Fantasy vs. Dark Fantasy vs. Horror

[GloatingSwine]

The dark fantasy genre isn't well-defined.

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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