Problems with fantasy fiction

Does anyone feel as though there's some things that make no sense in a lot of stories? I mean, practically every fantasy story is set in a pastiche of medieval Europe, but A Song of Ice and Fire is the only one I've read that actually seemed to reflect this. A lot of the rest have very anachronistic modern cultural attributes. Plus, often there's some pretty powerful magic but this doesn't seem to affect things. I mean, with what a lot of wizards can do in these settings, there goes your castles, just to start with. Heck, some could probably take on armies by themselves.

Of course, given how powerful many mages are, you'd think they'd be running things, but this is at best the exception. Most times it's actually rare. The magic is often not used for practical things either-it's like the innovations just don't occur to anyone (or rather, the author didn't think of it/doesn't want this). For instance, the book which first make me notice this I think is Talion: Revenant where two characters discuss how practical teleportation would put ships and caravans out of business. In most books though, teleportation is practical, yet this (and other things) simply never happens.

There's also in some stories like Harry Potter how mages hide themselves, with no justifiable reason. If anything, muggles would have to hide from them in most cases, given what power they usually wield. Plus, where magic is shown as hereditary (and basically always a dominant trait) this extremely advantageous gift never becomes widespread in the population. A real-life scenario would probably end with muggles long since bred out of existence.

Last on a minor note there is the way so many mages dress: pointy hat and long robes. Is this a The Lord of the Rings stereotype, The Sorcerer's Apprentce, or even earlier? I don't know, but it just seems repetitive, and the robes quite impractical given what most mages get up to (while working in labs and fighting, for instance, those would just get in the way). So many cliches... I love fantasy, don't get me wrong, but this tires after a while, especially since I first began noticing this stuff. Now I see it everywhere.

edited 12th Jul '16 5:34:16 PM by Fireblood

First off, it's far from the only one that tries to create that vibe. Secondly, it's far from an accurate portrayal of "the Middle Ages".

Also, if you're looking for stories that reflect medieval Europe you might want to read historical fiction rather than fantasy.

Well it's the only one I know of so far. I'm sure there are others, but it seems to be a minority. I didn't mean to say it was portraying the actual Middle Ages-it's still fantasy, after all-but it's far more realistic than most I've read. What I want is far less "medieval" fantasy overall, particularly when that makes no sense given what exists in the story (examples above).

People read fantasy looking for sword fights alongside their magic. If they didn't, the genre wouldn't sell. The genre as a whole is an outgrowth of the tropes found in myths, legends, fairy tales and folktales, and it reflects those tropes.

I guess I'm not sure what you're looking to accomplish in this thread. You're not a fan of the standard fantasy genre. Okay. So what are you looking for? People to share your complaints with? Recommendations of things to read that differ from the genre as a whole?

edited 12th Jul '16 6:25:58 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Either. Both. Seeing if anyone has the same views or noticed these things too. Just putting it out there really.

Well, let's talk about some of those complaints then:

Teleportation is hardly a common trope in fantasy. There might be a character who can do it, but there's rarely a whole lot of them, and there's loads of fantasy in which nobody can teleport. That seems like you taking a complaint you have with one or two books and extrapolating it to the entire genre.

Even historical fiction tends to feature anachronistic modern cultural attributes, because no matter how much research a person might do, putting yourself in the mindset of someone from a different culture or time period is virtually impossible.

I'd note that said anachronisms are a lot more justifiable in fantasy, given that in fantasy you are dealing with an invented world that can function however the author damn well wants.

edited 12th Jul '16 6:27:38 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is set in Totally Radical modern day America.

edited 12th Jul '16 6:28:14 PM by flameboy21th

I'm talking about when they can teleport. No, that doesn't apply to books where they can't (however I've read a fair number in which it's possible). That was probably a poor example.

As for anachronisms, I understand. It's just a lot of times the cultural attitudes don't seem justified. I mean, if you have loose sexual mores, that would be justified by easily available contraceptive spells or whatever else. However many times that doesn't seem to really happen. It's just...there. Because modern readers/authors like that I guess.

edited 12th Jul '16 6:35:46 PM by Fireblood

For teleportation—or any magic really—to revolutionize society, it would have be something that a sizeable portion of the population can do. If only one man in a million can be a wizard and the world's total population is less than a billion, your magic users aren't going to to be altering society all that.

Something to keep in mind too is that technological advancement doesn't always make sense and isn't always even. During the American Civil War, the warring states had the first Gatling guns and breech-loading rifles, the first ironclad ships, the first semi-functional submarines, and some of the earliest uses of military balloons. And yet, their doctors thought that pus was a sign that the infection was improving and that drinking a gallon of whiskey would cure snakebite. Is there any reason why a society with magic yet where everyone is armed with swords is anymore inherently ridiculous?

A lot of the time the cultural attitudes simply aren't explored, beyond what's happening to our protagonists. The author simply expects you to accept that if a lack of contraception was a problem they would tell you about it.

edited 12th Jul '16 6:37:42 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Well, not necessarily. It seems like wizards could make a good living in shipping, for instance. Or moving kings' troops around. Again it depends on who can do magic. Sometimes though wizards are really a dime a dozen in these stories, yet still this stuff doesn't happen.

It's somewhat ridiculous if the wizards are the equivalent of heavy artillery. If they can take on full armies by themselves, like I said, old weapons become pretty useless. As for the Civil War, yes it's definitely possible to have a disconnect between knowledge. In the real world that changed eventually, but with fantasy it just never seems to. Of course that is another trope itself.

edited 12th Jul '16 6:42:13 PM by Fireblood

But it doesn't automatically follow from that that somebody is going to invent newer weapons to compensate. Especially if your side can simply hire your own wizard/sorcerer/mage/whatever to hit back. If both sides can rely on magic-users in the heavy artillery role, than everyone else can go right back to fighting one another with swords.

Sure, they can both have wizards fighting each other, but we don't see much of that on a mass scale either. In this scenario, the spells would be the equivalent of guns and cannons. Once those became common, pikes, swords etc. started to disappear. Yes, it took a while-even so. The point isn't that you can't justify this at all. Of course you can. It's fantasy, as you said. However it just seems like so many simply don't. That's my beef.

edited 12th Jul '16 6:48:22 PM by Fireblood

To be fair, book writers write, mostly, to sell stories and earn their keeps. They're also humans, and prone to mistakes or forced to make mistakes, with some involved people basically not helping at all.

The sad truth is that poorly thought stories can sell well if it can stoke your emotion good enough.

And that Sturgeon's Law is very, very real.

Yeah, I know. In a lot of cases though, it's not that I hate these stories. Quite the opposite. It's just this stuff which bugs me.

You're still assuming a scenario in which the army-beating spell-casters you've described are common. Because that's the key with guns—they replaced swords, etc, once they became cheap and easy to manufacture and could be used to arm every man on the field (and even then it took centuries for swords to actually vanish).

Magic is almost always something that only a select group of people can do, which means there is almost never going to be a scenario in which every man on the field is using magic. Which means they have to be armed with something else—and if magic is filling the role of heavy artillery in this army, than it probably isn't going to be a gun (particularly in view of the fact that cannons became common before handguns did, so a society that doesn't need cannons is unlikely to develop handguns). That's even assuming that gun would be notably more effective against a magic user than a sword or a bow would be (early guns are notoriously inaccurate. Great for hitting an enemy formation. Not so great for targeting one particular guy).

And of course that's avoiding the fact that many non-magical fantasy characters are effectively superhuman in one way or another anyway. The moment that it's possible for a man with a sword to somersault over enemy lines and behead a mage with a single stroke of his (probably oversized) sword than having men with swords in the line becomes justified, even if the author never actually explains that.

EDIT: Also justifying things in-story isn't always easy to do. Say you've got a story in which easy access to magic has stunted technological growth. Commenting on that in an organic way is really hard to do, because unless there's a more advanced society around in-story, nobody in the setting is liable to know that their technological advancement is moving at a snail's pace.

edited 12th Jul '16 7:47:08 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Yeah, I am. Not all of these criticisms apply to every story. Some have cheap and common magic yet this still doesn't happen. That's my point.

True, but cannons were not manned by every soldier either. It didn't make them any less effective. Heavy artillery would be just an analogy. Often magic has been shown to be far more effective than either guns or cannons. Again it depends on the story.

If they showed that, I would have no problem with swordsmen still being effective.

And cannons didn't put an end to the era of sword and pike. Cheap handguns did (and even then it took a very long time). But you aren't liable to get cheap handguns without heavy artillery being developed first, and if the magicians are filling the heavy artillery role than that's not real liable to happen.

And again, it's sometimes hard to justify a trope without pulling the reader out of the story. Most societies with stagnant tech development aren't aware it's stagnant so having somebody comment on it would be pretty strange.

edited 12th Jul '16 7:53:13 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Why isn't it likely? That depends.

I don't expect characters within to comment on it, it's more the logic of the story itself that's all.

edited 12th Jul '16 8:56:12 PM by Fireblood

It's easier to make a cannon than it is to make a handgun. Or at least it is when you are dealing with early stage primitive gunpowder.

Again without someone actively spelling that out, it can be difficult to read. Not all fantasy has a massive constructed world where you can look at it and go "okay that makes sense". And sometimes the series that do have massive constructed worlds are among the ones that make the least sense. Case in point—ASOIAF has a low-magic world wherein 8000 years of recorded history has seen the advance from stone to steel, and that's it. There's no in-universe justification for it, and yet it's regarded as one of the most "realistic" fantasy series around. In contrast, Shannara often catches flak for its world-building, yet over the course of the series we've seen society move forward dramatically, developing airships, rediscovering gunpowder weapons (long story) and unearthing long-lost sciences and magics both.

edited 12th Jul '16 8:29:07 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Well, it's obviously not a direct comparison.

That's true, but we can still find things that make little sense. I noticed the lack of change about ASOIAF before, and it's definitely a flaw (though common). Not having read Shannara, I'm unable to comment.

It might help if you mentioned which fantasy novels in particular you're making these criticisms about.

Ok, let see your complain

"A lot of the rest have very anachronistic modern cultural attributes"

No surprising seen the diference between culture is so great it come as dificult to portray, nobody want a protagonist who think women are inferior, the system is just and all the jazz and get away with it, even song of fire and ice have Dany and Jon who are the most "modern" of all the chararter, come closs Tyrion and Stannis

"ften there's some pretty powerful magic but this doesn't seem to affect things. I mean, with what a lot of wizards can do in these settings, there goes your castles, just to start with. Heck, some could probably take on armies by themselves."

That dosent stick with mage actually, is more what I call "comic book mentality" where the world is the same not matter what happen(as watchman show, a world with superhero will be pretty damn weird) there is vast army but the main chararter can cut making clear that if you dont have name them you are mook at best,

" In most books though, teleportation is practical, yet this (and other things) simply never happens."

not really, most of the time teletransportation is just a chararter thing, but yeah there is a degree of reed richard is useless, is more a case by case basis

" but it just seems repetitive, and the robes quite impractical given what most mages get up to (while working in labs and fighting, for instance, those would just get in the way)."

Is more a style thing going on, Mage are seen a mystical and rope reflect that, what you refer is more a problem of some fantasy world of robing taking the otherwordly sense and reducing magic to pretty much super power

"ASOIAF has a low-magic world wherein 8000 years of recorded history has seen the advance from stone to steel, and that's it. There's no in-universe justification for it,"

in case of ASOIAF is more because records are not that clear about it, and it show with various chararter comenty the oddity about it.

Well, there are so many. I think some examples might be unknown to you though. Harry Potter would be one for some of these.

On Harry Potter: Well, for most part, wizards basically segregates themselves from muggles because prejudice and whatsnot, but basically it's boil down on the fact that, while wizards are powerful, there's truckload of easy agitated muggles who don't afraid to die if wizards decides to be a little jerk, or perceived to be a little jerk.

And that's before musket become conscript's standard armament. Now we have shotguns and magnums. And Glocks, I guess.

Yeah, in a way the wizards dosent want to contact the human world because there is so many muggle, it wont end well for them.

Also one thing, Harry potter is more a urban fanasy kind of thing so it dosent reallymix well with other fantasy genre, just saying