From Grit to Garbage: How Writers Fumbled the Art of Serious Storytelling

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Thank you again for tuning in to another compelling Thunderous Fantasies article.
Years ago, writers had bold visions of gritty tales that left an impact in their consumers. The gruesome, bitter massacre at a Moscow airport in “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” to the masterpiece classic of “Deus Ex,” the vision and execution of these stories were done masterfully. So what happened?

Today we will be exploring a tragic declination in the art of serious storytelling.

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Now lets dive into it.

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A G(l)ory Era

I bring up the “No Russian” scene from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 because it is a marvelous example of how grit was done right. When this game first came out, it created a firestorm of controversy, as it should when it involves a gruesome scene massacring civilians.
We often forget how awful war and terrorism actually is, and the Call of Duty games of old have perfectly encapsulated those aspects. In the characters we play, we want to be seen as the hero overcoming impossible odds. When it turns out we’re playing as a horrific villain, or with horrific villains, if done right, we are left with feelings of disgust over the actions we took in the game.

That is the essence of grit. It inspires real, harsh feelings over fictional scenes because we are confronted with ugly truths about the world, where real evil exists and it is something we have to contend with. Grit pushes that truth into our faces and forces us to think about it.

Another example of grit done well is the anime/manga Attack on Titan. The border of their city is both their salvation and their prison, protecting them from feral man-eating giants. When the walls come crumbling down, naturally people will die. Not even your favorite characters are safe, and it establishes that expectation early on. You can feel the fear through the eyes of the characters, and the tension as they run, hide, or desperately fight back, perfectly encapsulated through the visuals with their facial expressions, their eyes, and the utter horrific, warped proportions of these vaguely human-looking giants.

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Senseless (and) Violence

There has been a shameful trend of media adding layers of senselessness and senseless violence into their stories. For a proper gritty tale to be told, there has to be a solid foundation to rest on. Otherwise, the brutality of the story loses meaning.

“Invincible” suffers a lot from this, especially in the later seasons, as many of the show’s villains misplace blame. The audience is supposed to believe they have a righteous cause for their acts of terror, but because of their absurd logic and reasoning, it’s difficult to feel anything compelling towards them. Not to mention a lot of these conflicts could have been resolved without gratuitous violence, leading views like myself to believe the violence was forced without a satisfying narrative reason.

“My Hero Academia” also has this issue, specifically with the Japanese citizenry carrying unwarranted apprehension towards Midoriya and the heroes in the later seasons. Sure, there is a sense of frustration to be warranted when your nation has been overtaken by criminals. However, imagine an entire town placing blame and hatred towards firefighters who are actively trying to stop their homes from burning in a wildfire, risking their lives voluntarily to safe loved ones. The goal here was to make us feel bad for Midoriya as he’s risking his life for a thankless cause - a cause made thankless without any reason that makes sense. When the reasoning behind this spite has no logic behind it, the feelings the author tries to make us experience ends up insincere.

An Audience Forever Lost

When a franchise is established, there is an expectation to be had with its core audience. Whenever a new episode is released, or a remake is released, we expect the content to be consistent and faithful.
”Call of Duty” has evolved into a shell of its former self thanks to Warzone. Sure, the gameplay loop may be fun and thrilling. However, the serious tone it was once celebrated for has diminished severely into an arguably autistic slugfest, trading their gritty story loving audience for children and teenagers. Most of the blame can be pinned on Fortnite for the infantilization of our gaming industry.

But what about other forms of entertainment?
TV shows and movies have done a good job highlighting this issue. In a previous article published here on Thunderous Fantasies, the industry has suffered a plethora of remakes, reboots, and sequels which serve an audience alien to the original franchise. Laura Croft’s character was reformed, originally designed to be a beautiful woman to attract a male audience, to this strange lesbian character, absent of feminine features, and with a philosophy of “girl power.” Star Wars first catered to a mature, mostly family audience with its original trilogy, then went through a phase of marketing the franchise out to children, and with it’s later releases, slowly became this estranged amalgamation meant to appease the liberal audience…also with a philosophy of “girl power” with the Mary Sue known as Rey.

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Combined with a nefarious ploy to prey upon the good will of others, using diversity, inclusion, and equity as a façade, along with the failure to gatekeep our hobbies and interests from these disingenuous actors, producers of movies, shows, books and all forms of media have been alienating their core audiences to pursue a fanbase that does not exist.

Assassins Creed has sadly become a recent victim of this trend, as the tone deaf writers and producers completely dishevels the franchise with their recent release. Just compare the serious tone of 2007 to 2025. Not only has Ubisoft completely insulted their fanbase with this release, they even incurred the attention of the Japanese government over their brazen cultural degradation of Japan’s history.

Sometimes it’s not that Serious

Sometimes the senselessness in a work of fiction can contain elements that completely tarnish the story, making it a parody of itself. Usually this stems from poor attempts at humor, or injecting humor in places that do not belong. Hideo Kojima is infamous for doing this across his “Metal Gear” series, as well as “Death Stranding.” He makes these compelling, cinematic worlds with a lot of gritty undertones, developing worlds that carries a lot of weight. Yet somehow, he injects these obscenely strange scenes in attempts to convey humor, whether it’s a guy who soils his pants in a cutscene, or naming a character “Die Hardman.” What’s most compelling is that fans of Kojima’s works can brush these flukes off with relative ease. While they may be outlandish and unnecessary, Kojima can miraculously maintain a powerful story, as if exercising a level of hubris that says “I’m an amazing writer, and I can add whatever bullshit into a story and still make it a masterpiece.”

Invincible, on the other hand, contains a brutal fight between the protagonist and a Viltrumite warrior, with a needlessly creepy attitude. When their fight results in a massacre of innocent civilians and a vast amount of destruction, the villain, Conquest, shares some strange grips about loneliness, in a nearly homoerotic way. This becomes more brazen when he spits an orb of blood in space, and forms it into a heart. This entire fight becomes a meme of itself as these design and writing choices erupt from out of left field. This kind of attempt at humor is calloused at best, and perverted at worse. This ends up diluting the initial theme of the show: the consequences of super powers on a fragile world.

On the other hand, you have stories that tends to take themselves too seriously, or adjacently, try to convey morals that are not as compelling as the writers want you to believe.

In the above example of “My Hero Academia,” the later seasons made this viewer exhausted, and ultimately, unwilling to finish the series. Tone is crucial to maintaining grit, and this anime gave up an oppressive, depressing aura that stirred frustration. Combined with the unreasonable citizenry and their misplaced blame, along with the sense of futileness of Midoriya as his youthful spirit withers away, there is nothing to break away from the tone - making the series feel like a slog that will never conclude in this dragged out war against these escaped villains.

A more overt piece I think would be Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” The movie paints an overt, oppressive tone just like the later seasons of “My Hero Academia.” However, the brooding and the convoluted plot dissolves any fascination viewers may have had. It then attempts at a strange plot twist of Batman and Superman’s parents coincidentally having the name “Martha,” and for some reason causes them to stop fighting. The scene strived for emotional depth, but fell hard for its absurd logic and its melodramatic posture. Super hero fans expected an epic fight, not a forced emotional scene between two (supposedly) manly characters over mommy issues.

How to Fix this Tragedy

Grit requires balance, reason, and sincerity.
Too much oppression will lead readers to feel bad about the story, which will push them away from finishing it. This may not necessarily mean an abundance of torture and depression in a shocking few scenes, but also may include a prolonged suffering written in a way that the readers feels like they are in limbo - when these elements are written, rewritten, and overemphasized over the plot. You do not require a satisfying, happy ending for grit to be made good, but you have to lead the reader in a direction. Things have to move forward at a satisfying pace, and focusing on the pain and suffering for too long will lose readers.

There has to be sound logic behind a sad, grim setting, one that is believable or relatable. Some fans of Warhammer: 40k make fun of its grim setting because of some of the silly concepts written solely for the sake of making it “grim dark.” For instance, an engineer may need to sacrifice himself to fuel or maintain engines of the Imperium’s fleet, as opposed to using mechanical devices to remove safety concerns. (This results in Warhammer 40k sometimes be labeled as “grim derp.”)

Sincerity is absolutely mandatory, for if the reader suspects your attempt at this form of writing is forced, it will shatter all investment they had in your tale. Consumers hate it when a moral is projected and shoved down their throats. Instead, they should come to their own conclusions. Likewise, we hate it when characters act melodramatic, when emotions are forced and exacerbated like an amateur actors in a college film.

Of course, as always, be mindful of your audience. Know what your audience expects and desires before you write your gritty scenes. If you try to adhere to many different groups of people, who often have conflicting wants and needs, you will end up satisfying no one.

What do you think? Have you read or watched any grim shows or novels that left you unsatisfied? What is a good example of a gritty world in your eyes? Be free to share your experience below in the comments section.

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