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A Tone Shift that seeks to make a work of fiction more gritty and cynical.

An effective use of this tone shift could mean that archetypes which we are accustomed to see acting in a more noble setting will have to act in one where they must think and act grimly in order to make progress, thus forcing re-examination of the tropes involved, or the use of new tropes and expansion of the setting, utilizing different sorts of characters and stories. In practice, however, writers can be too lazy to realize all that potential and end up simply "spicing up" a work with gratuitous gore, cursing, and sex to make it more "adult" — often overdoing it in the process. This is not to be confused with Tough Love.

When done right, Darker and Edgier works are a case of Tropes Are Tools. When a show uses this trope as a tagline, you can expect a mixture of: awful things happening to the characters, twisted backstories giving them a reason to angst, protagonists becoming less heroic, and the setting becoming much bleaker. However, this all works IF it's done right.

As one could predict, this is fairly easy to screw up, and poor use of these tropes may just result in Too Bleak, Stopped Caring if the setting gets too hopeless, or Narm if the edginess becomes just silly. This doesn't make it a bad trope, though— when used subtly, such as in the Harry Potter series, it can create the effect of a series growing up with its audience.

In fact this is often the purpose of a Darker and Edgier turn. Just as a Lighter and Softer tone is typically part of an attempt to bring a fictional world to children or to younger children, a "darker" tone is often intended to make a setting appeal to older children or adults. But unlike its opposite, a Darker and Edgier shift is often used to keep an existing audience as it grows up rather than appeal to a new one. It can also be a result of child fans growing up as its creators and continuing to think of the setting as something aimed at themselves and their peers instead of the original target age group.

This trope became extremely popular in Comic Books as a rebellion against the Silver Age but also led to more than a decade of a lot of clumsy attempts by many writers to show that comics are "not kid stuff anymore." See the Bronze Age, the Dark Age, and '90s Anti-Hero for more details about how this worked.

The excessive version is often known as "Grimdark" (one word), derived from the tagline of Warhammer 40,000. ("In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.") Sometimes justified with the phrase "Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!". Usually shows up in Dark Fic. If a pre-existing show undergoes a Retool under the guise of making things Darker And Edgier, expect Jumping the Shark, especially if there was Executive Meddling involved. The United Federation of Charles wrote an essay called, What is Grimdark? which explains some of the history of the subject. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a video on this subject as well. "Grimderp" has in many parts of the Net become popular as a term for Grimdark that goes so far that it becomes Narm. When a specific character rather than the work as a whole is perceived as having become excessively Darker And Edgier, a popular term is "Edgelord". Which also gets applied to fanfic writers who produce exclusively Grimdark (or especially Grimderp) works.

As with Lighter and Softer, this practice tends to go better if the change was planned in advance to keep the tone from shifting too abruptly.

This is a common result of an ongoing work suddenly becoming subject to less censorship than it had been previously (as was the case with the Comics Code fading away). When the writers had previously been scarcely allowed to depict any violence, swearing, or innuendo at all, but are then finally given permission, you can fully expect them to go wildly overboard with it for a while. This will of course attract some audience members and repel others, but eventually both the viewers and the writers will likely want to scale things back to some level between the original squeaky-clean version and the later R-rated version. ^note If the standard metaphor is a franchise trying to "grow up," one may compare this to a young adult getting a first taste of freedom, and then gradually learning self-restraint.

Note that this is not the same as a Deconstruction. A Deconstruction plays out the genre's conventions to their logical conclusions in order to criticize the initial genre conventions. This does not have to be dark (see for instance Deconstructive Parody) and it does not prevent things from turning out well. Darker And Edgier just adds "dark" elements and may not have any real intention to deconstruct genre conventions. Often a Deconstruction can cause a work to seem darker because it's calling attention to dark aspects already implied but previously glossed over; see also Ascended Fridge Horror.

Opposite of Lighter and Softer as well as Younger and Hipper. Often found alongside Bloodier and Gorier, Hotter and Sexier, Ruder and Cruder, Sequel Logo in Ruins, Not Wearing Tights, and Real Is Brown. Often a by-product of the franchise growing bigger and more ambitious. Should not be confused with Cerebus Syndrome which means a shift from comedy to drama without necessarily increasing the edginess or adult content. May overlap with Actionized Adaptation.

Compare Grimmification and Fractured Fairy Tale for when this is done with fairy tales and American Kirby Is Hardcore for when this is done with boxart. See also Sugar Apocalypse. For when it applies to a single episode, see Unexpectedly Dark Episode and for when it applies to a parody, see Dark Parody.

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