When I started writing Veil Born, I originally classified it as grimdark. The genre label seemed to fit what I was writing and my world is certainly dark enough to qualify.
The thing about grimdark worlds though, is that the darkness is the whole point. People live in these worlds, they suffer and they can end up being pretty nihilistic. The focus, however, is always on the darkness. That’s fine, and if it works for other writers, more power to them.
It doesn’t work for me.
In my world? The point is what the darkness did to people. The darkness shapes who they are. Every single thought, word and deed is changed because of what people survived. Nobody comes out the same as when they started.
Instead of using grimdark, I’ve come up with a new genre label for my world:
TraumaDark.
It’s not glorifying trauma, it’s not pointing at it like it’s a spectacle. Instead it asks one question; what happens when people refuse to look?
What happens to the people who others turn from? Do they break? Do they survive? Do they choose to perpetuate what was done to them or do they use it as a crucible to become someone better?
TraumaDark has a two-fold purpose.
The first is to show survivors that they’re not alone. I see them, I am one of them.
The second is judgement.
Every person who reads the stories set in my world and turns away? They become as complicit as the perpetrators because they refused to look, to acknowledge what was done.
And the perpetrators, both real world and in the World of the Veiled? They’ll feel uncomfortable because I’m dragging what they’ve done out into the light and I won’t let them escape it. I hold both accountable.
So, that’s TraumaDark.
If your world does what mine does? Feel free to use the genre label. I give it to the world.