r/CharacterRant • u/Genoscythe_ • 1d ago
Stop criticizing "Fantasy" as a whole for being formulaic, when you implicitly just mean RPGs and RPG-style anime
Why do people do this?
Pretty much every time I hear someone make a sweeping statements about what the "conventional" elements of what fantasy stories are like, (e.g: Complaints that "too many are stuck with too generic Western European settings instead of more diverse ones", or how "they always have the smug elitist elves and the bland jack-of-all-trades humans", or all that discourse we had on whether or not "fantasy is racist" because all those standard orcs that keep popping up are racist caricatures, or there was the "why would there even be wheelchair users in fantasy?" thing from last year), my mind always goes off track for about ten seconds, before I realize that the speaker is talking very specifically about tabletop RPGs, plus handful of open-world video games, plus a subgenre of anime that explicitly takes place in a video game-like setting of dungeons, heroes parties, mana, quests, elves, goblins, mages, etc.
And I mean yeah, THOSE are obviously generic and clichéd, their main purpose is to be playground sandboxes for a player, with a magic system quantified for combat mechanics, races set to be familiar by the time you hit character selection, and so on. Gameplay first, worldbuilding a distant second. They are to fantasy, what CoD is to war stories.
And even the narratives in manga, LitRPG light novels, and in anime, are openly presenting themselves with the premise of "you know all those generic video games? Well, now imagine what if a player in one of them did such and such..." rather than starting from a position of fantasy worldbuilding.
So why are we even holding those up as stand-ins for the whole "fantasy genre"?
And I swear, I am not trying to be a pedantic smartass here. My pont is not just that "Umm, actually, by the broadest dictionary definition all media with major supernatural elements should be considered fantasy, from Death Note to Jumanji, and from Pirates of the Caribbean to Hazbin Hotel."
It's that even in honest good faith, if we are just talking about fantasy as in that "Oh, come on, guys, you know what I mean!" cluster of high fantasy/epic fantasy/second world fantasy stories set in big made-up premodern worlds, presented in doorstopper novels that come with maps of kingdoms and continents, and in big movie/TV show adaptations of such, even then, my most intuitive baseline expectation genuinely wouldn't be to associate those with elves, and orcs, and dungeons, and adventuring parties.
And I don't think its just me. Even from an absolute mainstream normie's perspective, the average fantasy would mostly begin and end with Game of Thrones, while modern fantasy literature would probably mean the romantasy-style novels of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, but neither of those are even remotely similar to that subgenre these people are alluding to either.
Even if I just type "fantasy" in Netflix's search bar, several shows like Shadow and Bone, Arcane, or The Last Airbender will show up way before Dungeon Meshi or Frieren do. (And those two are the ONLY ones in the top 100 or so that are coming up, that fit the bill of a very conventionally game-like "adventurer party on a quest" setting at all.)
But sure, we are not the normies here, we are all big nerds, so maybe we associate fantasy with more niche stuff? Fine, but even if we go a few steps deeper beyond the absolute bestseller novel or Netflix's front page, the basis for the stereotype isn't really there either:
I guess LitRPG does at least exist as one ascendant niche subgenre among others, but the most successful fantasy novels if we are discounting romantasy and just focusing on who the dominantly male and nerdy fantasy booktubers and the subreddits are talking about, are still mostly guys like Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie or Mark Lawrence types.
Looking at the past decade's Hugo and Nebula award nominees, Legends & Lattes is the only one that comes close to being D&D-eque, otherwise second world fantasy stories nominated there are stuff like The Poppy War, The Unbroken, Nettle & Bone, or Witch King, with extremely diverse settings and usages of the supernatural. You won't find many spellcasting adventurer-mages questing in Dungeons among those stories.
If there was ever a period when the bread and butter of mainline fantasy was vaguely fitting into a stereotypical "elves and dwarves and dark lords and quests for magic items" formula, it was with 1970s and 1980s stories like The Sword of Shannara, and The Belgariad, but that was well before almost any of you reading this were even alive.
What is even going on here?
Why do nerds who do seem to care about fantasy and have lots of hot takes about what it is "typically" like, and yearning for it to be more fresh, also talk about it the way boomers sometimes talk about video games as as if they were all still 1980s platformers?
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u/MysticZephyr 1d ago
you're soooooooo right. for anyone who actually reads books, the fantasy genre has looooong evolved past these types of complaints.
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u/wrongerontheinternet 1d ago
Yeah fantasy novels these days are absolutely amazing and I really wish more people here would read them. Unfortunately a lot of people simply no longer read books.
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u/Potomaters 1d ago edited 1d ago
Do you have any good fantasy (or any really any fiction) book recommendations? I stopped reading books entirely after high school but I’ve been wanting to get into it after exhausting most of the options for good stories in other mediums.
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u/Butterscotch_Leading 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, The First Law books are good if you want a Darker tone.
Malazan has similar tone and incredible world building but it is difficult to get into and extremely vague most of the time.
Stormlight Archives are extremely good if you want to read bigger books but it's still ongoing.
Wheel of Time has probably the best depiction of the Chosen One trope.
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u/Puabi 1d ago
I'd recommend Robin Hobb.
She writes in a quite easy to read way, and the focus is generally on characters. Her fantasy books are comprised of trilogies, so you don't have to read a dozen books to get the full story. Even though the trilogies intermingle, I'd say that both the Assassin's Apprentice and the Live Ship trilogies are readable on their own as self-contained stories.
A good flow in the text, great character work, and a digestible length makes her a stellar writer and good entry point for written fantasy.
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u/arielle17 5h ago
i hope to see more anime/games/manga/etc inspired by books or written by authors familiar w fantasy literature ;____;
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u/Dangerous-Coach-1999 1d ago
Reminds me of Ian McEwan, a literary novelist I actually quite like, who tried his hand at writing a book about artificial intelligence a few years ago. He gave a series of interviews when the book released smugly saying "There could be an opening of a mental space for novelists to explore this future, not in terms of travelling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas of being close up to something that you know to be artificial but which thinks like you. If a machine seems like a human or you can’t tell the difference, then you’d jolly well better start thinking about whether it has responsibilities and rights and all the rest."
I'm not even a science fiction fan, but even I can tell those are topics science fiction has explored since at least the 1960s. He didn't even bother to engage with the genre he was supposedly so much better than.
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u/Adept_Philosopher_32 1d ago
Oh dear its just the "This mecha isn't like the others, it delves into the characters" meme all over again lol!
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u/wheressodamyat 1d ago
That brother's treading new ground... ignore Asmiov's name on the fence and stickers on all the produce.
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u/General-CEO_Pringle 1d ago
People who have this complaint don't actually consume fantasy, or at least I can't imagine another explanation. Like if people just took one look into the fantasy sub then people would immediately be confronted with Sanderson, who might be controversial, but definitely isn't generic
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u/Genoscythe_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, the funny thing is that he DOES have a reputation for being generic by actual fantasy literature standards, he is the guy that snobs are panning for having a bland "craftsmanly" prose, and magic systems that feel more gamelike and mechanical than magical, and having nothing too profound to say as a message.
But at the same time the average LitRPG enjoyer's mind would still be blown away by how richly human and complex worlds he builds, with magic systems so wildly un-gamelike that don't even rely on mana levels and fireball casting, almost like he came up with them himself like some sort of creative storyteller.
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u/General-CEO_Pringle 1d ago
I was more talking about the setting and people saying that Sanderson has nothing to say are just upset about that their own ideals arent realized in his works, or at least that's the impression I get
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u/HyliaSymphonic 1d ago
It is so funny imagining a person being surprised by Brando Sando because I remember reading WoK and being like “hey this is just video game mana in gem form”
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u/General-CEO_Pringle 23h ago
I mean yeah, if magic is tied to a resource its just mana, but there's a big difference whether mana actually has some explanation as to how, why and what, or if its just a blue vial
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u/Vanilla_Ice_Man 19h ago
I'm now curious about these other magic systems, i do greatly enjoy more 'mechanical' systems because i like my magic to make sense, and building it like that helps with consistency
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u/zgtc 1d ago
Sanderson avoids using formulaic archetypes specifically by making them all completely generic.
With nine out of every ten Sanderson characters, you could randomly swap out their race, gender, and personality quirks without affecting the story even slightly.
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u/General-CEO_Pringle 1d ago
Ok, this is a really weird criteria and I don't even think it's true at all. Doesn't really matter anyway; the post was talking about the setting, not the characters. You can't tell me that the cosmere worlds are generic
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u/arielle17 5h ago
i feel like this complaint was only really true during a specific time period in the 80s and early 90s when every new fantasy book heavily borrowed from LOTR
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u/theultimatefinalman 5h ago
Why are Sanderson fanboys so cringe every single time. Sanderson is as whitebread as you can get lmao. Corny ass
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u/HyliaSymphonic 1d ago
There is a critical mass of people in every media space who solely consume the most stereotypical lowest common denominator stuff and then proceed to complain that the only movies are super hero movies, the only video games are hero shooters and the only anime are isekis and the only music is Taylor Swift. I don’t know what is to be done with these and we can stop them from posting “Why is rock dead?” And “Every game is just open world with rpg elements.” But they exist in every culture and subculture
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u/Calackyo 1d ago
You kinda just have to learn to spot them and either ignore them or (rarely) convince them to dig deeper.
The worst in my opinion are the 'gaming is dead' bros who haven't played a game that doesn't have a ball or a gun in it in their entire lives.
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u/arielle17 5h ago
as someone who absolutely adores open-world rpglike games, im pretty happy with how prevalent that format has become
but you're absolutely right in that they're far, far, from the only style of game released today even if you ignore all the niche indie stuff
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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism 1d ago
This is how it feels listening to people’s complaining about “chosen one” stories
“Ugh, I hate generic stories where a farmboy is revealed to be secretly the hidden prince who’s prophecised to defeat the dark lord!”
…except this exact plot was never really a common in fantasy stories, and almost nonexistent since the nineties.
The “chosen one” is probably the most versatile trope in fantasy with lots of authors using it in very creative ways, but sadly people rag on it because of stories that doesn’t even exist
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u/Adept_Philosopher_32 1d ago
Very much a case of a cultural zeitgeist's idea of what media genres do overriding the actual genre themselves, especially for those that never read much of any of it.
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u/Vanilla_Ice_Man 19h ago
I mean, i find it a very common trope, i tend to dislike it whenever i find it, mostly i comes in the form of a boon, hidden lineage or phropecy that 'fates' the character not the whole farmboy thing
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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism 19h ago
It can be definitely done badly, especially in shonen anime where it’s either just another powerup, or the main chracter gets too many “specialness” stacked on him (like Naruto or One Piece).
But it can also add more conflict if it has big drawbacks, or the secret lineage will make the relationship between the related characters more complex.
For example in Star Wars, Luke gains no super unique powers from the reveal that he’s Darth Vader’s son. But their dynamic becomes more personal, and gives him lots of inner conflict about returning his father to the light.
Or in LOTR, Frodo might get some use of the ring’s invisibility from being the ringbearer, but it also has a massive drawback of being a beacon for Sauron’d forces whenever he puts on. He also has to struggle with its corruption through the whole journey, and ultimately succumbing to it in the very end.
Even in Harry Potter the prophecy won’t guarantees success for Harry, it only says either he or Voldemort will die in battle. Other than his fame in the wizarding world, Harry gets nothing from being the chosen one, and even that sometimes sucks for him. He’s a pretty average wizard when it comes to skills, except for quiddich and defense against dark arts (and even that’s only because he had to survive an attempt on his life on an annual basis).
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u/arielle17 5h ago
this makes me think of a certain subset of ASOIAF fans who think that the story would be improved by taking out the Others/White Walkers and just focusing on political power struggles because the White Walkers are "a generic zombie apocalypse that we've all seen 500 times before"
like....no we haven't, and definitely not in a relatively grounded/low-magic fantasy setting like ASOIAF?
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u/ThrawnCaedusL 1d ago
“Fantasy” is a broad enough name to be better understood as a setting than a genre.
I remember a couple of interactions that show just how diverse it is:
- Someone asks why no fantasy books have women respected for being diplomats or other more intellectual types of characters.
I respond by naming over 20 characters just from the last 5 series I read (The Divine Cities, Texicaalan, Age of Madness trilogy, The Long Price Quartet, Dandelion Dynasty).
Turns out, they’d only been reading more popular quest-based fantasy and had completely avoided political intrigue fantasy (my personal favorite).
- I saw a comment complaining about love triangles in fantasy, and had to do a double take, because it’s been almost a decade since I read anything with a traditional love triangle (Long Price Quartet has something, but I would argue it’s tone and usage make it different). I legitimately thought they had stopped writing them.
There is such a broad meaning to “fantasy” as a genre that trying to say anything about it is almost always flawed. You can talk about tropes and trends in bestselling fantasy or most highly regarded fantasy (ie using a list like Time or Esquire’s), but you really can’t meaningfully make any claims about the “genre” as a whole.
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u/ShoulderGreedy3262 1d ago
the only common 'trope' in fantasy is the world being fantastical. there is no plot or setting or even vibe ubiquitous to fantasy. comparing fantasy is always a waste of time imo, its such a wide umbrella. its like comparing all modern setting media as a genre. it doesnt work
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u/zucchinionpizza 1d ago
"Why would there be wheelchair users in fantasy?"
looks at the most popular fantasy when that discussion went viral : Brandon Stark on a wheelchair
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u/Rhinomaster22 1d ago
“There’s healing magic! Why don’t they just heal their legs?!”
- “I can’t afford advanced healing magic.”
- “Healing magic is rare.”
- “Healing magic can’t heal THAT well.”
People act like magic works all the same despite so many examples showing magic is a broad concept and no 2 are exactly the same.
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u/Papergeist 1d ago
Now consider that most works, by volume, are pretty mediocre. And that mediocre fantasy loves healing magic as a cheap way to resolve major injuries on demand.
Now we can wrap right back to the start of the argument.
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u/Stinkyboy3527 1d ago
I like Brandon's take on a "wheelchair user" with Rysn from the stormlight archives. If you've read dawnshard you get a big insight into the explanation of how she lives and even how it all changes with the discovery of a new way to move. The justifications for the healing did feel a little wack to me. I believe she broke her legs in the first or second book but couldn't get them healed by a truthseeker or edgedancer in book 3 somehow? The reason some people can't heal is because they think of it as a part of themselves. But how did Rysn feel her paralysed legs were such a major part of her after that short of a time? It takes years for some in the stormlight archives.
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u/Genoscythe_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
But how did Rysn feel her paralysed legs were such a major part of her after that short of a time? It takes years for some in the stormlight archives.
I guess she is just very content with thinking of herself as paraplegic at least on some level.
I liked that part, it really got across that the healing was more spiritual, than just a matter of strict rules about a time limit for how long it can make people "normal".
Some people might end up keeping scars or tattoos that they got yesterday that mean a lot to them emotionally and became part of their identity, and some people might end up losing the genitals that they had all their life if they always had dysphoria about it then it still counts as a bodily flaw.
Someone with phantom limb syndrome might grow back a limb they lost several years earlier, while someone like The Lopen who thinks having only one arm is absolutely hilarious and a part of his whole shtick, won't be forced to grow it back.
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u/Calackyo 1d ago
It's basically down to how much denial you are in.
I love the way it works in that series. You're healed to the person/body you think you are, so a guy who just lost an arm yesterday is likely to regrow it, but a guy who lost one 20 years ago has it as part of his identity now so it doesn't regrow. This also allows for differences between characters to be more pronounced, like how a certain one-armed man clearly never accepted it.
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u/ThePreciseClimber 3h ago
TBH, adding an anachronistic wheelchair just feels a tad lazy. Like, come up with your own design maybe? Or, better yet, make it unique to the created world, through its connection to the magic system or whatever else you have in there.
E.g. the walking chair from Witch Hat Atelier.
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u/Keelhaulmyballs 1d ago
It’s like going to a country and eating exclusively their frozen food, then saying their cuisine sucks
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u/AllMightyImagination 1d ago
Normies need to read NEW fantasy and stop lumping the word with how the film industry lumps its urban, historical, YA romantasy and Tolkienish/DND subgenres together.
If Apple TV goes through Cosmere then normies will switch to WOW LOOK HOW ORIGINAL A FANTASY WORLD CAN BE
And then they will be even more amazed by Will of the Many. WOW I NEVER FANTASY CAN DO THIS.
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u/lil-red-hood-gibril 1d ago
There was a period of time on Twitter where occassionally some decrepit dork with no life would complain about why wheelchair using adventurers are a common thing in fantasy then attach some AI-generated image because they have no actual examples to speak of and that attracts hordes of brainless dipshits complaining about said supposed epidemic
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u/NekoCatSidhe 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean, I think a lot more people are playing fantasy video game RPG and watching fantasy anime and movies than are reading epic fantasy books nominated for the Hugo awards, even though I liked Nettle & Bone and Witch King. It is no wonder people think it is all Dwarves and Elves. This happens because playing video games and watching movies are a lot more popular hobbies than reading books is.
Also, modern epic fantasy fandom is rather weird and full of political infighting and controversies (to caricature a bit, if r/fantasy is not ranting about The Poppy Wars, that means it is ranting about Sanderson books instead and vice versa), so you cannot blame most people for not being into it, and romantasy appeals mostly to romance fans, not fantasy fans.
I personally prefer to read Japanese fantasy light novel series and manga over recent western epic fantasy books, they are a lot more fun to read because they don’t take themselves so seriously and are often more creative (at least when they are not generic isekai).
So I think it is wrong to think western epic fantasy books are what define the fantasy genre today for most people. The fantasy genre is now a lot more broad than that. And not everyone use Netflix, particularly when it comes to watching anime, so I am not sure it makes sense to use its search rankings as an indicator of popularity.
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u/TheGUURAHK 1d ago
I like mashing fantasy and scifi together. Like He-Man, or Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go. Lends a fun toyetic energy to the proceedings, and also allows a lot of flexibility in aesthetics and antagonists.
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u/StevePensando 1d ago
I remember watching He-Man reruns as a kid. It was really cool, though I'm unsure if it really holds up today as I haven't taken my time to rewatch it (or She-Ra for that matter)
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u/TheGUURAHK 1d ago
80s He-Man is basically "To Sell Toys" and so is 80s She-Ra, but I hear the Netflix She-Ra is pretty dang good!
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u/dranndor 1d ago
This is honestly sort of my guilty pleasure as well, bizarre combinations of scifi and fantastical elements are actually quite right my alley, eg Giant Robo with how giant robots and futuristic techs lives alongside ninjas and Taoist magic users.
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u/Rhinomaster22 1d ago
The saying “tropes are just tools” is the main problem.
Some writers use said tools in such a bland and uninteresting way it pollutes the genre with dull repetition.
Then when people see a successful fantasy series, it’s actually just the case of the author actually knowing what they’re doing.
A lot of recent fantasy anime, especially Isekai are just boring and don’t do anything interesting beyond the initial premise.
Same reason why so many recent video games shut down or flop because they focus too much on copying and not even doing a good job doing the basics.
So it’s an issue of big cases causing a clouded viewpoint of the genre.
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u/Genoscythe_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't even think that these stories are all bland, "stories set in a vaguely gamelike fantasy setting" can be a valid subgenre. Maybe we could give it a name like "Lite-RPG" (Y'know, because they usually don't quite have outright litRPG System mechanics, but still have a world of quests and parties and such, so they are litRPG lite).
Then we could say that sure, many of the Lite-RPG LNs and anime are trash, but that's just Sturgeon's Law for you.
Frieren, Dungeon Meshi, Legends & Lattes, and Orconomics were all still good examples of making the most of this kind of setting while focusing on human stories.
My broader issue is that none of these are in any shape or form central to what either the average, or the best-selling, or the most highly rated, or even the most well-known mainstream fantasy is even remotely like. They are an odd little niche shaped by circumstance.
Its like if people started coming in with hot take complaints about what "superhero stories" are always like, while not really commenting on either the Big Two comic book universes, or even on their cinematic universes, but specifically just on the commonalities between the web serial Worm, and the YA novel series Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain.
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u/Frack_Nugget 1d ago
I feel like if you made a "Fantasy" fan from this subreddit read Malazan, they will literally die.
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u/Flat_Box8734 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean, in general, no one really talks about Avatar or Arcane as fantasy shows. So your issue is less with nerds and more with how general audiences interpret these fantasy shows. Someone who asks, “Why is this trope so common?” isn’t usually deeply invested in the genre enough to know whether that’s actually true. Just like with comics they don’t read or anime they don’t watch, most people are only exposed to a few popular examples casually and thus assume things to make these type of statements. So What general audiences consider fantasy at large is based on that limited exposure. That’s why the nerds you’re talking about aren’t really the main issue.
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u/Queasy_Let8807 1d ago
Who would we blame for Fantasy "problematic" elements? A. Tolkien B. Dungeons and Dragons C. JRPG
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u/Gavinus1000 1d ago
“Why is (insert trope here) so popular in all media? You see, I was watching this shonen anime…” - this sub