Saturday 27 September 2014

I'm Sick of Traditional Fantasy!

There are two things you should know. 1) I love fantasy. It’s the genre I write and read. 2) I’m really sick of most ‘traditional’ ‘epic’ and ‘sword and sorcery’ fantasy.

It’s hard to explain and I’m not sure if I can put my finger on exactly why my beloved genre puts me in such a foul mood. If I had to sit down and think about it (as I am attempting to do right now) then I imagine that in reality, I simply find the genre is often handled badly. Traditional tropes and clichés seem all too prevalent. I’m not saying that every single story follows these pet peeves, but a whole lot of those I’m reading do.

You can put good money on it being a medieval world, where food is basic and boring, decoration is basic and boring, and people are basic and boring. Guess what all the characters do in their spare time? Go hunting and / or train to be a warrior. I get that these worlds, based upon medieval life, are supposed to be harsh and requiring of brave, noble people. But there’s just something about that, which I find so very, very dull.

Then out come the stock fantasy races. Why hello, elf! Let me guess, you’re a pointy-eared quiet and reflective type very in touch with nature and / or magic, or alternatively a massively arrogant jerk? Hello to you too, dwarf! I bet you’re short and abrasive, with a love of weapons, fighting, and gold. Races beyond that are a little better, but there’s something about dwarves and elves that really gets under my skin. I think I simply consider them lazy. One is just a short person. The other is a model with pointy ears. Vampires do come very close to joining this group of annoyances, but despite their torrent of popularity and representation in this current age, they’re not such a problem. In reality, they’re just pale, fanged models. I think the thing which keeps them a cut above, is that you can (based purely on available classical mythology) do so much more with vampires. They have such a rich weave of powers and weakness, differently attributed across the globe.

But I digress.

What else bothers me about ‘typical’ fantasy? Well there’s the journey and training parts. Our characters need to go somewhere. You can be fairly sure they’ll have to trek through either a forest or some meadow-land. I can just about bear it, if we’re going through a desert or some snowy climate, but even then, there’s something very tiresome about journeying. The scenery is all a bit too samey. Somewhere on the way (if the hero isn’t already a shining paragon of goodness, with muscles and expert swordsmanship / magical powers) we’ll have an obligatory training montage. Again, perhaps because I’ve seen the same thing so many times, having to read as someone learns how to fight and / or use a sword is extremely boring.

Looking all these factors over, I have to round back to my point right back at the start of this little rant. I dislike a lot of fantasy, because there’s no imagination there. I mean, come on, this is fantasy! By definition, that encompasses literally anything you can imagine! So why, why, why, why, why do people insist on taking the easy route and reusing such tired clichés? I’m not saying ‘elf’ should become a swear-word. I just mean that if you’re going to give me an elf, for goodness’ sake, do something different with them.

This is fantasy, where the potential should be limitless, rather than stuck to the same tropes J.R.R Tolkien invented nearly a hundred years ago.