What, In Your Opinion, Is the Fantasy Genre Missing?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Messages
4,584
Reaction score
1,412
Location
The land from whence the shadows fall
Website
www.sunyidean.com
Okay, but I think part of the issue is that it's maybe locking out authors who aren't caucasian.

agents say they want more diversity, but by all accounts that translates into western authors writing nonwestern fantasy in many cases. I love Baru Cormorant, but isn't that a prime example of what we're talking about?
 

LucidCrux

Write like there's no tommorowe.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 24, 2013
Messages
552
Reaction score
190
Location
Colorado
Never mind. I'm way to afraid of the culture thing.

I would also like more adult portal stories, and down-to-earth stories set in fantasy worlds.
 
Last edited:

autumnleaf

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2010
Messages
1,133
Reaction score
215
Location
small rainy island
I'm at the point where I won't read any fantasy based on Medieval Europe unless it comes very highly recommended. Whereas something based on another time or place will at least get a second look from me.

I'd love to see more "animal viewpoint" fiction such as Watership Down or The Bees. Not anthropomorphized animals, but with a real effort to see things as that animal might see it.

I'd love to see more older female characters who aren't useless mothers, wise crones, or evil witches.
 

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2005
Messages
4,827
Reaction score
336
Location
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Website
home.comcast.net
Adult portal. Hope it makes a comeback soon.
Portal will always be one of my favorites, though I think that if you look at fanfiction you can see reincarnation and abduction/act of ROB replacing the literal portals so the characters aren't expected to spend time back in the normal world, ever.
 

Zaffiro

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 9, 2013
Messages
61
Reaction score
12
I think the nonexistent-parents thing might stem from the fact that fantasy has its roots in fairy tale. Fairy tales are full of dead mothers and absent parents, and it's for a psychological reason: they're about the child moving into the adult role, filling that space for himself or herself. The parents get killed off or removed in order to leave the 'adult' space open.

Also, it would be cool to see more fantasy where the focus isn't on wars or on the clash of armies on an epic scale and on the fate of the entire world in the face of some vast, implacable evil that seeks to corrupt all. I enjoy epic fantasy, bit it would be fun to read more stories that focus on personal goals, relationships, local-conflicts, and even swashbuckling adventure in settings that are different in ways that change the stakes and dynamics from those we're all familiar with.

The challenge, I guess, lies in making these more personal stories and smaller-scale stakes relatable and important to the reader within a made-up world, rather than having the entire made-up world be what's at stake.

Yep. I almost never read fantasy now, but I tried a lot of it when I was younger, and what turned me off was the epic scale of everything I read. It's the same reason I don't read international thrillers about preventing a nuclear anthrax attack that will obliterate whole continents, or whatever: I'm interested in the small-scale, in individual characters. If the stakes are too huge, then the individual character gets dwarfed: there's no space for the intricacies of the protagonist's psychological development or jeopardy to be a high priority, because obviously the lives of millions and the salvation of the world are more important than whether Joe Smith gets a handle on his fractured sense of identity in time to salvage his relationships with his childhood friends. The personal stakes sometimes did get a look-in, but in the books I read, anyway, there was only room for them to be painted with the broadest strokes. I'd love to read fantasy with individual characters' psychological journeys at the heart of it.

I think one reason why that doesn't seem to happen much is that writers feel like, if you're going to go to the hassle of creating a whole different world and expecting the reader to get to grips with it, the book should be about the world. If it's about Joe Smith's fractured sense of identity and childhood friendships, then why bother setting it in an alternative eighteenth-century Russia with wolf shapeshifters*? Why not just set it in small-town America in 2017? I don't agree, but I can see how it might feel that way to a writer.

*I would totally read this book.
 

Putputt

permanently suctioned to Buz's leg
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 10, 2012
Messages
5,448
Reaction score
2,980
There is this very narrow path authors seem to be allowed to walk with non-medieval fantasy that must stay as close to the actual inspiring cultures as possible without actually including anything people think is special or sacred or unique to that background. Thus any such writing requires WAY more research than someone who can just plop down medieval sorts of things according to need or what interests them. Fantasy writers don't tend to be the research types, so this just turns them away.

Erm. Really? I think you're heavily generalizing here. I'm under the impression that many fantasy writers, perhaps even the majority of them, DO tend to be the "research type". It's how you get good fantasies, regardless of time and setting. Even much-used settings like Medieval Europe require a shitton of research to truly bring it to life. Make a mistake or a lazy shortcut and history buffs are likely to pounce on you and lecture you about how horses weren't actually bred this way in Medieval Europe etc.

Quite honestly, I think this kind of thinking is slowly killing those rich histories and interest in them. :( Like languages dying out from diminishing use or purists.

I wish people would let us celebrate other cultures and explore their potentials and might-have-been's if war-monger white and Spanish guys hadn't destroyed so much of it. The young especially, I think, are dying for this diversity and expansion beyond tired mythologies.

Yea...I don't think anything is "killing those rich histories and interest in them", unless what you're referring to is white or other privileged writers having to check themselves before borrowing from marginalized cultures. If you keep up with things like DVPit or even Pitch Wars, you'd see that there are tons of writers writing non-Medievalesque fantasies. Also, when you say "I wish people would let us celebrate other cultures"...I feel like you're centering the conversation around white, or otherwise privileged writers wanting to write about marginalized cultures. I don't have a problem with white writers writing about non-Western settings, all they have to do is do the research, same if they want to write Western settings. But more than that, actually, I would like to see more writers from those cultures, writing about their own cultures, being published. This way, you don't have to worry about diverse cultures not being represented.
 

autumnleaf

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2010
Messages
1,133
Reaction score
215
Location
small rainy island
Erm. Really? I think you're heavily generalizing here. I'm under the impression that many fantasy writers, perhaps even the majority of them, DO tend to be the "research type". It's how you get good fantasies, regardless of time and setting. Even much-used settings like Medieval Europe require a shitton of research to truly bring it to life. Make a mistake or a lazy shortcut and history buffs are likely to pounce on you and lecture you about how horses weren't actually bred this way in Medieval Europe etc.

I think LucidCrux was talking about books "inspired by" Medieval Europe, rather than set in the real time and place. If you wrote a historical novel set in 13th-century France, readers would indeed be annoyed if your characters ate turkey and potatoes (New World foods that didn't exist in Europe at the time), carried pistols (a Renaissance invention), or blasphemed openly without response. But if your society is based on a vaguely Medieval European setting, you can have your characters eat and shoot and say whatever you choose. You can even portray this Medieval-based society as corrupt and cruel (as GRR Martin does), without any real criticism. There isn't any real danger of getting it "wrong" (except the danger of writing a bad story, which exists no matter what the genre).

Whereas if your society is "inspired by", for example, the various West African empires, you leave yourself open to the objection of misrepresenting that culture, especially if you show that society in any kind of negative light. So you get fewer people wanting to take that risk, and fewer books with that kind of setting. (Although there's also the issue that fewer people know about the rich history of Africa before European and Arabic colonization. )
 
Last edited:

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,054
Location
Not where you last saw me.
Mod Note: Diversity IS needed in fantasy as in all other genres, so I'll allow it as part of the discussion. If we can have a discussion of how that might be accomplished without the cultural appropriation opining, then we'll go for it.

There are also many excellent resources for worldbuilding and creating cultural elements for your novel. If you want to help each other out by sharing those resources, that would be great. So,

*ahem*

There is to be no further cultural appropriation "opinionating" (opining) in this thread. If you can't bring legitimate and expert source material to support your opinion, keep it to yourself.
 

Zaffiro

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 9, 2013
Messages
61
Reaction score
12
I prefer K J Bishops approach where the setting exists to reflect the psychological state of the characters.

I hadn't heard of KJ Bishop, and The Etched City sounds great. Thanks.
 

blacbird

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Messages
36,987
Reaction score
6,158
Location
The right earlobe of North America
After some discussions in other threads, it has occurred to me that, as a reader, what I often fail to find in Fantasy genre fiction is suspense. I read a lot of mysteries. I like suspense. I like puzzles. I like figuring things out. I like guessing at outcomes. I like being wrong about my guesses and surprised when they are wrong.

Too much Fantasy fiction I've read seems to me to be too predictable, lacking in surprise. Maybe that's just me, and my reading preferences, but that's something I see.

caw
 

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Messages
4,584
Reaction score
1,412
Location
The land from whence the shadows fall
Website
www.sunyidean.com
The Etched City requires... a lot of patience :) Think of it as a novel length poem. It has about as much plot as a poem, too. I still liked it though. The writing is lovely.

Mysteries in anything are fantastic. A good setting junkie book for fantasy can be one long mystery to unpick. I don't know if you count that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.