The stupefaction of modern fantasy annoys me a great deal. The Hero always gets absurd power that only they can control, there’s a creepy constant of ‘earning the romantic partner/their heart is the prize’ rather than it being a journey of being yourself and working together as equals, the White Savior dynamic is back and I want to set it on fire with a battle-barge’s worth of promethium and cyclonic grenades, and barring a few authors who rarely get the chance to do a sequel, nobody ever does a genre-flip from the ‘villains/monsters’ side of the story that doesn’t even have the protagonists as underpaid and fed up Evil Minions, Defectors from Villainy or scrappy rebels who have fallen under said-White Savior’s leadership.
So let’s take this thread places and kvetch about modern fantasy, and what we’d like to see more of.
- Everybody is the Hero of their own story, but its a Black vs Grey setting
More stuff about the maligned monsters, about how their noble society keeps getting pummelled by these self-righteous lunatics with delusional ideas on how the ‘monsters’ society is run, and every time they send ambassadors, diplomats or even try to talk to captured heroes about this, they just run into a screeching, ever-defiant wall of intolerance and fanaticism, learning that the ‘Crusades’ they’ve been facing are the result of centuries of religious and political engineering to paint anything Non-Human as inherently lesser, that any nation, race or force that could stand in the way of this nation’s ascendancy was tarred with this brush and that they’re just the first victims on their continent for this treatment, realising with horror that the continent these barbarians hail from was long ago conquered and all the Non-Human races have either been wiped out or enslaved to serve the New Regime, and that this Crusade ‘must’ win for the invaders, because centuries of relentless expansionism and ruthless corruption has ruined the earth, poisoned the waters and squandered almost all available resources.
The ‘Crusade’ isn’t murdering babies and the elderly because they are told its what their Gods want, but because they’re so close to starvation and total societal collapse back into hunter-gatherers back home that even the most conscientious objector is saying “Well it’s not my baby …”.
This results in an even more ferocious defence by the locals and natives, which provokes the Crusade to literally throw every body that’s upright and breathing (and eventually not even that) at the fight because the only thing that’s allowing them to limp along is the horrendous mortality rate stretching out their resources enough to sustain the survivors, and keeps them at this with ever more heinous techniques because if they run out of bodies before taking enough territory, they’ve lost all their slaves to the war effort, none of their soldiers know anything about farming or crafting, and the moment they can’t keep up the pressure overseas, the leaders of the Crusade fully expect everyone to act just like themselves and launch a brutal campaign of conquest and genocide in retaliation.
Being told constantly by the other world powers to ‘take pity’ on the same Crusaders that are howling for their blood because of racial ties between these world powers and the Crusades leadership, their neighbours blindly believing they’ll be spared if they turn a blind eye to the massacre, and infighting amongst their own leadership who are either too far removed from, or blind to, the scope of what will happen if the Crusade does overwhelm the beleaguered defenders. Of the clashing ideals of the Crusaders who think they’re on the side of their Gods and can’t fathom why they keep losing, and the Defenders who are outraged by the slaughter and the madness of these invaders, and those on either side who come to realise why this war is being waged and that the only way forwards is literally over the top of each other’s peoples.
- Tales from the Roadies
What happens when the Heroes are insane, entirely self-absorbed, irredeemably horny and horribly incompetent? You head to the B-Team. What happens when they’re exactly the same, with an added dose of homicidally jealous of the Heroes?
And how far down the line do you have to go before you find somebody actually heroic before their lack of power becomes an issue?
What happens when the only people the Kingdom can reliably call on to complete the mission are general, basic civilians, but politically, they have to let the Heroes lay claim to the deeds? A story about average, ordinary people out on a quest for the sake of the world, having to look on in bewilderment and growing discontent as these ‘Chosen Ones’, these ‘Heroes’, act like spoiled children, fling about powerful magic and supernatural abilities like toddlers throwing tantrums and generally make things worse for the Kingdom and the World with their selfishness and evil ways.
And at what point does this team decide to screw destiny and see if the Demon King or what-have-you is really as bad as they say, and begin to question if the Great Prophecy is actually true, if its been altered to enshrine the Royal Family to protect them from being overthrown, or if it was manufactured in its entirety as an excuse to gain power and wealth by the families and factions behind the ‘Heroes’ of the setting.
Are those people on the other side of the mountains really evil baby-eating monsters or are they just people with green skin and bad oral hygiene? Are the Witches of the Woods truly devil-consorting soul-snatching spell-casters, or are they just a very reclusive order of herbalists and sorcerers who got tired of being set on fire or aggressively propositioned by both Clergy and Heroes? Is the King and his family really descended from the God above all Gods, or does their heritage lie in an altogether more fiendish direction? Completely ordinary people thrown into the grinder who use common sense, rational thinking and co-operation to overcome the ‘Trials’ that the Heroes keep failing and sabotaging for each other, and find an answer that they never expect, and that the Kingdom might be willing to kill to keep a secret.
- I blocked the Call of Destiny
What happens when the ones destined to bring about the Final War and settle the Gods’ eternal struggle for control take one look at each other and go “… fancy a pint?” “Gods, yes.” and settle down over a counter meal to hash things out.
Well, technically, they did what the prophecy called for. It never said one side had to kill the other, only that the Champions were to meet and settle the dispute. And so, much to the chagrin and outrage of the Gods, the feud is settled, the most peaceful and benevolent God in the setting gets the Throne, all these armies that had been gearing up for generations for a armageddon to end all armageddons find themselves being told to go home and beat their swords into plow-shares and the like, and the Temple Clergies and Kings and Emperors who were poised to role over it all on behalf of their Divine Masters find themselves impotent, over-extended and entirely broke.
This leads to a series of subtle and less-than-subtle attempts to prove the Prophecy was not correctly carried out, by both outraged Gods and desperate Mortals, which ends up creating a grand adventure for the now-retired Champions, who have settled down, had families or gone back to their old lives, who now have to protect their families and each other as schemes, sieges and sorcery is leveled at them by the leaders of the belligerently-pacified leaders of the world, who quickly remember in turn as to why these people were their Champions when a line is crossed and the Ex-Champions stop trying to hold back…
- A Villain no more
What happens when the villain wins. What happens when they were proven right all along, and the Heroes were the ones propping up a corrupt and despotic regime, even if they weren’t aware of it?
What happens when the Villain had no intention of surviving the whole debacle, and now finds themselves worshipped as a near-God by their followers and the lower classes of their former enemies, and as the Devil Incarnate by the leaders of that regime and their surviving champions?
They won. They averted the Doom that had come for their World. They saved the people that they thought despised and hated them, they exposed the hypocrisy fostered by Temples and Kings and Scholars that the Demi-Humans were evil and that Humans were innately good, and freed the slaves, toppled the despots and defrocked the corrupt priesthoods’ leaders. But rebuilding a world shattered by war and hatred is a very different, and significantly more difficult, task than funnelling an army of desperate outcasts, maligned races and embittered former champions in a single direction towards a magical Mac’Guffinite.
How do they do this when the people are still divided by gender, faith, race and creed? When their former rival seek to undo every step forwards out of pure, malignant hatred and crushingly bruised pride? When their followers decide its time to carve out their own empires and retake the lands that were stolen through sword and fire by returning the favour? When a host of ‘partners’ are thrown at them by petty lordlings and minor kings to cement alliances, but the Villain has a lover, and rejecting them out of hand will result in only more conflict and further bloodshed?
There’s more, but these pills are making me incredibly sleepy and I have to go back to work tomorrow, radiotherapy or not.