Things you'd like to see brought back to fantasy

@Writer MMS

Saga what? The Vaughn comic? The publishers? Third thing? I need to know!

kuwisdelu said:

I love it when two planets fall in love.

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Pluto loved Neptune, and for a while, their orbits intersected, but alas, it was not to be. When Pluto's planetary status was revoked, Neptune couldn't take him seriously anymore. Planets are classist snobs.

Writer MMS said:

Saga, my friend, Saga <3

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Kjbartolotta said:

@Writer MMS

Saga what? The Vaughn comic? The publishers? Third thing? I need to know!

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I'm sure he doesn't mean the old Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America. That's the only SAGA I know of.

Or the band.

Anna_Hedley said:

I was just about to rant about this. It's one thing to have rape in a book, I can accept that as part of an awful world. But when it's every single female character in a book, or most of them, it makes me want to throw it against a wall. Like rape is a natural consequence of being female.

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At the same time, it's a very anti-male message - it implies that, once you've taken away any immediate consequences to men committing rape, they'll do it wholesale. Not just to their enemies, but to any girl or woman they find unprotected.

While I'm sure unspeakable brutalities (both sexual and non-sexual) go on in war zones, I have a harder time visualizing a society where in peacetime Meg the Milkmaid can't go out to milk her cows without being attacked by travelling knights or the local goatherds. Just the economic consequences of this sort of chaos would be difficult to cope with. Social ties should be strong enough in normal societies to prevent people treating their neighbors as prey.

I want ridiculously overpowered magic, alla the powers found in anime/manga, to be a thing. I want more non-western mythology based settings and settings with higher tech levels than the usual medieval or steampunk/Victorian fair. I want over the top characters and scenarios. I want fantasy that is more like a JRPG or manga and less like game of thrones. Alas, fantasy has never had any of that, and never will. Oh well. Life goes on.

Nogetsune said:

I want ridiculously overpowered magic, alla the powers found in anime/manga, to be a thing. I want more non-western mythology based settings and settings with higher tech levels than the usual medieval or steampunk/Victorian fair. I want over the top characters and scenarios. I want fantasy that is more like a JRPG or manga and less like game of thrones. Alas, fantasy has never had any of that, and never will. Oh well. Life goes on.

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B-but you're a writer and your on this forum. You can write and self publish it yourself, because there is an audience for that kind of story.

That's the thing, I want to write, not market and engage the online community. I abhor social media, and have all the marketing skills of an untrained chimpanzee. I want nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the marketing/promotion side of things. I just want to write....I have NO desire to be involved with self-promotion and HATE, HATE, HATE social media with a burning passion...so that's why I can't, and won't self publish. As for traditional? No publisher would touch anything like that with a 10-foot pole unless they happened to be Japanese, and I do not live in Japan. So yeah. There's no way I'd ever be able to get my stories out there in the US...and I have no clue how the heck I'd pitch them to Japanese publishers, if that's even possible. However, this discussion is derailing the thread, so I feel it best we end it here.

Nogetsune said:

That's the thing, I want to write, not market and engage the online community. I abhor social media, and have all the marketing skills of an untrained chimpanzee. I want nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the marketing/promotion side of things. I just want to write....I have NO desire to be involved with self-promotion and HATE, HATE, HATE social media with a burning passion...so that's why I can't, and won't self publish. As for traditional? No publisher would touch anything like that with a 10-foot pole unless they happened to be Japanese, and I do not live in Japan. So yeah. There's no way I'd ever be able to get my stories out there in the US...and I have no clue how the heck I'd pitch them to Japanese publishers, if that's even possible. However, this discussion is derailing the thread, so I feel it best we end it here.

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Self-publish it anyway. Don't worry about marketing or social media, just put it out there, for 99 cents. People will buy it at that price and then at least someone else will have read your book.

This thread is not what I expected to find. I had no idea there was so much backlash against the GRRM vein of fantasy. Then again, I spend so much time at the typewriter I don't have a good pulse on anything these days. I've had a few fantasy stories kicking around in my head and reading your responses has given me new hope that they might actually have appeal.

One more reason why I love this forum.

Nogetsune said:

I want ridiculously overpowered magic, alla the powers found in anime/manga, to be a thing. I want more non-western mythology based settings and settings with higher tech levels than the usual medieval or steampunk/Victorian fair. I want over the top characters and scenarios. I want fantasy that is more like a JRPG or manga and less like game of thrones. Alas, fantasy has never had any of that, and never will. Oh well. Life goes on.

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Stories with a higher degree of tech than current are usually classed as SciFi, not Fantasy, so you may be looking at the wrong place. Fantasy is usually the term for speculative fiction that doesn't involve high degrees of tech for the spec part, although there is overlap.

My wants are simple. I want Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams back.

paddismac said:

My wants are simple. I want Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams back.

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Bwaaaaaah... You had to remind us.

Nogetsune said:

No publisher would touch anything like that with a 10-foot pole unless they happened to be Japanese

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I doubt that.

Highly doubt what? That Japanese publishers would touch an over the top, anime-esc novel? If so, A Certain Magical Index, which was originally a light novel series, says hello. I never said "in English" in my previous post, so if you take that into consideration then you have a bunch of "anime-esc", over the top stories being published by Japanese publishers, often times to great success.

Now, if you doupt the fact That no US/English publisher would be willing to touch a story like that then prove me wrong. I have asked as-nausuem on this forum for evidence to the contrary and nothing had been given that has shown me that this fact, echoed by every writer I know IRL, is false. I have had one friend, who is a published writer, tell me the kind of stories I want to write would never stand a chance of being published traditionally in the U.S. I had another friend who is many years older than me and an experienced, well-educated buisnessperson tell me that my best chance was to aim for the Japan market and that US publishers would not be very open to these kinds of stories. What makes these people wrong? What evidence is there to the contrary?

Nogetsune said:

As for traditional? No publisher would touch anything like that with a 10-foot pole unless they happened to be Japanese, and I do not live in Japan. So yeah. There's no way I'd ever be able to get my stories out there in the US...and I have no clue how the heck I'd pitch them to Japanese publishers, if that's even possible.

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Nogetsune said:

Highly doubt what? That Japanese publishers would touch an over the top, anime-esc novel? If so, A Certain Magical Index, which was originally a light novel series, says hello. I never said "in English" in my previous post, so if you take that into consideration then you have a bunch of "anime-esc", over the top stories being published by Japanese publishers.

Now, if you doupt the fact That no US/English publisher would be willing to touch a story like that then prove me wrong. I have asked as-nausuem on this forum for evidence to the contrary and nothing had been given that has shown me that this fact, echoed by every writer I know IRL, is false.

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Nogetsune, I've read your previous threads (I know this is not yours, btw) and it always sounds like A) You don't read western Fantasy novels, and B) You have it somehow drilled into your mind that your "anime" style is impossible to sell in the west.

Have you read your previous threads? 'cause it's sounding like you're a broken record.

I'm never said my ideas have no audience in the west, just that no publisher would ever touch them, and all my friends IRL who know the writing world have said the same thing. There is a market in the west, it's just invisible to publishers. If I had any desire to learn social media and engage in self promotion I have no doupt something like this could be sucssefully self-published and, in fact, there are other writers who are doing just that... I should know, I have their books on my kindle and at least one of them is an AWer. However, I despise social media with the passion of religious zealot and have zero desire to be a marketer/promoter. Therefore, self publishing is not an option for me unless I come into a sizable fortune and can hire a marketing person to do the promotion work...which is not very likely to happen.

As for traditional publishing, I challenge you to find a single, traditionally published fantasy book/series not based on a non -book franchise(so stuff like the magic the gathering and d&d novels, marvel/DC novelizations etc... are out) with an over the top, ridiculous setting that actually takes itself seriously and characters who can annihilate entire planets/worlds on their own, by using magic, that are focus characters rather than distant, far removed from the plot deities.

Come back and tell us that again when you 1) write a book, and 2) submit it to publishers.

What I would like to see more of is characters who are middle-aged or older, but not over-powered jaded secret wizards or royalty. Just people who go off on an adventure like in the Hobbit.

More middle-aged or older women especially (forty-something-year-old guys who look and act like twenty something year olds, aside from a whisper of gray at their temples, and who are adored by twenty something year old women don't count).

Nogetsune said:

I'm never said my ideas have no audience in the west, just that no publisher would ever touch them, and all my friends IRL who know the writing world have said the same thing. There is a market in the west, it's just invisible to publishers. If I had any desire to learn social media and engage in self promotion I have no doupt something like this could be sucssefully self-published and, in fact, there are other writers who are doing just that... I should know, I have their books on my kindle and at least one of them is an AWer. However, I despise social media with the passion of religious zealot and have zero desire to be a marketer/promoter. Therefore, self publishing is not an option for me unless I come into a sizable fortune and can hire a marketing person to do the promotion work...which is not very likely to happen.

As for traditional publishing, I challenge you to find a single, traditionally published fantasy book/series not based on a non -book franchise(so stuff like the magic the gathering and d&d novels, marvel/DC novelizations etc... are out) with an over the top, ridiculous setting that actually takes itself seriously and characters who can annihilate entire planets/worlds on their own, by using magic, that are focus characters rather than distant, far removed from the plot deities.

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I'm 100% sure whatever I recommend you, you're going to say something along the lines of "I never said..." or, "That's not..." and find some way to justify your self-persuaded, idealistic thoughts.

Best of luck.


/end. Sorry for the derail, folks.

Orcs. I would love to see more orcs! Elves get to be complex and dwarves too, orcs don't get that as much. I don't mind an evil orc, but it seems like people don't use them as much as the aforementioned elves and dwarves because they're stuck on them being evil. Gimme a complex society in oposition to humans. Surely orcs could provide that just as much as elves and dwarves do if people just gave them a chance to do so.

Coincidentally, I do have two separate stories which both deal with orcs, or in the case of one, something orc-like instead. They're just awesome.

Nogetsune said:

I'm never said my ideas have no audience in the west, just that no publisher would ever touch them, and all my friends IRL who know the writing world have said the same thing. There is a market in the west, it's just invisible to publishers. If I had any desire to learn social media and engage in self promotion I have no doupt something like this could be sucssefully self-published and, in fact, there are other writers who are doing just that... I should know, I have their books on my kindle and at least one of them is an AWer. However, I despise social media with the passion of religious zealot and have zero desire to be a marketer/promoter. Therefore, self publishing is not an option for me unless I come into a sizable fortune and can hire a marketing person to do the promotion work...which is not very likely to happen.

As for traditional publishing, I challenge you to find a single, traditionally published fantasy book/series not based on a non -book franchise(so stuff like the magic the gathering and d&d novels, marvel/DC novelizations etc... are out) with an over the top, ridiculous setting that actually takes itself seriously and characters who can annihilate entire planets/worlds on their own, by using magic, that are focus characters rather than distant, far removed from the plot deities.

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Seriously...? Again?

I think you're too focused on really shallow or superficial aspects to really see the variety of fantasy/scifi that is out there in the world.

You're more focused on stuff that's not really important in the long run, novel-wise. What about the story?

Besides, if a character can destroy planets, then where would the conflict be? What would his/her story? I guess another demigod-like character who can also destroy planets or whatever can be his/her foil, but...it sounds like it can get boring fast. Novels are kind of different than visual mediums. Novels are more useful, or at least, more effective at going in depth into the characters' personalities and motivations, etc. What is the point of having characters strong enough to blow up planets?

Even superheroes and supervillains can have depth, or at least, have some drama and conflict. It's tricky when you have a hero who's so strong, so you have to provide weaknesses or something that will provide some actual drama. You should read some good superhero comics to see this.

Some shounen anime (especially for younger audiences) can get away with flat characters and straightforward (or even lack of) plots, because they can capture the audience with visual flair and spectacular fight scenes and special effects...but a novel has to capture the audience in a different way due to the less-visual aspects.

ETA: If all else fails, then you probably need to suck it up and actually learn how to draw. Or get a job or something to pay an artist. In terms of marketing/promotions, well, that's reality, as my mother would say. You either do it, or you don't (and stop angsting about it).

Kjbartolotta said:

@Writer MMS

Saga what? The Vaughn comic? The publishers? Third thing? I need to know!

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1st one. It's an amazing interplanetary romantic sci fi comedy action space opera. Talk about a genre breaker.

Writer MMS said:

1st one. It's an amazing interplanetary romantic sci fi comedy action space opera. Talk about a genre breaker.

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Aren't the labels of scifi, interplanetary, and space opera kind of similar or unnecessary? I mean, isn't most space opera have some kind of planet contact, or maybe is already scifi, etc? Sounds like too many labels to me, lol.

Reminds me of old promos or pitches of movie or comic book stories. "It's got ACTION! DRAMA! ROMANCE! COMEDY! It's got it ALL!"