Editing Noblebright (section)

==Some Examples of the Categories==

'''Grimdark''':
* Warhammer, both kinds - Warhammer 40000 coined the term Grimdark from its tagline, so goes without saying.
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones]]
* Oedipus
* E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy
* Gears of War - Basically a world in which humanity has been at war with itself and genocidal mutants for over a century. The world is apocalyptic and everyone uses chainsaw bayonets to saw their enemies in half.
* Killzone 2-3 - If Space World War Two met Gears of War, Killzone is the product: A genocidal war between humanity and a mutated version of them on a wasteland planet. Both sides commit war crimes incessantly.
* The MachineGames Wolfenstein series - It's 1960, Jim, but not as we know it. The [[Nazis]] used crazy super-technology to win World War II and grind the Free World into dust by 1947. The games pull no punches in its depictions of the Nazis' ideology and the kind of waking nightmare they would turn the world into if they were free to reshape it as they saw fit.
* [[Dark Souls]]
* [[Conan the Barbarian]] - Takes place in a fictional time period after the sinking of Atlantis but before the historical record began. There are monsters and villains everywhere, all magic is black, and the few cities are run by maniacal sorcerers and other unsavory types. Conan usually only barely survives his stories through wit and dumb luck rather than might, and he certainly cannot change the world, not at least until he becomes the good king of Aquilonia.
* [[Dark Sun]]
* [[Ravenloft]]
* [[Delta Green]] - Earth and mankind exist in a tiny flickering firelight of sanity and civilization that can (and inevitably will) be snuffed out by alien gods and forces of madness. You play as the clandestine agents of the US government tasked to investigate and combat this phenomena. Few people in Delta Green live to retire, and the most common retirement plan usually involves a bottle of whiskey and their service pistol.
* [[Dwarf Fortress]]
* Undertale (genocide route): The player character is a psychopathic murder seemingly on a quest to kill every last creature in the Underground, along with reality itself. No matter what your enemies do, you are an unstoppable killer [[Lucius|who comes back from death]], the only obstacle towards omnicide being boredom or frustration. Inevitably, they achieve such a [[Khorne|willingness to commit violence and slaughter]] that they obtain total power, and destroy the universe.
* [[1984|Nineteen Eighty Four]] / I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream / [[Xeelee Sequence]] - All three are strong contenders for the most Grimdark story ever put to paper, experts are currently divided. The first takes place in a (possibly) post-apocalyptic Earth split between three totalitarian superpowers that are constantly at war despite sharing the same nihilistic ideology with unaffiliated nations serving as the battlegrounds/prizes, and the hero is an ordinary man who gets captured, tortured and thoroughly mindfucked by the police into accepting the rule of the Party.  The second takes place in a post-apocalyptic underground city where a psychotic supercomputer tortures the last five living people while keeping them alive and from killing each other; the protagonist "wins" by mercy-killing the other four but his moral victory is tempered by the fact he is trapped forever at the mercy of the machine. The third takes place in a nightmare hellscape where the entire universe is dying between a cosmic war of two god-like races, whilst the human race has degenerated to such levels of bastardry, that the actions of stripmining entire galactic superclusters or committing a xenocidal killing-spree across the universe that stretched for millions of years is a mere dip in the ocean. There is no hope or salvation, heroism is not only dead but outright outlawed, absolute surveillance and total control due to mass time-travel usage, as an incalculable amount of human child soldiers would die for nothing. Meanwhile the surviving races are fighting tooth and nail, killing each other as they are trying to escape a reality that is collapsing in on itself.
'''Grimneutral''':
*Most episodic sitcoms like The Simpsons, Family Guy and Ed, Edd and Eddy. Although the setting usually won't be downright awful to live in, any changes or breakthroughs that charactes make will almost never make a difference in the grand scheme of things in order to maintain the show's status quo. May slip into grimdark if it's an adult show reliant on black comedy. 
'''Grimbright''':
* Sandman
* The Sims - Pretty self-explanatory. The world is generally nice to live in and stories are more about your Sims' living one day at a time than anything else.
* Most Tycoon games
* The Commonwealth Saga
* [[Eclipse Phase]]
* [[The Culture]] - Futuristic novel series by Iain M. Banks, set in a utopian society based on socialist and anarchist principles achieved by post-scarcity technology ([[Eldar|space hippies whose words are backed by star-system busters]], this lot are probably the only fictional sci-fi civilization that would beat the Imperium hands-down in a war). The protagonists are usually Special Circumstances, agents of the closest thing they have to an intelligence division given license to operate outside of their laws and morals to uphold the Culture way of life.
* Deltarune
* [[Scarred Lands]]
* [[Spelljammer]]
* Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: A soft sci-fi/slice of life [[manga]] from the turn of the millennium. The story follows Alpha Hatsuseno, a gynoid that claims ownership of a cafe in the titular Yokohama Shopping District after a devastating flood. As refugees and vagabonds trickle in and out of her turf, the reader discovers the flood was merely the last in a series of global calamities, chief among them was the sterilization of the entire human race. [[What| All surviving humans have completely made peace with the destruction of civilization and their immanent extinction, and have resolved to spend their remaining time living idyllic pioneer lifestyles.]] So resigned is the human race that the focus of the story isn’t even the on the implications of the demise of the species or the fate of the fallow Earth, but on the side characters helping Alpha to recognize her own blooming humanity as she decides with her fellow robot buddies to become a living record of the humans she encountered in their final days, the “Age of the Calm Evening” when ‘the whole world, which had been like a festival, slowly calmed down.’
* RWBY - The result of Sailor Moon and [[Dark Souls|Bloodborne]] having a drunk fling, it subsists on a steady diet of Rule of Cool. You take four cute teenage heroines and watch as the grim, behind-the-scenes reality of their glamourous high adventure world beans them over the head repeatedly. Because they are just rookies who don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Then they come back with a vengeance and it becomes pure Noblebright instead.
* Doctor Who - It's a time travel show where the protagonist is a millennia-old alien who has seen and done some truly incredible shit in his time, but cannot overtly alter the flow of history or even build close relations with his human companions. He just saves the day and goes off to another planet.
* Most of Zeus' flings with mortals (from the gods' perspective)
* [[Touhou]] - Despite Gensokyo being a fantastical setting and the characters all being quirky cute girls, ultimately the majority of folk are powerless to change the status quo and everyone is kind of stuck in a system that forces humans and youkai to be at odds. The relationship between the two is slowly growing more peaceful, but its unlikely true harmonious co-existeence could ever be achieved.
* Mirror's Edge - In the end, you can take home a few personal victories, but you can't change the wider status quo. The oppressive government still controls the City of Glass's flow of information, the anti-courier assassin program is still going strong, and security is only getting tighter with each passing day. But at least you've saved your sister from being unjustly convicted for murder and got your revenge on the bastards who tried to frame her. The City itself is also quite cool to look at, and there's a sense of constant adventure in the form of courier jobs passing information the government doesn't want people to know from Runner to Runner (classical Bright traits).  



'''
Nobledark''':
* [[The Lord of the Rings]] - If Warhammer is the platonic ideal of Grimdark, LOTR is the platonic ideal of Nobledark.
* Mass Effect - Galactic civilization is not a united front, humanity is the upstart new kid on the block and looming over all are the Reapers bringing Lovecraftian levels of Grimdark, but while it takes a monumental effort heroes can save (or ruin) everything.
* Berserk
* [[Eberron]]
* Starcraft
*Neon Genesis Evangelion
* Terminator - "No fate but what we make" vs a genocidal global army of machines.
* Fallout - The world may be a nuked-out hellhole full of monsters, cannibals, bandits, and power-hungry psychopaths, but even one person can make grand, sweeping changes with enough fortune, skill, and grit. Especially New Vegas, oh boy, New Vegas; the Independence ending is basically the story of how a wasteland courier dug their way out of their own grave and brought down two post-apocalyptic superpowers through sheer force of will and character.
* The Iliad
* Skyrim
* Undertale (mercy route): The people of the Underground were locked beneath Mount Ebott in ages past, and long ago gave up their thoughts of freedom, with their only distant hope being gaining seven human souls from the victims who fall into their prison to break free. Despite this, the PC’s sheer force of determination and empathy results in them befriending all, even the soulless main villain, freeing the Underground and heading a new era of peace and unity.
* Firefly - Humanity is settled in star systems caught between an authoritarian interstellar Alliance, interplanetary crime syndicates and space pirates who are pretty much [[Dark Eldar]] with alien advancement swapped for cannibalism and radiation sickness... but the motley crew of one outdated freighter ship dance between the raindrops and strike blows against these three that actually improve life for humanity.
* Most Batman stories - Yes, Gotham sucks and yes, Batman is a dark character, but he is also a deeply idealistic hero (refuses to kill, believes in the inherent good of people and the human spirit). Which is why putting Batman in Grimdark tends to really not work.
* Warhammer novels like [[Ciaphas Cain]] and Gaunt's Ghosts. Especially ones where the protagonists are ordinary people like the [[Imperial Guard]] rather than the superhuman, galaxy-bestriding Space Marines.
* [[Exalted]] - Encapsulates the nobledark spirit for RPGs. "The world sucks. You have the power to fix it. Try not to fuck it up worse."
* Naoki Urasawa's Monster - A psychological thriller [[manga]] about a neurosurgeon setting out to stop a former patient of his who turns out to have become a serial killer, committing murders in the surgeon's name. Said serial killer might also be the next Hitler, or even the antichrist, we're not sure. Despite that, the surgeon is a genuinely good person, and most of the series is about how a good person can make a difference despite the corrupt world around them.

'''Noblebright''':
* The Chronicles of Narnia
* Blue Rose
* Morrowind
* [[Forgotten Realms]]
* [[Greyhawk]]
* Magi
* Warcraft
* Star Wars
* Pokemon
* Trine
* Most Marvel movies, except the one that is really infamous for not being this
* The Odyssey
* And of course, [[Star Trek]] - The platonic ideal of Noblebright.