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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by BeamBrain@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

I have a few:

  • Chosen ones, fate, destiny, &c. When you get down to it, a story with these themes is one where a single person or handful of people is ontologically, cosmically better and more important than everyone else. It's eerily similar to that right-wing meme about how "most people are just NPCs" (though I disliked the trope before that meme ever took off).
  • Way too much importance being given to bloodlines by the narrative (note, this is different from them being given importance by characters or societies in the story).
  • All of the good characters are handsome and beautiful, while all of the evil characters are ugly and disfigured (with the possible exception of a femme fatale or two).
  • Races that are inherently, unchangeably evil down to the last individual regardless of upbringing, society, or material circumstances.
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[-] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 4 months ago

I'd like to see more fantasy backgrounds that aren't medieval Europe, China and Japan with the serial numbers filed off.

Perhaps trying to build something into a respectful Arab, African, Native American or SE Asian mythos is just begging for tone-deafness. But there's plenty of opportunity to run the clock forward.

I'll give points for steampunk and related genres, but some of it seems too prone to passing as self-parody (I know there's an entire community devoted to Weird West stuff)

It feels like any sort of "how do we run an information-age society on magic" is surprisingly scarce outside the robust world of modern-era vampire/were bodice-rippers. Give me a world where the humane society is trying to unload a litter of gryphons. Make the Huawei corporation led by a cabal of mages. Have election deepfakes that are actually clones made of cornmeal and talismans that melt when they get wet.

[-] Zodiark@hexbear.net 7 points 4 months ago

Netflix used to have historical fiction stories about Turkey called Etrugl. I quite liked it.

[-] spacecorps_writer@hexbear.net 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I used this series for research. It's on YouTube now. There's hundreds of episodes.

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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
89 points (98.9% liked)

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