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Things You Want More From Fantasy



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Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:42 am
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Zyox says...



Currently I am in a stage of regaining my will to write, it's been a while, and I'm in a lengthy struggle to create myself a Fantasy plot I thoroughly enjoy and am attached to.

I came here to ask of you simply, what do you want more from the fantasy genre?

Please post comments! I would very much appreciate some ideas to better flow my writing!

-{Zyox}-
  





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Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:28 am
Lightsong says...



Intelligence and emotions. Why? Firstly, I crave for the good guys to win the seemingly impossible battles by using brilliant, out-of-the-box solutions, instead of deus ex machina helping their victory. Secondly, I view mages or non-mages who play important roles in the story as complex characters dealing with everything that poses threats and problems to them, and therefore their emotional responses and sensitivity to these need to show to reflect their characters.
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Tue Mar 24, 2015 6:53 pm
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LadySpark says...



MORE FEMALE CHARACTERS AS THE HERO.
More ugly people as the hero.
More actual people as heroes, not glorified beautiful blonde haired men with no faults who are driven by the love of their family.
LGBTQ*+!!!!!!!

I cannot stress the first one enough. We need more Agent Carter's. We need powerful young women in the hero roles so bad. Sooooo bad. I want to see women who don't find romantic love, but find friendship love. I wanna see women who struggle with their roles as heroes. I wanna see real girls that can kick butt just as much (if not more) than the powerful boys. I wanna see more women as main characters all around. I want even supporting characters to be well rounded. I want the men of fantasy to let go of internalized misogyny and respect their female counterparts as powerful people.
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Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:22 pm
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Holysocks says...



I'd like to see more out-of-the box ideas. It's fantasy; you can literally do ANYTHING but the genre seems to be stuck in medieval times. Of course it's everyone's choice what they want to write about, but I'd still like to see more unique setting and characters and worlds.
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Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:37 pm
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Mea says...



@Holysocks said it first. XD

I'm rather sick of medieval sword and sorcery type worlds. (Elves, dwarves, humans, dragons, etc.) There are quite a few good ones out there, but they're feeling less original by the day.

I'd also love more interesting magic systems and cultures and more exploration of how they interconnect. Brandon Sanderson is a really good example of this, and I wish I could see more stuff like his.
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Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:40 pm
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Vervain says...



@Holysocks and @Meandbooks, you might be interested in checking out other genres, then -- well, subgenres -- like historical fantasy, steampunk and cyberpunk, all that sort of stuff. Mainstream fantasy definitely feels like it's stuck in the AD 700s-1400s, but that's because a lot of the stuff that isn't is put into a different subgenre. It's not as much an issue of "fantasy focuses only on medieval worlds" as "fantasy focuses on European worlds and anything that's not medieval isn't under the fantasy heading".

As for what I'd like to see more out of fantasy? Non-European-based societies. And I don't mean a one-off "trading society" in the "Far East" because come on, you're just not even trying at that point. I want to see Indonesian kingdoms, South American empires, Oceanic societies, places that aren't just England and France and Germany over and over again. Because it's painfully obvious when a place is just a Europe expy, and everyone just assumes that a fantasy world is a Europe expy, and European Fantasy Land #43 is just boring at this point overall.

I'd also like to see a lot more MOGAI people. (Marginalized Orientation and Gender Alignment, and Intersex, that is. Basically LGBTQIA+ with about ten billion less letters.) It feels cheap, like a cop-out, when an author is "accepting" of MOGAI people because they have a grand total of one, usually stereotypical, MOGAI character. I'm not saying that everyone has to be gay or anything, just a bit more diversity as far as everything goes.
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Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:44 pm
Zyox says...



Thank you to everyone who has posted so far! I'm finding ideas already beginning to knaw at my mind! Please, do keep your wants from the fantasy genre coming!

-{Zyox}-
  





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Tue Mar 24, 2015 9:09 pm
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Hattable says...



@Holysocks I'm writing a story at the moment that isn't set in a medieval world... Not sure what the setting is going to be yet as I haven't built the world much, mostly just the premise.
Spoiler! :
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Please don't consider this shameless advertising, I am advertising but because so far my story's done good and I want more people to see it, so I can get a broader view of what I can fix/do with it. :P
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Wed Mar 25, 2015 6:52 pm
Gardevite says...



I really want to see more complex and magical modern worlds, and well developed villains.
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Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:40 pm
beans says...



I want the heroes to struggle more, in a very physical way. Sorcerers and wizards are really cool, but there needs to be a limitation to their power in some way. Even Gandalf got tired from time to time; He wasn't just casting magic missile at everything that they came across, because his power had a cap. It prevented him from simply steamrolling through every challenge.

Good fantasy operates on a clearly defined reality; the fantastical/magical elements stand out more this way. Unless you're writing a Terry Prachett story, in which case, go bonkers.

I also agree that fantasy settings can be somewhat stale. I wanted to do a medieval fantasy story, save for some Escaflowne-style giant robots and magic (my story is heavily inspired by Escaflowne), but it felt too cut and dried, so I went with a more dieselpunk/soft sci fi setting instead. I traded horses and chariots, swords and shields, for cars, trains, airships, firearms, and televisions. I'm quite happy with the result so far.
  





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Sat Mar 28, 2015 3:42 am
eusouJT says...



A lot of times what I want is I want that when the character who is oppressed by his peers agains the ability to fight back or use some level ability to handle himself I want him to assert himself to himself and not just imidly discover his powersa dn act like they are curse, we all grew up watching movies and cartoons and dragonballz so I assme that if any of us would gain a power we would not be shooken up and scared about it Im pretty sure we would all be excited
  





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Tue Mar 31, 2015 3:15 am
r4p17 says...



One thing I don't see a lot of is non-magic fantasy. It is almost a given. The nice thing about fantasy is that you can go anywhere with it as long as you are consistent and still have awesome characters. :) I think authors should take advantage of that. Personally, I am part of the epic fantasy sub genre, but I'd like to see more outside the box stuff in Fantasy.
One writer with one imagination makes thousands of new worlds and stories." ~ Anonymous author
  





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Tue Mar 31, 2015 5:25 am
Kale says...



I think the real question here is what do you, Zyox, want to see more of in the fantasy genre?

If you write what you want to see more of, it will help to keep you motivated because you're writing something that you enjoy.
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