Dark fantasy or isekai power fantasy (LiRPG): which do you prefer?

[Anonjohn20]

Which do You Prefer?

The one with smut. LOL JK

 

[Eldoria]

1. Dork Fantasy (no, not a typo) authors usually went all-in on the dork and forgot about everything else.

- The story is almost certainly suffering/snuff porn, where characters are killed at the drop of a hat for no reason at all. Like, my brotha, I have never seen this random-NPC-no-6969 before in the story, so why am I forced to watch her gets gangbanged by monsters and killed in the most off-putting way possible that isn't even related to the main characters?

- "Gray moral choices" = "Absurb, nonsensical choices". Every.Single.Time. Not the character's fault, but the author's fault for forcing them to pick between two dumb choices and calling those morally gray.

- On the topic of choices, mob characters often have negative IQ and make the dumbest decision ever. For example: "Hey mates, our party is working like a finely tuned machine of intricate parts, let's kick out one of our own WITHOUT AT LEAST FINDING AN ADEQUATE REPLACEMENT and see how hard life would kick our butts."

- What is the meaning of life? Be cannon fodder NPCs who exist for like 2 chapters each. Is there hope amidst the darkness? Yes, for the obviously self-insert character only.

This is a sharp and reasonable critique. But what if there were a dark fantasy novel that didn't exploit sufferers (trauma porn) and anti-male gaze? So the darkness of the world is only shown as the true face of the world, often hidden, and could even serve as an allegory for the dark realities of the real world. Thus, suffering and trauma are often ignored realities, and authors strive to reveal this dark reality to readers, not for enjoyment but for reflection. Imagine an author writing about their life experiences of the horrors of the Holocaust in fictional form, not to exploit the suffering, but as a dark witness to the suffering of a world that is ignored and perhaps (will be) forgotten. I think some authors might use dark fantasy as a 'fictional monument,' rather than shallow entertainment.

As for the gray moral choices, I think dark fantasy protagonists are designed that way, not because they want to be gray, but because the dark and absurd world forces them to make complex, intricate, and dilemmatic moral choices that cannot be based solely on right and wrong but also consider the consequences and broader social impact. For example, in shounen logic, protagonists are often depicted as ideal hero figures. But their heroic deeds seem simplified to make it easier for readers to grasp their heroic characters. For example, a shounen protagonist saves children from a criminal, then imprisons the criminal and hands the children over to the authorities. And the story continues... the children are forgotten. But the question is, what happens to the children after the protagonist abandons them?! Are the children really safe from their kidnappers? What if the world's legal system is corrupt? What if the criminal bribes the authorities (police, knights, etc.) and then is released? What if those officials are actually systemic criminals who exploit the children behind the scenes? Shounen protagonists often cannot face such dilemmas.

Let me take another example, the protagonist of millions of people, Naruto. In the Konoha invasion arc by Pain, Naruto had to fight alone against Pain's Six Paths before he was finally defeated. Tendo Pain - who is the incarnation of the ideology of peace through suffering - asked Naruto an ideological question: how to stop the cycle of hatred that is the root of violence in the ninja world? Naruto could not answer. Even after reaching reconciliation with Nagato, Naruto, now Hokage, ultimately failed to realize Nagato's ideal of lasting peace. Amagakure—the village Nagato loved—remained bleak, dark, and riddled with cycles of violence. Black-and-white moral protagonists aren't designed to solve the world's complex social problems; they oversimplify issues and often fall for moral gimmicks. Gray protagonists (usually dark fantasy MCs) exist to confront the world's complexity and absurdity. Because oftentimes, complex problems must be addressed with calculated personal, ethical, and social action. For example, how protagonist V becomes an anarchist to awaken the people's desire for freedom, shackled in a totalitarian state. Although the MC's actions can be extreme. Or another example, how Eren Yeager is forced to become a genocide who wipes out over half the world's population because of a hatred from non-Eldians that is deeply rooted in world history and cannot be resolved through dialogue. This is why gray protagonists are necessary for the world, especially in a dark and absurd world.

And regarding the fate of NPCs as cannon fodder, I agree with you. Most NPCs are simply disposable pawns with no meaningful moral weight or mere plot devices. Therefore, designing complex and human characters shouldn't just be limited to the protagonist, but should encompass all characters in the story, making the worldbuilding feel alive and realistic.

Lastly, is there hope amidst the darkness? Yes, dark fantasy is often filled with gloomy, gray, and nihilistic values. The world is more like hell than a realistic world. Therefore, I write dark fantasy stories with lanterns. Darkness will always be present in the reality of the world (both in fiction and the real world), but the lantern, hope, always accompanies it. Just as after a dark night, a bright day rises. There must be a balance between darkness and hope so that the story does not fall into total nihilism but also brings new hope to the world. Therefore, the protagonist of dark fantasy, even though morally gray, should always have a 'moral compass' so that his actions will lead to the final resolution of world conflicts, both short-term and long-term. And most importantly, the protagonist does not enjoy the suffering (exploitation) of others but becomes an opponent of darkness in his own way (even if it is extreme). This kind of dark fantasy is what I want to realize, as a monument to suffering and a small lantern for a dark and absurd world.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Dark Fantasy does not always mean gray area protagonists. It can mean horror stories with traditional fantasy elements (the novels and gaming setting for AD&D 2e and 3e - Ravenloft - was of this type, though the gray area stuff ruled the rust in the spin-off "Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death") - or it can be a traditional fantasy story with the hero getting progressively more corrupt (i.e. John Norman's Gor series, where the hero was a "white hat" type for something like five of the forty books, and a gray area character for about the same number before finally becoming the worst of the worst by the end of the series).
Isekai could probably have the same "spectrum" but rarely does - the hero is brought in BECAUSE he's the shounen "good guy" - or he's being shoved into a villain role in the hopes of redeeming the character (or just because the entity transferring the hero is a prick just to mess with him).
I suspect there are a lot of dark Isekai out there, but the "more traditional" Isekai takes precedence