Edgy

"As far as I can make out "edgy" occurs when middlebrow, middle-aged profiteers are looking to suck the energy--not to mention the spending money--out of the "youth culture." So they come up with this fake concept of "seeming to be dangerous when every move they make is the result of market research and a corporate master plan"."

– Daria, Episode [3.05] The Lost Girls.

"My name is Not Important; what is important is what I'm going to do. I just fucking hate this world, and the human worms feasting on its carcass. My whole life is just cold, bitter hatred, and I always wanted to die violently. This is the time of vengeance, and no life is worth saving, and I will put in the grave as many as I can. It's time for me to kill and it's time for me to die; my genocide crusade begins... here!"

– The player character of Hatred

"Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."

– Joss Whedon giving a nice example on how to avoid being edgy even while creating a dark world

Unabashed Edginess from the 1990s

Edginess refers to people pushing violent and controversial subject matter in their stories, especially when they're doing it to to try and be popular with tragic, violent or controversial stories. This often takes the form of senselessly driving a vague argument, a plotline or a scenario to its darkest possible outcome, all the while openly expressing their disdain for whoever "the establishment" is, rationalizing villains or finding a middle ground in discourses. Like most internet terminology, it has been beaten to death, resurrected hastily, and then beaten some more. Has no relation to Hunter: The Reckoning.

Another far less negative use of the term is to describe something on the 'edge' of what's acceptable, pushing established boundaries of convention. For example, by this definition Batman: The Animated Series was edgy for making an animated series which defied expectations of how true to its base concept and generally well-written a show designed to sell toys could be. Some more examples of this would be Ren and Stimpy (which was crude and vulgar) or Invader Zim (which could get dark in subject matter, and used a fair bit of black humor); in both cases, a decent bit of the comedy was of the "I can't believe that they did THAT on a kid's cartoon show!" variety. A milder version of this was Sonic the Hedgehog in contrast to Mario. In 1989 the Simpsons was the Edgy take on the classic family sitcom archetype and in 1999 Family Guy had slotted itself in as the Edgy version of The Simpsons. For the 1990s and early 2000s Edgy was a favored term of cynical marketing types which drew the attention of the world's sarcastic snarkers, many of which came to congregate on sites such as 4chan.

An "edgelord" is someone who essentially is guilty of serial attempts to be edgy, like that guy at your tabletop role playing group who always, without fail, makes a specific type of self insert or wish fulfillment character; brooding loners skilled at violence who hate anyone else having authority over them, are anti-conformist and have a troubled past - all without the nuance or skill to actually pull it off (with their opponents often being stand-ins for whoever the edgelord considers "The Man™" or representing "the establishment™" such as big business, law enforcement or organized religion). The end result is they makes themselves look silly. "Art" done by edgelords contain characters who are as dark, brooding and as painfully unhappy as possible, conflicts have zero compromise, institutions are the villains unless the edgelord made them and any conflict of interest will have the worst possible outcome. In writing, edgelords will go out of their way to make the story extra depressing, and subject multiple aspects of it to an increased shock factor when it's clearly illogical to do so. Needless to say, it can drive a perfect idea to make an entertaining story into the shitter, grating the nerves of even the most jaded audience. When commenting, the "edgelord" will simply push any predicament in the artwork to the darkest, deepest, worst outcome, while describing his fantasies. For example: In an adult and/or bondage predicament picture, edgelords can be found describing a paragraph of horrible fate the captive would suffer, *should* suffer because slaves are shit, and *deserve* abuse, even when the picture was of a predicament with nothing in context. Or he will simply fill the comment of any NSFW picture with his own sick fantasies, surely adding "women DESERVE it".

This is not to say that said dark elements like murder, slavery, rape and bodily harm are bad for literature, but rather that their sloppy execution with no regard to their depth is. As shown above, even the most "edgelord" of concepts can be salvaged and even made bearable with proper handling, especially going by the latter definition - but if you do it enough, the boundaries shift and what was edgy becomes the new norm, and there is always the risk of falling over the edge. This is why the old definition has fallen increasingly out of favor as time has gone on — people began seeing the dross sold under the title of "edgy", and the idea of what it meant thus moved away from the positive connotations marketing execs desired and closer to the qualities described above. Plus, this is the internet, and people would rather a word just be an insult or a compliment to reduce confusion.

The Anatomy of Edginess

Edginess is in some ways like a cargo cult. During WWII in the Pacific, the US military set up bases on remote, but inhabited islands, bringing with them a lot of stuff like planes and cars and so forth that was quite amazing to the stone age natives, to whom the world had been a few dozen square kilometers of land surrounded by ocean, with hazy stories of other such islands. When the military left, some of the natives took to making coconut and wooden radios and flight towers based off of some vague recollection of the military variants, unaware that making the shape alone does not get you the functional item.

The ultimate apotheosis of an edgelord: All edge, no point.

In that vein, most of what comes to mind when people envision "edgy" artworks tends to be the result of people who wanted to make morally grey characters and subject matter, but lack the maturity/experience/focus necessary to NOT end up with anything other than a multiple-personality-disordered mess or a power fantasy wrapped in propaganda. Someone with (at best) mediocre creative abilities sees some fiction that makes good use of melodrama, gritty settings, dark humor and such, made by people who know what the hell they're doing and figures "I can do that!", leading to said person haphazardly applying those elements incorrectly. The results of such efforts are either tiresome, unintentionally funny or just painful. The stereotypical teenager, especially one with gothic/emo tendencies or problems with authority, commonly embody this - all too eager for "adult" things (eg: violence, sex, etc.) in their limited perception of such, often born of denial. Individuals who pander to said demographic (or are otherwise just downright hacks) will favor this approach over any sense of complexity, subtlety, nuance and some actual understanding of the human condition.

Edgy and Grimdark

While edginess is frequently associated with invoking grimdark for the sake of it and nothing else, it's important to remember that this alone does not edgy make. As an example, WH40K's Imperium of Man has reasons to be fair and kind when capable: though it has plenty of genocide, xenocide (completely annihilating species even when they are gentle and kind), torture, forced labor (they draw the line at commercialized chattel slavery, but un-unionized indentured servitude is fair game), witch hunts and militarism that would give Hitler a chubby beyond the grave, said horrors have reasonable justifications. Aliens were buying and selling humans like pets and culling them by the billion, operating slaver outposts even in our solar system before the Emperor came into leading humanity into a roaring rampage of revenge. And regarding souls and the universe after the Heresy, any deviation from faith in the Emperor will literally send a human to hell upon death, with their soul becoming dæmon food (and/or sex toys).

Any mistreated machinery will attract foul entities and corruption that will fuck you up seven ways till Monday and chew you out; any ill-coaxed Machine Spirit will jam and blow up in your face; and any laxity will make Chaos cults pop up by the billion in a week. Then there's the genocidal robots from another age, space elves that would murder a planet on the off chance that their Farseer would break a nail otherwise (and they're still the nice space elves despite that, as their webway dwelling cousins are even worse - murdering entire planets just because they like the sound of millions of people screaming), the ambulatory (AND belligerent) fungi that plague the entire galaxy in a series of wars, and extragalactic horrors that intend to eat everyone's face. TL;DR The Imperium acts like an asshole Hitler/Hirohito bastard child because the alternative is much, MUCH worse.

At the level of narrative, the fact that things are very very bad is a core thematic element of this world. As pointed out there are reasons why things are so miserable in this world which flow logically and despite this there can be points of contrast. Imperials still have the same potential to love and be kind like modern real world humans do. The Tau are hopeful despite the evils of this world. Occasionally pragmatism can overcome the deep seeded prejudices to overcome greater evils, if only for a while. And even if it is preformed by Conscript Guardsmen, Commissars or Space Marines, each the product of horrendous military institutions, can fight to achieve acts of genuine (if still typically brutal) heroism.

Now if you want a senselessly edgy story in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, an example would be the now non-canon Khornate Knights.

Who's An Edgelord?

Who's a cute little Edgelord? Yes, you, you adorable little mass-murderer, you!

"Edgelord" gets applied to two groups: Authors fixated on making edgy material, and the Edgy characters they write. While most of this article assumes the latter definition (as we at least try to avoid authorial mind-reading), it's quite possible for an Edgelord author to create an edgy work without an Edgelord character, and a non-Edgelord author to create an Edgelord character (either unintentionally, satirically, or de-constructively).

Edgy Villains

There's an important argument to be made about villains and edginess. Frequently, it's necessary to engage in authorial behavior that would be considered edgy in order to properly develop a bad guy. There are a few important questions to ask in this case, the largest ones being "is this a Villain Sue situation, and if so, what kind of Villain Sue are we dealing with?" and "are the author's sympathies clearly with the villain's agenda?"

Edgelords and Mary Sues

A lot of edgy characters also qualify as Mary Sues. This is because many writers who aim for "edgy" in their works are terrible at writing, and writing a Mary Sue is a common result of terrible writing. Another reason is the "Power Fantasy" route, where the author uses their work and the character in question to attack something or someone from real-life that they oppose. There are a few important questions to ask in this case, the largest ones being "is this a Jerk Sue situation?", "do the villains represent a work the author hates?" and "do the villains represent a real-life person or group the author is against?"

Be on the look out for plot armor, protagonists who not only share their author's values, but are not challenged on these views in any way, and the other major Sue factors covered in our Mary Sue article.

"Right Target, Wrong Method" Characters

One important partial exception: Sometimes authors include a character that can be considered "Edgy" in theory... but in practice, it's clear the author isn't rooting for them, because they take things way too far. We're talking "Utopia Justifies the Means, No Matter How Horrific" and "Death Penalty for Jaywalking"-type characters here. While they can degrade into regular Edgelords quite easily, as long as it's clear that either the author's sympathies are not with them, and/or the story spends a lot of time on the collateral damage they inflict, they can be considered not wish-fulfillment enough to count as Edgelords... although note that such characters, particularly if allowed to be a protagonist or in the hands of more than one author, tend to degrade into Edgelordery for subtly obvious reasons.

Sidenote: Chunni

In some Weeb circles, an "Edgelord" is called "Chuuni", short for "Chuunibyou". This delightful Japanese word combines the concepts of "Sophomoric" ("Chuunibyou" literally translated means "Middle [School] 2[nd Year] Syndrome") and "Edgelord", with an optional side note of "I have supernatural powers". Importantly, the "Stupid and Lame" part is baked right into the word, while "Edgelord" is usually only implies stupidity.

In closing

There are many paths to success for a storyteller, some of which include going over dark territory in various ways or by innovating and pushing boundaries. However, all of them require care and attention to detail to pull off well. Being dark is not a magic bullet for achieving profoundness without trying, a lack of dark content doesn't equal lack of profoundness (eg; some of Aesop's Fables) and using it as an outlet for personal grievances is the writing equivalent of walking through a minefield.

How Can I Tell If My Character Is An Edgelord?

Every edgelord has at least four qualities; skilled at violence, aggressive, has easy access to weapons and are some kind of non-conformist. These alone or even together do not make a character an edgelord. If the character has these four traits, each "Yes" answer from the list below gives your character a piece of edgelorddom;

• Are they a power fantasy against "The Man™" or "the establishment™"? Note, while it's possible to have an edgelord who's not targeting "The Man™" (since their targets can include enemies of what's considered "the establishment™", such as criminals or foreign enemies), a "yes" answer here automatically grants the character edgelord status (with one exception below).
  • Bonus points if the writer's targeting any of either big business, organized religion, the education system or law enforcement. Double bonus points if it is a real-life example, and triple bonus points if they're is already frequently targeted this way (like oil companies for industries or the Catholic Church for religious groups).
  • The one exception are characters who start out as merely mildly edgy (particularly antagonists of the "right target, wrong methods" variety), and only graduate to full edgelord status if other writers are allowed access to them or the current writer gets carried away.
• Do they openly mock altruistic traits like hope and love? Compromise? faith or the Powers-That-Be? Bonus points if they do so without suffering negative consequences for it.
• Do they have a backstory full of suffering (often trotted out as an excuse for their violent contrarianism)?
• Are forgiveness and redemption things the character disregards, if not actively despises?
  • Partial credit is granted if they themselves are seeking redemption... by using the exact same methods they used to use, just against a different set of targets.
• Do they not care if they live or die? Or do they want to die?
• Do they have problems with authority? As in a negative attitude towards anyone besides themselves having authority over them.
• Are they heavily scarred individuals? (physical, emotional, whatever...)
• Do they regularly quote-mine philosophers or works of fiction and spout these quotes to validate their worldview? Bonus points if they alter the original quote.
• Do they share any of the same beliefs as the work's creator and openly express them? (for example, the protagonists of stories by Ayn Rand or Jack Chick). Bonus points if they're nihilistic.
  • Are these views never challenged or refuted in the story? Or are the challengers clearly strawmen?
  • The Star Trek Captain Exception: If said belief is cleanly confined to one speech towards the end of the story/episode, and the author seems to be legitimately trying to just sum up and state the message of the story, it usually doesn't count. (Normally not an issue for edgelords, but it has happened occasionally.)
• Do they always wear sinister-looking attire? Bonus points if the outfit;
  • Includes a cloak or a long trenchcoat (think Neo's from the Matrix films).
  • Has Built-in blades or spikes
  • Includes fedora
  • Has emblazoned or tailored-on insults, profanities, curses or threats
  • Tailored on Imagery of violence or death
  • Incorporates or is made of other people's body parts
  • Is alive (especially if it's a monster in clothing form or possessed)
  • Is black or dark colors
• Do they wear warpaint?
• Do they have body modification, ranging from minor such as tattoos to extreme examples such as horns or wings? Bonus points if the modifications can be weaponized.
• Do they swear like a drunk pirate?
• Do they have an "adult" vice/addiction such as drinking or smoking (fantastical addictions count).
• Do they have plot armor? (such as the Punisher being able to go toe-to-toe against superpowered beings who’d mop the floor with him otherwise)
• Are they a protagonist or antagonist written by Gav Thorpe, Garth Ennis, George RR Martin, Pat Mills or Alan Moore? Honorable mention: Mark Millar (Note, an edgelord can be written by someone who's none of these people. And Moore and Martin, at least, are capable of writing protagonists and antagonists who aren't Edgelords despite lots of their characters being unnecessarily edgy.)

Notable Edgelords

Comics

• The Punisher (pictured above), depending on the writer but especially when it's Garth Ennis. The ultimate example being Ennis' professionally published Hate Fic "Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe".
• Billy Butcher from "The Boys", a comic series written by the edgelord Punisher author named above using knock-offs of Marvel and DC supers in an anti-superhero genre power fantasy, with Billy himself being a racist Punisher knock-off and author mouthpiece.
• The Joker, depending on the writer.
• Lord Edgelord, later Lord Edgegod from Slackwyrm Keep. He's aware, and he's loving it***CLANG!*** There's no love in edge, only chaos!
• Adversary from DC comics (pictured below), as a jab at edgelord characters and perhaps also their fans. In addition to meeting most of the criteria above, he works for a demon named Lord Satanus who gave him his powers and is actually a kid in a wheelchair.

Film

• Jared Leto's Joker in "Suicide Squad (2016)".
  • Compare this to Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight and Joqauin Phoenix's Joker in Joker. Ledger's and Phoenix's portrayals were "edge with a point"; the former was about exploring human evils regarding terrorism and the latter was about exploring the origins of evil (both avoiding ideological baggage).
• Tyler Durden from "Fight Club". While he started out as "edge with a point" trying to give men catharsis from, and criticizing, the growing cultural and familial vacuum of the 90's, later in the film he descended into being a full-blown edgelord.
• Kylo Ren AKA Krylo Ben AKA Ben Swolo. The writers were doing it on purpose, to play up the First Order's dogmatic North Korea in space schtick, and to that end made Kylo an incredibly unsubtle Darth Vader pastiche. While "Kylo" may be the worst Skywalker ever, there is no denying that the edge is strong in his family. His mom's side are a bunch of crybaby desert backworlders with an incestuous sex drive and his dad was a scruffy, nerf herding spice smuggler - and all were war criminals, some with body counts in the hundred thousands and some with children's blood on their hands... He probably fits the mold better than we'd like to admit. Also his edge is undermined by fact that he never won a fight against Mar-Rey Sue Palpatine which doesn’t help things either.
• Peter and Paul from "Funny Games". Another "cool psycho gang that tortures, kills and dismembers a family" sort of director's wank which ups to eleven: when the woman in desperation manages to kill one, the other literally turns back time, and kills her child and husband, THEN tortures, gags, takes her for a boat ride and drowns her for fun, go to the next house and wink at the camera while acting happy and nonchalant, to start the cycle a new. Director Haneke has stated that the film is a reflection and criticism of violence used in media and definitely not getting his rocks off torturing a whitebread white woman with a family and gagging, killing, and raping her. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight (then again this is a tame letdown compared to what a hardcore gorehound would watch, with cinematography purposely ruining any payoff. Very messed while also giving a middle finger to Slannesh Worshipers as no rape occurs in the film). Oh, and he enjoyed it so much he remade HIS OWN MOVIE; after the original 1997 German language version he made a 2008 English version.
• "The Strangers" from the 2008 The Strangers movie. Literally a bunch of home invaders invade a couple's home, beat, torture and kill the husband, unmask themselves to the wife, act all chill and cute, act cool to a bible tract distributing kid and talk about "it will be easier next time". They are never found, never bested, and simply put, get away with everything in a "cool teenager" attitude.

Live Action TV

• Stargate's Sohkar- It's hard to get more edgelord than literally masquerading/cosplaying as Satan.

Video Games

• Shadow the Hedgehog for the PS2/XBox/Gamecube. For the unfamiliar: An edgy game about a cartoon hedgehog shooting enemies, yet ESRB rated for Everyone 10 and up.
  • The villain Infinite from Sonic Forces, as a parody of edgy Villain Sue characters.
• Several characters and groups from World of Warcraft, prime individuals being Deathwing, Sylvanas, Sargeras and Illidan Stormrage (pictured below). Prime groups are the Forsaken and Demon Hunters (Illidan even founded the latter).
  • Special mention goes to pre-retcon Sargeras. Originally, Sargeras was so traumatized by the evil of the demons he fought... he became convinced that good was futile and conscripted those same demons into an army to destroy the cosmos).
• Reaper from Overwatch. For whatever reason he cannot die, as he constantly regenerates his tissues (with an advanced necrosis, so he's basically sort of sci-fi undead). Of course, he blames his former friends from Overwatch (like he never considered it COULD be some side effect from supersoldier genetic modifications he'd received before forming of the Overwatch) for his sorry condition, so he became fixated on revenge and killing. Also, he was super jealous for his best friend, who was getting all the praise, while he was getting his hands dirty.
• Caesar's Legion and Caesar himself in Fallout: New Vegas (along with some of their fans and the writer who created them).
• Not Important aka The Antagonist aka The Crusader from Hatred. Imagine every trope related to nihilistic spree shooters, push them to their uncomfortable extremes and then plop the result in a monochromatic mess of a game. What you get is the story about a very unlikable man with dialogue written by less likeable people (including an edgy as fuck death metal band) going around and killing everyone because...fuck you, it's edgy.

Literature

• Elric of Melnibone, arguably the first one.
• Euron Greyjoy, Littlefinger, and Ramsay Bolton from A Song of Ice and Fire.
• Hamlet (yes, THAT Hamlet), possibly an example predating Elric. After his father dies dies, he wears black, becomes foreboding, dramatic and revenge obsessed for at least 6 months, monologues with skulls and murders his friends including the harmless father of his girlfriend (though to be fair he thought he was stabbing the man who he suspected killed his father).

Tabletop Games

• Blackguards
• Vlaakith, the Queen of the Githyanki. On top of being a callous, violent, paranoid tyrannical lich who hates systems of authority unless they benefit her, especially religion... but she wants to become the goddess of her people. She values strength... but kills people who might become powerful enough to challenge her; textbook edgelord.
• Lolth from Dungeons and Dragons. Started with trying to overthrow her divine husband because she didn't like her job and it all went downhill from there. For more information, look at the Drow and remember they're like that because her laws require it.
• Warhammer settings have too many to list them all;
  • 40k is the worst offender in that regard, so let's just say the Black Templars, the Marines Malevolent and most traitor marines for this one.
    • On that note Konrad Curze...
    • ...Fabius Bile...
    • ...and the Dark Eldar, to such a degree they each deserve a separate bullet point all to themselves..
  • For Warhammer Fantasy there's Valnir the Reaper, Nagash and most Dark Elves. (None of whom are quite so needlessly edgy as to deserve their own separate bullet points, unlike the 40k Edgelords above.)
  • On that note, Malal among the other Ruinous Powers.

Fan Works

• Drizzt clones with extreme Alignment leanings, either towards good or evil.
• Various fan-made and canon Sonic characters, particularly Shadow.
• The protagonist of "Ambience: A Fleet Symphony" and the story itself. A Fallout KanColle crossover fanfic that thinks it's a regular KanColle fanfic. It revolves around rape, killing, eugenics and an violent solipsistic protagonist with enough plot armor to make Ciaphas Cain look like a redshirt one day away from retirement. When the story was posted to a forum and scorned, the writer went ballistic against their critics.
• The whole "*teleports behind you* Nothing personal kid. *stabs you*" meme originated as a parody of edgelord characters.

Anime

• Half of the Animu protagonists in existence. Bonus points if the genre is Isekai, triple points if there's a harem involved.
• Bakugo from My Hero Academia probably counts as a deconstruction/parody of one. What else do you say about somebody who chooses the codename "King of Explodo-Kills" and later "Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight" while training to be a superhero?

Gallery

• 

  The edgelord mindset in a nutshell.

• 

  If any fictional edgelord could be called well-written, it'd be Elric.

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  "Adversary" from DC Comics. Sinister clothes, aggressive name, smoking, swearing, trying to kill Superman for "rep"...

• 

  The face that launched a thousand edgelords (ironically doesn't wear dark clothes).

• 

  There's a small but distinct line between edgy...

• 

  ... and edgelord.