#fantasy genre tropes

[prokopetz]

The real difference between fantasy and science fiction is that if you have too many belts, you're fantasy, and if you have too many zippers, you're science fiction. If you have too many of both, you split the difference and land in a contemporary technothriller where everybody is secretly a vampire.

[joncronshawauthor]

What Fantasy Writers Can Learn From Mr. Bungle

In the realm of fantasy literature, where worlds are bound only by the limits of imagination, finding unique sources of inspiration is crucial. For writers looking to inject a dose of the extraordinary into their narratives, the eclectic and often surreal music of Mr. Bungle offers a treasure trove of creative cues. Known for their genre-defying soundscapes and theatrical flair, Mr. Bungle…

[hilacopter]

the curse of liking fantasy & being jewish

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

And remember kids, the next time someone tells you, "George R. R. Martin wouldn't make Jon Snow the typical fantasy hero because that's cliche".....

Oh yes he would!

One viewer wants to know what character would you play (on the show)? GRRM: If I could magically clap my hands and become a different person, it would be cool to play Jon Snow who's much more of the classic hero. Everybody wants to be the classic hero! ABC Interview, 2014

GRRM: And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Meduza Interview, 2017

In fact he already has ☺️

[bad-as-me]

its been long enough since the dlc that the Play Elden Ring Again brainworms are starting to move around in my head again... thank u god

[lotus-pear]

lotus. lotus. LOTUS.

you’ve read throne of glass???????

/pos btw i’m not about to explode you for reading it bc i realize now that this ask could come off really negative 💀

YES unfortunately i was forced into reading it by my bestie bc the deal was she read bsd and i read tog (we both ended up suffering bc now we're both obsessed with each other's series)

i'm on queen of shadows rn so it's supposed to start picking up from here...

[i-am-trans-gwender]

I swear at least half of all high fantasy is just "We have Tolkien at home."

[writtenroses1813]

Just putting this out here cause I had to explain it to my mom, but here are the types of fiction (sorry if I leave out any)

Urban fantasy aka “I live in a modern society but turns out the creatures of old live in the forest” Ex: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Paranormal (Romance) aka “My sexy neighbor is secretly a werewolf/vampire and I’m a human teenage girl” Ex: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Epic Fantasy aka “This is a crazy quest isn’t it my dear found family” Ex: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

High Fantasy aka “This is a crazy quest of prophecy isn’t it my dear found family oh look a dragon” Ex: The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien

Dystopian aka “This future world is apocalyptic and quite obviously favors the rich” Ex: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Utopian aka “This future world seems peaceful on the outside but that just covers all the absolutely insane problems only this 16-year-old can fix” Ex: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

[fallensapphires]

Genres: Sci-fi

It's been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things: science fiction the improbable made probable; fantasy, the impossible made probable.

[prokopetz]

"But if this other world has always operated according to video game logic, why is the isekai protagonist literally the first person to figure out all these basic mechanical exploints" well, largely because litRPG isekai is merely the latest flavour of I've Been Transported To Another World Where Everyone Is Stupid Except For Me, a venerable genre that's been a going concern at least since Mark Twain.

When I was a kid, it was American sci-fi authors writing stories about shitass engineering majors getting portal-fantasied to alien planets and single-handedly saving civilisation on the strength of being the only person in the world who knows what a flowchart is, and very little has changed – right down to the weirdly inverted character arcs where the loser protagonist discovers that they don't actually need to engage in any self-reflection at all because the very traits that rendered them odious in their native society are what make them God here.

[kjscottwrites]

As a follow up to THIS poll…

This time around I made sure the very popular Aragorns and Geralts of the world wouldn't count lmao whoops. For the alien question I mean "true" aliens also - not in the celestial deity sense but in the little green men sense. Everything else is open to interpretation though!

And hit me with recommendations if you think of books that have these!!!

[otter-byte]

I think Brennan perfectly captured the difference between writing sci-fi and fantasy* when he said that sci-fi needs to be 'crunchy'.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

This isn’t really a fully formed thought or anything. But it’s interesting how Sansa, Jon, and Lyanna specifically factor into one of GRRM’s greater explorations on the merits of fantasy. More specifically, there is a common trope that connects these three characters: a princess locked in a tower transforming into a valiant knight/hero. Lyanna and Jon, for starters, are pretty obvious explorations of this. Lyanna is the reconstructed version of this classic trope especially as presented through Arthurian tradition; but the twist here is that the dragon/knight who “locks” her in the tower isn’t actually evil and she isn’t so much kidnapped but rather willingly chooses to go there with him. This princess in a tower directly results in the birth of the hidden prince trope, which is even older than Arthur. So one fantasy classic, Rhaegar and Lyanna, leads to another with Jon being Arthur (a hidden prince and destined king), Percival (a hero who grows up in obscurity but has a great destiny to save the land), and Galahad (a noble hero destined to be even greater than his father, Rhaegar/Lancelot, ever was) all at once.

This princess dies in the tower…but her spirit/ghost lives on through her son, who grows up to look and act just like her, eventually becoming the valiant hero you read in the stories (but again, a de/reconstructed version). Part of how Jon does this is by repeating Lyanna’s actions as the valiant “knight” protecting an innocent from bullies. So by making it out of that tower even though his mother didn’t, Jon becomes the survival and rebirth of the fantasy ideal. You could even make the argument that just because Lyanna died doesn’t mean fantasy died as well because it lives on through Jon, her son. And this is actually is aided by Lyanna’s pleading for her son’s life, so she has some agency in how fantasy is preserved in the same way she had agency in how it’s perpetuated when she protected Howland Reed and when she ran off with Rhaegar. The princess living on and becoming the hero/knight in the stories is thus taken on by two characters here: Lyanna and Jon, mother and son. Jon goes even further into the Arthurian-knight playbook by encountering and eventually killing another vicious bully, Janos Slynt, who was coincidentally had a hand in his father’s demise. Then enter princess in the tower 2.0, Sansa Stark.

Sansa is an interesting case because she’s not martial in the way Lyanna and Jon are. But she too encounters her fair share of knights and villains. Janos Slynt is one of them, and Littlefinger will be another. I’ve talked about this before but Jon becoming the valiant hero Sansa wished for is important because it directly plays into GRRM’s reconstruction and (imo) defense of the ideals of fantasy. It’s not so much that heroes don’t exist - they actually do. They just might be far away, or might be the ones you’d never expect. This is the opposite of the “fantasy is dead, stop believing because everything sucks” reading you might see in some sections of the fandom. This moment may not end up meaning much for Jon and Sansa and their relationship, but it means a lot to us readers who are audiences of GRRM’s conversations with the genre and his arguments for its appeal. But that’s not the only interesting thing because Sansa, unlike Lyanna, does eventually make it out of the tower. But she’s currently in the hands of Littlefinger who, like Janos Slynt, was a villain responsible for her father’s demise. In this scenario, will she have to wait for a valiant hero to come take care of him again? Or will she instead don the knight’s armor (figuratively) by enacting justice in her own right? Based on the GoHH’s prophecy, it looks like it will be the latter; and it’s important to note how often “armor” as a motif is repeated in Sansa’s chapters. Thus, the princess evolving into the hero is told through the arc of a singular character here. Sansa is the princess who makes it out of the tower to become a hero of her own making; important disclaimer though, Littlefinger doesn’t really play into the elements of knighthood but he does count as an evil lord holding a princess hostage so Sansa can still be a subversion of the knight rescuing the maiden - the lesson being that she is her own knight, her own salvation!

It’s a very powerful meta-textual thread that exists between these three characters. They all fit into a wider narrative about fantasy and how it can live on, whether played straight or twisted a little crooked. So Sansa doesn’t have to be an overt in-universe parallel to Lyanna because that’s just not her role in the story. And I personally don’t think any “similarities” they have are actually important to Sansa as a person or to Jon because let’s face it, Lyanna’s primary (and most important) role is to be Jon’s mother and everything else informs on that. But both these women (and Jon) can be meta twinsies based on how they fit into GRRM’s wider narrative goals.

[tomnice2001]

The existence of "dark elves" implies the existence of "light orcs".

[oc-culture]

I'm curious: How do you define low and high fantasy?