Suggestion: Low Fantasy

Here's another one of the Fantasy subgenres that is currently without an image, and compared to others like Dark Fantasy or Medieval European Fantasy, probably one of the more difficult ones to picture. Basically, the problem is how to show "Fantasy world without a lot of overt fantasy elements (or ones that only become obvious over time)". So let the brainstorming session begin.

First idea: 1◊, 2◊, 3◊, 4◊, 5◊.

Opened.

Now that I've seen the options, I lean toward 1.4. 1.5 seems like it would fit another trope...do we have a trope that covers that particular scene?

Not a specific scene, but the first thing that pops into my mind when I saw 1.5 is Hopeless War.

Because of the weird dog-cat thing, I'm gonna go with 1.4 as the best so far.

It just looks like a normal dog to me.

Lots of beautiful looking suggestions, but none of them are doing it for me. I feel like the intricacies of the genre dictate that we need an image that lampshades it, otherwise this just might be BUPKIS.

edited 10th Mar '17 2:52:52 PM by Karxrida

My biggest problem with all of the suggestions so far is that there is no fantasy as far as I can immediately tell. Worse, they seem to focus too heavily on war and knights which blur the lines further for me.

Thankfully, I have my own suggestion here◊ (Source is Gingitsune).

I'm not sure what that pic is supposed to be showing.

You're looking a teenage boy and his guardian fox spirit having a genuinely dramatic moment. The human in the center is simply an onlooker in this particular scenario.

This is a difficult one to pic, considering the extremely broad trope.

What about Conan the Barbarian killing a giant snake? [1◊ 2◊ Or The Battle of the Trident from A Song of Ice and Fire (3), the "grit" is there, but things like Rhaegar's dragon helmet allude to more fantastic elements.

The 10.1 snake doesn't look like a normal snake exactly, so I'd say that works. The handlebars in 10.3 aren't explicitly fantastical and the snake in 10.2 is huge but the fiery sword could be "too" magical(?). 7.1 could work, though I honestly thought the face-dog was the girl's.

I agree. I think I should have said it this way: 10.1 > 7.1 > 1.4 > 10.2.

edited 11th Mar '17 11:53:57 AM by WaterBlap

I know it does seem that way, but that's not the point behind the presentation.

A common aspect of Low Fantasy is the "plot scope" thing: in contrast to High Fantasy, which often involves saving the world, the stakes tend to be lower.

edited 16th Mar '17 10:00:25 PM by rodneyAnonymous

hmm, perhaps made a mistake trying to post this by hitting the image uploader at the top of the thread, sorry if that went somewhere (if anywhere) but this image seems to capture the "low" to me but I don't know if it sells fantasy hard enough. The fact that he has two swords might not be interesting enough to get the idea across at a glance.

image

I kind of like the gritty, dilapidated scene.

edited 17th Mar '17 1:30:00 AM by rodneyAnonymous

Looks like a Medieval European Fantasy, actually.

quality upgrade on 14, makes the thugs and beating more visible

something more obviously fantastic, elves executing wounded

I like 17.2 — has the grit and low scope of the genre, especially since high-fantasy elves are likely to be more pristine characters — and the fantastic elements are present enough for me.

I don't like the Medieval images because Knights and Castles make me think of high-fantasy, of which this trope isn't. Same deal with the elves.

I almost think we need something form an Urban Fantasy work since that's a common setting for this trope.

There's also the issue of it being hard to distill a broad genre to a single image.

edited 19th Mar '17 4:31:37 PM by shoboni

This might be one of those tropes that's better pic'd as a collage if we can't find an image that lampshades it, given that it can apply to a wide range of settings (from urban to medieval to other-historical-period to other dimensions).

edited 19th Mar '17 5:14:31 PM by Synchronicity

^^ Urban Fantasy has its own genre page, though.

Genres can easily overlap, especially with a broad one and a more specific one like this.

It seems since Low Fantasy about fantasy in a mundane world instead of being used for epic plots and creating a fantasy setting, Urban Fantasy would be a prime contender.

edited 23rd Mar '17 4:17:44 PM by shoboni

17.2 > 10.1 > 7.1 > 1.4

17.2 has gritty elves rather than super-magical ones, so I think it and 10.1 are good contenders. And since 17.2 is just more interesting (e.g. more characters, more action, obvious threat that'll end in an obvious way) than 10.1 (e.g. why is the woman just lying there?).

^^ The issue isn't whether the genres can overlap, it's that they shouldn't in an image. When you're dealing with closely related tropes, it's always better to have an illustration that doesn't cover both because it makes the tropes look identical and promote confusion and misuse.

That's a hard task when one is a sub-genre.

Anything with knights and castles overlaps with medieval fantasy or maybe even swords and sorcery fantasy.

edited 23rd Mar '17 5:29:56 PM by shoboni