One thing that drives me up the wall with "dark fantasy" or "grimdark sci-fi" is how so many readers genuinely think the more vile, depressing, or bleak something is, the better it must be. We're seeing that with the "Blood and Cheese" scene in "House of the Dragon," where fans are outraged that the TV show didn't depict the (frankly absurd and cringeworthy) version from the books. The book version is so gratuitous, so over the top, that it actually strains suspension of disbelief. I can believe in a world with dragons; I struggle to believe in one where two amateur peasants decide to psychologically torture the royal family for free, for fun, like they're villains in a home invasion horror movie who know they are in no real danger.
In any case, these fans accuse the show of "ruining the scene." Nevermind that the scene as filmed is excellently paced, acted, written, etc. to them, it's not as violent as it could be, therefore, it's not as good. The more violent a scene is, the better it is, even if that comes at the expense of character motivations, plot, or even realism. There's this perception that excessively "dark" or "grimdark" fantasy tropes are "more realistic," but they're often so over the top that they become almost comical. You can practically hear the writer, no matter how solid their prose, whispering "ooooh, look how VIOLENT and DEPRESSING this is, don't you FEEL bad? You should FEEL bad!" in the reader's ear.
There is some genuinely excellent stuff under the "grimdark" label (I recommend literally anything by Michael Fletcher).
You can depict how messed up people are without lurching into the cartoonish. And there are cartoonishly evil people in the world, don't get me wrong, but their existence is notable precisely because that level of douchebaggery is genuinely, thankfully, extremely rare.
Obviously taste is subjective, but it's worth pointing out that I am a perfect person, while anyone who disagrees with me is an immoral freak.