Fixing all the Problems with Fantasy (Epic Fantasy, YA Fantasy, Isekai)

The Assassin's Creed games were always terrible, this isn't a new phenomenon.

0:00 - Intro
2:27 - Epic Fantasy
8:33 - Young Adult Fantasy
19:02 - Urban Fantasy
22:28 - Isekai
26:24 - Low/Dark Fantasy

[PlatinumAltaria]

The magic people are oppressed because OBVIOUSLY our main character needs to be one of the genetically superior group, but they also have to be an underdog. You can call this the undergod: a character who is inexplicably both gifted and ostracised.

Let's see, stuff I don't like:
- Big armies of unnamed characters dying, as though we're going to care just because they put a big number on it. One guy we know dying is more emotionally resonant than a million guys we don't.
- Worldbuilding elements that ought to significantly affect the structure of society that just don't. If there are giants in your world that breaks almost everything, please stop putting them in as an afterthought. If there's a spell to unlock doors then people wouldn't bother with locks. Don't just copy stuff over from our world without thinking.
- Trying to do eldritch horror but instead just doing fish monsters and kaiju. It's actually not an unknowable horror if you can kill it with bullets.

[Leivve]

Your Vampires control the stock market should unironically be the standard for modern urban fantasy like that. The arch type of the vampire is to represent the distant and aloof old powers, such as the nobility of the old world. In a modern fantasy, a Gilded Age vampire in a manor who owns a Rockefeller style cooperate empire, and massive stock portfolio is the perfect representation of them. Bound by weird archaic rules that no one understands, but likewise in their immortality they don't understand the world either.

[somerandomnoob]

My problem with isekai (or power fantasy webnovels in general really), is that they concentrate all the specialness in the setting onto the main character and then there's no other character that's allowed to be cool. It doesn't matter how many badass scenes the main character gets when all the other characters are pathetic. The more cool characters there are in the story, the cooler the story as a whole becomes.

I don't understand why this mistake gets made so often, because if you read the shonen manga that inspire these stories, all of them have a memorable scene or two where a side character becomes beloved for doing something badass that the main character couldn't do

[ribbonquest]

I want isekai to work harder to justify the isekai. WHY does this world need to summon a hero from Earth? Don't they have local options? WHY does Joe Middle Management get special reincarnation privileges? "The bad guys screwed up a summoning ritual" is the most effort I usually see.

I didn't watch it, but I remember reading about an anime where somebody assassinates all the isekai dudes because they cause more trouble than they solve. That's how I feel about it most of the time.

[jackscomics]

I’m writing a dystopian fantasy series where the magic used is channeled through the person’s nervous system. This would grant the user magical abilities but using too much too often would result in nerve damage, migraines, mood swings, decreased motor and bodily functions as well as an increased likelihood of developing severe cognitive and mental disorders later in life such as dementia and Alzheimer’s and in extreme cases, using too much can even result in either brain damage or brain death.

[TheLuckOfTheClaws]

One thing i especially hate about the 'the magic people are oppressed' is because it kind of garbles the entire metaphor. Like, the whole thing with real world racism is that it's pointless, baseless, and wrong; people of different races are different in phenotype and culture, but not in capabilities. if the oppressed class in your fantasy world can turn into bears and maul people randomly, or can accidentally shoot fireballs that explode crowds of people, there's actually a reason for others to fear them. This is why stuff like zootopia or Bright or that awful show about the zombies doesn't really work. if the other side has a point in your racism metaphor, you did a bad job.

[sorcerersapprentice]

Honestly, you REALLY need to read more Young Adult Fantasy. While I agree about the more "big name" examples, there are plenty of other stories that don't fit that mold. Six of Crows, Cinder, We Hunt the Flame, Cemetery Boys, and plenty more. You just to need to seek out the lesser known shit.

[nightwolfMKT]

I'd like to see more fantasy stuff tackle 1800s Europe-style settings. Not on the technological side but rather politically, a really unstable setting with constant rebellions and revolutions and changing territory and such. Where the nobility are scared and desperately clinging onto their power amidst their cousin-brother-uncles overseas being overthrown. At most you get, like, one revolution, and it's the main character doing it (or putting a stop to it).

On the isekai side, the main problem I'd say is how all the settings just work like a videogame. Even in the better ones there's rarely any attempt whatsoever to actually make a world or setting rules or anything, they always just are about literal measurable stats and levels and adventurer's guild ranks and all that rubbish.

[megantvenstrup]

Considering the Middle Ages lasted 1000 years, that's a huge chunk of Europe's written history. It's not that surprising that so many stories have such a setting, since it covers so much time. And even when some stories are set just after the Middle Ages, sometimes it can be hard to tell unless you're a historian. ASOIAF, for example, has a lot of post-medieval features, but most people will call it medieval just because there are knights and kings, even though those classically medieval aspects also exist after the Middle Ages.

[dragonify]

The reason Isekai stories are popular in Japan is because they are bought, read and enjoyed by salarymen, who work dead end jobs with unpaid overtime, requirement of going for drinks with bosses after that unpaid overtime, long commute times and all of it boils to no social life for friends, no time for hobbies and no love life. They don't really live outside working. So isekai stories offer a distraction, an imitation of a happy life, they get all the freedom to do what they could not in their old life, be respected, valued, socialize with new friends, meet girls and build a love life with them in a form of harem, even when it's just dangled in front of the MC and us readers until the very end of story, become the OP hero to save a town/nation/world from generic bad guys.

Also why would they want to return to their original world where they just work with no end in sight, aren't desirable by women, so no love later family life. In another world they get their wish - a happy life with no hardship.

[someidiot]

An important note about unique magic systems is to focus in on exploring the logical results of the base concept before you add more stuff. If your magic relies on self-harm, what does that mean, not just for wizards, but for society?

Guards check newcomers for scars, cause most mages cut themselves on the arms.

An order of assassins has mastered the art of invisible harm. They take a simple pill that causes gradual internal bleeding with no exterior side affects. None of them live past thirty, but they always get their target.

Old wizards live as mentors alone, as even simple spellcasting risks a horrible death from infection with their weakened immune systems.

An order of monks believes self-harm to be a sin, but are master wizards. No one dares lay a finger on them, for if you cut them they can unleash the power of your own strike back upon you tenfold.

An old warrior teaches the main character a useful trick. If you exert yourself for extended periods you can wield the burning of your muscles as magical power. It might be a tiny trickle, but you can reinvest it back into moving your body to grant you unimaginable endurance.

[KamenRiderFeline]

The "cut your arm off to do magic" is pretty close to Dorohedoro, where magic runs on "smoke", which comes from the blood of magic users. So to access it many magic users make holes in their bodies. One character cut his fingers off and stitched them back on. Dorohedoro is absolutely nuts.

[seanpoore]

8:00 similar to how ASOIAF and Stormlight will introduce a character for a single chapter to fill us in on a plot point that none of the main characters could be there for, before leaving them alone and going back to the original story. Sometimes even just killing them off so the story doesnt get hung up on giving "right place right time merchant" a whole wikipedia page

[ROEbt]

My biggest problem with isekai is that if you fix a lot of the common flaws, add a plot, interesting world building, character development wtc, u run into the question of why wasn't this just a fantasy series. Why'd the mc have to be from another world

[MasonShmason]

Fantasy doesn't have to be a continent-wide epic. It can be set in a single city, or even better, one district of a city. There needs to be more domestic fantasy in general. Idk why there aren't more stories about, say, an orc and a human genuinely falling in love and having their own generational story about their children and grandchildren and their trials and tribulations. If you must have magic, you can have it as simple as using a spell to help churn butter, or light a hearth fire.

[eriskalliste]

The original World of Darkness RPGs were actually pretty good Urban Fantasy in the way they integrated the secret magic people and the mundane world.

[ronokoftherainlords]

A good example of urban fantasy, would be the World of Darkness, where vampires, werewolves, ghosts, wizards and whatever else move and scheme in the shadows of mortal society.

[ericamborsky]

I once had a silly idea about a story set in a fantasy world based on the mid to late 1920s where an 800 year old vampire who has been a soldier most of her life must, under orders from her superiors in the army, infiltrate a high school to protect a boy suspected of having special powers from enemy espionage rings, organized crime groups and shadowy cults.
The POV would be mainly split between the Vampire and the boy's best friend.

Feel free to use this idea.

[herobrinesblog]

Ok, imma make sure to include all these flaws and annoying tropes in my next epic young adult isekai!

[ASpaceOstrich]

The young adult genre problem is the same problem I have with video games. I rapidly lose the ability to take a narrative seriously when the player is the only competent or relevant character in the setting. Skyrim is a great example of this. The player becomes the leader of the Companions, the Mages College, the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, the Blades, and becomes Thane of every hold. And you can achieve these lofty titles with basically zero effort. You can become head of the College of Winterhold with no magical skills, provided you can find some way to bullshit your way through the "cast babies first spell" check at the gate.