Basically I wanna know, what officially makes a story grimdark? Is there an official place or is this a mileage may vary type deal?

Also, if some of you amongst us happen to like grimdark, feel free to tell us why.

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I'd say it varies, it can be violent or overly sexual to a point of being uncomfortable. There can be blood and gore, or just a focus on abuse and damage. It doesn't even have to encapsulate that, it could capture the idea of drug abuse.
Though, I usually think of primarily gore when I hear grimdark, but dark captures most of this. That being said, there has to be a decent amount of focus on the 'dark' thing in your story.

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Your mileage may vary. It depends on the kind of story you're looking to present. If the expected norm is that more bad things happen than good things, you're probably looking at grimdark, but only if those bad things fall into the purview of a grimdark environment. Ie; beatings, maulings, psychological abuse, rape, drug and alcohol usage, etcetera. If your story makes a habit of bringing these things to light, or is focused around one or more of these things, you're probably looking at a grimdark tag.

One death alone isn't enough to put in a grimdark tag, in my opinion, but multiple grizzly deaths would be, especially if those deaths are central to the story's development.

I am a fan of the grimdark motif, but only as a motif, not as a centerpiece. Ie; grimdark for grimdark's sake. I enjoy exploring the darker recesses of minds belonging to a nearly Utopian society, or tilting the scales of balance within that society and seeing how its citizens would react, adapt, and respond. I especially enjoy them if the solution can still somehow be (reasonably) tied back to the tenets of the original source material. Zombie apocalypse? We made it through because we stuck together.

Grimdark stories make the FiM universe seem more... real, strange as that may seem.

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Basically, grimdark is when a story is overtly grim and dark for mostly stylistic reasons, or to generate excessive pathos. I personally find it overrated and crude - I prefer to balance dark themes with hopeful idealism.

Picture unrelated.

2249746 That picture is AWESOME! Although I view Big E and Horus as somepony different.

I think it's a description of setting and subject matter more than anything else. Grimdark is all about a story filled with violence and brutality and suffering, often to excessive extremes. However, it is not a description of how this violence is played. It can be played dead straight as an obstacle for the noblebright heroes to overcome (Lord of the Rings, Fallout Equestria), turned up to eleven and played tongue-in-cheek (Warhammer 40k, early Fallout games), used for stylish effect (Tarantino films, A Clockwork Orange, World of Darkness games), made the subject of study (The Walking Dead, Full Metal Jacket, Nolanverse Batman), or just kind of there (later Fallout games, arguably FoE past a point). As long as you're aware of what you're doing and can reliably produce the effect you're looking for, there's no reason to avoid it.

Grimdark is like chilli. Adding a little can give your story some spice. It's not to everyone's taste, but that's okay. Adding too much just makes it completely unpalatable to all but the most masochistic readers.

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Are the characters in FoE really Noble Bright? From what I've heard most of them are psychotic save for Velvet Remedy.

2253428 They're kind of like a band of roaming dicks, framed as noblebright heroes (mostly by Homage's constant hero worship). Littlepip keeps getting epithets like "Lightbringer" but when she's not murdering everyone she doesn't like, she's burglarising orphans and getting cheese merchants executed. It is, however, played entirely straight, when something like that could be played as a satire of how Fallout 3 and games like it let you be a flat-out douchebag but still get lauded a hero.

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In that case I wish FoE had been a satire!

Hell if thats what the author was going for I'd call her a genius.

But I'm pretty sure it isn't...

Well I guess we more or less have an understanding of what Grimdark is. I'm reading Fallout Equestria now. Actually listening to an audio book of it on YouTube. I'm on chapter 13. So far my honest opinion is....Well isn't this pretty much what happens in the games? I have not yet reached Homage, which is where some associates say the story starts to plumet. But I get this weird feeling that the writer is taking the video game logic literally. Which is probably crippling to the overall theme of this tale. But I find it hilarious what Little Pip gets away with.

I have my reservations. Then again given the fact that this is an apocalyptic setting, I wonder why LittlePip's morals are even that big a deal? My biggest complaint is that they're ponies. If the characters in this were all human I'd say this was an at least decent Fallout fanfiction thus far.

I suppose its because we need somebody to root for. And if the hero is an asshole then we have nobody to root for. But so far, the only kind of person LittlePip has killed are slavers. Though I was kind of confused about the whole raider debacle between Red/Deadeye and God. Whatever resolution that was meant to have was lost on me. I guess slavers are the lowest common denominator and Raiders are the lesser of the two evils?

But otherwise, I don't know. Her morals appear consistant. She hates slavers and wants to stop them. I don't see the inherent wrongness there. There seems to be no attempt at peace talks though which is disconcerting. There must be another way to solve the issue but then again, in FallOut I don't know of many societal issues that were overcome with rational talking. This story lacks is a sense of humor I realize. No Moira Brown equivalent anywhere.

Another thing I haven't figured out is where the hell these slaves are even going? Who has land and resources to even support slaves in a barrent wasteland? Who has a farm? Everything is dead, there is nothing to plant or harvest. Is someone building? Building what? So many unanswered questions. There should be no damn slaves. It feels like they're there just to be there. A window dressing.

The overall mood and setting and the feeling of utter hopelessness is like an anti thesis to everything My Little Pony.

Why in the world owuld ponies have guns designed for humans? I really want to know how that's possible besides author laziness.

Oh yeah and I'm totally unconvinced about the Zebras. Completely unconvinced. How did Kkat manage to turn them into a savage antagonist when the only example we have of the species is Zecora?