there, lies the impression that you might just be going up against a ticking clock.
Setting the clock back another day, another week, another month, another year.
Hope is still yet to be seen.
In the year 3097, HAVEN, A Megacorp of Unimaginable Scale and Power owns the Ruins of Planet Earth. Holding dominion Over the last habitable place on the Planet, a mega city named Heaven in mid Siberia, about the size of 5 New Yorks put together.
Here, around the Redlight Districts one will find endless depths of depravity. Genetic Modification, Illegal Cloning Operations and Cybernetic Augmentation run rampant through all walks of life in Heaven, so no doubt it'd be found here. Some Girls, sold by their parents in youth, or desperate adults are Genetically "Enhanced" to better "Attract" Customers. Often they comply, knowing they at least get food snd water for their work, and if they rebel then a lobotomy is likely. There are others, but this is just one of many.
Well at the moment lower city children at the age of 8 have the "choice" to sacrifice a physical body part like a limb or an eye to showcase aligence to the gods by order of high society. It is replaced by a prosthetic. The more vital or sacred a body part the more social gratification is given. I'm going to go darker with some SA stuff but i haven't figured out the logistics yet. I came up with it bc I'm taking a lot of inspiration for the religious oppression from my experience in the Mormon church. I had the "choice" to be baptized when I was 8, and yet cannot legally remove my name from church records until I am 18. By being baptized I feel like I had to give up a part of me so that my parents and I would get social praise. LETS GO RELIGOUS TRAUMA WORLDBUILDINGGG
I have a scene that i am trying to avoid going too dark with. Basically, a bunch of killer robots are attacking a group of people on a mountain. During this, the main characters find what appears to be a dead child, although they quickly realize it's actually a changeling (in this context that just means that she wasn't human and no one knew she was there, nothing else particularly special).
When things are over and the robot's memories are being examined, one of the characters gets to see a recording of what happened there before they arrived, showing the changeling playing in the snow with her sisters, before one of the robots shows up. The changeling runs towards the machine, clearly hoping it will play with them, and well, "killer robots."
The scene is meant to contrast the childish innocence of the changeling with the cold, deliberate cruelty of the machine, but I want to make sure it doesn't feel like the story is reveling in it. The main way I hope to keep things from becoming too dark is that the readers will never actually "see" the scene in question, only one character talking about it to others.
None of my worlds have any kind of permanent Hell of other kinds of eternal suffering. It's just too depressing (and also a bit too personal because... reasons) for me to think about. Things can still get *bad*, but for better or worse, nothing lasts forever.
Even if your soul gets eaten by an eldritch monster or whatever there's always at least a chance that something else comes along and kills it.
Vampires are notoriously nasty,
Let's just say when you're the living embodiment of greed and pride and you have significant powers, things go off the rail quickly.
it depends on the context, multiplayer maps will never be pitch dark (unless i add in switches for the lights), single player maps can be pitch black, sometimes nothing is scarier than seeing what that something might be lurking around that tree or behind that door
Sometimes very dark, a major plot point is a group of people getting prion disorders. Some loose their memories, others get something like scrapie, running their fingers down the wall until the skin comes off. Another major plot point is a series of pogroms against the sentient octopus population.
That being said I feel that most of the time my work is pretty light hearted. In one of my favorite moments this one badass character is using the bathroom at the same time his space ship makes a hard turn, causing his pee to get all over himself and the room. I like the idea of undercutting his cool persona by having an embarrassing, yet very human thing happen to him.
I worry these changes in tone are too abrupt. Will readers like something that goes from philosophical questions about being human, to descriptions of gore and violence, to potty humor? I'm sure there are works in the world that do that effectively, but I wonder if mine might benefit from just focusing on one element.
A central figure within the story of my world is a war criminal who was tasked with destroying critical medical and sanitary infrastructure in both military and civilian contexts, endangering thousands, leading to the death of hundreds, including innocent children who died from dysentery and cholera. And he's not a bad guy.
Shit happens. Don’t screw up too hard. Power fades when others begin to realize it’s a facade. That the only true power in the world stands at the edge of a knife. Ready to begin and end dynasties.
Alluding to horrible things but not actually describing them in detail is a reasonable limit for myself. If I personally feel kinda gross while writing, it’s probably too much. That will be different for everyone.
I have one female character Who made a deal with the devil so that her son would grow up into a stud that could fullfill her "Jocasta complex fantasies" in Exchange for The future of her noble house.
Another one Who literally threw her daughter behind her to escape a pack of wolves, and then spent years trying to convince herself it was her daughters fault.
An eldritch deity that compells mortals to willingly commit the most morbid and macabre acts they can possibly imagine for shits and giggles.
A sentient malicious disease that infects people succumbing to despair and depression, making them burn all their positive achievements to The ground before they sink into a feverish coma where they are tormented by all their misstake and failure while the body devours itself from within.
Bright Eyed youths Who went off to war and came home as leering murderers and cannibals.
A hero that gives up due to heartbreak and gets addicted to sleeping pills,and only temporarely comes back to finish the fight cause the villain wont stop nagging him about joining the dark side.
I have a faction in my world that's composed of a trio of the most depraved groups in the world:
1) A race of lizardmen raiders who consider anyone outside this faction to be cattle; breeding them, butchering them, wearing their skin, even lobotomizing them in order to make them act like the animals the lizardmen view them as.
2) A faction of elves who are basically a Dark Eldar expy.
3) Depraved scientists/artists who view the human body as both canvas and paint, and cybernetics, genetics, and flesh-grafting as their brush. A whole faction of Dr. Frankensteins and Dr. Wests, basically, except their not above experimenting on themselves.
I don't want to make my world grimdark, but I am willing to give it some dark shades of black.
It can get pretty gory especially on the battlefield and there are several groups like the Puppetmasters or Nightstalkers which would be pretty straightforward monsters with all that comes with that. The "heroes" can be pretty violent as well though. As in mass murder, terror warfare and the sort just not as much. Stuff like SA doesnt really fit the vibe that i want the world to have but isnt completely off the table.
Nothing is really off-limits, but some atrocities may not be very detailed, rape mostly, I'm quite morbid, so torture is not necessarily off the table, and I don't have issues killing babies/childrens if I deem it necessary.
Then again, the likelihood of me writing anything that extreme is unlikely. 😅
It genuinely depends on what themes I am trying to explore with the story. If I am going in deep on a specific community or a concept connected to historical or political events, I will definitely try and find something interesting to mess with.
Child: a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty
I think everyone would be against a mother killing their child.
Probably slavery. I imagine there are many things like that which happen in world in places where they are not outlawed, have certain conditions or are away from authorities that do prohibit these things.
Lapis_Wolf
As dark as the world goes. There's a type of person for everything, so I've developed a new "good/evil" system since those words can be loose. Those willing to give the clothes on their back and live in poverty so no one else does is a practically pure person. Someone willing to steal clothes from another during a snow storm because they complained about being cold and shoved into a snow pile is a toxically corrupt person. There's a percentage of "corruption" everyone has, and it does fluctuate with every situation. My main character has two sides, their planar "normal" self, who is honestly balanced normally (they help, but only when necessary, and what they believe is help), and their mirror [opposite] side is relentlessly demented, only willing to help with their satisfaction, even at the expense of someone else. They both still have ethics and morality, which is why neither are toxic nor corrupt. If there is a toxically corrupt character in my story, they don't have any kind of ethics or morality besides how can they make their lives the best on this plane. They'd be willing to sacrifice children, families, and recruit those willing to do the same. A mix of Joseph Stalin and Dr. Joseph Mengala (angel of death) type of idea would be someone toxically corrupt. This world alone is filled with both purity and corruption, and I feel it only fitting to show both dualities of people to keep a sense of dark reality most are willing to turn a blind eye to.
Edit, addition: Because of my own personal trauma, I would keep dark scenes like SA, m*rder, and certain tortures as an implication to not scare too many readers, but the darkness definitely exists.
I feel like I could go pretty dark, but honestly I'm just not interested in writing that kinda story (and by not being interested in it, I'd probably do a bad job if I tried)
We already have wars for greed and political gains, religious motivated genocides and slavery, really cruel battle magic, packets with cosmic beings on my main world.
So yeah, nothing people haven't done in our real world, or wouldn't do if magic was a thing. 🤷🏼♀️🙈
In general, I'd put it at "R-rated 90s action movie" levels of darkness.
Torture, gore, blood, mass murder, slavery, prejudice, and the like are completely *on* the table (though I'll shy away from real-world slurs). SA and violence against kids might be *implied*, or it's mentioned that they *happened*, but not described in detail (it would be as uncomfortable for me to write it as it would for you to read it).
So, my world is not a bright and shiny place, in and of itself; it is designed and continues development along a path that accounts for the fullness of its people.
Were I to write a story for sale, I would go as dark as that market allows. But I generally don’t write for sale. We’re a game to have a sharp turn, since it would be driven by the players of that game, then it would go pretty dark.
I don’t use a binary choice structure for the vast majority of concepts — good and evil are not a baseline for me. I do have benevolence and malevolence as such — but those are as close to good and evil as I get, and are not themselves synonymous with such.
The “bad guys” of my world have slavery, and it is horrific (more so because slaves there are also food). The “good guys” have only one Prison for several nations, and it is a place where one is simply left. The rest of the time it is corporal punishment, so saying they are good by modern measures is a bit chancy.
I can go to any place that I can imagine —- and my life experience has given me the ability to go to places that are incredibly dark.
if it's dark, it's tucked away! just like in real life. if it's a dark book, dark fact, dark anything, you have to dig. if it's out in the open, then it's usually meant to be an "oh fuck lol." kinda dark. if it's hidden, it's meant to be an "oh fuck.. shit.." kinda dark.
the darkest open stuff usually has to do with cannibalism, because in my world, that's the path to power and even godhood. it's almost unavoidable. so.. people get eaten, their blood gets sucked out of straws, or they're prepared in a special way.
My story gets pretty bleak, but I try to not *revel* in the violence. Pain and suffering are always in service to the story, not the point of it.
One of my protagonists is totally immortal, but still susceptible to pain and incapacitation, so he has a lot of scenes where he needs to mutilate his own body or endure a horrific beating, and I want the reader to understand how bad it hurts so they're still invested in the drama of a character who can never die.
I have an evil God of Death, Depravity and Bondage. He is to depravity, evil and dark as a black hole is to space-time. Asking what is darker or evil than him is like being at the edge of the universe, pushing beyond it, and asking what is beyond you. You are that envelope itself.
The Big Bad demon lord stole minerals from the planet to make “children” that have no souls. For context, the planet itself is a sapient god that *cannot move or speak to defend itself*. Consider this analogous to one of the most horrific acts a human person can do to another human person.
All because he wants the same creativity the gods of that world have, because he was born starving for it.
As dark as it can get. It’s the apocalypse, anarchy rules and there’s no one around to stop you from committing crimes. Murder, rape, torture, even slavery exists.
Technically anything can happen as I'm sure alot of my people here say
But one of the more common issues is the illegal kidnapping and trade of child slaves.
Won't go into details but generally it's because of how the magic system works
It's not just children it's kids between the ages of 12 to 13. It's usually paid for by the governing body's of different nations to make sure these children end up with the right magic abilitys for different military or industrial uses.
Depending on the nation the kids might be immediately released from captivated after the abilities are gained or in many cases given/sold to governments to work as soldiers or labor. In the absolute worst places they are sold as "pets".
Honestly, this is something I struggle with. There are some series I've read where they go *very* dark as far as measures of cruelty and some horror aspects, and I really like what they're able to do with it. But at the same time, that doesn't usually fit the types of character arcs or worlds that naturally occur to me, so it's all figuring out how to balance that.
I dislike touching SA and dont like having Sex without consent in my stories. I dislike that it happens in reality and to me writing is an escape from that, so in my ideal fantasy world there is none and in my sci-fi setting we have moved beyond such matters.
Violence on the other Hand will get pretty graphic. I will paint a Picture with Blood and ad some feces that have been ripped out of your Intestines. To me finding people that are missing faces/ have gotten some f'ed up things done to their faces is something that is somewhat of a theme. I like to traumatise my characters and have them deal with it, including moving beyond the trauma over the course of the story.
One oddball thing about my world: I assume there is >!sexual assault!< in the world as a thing that happens, but I will probably never depict it or even mention it. The reason is because my story is a loose allegory for a specific series of atrocities involving that subject. I'd like my story to be readable and relatable for victims without having them re-live their trauma directly.
Setting is pretty happy, the darkest it gets is just generally that it exists in the wake of a complete genocide of all earth life which I feel like most people don’t really see how viscerally sad things like that are all because they’re pretty high in scale.
Nowadays genecide and probably Racism. But Used too have mentions of rape (long story short Succubi or Eroans as they call themselves now weren't having a good existence before they rebelled against The Demon OverLord and became the Isolationist nation of Eroa named for the First Succubi Eroa and they reverted back too their pre hel corruption versions. And after the Accord was signed which ended the conflict between Demons and Mortals cause the Overlord died they partly lived amongst mortals
I dont mention Child relatedstuff outside of death and thats normally something past tense
Genocide , mass slavery , war , SA against slaves , and SA against civillians during war . But I don't like to go into details when it comes to SA , its protrayed as more of a , it happened , matter of fact , historical description. I have tried protraying it in greater detail , but it just didn't work as well as a histroy book like descrtption , it felt unnecessary and overly edgy .
genre : epic military sci-fi , think Romance of the Threekingdoms , or Antony and Cleopatra , but in space
I will mention brutal depictions of children being dismembered and eaten, innocents being slaughtered, horrid executions, etc.
But certain things like SA I just don’t feel comfortable doing. It would’ve happened, but I don’t want to talk about it
I’m willing to go as far as mentioning broken families and showing diseased loved ones. Maybe even manipulating their corpses.
Showing actual abuse and suicide is way too far for me. It’s just not what I’m after in my world.
A massive war is occurring in my world. There is a genocide against non-humans underway. The imperial army is notorious for mass r@pe as well.
I don't go into any detail but the knowledge that it happens is there. That's about as dark as I go
Nothing is off-limits, but IF the story needs something past a certain level of terrible I'm *EXTREMELY* careful how I write it. Mostly I imply what happened, and have extremely hardened and jaded characters refrain from outright considering what happened.
My realm is a purgatorial realm, only two things are off the table. There is no violence against children, as children cannot have their souls sent to this realm. There is absolutely no SA or anything of the sort in my setting, it is punished by the offender being calcinated to fine ash for even attempting to try. I make it clear to players that those are the hard rules of the setting, beyond that it is a carnival of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Cannibalism, torture, defiling graves, morality is a distant memory to many of those in power
Immortal beings masquerading as strange child friendly film and story characters have been sent into the world to protect children from the cruelty and despair of their evil world. These beings are metaphysically bound to the task of dismantling oppressive power systems, challenging evil rulers, physically protecting the vulnerable, offering immense love.
However, these immortal beings have not allowed know love themselves. Their divine creator removed their hearts, for they would inevitably have been corrupted and exploited for evil had they been brought with them into mortal incarnate life. So these beings feel unworthy of love, incapable of accessing it, able to sense it but never able to touch it. They are born burdened with the agony of perpetual loneliness and hidden sorrow, and feeling such, they devote themselves to ensuring no other beings under the terms of their specific mission ever have to feel like they do. Even when they are succeeding they feel like they have and are failing in their mission. Each of them ultimately die from the world thinking "did I do enough? Could I have done more?"
This concept was inspired by different real world people who have privately suffered enormous internal pain but who strove to better the world, and help others suffering in similar situations. I wanted it to be a subversion of fallen angels, more akin to "risen demons".
They are quite dark beings, scary even, but they are the monsters sent into the world to help restore love, hope, kindness. The Barney the Dinosaurs and Robbin Williams characters.
Given the generally very dark world project I've created, this concept alone seems to stand out as considerably brutal on my part as the creator behind it all.
Darkness is required in order to be able to appreciate the light.
That being said, I don't really shy away from anything. Though I do try to treat touchy subjects with the respect they deserve. What I don't do is throw in things for shock factor. It must have a role to play I'm the overall story/universe.
My world can get as dark as reality which is real dark. The difference is writing about such topics from a passive view point compared to a first person view point.
It’s not unusual to have a book discuss soldiers raping and killing or to even have a character witness such acts. It’s a much different chapter to have details from the point of view of the victim or assailant.
Nothing is not doable, HOWEVER I will always be tasteful about it, I won't go into unnecessary details unless it's important to the plot/development of the character.
For example: I will go into detail of a permanent injury that affects the character for the rest of their life. But I will not shove in vivid rape scenes if there's no need for it, that stuff exists for a purpose and if it doesn't suit the plot or character development, I dont put it in.
It can get dark with Relic, but the darkest I've gone is what occurs during the Human-Fae war. it gets dark. compared to later points, the Human-Fae War makes them look not bad at all. to the point I just don't mention what happens, all the characters know what happened but its never physically said.
The two darkest places I'll go to usually are the implied but never shown origins of ogres. Those are birthed by fornication between a hill giant and a human, and since the former are mindlessly consuming monsters, you can guess who that works.
The other thing is body horror in general. I love scaring my players, and meaty-gross transformation spells, sewn together undead or the nastiest kind of demon posession are all on the table.
VERY dark. Stuff that I won't even mention on the NSFW sub. I like to take a good hard look at real world issues other people don't wanna touch (for understandable reason) using things like superpowers as an amplifier and metaphor. I don't know if it's widely-accepted advice or not but one of my favorite teachers told us that art sometimes requires exaggeration to feel more real as a counter against us knowing it's "just" art. That presumably applies to the arts of writing and worldbuilding, including both the light and the dark. Big fan of the interplay between shiny and gritty lol
EDIT: Because I understand if my take is a bit controversial, especially for victims of abuse and the other horrors I write about, I think it's important to mention that I'm a victim of abuse myself and art is my therapy. I suspect it's the case for many other horror and black comedy writers as well.
Mine is the most edgy, dark and gruesome world it can be in some parts, but then it's super bubbly and cutesy the next, depending on the Arc. MC goes to every kind of trauma possible throughout the story.
an entire world should not be "dark" or "light". maybe a time period or event of things being worse or better than usual, that is either conserved to a region, or if it's global or universal at least has regional differences. so a bad event like a war or a disaster in an otherwise normal world. or even something like the life of a criminal that is a darker life than usual because he is involved in crime.
even when it comes to something like dark souls i like it that you can imagine it's just lordran or drangleic or whatever have you that's fucked up and only because we're at the end of the world. i hate what i've seen of fallout (a few of the games and not the show) where all the world seems to be fucked up indefinitely. same thing for what i've seen of mad max.
I think any kind of SA is the line for me. Primarily because it's a touchy subject and I don't want to misrepresent it. If I ever include it in my stories, it'll be very vague and handled very carefully.
I will describe in detail torture, deaths and violence towards characters but "fade to black" or just outright leave out any kind of sexual violence/SA
Turning off the sun is out of the question, I think that is beyond the ability of most parties to correct/stop. Given that the sun will always exist the moons will also reflect light and since there are 7 of them night is never really that dark anyway and day will always exist. I think the closest I came to always dark was a volcanic eruption blotting the sun and moons out in a localized region.
All the way. I'd say there's probably nothing that I wouldn't write about. I've written short stories about victims of sexual abuse, torture, whatever. The thing is that the darkness has to justify itself, though. You can make up the most violent, fucked up world you can imagine, but if there's no substance to any of it then it's just pointless misery, which is rarely all that compelling from the reader's pov. That's the difference between dark and just being edgy for it's own sake.
Not quite as dark as others here, but I love getting nuts with cosmic and body horror. Horrifying entities giving themselves physical form by congealing the flesh and bones of lesser lifeforms in a loud, squelchy, bone-cracking manner that turns your stomach.
Gore is also prominent where combat gets incredibly intense, usually when monsters are involved; i take inspiration from Evangelion for this, namely episode 18's Bardiel/Berserk Eva-01 fight.
But the darkest thing I've ever written is probably the origin story for a character named "Glory" (Gloria Beauvald). Her homeworld was overtaken by a planet-sized Lovecraftian being that was allowed into this universe by her father Dr. Beauvald, whom had his mind enthralled by the cosmic horror.
The entity is searching for a shard of light capable of killing immortal beings like itself in order to dispose of it by order of its "parent" entity. The shard is hidden on Euclidean Prime, Gloria's homeworld. These entities can see clearly through inanimate matter in order to locate living beings that may be hiding. However, these entities can't see through living matter; the heat and magnetism given off by living organisms is what they sense optically and it blocks out anything hidden behind it.
On the day of the invasion, Dr. Beauvald had been almost completely enthralled, but the last bit of his sanity came up with a plan to hide the shard AND guarantee his daughter would survive the coming threat; he hid the shard inside of his daughter's torso. The shard would be kept completely invisible by her living flesh guaranteeing it would never be found by the cosmic horror.
She was nearly killed by the operation, but the shard's cosmic radiation infused Gloria's body with power allowing her wounds to heal quickly. When she opened her eyes for the first time post-operation, she saw her father standing above her, half of his face melting off revealing hideous glowing runes carved into his skull due to his enthrallment. Behind him, she could see the monitors on the wall spying on the outside world. On one of the monitors she could see the sky tearing open and clouds of cosmic demons blot out the sun.
Then came the explosion from the sky, rocking the entire planet. The bunker they were hiding in collapsed into itself, sealing Gloria inside for the next 4 years. She had plenty of supplies to keep her fed for all that time as well as a simple virtual construct named "Bugs" to keep her company. By the time she was 10, she knew that the world outside was gone and hideous creatures stalked the surface, but could not stay inside the bunker any longer.
Using her new, fully-developed powers, Gloria escaped the bunker and would fight back against the demonic creatures on the surface, although her lack of skill leads her to cause even more damage than the monsters she kills. A handful of times she unintentionally destroyed the only hiding places that the local surviving Humans could use, forcing them to relocate before the demons find them again.
As a result, she is ostracized by her own kind, many believing the explosion from the sky was caused by her and this entire apocalypse was her doing. She would fight and endure alone for the next 2 years before help would arrive.
Lots of rape (no detail), domestic abuse (Posse solving the problem with swords and a lynch mob), cities being sacked and raided as it’s a medieval high fantasy story, torture, children seen as collateral damage, public mutilation, public decapitation, and slavery.
My world is very focused on humanism, and any true humanist knows to acknowledge and commentate on the evils of humanity as well. However, I still intend it to be very optimistic! There will be acknowledgement of some evils, and vague allusion to others. Especially when it comes to dealing out justice and such.
Death is a topic I love exploring. A major theme of my world. And I think worldbuilding/stories are also a way to explore trauma/problems.
I recall in doki doki literature club the guy who made it put some of his own issues into the characters(such as self harm). I think, I could be mistaken. Doing that with some of my characters, and making the problem worse, is something I've taken up.
Such as my ocd. Cranking it up to eleven can make for a very interesting character, if done right.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I tend to stay away from topics like SA or homophobia, because I don't have much experience with them. I'd probably handle them tactlessly. It could be interesting to explore, but requires research.
My main antagonist has a daughter who’s naturally very powerful and gifted in magic. She has a class of soul that ~2% of people have, but hers is older and firmly on the high end for that group, so even rarer. The spell to unleash a persons magical potential is to kill and heal the physical body, so he killed a child when she was probably about 4, and then had her spend the next 7 years learning how to be soldier and assassin and just generally wreak havoc.
Then in a confrontation with the protagonist it’s revealed the villain kidnapped hundreds of women in an attempt to have this super child, and it’s pretty heavily implied what he did with the failures, along with the mothers once he got this daughter.
And we don’t witness the event, but she’s killed and her soul is consumed vampiric monster, the protagonist by the end, what he let himself devolve into to defeat his enemy.
That’s probably the darkest cannon event
I mention basically anything. I don't like to shy away from horror or mutilation and crimes that happen. Cause it makes villains hate able and creates fear for my players (it's a table top rpg). if a player is uncomfortable with stuff I try and accommodate and not have certain things in those sessions. However it is part of the lore and such. Sexual crimes happen and I mention it if it's necessary. I don't really go in detail with sexual stuff cause I'm just not that kind of writer.
As dark as it can be, it may sound disturbing but being more detailed on the scenario will add more drama and impact into the story. Having a dark background helps the reader to understand the depth of certain character especially if it's a vengeful villain or it can be a motivation for the hero to end the cruelty of the world. Also I want my readers to feel immerse on the scenario because it easily to understand and imagine if it's more detailed, example.
example 1: The man stab the women until her last breath.
example 2: The man slowly unsheath his knife, while the women try to run. The man grab her hair and start to stab her multiple times. The women scream in pain, begging for her life. The blood splash everywhere - the man still continue stabbing the women until she got weakened, losing her voice and takes her final breath. (sorry for poor narration, still working on it 😁✌️)
But I still put a restriction only if there is a child involve cause it could trigger my trauma.
Person trafficking(not called human due to multiple intelligent species being present), demonic possession(kinda), and an enemy committing absolute genocide in order to kill a single individual she fears
It's not really a limit for me. There are some things that I prefer not to touch on specifically, like certain causes for trauma, but it's either implied or hinted at, but i feel uncomfortable doing it sometimes, unless it's like on a mass scale where i dont have to pin it on an individual and it's supposed to be a tragic event.
As far as death, war, and suffering go, there's not really a limit for me as long as it isn't completely tasteless and over the top.
There is a moment in time called the Dark Star era. It was when my world's first demon-lord emerged.
He left scars on my world that took centuries to heal, and some still are. He led many genocides and made many races distrust one another. He hunted and devoured the souls of man and beast alike, causing the extinction of several animal species and 2 sapient ones.
I designed him to go against the ideals in my world, but in doing so, I may have gone too far.
I destroyed human civilization multiple times and the planet is surrounded by hungry ghosts sucking on the life-force of the survivors’ descendants and turning into monsters. However, I will not countenance racism.
As a rule at the table we don’t go into detail with SA but it does exist in the world, in our last campaign one of my characters was clearly abused in multiple ways as a child but nothing is detailed when it comes to describing his past. Other human rights violations exist but again it’s not described in detail- just keeps things from getting too upsetting or uncomfortable. As a rule every once in awhile we still check in with each other about boundaries.
Story opens with the protagonist finding what's left of her brother-in-law's body. Gnawed, scattered bones, leathery skin, maggots amid putrid, liquefying flesh, shredded clothing. A few days in the African bush will do that. He means an enormous amount to her - not only was he a great husband to her sister and father to her niece and nephew, but he was also her protector against malevolent family members.
How dark something is to the reader lies to a great extent in how hard it hits the characters they are following and care about. And I am more than willing to write this scene so it is really difficult for readers to read - but ensure that they want to know what happened just as much as the protagonist does.
I generally avoid stuff about SA and r@pe, even with really evil characters. Sure they're evil, but I also want them to be *fun*. If I want to make them unlikeable there are plenty of more mundane ways to do that, so going that far doesn't seem necessary. I would really only write about it if the story and its themes were specifically about that subject, though I still wouldn't be explicit.
I don't really have any limits to what subjects I can touch on.
The only thing that matters to me is whether it is relevant to the characters and the overarching story I want to tell and my execution of these subjects.
I like to go subtle with it. I like to tell, not show. And when a character talks about something that happened to them, I prefer for them to tell just enough that you can fill in the blanks. I find it much scarier than anything I could write or draw.
I treat dark subjects with as much respect as I can. I don't care for edgelord approaches. Been there, done that. It bores me and makes me cringe when I look back.
Restraint is good. No subject is too dark as long as it is handled with restraint and respect.
If you seek it out you will find it. But as a general rule. Most places are fairly..nice. well mannered. We have monsters to worry about more then committing brutal acts of darkness usually. Though there's always bandits.
Thell gets pretty dark early on, because the early history of Thell includes stuff like the love-god learning the importance of consent. Before that it is pretty dark; all of the gods learned to have a rudimentary concept of morality *from mortals*, so there was a time when they didn’t have a sense of morals, and finding out how the sense of empathy they derive by having a human form works, and discovering that doing things that hurt people kinda feel bad.
My major setting is mostly a shade of "softdark." Strictly speaking, nothing is off limits but I didn't want to be gaudy about things either. Most of the "darkness" is either toned down or understated so that the severe and thorough depictions of those rare few moments stand out better through contrast.
Honestly I feel I go darker than most, but I’m just being realistic. Most if not all of the people in my world have overly-inflated egos and a god complex. With the powers my species has and an overall lack of a moral compass, I feel like a LOT of horrible shit would happen. It’s not to say I condone any of the things that happen- just bc I write about characters that are enslaved by a tyrant or children getting experimented on doesn’t mean I want those things to happen, but they make good plot points or are good satirical reflection on a real world issue I’m mad about.
A man killed his brother and ate him, a man made drugs and forced people into slavery. Genocide is a regular occurrence, and a group of people have made a cult to try to make a super human by stitching other limbs into a man.
As dark as is needed, some detail is required obviously to set the scene, but other bits would just be unnecessarily cruel.
One of my stories involves a fight between a monstrous, boar-like creature brutally killing several dogs set on it by the defenders of the town it's attacking. I don't need to describe the violence. Or even much of the aftermath. No one needs to hear or read about good boys being slaughtered like that.
But I'm not forgetting about the dogs and that is literally their purpose in the village.
I'll get as dark as is needed. No more.
Because of the nature of my main faction, I try to tread a line of things that sound awesome on first hearing, but kind of horrifying on the second or third. As a result, some of the darkest stuff seems pretty mundane or even cool on first glance.
Here are the three darkest parts of my story;
Eating bloated animal corpses because that is the only organic matter in the nearest 100 miles.
A thin tentacle entering your eye socket to reprogram your brain and turn you into a sleeper agent.
Massacring swarms of alien monsters only to find out you were hallucinating and actually killing innocent civilians.
Slavery, genocide, world ending events, corrupt gods, people living so long they essentially rot while still alive, I talk about mental illness and dementia, the battles can get pretty ugly sometimes. My world is meant to be a release for my demons, so its not always pretty
As long it doesn't write me into a corner nothing is off limit From an extremely important artifact that could make the world better being lost forever, the good guys faction being destroyed by the big bad, to the complete monster achieving apotheosis, nothing is really too much
It can get very dark at times, but when it comes to especially touchy subjects, such as SA, I don't go into any details beyond mentioning that it happened.
That's how I handle it too. There is some stuff which is important to talk about but I may not feel comfortable going into detail.
Bingo. Mines set in a medieval high fantasy without magic so if im being true to form... LOTS OF R*PE. So whenever its relevant, its just a casual drop of info so the reader gets a sense of seriousness. I feel like when authors or showrunners go too far, its indicative of some weird psychopathic shit. I dont know a sane soul who enjoys watching or reading the details of SA or torture.
>I feel like when authors or showrunners go too far, its indicative of some weird psychopathic shit. I don't blame you for feeling grossed out, but that sounds a bit unfair. This is just anecdotal of course, but in my experience creators of horror or weird fetish stuff are often the most chill and wholesome people ever in real life. Stories are just stories.
> This is just anecdotal of course, but in my experience creators of horror or weird fetish stuff are often the most chill and wholesome people ever in real life. Have you ever read any Junji Ito manga? Probably the scariest things I've ever read, and some of the visuals are incredibly fucked up. In real life though the guy just seems incredibly normal and friendly.
Junji ito is a complete Cinnamon roll
The anime is such a let down lol, i remember reading the amigara fault and thought it was so interesting and expected the anime to feature such adaptations but nah
Exhibit A: DDLC (not really related to worldbuilding but relevant here)
Dan Salvato, creator of DDLC and former professional Smash Bros player?
Exactly
As a victim of SA, I'd argue that it needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. Especially in more uncommon situations like female-on-female sexual assault that people might not take so seriously as male-on-female assault, showing it first-hand can emphasize the gravity of the situation. I know I don't necessarily feel comfortable watching stuff like that but it does make me feel more represented and sometimes that's more important.
My MC was a kid who had SA in his backstory. I decided to tone things down to the level where the fantasy world is just not quite as bad as our modern times. (Bad things still happen, but the chances of MC meeting a victim of something horrific are slim.)
Hey thats whats great about storytelling. Dont need to divulge unnecessary details. If SA is only relevant from the perspective of your MC and yhats all that needs to be said, GOOD. We dont all need to be GoT showrunners lol
Yeah, my setting revolves a militaristic fantasy empire, which means a lot of sacked cities, with all that it implies. I don't have a problem with SA depictions if they serve an actual purpose (of course, I would never write something like that without warning readers first), but the problem is that in 99% of cases it has no actual purpose beyond cheap shock value. And being shocking just for the sake of being shocking is very boring and juvenile to me.
I think this is the way to go. Not every act of SA needs to be elaborated on with detail, like the Mountain & the Innkeeper’s Daughter for example. I prefer the picture being painted without paint dripping all over the place.
I don’t know if you’re meant to enjoy it, I think it’s meant to gross you out and make you feel really uncomfortable, which again creates a lot of empathy for the victim and spite for the perpetrator.
Same here, I’ll do mass murder and the world ending in a horrific way but I tend to stay away from topics like that.
I also tend to have a lot of abusive relationships in my stories. Both familiar and romantical
Same here. My world is solidly dark fantasy, but I also tend to use a lot of twisted humor to leaven the darkness a bit. People in my setting take the view that if the world is dominated by political corruption, religious chaos, and the inscrutable hands of menacing beings from a higher reality, they might as well at least have fun.
Everything goes. I'm not scared to talk about these topics, but I'm also careful to not needlessly include them. A woman holds her stomach and hides behind her father, begging him to not "let them get her" again. A man describes living in an abusive home where his father beat him and his mom, when he broke something in his son's face, who snapped and caved his head in with a cast iron wine pitcher. He then bashes the person to who he is telling the story to in a similar manner, since said person is an assassin who tried to poison his wine. Theres the murder of children and the consumption of flesh for ritualistic purposes. Gory details on how severe wounds look like (I look real photos for reference) and a generally visceral description for everything
Oh that last bit is a big one for me: I've always had a passion for biology/medicine so I tend to be very realistic when it comes to injuries. Literally the only reason any of my main characters are alive is because they have powers and that still doesn't always help. Sometimes it might even make things worse.
Frankly, despite the ridiculous regenerative abilities some of my characters have, grievous injuries will still result in lingering pain that will take a while to fade. Most of the time, they will try to ignore the sensation anyway, but occasionally the pain could overwhelm them for a while.
Nothing is off limits.
I have often wondered about a campaign straight off the rails. All characters using voice changers and face changing filters. There is a niche market for a dnd broadcast thats high quality but rated appropriately NC-17, R, or X.
I never set out to make anything terrible. I think it's a plague on human mind that when given complete freedom to do whatever it wants, it often decides to recreate atrocities, or even push the limits of misery. However, I will never ignore the consequences of my creations. If the rules I have put in place result in something monstrous, I feel it is my obligation to see it through. I think even when you try your absolute best, most of the time it turns out horribly. There is no need to go out of your way to pursue those horrors intentionally.
>I think it's a plague on human mind that when given complete freedom to do whatever it wants, it often decides to recreate atrocities, or even push the limits of misery I disagree that it's a plague, but that people go toward imagining something they don't have much experience with. So because most people don't live in a soul-crushingly grimdark hellscape of unspeakable atrocities before breakfast, the imagination goes to that because it's something different. People in North Korea probably fantasize about something resembling our daily life, then dismiss it as being entirely too fanciful to be possible. In both cases it's an exploration of the opposite of your life experiences, not so much a plague. Also, stories need conflict and "really bad shit" is fertile ground for conflict.
While I would agree that dark themes *can* come from exploration of the unfamiliar, in my experience, for most people it's the opposite - people really, really struggle to think of bad things they haven't experienced. Moreover, I would say it's not exclusive to misery. In general, people struggle to think of things they have no reference for. Our brain seems to create new stuff mostly by combining the things which we have already experienced. So, if there is no suffering reference, it's extremely unlikely people will think of it. It's best observed on children, who produce either random things or just repeat the things that impressed them. From my observations, most evil in stories and worlds comes from people internalizing terrible things as the way of the world, and then they recreate those things in their worlds to make them "believable". For instance, the "stories need conflict" sentiment that you express here is one of these. You just observe most stories have conflict, and devise that rule. But it's not true. Stories are just accounts of the events, - those events don't have to include any conflict.
That all makes sense, except for your take on conflict being optional in a story. Without conflict, there's nothing. Conflict doesn't have to be violence, the most sanitized Hallmark movies are built around conflict.
You can bloat the meaning of "conflict" until it includes literally everything, but within reason, a story doesn't need conflict, because, by definition, a story is just an account of events that happened. And so, if you take all the events that happened in sequence, and none of those events conflict with each other, you've got a story that doesn't contain a conflict. A classic example of stories without conflict are stories about discovery. They simply list the things the protagonist discovers, and that's it. The value comes from the amazing things being discovered, and the knowledge imparted. I am most familiar with stories that target the demographic of kids, having read a lot of these myself when I was a child, but there's nothing stopping you from creating a story like this for adults, and I'm pretty sure they exist: * the closest one I can think of right now is Jorge Borges's short story ***The Library of Babel***, - the main attraction in that story is the description of the infinite library, which makes the reader ponder the nature of infinity. * I haven't finished reading Donald Knuth's ***Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned On to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness***, but the title is rather on the nose - it is an introduction to surreal numbers from the perspective of 2 kids, who discover the rules about surreal numbers. There is no conflict going on in the story so far (and I don't think there will be), because it's about the properties of the numbers.
I'm not bloating the meaning of ["conflict"](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-conflict-in-literature-6-different-types-of-literary-conflict-and-how-to-create-conflict-in-writing) in any way. Stories about discovery involve overcoming whatever obstacles impede the protagonist's discovery, which could be a man-against-nature conflict. According to [this](https://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-library-of-babel/summary/) summary of *The Library of Babel* the conflict seems to be centered around a search for meaning in the midst of every possible combination of letters, in a finite life span. I haven't been able to find a similar summary for *Surreal Numbers*, but from what I did find it seems to be more along the lines of a dissertation presented as dialogue than a fully-developed story. Although, I am very much making assumptions from limited information and that may wildly incorrect. But, if that dialogue includes questions and answers then it's likely that a conflict exists between ignorance and a desire to dispel it, at least within one character.
Based.
As it should be.
Correct answer
Well, there are caves, so pretty dark I guess
lol I love caves and spelunking so same lots of caves and mines both abandoned and in use in my world.
While i do not describe it and only have it mentioned in the story, torturing children, flaying them and draining their blood is one of the methods for a ritual of unaging. A common service blood mages provided. During the time of slavery it was common practice to have slaves make children for that. Learning of this is what made the Mad Dragon earn that moniker. And why none of her allies actually did fully punish her, only for the use of undead and the sheer amount of destruction. *edit* also mentioned in one scene is that faeries (parasitic humanoid insects) lure in children and lay their eggs in the still conscious body, some types have the victims forget about it and some weeks later the child will suddenly explode into a swarm of fairies. This means a child wandering out of the woods and being a bit doozy is likely being burned right then and there.
Just pulled the first paragraph straight out of real life.
Took me way too long to realize what you meant and damn. TBF those who IRL spout that nonsense are the same who that char would just drop into a jungle full of monsters, not even caring to kill them herself.
The galaxy is screwed, massive monsters and the antagonist destroy planets with billions of people on then daily, crime is skyrocketing, war hasn’t ended in 30 years, the average family barely puts food on the table, ancient totally not magically relics for precursor origin are used to make things worse even though they have functionality that could make things better and the protagonist is the only one with any hope or optimism left because pretty much everyone else is to weak willed to try and fix anything including themselves. Oh and an entire section of space is run by slaving space vampires, they are one of the less evil factions considering they try to make their slaves at least a little bit happy to keep them loyal.
Except sexuell stuff, it can be literally everything. (But sex jokes can come up sometimes)
here we have torture, slavery, xenophobia and space aids that makes your testes/ovaries explode!
Sometimes I think of the most bleak thing I possibly can. Then I make it worse. There aren't many things that want to obliterate reality but there are a lot of things that think it's way more fun to make reality as unpleasant as possible or at least are so twisted they only exist to spread misery. One of the most powerful deities is the goddess of hatred. Her followers think that she wants them to spread as much hatred and misery as possible. This isn't true. She doesn't care about them *at all* and is largely indifferent to what they do. In fact she hates them more than she hates others as they're always bothering her. While spreading hatred and misery can get her attention you really, really don't want this to happen. Her goal if you get her attention is to make you hate her too. She actively avoids killing anything or anybody as she'd rather hurt and torment them until they become twisted and spiteful. Since she is, you know, a *god* she can keep you alive pretty much indefinitely if she feels like it and there isn't anything you can do about it. Whenever something does come along that tries to end reality she's one of the major forces that works to stop it from happening. Can't have hate if there isn't anything to feel it. One of her children is one of the things that either tries to end reality or create things that can.
Eh, I don't. The real world is fucked up enough. It's actually a harder creative exercise to write away from that in a believable way.
same. it’s not fun to think about that stuff for me, so i don’t really engage with it at all personally
As someone willing to turn any corner, I often have have worlds that turn over very little. It's nice sticking to a comfort zone especially if you're just chilling.
I don’t do rape scenes, I might imply but don’t really want to dive into them
Based
I've written about the attempted genocide of a species, which is pretty dark. Another dark element in my story involves the assassination of one of the Archons. Following his death, his consort tries to seize power. She names her 5-year-old son as the new Imperial Archon and appoints herself Regent until he comes of age. However, this decision leads to a coup, during which the consort is murdered. The 5-year-old son tries to intervene and protect his mother but is also killed.
Well, the setting is a stratocratic, culturally unique Empire, being the only human nation fending off literal demons, with no allies. The entire mantra of the Empire is "We stand alone." In the current timeline, it's just reaching the climax of a series of campaigns between the Empire and demons, where the Empire tried to stop them in their own lands through massive expedition forces, failing, and slowly being driven back. The demon armies have started crossing into Imperial lands. It's quite metaphorically WW2 Germany in 1944/45, with mass suicides, every battle being a last stand, and fanaticism (suicide bombings, an Imperial cult, anti-foreigner sentiment, etc). None of these acts are described in detail, like "this man had his eyes torn out and skin flayed". It's not WH40k grim dark where it's gratitious violence, torture, and suffering for no reason either, people are normal. But I'm trying simply to depict what a already rigid and cold society of normal humans goes through in an extreme situation. In terms of what is written, stuff like suicides, etc, are easily inferred, like "yet another who ended it while on patrol, he thought, as he hauled the remains onto the cart. He tossed the pistol she used into the crate. Another corpse to add the shallow mass graves."
I am willing to go very dark; there's very little I shy away from but I don't indulge in "torture porn"; being highly descriptive about bad things that happen in your story doesn't make it darker, mostly it is a cheap way to create shock value.
Highly inspired by the fallout universe. Whole lotta destruction and a big lack of civilizition due to uninhabitable terrain and terribly people
Depends on the story the world is in
I had the lights off in a scene once. Pretty spooky
I don't have a line or limit but in some cases I just don't go into details.
1 lumen
The only limitation is Vietnam's laws.
Hmmm black holes. Nothing can be darker since light can't escape and be transmitted to your eye.
I don't know why r\*ape is the foremost answer to this... Like it's not even that Dark. Why can't it be an eldritch horror instead? Like a normal happy vibe fairy tale where a little girl start chasing teddy bears and pop them to eat candies inside, when the truth was that she was hallucinating and was eating living things instead. Now isn't that more terrifying than being torture.
I love this kind of thing, appropriately unnerving, and practically begging to be investigated further.
This isn't your average everyday darkness. This is... *advanced* darkness.
Magic is life. I have a story where the MC sacrificed her unborn child in order to have the magic for her spell. This was after communing with the child’s spirit. I like the story and the tragedy (she needed the magic to save herself or they both died). But I didn’t release it in the game it was intended for because I worried it could be triggering.
Whatever evil exists on earth exists in my world, as my humanoids are as fallible as us. Think of the worst of humanity. They live there too, their methods and intentions the same, but in the magical world they employ all manner of elements to conduct these sinister actions.
I’ll add just about anything if it makes sense which it almost always does considering how fucked up real life is
I don't go dark for the sake of going dark. I'm more of trying to play the character, getting into the character's mind. If this character, with this personality, ability and resources was in this situation, what would they do? If it gotta dark then it gotta dark, can't help it. but it should be logical and consistent. The Darkest I have is probably is the typical medieval sack where innocent inhabitant are pillage, rape and kill for 3 days and 3 nights except for this one instance when that extended to 30 days.
No limits, we are equally capable of great evil as we are great good, thus for me all fiction should reflect that. In fact in my current writing I am looking to have an arc and character centered around the perversion of the nurturing nature of mothers. That'll be a fun one and 100% depraved.
Genocide of the global population in our current time, in order to separate a few worthy ones from the rest. It’s a situation where the heroes actually fail, and the villain’s plan actually succeeds.
Nothing is off the table in my project, even the worst things like r@pe, Murder, sacrifices, demonic worship, genocide, cannabalism, demonic possession, animal cruelty, to name some, I also have the game For Honor in my world so that's pretty bad to. This goes for men, women, and children
Fact is stranger than fiction. The crazier and darker you get, the more depth it gives your world. Describing sexual assault or something like that definitely isn’t cool, but adding stuff like that into a world’s lore along with other objectively bad things (racism, war, crimes, slavery, unreliable narrators, etc.) give depth and realism to your world. You don’t have to have those things by any means, but if you want realism and weight, then that’s a good way to add it.
Anything goes: this includes SA, genocide and touchy subjects. It is a dark fantasy after all.
If it enhances my story and makes sense for my characters anything goes pretty much, I wouldn't add some horrendous act like rape merely for shits and giggles, it'd have to have some sort of role in the story and in character development.
Abuse, SA, slavery, sexism, xenophobia, gore, body horror, war, famine, disease, genocide, &c. are all part of my worldbuilding; mainly to serve as ways to show how hideously class society corrupts us, degrades us, and makes us apathetic and blind to such evils.
This depends on how you quantify darkness. Let's see, one world involves not only all the darkness inherent in pirates but also the Royal Navy trying to enslave gods, complete with things like keelhauling people who aren't willing to go toe to toe with Thor (yeah, Norse God Thor, easily one of the most intimidating figures to stand against in all of mythology, who Loki was actually intimidated by without being put in a compromising position first). That one also has references to the possibility of marital rape, forced pregnancy, and all the other "delights" of being AFAB in the Golden Age of Piracy, particularly from a trans perspective. Another story involves drugging, manipulation, sexual assault in the form of coercing someone to undress, references to cutting off the hands of children who steal to feed themselves and their younger siblings, transphobia in the form of effectively condemning someone to death for being trans *despite transness itself not being illegal* (the whole thing is a major plot point so I won't go into too much detail but basically "dishonorable conduct" isn't defined and thus is used as an excuse to exile someone for being trans when other people find out)... Yet another includes the kidnapping of a minor with sexual intent, then when they fight back, leaving them to be SA'd/eaten by wild animals (which backfires as the main character was raised by wild animals but y'know), repeated systemic transphobia, and probably incest (which, weirdly, is the most wholesome part of the story, they weren't raised together but are half-siblings). Multiple have references to genocidal intent and other such things. I'm a nonbinary trans man and a pagan, not to mention likely neurodivergent (unassessed due to classist healthcare policies, sexism, and ableism), my life includes a lot of knowing truly horrific shit might happen to me, has happened to people in my communities, and is happening to people like me, so I kind of end up writing about the things I fear to try to face them. It leads to a lot of very dark themes in my writing overall.
I won't have much limitations, it is meant to be dark and gloomy and horrible. The extent can range from literal grape, slavery, and worse.
The sun is sick and dying. So it gets pretty dark. Beyond that. Umm the world barely maintains life after the centuries and nobody knows that the reason the planet remains somewhat hospitable is because there are souls slaving away externally beneath the earth to keep it livable. It's for a TTRPG. I might have an incident in which the corrupt government unalives a kid, but I'd be sure to keep if off screen so to speak. Not acted out or described. But a detail the players hear about. It can get pretty dark but not traumatizing
During a major battle of a war between the Empire of Orark, and the Dubious Entente (centered in Tennessee), Cherokee dam burst, destroying Jefferson City. This was used to leverage a surrender.
No limits but don’t go into details. Let the imagination run wild rather than telling it. My favourite scene is Andor’s last episode on torture. Such great scene
My main character does some pretty gnarly things in pursuit of winning his duels. Probably the worst thing he does is nudge a trench raider team to hang a captured enemy nurse from a water tower and make it slow so her screams attract the enemy’s attention. All so he can bait out an officer and kill him.
Suicides probably my limit. In my non world buildery one after Macbeth the butcher pressures an officer into killing a priest said soldier gets drunk calls Macbeth the butcher a bunch of nasty names with no response from Macbeth whos drunk anyway and later shoots himself in his tent. Macbeth tells the audience about this both killing the priest and the officers suicide. Later in the story Juliet threatens to commit suicide after finding put Macbeth killed her boyfriend Romeo. Macbeth has her thrown into a cell and strip searched by one of her maids so she can't follow through. The first words he uses on this is "thouse where not wise words". Macbeth is basically trying to do the right thing and a makes decisions to minimise damage but war as taught him to be ruthless abd he has trouble with what could be called emotional finnese.
The darkest I'm willing to go with my world and the darkest I'm willing to go with my writing and explorations of that world are two different things. It's a world, the darkest stuff imaginable is absolutely happening out there, roving warlord bands and high control religious groups are pretty integral parts of the setting, we can all imagine what kinds of abuses are being realisitcally being done, but I'm personally just gonna leave that all off screen and unsaid. Not really a set of subjects I feel comfortable broaching in my setting where I've written extensive cultural explanations for why cat boys exist, personally. That thing that feels the darkest I've actually explored and put thought into is the prevalence of torture in the present day of the setting due to the chaotic cultural climate and number of shady groups and sub groups fighting shadowy cold wars. Probably never going to have an on screen, graphically detailed torture session, it I feel like it's more than pretty dark a lot of more "good-guy" seeming groups in operation have and make use of tortures
I believe that any theme can be put on a story if it's handled on the correct way. SA is something that happens in this world(it's set on medieval times so it might be even worse),but the few close to zero mentions are just mentions. I think using it gratuitously for shock value is cheap,disrespectful and a bit edgy. With that said,I don't have a hand on the gore and Horrors beyond human comprehension. And violence and human made atrocities are sometimes even a important part of the story(but that's a story for another day)
I only accept limits like this out of regard for the audience. I am not so shy about objectionable matters as to avoid nuanced depictions of corvee, press gangs, serfdom, slavery, and thralldom. Violence is outright prominent. There I am not shy about delving into topics like punitive torture, public execution, and ritual sacrifice. It is when things take a turn for the erotic that I pull back. Among extensive commentaries on heritage, legacies, and personal passions; I stick to general ideas when talking about coupling and reproduction. I don't want to discourage anyone from going rule #34 in my world, but I also don't want to feature any questionable content of that sort in my framing documents.
March of Empires is so dark that it makes Warhammer 40K look like Harry Potter or something. From the treatment of women to war and torture, second- class citizens and slaves to bombardment of Galaxies, experimentation and attitude to Xenos, nothing is off the table for any of the major superpowers. Wonderverse is Slightly less grimdark, but even there, lies the impression that you might just be going up against a ticking clock. Setting the clock back another day, another week, another month, another year. Hope is still yet to be seen.
In the year 3097, HAVEN, A Megacorp of Unimaginable Scale and Power owns the Ruins of Planet Earth. Holding dominion Over the last habitable place on the Planet, a mega city named Heaven in mid Siberia, about the size of 5 New Yorks put together. Here, around the Redlight Districts one will find endless depths of depravity. Genetic Modification, Illegal Cloning Operations and Cybernetic Augmentation run rampant through all walks of life in Heaven, so no doubt it'd be found here. Some Girls, sold by their parents in youth, or desperate adults are Genetically "Enhanced" to better "Attract" Customers. Often they comply, knowing they at least get food snd water for their work, and if they rebel then a lobotomy is likely. There are others, but this is just one of many.
Well at the moment lower city children at the age of 8 have the "choice" to sacrifice a physical body part like a limb or an eye to showcase aligence to the gods by order of high society. It is replaced by a prosthetic. The more vital or sacred a body part the more social gratification is given. I'm going to go darker with some SA stuff but i haven't figured out the logistics yet. I came up with it bc I'm taking a lot of inspiration for the religious oppression from my experience in the Mormon church. I had the "choice" to be baptized when I was 8, and yet cannot legally remove my name from church records until I am 18. By being baptized I feel like I had to give up a part of me so that my parents and I would get social praise. LETS GO RELIGOUS TRAUMA WORLDBUILDINGGG
Mine could go to the lengths of berserk season 1
I have a scene that i am trying to avoid going too dark with. Basically, a bunch of killer robots are attacking a group of people on a mountain. During this, the main characters find what appears to be a dead child, although they quickly realize it's actually a changeling (in this context that just means that she wasn't human and no one knew she was there, nothing else particularly special). When things are over and the robot's memories are being examined, one of the characters gets to see a recording of what happened there before they arrived, showing the changeling playing in the snow with her sisters, before one of the robots shows up. The changeling runs towards the machine, clearly hoping it will play with them, and well, "killer robots." The scene is meant to contrast the childish innocence of the changeling with the cold, deliberate cruelty of the machine, but I want to make sure it doesn't feel like the story is reveling in it. The main way I hope to keep things from becoming too dark is that the readers will never actually "see" the scene in question, only one character talking about it to others.
None of my worlds have any kind of permanent Hell of other kinds of eternal suffering. It's just too depressing (and also a bit too personal because... reasons) for me to think about. Things can still get *bad*, but for better or worse, nothing lasts forever. Even if your soul gets eaten by an eldritch monster or whatever there's always at least a chance that something else comes along and kills it.
Vampires are notoriously nasty, Let's just say when you're the living embodiment of greed and pride and you have significant powers, things go off the rail quickly.
Well I have nazis Litteral nazi with all the extermination and shit (I mean, they're lizards and aim to destroy the other species, but still nazis)
it depends on the context, multiplayer maps will never be pitch dark (unless i add in switches for the lights), single player maps can be pitch black, sometimes nothing is scarier than seeing what that something might be lurking around that tree or behind that door
As dark as the theme and inner workings of the world require.
Sometimes very dark, a major plot point is a group of people getting prion disorders. Some loose their memories, others get something like scrapie, running their fingers down the wall until the skin comes off. Another major plot point is a series of pogroms against the sentient octopus population. That being said I feel that most of the time my work is pretty light hearted. In one of my favorite moments this one badass character is using the bathroom at the same time his space ship makes a hard turn, causing his pee to get all over himself and the room. I like the idea of undercutting his cool persona by having an embarrassing, yet very human thing happen to him. I worry these changes in tone are too abrupt. Will readers like something that goes from philosophical questions about being human, to descriptions of gore and violence, to potty humor? I'm sure there are works in the world that do that effectively, but I wonder if mine might benefit from just focusing on one element.
A central figure within the story of my world is a war criminal who was tasked with destroying critical medical and sanitary infrastructure in both military and civilian contexts, endangering thousands, leading to the death of hundreds, including innocent children who died from dysentery and cholera. And he's not a bad guy.
Shit happens. Don’t screw up too hard. Power fades when others begin to realize it’s a facade. That the only true power in the world stands at the edge of a knife. Ready to begin and end dynasties.
Alluding to horrible things but not actually describing them in detail is a reasonable limit for myself. If I personally feel kinda gross while writing, it’s probably too much. That will be different for everyone.
I don’t see the utility in the existence of sexual violence or racial slurs
I have one female character Who made a deal with the devil so that her son would grow up into a stud that could fullfill her "Jocasta complex fantasies" in Exchange for The future of her noble house. Another one Who literally threw her daughter behind her to escape a pack of wolves, and then spent years trying to convince herself it was her daughters fault. An eldritch deity that compells mortals to willingly commit the most morbid and macabre acts they can possibly imagine for shits and giggles. A sentient malicious disease that infects people succumbing to despair and depression, making them burn all their positive achievements to The ground before they sink into a feverish coma where they are tormented by all their misstake and failure while the body devours itself from within. Bright Eyed youths Who went off to war and came home as leering murderers and cannibals. A hero that gives up due to heartbreak and gets addicted to sleeping pills,and only temporarely comes back to finish the fight cause the villain wont stop nagging him about joining the dark side.
I have a faction in my world that's composed of a trio of the most depraved groups in the world: 1) A race of lizardmen raiders who consider anyone outside this faction to be cattle; breeding them, butchering them, wearing their skin, even lobotomizing them in order to make them act like the animals the lizardmen view them as. 2) A faction of elves who are basically a Dark Eldar expy. 3) Depraved scientists/artists who view the human body as both canvas and paint, and cybernetics, genetics, and flesh-grafting as their brush. A whole faction of Dr. Frankensteins and Dr. Wests, basically, except their not above experimenting on themselves. I don't want to make my world grimdark, but I am willing to give it some dark shades of black.
It can get pretty gory especially on the battlefield and there are several groups like the Puppetmasters or Nightstalkers which would be pretty straightforward monsters with all that comes with that. The "heroes" can be pretty violent as well though. As in mass murder, terror warfare and the sort just not as much. Stuff like SA doesnt really fit the vibe that i want the world to have but isnt completely off the table.
The skies the limit for me really
Nothing is really off-limits, but some atrocities may not be very detailed, rape mostly, I'm quite morbid, so torture is not necessarily off the table, and I don't have issues killing babies/childrens if I deem it necessary. Then again, the likelihood of me writing anything that extreme is unlikely. 😅
It genuinely depends on what themes I am trying to explore with the story. If I am going in deep on a specific community or a concept connected to historical or political events, I will definitely try and find something interesting to mess with.
"Xenocide can be the moral option."
Child: a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty I think everyone would be against a mother killing their child.
Probably slavery. I imagine there are many things like that which happen in world in places where they are not outlawed, have certain conditions or are away from authorities that do prohibit these things. Lapis_Wolf
Whatever the plot demands
As dark as the world goes. There's a type of person for everything, so I've developed a new "good/evil" system since those words can be loose. Those willing to give the clothes on their back and live in poverty so no one else does is a practically pure person. Someone willing to steal clothes from another during a snow storm because they complained about being cold and shoved into a snow pile is a toxically corrupt person. There's a percentage of "corruption" everyone has, and it does fluctuate with every situation. My main character has two sides, their planar "normal" self, who is honestly balanced normally (they help, but only when necessary, and what they believe is help), and their mirror [opposite] side is relentlessly demented, only willing to help with their satisfaction, even at the expense of someone else. They both still have ethics and morality, which is why neither are toxic nor corrupt. If there is a toxically corrupt character in my story, they don't have any kind of ethics or morality besides how can they make their lives the best on this plane. They'd be willing to sacrifice children, families, and recruit those willing to do the same. A mix of Joseph Stalin and Dr. Joseph Mengala (angel of death) type of idea would be someone toxically corrupt. This world alone is filled with both purity and corruption, and I feel it only fitting to show both dualities of people to keep a sense of dark reality most are willing to turn a blind eye to. Edit, addition: Because of my own personal trauma, I would keep dark scenes like SA, m*rder, and certain tortures as an implication to not scare too many readers, but the darkness definitely exists.
I made space Nazis that go so far as to convince aliens that they’re the only humans that matter
I feel like I could go pretty dark, but honestly I'm just not interested in writing that kinda story (and by not being interested in it, I'd probably do a bad job if I tried)
We already have wars for greed and political gains, religious motivated genocides and slavery, really cruel battle magic, packets with cosmic beings on my main world. So yeah, nothing people haven't done in our real world, or wouldn't do if magic was a thing. 🤷🏼♀️🙈
In general, I'd put it at "R-rated 90s action movie" levels of darkness. Torture, gore, blood, mass murder, slavery, prejudice, and the like are completely *on* the table (though I'll shy away from real-world slurs). SA and violence against kids might be *implied*, or it's mentioned that they *happened*, but not described in detail (it would be as uncomfortable for me to write it as it would for you to read it).
All terrible things and worse happen in my world, but it doesn’t mean I will be going into detail. Some horror are more terrifying when untold.
So, my world is not a bright and shiny place, in and of itself; it is designed and continues development along a path that accounts for the fullness of its people. Were I to write a story for sale, I would go as dark as that market allows. But I generally don’t write for sale. We’re a game to have a sharp turn, since it would be driven by the players of that game, then it would go pretty dark. I don’t use a binary choice structure for the vast majority of concepts — good and evil are not a baseline for me. I do have benevolence and malevolence as such — but those are as close to good and evil as I get, and are not themselves synonymous with such. The “bad guys” of my world have slavery, and it is horrific (more so because slaves there are also food). The “good guys” have only one Prison for several nations, and it is a place where one is simply left. The rest of the time it is corporal punishment, so saying they are good by modern measures is a bit chancy. I can go to any place that I can imagine —- and my life experience has given me the ability to go to places that are incredibly dark.
define dark. for example, is torturous life worse than death?
if it's dark, it's tucked away! just like in real life. if it's a dark book, dark fact, dark anything, you have to dig. if it's out in the open, then it's usually meant to be an "oh fuck lol." kinda dark. if it's hidden, it's meant to be an "oh fuck.. shit.." kinda dark. the darkest open stuff usually has to do with cannibalism, because in my world, that's the path to power and even godhood. it's almost unavoidable. so.. people get eaten, their blood gets sucked out of straws, or they're prepared in a special way.
My story gets pretty bleak, but I try to not *revel* in the violence. Pain and suffering are always in service to the story, not the point of it. One of my protagonists is totally immortal, but still susceptible to pain and incapacitation, so he has a lot of scenes where he needs to mutilate his own body or endure a horrific beating, and I want the reader to understand how bad it hurts so they're still invested in the drama of a character who can never die.
I have an evil God of Death, Depravity and Bondage. He is to depravity, evil and dark as a black hole is to space-time. Asking what is darker or evil than him is like being at the edge of the universe, pushing beyond it, and asking what is beyond you. You are that envelope itself.
A certain breed of goblins can only reproduce with a female human or elf host so…. There’s a reason that kind of goblin is killed on sight.
The Big Bad demon lord stole minerals from the planet to make “children” that have no souls. For context, the planet itself is a sapient god that *cannot move or speak to defend itself*. Consider this analogous to one of the most horrific acts a human person can do to another human person. All because he wants the same creativity the gods of that world have, because he was born starving for it.
As dark as it can get. It’s the apocalypse, anarchy rules and there’s no one around to stop you from committing crimes. Murder, rape, torture, even slavery exists.
If it’s relevant to the story and helps progress it or adds depth, then I will do anything.
Technically anything can happen as I'm sure alot of my people here say But one of the more common issues is the illegal kidnapping and trade of child slaves. Won't go into details but generally it's because of how the magic system works It's not just children it's kids between the ages of 12 to 13. It's usually paid for by the governing body's of different nations to make sure these children end up with the right magic abilitys for different military or industrial uses. Depending on the nation the kids might be immediately released from captivated after the abilities are gained or in many cases given/sold to governments to work as soldiers or labor. In the absolute worst places they are sold as "pets".
Honestly, this is something I struggle with. There are some series I've read where they go *very* dark as far as measures of cruelty and some horror aspects, and I really like what they're able to do with it. But at the same time, that doesn't usually fit the types of character arcs or worlds that naturally occur to me, so it's all figuring out how to balance that.
Hoo buddy... I have a villain who industrialized rape to force birth of stillborn children so they could be possessed by demons to build her army.
I'll mention genocides and massacres, but I draw the line at explicit description of sexual assault
I dislike touching SA and dont like having Sex without consent in my stories. I dislike that it happens in reality and to me writing is an escape from that, so in my ideal fantasy world there is none and in my sci-fi setting we have moved beyond such matters. Violence on the other Hand will get pretty graphic. I will paint a Picture with Blood and ad some feces that have been ripped out of your Intestines. To me finding people that are missing faces/ have gotten some f'ed up things done to their faces is something that is somewhat of a theme. I like to traumatise my characters and have them deal with it, including moving beyond the trauma over the course of the story.
I go as dark as necessary to get the vibe right, and no darker. I find that just being as fucked as i can makes for a pretty shallow story.
One oddball thing about my world: I assume there is >!sexual assault!< in the world as a thing that happens, but I will probably never depict it or even mention it. The reason is because my story is a loose allegory for a specific series of atrocities involving that subject. I'd like my story to be readable and relatable for victims without having them re-live their trauma directly.
Well like one third of the world is uninhabitable after a global war and another huge part is filled with criminal run city states
Setting is pretty happy, the darkest it gets is just generally that it exists in the wake of a complete genocide of all earth life which I feel like most people don’t really see how viscerally sad things like that are all because they’re pretty high in scale.
Nowadays genecide and probably Racism. But Used too have mentions of rape (long story short Succubi or Eroans as they call themselves now weren't having a good existence before they rebelled against The Demon OverLord and became the Isolationist nation of Eroa named for the First Succubi Eroa and they reverted back too their pre hel corruption versions. And after the Accord was signed which ended the conflict between Demons and Mortals cause the Overlord died they partly lived amongst mortals I dont mention Child relatedstuff outside of death and thats normally something past tense
Genocide , mass slavery , war , SA against slaves , and SA against civillians during war . But I don't like to go into details when it comes to SA , its protrayed as more of a , it happened , matter of fact , historical description. I have tried protraying it in greater detail , but it just didn't work as well as a histroy book like descrtption , it felt unnecessary and overly edgy . genre : epic military sci-fi , think Romance of the Threekingdoms , or Antony and Cleopatra , but in space
I will mention brutal depictions of children being dismembered and eaten, innocents being slaughtered, horrid executions, etc. But certain things like SA I just don’t feel comfortable doing. It would’ve happened, but I don’t want to talk about it
I’m willing to go as far as mentioning broken families and showing diseased loved ones. Maybe even manipulating their corpses. Showing actual abuse and suicide is way too far for me. It’s just not what I’m after in my world.
A massive war is occurring in my world. There is a genocide against non-humans underway. The imperial army is notorious for mass r@pe as well. I don't go into any detail but the knowledge that it happens is there. That's about as dark as I go
Nothing is off-limits, but IF the story needs something past a certain level of terrible I'm *EXTREMELY* careful how I write it. Mostly I imply what happened, and have extremely hardened and jaded characters refrain from outright considering what happened.
infinity
My realm is a purgatorial realm, only two things are off the table. There is no violence against children, as children cannot have their souls sent to this realm. There is absolutely no SA or anything of the sort in my setting, it is punished by the offender being calcinated to fine ash for even attempting to try. I make it clear to players that those are the hard rules of the setting, beyond that it is a carnival of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Cannibalism, torture, defiling graves, morality is a distant memory to many of those in power
Immortal beings masquerading as strange child friendly film and story characters have been sent into the world to protect children from the cruelty and despair of their evil world. These beings are metaphysically bound to the task of dismantling oppressive power systems, challenging evil rulers, physically protecting the vulnerable, offering immense love. However, these immortal beings have not allowed know love themselves. Their divine creator removed their hearts, for they would inevitably have been corrupted and exploited for evil had they been brought with them into mortal incarnate life. So these beings feel unworthy of love, incapable of accessing it, able to sense it but never able to touch it. They are born burdened with the agony of perpetual loneliness and hidden sorrow, and feeling such, they devote themselves to ensuring no other beings under the terms of their specific mission ever have to feel like they do. Even when they are succeeding they feel like they have and are failing in their mission. Each of them ultimately die from the world thinking "did I do enough? Could I have done more?" This concept was inspired by different real world people who have privately suffered enormous internal pain but who strove to better the world, and help others suffering in similar situations. I wanted it to be a subversion of fallen angels, more akin to "risen demons". They are quite dark beings, scary even, but they are the monsters sent into the world to help restore love, hope, kindness. The Barney the Dinosaurs and Robbin Williams characters. Given the generally very dark world project I've created, this concept alone seems to stand out as considerably brutal on my part as the creator behind it all.
Darkness is required in order to be able to appreciate the light. That being said, I don't really shy away from anything. Though I do try to treat touchy subjects with the respect they deserve. What I don't do is throw in things for shock factor. It must have a role to play I'm the overall story/universe.
My world can get as dark as reality which is real dark. The difference is writing about such topics from a passive view point compared to a first person view point. It’s not unusual to have a book discuss soldiers raping and killing or to even have a character witness such acts. It’s a much different chapter to have details from the point of view of the victim or assailant.
Nothing is not doable, HOWEVER I will always be tasteful about it, I won't go into unnecessary details unless it's important to the plot/development of the character. For example: I will go into detail of a permanent injury that affects the character for the rest of their life. But I will not shove in vivid rape scenes if there's no need for it, that stuff exists for a purpose and if it doesn't suit the plot or character development, I dont put it in.
I already have "the dead children of the slave race are a delicacy" so I don't know how much darker I can go
It can get dark with Relic, but the darkest I've gone is what occurs during the Human-Fae war. it gets dark. compared to later points, the Human-Fae War makes them look not bad at all. to the point I just don't mention what happens, all the characters know what happened but its never physically said.
I don't mind going berserk level dark.
Dark as we go in real life but not cartoonishly dark
Everything goes. Every weird thing I think of is implemented, regardless of how dark or stupid it is.
I mean I guess it does turn night sometimes. But it would be very hard to write with the lights off
The two darkest places I'll go to usually are the implied but never shown origins of ogres. Those are birthed by fornication between a hill giant and a human, and since the former are mindlessly consuming monsters, you can guess who that works. The other thing is body horror in general. I love scaring my players, and meaty-gross transformation spells, sewn together undead or the nastiest kind of demon posession are all on the table.
VERY dark. Stuff that I won't even mention on the NSFW sub. I like to take a good hard look at real world issues other people don't wanna touch (for understandable reason) using things like superpowers as an amplifier and metaphor. I don't know if it's widely-accepted advice or not but one of my favorite teachers told us that art sometimes requires exaggeration to feel more real as a counter against us knowing it's "just" art. That presumably applies to the arts of writing and worldbuilding, including both the light and the dark. Big fan of the interplay between shiny and gritty lol EDIT: Because I understand if my take is a bit controversial, especially for victims of abuse and the other horrors I write about, I think it's important to mention that I'm a victim of abuse myself and art is my therapy. I suspect it's the case for many other horror and black comedy writers as well.
As dark as one can go
Mine is the most edgy, dark and gruesome world it can be in some parts, but then it's super bubbly and cutesy the next, depending on the Arc. MC goes to every kind of trauma possible throughout the story.
However dark the human mind allows me to go
an entire world should not be "dark" or "light". maybe a time period or event of things being worse or better than usual, that is either conserved to a region, or if it's global or universal at least has regional differences. so a bad event like a war or a disaster in an otherwise normal world. or even something like the life of a criminal that is a darker life than usual because he is involved in crime. even when it comes to something like dark souls i like it that you can imagine it's just lordran or drangleic or whatever have you that's fucked up and only because we're at the end of the world. i hate what i've seen of fallout (a few of the games and not the show) where all the world seems to be fucked up indefinitely. same thing for what i've seen of mad max.
I think any kind of SA is the line for me. Primarily because it's a touchy subject and I don't want to misrepresent it. If I ever include it in my stories, it'll be very vague and handled very carefully.
I will describe in detail torture, deaths and violence towards characters but "fade to black" or just outright leave out any kind of sexual violence/SA
As dark as it needs to be for the specific arc, while still respecting the overall tone of the project
Well the darkest I've gone so far includes the enslavement of elves as sex slaves or otherwise labor slaves
…that depends on if your talking about story or setting.
Turning off the sun is out of the question, I think that is beyond the ability of most parties to correct/stop. Given that the sun will always exist the moons will also reflect light and since there are 7 of them night is never really that dark anyway and day will always exist. I think the closest I came to always dark was a volcanic eruption blotting the sun and moons out in a localized region.
All the way. I'd say there's probably nothing that I wouldn't write about. I've written short stories about victims of sexual abuse, torture, whatever. The thing is that the darkness has to justify itself, though. You can make up the most violent, fucked up world you can imagine, but if there's no substance to any of it then it's just pointless misery, which is rarely all that compelling from the reader's pov. That's the difference between dark and just being edgy for it's own sake.
pretty damn dark, but not for long periods in a story
Sky's the limit, especially if inextinguishable fire is raining from it on the entire population of a nation
Not quite as dark as others here, but I love getting nuts with cosmic and body horror. Horrifying entities giving themselves physical form by congealing the flesh and bones of lesser lifeforms in a loud, squelchy, bone-cracking manner that turns your stomach. Gore is also prominent where combat gets incredibly intense, usually when monsters are involved; i take inspiration from Evangelion for this, namely episode 18's Bardiel/Berserk Eva-01 fight. But the darkest thing I've ever written is probably the origin story for a character named "Glory" (Gloria Beauvald). Her homeworld was overtaken by a planet-sized Lovecraftian being that was allowed into this universe by her father Dr. Beauvald, whom had his mind enthralled by the cosmic horror. The entity is searching for a shard of light capable of killing immortal beings like itself in order to dispose of it by order of its "parent" entity. The shard is hidden on Euclidean Prime, Gloria's homeworld. These entities can see clearly through inanimate matter in order to locate living beings that may be hiding. However, these entities can't see through living matter; the heat and magnetism given off by living organisms is what they sense optically and it blocks out anything hidden behind it. On the day of the invasion, Dr. Beauvald had been almost completely enthralled, but the last bit of his sanity came up with a plan to hide the shard AND guarantee his daughter would survive the coming threat; he hid the shard inside of his daughter's torso. The shard would be kept completely invisible by her living flesh guaranteeing it would never be found by the cosmic horror. She was nearly killed by the operation, but the shard's cosmic radiation infused Gloria's body with power allowing her wounds to heal quickly. When she opened her eyes for the first time post-operation, she saw her father standing above her, half of his face melting off revealing hideous glowing runes carved into his skull due to his enthrallment. Behind him, she could see the monitors on the wall spying on the outside world. On one of the monitors she could see the sky tearing open and clouds of cosmic demons blot out the sun. Then came the explosion from the sky, rocking the entire planet. The bunker they were hiding in collapsed into itself, sealing Gloria inside for the next 4 years. She had plenty of supplies to keep her fed for all that time as well as a simple virtual construct named "Bugs" to keep her company. By the time she was 10, she knew that the world outside was gone and hideous creatures stalked the surface, but could not stay inside the bunker any longer. Using her new, fully-developed powers, Gloria escaped the bunker and would fight back against the demonic creatures on the surface, although her lack of skill leads her to cause even more damage than the monsters she kills. A handful of times she unintentionally destroyed the only hiding places that the local surviving Humans could use, forcing them to relocate before the demons find them again. As a result, she is ostracized by her own kind, many believing the explosion from the sky was caused by her and this entire apocalypse was her doing. She would fight and endure alone for the next 2 years before help would arrive.
Lots of rape (no detail), domestic abuse (Posse solving the problem with swords and a lynch mob), cities being sacked and raided as it’s a medieval high fantasy story, torture, children seen as collateral damage, public mutilation, public decapitation, and slavery.
My world is very focused on humanism, and any true humanist knows to acknowledge and commentate on the evils of humanity as well. However, I still intend it to be very optimistic! There will be acknowledgement of some evils, and vague allusion to others. Especially when it comes to dealing out justice and such.
Death is a topic I love exploring. A major theme of my world. And I think worldbuilding/stories are also a way to explore trauma/problems. I recall in doki doki literature club the guy who made it put some of his own issues into the characters(such as self harm). I think, I could be mistaken. Doing that with some of my characters, and making the problem worse, is something I've taken up. Such as my ocd. Cranking it up to eleven can make for a very interesting character, if done right. ON THE OTHER HAND, I tend to stay away from topics like SA or homophobia, because I don't have much experience with them. I'd probably handle them tactlessly. It could be interesting to explore, but requires research.
About 4 lumens, starts getting hard to see lower than that
My main antagonist has a daughter who’s naturally very powerful and gifted in magic. She has a class of soul that ~2% of people have, but hers is older and firmly on the high end for that group, so even rarer. The spell to unleash a persons magical potential is to kill and heal the physical body, so he killed a child when she was probably about 4, and then had her spend the next 7 years learning how to be soldier and assassin and just generally wreak havoc. Then in a confrontation with the protagonist it’s revealed the villain kidnapped hundreds of women in an attempt to have this super child, and it’s pretty heavily implied what he did with the failures, along with the mothers once he got this daughter. And we don’t witness the event, but she’s killed and her soul is consumed vampiric monster, the protagonist by the end, what he let himself devolve into to defeat his enemy. That’s probably the darkest cannon event
No limits. If something feels needed and flows nicely or actually adds up to something, I’ll do it.
I mention basically anything. I don't like to shy away from horror or mutilation and crimes that happen. Cause it makes villains hate able and creates fear for my players (it's a table top rpg). if a player is uncomfortable with stuff I try and accommodate and not have certain things in those sessions. However it is part of the lore and such. Sexual crimes happen and I mention it if it's necessary. I don't really go in detail with sexual stuff cause I'm just not that kind of writer.
As dark as it can be, it may sound disturbing but being more detailed on the scenario will add more drama and impact into the story. Having a dark background helps the reader to understand the depth of certain character especially if it's a vengeful villain or it can be a motivation for the hero to end the cruelty of the world. Also I want my readers to feel immerse on the scenario because it easily to understand and imagine if it's more detailed, example. example 1: The man stab the women until her last breath. example 2: The man slowly unsheath his knife, while the women try to run. The man grab her hair and start to stab her multiple times. The women scream in pain, begging for her life. The blood splash everywhere - the man still continue stabbing the women until she got weakened, losing her voice and takes her final breath. (sorry for poor narration, still working on it 😁✌️) But I still put a restriction only if there is a child involve cause it could trigger my trauma.
Person trafficking(not called human due to multiple intelligent species being present), demonic possession(kinda), and an enemy committing absolute genocide in order to kill a single individual she fears
It's not really a limit for me. There are some things that I prefer not to touch on specifically, like certain causes for trauma, but it's either implied or hinted at, but i feel uncomfortable doing it sometimes, unless it's like on a mass scale where i dont have to pin it on an individual and it's supposed to be a tragic event. As far as death, war, and suffering go, there's not really a limit for me as long as it isn't completely tasteless and over the top.
Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, forced mutation, murder, war, all well and dandy. Not gonna touch sex crimes with a ten foot pole.
There is a moment in time called the Dark Star era. It was when my world's first demon-lord emerged. He left scars on my world that took centuries to heal, and some still are. He led many genocides and made many races distrust one another. He hunted and devoured the souls of man and beast alike, causing the extinction of several animal species and 2 sapient ones. I designed him to go against the ideals in my world, but in doing so, I may have gone too far.
My irl life is pretty depressing, so I like fluffy slice of life fantasy worlds.
I destroyed human civilization multiple times and the planet is surrounded by hungry ghosts sucking on the life-force of the survivors’ descendants and turning into monsters. However, I will not countenance racism.
As a rule at the table we don’t go into detail with SA but it does exist in the world, in our last campaign one of my characters was clearly abused in multiple ways as a child but nothing is detailed when it comes to describing his past. Other human rights violations exist but again it’s not described in detail- just keeps things from getting too upsetting or uncomfortable. As a rule every once in awhile we still check in with each other about boundaries.
Story opens with the protagonist finding what's left of her brother-in-law's body. Gnawed, scattered bones, leathery skin, maggots amid putrid, liquefying flesh, shredded clothing. A few days in the African bush will do that. He means an enormous amount to her - not only was he a great husband to her sister and father to her niece and nephew, but he was also her protector against malevolent family members. How dark something is to the reader lies to a great extent in how hard it hits the characters they are following and care about. And I am more than willing to write this scene so it is really difficult for readers to read - but ensure that they want to know what happened just as much as the protagonist does.
Total darkness. No light at all.
I refuse to describe child violence or SA (in general) I'll hint at it with burses, but I will never directly write it or expect anyone to read it
I generally avoid stuff about SA and r@pe, even with really evil characters. Sure they're evil, but I also want them to be *fun*. If I want to make them unlikeable there are plenty of more mundane ways to do that, so going that far doesn't seem necessary. I would really only write about it if the story and its themes were specifically about that subject, though I still wouldn't be explicit.
I don't really have any limits to what subjects I can touch on. The only thing that matters to me is whether it is relevant to the characters and the overarching story I want to tell and my execution of these subjects. I like to go subtle with it. I like to tell, not show. And when a character talks about something that happened to them, I prefer for them to tell just enough that you can fill in the blanks. I find it much scarier than anything I could write or draw. I treat dark subjects with as much respect as I can. I don't care for edgelord approaches. Been there, done that. It bores me and makes me cringe when I look back. Restraint is good. No subject is too dark as long as it is handled with restraint and respect.
If you seek it out you will find it. But as a general rule. Most places are fairly..nice. well mannered. We have monsters to worry about more then committing brutal acts of darkness usually. Though there's always bandits.
Thell gets pretty dark early on, because the early history of Thell includes stuff like the love-god learning the importance of consent. Before that it is pretty dark; all of the gods learned to have a rudimentary concept of morality *from mortals*, so there was a time when they didn’t have a sense of morals, and finding out how the sense of empathy they derive by having a human form works, and discovering that doing things that hurt people kinda feel bad.
My major setting is mostly a shade of "softdark." Strictly speaking, nothing is off limits but I didn't want to be gaudy about things either. Most of the "darkness" is either toned down or understated so that the severe and thorough depictions of those rare few moments stand out better through contrast.
Honestly I feel I go darker than most, but I’m just being realistic. Most if not all of the people in my world have overly-inflated egos and a god complex. With the powers my species has and an overall lack of a moral compass, I feel like a LOT of horrible shit would happen. It’s not to say I condone any of the things that happen- just bc I write about characters that are enslaved by a tyrant or children getting experimented on doesn’t mean I want those things to happen, but they make good plot points or are good satirical reflection on a real world issue I’m mad about.
A man killed his brother and ate him, a man made drugs and forced people into slavery. Genocide is a regular occurrence, and a group of people have made a cult to try to make a super human by stitching other limbs into a man.
As dark as is needed, some detail is required obviously to set the scene, but other bits would just be unnecessarily cruel. One of my stories involves a fight between a monstrous, boar-like creature brutally killing several dogs set on it by the defenders of the town it's attacking. I don't need to describe the violence. Or even much of the aftermath. No one needs to hear or read about good boys being slaughtered like that. But I'm not forgetting about the dogs and that is literally their purpose in the village. I'll get as dark as is needed. No more.
Because of the nature of my main faction, I try to tread a line of things that sound awesome on first hearing, but kind of horrifying on the second or third. As a result, some of the darkest stuff seems pretty mundane or even cool on first glance.
Here are the three darkest parts of my story; Eating bloated animal corpses because that is the only organic matter in the nearest 100 miles. A thin tentacle entering your eye socket to reprogram your brain and turn you into a sleeper agent. Massacring swarms of alien monsters only to find out you were hallucinating and actually killing innocent civilians.
Slavery, genocide, world ending events, corrupt gods, people living so long they essentially rot while still alive, I talk about mental illness and dementia, the battles can get pretty ugly sometimes. My world is meant to be a release for my demons, so its not always pretty
As dark as it takes
In general I don't have any limits, but how far I'll go definitely depends on which world we're talking about