#Moral complexity in fantasy

[joncronshawauthor]

Colonial Themes in Fantasy: A Deeper Look

Fantasy has long engaged with themes of conquest and resistance, from Tolkien’s hobbits facing industrialisation to modern works exploring the complexities of empire and colonisation. As I wrote The Knight and the Rebel, I became deeply immersed in these themes, examining both the machinery of conquest and the human cost of resistance. The Colonial Narrative in Fantasy Colonial narratives in…

[zevranunderstander]

i dont think i will ever be over dragon age 2. like. bioware made an epic fantasy story about a chosen one having to save a country and stop the apocalypse and then they made the second installment of the series be about the sociopolitical climate in ONE city through the lens of a family of refugees fleeing from the war of the first game and just. made it about political tensions and class dynamics and the influences of living in a church-mandated state and the growing tension over an occupied piece of the city and political killings and interpersonal conflict and power and its story is ENTIRELY character-driven. it has easily the most iconic set of companion characters. the premise of living through a story told over the course of ten years and knowing from the start that something really bad will happen in the end was so fresh and exciting. the fact that the acts really built on top of each other andhow much the city changed over time. and the game was so mature in terms of the topic of fighting against oppression in so many ways (im usually generous and say that the short development time left some things a bit wanting), and as much as some people say that the game treats mages and templars as being equally bad, i don't think that that is actually true about the game and it very earnestly tries to grapple with some pretty complex political dynamics.

and then the game completely flopped financially and was almost universally hated for its queer themes and its sympathy for "terrorism" and a lot of the things that stemmed from basically having no production time at all and then the studio just made another epic fantasy story about a chosen one that has to save the world from the apocalypse

[bittsandpieces]

do not send me messages about your real life experiences with incest. do not ask me about my real life family members. I cannot stress enough that I do not want to engage with real life incest, that is a hard limit and I can and will block anyone who violates it.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Very funny to me how Stansas present her character as being so interesting and complex because of her vulnerabilities, while simultaneously ignoring those same vulnerabilities in other characters. Dany is sold as a bridal slave and lacks agency throughout AGOT and after. Her dragons are either too young/small to utilize effectively or locked away for the majority of the story. They aren't some all-powerful trump card that protects her from harm. Arya is captured as a prisoner of war, forced to watch countless people tortured and murdered, and then essentially enslaved in Harrenhal with no way to fight back. She has an entire arc of feeling powerless, of being a "mouse", during ACOK. She doesn't have "kung-fu" or the ability to magically fight her way out of every situation, she's a young child lacking physical strength with only the most basic sword training.

Sansa isn't the only female character, she isn't the only young character, she isn't the only character who suffered, and no one is obligated to prioritize her. I'm so tired of Dany and Arya being mischaracterized and having their stories erased to prop Sansa up. "Sansa has kept her dignity" In other words, let's praise her for having a level of security that Dany and Arya don't have access to. She hasn't ever been forced to make a hard decision which of course means that she's morally superior to them. They can't even admit to themselves that her lack of action is due to her own passivity. If it doesn't fit their delusion, they erase it from the story and expect the rest of us to play along. Ask one of them what they like about her character without bringing up her being the ultimate victim, and I genuinely don't believe they'd be able to give you an answer. They belittle other characters more than they talk about her and these takes just scream insecurity/jealousy at the content and development other characters have in their POVs.

[jessread-s]

✩🕯️📜Series Review:

Core concepts

⋆ The Atlas Six - Physics

⋆ The Atlas Paradox - Psychology

⋆ The Atlas Complex - Philosophy

“The Atlas” series is so much more than dark academia or romance. This series studies what happens to human beings when they are promised access to infinite knowledge and power. It is about how quickly we turn on each other and abandon our own morals to gain. said knowledge and power. Each installment blew me away as I watched Blake’s six protagonists gradually find and/or destroy themselves. My mind was continuously expanded by her prose and it made me question my every decision. It’s a soul crushing read, but perhaps also a necessary one.

Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph

@torpublishinggroup @olivieblake

[anim-ttrpgs]

didnt behind the bastards really recently do an episode about the coercion of prisoners to give blood, too?

I’ve never listened to that podcast but yeah forced blood donation in US prisons is already a real thing, that’s why I bring it up every time somebody tries to “solve vampirism” by saying that the government should just make blood donation mandatory.

It’s easy to say “oh the government should just force people [to do good leftist thing]” when you don’t think about a less idealistically morally pure government could do with that power and will after an inevitable shift in voter opinion. These things really are never that simple and have to be thought about very carefully both in real life and in fiction.

[ominous-faechild]

Hello, @ominous-feychild ! 👋✨

From the QnA tag, my eyes immediately went to Tazin the theatre kid (can relate). Can you tell me a little more about this character?

Haha, it doesn't shouldn't surprise me that you'd be interested in Tazin "the theater kid" {REDACTED}, Golden! Sorry for taking a while to get to this ask, I've been busy!

(Aka I've been stubborn about trying to get to these in order, but was stuck on Ludmila's part of another ask...)

Before I begin, I figured I should clarify: Tazin's name is pronounced "tah-zeen"! I've received some questions on this in the past and I know it's unconventional, so.

Tazin {REDACTED} | aka "Svarog"

So, to begin with! Unlike most characters, Tazin's last name will never be given within these posts, haha. Not only does he purposely hide it/his family, but it's actually spoilers! His family's name appears within the story, and I definitely don't want to expose him early, haha.

The reason I call him "Tazin the theater kid" is because, predictably, he's an absolute theater kid. I mean, he's never been able to do participate in theater stuff because Glavnran (but especially Kavo, the town he grows up in) is way too poor and stuck in survival mode to be able to afford stuff like that. But, still! Just one glimpse at this kid and you'd see it.

I'll give you a few glimpses of an as-of-the-moment (and will be for a while) unpublished chapter narrated by him as a treat, haha.

It wasn’t normal for someone to be in the alley, of course. The only ��decent” people to ever go there would be the pasidnyy—taking a shortcut in pursuit of a villain—or a person chasing something stolen by the wind. Why would you go through an alley when it put you at risk of running into a bolyui or some punk looking for trouble? Well, Tazin was that punk. And bolyui weren’t real. They were just a scary story told to children to make them behave for adults.

(Note: bolyui are very real. The first and second chapters prove that much, and that they are utterly terrifying. He's just an arrogant kid who thinks he knows everything. /lh)

But some of {the "everyday people" on the streets} might’ve been pretenders, like him. Some of them might be out there with ominous motives—might even be working with the khonitva. Them, or the uzhar. Like him. Except, he didn’t work with the uzhar anymore. He’d seen to that.

(This kid KILLS me, istg--)

This strategy never went wrong. Nope, nuh-uh.

A genius plan, of course. He’d come up with it, after all.

Worst case scenario, if he couldn’t lose his pursuers, he could just set another building on fire. That always distracted people. A kid goes in a building, then the building burns down. Nobody ever suspected that the kid made it out—much less that the fire was meant to cover his escape.

(If that seems unrealistic, it's because it is. The cops absolutely suspect the kid survived, especially since he's pulled that exact same stunt a few times. He just thinks he's getting away with it because he hasn't noticed anything and they're too busy putting out the fires/saving others to find him in or escaping from the site.)

But Tazin’s mind wasn’t on any of his strategies. Instead, he was thinking of the letter he’d left. ‘I left the uzhar,’ it’d begun. ‘I don’t care if you want me to stay with them, I QUIT!’ Tazin had written, aggressively underlining the word “quit.” When he’d left the uzhar, he’d destroyed one of their hideouts. The recipient probably didn’t know that, but Tazin was sure that the uzhar had figured it out. That, and the message he was trying to send by doing so. Fire was Tazin’s whole ‘thing’, after all. ‘They were horrible, just like YOU, and I hate both of you!’ he’d written, once again aggressively underlining the word “you” on top of using all caps. ‘So I’m not going back,’ Tazin had written. Little did the recipient know that Tazin wouldn’t be able to go back even if he wanted to. He’d burned that bridge—almost literally—alongside their hideout. That’s why he’d done it, after all. ‘And don’t expect me to come back to you, either,” Tazin had initially finished the letter with. ‘You’re no better than them.’ But then he’d crossed the two sentences out, running the charcoal over them so it’d be impossible for the recipient to read it. As much as he wanted to hurt the recipient of his letter, he also hated the thought of it. And calling them “no better than the uzhar” would be too far. If Tazin had told them that, they might’ve finally given up on Tazin completely. Left him alone. And, as much as Tazin tried telling himself otherwise, he didn’t want to be abandoned. Not again. So, instead of that, Tazin had replaced those lines with: ‘and tell Mom I’m NOT coming back and to STOP looking for me!!!’

THIS IS ALL FROM HIS INTRO CHAPTER BTW-- 🤣

That last "bit" (read: everything about the letter) is spaced out between paragraphs of action. He's thinking about it while doing other stuff. I think it's a great intro chapter in general that pretty solidly explains his character and a lot of his business, haha.

Then again, maybe I'm just flattering myself.

ANNNNYHOW! As you can probably tell, he's an absolute drama queen with horrible attachment issues. A little under a year before the start of the story, Tazin was kicked out of his home. His family later changed their minds and tried inviting him back, but he's stubbornly refused to return, leading to him being in the position he is at the start of the Arcane Rifts.

I don't know if it's clear from the snippet (overall it's not the biggest deal but I want to clarify), but the "recipient of the letter" isn't his dad, but someone who is/was closely associated with his family.

Overall, Tazin's genuinely a fun character to write (most of the time)! He's very overdramatic; his narration is condescending toward the reader, as though he's talking to them, because he sees his own life as a story where he's the tragic hero; and whether it's ironically or played straight, lots of people seem to find him pretty funny.

Which, hey, he'd love to hear that!

(Minus the ironically part... actually tbh young!Tazin would probably lash out at you if you told him you thought he was funny. Y'know, thinking you thought he needed the validation. Whoops.)

Like Gene, Tazin starts the story young. He's only nine at first (if you couldn't tell,,,) but progresses to fifteen by the end of book 1 (there's a lot of timeskips through Important Events as the kids age up. Trust me, I'm careful with the pacing though, haha).

But, uh... that definitely colors my perception of his character a little differently than I'm sure you guys will see him. For a long while, you'll only see him as a kid, where his more negative traits (arrogance, selfishness, refusal to admit if/when he's wrong, etc) are a lot more excusable and possibly even charming. But in my head, all I see is how that stuff carries over to Adult!Tazin (because he never gets better), and I like him a lot less because of that, haha.

On a similar note, feel free to check out the songs that represent him.

A little more relevantly! If it wasn't obvious enough already (or if you haven't stumbled upon me mentioning it before), Tazin is a fire mage and healer! Otherwise known as a sech and izsech respectively in their language. Both powers typically come from their fire god (which, out-of-universe, takes a lot of inspiration from Hestia), Rholvny.

Like most mages, Tazin has an affinity for his element... which has turned more into an obsession for him if you couldn't tell. I've mentioned before that his (actual, lowkey) obsession with arson is related to a traumatic incident in his past?

Tazin is a complicated character. As much as I (hate to hate and hate to) love him, his character arcs revolve around his family / abandonment issues; the many, many problems it caused him (he used to just be a brat, but now...); and his relationship with Gene.

The two--Gene and Tazin--grow up together supporting one another because nobody else will do so for them. Tazin faces discrimination for his arson his skin tone, being Jhandan (or Fantasy!Indian) in a xenophobic country, aaaand for his deeply problematic aggression issues. Gene, on the other hand, is disabled and autistic--and you betcha Glavnran is ableist and social darwinists, too!

On Tazin's end, their relationship is/was problematic for a few reasons. One, Gene is too timid to stand up to him, leading to Tazin's worse habits never getting corrected since he can get away with them. Two, Gene becomes an enabler for Tazin's worse traits because of their history together. Aaaand, three... while Gene sees Tazin as like a brother, Tazin develops romantic feelings for him by the end of the first book.

Yeah. There's just NO end to the problems there--

But I guess those are just some of the many tragedies associated with two kids raising themselves and each other! (Despite that, they're still cute to read the interactions of whenever Tazin isn't being toxic.)

And, of course, this is all stuff I tackle (even if only through implication) within the story!

I'm sure this all is only one of the many reasons tAR won't be the most popular of my stories. 😅😭

Sorry I got a good bit into Gene there! I don't know if you can tell, but the two are practically inseparable, and their dynamic with one another majorly shapes how they turn out! (For probably obvious reasons.)

Hope you enjoyed reading! I actually cut out a LOT of possible snippets for the sake of (nonexistent) brevity, haha. Feel free to reblog and/or tell me what you think! PS: I think I'm probably going to change Tazin's title to "the dramatic". Thoughts?

Tag list: @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet @illarian-rambling @ashirisu @urnumber1star

@the-letterbox-archives @48lexr @aalinaaaaaa

Divider by @cafekitsune

[joncronshawauthor]

Redefining the Dark: Brent Weeks' Groundbreaking Impact on Fantasy

From the sun-kissed lands of Tolkien’s Middle Earth to the frostbitten realms of Martin’s Westeros, we thought we’d seen it all in fantasy. Ah, bless our naïve little socks. Little did we know, the genre was primed to be knocked squarely on its ethereal arse by an unassuming bloke named Brent Weeks and his seminal novel, “The Way of Shadows.” In the dimly-lit world of fantasy, where elves…

[llycaons]

I do appreciate how quickly things happen tho. like xff is betrayed, almost dies, is taken in, taken on jl's identity, escapes zhennv, gets herself welcomed back by society, navigates various social hijinks and schemes, gets herself into a school, enters and nearly completes a competition, gets into a weird relationship with a member of the gentry who is maybe using her? and establishes herself as a Person To Know, all within 10 episodes. they're dense, but stuff happens and I really am enjoying the characters and themes and relationships and costumes and set designs

[oysterie]

got three hours into a book and quit god bless you were kinda boring. sorry butch lesbian mc you couldn't save it

[bee-ina-boat]

person who has done terrible unspeakable crimes and ruined lives and doesnt feel guilt for any of it and they would do it again in a heartbeat and their morals are fucked in real life: ew die please

person who has done terrible unspeakable crimes and ruined lives and doesnt feel guilt for any of it and they would do it again in a heartbeat and their morals are fucked but fictional: 💘💝💟❣💕💞💓💗💖💗💞❣❣💝💘❣💞💗💖💗💞💕❣❣💌💌💝💘❣💞💖💖💌💓💕❣💝💘❤

[jessread-s]

✩👁️⌛️Review:

This book turned my brain into scrambled eggs and I’m honestly okay with that.

The conclusion to “The Atlas” series follows Callum, Reina, Parisa, Libby, Nico, and Tristan as they fight to survive the lethal terms of their initiation and face the consequences of limitless power.

The beginning of the “Atlas Complex” is so slow I nearly gave up on it, but if you find yourself in the same position, do NOT do it! Blake intentionally takes her time leading up to the novel’s explosive ending so as to focus on how the characters develop when they are given endless knowledge and power. I was gripped by each character’s point-of-view as they become corrupted by Atlas’ promise of making their wildest dreams come true—the cost of which was losing themselves and even then that proved to not be enough, a realization that came too late. Gone are the people they once were in “The Atlas Six”. Callum is consumed by obsession, Reina devotes herself to things she cannot control, Parisa sheds her vanity, Libby loses her moral compass, Nico becomes too trusting, and Tristan wants for too much. Their fates were sealed once the Society, the Archives, and the Forum became a part of their lives and this just goes to show that human beings will do anything to achieve greatness, even if that means compromising their goodness. Blake’s commentary is haunting and will make you reflect on your own choices and question what you would do and who you would betray for glory. The final chapters are an emotional overload as each character is confronted by the repercussions of their actions. It’s utter chaos…just as it should be. There was never going to be a “happily ever after”.

Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph

[the-henry-cavillian]

The Perfect Fit: Iconic Roles That Henry Cavill Was Born To Play

Henry Cavill has proven himself as a versatile actor, demonstrating charisma, physicality, and depth in his performances. In this article, we explore some iconic roles that would be a perfect fit for Cavill's talents, showcasing his ability to bring beloved characters to life with his unique presence and skill.

I. The Suave Super Spy:

Henry Cavill possesses the suave charm and physicality required to step into the shoes of a classic super spy. Whether it's James Bond or another iconic secret agent, Cavill's sophisticated demeanor and action prowess make him a natural fit for a role that demands equal parts charisma and intensity.

II. The Intrepid Adventurer:

With his rugged good looks and commanding presence, Henry Cavill would excel in a role that embodies the spirit of a fearless adventurer. Whether it's Indiana Jones or another legendary explorer, Cavill's ability to blend physicality with emotional depth would make him a captivating lead in a thrilling, globe-trotting escapade.

III. The Heroic Knight:

Henry Cavill's chiseled physique and regal aura make him an ideal candidate for a heroic knight or warrior. Whether it's a legendary character from mythology or a beloved figure from fantasy literature, Cavill's ability to convey strength, honor, and determination would bring such iconic roles to life with authenticity and gravitas.

IV. The Complex Antihero:

Henry Cavill has demonstrated his talent for playing complex characters with shades of gray. An iconic antihero, such as Batman or a morally conflicted protagonist, would provide Cavill the opportunity to showcase his acting range and delve into the depths of a character's psyche, creating a captivating portrayal that challenges traditional notions of heroism.

[txttletale]

yknow one quite common response i get to my critiques of the fantasy genre's 'evil race' trope is that, yknow, people want to play games that offer a guilt-free violent power fantasy without any moral complexity. but, like--this is also the core reasoning that makes a lot of pulpy throwback nazi-punching media work, and you never see wolfenstein insisting that germans are biologically evil in order to make that work

[neutral-towards-mindmaps]

can't stop thinking about tamsyn muir's choice to present her deep, morally and politically complex science fantasy world with a central web of magic, secrets and lies reaching back ten thousand years through the eyes of three characters who:

1. tune out and start thinking about hot women whenever the magic system or worldbuilding are being explained

2. experience hallucinations on a daily basis, have brain damage and are being deceived and misled by their peers, authority figures, themselves and God

3. don't know who they are, have spent their entire life in one place and are, on all levels but physical, six months old

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 60

There existed a figure shrouded in darkness. Some called them a villain, while others whispered tales of their ruthlessness and cunning. Yet, amidst the chaos they wrought, there beat a heart heavy with remorse.

Caught in the web they spun was the hero, a beacon of light in the murky depths of the villain's domain. Unexpectedly, a tender emotion blossomed within the villain's hardened soul - guilt. Guilt for the tendrils of affection that wound around the hero's unsuspecting heart, guilt for the innocence they tainted with their allure.

"I'm here if you want me," the villain murmured, their voice a haunting echo in the caverns of the hero's conscience.

The hero's gaze wavered, torn between duty and desire. "This… this can't be right," they faltered, their resolve shaken by the raw vulnerability in the villain's confession.

"It's not about right or wrong," the villain countered, a hint of desperation seeping into their words. "It's about what we feel."

But the hero shook their head, a flicker of anguish clouding their features. "I can't… I can't betray everything I stand for."

Silence lingered like a heavy fog between them, pregnant with unspoken words and shattered dreams. With a heavy heart, the hero turned away, their footsteps echoing hollowly against the stone floor.

As the hero vanished into the depths of the night, the villain remained rooted to the spot, haunted by the specter of what could have been. And though they stood on opposite sides of the battlefield, their hearts remained intertwined, bound by the fragile threads of forbidden love.

"I'll wait for you," the villain whispered into the darkness, a solitary figure standing sentinel at the edge of oblivion. "I'll always wait."