[ SECRET POST #5461 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5461 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 37 secrets from Secret Submission Post #782.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[meadowphoenix]

when you say "traditional" what do you mean? like is this a sad puppy thing or? I'm not saying there isn't quite a bit of lampshading, but a lot fantasy is still good v. evil, with firm categories of either, based.

anyway, if wheel of time does well, you might get some more!

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but I think you just identified one of the reasons why traditional fantasy isn't as popular as it used to be. People just think oh, you mean that sexist, racist crap that the Puppies whined about. I can't speak for the OP but for myself... no. That Sad/Rabid Puppy BS was embarrassing and awful, fuck those guys. There's got to be a way to get that classic feel without the problematic trappings.


... but then I hated Wheel of Time. :-/

[(Anonymous)]

Very much fuck those guys. Like, I just want to read about someone going on a quest with some elves. I don't give a shit about how it factors into someone's culture war and how kids these days aren't reading Heinlein or how John Scalzi's feminist guitars are robbing them of they "rightful" Hugo awards. I don't know what planet those assholes are on, it certainly isn't planet sanity.

[(Anonymous)]

IMO, it's pretty clear they've got other baggage that's coming out in the form of, "But fantasy isn't fuuuuuuun anymore!!" Those assholes actually miss the sexism, homophobia and lack of diversity, and they think that's the sign of Good Fantasy that the kids these days just aren't appreciating because they're drowning in wokeness or whatever.

[meadowphoenix]

I think "traditional" is throwing me off because there's plenty of quest fantasy out there, but there are more non-traditional heroes, etc. I think there are some annoying trends in titling, and making everything YA or NA with books that would have just been adult 30 years ago, but that's not a lack of quest fantasy or even chosen one fantasy, just more non-socially conventional fantasy with traditional tropes.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP but I interpreted this as literally there is a group of heroes and a villain they must defeat, without navel gazing or applying modern politics.

I literally don't care what race anyone is in such a book, I just want it to have no relation to the increasingly awful real world.

[(Anonymous)]

I am happy for fiction to pretend that there is a magical true king who is kind and beneficent to their subjects, because there sure as shit is nobody comin to save us in reality any time soon. Let me have fiction that can pretend someone will make it better, just for a brief escape. If it involves slaying a dragon at some point along the way too, so much there better.

[(Anonymous)]

This has been my mood about writing recently, so I'm glad there's a potential audience!

The world's just so awful lately--let me exist for a while in a world that isn't.

[(Anonymous)]

> "without navel gazing or applying modern politics."

Ah yes like how women are people and aren't just baby-factories. :| Or gay people existing.

[(Anonymous)]

See, you went too hard in on that one. Nobody is gonna pick up that bait.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, this is serious. I've never seen something about "modern politics" in this discussion that isn't code for racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

You’re not wrong that it is very frequently a code for bigots to pretend they’re not bigoted. Saying they’re don’t want modern politics in their media, while actually meaning they don’t want diversity or views that go against theirs.

But I think it’s fair to give the anon here who said they don’t want modern politics the benefit of the doubt. Because they could just as easily mean that they legitimately don’t want any kind of politics that remind them of the real world in their fantasy. It doesn’t ALWAYS have to be a code, just because of bad-faith assholes making it one elsewhere. This discussion was free of any transparent bigotry so far, at least as far as I’d seen, and was actually very pleasant to read. So I don’t see any reason to assume anon meant their comment about not wanting modern politics in their fantasy all the time to have ulterior motives.

[meadowphoenix]

I'm not really seeing a dearth of that? There's a lot of cringy titles out there, but still a lot of quest fantasy? Also, I feel like you can find a lot more with non-traditional protagonists because authors who would have wanted those kinds of stories with those kinds of protagonists are making up for lost time (occasionally they are put with the other niche audience titles instead of the fantasy sections tho).

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Got any recs????? I never seem to find any.

[meadowphoenix]

I am not the greatest reccer (because my memory for book titles is sieve-like), I haven't read all (they're on my list) but here's one, and I'll try to find my list for others:

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier.
Eta:
Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica
Every Heart a Doorway (and sequels) by Seanan McGuire
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen
Dreams Lie Beneath by Rebecca Ross
The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix
The Witch Walker trilogy by Charissa Weaks
Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells

[(Anonymous)]

I think one major part of it is probably "fun / pulp / adventure"

But also, fantasy has been going on for a long time; 80s romantic fantasy is basically as traditional as almost any other genre fantasy at this point

[meadowphoenix]

the specific literary decade is definitely part of my confusion with the word traditional, because I don't really see a dearth of fun adventure fantasy, nor good-evil fantasy.