What makes fantasy generic

[mr friendly guy]

I have seen this term used to describe fantasy usually of the D & D type. I am interested in what features people consider "generic fantasy" and by extension what makes something non generic. Examples would also be greatly appreciated.

Is there some agreeable (for the most part) criteria for generic fantasy, or is this one of those terms like "wank tech" which we use a lot but find it hard to define.

[Dominus Atheos]

Depending on your definition (there is no one agreed upon definition), Tolkienian fantasy. An epic quest by a Company of people to return/seek/deliver the Plot Device and defeat an evil Dark King. Sword of Shannara, possibly Dragonlance and Sword of Truth, etc.

[Meest]

Prophecy, but guess that applies to sci-fi too.

[The Cooler King]

Depending on your definition (there is no one agreed upon definition), Tolkienian fantasy. An epic quest by a Company of people to return/seek/deliver the Plot Device and defeat an evil Dark King. Sword of Shannara, possibly Dragonlance and Sword of Truth, etc.

It was exactly those plot devices that had me reading fantasy only sparingly for over two decades. There were a few that bucked the trend (Game of Thrones, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Black Company series, for instance), but for the most part, fantasy novels were developmentally stunted for a long time.

[Terralthra]

Elves are haughty creatures who live forever, are in tune with nature, and are natural archers. Dwarves are greedy, drunk, wear plate mail and use battle-axes and warhammers, live in mountain cave castles. blah blah.

[mr friendly guy]

Would Robert Jordan's wheel of time be considered "generic" then given some of the definitions proposed, eg prophecy, defeating the evil dark king archetype etc.

[madd0ct0r]

I'd say that wheel of time was relatively generic, yeah.

Another point of genericism - Eurocentric with innately evil races.

[Zixinus]

I made several more points, but then I realized that those were essentially more "bad writing" than "stuff that makes fantasy stories stereotypical and boring".

- Basing your setting in a strictly medieval western Europe-like world, but without any in-depth knowledge of either that period's history or how those civilizations worked or even how people lived in those eras. Also, no gunpowder despite the fact that there are evidence of gunpowder as early as the 13th century (even if only as curiosities).
This gets worst when the writer essentially writes a story with characters, elements, religions, politics, etc. that would be more at home in the modern USA than in the medieval world they are trying to depict ("FOR FREEDOM!" freedom from what? The rule of one guy instead another guy's rule?).

- Making up your own language. Tolkien did it because he knew several and had a love of languages. My understanding is that even then, Tolkien made it up only to appease his own aesthetic tastes and the language was not meant to be complete. If you genuinely love linguistics and know linguistics, I'd say you are forgivable, but otherwise just don't. Relying on making up nonsense words and names becomes jarring very quickly, especially if you have to include a pronunciation guide.

- Any plot that is based on prophecy or "legends" (which despite the definition of legends, always turn out to be 100% completely true with no exaggeration or errors). Prophecies are like time-travel stories, everyone knows it's just a trick and the best you can do it is make it a spectacular trick. Otherwise, you are just telling your plot in advance while removing both perceived risk and agency of your character's actions.

[Guardsman Bass]

The "boring" aspect usually comes from shallow characterization and bad writing more than any particular element, although I've found that a lot of "Epic Quest" stories tend to go sour unless the characterization is good.

[Formless]

Cliche's for cliche's sake. Mostly this is an aesthetic problem rather than an issue with any one type of story. Plots like the Hero's Journey still work as long as they are written by someone who knows it inside and out, and understands the way tension, pacing, and escalation work in an epic. Sometimes the problem is as simple as the writer trying to jump directly into things they think will feel Grand and Impressive before anyone has had time to appreciate the setting or characters first. Or they make Tolkien's mistake of fucking up the pacing by failing to skip parts that are fundamentally boring, like trekking across the wilderness or showing off towns and other settings where nothing happens. Eragon did that a lot.

But those problems aren't what makes fantasy feel "generic". Its the sword and sorcery elements that are frequently put in for their own sake. And its not the only "generic" subgenre that can ruin something. Just as sword and sorcery has its Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs "modern" fantasy tends to have Gothic horror monsters like Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves. And there is always some kind of artificial barrier between the world of the supernatural and modern elements like technology, thus undermining the whole point of a modern fantasy tale. Like Harry Potter: not only do you have the Secret Society of Magic Douchbags, you also have the cliche of magic being superior to technology every time. Since 80% of a Harry Potter book is set in a magic castle, the modern trappings are mostly there for a bit of whimsy and contrast, not actually to have an impact on the plot. It could have been set entirely in the Renaissance with a few changes. By comparison, American Gods is all about a struggle between the Gods of the Old World and deities representing modern fads and concepts, in a land that was never fertile for deities in the first place (unless your name is Jesus Christ who is conspicuously absent from all the action). American Gods stands out because its as much about the modern world as it is about history.

A lot of anime follows the same plots, but unless you go out of your way to find shows with a pre-determined aesthetic like the Magic Girl or Super Robot genres, most are quite visually distinct and manage to feel more diverse than a plot summary would imply. Its because one of the first things the creators do is ask themselves how they want things to look and feel that will set it apart. Most western fantasy on the other hand is in written media like novels, and many novelists are actually bad at visualization because they are working with abstractions all the time. They get away with it as long as they can make it about the characters or if they are also practiced at poetry, but most "generic" writers are cheap hacks with a publisher's ear.

Actually, I would argue that gaming also tends to be better about this too despite its reputation. Dungeons and Dragons over time and editions has acquired a distinctive look that immediately distinguishes it from World of Warcraft and Warhammer Fantasy despite the fact that all three have Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs. They are hampered by the inclusion of self consciously Generic elements, but the visual aspect of the games have forced their creative teams to do something about it. And then there is Magic: the Gathering, which manages to make new and amazingly diverse worlds with every new Block trilogy. I sometimes wonder how those guys at Wizards of the Coast do it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Commercialism and money making have a big part to do with it in most entertainment mediums, I suspect. being innovative and creative is risky because someone may be offended/not like it/not understand it. So to be profitable there's probably some drive towards imitation rather than innovation.

[Formless]

An epic quest by a Company of people to return/seek/deliver the Plot Device and defeat an evil Dark King. Sword of Shannara, possibly Dragonlance

Wait, stop. Comparing Dragonlance to Tolkein is like comparing wine to champagne. Yes it has the derivative elements of elves and dwarves, but the plot diverges from that template you give shortly into the second book. By the second trilogy its doing a completely different, far more character driven story. The differences don't end where the time travel begins. I would argue that much of it is a deliberate attempt to undermine (or at least reinvent) the Tolkein standard, like the anti-climactic ending of Dragons of Spring Dawning, or the contrast between Tasslehoff and the Kender vs Frodo and the Hobbits.

[Ahriman238]

Mostly because people don't like it, or think it's all cliche and have trouble expressing precisely what they feel. There is a very real feeling that while science fiction is open-ended, Fantasy is limited to retrospective, because it is concerned with ancient histories and sword-wielding heroes. This naturally isn't always true, some of the best fantasy stories of recent years have been urban fantasy where magical elements exist in a contemporary setting, but are hidden from general knowledge.

[Guardsman Bass]

In defense of Harry Potter, I think setting it in modernity helps to make a point in later books about how the magical folk have become regressive and insular, with even pure-bloods sympathetic to non-magical people tending to have a patronizing attitude towards them despite their accomplishments and advancement. That's not the case in the first book, which is written for a younger audience and has a heavy element of wish fulfillment.

[The Romulan Republic]

Just as sword and sorcery has its Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs "modern" fantasy tends to have Gothic horror monsters like Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves. And there is always some kind of artificial barrier between the world of the supernatural and modern elements like technology, thus undermining the whole point of a modern fantasy tale. Like Harry Potter: not only do you have the Secret Society of Magic Douchbags, you also have the cliche of magic being superior to technology every time. Since 80% of a Harry Potter book is set in a magic castle, the modern trappings are mostly there for a bit of whimsy and contrast, not actually to have an impact on the plot. It could have been set entirely in the Renaissance with a few changes.

I think vampires and werewolves predate gothic stuff. I don't know if zombies do.

And a lot of fantasy set in the modern day has technology used along with and against magic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Dresden Files are good examples of this.

I think you're mischaracterizing a genre.

[Formless]

This naturally isn't always true, some of the best fantasy stories of recent years have been urban fantasy where magical elements exist in a contemporary setting, but are hidden from general knowledge.

And this is terrible 90% of the time. Its just a way of keeping the fantasy elements in a ghetto where they can't have any kind of impact except on the main characters. You might as well do the Portal to Another World style story, like Narnia and Wonderland, if that's all that matters in the narrative. The problem is, even though its standard for the sword and sorcery stuff to have either an alternative history or be set on a fictional world, "modern" fantasy always wants to put it in contemporary settings without actually changing them in any way. After a while, its starts to become amusing again because of the convoluted lengths an author has to go to in order to keep the status quo. Giants are attacking London? No problem! We can neuralize an entire suburb and leak false reports to the press! Of course, how our men are able to mobilize so quickly after the giants are already gone but not during even we don't know, because our heads are stuck up our assholes.

The scene where they fill in the Prime Minister of the UK was simultaneously one of my favorites in the entire HP book series, and one of the perfect demonstrations of why the series just doesn't work.

In defense of Harry Potter, I think setting it in modernity helps to make a point in later books about how the magical folk have become regressive and insular, with even pure-bloods sympathetic to non-magical people tending to have a patronizing attitude towards them despite their accomplishments and advancement. That's not the case in the first book, which is written for a younger audience and has a heavy element of wish fulfillment.

She already did a good enough job of characterizing them thus in the second book with the blatant bigotry they show towards elves and Hermoine, which doesn't require a modern setting.

But you know what, I could totally salvage the entire HP series in another way. Make it actual portal fantasy. Hell, its already halfway there, it just never got this treatment because like so many other fantasy series it was planned book by book rather than by how they fit into the larger arc. The wizards literally live in another dimension. Maybe they created it centuries before as a safe haven during the witch hunts and later as a form of self exile that the regressive types have always resented, but could never do anything about until Voldemort came around. But they still have a few ties to Earth; family, maybe some institutions (actually, having Hogwarts be on Earth as the last bastion of magic here would be a nice reversal). This simplifies a lot of things, like making the extreme proliferation of memory charms no longer necessary. Also, it creates consistency between books. The story no longer needs to invoke old magic six books after the original explanation was given for why Harry lives with his abusive relatives. Now its a simple matter that no one would think to go there, whether because they still perceive muggles as potentially too dangerous to fuck with or simply because most people don't know Harry has muggle relatives. Maybe the first Wizards War was contained to their own world despite the ambitions of Voldemort and his crew. Then there is some real tension when suddenly the Earth is no longer neutral territory like it once was.

If you want a ghetto, at least make sure the walls don't have cracks.

I think vampires and werewolves predate gothic stuff. I don't know if zombies do.

Pre-gothic vampires in folklore are almost unrecognizable to most people. They're more like ghosts or demons, less like cursed humans. Dracula and other Victorian literature pretty much modernized the entire thing. Werewolves predate it, no shit, but they were popularized at the same time. Zombies are the only stretch, but the very word would have remained an obscure concept in voodoo mythology/religion if Lovecraft hadn't written about them.

And a lot of fantasy set in the modern day has technology used along with and against magic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Dresden Files are good examples of this.

I think you're mischaracterizing a genre.

Buffy is the laziest example of ghettoization in the entire genre. The town of Sunnydale has a vague idea that stuff is happening, but never actually bother to figure out that there are vampires sucking people's blood and demons possessing people's minds? Fuck you. TVTropes used to literally have a page named Sunnydale Syndrome before it got renamed in their efforts to stop appearing so insular. The only reason people give it a pass is that it was literally treated as a joke, and nerds have a soft spot for Joss Whedon (I don't).

Likewise, Harry Dresden literally cannot use a semi-automatic because they fail to function any time he gets near one because "its too advanced" or some shit. Even though under the chassis, a DA revolver is actually more mechanically complex most of the time. Most people have just never seen one taken apart.

My problem isn't "RAH technology better", its that the reverse is all too often a necessary byproduct of trying so hard to maintain the status quo while still having supernatural shit everywhere that no one knows about. Take off your genre blinders, mang.

[Formless]

Commercialism and money making have a big part to do with it in most entertainment mediums, I suspect. being innovative and creative is risky because someone may be offended/not like it/not understand it. So to be profitable there's probably some drive towards imitation rather than innovation.

But that doesn't really explain why people complain about it being "generic". Clearly, people like sword and sorcery, but they like variation as well. I think the real problem, and this applies to SF too, is that there is a conflict between fantasy as a genre and the concept of fantasy. Consider that the word genre is derived from the word generic. But the idea of fantasy boils down to two interrelated things-- wish fulfillment, and an exploration of the impossible through imagination. This is what keeps people coming back to fantasy stories, not the castles and trolls and wizards with pointy hats. I say that the problem is cliche for cliche's sake because too many writers think the cliches themselves are what bring people to the table, and its actually the wish fulfillment just like 90% of Hollywood and SF. Or the desire to see something impossible realized through imagination; well, how little imagination does it take to slap together a half a dozen cliches? Next to none, unless you are truly brilliant as an artist.

[Crazedwraith]

Just to nitpick: plenty of wizards and people around Harry Dresden use semi-automatics all the time and they never malfunction. Turns out Harry just likes revolvers really. He's stuck in his ways about a lot of things like that.

As to Hp, I'm not sure how that even counts as generic. 'Popular fic, i like to think I'm cool for not liking' maybe but not generic.

[Formless]

As to Hp, I'm not sure how that even counts as generic. 'Popular fic, i like to think I'm cool for not liking' maybe but not generic.

Could be a generational thing, in that it got ripped off a lot and its hard not to see it in other works. By the same token, Tolkien isn't "generic" either, really. But you can still use it as an example.

[SMJB]

And this is terrible 90% of the time. Its just a way of keeping the fantasy elements in a ghetto where they can't have any kind of impact except on the main characters.

To be fair, if you want to have magic in "our world" rather than something like Soulless' magical British Empire or Anita Blake's magical America, you do have to somehow explain the fact that wizard duels never make the news.

That doesn't excuse being sloppy about it, though. I'm going to great lengths trying to justify this for an urban fantasy type thing I've been kicking around. Basically towards the middle of the book the vampire character is initially shocked when the Men in Black come out of nowhere with tech specifically designed for use against vampires and captures his ass, and then it hits him how utterly ridiculous it is to believe that thousands of uncoordinated vampires who have no interest in looking out for anyone who isn't part of their immediate clan are all able hide from the American government for hundreds of years, so of course it was that the government was merely allowing them to think that they had managed it in order to keep the vampires divided so that they'd be easier to hunt down and capture/kill.

[SMJB]

As for generic fantasy: quick, what do you think of when I tell you to picture "a fantasy setting"? Feudal lords employing wizards (for some reason, the people who can bend reality itself to their will haven't assumed power centuries ago) but mainly relying on unmagical knights? Elves who are long-lived and dying out (because, um, that's what Tolkien did), blonde and beardless (in spite of that NOT being what Tolkien did)? Battleax-swinging, hard drinking dwarves with long beards who are always decked out in armor and don't have access to magic? Always Chaotic Evil monster races who inhabit the inexplicably empty places between human settlements?

Chances are good that that's what you pictured, because those are the fantasy tropes that have become, well, generic. Generic fantasy, in other words.

[Batman]

Actually I picture a world where a guy allegedly running on solar power can casually benchpress a planet, people can move faster than the speed of light thanks to a lab accident, the potentially most powerful weapon in the universe suffers from the mother of all memory effects and is useless on anything yellow and an entire city's criminal population is terrified of a guy everybody knows will never, ever kill.

[SMJB]

Touché.

[Eleas]

I think of settings that are vast, sprawling, but incoherent. I think of orc analogues, ponderous prophecies, and a laboriously epic plot that meanders from map marker A to B. I picture huge namedrops that never quite roll off the tongue and don't show any plausible linguistic unity, and a main cast that are there as much to be wish fulfillment as to satisfy Joseph Campbell's monomyth. I see setpieces stolen wholesale from older works of SF/F and crammed wholesale into the stew: what we used to give the portmanteau "fjantasy", or "silly fantasy" -- the prose overwrought, the tone self-importantly but ineffectually reaching for gravitas, and patchwork world made from all the cool and awesome things the author saw when flicking through Frank Frazetta's ouvre. While I don't expect a truly "medieval" depiction -- the world will, if you scratch the surface, be mostly 1940's in how people think and act and feel -- I do expect it to be dressed up that way.

tl;dr: a superficial imitation of (the most evocative) Fantasy works; a padded Wagner/Tolkien/Howard pastiche; Sword of Shannare, Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, et al.

[Formless]

To be fair, if you want to have magic in "our world" rather than something like Soulless' magical British Empire or Anita Blake's magical America, you do have to somehow explain the fact that wizard duels never make the news.

Easy. Man reveals psychic his powers to his girlfriend = not newsworthy. Elf lady moves into Las Angelis suburb = not newsworthy. Crazy man murders seven in school massacre with a lightning materia = the 11:00 news won't shut the fuck up about it. Man invents an elixer of cancer smiting = the nobel prize ceremony is the most watched in twenty years. First dwarf president elected to office in America = media field day.

Point is, magic in its own right is only newsworthy if everyday people have no experience with it. Once that hurdle has been jumped, with the exception of innovations its what people are doing with it that is important. Ever heard of the pen and paper RPG called Shadowrun? It works something like that.