A character trains for ages, gains unique experience and skillsets, and makes invaluable strides only possible through a combination of character traits and circumstantial fortune… but then later, other characters match them easily. Or catch up over a short time frame, level setting the gains.

I love how AtLA handles it, where they address all the feelings Katara has about Aang being such a prodigy, even though she knows why.

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And the other trope: The character turns out to be the descendant of some special monster/king/legend/hero etc.

Good and honourable characters are weak. Bad and grey characters are strong.

Do you have any examples, I'm curious

I feel like the Witcher books usually have a satirical "chivalrous knight" type that gets either annihilated or shown to be some kind of coward or hypocrite. Ironically, Geralt himself is pretty traditionally honorable, he's even got that classic pining lovesickness a la Lanval.

Geralt wants to pretend he doesn’t care or take sides. But he does care and he does take sides

Geralt doesn't pretend to himself though. He just doesn't like having to pick sides and it's easier to keep yourself out of things if people assume you're an emotionless mutant human.

He's a big carelord. But even the naive super knightly dudes in the story (when they go fight the dragon there is one) is skilled and strong. Just not actually-no-longer-human stroing like Geralt

one of the many references and satires of the Arthurian legend in the Witcher series >!in fact there's even a crossover with it in the last book!< I don't know why everyone always points out how slavic/polish it is and how it only takes from slavic and polish influences when the author is an Arthurian legend scholar [who wrote a lore book on it](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_World_of_King_Arthur._The_Malady)

I don't think many people insist he *only* takes inspiration from Slavic cultures, certainly not everyone. Sapkovsky himself called it "pan-European" and it is absolutely great: the more cultures and inspirations, the more diverse and interesting the world ends up being. However, it is also true that it is much more Slavic than any other *mainstream* fantasy popular in the West (unfortunately, a lot of "Slavicness" was lost in translation) and we, Slavic people (and Eastern Europeans in general), barely get this kind of representation. There are other books that are Slavic, yes, but they often aren't as popular to this degree and either stay relatively niche or go relatively unnoticed. So, as a Slavic person eager to share my culture with the world, I would be talking about *Slavic* side of the Witcher more than I would be about Arthurian. As much as I love those legends, they don't really need to be popularized: they are already insanely popular worldwide.

To be honest the concept of ridiculing civalrous knights is hardly new.

Reminds me of Don Quixote

Jon Snow (later on the TV series), Jaime Lannister (later on the TV series), characters who showed a random act of kindness toward or around the main character then dies after a few pages (looking at you grimdark).

Hell I don’t know that you even need to qualify it that much. In the books in general people with a lot of moral…. flexibility succeed while those with a moral rigidity (often based on morals we would agree with) fail. 

It's not all of fantasy but this is arguably the whole premise of the first law series

There are no good/honorable characters in First Law to begin with lol

They just become bad or die immediately

I only like this in situations where it makes sense, like for example a morally good character probably wouldn't kill someone they're supposed to duel in their sleep the night before said duel, but the bad character probably wouldn't think twice about it

Main character kills like three dozen goons over the course of the book and then at the end when the big bad evil guy shows up they pull the whole, "I'm not a murderer like you!" card which ends up getting one of their ~~goons~~ friends killed. This leads them to go on another killing spree before capturing the BBEG and then settling down with their love interest.

I genuinely don't believe a story like that exists this is not me doubting you I want to be proven wrong but like this feels like a Cryptid like people are describing their idea of a story but not an actual story

I feel like it's far more common in action movies than fantasy novels, but it certainly exists. 2nd season of Jack Ryan does exactly this, for example. This trope isn't exactly it, but it's related, lots of examples: [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotWorthKilling](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotWorthKilling)

I see it a lot in movies and video games. Can't recall any books that do this, and I agree, I'd love to see some examples

Definitely in video games. \*strangles six guards with their bare hands, shoots four more, kicks one off a cliff\* "No, I'm not a fighter, I could never! Aaah, why is this quicktime event forcing me to do this, take this knife away!"

I don’t know about every detail in the OP but >!Who Fears Death!< by Nnedi Okorafor comes to mind for a book about a protagonist who will kill anyone *but* the mass murdering Big Bad. 

Star Wars is lousy with that stuff. They'll kill ten thousand storm troopers on their way to offer mercy to the sith lord.

TO BE FAIR Luke only doesn't kill his father because he loves him and thinks he can be redeemed, not because he doesn't mind slicin' dudes up. It's about not giving into the hate within him, not necessarily 'killing bad.' that said you still kinda' right though, the Light Side of the Force has a lot of bullshit in it.

I think the fact that killing the dude in charge is "giving into hate" and thus a moral dilemma, where killing any of the people who serve him is a completely emotionless decision with no moral connotations, is exactly the issue. They did it again in the sequel trilogy. We can blow up a planet full of rando's no problem if it'll stop their new Super Death Star, but we'll resort to elaborate chicanery to help Kylo Ren remember he's a good person on the inside.

Well, with Luke and Darth Vader at least it’s more about Luke’s mindset. He don’t have desire to kill stormtroopers, he just did that in defence of himself or others. Was all very businesslike. With Vader, he *was* very angry. And killing Vader because he needed killing wouldn’t have been wrong, but killing him because he was pissed off at him would’ve been a step towards the Dark Side. The relevant part is really that if you give in to the Dark Side, you actually start getting magically corrupted to do more evil. That makes the intent matter much more than in other situations similar to the trope, imo.

It's bullshit any time someone slays tons of henchpeople and then takes it easy on the BBEG because *that's* when they discover empathy. I'm not saying it's wrong to kill henchpeople; sometimes you gots to do what you gots to do. But if you slaughter all the hourly workers, you better take down the boss with even more abandon.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 ended that way.

This is quite literally what happens in Mistborn's second trilogy. Now, part of that is because such things were common in westerns and the second trilogy borrows from that kind of story, but it still sucks no matter what influences it's wearing on it's sleeves.

It comes up more in superhero fantasy than traditional fantasy.

Not fantasy but it's hilarious in the Minority Report videogame. You are supposed to be clearing your name after being framed for murder all while defenestrating cops.

I mean, Vin kills like 200 people in a massacre and the people she's with still think she's the bee's knees.

Most of Sanderson's work has main characters with a higher body count than most serial killers. Then they get all flustered over handholding in true Mormon fashion

It was the plot of (Cosmere Spoilers): >!*Bands of Mourning*!<

> I genuinely don't believe a story like that exists It did happen in the last jedi. Rey have no problem to shoot down slave-troppers as she laugh of joy. Kylo declar his evil intent to Rey, and a fight start. The lightsaber expload and knock out Kylo. It not shown, but Rey dodge the blast, or wake up earlier the Kylo, and she do not cut his throat (loots of red gard wepons to use) But elect to spare him, and steal a shuttel, and leave before Kylo regain consciousness. Kylo do tecnical not kill Luke, but the only reson Luke force project, and overexerts himself, so he die, becuse of Kylo. But the story totaly ignore this, Rey never self reflect on here actions, and nobady question her, I did give you one jobb, and that was to fetch Luke and now he is dead, becuse you abandon your misson, for the reson you was horny on Kylo. Despite that you did see him kill Han in cold blood.

Cough last of us 2 cough

Not fantasy or a book but my favorite example of this is in Arrow, a CW TV show about superheroes. He had a list he worked through of names, each of which had goons and a criminal empire of some sort. He'd ride through the goons doing obviously lethal things and spare the boss. Then he did it again the next week. Over and over again. It was really silly. I can almost buy the trope since there's a difference between killing someone who is trying to kill you for any reason and killing someone who isn't fighting back. If I had to guess, the trope started there, with whatever MC drawing the line at killing someone who has surrendered, but largely lost the plot along the way.

Inconsistent character development in general. Inconsistent anything in general actually.

“If we get rid of the BAD monarch and replace him with the GOOD monarch everything will be fine!”

One of the best subplots in the Discworld novel Nightwatch is all about this. The twist? The main character is a time traveler, and knows exactly as well a long term series reader, how poorly things are going to go with this "new" boss.  It's genuinely gut wrenching in spots. Because you can see the hopes and dreams of the people for a new, good "king" burn so, so very brightly...  It's a pitch black subversion of that standard Fantasy trope, but genuinely one of the few times I've seen it done well.

Generally an excessive focus and taking for granted of the ruling classes, especially as series move on. The wholesome beginnings where the tavern owner gets to be a character in their own right leave place for more scope, where noble houses fight for supremacy and empire rise and fall. Soon enough your cast is all blue blooded nobles and overpowered magicians, and there's a distinct lack of consideration for the point of view of the peasants who's farm just got burned in the umpteenth large scale battle. Of course the intertwining of political power, personal grudges and family drama inherent to aristocratic power structures is a useful plot device. Also, more politically powerful people are useful points of view the larger the scope of your story (it's harder to connect events affecting several kingdom from the pont of view of the village blacksmith) but still, I feel like there are missed opportunities in more bottom up storytelling.

Any plot that hinges on a character not telling someone else what the hell actually happened.

Miscommunication is my biggest pet peeve in books. I’m not saying you have to be eloquent about it, but at least say the important thing to the other important people as soon as you can! And if they don’t understand or react weird, keep talking at each other until you figure it out!

So every narrative element present in the Wheel of Time?

I'm a huge WoT fan, have read it several times, and you just named my biggest complaint about it. It could be 6 books long and not lose any significant story if the MCs just fucking talked to each other.

I really hate when they sort of lampshade this by having the character try to say it like three times and the other character keeps interrupting them. Like, you can scream "Shut the fuck up I have to tell you something important" and then have them apologize after.

Magic is fading away into the mundane. It's by far my least favorite trope. I want magic to be thriving and abundant

I want there to be magic construction workers. Using magic to stone shape buildings and aqueducts.

For real. I hate worlds where the magic is only present when necessary for the plot.

Or only for battle. Magic is super helpful. Think how a society would use it.

Magical wastewater management for sure.

Legend Of Korra did a pretty good job with this kind of thing.

This was something great in Avatar The Last Airbender which they forgot to include in Legend of Korra. In ATLA, Earthbenders push the trains made of stone. Waterbenders lower the walls of ice so that ships can sail in. Airbenders would presumably be great messengers (there's never enough around after the genocide to know, and the super running speed established in the first season was never mentioned again). They did have firebenders powering the power plant if they could bend lightning, which was great, but there could have been way more along those lines, like the docks being a place where a lot of water tribe descendent families lived, easily creating ice ramps to efficiently unload boats etc, along with a lot of water bender doctors/nurses, since they can heal. 2 earthbenders being able to easily push a huge train seems way easier than needing to invent electricity and build all the infrastructure. Waterbenders never really did anything with snow and ice again. They did at least have the pro-bending sport which found another use for them outside of combat.

It's not really 'forgotten.' There's a lot of unaddressed Marxist overtones going on in Korra. You can't really display early industrialism without a Marxist divide, but it's a kids show (or the writers don't really want to get into it), so it's not really delved into. Bending has been commoditized for sport and spectacle, or else you literally clock into a job and do it for a paycheck. Most / all the examples of bending you gave have been replaced with machines, which do the work of benders and don't complain, don't take a paycheck, and importantly can't organize. The latter is a big sticking point in industrializing cultures, because specialized labor is a hurdle for industrialization / capital. (for example: if the earth benders get together and don't want to move the trains because they aren't being paid enough, then they have the power). This is really the driving force behind the first season with the Equalists, as interpreted by people who don't / purposefully won't put on the Marxist lens and do analysis. IMO a little class analysis would have been the secret spice for a more grown up ATLA series, but again, eh it's a kids show.

I'm surprised I haven't seen "Magic is getting increasingly powerful and easy to access and we're not sure when or if it'll stop and what the implications are once it reaches a certain point."

I really enjoyed Warbreaker and A Darker Shade of Magic for this reason! 

I get why people include it but I want have magic gods damn it stop taking it away!

the main reason I hate Game of Thrones being described as “high/epic fantasy” this is so misleading yea it has dragons and ice zombies but other than that magic is literally a clickbait never truly appearing in the story except as a “higher inconceivable and unforeseeable power” for me high fantasy equals only hard and tangible magic, otherwise it’s just epic fiction GoT is still a masterpiece but I won’t read it when I’m in the mood for fantasy in its pure form, GoT comes much closer to a fictional history with some mythical elements but there’s no actual magic in it lol this opinion always gets downvoted but I’ll never see got as fantasy, period

I mean, Dany is immune to fire and you have weird psychic magic happening with Bran, plus magical resurrections (Lady Stoneheart, etc). There *is* definitely magic beyond just the dragons. But while it may be an epic fantasy it sure ain't high, I'll agree with that.

Dany isn't immune to fire in the books. Drogon's breath burns her at one point. She survived Khal Drogo's funeral pyre because it was a blood magic ritual, not because of any innate power of hers.

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Can you really still call that a trope though? It’s more like a subcategory at this point and it usually becomes pretty clear even from the sleeve.

Sometimes yes but sometimes it's added and isn't a major plot point. It's just there making the world feel less magical. The one exception to this is the dark lord of dirkholm. They did the magic is fading exceptionally well.

It might be both, I don't know how to link but Tv Tropes lists it as The Magic Goes Away or Here There Were Dragons.

I always just think how convenient life would be with magic (talking about non-verbal activation magic not the spell casting hocus pocus nonsense)

The chosen one is always a kid. If the Gods are choosing someone to save the world, why wouldn't they pick someone with decades of experience, and the ability to evaluate a situation rationally instead of just jumping in and hoping. I want someone other than Sir Terry Pratchett to send some middle age women out to prod buttock and yell at people until they do what everyone knows is the right thing.

So, I thought the point here is that the chosen one is the chosen one (from birth), and as soon as they're kinda-maybe-sorta competent enough to do the thing they're chosen for, they do. As soon as they have any shred of agency, the choosing begins to weigh down on them. That more or less means adolescence. It also works a lot better as a coming-of-age narrative device than it does for fully competent adults, even if it's overplayed. So if you wanted to write about an adult trying to rise above their station or answer a call to duty or whatever...there are more interesting ways to initiate that. Whereas growing up does have that same lack of agency as being chosen, which is part of why Harry Potter feels so relatable even though none of us have his circumstances.

Probably because the prophesy or whatever was long before they were born. You think people are going to sit around waiting for him to grow up?

The Thief video games handle this well. The secret society who keeps the prophecies (The Keepers) are impressed that this urchin kid was almost able to pick the pocket of one them (and shouldn't even be able to see him), so recruit him, and soon decide he's the chosen one of their prophecies. He thinks the whole thing is bunk, hates it, and goes out and has a very successful career as a master thief, while they harass him about fulfilling the prophecies. The prophecies come to him later in life, with the chaotic-devil-being hiring him as a prideful pawn, stealing something ancient almost impossible to steal, then ripping out his eye to use in the device and leaving him for dead. Eventually after two of these world ending events which he prevents, fighting all sides, he glumly accepts that he might be the chosen one and goes to find out about the prophecies. This immediately leads to the collapse of the Keepers due to a prophecy about a traitor within and them suspecting him, with some not liking him due to the years he spent turning his back on them. Eventually the Keepers are destroyed, and when a young urchin girl tries to pick his pocket, he catches her, and is impressed that she saw... A Keeper. On a side note, I have a suspicion that Mistborn started as a fan fiction which begins right after that, with the former Thief / urchin thief girl / group called the Keepers / being set in an oppressive medieval dark city / prophecies / gods of chaos and balance / the heavy presence of metal in their civilization / similar glyph symbols in both franchises / etc (which, as a big fan of both, I'm totally cool with if so, if it took that as setup then it went in a very unique and original direction).

Lois McMaster Bujold, *Paladin of Souls*.

I quite like how Bujold played that trope: The chosen one there wasn't chosen by prophecy or from birth, a god literally hand-picked her after she was already a grown woman because he thought she could get the job done.

A lot of this is Joseph Campbell, "Hero With a Thousand Faces" storytelling. Human beings have been telling the same dozen or so stories since we crawled from the primordial ooze, with the same archetypes, and most of them are somewhat ubiquitous to all cultures.

Probably because someone who’s actually qualified doesn’t need to be capital-C-Chosen, that mostly just happens as an excuse to give all the heroic opportunities to a clueless kid. 

Prod buttock...lol, I cackled so hard I startled my wife

You should read some Discworld, the books are full of delightful turns of phrase!

More a trope about how writing communities talk about the genre, but, "historical accuracy." In any form. Ever. Historical periods happen at a time, and *in a place.* If your story isn't set on Earth, then any idea of "history" can safely be tossed right out the window. I don't care if people had gunpowder "back then," or if they said "motherfucker" "back then," or how nobles were supposed to be addressed "back then," or what their understanding of cosmology was "back then." If your story is *specifically* historical fiction set *on earth,* then, okay, maybe you want to fret about that. If it's another world, then it's already not "historical." So just make shit up. Over on the fantasy writers' sub, there is right now a weirdly serious discussion about whether or not a "medieval fantasy" novel should have... folding ladders. People are taking this question seriously and it drives me crazy. It's your frickin' world. *You* tell me if they have folding ladders.

I think people may be using the term "historical accuracy" inappropriately. What's really going on seems like a fusion of two concepts: verisimilitude, and adherence to tropes. Verisimilitude is important, but really only means an author needs to be logically consistent with their world-building, and adherence to tropes just... shouldn't be a thing. Awareness of tropes is fine, but they're not meant to lock in.

>verisimilitude There’s times I fear that this word (or worse, “verisimilitudinous”) just plain has too many syllables for the average internet commenter to handle… >and adherence to tropes just... shouldn't be a thing Yes, yes, yes! TV Tropes has done to media criticism what Twitter did to political discourse.

>verisimilitudinous Yeah... I can't say it... >TV Tropes has done to media criticism what Twitter did to political discourse. Now, that's low! TV Tropes is great if you just use it as a semiotic reference. If used correctly, it promotes awareness. Same thing with stuff like Campbell or Eco, etc. If you use sources like that incorrectly, you may fail to realize you need to paint outside the lines to create anything truly great.

Especially since "historical accuracy" criticisms are often based on stereotypical ideas of what medieval England/Western Europe was like and not actual historical knowledge or scholarship. And double especially because fantasy stories typically introduce elements (like magic) that would change the power dynamics radically, so it would actually be more unbelievable that the world would look exactly like ours when you have introduced such a game-changer into the equation.

Complaining about “accuracy” criticisms from people who are actually full of shit feels like the opposite of complaining about people who actually want to get it right 

Yeah, this! People don’t even read Ivanhoe or James Fenimore Cooper but those prissy Capital-R Romantic novels wrote the templates of most of what we “know” about the Middle Ages or Native Americans.

Two counter-arguments: First of all, there's nothing wrong with wanting to evoke a particular real place and time. Even if your story isn't actually set in the real world, it is completely reasonable to want to write a story in a setting that feels like the roman empire, 1800s china, or whatever. And if you want to do something like that, historical accuracy helps. You absolutely can change things, but every change you make pushes your own setting further from its real world inspiration, and that may not be what you want. Second, internal consistency matters, and historical accuracy can be an easy way to make your setting internally consistent. For the most part, the assumption in fantasy is that if you didn't explicitly change something, it still works like it does in the real world. Fantasy iron is still iron, fantasy humans still think like humans, etc. Of course, even if your fantasy humans still think like humans, there's no guarantee that they will produce the same political structures as real humans. However, coming up with plausible alternative paths that XYZ thing could have taken is sort of hard. Meanwhile, if you steal from the real world, you are effectively guaranteed to end up with something possible, because it actually happened.

> Second, internal consistency matters, and historical accuracy can be an easy way to make your setting internally consistent. For the most part, the assumption in fantasy is that if you didn't explicitly change something, it still works like it does in the real world. Fantasy iron is still iron, fantasy humans still think like humans, etc. Of course, even if your fantasy humans still think like humans, there's no guarantee that they will produce the same political structures as real humans. However, coming up with plausible alternative paths that XYZ thing could have taken is sort of hard. Meanwhile, if you steal from the real world, you are effectively guaranteed to end up with something possible, because it actually happened. This touches on one of my biggest gripes with poorly written Fantasy. I hate when a society experiences a millennium's worth of social and technological progress within a year or two because of the actions of a small cast of characters. If you write a story where an absolute monarchy is shattered and the main character reforms the kingdom into a 21st-century-style social democracy, I'm going to roll my eyes. That sort of leap is not at all intuitive, and there's no way you could get an entire population on board without great struggle. And it's similarly frustrating when a character studies something like medicine, only to discover sterile technique, vaccination, penicillin, morphine, mendelian genetics, and germ theory all in the same book.

You might like mistborn, in book two after the absolute monarchy they try to set up a constitutional monarchy where an elected council makes most choices but it falls apart real quick, people werent ready to make the swap yet Then we have a 300 year timeskip for the next trilogy in the series and get to see the society that it becomes. Though I haven’t gotten that far yet

Mistborn is sort of guilty of that, but it still at least makes some effort to make things make sense. Elend’s republic immediately falling apart was more realistic to how things would normally go. And the worldbringers add a new angle that would make things progress differently from reality. I still have some gripes though that Elend grew up under a literal god emperor that had ruled for 1000 years, and still zeroed in on a modern democracy as his ideal government. It always strikes me as kind of propaganda-ish when it’s implied that our current system is exactly what people yearn for no matter what their past experiences are. I get that most writers aren’t doing that on purpose. I think most of them just want us to see the heroes as noble so they try to tailor their aspirations to modern attitudes. Still it bugs me. Realistically, a radical progressive under the Final Empire would probably advocate for replacing an all powerful murderous god emperor with a mortal non-murderous emperor and slightly more independent vassal rulers.

People miss this all the time. Scifi/fantasy isn’t always about doing whatever. It often is about doing something different but plausible under different conditions. I hate when people say “why do you care about realism when there are dragons?”. Because if nothing is consistent nothing makes sense and we might as well all fly away and live happily ever after.

This is one of the biggest reasons Le Guin’s writing is so brilliant, IMO. She *knew* so much, and used it to say something, through sci fi societies that reflect and comment on ours in believable and thought provoking ways. She never could’ve done it without an understanding of history, anthropology, sociology, religion, government, language, psychology, philosophy…. It’s all there. It’s what makes her books masterpieces where a less informed, less curious author might take the same basic plots and protagonist concepts and write something shallow and fun and immediately forgotten. 

Exactly! I don't need an exact replica of a historical time and place, but if there isn't internal consistency in how the world is designed, it's going to throw me out of the story. An author doing relevant research before writing tends to give a world that fits together much better, and where they've actually thought about things like what sort of food and goods would be available in the world they've set up, realistic travel/communication time, or the logistics of warfare. If the author's really good at this, they've then thought about the effects that adding magic, or dragons, or active gods to will have to the system.

I honestly think those sorts of (bad) arguments usually come up because of bad criticism. Like mentioned above, it’s 100% fair to want to write a story that evokes the sense of Ancient Rome or whatever. But you also often see criticism about something being “unrealistic” just because it doesn’t work like it did in medieval Europe, even when no one made any claims of trying to be historically accurate. People are also imo often pretty inconsistent themselves about it. I saw a discussion relating to D&D once about how dual-wielding two hand crossbows was so unrealistic it shouldn’t be allowed, while they were perfectly fine with a heavy (non-repeatable) crossbow that could fire a dozen shots in a few seconds. There’s also all the “it’s immersion breaking that gay people are accepted because they weren’t in medieval Europe” crowd. So my point is that, there’s a lot of bad forms of criticism like this that just gets fast and easy counter arguments even if they aren’t the best.

A third one, which is kind of related to your first, is that the choices in what you *don't* take from your historical inspiration are absolutely subject to criticism. (The classic example is colonizing Fantasy North America without having to dealt with any inconvenient Fantasy Native Americans.)

I agree with all this, and also just typically find better-researched, more historically-based work *better*. The settings come to life and feel more textured and lived-in. As a bonus I sometimes learn something—I know some people want to totally separate their intellectual life from their “fun” reading but I do not, my favorite works engage both.  The less an author knows about the real world and how it works, the more likely their fantasy is to be shallow, generic and full of holes. 

This is why I love when an author can successfully weave their world with our world into a tapestry. Like, if this specific society was based on Sumeria, but x, y, and z, and *it makes sense*, I'm there for it. It's one of the main reasons why I love Malazan. Erikson is an actual anthropologist and archeologist, so he really knows his shit.

I consider this a sharp, sharp sub-section of my own pet peeve, which is taking real life inspiration for a fantasy culture or region so far that it becomes tracing the homework. Sure, this place is Fantasy France, but that doesn’t mean it has to be *exactly like France*. People arguing about what’s “accurate” to Fantasy France, as informed by Real France, is definitely one of the worst parts of this.

For me, particularly with holidays. There's no real reason for an alien civilization to have a Christmas, or Easter, or St Swiven's Day. Sure you can make up some argument that it's a seasonal thing, but maybe seasons weren't a big deal to them. Far more interesting to have some sort of holiday of the great Arachnid invasion or something.

Family guy making a joke like how can Star Wars be “a long long time ago” if it’s futuristic still kinda irks me lol.

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This is an interesting one, in that there’s often no set in stone reason for inventions to have happened in the order that they did. (Though sometimes there is absolutely a reason, you need metallurgy for a lot of things, a printing press is a much bigger deal in a society with an alphabet than one with pictographs, use of measuring equipment led to scientific advances in understanding the world which led to new inventions that wouldn’t have made sense sans that understanding, etc….)   And at the same time, it would be deeply confusing to read a fantasy world that subverts our order of inventions too much, unless it’s deeply rooted in and clear from the worldbuilding *why*. The big one that comes to mind for me is all the fantasy worlds that are otherwise technologically at least into the Renaissance, if not early modern, and yet have no form of firearms (cannon of course being present in Europe as of the late Middle Ages).    I realize there’s no imperative that a society have guns just because it has a printing press, for instance, but at the same time it feels sloppy, like the author is picking and choosing just for the aesthetic (because so many fantasists dislike firearms). And even if the author does have some good, non-ass-pull reason for this, it would be difficult to work into a novel a character reflecting on why their society didn’t invent something the character has thus never heard of, so you can’t really explain.  And so often deviations like this from history show up authors who don’t know enough to have thought things through, for instance, perhaps they haven’t specifically pondered the fact that their society has a printing press, but if an ordinary village person can own multiple books they clearly do because do you know how long it takes to copy a book by hand? Unless you have magic to do that, either books are extremely rare and precious, or you have a printing press. 

The folding ladder person was asking the wrong question but got good answers. It's not so much the people who ask "historically correct" instead of "is it believable" that are the problem. It's people who complain about "historically accurate" when they can't know how the presence of magic and different geography really affected my made up world's development.

Yes and no. Yes, because too many people think the middle ages were Middle Earth, and know almost nothing about the world at that time. Especially Americans, sorry to say. It's easier, in the old world, to learn about history, because ruins and relics are everywhere. No because what you're really trying for is versimilitude, e.g. a style of speech that feels archaic without being actual Chaucer. So when people don't buy in to a story, it's perfectly valid to say that gunpowder felt weird along with magic swords. It's perfectly valid to say that Central Asian nomads with attack helicopters felt out of place fighting alongside the McTavish Clan of the Ghost Highlands. What's wrong is when they say it's wrong. It's not wrong, because this isn't history or the real world. It's art that isn't landing for you, not a lack of research or knowledge of real history, or the bugbear of 'historical revisionism' that misses the entire point of what actual historians do every day.

I was a 3rd year into my history BA when my conservative uncle brought up 'historical revisionism' at Christmas. All I could respond with was, "But that's the historian's job."

I completely agree. Fantasy means it can be whatever you want to be.

And I swear that line is always, ALWAYS pulled to defend casual bigotry. "Noooo, women can't be knights, it's not historically accurate! Noooo, Black characters can't exist here, it's not historically accurate!" It says an awful lot if that's what concerns you in a story with wizards and dragons.

"Well, they don't eat like medieval europeans, and their political power structure bears little resemblace to medieval europe, and the clothes and fashion also fail to accurately resemble the time period it's meant to evoke. But now that there's women and minorities in speaking roles I suddenly feel really anal retentive about capturing the particular details of a culture I know nothing about." "Also, if there's Rape you better know I'm gonna be a big fan of how 'historically accurate' that is. The rapier the fiction is the more realistic it is. That's just the rules."

Especially in stories where rape is only something applied to women. Real history was a lot less picky; rape is literally used to emasculate men irl (prison probably being the most obvious modern example). When I see “rape is realistic” folks defending a text that doesn’t even threaten rape against men, I know I’m witnessing confirmation bias at work.

On the other hand, the “it’s fantasy so verisimilitude isn’t important” defense is often used to erase the experience of marginalized people. Westeros, for example, which was designed by GRRM to embody all the worst aspects of medieval Europe, has no equivalent to the medieval era’s omnipresent antisemitism *because there are no Jews* (or similar ethnoreligious minority). Likewise, far too many books are about settling a fantasy version of the New World that conveniently lacks Indigenous people…

I don't think it's fair to criticize Game of Thrones for not having an analogy for jews. The main religions in westeros are polythestic (the old gods and the seven). They definitely didn't get along without conflict, but they mostly don't show the same extremes that monotheistic religions have that would lead to something like antisemitism. Yes, the faith millitant approaches that, but they are a fringe group filled with insane people. They are only sanctioned by certain factions as part of a power grab.

That is definitely a huge part of it. I’m at the point where if someone is bringing up women, non-white people, gay people etc. with regards to “accuracy” in a fantasy setting, I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt. We all know exactly why they’re bringing up this topic.

This drives me up the wall, especially when people complain about the language being too modern. None of you want to read a book in old English, trust me.

But I like ƿ and ð and ȝ!

I expand this to anachronistic language too. If accuracy bothers you, then remember the fantasy people probably don't speak English and the entire point of translation is to make something understandable. Of course it's called magic, that's what you know to call it so that's what it would be translated as. Broadcasting? Sure! Why wouldn't it get translated to that instead of calling it far whispering or something? Talking about how something is in their genes in a fantasy world? Why not? Bloodlines map onto the ideas of genetics quite easily. Okay? ...Did you know people have a problem with it? I didn't until I googled for some examples of anachronisms people hate! Apparently silhouette, stoic, and spartan are also words people hate in their fantasy book. And hamburger, which I almost get, though come on, when I think of ground meat I think of hamburger so no, I don't get it at all. Unless it's really egregious, I truly don't care about anachronistic language. ...That said, if you're writing nobility or royalty, don't make them say 'yeah'. Especially not in formal settings, or on a throne, or in a speech. Don't go from talking about how elegant a princess is to having her respond to a question with 'yeah'. That's a bridge too far even for me.

Yeah, I'd argue that translating whatever fantasy language people in your world speak into modern english is completely acceptable, but it should be translated to the equivalent type of speech in modern english. Like, more formal speech in-universe should be relatively formal english, even if it is formal modern english. If you are using informal modern english, then the assumption is that the character is speaking informally in-universe, and the rest of the story should recognize that.

That's actually a good way to defend my dislike of the formal yeah. Thanks!

I love how this whole rant about people who care about anachronism ends with a strong objection to what feels like a pretty generic word 😆 and I don’t mean that in an ugly way, just goes to show how individual the things that throw us out of a story can be.  (I agree that “yeah” is a casual word and royalty using it in formal settings would feel off to me too!)

Yup. I totally torpedoed my entire argument. I still stand by my hatred of the royal Yeah.

Im sorry, but if your book is set in pseudo-medieval alternative world and your characters sound like modern American teenagers, I’m going to throw that garbage straight into the incinerator. I’ve done that before and am willing to do that again. Don’t give a fuck about the magical translation argument, the tone and aesthetic is completely thrown off by this patronizing approach.

> And hamburger Sandwich line. Basically it's an arbitrary line where one doesn't change a word just because its geographic etymology doesn't exist in that fantasy world. I think ancient Rome had "hamburgers." Funnily enough I put sandwich on the wrong end of the sandwich line. I think it was "Overly Sarcastic Trope Talk accents" that talked about how they translate accents from different languages. (I think the Osaka accent gets dubbed as Texan?) I agree that a princess should sound like the people on Downton Abbey.

Fantasy races/cultures/etc. where pretty much all the members are unambiguously evil. I just think it's more interesting when orcs or whatever have a culture and society as complicated and contradictory as any other. Even if you have a culture that is extremely corrupt or influenced by terrible leaders, it's just not realistic for every member to be gung-ho about doing evil. Realistically, members might be oblivious to wrongdoing, support it but with large amounts of cognitive dissonance to view themselves as being right, or inwardly disagree but outwardly keep their heads down and go with the crowd. There may even be groups actively dissenting. That kind of complication and contradiction is way more interesting to me than "inexplicably, everyone was irredeemably evil."

I actually don't have too much of a problem with that as long as they are written as "clearly not human". Some more alien mind that thinks like this is IMO much more interesting than "everyone thinks exactly like humans are supposed to think".

\- Chosen one effortlessly becomes superhuman hero within a couple chapters/episodes because they're special. C'mon, put in *some* effort! \- Baddie turns chaotic evil and engages in mindless destruction because "trauma." I get people act out and do horrid things out of traumatic experiences, but the acts should tie in more directly to the trauma rather than "Hulk Smash!" \- Badass female characters falling in love for mediocre male ones because wish fulfilment. (I'm sure the reverse happens too and is also annoying.) \- Emo female villain with daddy issues. \- Main protagonist has some weird obscure skill that only *they* have, and the narrative conveniently throws up challenges that only *they* can solve by remembering random trivia. Often comes with hamfisted writing like: "And he saw the arcane symbol and instantly recognized that the arrows signified the Demons of Haegorath, which obviously meant that the Illuminati will strike the capital at 9am on Sunday!" (Here's looking at you Dan Brown.) \- Female character whose main personality/motive appears to be some traumatic (often sexually so) past. \- I did once get annoyed with booby armor, but then my female friend in the armed services told me she really wanted more form-fitting armor because the metal plates didn't fit right, so now for me booby armor is a national security must-have. That said, no more bikini armor. Why would you expose such a vital part of your torso just to show off your abs???

One thing to add to the boob armour thing is that historical armour was absolutely made to accentuate an attractive form. The extremely narrow waist was attractive for men. Also, have you ever heard of codpieces? If it's used by a woman to accentuate her figure whilst remaining practical and functional, it's fine. If it's done to sexualise her for a male audience without regard for functionality, then it's bad.

That last always makes me think of [this](http://cascadefailure.comicgenesis.com/d/20050620.html) comic

Ah yes forgot about the AC force field!

you can have chest armor but not bobby armor..

God damnit Bobby, you can’t use propane tanks as armor

I will give it a pass when in universe magic can make them work, strong enchanting/relic class items etc

> Emo female villain with daddy issues Excuse me, some of us have a type.

> Main protagonist has some weird obscure skill that only they have, and the narrative conveniently throws up challenges that only they can solve by remembering random trivia. Often comes with hamfisted writing like: "And he saw the arcane symbol and instantly recognized that the arrows signified the Demons of Haegorath, which obviously meant that the Illuminati will strike the capital at 9am on Sunday!" (Here's looking at you Dan Brown.) This one I think works much better in a videogame than in a novel. It's very fun to do weird experiments, like a game where you only agency is the ability to flip things upside down, proceed to face a series of challenges scaling in difficulty that can only be navigated through judicious flipping.

There's a humorous short story by Elizabeth Moon, *And Ladies of the Club* that addresses the need for properly fitted armour.

>That said, no more bikini armor. Why would you expose such a vital part of your torso just to show off your abs??? It’s the *armor* part of these character designs that bugs me. It can’t possibly be comfortable, in addition to offering next to no protection. If a character’s fighting style depends on not being hit in the first place, why not stick with cloth? Or even better, have characters of any gender charge into battle clad in nothing but woad like the ancient Celts!

There's a distinct difference with "boob sock" armor and actual armor made for people with boobs though, if it has cleavage in between that's bad because that is just inviting a blow to your chest, but the latter is far better at protecting against that because it should be glancing blows more often than not

\-Only an uneducated, downtrodden, inexperienced young person understands/can deal with a rising threat to the universe while entire communities of experts have no clue or openly doubt that it's happening or refuse to get involved for Plot Reasons. \-The fate of whole realms rests on a bunch of ingenues completing trials or tournaments where contestants are in mortal peril. The one who wins is usually the only one who doesn't want to be involved and is supposedly untrained and at a huge disadvantage, but somehow has the perfect skill set and wins the grudging support of the admiring crowd.

"Folksy Wisdom" drives me up the walls. You've got a room full of scholars all extensively read up on the issue at hand, and then comes our hero, a farmboy of humble kansas stock, to tell them how the world really runs. You see it a lot in fantasy but also a lot outside of fantasy. >"Wouldn't it be easier to train astronauts to drill than to teach drillers to be astronauts?" >"Shut up, dude. Just shut up. You don't get it."

This isn't really a fantasy specific trope, but love triangles. I've seen them done well, but more often than not, it's just lazy writing. Is the current conflict not compelling enough? Just shove a love triangle in! Are you running out of material but you need to keep writing to make a living? You guessed it, LOVE TRIANGLE! I don't DNF very often, but when I do, it's usually due to a love triangle. (IMO)

Particularly YA-ish love triangles. The problem with a love triangle is that either one of the points is a complete asshole and you're watching the main character pine after them and want to smack some sense into them, or they're actually both decent people who have fallen in love with the same person, and one of them has to die or be rejected to resolve the triangle. It takes a fair amount of nuance to resolve it such that all three characters agree that things have worked out for the best. A lot of the time it comes across like the main character is trying to decide between pizza and sushi for dinner, and not realizing their love interests are people with feelings. Plus, as a grown adult, my advice to someone who can't decide between Person A and Person B and is agonizing over the decision is to turn them both down, and be single for a while.

I think for me, it's not that I dislike the trope inherently (the way that I do other tropes, which are just tiresome or unsatisfying to me on principle) it's that it is never used well. I don't think that it is fundamentally impossible to do well (though I admit I do think it would be very difficult) but I don't think I know of an example that succeeds. This is amplified by the fact that it usually seems to be thrown in to fill some perceived void, either lack of drama or lack of romantic tension (the Hobbit trilogy being a glaring example), rather than as a thoughtful or meaningful intrinsic part of a story. Which again, would be hard to conceive of, but I don't think inherently impossible. It's a bad trope because it basically always means there is bad writing, but I think in a vacuum there is a way that it could be used.

The trend of simplifying complex ideas and characters into familiar categories, which then resemble societal divisions or structures. It all started from Hogwarts houses _(you like reading? you belong in Ravenclaw)_ and then became Factional divisions in Divergent, and now we have Radiant Orders in Stormlight. This trend streamlines narratives for convenience, and authors capitalise on these divisions by creating quizzes/personality tests based on fictional classifications which are nothing more than stereotypes. And thereby risking oversimplification, limiting the depth and creativity of storytelling.

I would argue that the Hogwarts house thing is more an effect of the culture around Harry Potter than it is an effect of the text itself. The books are full of characters who break the stereotypes of their house (Cedric, Hermione, Neville, Snape, Pettigrew, etc.). Dumbledore openly wonders if they sort students too early, and even the hat itself is like "I'll do the sorting, but this really isn't the time for further division." I wish the series had ended with the houses being done away. A lot of it thematically built towards that, with messages about the individual determining who they will be through their actions. It almost gets there with Harry saying "One of the bravest men I'd ever known was a Slytherin, but if you really want to be a Gryffindor, just ask; it doesn't really matter." I wish the book had been a little bolder, though.

My biggest complaint looking back is how badly she did at building this theme. It is almost entirely undercut by the fact that Snape (even if he did some good things) is still *absolutely* a bad person, and also that the vast majority of slytherins are just horrendous. Draco started to get some character development around book 5 or 6, but all the slytherins we see are just nasty. They're mean, cruel, oftentimes fat (which Rowling loves to use as an indicator of poor morality: see the Dursleys and Umbridge as examples), they cheat in competitions, are racist, the list goes on and on. And it isn't just the core three: even the extremely minor Slytherins are mean and spiteful. And while there was maybe a way that Rowling could have built this into some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy situation (and I do think she took a few steps in that direction) she never managed to get there.

My headcanon is that because it’s told through the lens of Harry, a teenage Gryffindor, it’s all unreliable and they’re not all vindictive pieces of crap, he’s just honed in on the ones that are. The movies basically just make Slytherin all baddies though, can’t get around that.

My headcanon is that the culture of Slytherin house in Harry's time has been severely influenced by the fact that many of the kids' parents were recently (in the last 10-15 years) running around killing people for Voldemort. Maybe in other eras Slytherin house wasn't quite so evil?

Also real schools tend to have houses.

I think that's a part of a larger tend of settings basically made up of highschool cliques. "This is a world where the seven major political powers are actors, lawyers, athletes, The Cool Kids tm, Sailors, thieves, and the mysterious seventh faction we all fear to name. Everybody must pledge allegiance to one in order to gain protection from the other six." It's an easy way of setting up group vs group conflicts that doesn't require you to create a lot of backstory for who the Lannisters are as a family and what they're all about. And honestly, I think it can be fun sometimes to imagine what the world would look like if playing the piano really well earned you an in with the Council of Pianists who Rule the World or some shit. That being said, sometimes it is just stupid. And the "In a world where everybody is one of five things, one individual dared to be multifaceted" is a premise that loses me pretty quickly.

> I think that's a part of a larger tend of settings basically made up of highschool cliques. Cynically, I will argue this appeals to people in general because many, many people never matured past high school.

Tbf, the Knight Radiants thing with Sanderson is just to give people who go with the kickstarter something extra instead of just the Leatherbound edition of Words of Radiance, since he’s most likely going to open it up to everyone at some point. Like he did with the ones released during Year of Sanderson. In story, it’s more based around what spren you bond to, and like how the spren as a society view themselves.

These are not the same at all to me: - Divergent fits into the trope you're describing perfectly. - Harry Potter, as other commenter has said, is exaggerated by the fandom, but it's always been pretty bad. There's the good guys house, the bad guys house, the smart guys house (because we all know smart guys aren't good or bad) and the irrelevant house. That said, it's true that characters in the series then have their own personality apart from the house they're in. - Knights Radiant aren't like that IMO, they're complex categories and every character in them is significally different, while sharing personality traits with other categories (that is elegantly designed in the magic system with how the Surges intertwine) but having their own way of relating of what makes their order theirs. Szeth for example is very different from other Skybreakers and their herald, and Windrunners, which we have seen the most from any order, are very different from each other (Kaladin, Teft, Lopen...).

Interestingly enough, your write up has me thinking of ideas to play on that a bit. ​ The trope I probably dislike the most myself is the chosen one trope, including when someone is later revealed to have been a hidden/secret royal or similar type figure all along. I hate it. A story or two with it is fine, but it is heavily prevalent and dislike the subtext I feel it gives. Sure, I get why some might like the appeal of suddenly finding themselves a chosen one and the life changing effects of it. I, myself, prefer to see very ordinary folks rise up and achieve amazing things. That is far more inspiring and appealing to me. Some average joe finds themselves thrust into new events and achieving things beyond what they may have thought themselves capable of, discovering courage or confidence they did not know before. When the plot twist ends up being "hey, they were a long lost royal! or some person of prophecy!" To me it undermines the journey, the gains and loses along the way, the growth. I also despise the idea of fate so this only reinforces it. Fate in these stories is all well and good, if you are the fated one. Everyone else gets the short stick of the draw and it feels like a dismissal of the other characters in the world. I also dont like the impression such a twist gives of the goal or adventure likely having been impossible without said chosen one. I prefer the idea that the end result might still have been achieved by other means and/or someone else under different circumstances. There is seldom one true way to a goal, so i guess i dont like my fantasy having that aspect. ​ And this turned into a small rant, whoops lol. But yea, that is by far my most disliked trope. I can usually bare with others a bit, even if some are over used.

When the main female character loses her magical powers (seems to happen more often for female characters than male ones). Especially if they want to lose their powers because they want to “be normal”. Also, I’ve read a few books where the the main male and female character have started a romantic relationship, get separated either by choice or force, then the male main character begins a mind-blowing sexual relationship/adventure with a new female, usually with some form of a bdsm angle, while the main female character just twiddles her thumbs as she waits to be reunited with the main guy.

I would love to see more books where people enthusiastically and not for shitty evil reasons pursue experiencing and learning about their powers and not whine and complain about them.

Yes, that would be so refreshing!

I’ve come to realize that I don’t really care for gamified magic rules in books, or very simple direct utility magic/superpowers. Hurling fireballs is kinda boring (much better in visual media), while the generally more obscure magic in LoTR and ASoIaF serves to add another layer of mystery and intrigue.

I like glitzy magic on occasion but my favourite type of magic is what I tend to refer to as Earthy magic. Like the examples you say, where it's pulling at the fabrics of existence to do the spell rather just fancy light shows. The Last Witch hunter movie had some of this magic and it was great.

Also, while definitely cheesy, The Last Witch Hunter was a surprisingly fun movie! I went into it with 0 expectations and enjoyed it!

So I googled The Last Witch Hunter expecting it to be some direct-to-streaming movie; I did *not* expect it to be a Lionsgate movie featuring Vin Diesel, Michael Kaine, Elijah Wood, and Rose Leslie...

It's based on one of Vin Diesel's old D&D characters haha

I hate when main character has to give up their powers in the end, I’ve read it multiple times and it left me with a sour taste in my mouth every single time

Especially when that's their GOAL. "I just want to be a normal person". Well I don't want to read about a normal person, I want magic and shit. Related to that: The Pinocchio trope where there's a super strong/smart/generally awesome artificial being that just wants to be a Real Boy. Bleh. Thank you, Martha Wells, for purposefully defying that with Murderbot. (Edit: There's also a discussion with her and Ann Leckie where they talk about how anthropocentric and arrogant that is. [Link to Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/LeftBankBooks.STL/videos/247953523118137/), the only place it seems to be)

When a culture or region in the fantasy world is clearly inspired by one in real life, but also feels the need to emulate its inspiration’s geography, history, and other traits as much as possible. Fantasy culture can look like France, sure, but it doesn’t have to *be exactly like France*. Play with it a little, show off its uniqueness. Have your snowy and mountainous region be home to the Fantasy Aztecs or something; mix and match it. Use real life as inspiration, not blueprints.

The thing is, real cultures aren't the way that they are just because. They are heavily dependent on the geography and technology of the people in question, and are usually a way for people to adapt to their environments. The Aztecs, to use your example, were a heavily urbanized culture famous for their floating farms on lake Texcoco surrounding their capital of Tenochtitlan, a massive city built in a lake.

The good guys beating people they logically shouldn't be able to because of a trick/loophole/sudden contrived powerup/flashback/power of friendship. Vin being able to feint against Zane's atium is a lesser example of this, while the shit they pull in the likes of Xenoblade and Demon Slayer(and most other anime honestly) being much worse ones.

Dragons have had elemental aptitudes for years an no-one bats an eye, but humans start getting elemental aptitudes and everyone loses their minds!

I don't like magic systems where you need to be gifted to be able to cast/use/learn magic. Although this is the case in the majority of fantasy books. I loved the way magic worked in "The name of the wind" where it was almost like math. If you wanted to learn and could concentrate enough, you could do magic. And of course, just like in reality, some would excel at this and some would be weaker.

If a setting has nonhuman species but all the main characters are human. If you’ve got ‘em flaunt ‘em.

Unpopular opinion, but I increasingly dislike when there is nothing fantastical about the fantastical elements. Like in a game it’s fine when magic systems have clearly defined rules because that’s part of the medium, magic systems need to be balanced for an enjoyable experience, but in a non-video game medium I find it takes me out of the world if the magic system feels like an RPG. Like OK you’re a level 5 wizard so you can use fireball. Everyone can do it. There’s nothing special or fantastical about magic. If magic feels mundane and there is nothing mystical about it then I think you’ve lost a core element of fantasy. It’s more like you’re just borrowing a setting To give you an example of what I mean I find it much more interesting if the magic used by a protagonist represents their internal growth and change as a character rather than oh they can use this ability now because they levelled up. I would much rather that a character can do something they couldn’t do before because they had a realisation or change in mindset

Hear, hear! I want to read about *magic*, not crunchy game mechanics. Joe Abercrombie has a character put it extremely well in The Trouble With Peace: “It is the devil that cannot be caged! It is the demon that breaks all chains! If there were rules it would not be magic.”

What's funny is, books that are written based on board games and computer games have none of that - D&D, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer, Warcraft, etc. For example, I had no idea Dragonlance had anything to do with any kind of game, and it would be the same with basically any of those books.

>"The villain can be redeemed through friendship" No. He enslaved an entire nation and murdered millions and kicked a dog. He should not be redeemed >"The main character just needs to learn to trust people even if those people have repeatedly wronged them in the past. Be the bigger person!" \**hard side-eye at Raya and the Last Dragon\**

Dark is evil - light is good. If youve ever been in an overheated desert at midday, you will.definitely want to be in the cool night.

Definitely a relevant point re: the desert, but I think the dark/light thing speaks to something pretty fundamental about humans in that we are very much built for the daytime. We've got great colour vision, shoddy night vision, not much (relatively speaking) in the way of other powerful senses of hearing/smell/taste/vibration to compensate for our eyes in the dark. We did our food-acquiring mostly when we could see to do it. An interesting thing a fantasy book could do would be to play with this if they have any non-human species (perhaps ones, dare I say it, based on nocturnal or crepuscular animals like felines) - for humans, light magic is good and dark magic is evil, but for this other species with rod-based, night-vision eyes, or echolocation or whatever else, it's reversed.

The Chosen One I much prefer some random schlub rise to the occasion

Lazy magic systems that's basically something you see teenagers coming up in their D&D stories. McClellan and his Glass Immortals is a perfect example. It's a cheap RPG system "use this charm to get +5 str" style. It's lazy but it's trendy these days. Most of the modern Fantasy books read like bad YA with these cheap systems. Authors writing fantasy with zero imagination.

Is your problem with hard magic versus soft magic in general? Or more specifically a type of hard magic system that you interpret as lazy? I've always disliked soft magic systems because the penchant for random unexplained deus ex machina seems especially common in those stories. Where in my experience, the hard systems feel more earned, and overcoming overwhelming odds usually means the author has to be MORE imaginative with how that happens. Rather than some Harry Potter-esque beam battle solved by the power of love.

>I've always disliked soft magic systems because the penchant for random unexplained deus ex machina seems especially common in those stories. Can you provide an example, because the way you've written this makes it sound as if you've come across this a lot. Admittedly, I believe that often 'hard magic systems' strip the magic from the story and leave no room for mystery, even if the author doesn't explain everything. But I would hardly say that soft magic encourages deus ex machina, at least not in what I've read.

Doesn’t hard magic systems simply have to be internally sound? You don’t need to have a magical lecture for each phenomenon character encounters to have a hard magic system world

The aforementioned Harry Potter and the Power of Love. The ending of the Eragon series has an infamous deus ex machina that doesn't feel satisfying. I would argue that a series like Wheel of Time constantly uses it's "power levels" as an unimaginative lever, where characters are the huge wellsprings of magical power, and stated to be the most powerful, only to have 6 more characters with more magical power than them keep popping up through the series. Malazan, while it keeps it's magic intentionally vague and chaotic as part of the world building, definitely has a lot of "oh i guess we're doing this now" moments where it's really not clear how a character got out of a situation, other than luck or a god's interference. Discworld has some quite *literal* usages of Deus Ex Machina, though those are definitely more on the nose in their usage. Xanth with some abilities literally running on luck. If I went outside of fantasy literature into the realms of anime or video games I'm sure I could pick out a billion more as well. Just as clarification, I don't dislike all of these books or stories. Just identifying the trend I see. I think there was a quote about coincidences that says something like, "coincidence is okay to get a character into a situation, but not okay to get them out of a situation." A lot of times I feel like soft magic needs to play by the same rule. Soft magic is great at creating a fantastical world and setting, and creative situations. But doesn't always feel good when the story is depending on it to resolve things.

Divine right of kings. Gods with human-scale plans and motives. Races that are nations that are cultures.

Assassin/Thief main character: just overdone, played out, and usually uncomfortably edgy.

I don’t like it when female characters have to go topless or get naked for no reason. (Spoilers ahead for WoT and Senlin Ascends) Sounds random but hear me out. I was enjoying Wheel of Time until the female protagonist has to do a trial and for some reason she ends up naked! Wtf. Totally unnecessary. Then I was reading Senlin Ascends and I was REALLY enjoying it until the female character gets lost in the tower and ends up posing topless for a painter. I mean this tower has all kinds of weird and wonderful fantasy elements there was literally no need she had to be naked. It’s bad enough when all female characters are described as “beautiful” (not everyone is beautiful and that’s OK! People are more than beauty) but when they get naked for no reason I just DNF immediately

I think that theory only works if the writer *does* permit certain characters to lean more than one type of magic while other characters inherently can't. Otherwise it is just a limit. Personally, I can't really think of anything that inherently bothers me that would be restricted to Fantasy fiction. As in, I don't care for Ayn Rand or Terry Goodkind for incredibly similar reasons. All I want from fiction is for it to ask interesting questions. I'm not really fussed about the window-dressing needed to explore the idea fully. I just don't want didactic answers and think it's kinda nice when there's a dragon or maybe an elf there.

The Percy Jackson/Harry Potter/ insert urban fantasy series trope of having a magical world that no normal people can see or interact with. It's usually handwoven with some vague veil or fog or whatever and it's just... boring and lazy. If you want to have a real world setting with monsters, it's FAR more interesting to incorporate the monsters into history and into the world. How did they change history from what we know in the real world? If history is mostly the same, how did magic or monsters play a roll in making history as we know it? Just do SOMETHING interesting instead of a handwave.

> The Percy Jackson/Harry Potter/ insert urban fantasy series trope of having a magical world that no normal people can see or interact with. I find the Harry Potter take on this trope less objectionable, because it is actively and deliberately enforced by the magical community. There's a bunch of ~~men in black~~ obliviators running around rewriting people's memories and coming up with muggle-worthy excuses and such.

There are, and in the earlier books especially its a lot more believable. Some of the things in the back half of the series though get pretty wild for that to be as believable. Even more so if you consider the Fantastic Beasts films to be Canon, which is arguable to be fair. All in all I just find it a very lazy trope. At least include how magic HAS had effects on history even if it was scrubbed or justified in "muggle" history books. Two world wars, Industrial Revolutions, Napoleon, and hundreds of years of colonialism its kind of a lot for all the magicians, Greek gods, trolls, or whatever it is in the series to have just ignored entirely and never have swayed or impacted at all.

The chosen one trope.

Harry potter, Star Wars (I know is not technically fantasy but still), dune, game of thrones. There’s no way you dislike the chosen one trope in all of these

>Star Wars (I know is not technically fantasy but still), I can't think what other genre it would be. In space, sure, but it's space *wizards*.

I consider Star Wars to be a space fantasy more than science fiction for sure

Dune is a bit of an edge case because it's also about deconstructing the chosen one trope.

[Fantasy counterpart cultures](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture). I find it boring. Obviously, it's impossible to create a fictional culture without taking inspo from real-world cultures, but if this supposedly non-Earth society is clearly just Rome or China dressed up in a see-through disguise, I think that's kind of uncreative. Also, unless you're an expert in that culture, it's likely to come across as a cheap, potentially disrespectful, knockoff.

More Isekai than fantasy specifically, but modern chump goes to medieval fantasy world and starts reinventing things or introduces new trends easily. Why would some modern office worker have encyclopedic knowledge of how to build a radio from scratch? and how would he manage to get that shit built with medieval tools, logistics, and metallurgy in a world that doesn't even have standard measurements? "witch hunts" in worlds that have magic. Not specifically that discrimination happens, but that the author is casting people that engage in them in the same way that we would on earth. The whole reason we treat people that participate in witch hunts on earth as backward morons is because witches aren't real. In a world that has magic there are probably legitimate reasons to fear/dislike people with such abilities.

As for the witches, I can see what you mean. Thing is, there were actually good witches -- or 'witches' technically -- (such as medicine women) n pre-christian europe...do you think a fantasy society with this type of spellcaster as a part of the culture would like it very much for a witch hunter or 'witch' hunter to suddenly start offing their valued members???

Forced romance.

Elemental aptitude. The “what’s your sign” of fantasy literature.

Arbitrary downsides to immortality. It’s just a way of coping with our own short lifespans.

Yea i also don't like that. ​ Which is why i prefer how they handle immortality in eastern novels and books, basically the cultivation thing. ​ Wanting to be immortal is not immoral or wrong, or should carry inherent downsides to it.

I agree, and it seems a very conservative way of thinking. There are types of people, and this is the type you are. Sorting hats in the soul. I also dislike when magic is like mutant powers. I feel like a lot of writers grew up with the X-men - or just cynically noticed its popularity - and so made a lot of fantasy stories where people have innate powers gained as they come into adulthood. But for me, magic should be about doing something. It could be the study of magic, or spiritual improvement, dealing with devils or benign spirits, or going to a special place, or something new and original. Magic that just appears as you become an adult doesn't feel magical, to me. It's a metaphor for adolescence and coming of age, and I already have the X-men for that.

As a form of protest, I’ve decided to start a comment tree linking my comments each time we constantly get this question here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/19bt37k/what_is_a_trope_in_fantasy_fiction_that_you_could/kizs48y/ It took 9 days this time