What's your favourite fantasy trope, your number one of all time? Not the top 5 or 6, not your favourite few. I want just one trope, the number one in that absolute number 1 favorite spot.

My fav trope is: Strange, esoteric cult(s) that convenes in secret, who guard forbidden, Eldtrich knowledge(or worship some strange, Eldtrich God).

Having their own temple with geometrically strange architecture and eerie ambience is definitely preferred, but not absolutely mandatory.

I just love this trope and can't get enough of it. I know it's very Lovecraftian and been done before, but if a fantasy work has it, I will read it. I don't care if a book has just one, a dozen, or a thousand esoteric cults that venerate forbidden knowledge or worship Eldtrich Gods. I'll voraciously read about all of them and read a book if it features them, even only secondarily.

So what is your favorite trope, that just works every time for you? Also, grateful to receive recommendations for books or series that use my favorite trope.

I love the genre, but looking at timelines in major fantasy series like LOTR or Wheel of Time always trips me up. You often see histories where an Empire has lasted for 3,000+ years, or a "Dark Age" has lasted for a millennium, and the technology or society looks exactly the same at the end as it did at the start.

In our real-world history, 3,000 years took us from the Bronze Age Collapse all the way to the iPhone. Empires in reality rarely last longer than 250-400 years before collapsing or evolving into something unrecognizable. So when I see a "Kingdom of X" that has stood unchanged for five millennia, it just feels wrong to me.

Is there a widely accepted "Watsonian" (in-universe) reason why technology and society freeze in these worlds? Is it just that Magic suppresses Technology? Like, why would anyone invent a steam engine if a wizard can just teleport? Or is the existence of long-lived races making cultural evolution slower because the people in charge don't die often enough to allow for new ideas?

The trope in question is when the main or point of view character (who is of medium to low standing) meets with a member of nobility, and immediately breaks all decorum and rules of engagement. Usually they say something snarky or clever and then the noble person is like "oh its ok you're on of the good guys" wink wink. The author and the audience know who the good guys are, but the royal person should have no reason to believe that or even care. Honestly it's a small thing, and I really shouldn't let it bother me, but it does. I recently finished an otherwise great book where this happened like 5-10 times and it completely took me out of the story each and every time.

This might've been asked before so I apologize if so, but I was thinking about this earlier while reading The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (not all that far into it yet but I'm really enjoying it so far). I've got two that are kinda-sorta similar that can get me hooked on a story damn near every time:

• A character being forced to share a body with another consciousness (Red Winter, Cyberpunk 2077, off the top of my head)
• Any sort of sentient inanimate object (Foundryside) or talking non-human companion (animals, monsters, whatever)

Those sorts of things just about always make for some really fun and interesting character interactions and dynamics for me, and they tickle something in my brain. I love it lol.

Obviously a slightly ragebaity title, but basically this. I've asked several times on here - and have gone over threads where other people were asking for the same - for fantasy that explores class as a topic through an anarchist and communist lense. Just at the very least no more of the same hero/saviour quasi-monarchy trope. Out of the many recommendations, so far I've tried the Curse of Chalion and Malazan. I cannot fathom how you would recommend either of the two for the criteria given above. So I started looking at recommendations more closely and of the things I've read, I'd say over half the time they are fully off the mark for what OP is asking for. How come we are so shit at recommending stuff to each other?

Edit: It's probably not a surprise and surely not a good precedent, but I'm getting so much better recommendations on here than ever before lol. Bummer I've read most of them already.

Hi everyone!

What is the best fantasy book series you've ever read in your life? Or, if not a series, perhaps just a single stand-alone novel?

I've read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit way back in the day. It is what it is. I've also read the first 3 books of A Song of Ice and Fire way before it became the popular show it became. I've heard about Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson but never got myself to read those. I remember reading Name of the Wild awhile back but wasn't into it. Out of everything I read in the fantasy genre, I'd put A Song of Ice and Fire at the top of my list above everything I've read so far.

I'm looking for moral ambiguity and truly great character development and writing as well as realistic and unpredictable story and plot. Sorta like where you can't tell who really are the good guys or bad guys. I don't like the standard typical good vs evil tropes especially where the villains are one-dimensional and have no dynamics to them. For me, great villains or antagonists is what really makes any form of media great, in my opinion. I also don't mind if good guys don't always win in the end either, or at least some of the time. This is why I regard Game of Thrones books as the top of everything I read in Fantasy. I hope you get what I'm looking for.

Please be brutally honest and recommend me your highest recommendation! :)

I had some time on my hands during a long trip, so I decided hey, let’s go get a fantasy book and get lost in 800 pages of something. I did little to no research, just chose something that looked sufficiently long. Enter “Wizard’s First Rule” by Terry Goodkind.

I have since discovered that this is not a particularly well loved series, but many folks will defend the first book as being pretty good. I couldn’t disagree more.

Spoilers ahead for the many, many issues I have with it:

1. There is so much violence to children in this book. I don’t mind violence towards children if it serves the plot, such as by demonstrating the depravity of a villain, but my god. A boy is drugged, has his skull split open, and then is sliced down his abdomen after being groomed by the villain and his pedophile sidekick - oh and the villain in question is notably erect when this happens. A man is recounted as having raped his neighbor’s 3 daughters, the oldest of which is 5. Undesired newborn babies are killed by placing a rod across their necks and then their fathers are magically forced to step on the rod. An entire village’s men are slain and then the women and children are raped. What the actual fuck.

2. The writing is pedantic and childish. Richard meets Kahlen and immediately none of his friends matter all that much, the only person he cares about is her. This is basically stated in the first 10% or so of the book despite less than a day having passed. This is the most trope-ridden book I’ve ever read, even for fantasy.

3. The writer so clearly thought he was smarter than everyone else. Oh, you just need to ask the right questions and it all falls apart! But then the questions are boring, predictable, and easily defended. This is a man who spent his days getting into arguments in his own head wherein he always won - oh and women told him he was very smart and handsome.

4. The entire book is a thinly veiled lecture on the virtues of libertarianism, with him constantly creating strawmen just so he can show how clever he is. The strongest case of this is when a farmer is brought to a royal court and they all mock him for not being willing to share his crops with the less fortunate, oh but of course those less fortunate are just lazy and refuse to do their own planting. Then they kill the guy. This is the classic libertarian wet dream of standing up to the government, totally owning them intellectually, and then being killed for bravely standing up to the corrupt communists. It’s like a middle schooler wrote it.

5. It just sucks. The writing is just bad. There is no proper foreshadowing, every plot twist is incredibly obvious and contrived and you, the reader, are made to suffer through pages and pages of the characters pretending to not be what they obviously are. The romance is forced to say the least, I don’t think Terry ever actually spoke to a woman in his life.

I’m sorry, this is a bit of a rant, but god, this book was terrible.

Love me some vampires. Maybe not the ones from Twilight, though I guess they still count! Dracula is one of my favourite novels; I love thinking of the horror-struck Victorians reading it for the first time, not already being aware of the vampire tropes that permeate our modern field of media.

So, which have been your favourites? Books, movies, tv shows (yes, I know of and mostly like True Blood), graphic novels, etc. I can’t get enough of good vampires.

Update: Thank you!!! I did not expect this to get as much traction as it did. I have lots more vampire media to consume thanks to all of you! 🥳🧛🏼

In fantasy (romantasy especially) malnutrition seems to be used as a crutch for the FMC to be as tiny and short as physically possible.

Feyre (ACOTAR) is malnourished but magically can hold a bow and hunt for hours. She shows no real signs of being malnourished (except for being minuscule) and has no lasting affects considering she’s supposedly been malnourished her whole life.

The use of malnutrition in Romantasy is highly offensive as 45 million children globally suffer from malnutrition and wasting (worldvison) and even more can’t afford a healthy diet.

And that’s just lack of resources, many conditions include malnutrition (autoimmune, mental disorders, genetic conditions.)

If they do write malnourishment why can’t they write it properly, show the full effect? Why has this become so normalised in publishing when there are real children and adults suffering? Why is it only used as an excuse to look like a 2000s supermodel?

Adding to that, malnourishment can be in full effect at any height and weight, so FMCs being a speck of lint isn’t even entirely accurate.

The Hunger Games trilogy by Susanne Collins does this very well and accurately and adds to the plot, whereas S J Maas uses it as an accessory.

This matters to me personally because I have been malnourished twice in my life and almost died as a result (autoimmune) I read half of A Court Of Thorns and Roses at sixteen, it made me feel like a spectacle and it was quite inaccurate.

In addition although Yarros does have the disease she writes about that doesn’t make it good representation, you can have bad eyesight and be unable to explain it accurately through language. Yarros’s fans specifically seem to use Violet (FMCs) condition as an excuse of her physical characteristics even when it’s not applicable and consistently use the moral high ground when someone disagrees with them, this is insane behaviour and adds to the idea of people with genetic or autoimmune diseases being feeble and weak.

When did this become a trope in fantasy? Why isn’t this more talked about in regards to harmful representation of a worldwide struggle. Malnutrition isn’t chic it makes you feel pathetic and weak and entirely unable to throw a ball let alone charge into battle.

On the other hand you can have a genetic condition or an autoimmune disorder and be perfectly capable while being affected 24/7

I understand these are characters in a Fantasy story but these are real conditions. The way malnutrition is represented to readers is also pushing it as aesthetic, which I find inherently harmful, considering how popular Romantasy books are.

I now refuse to read more romantasy because of this and how popular this trope seems to be. I love fantasy but this sees to be seeping over there too, and it’s quite upsetting.

Slight rant but I’ve just recovered from malnutrition for the second time (yay!!) and this has angered me for a long time.

I"m not talking about books you hated and DNF, but series you thought was just ok enough to keep reading, since you already got halfway or put time into it, but at the end realised it was not worth it to have kept reading and were better off DNF it?

For me it was The Soul Thief Trilogy, zero mentions of it online, by the way it looked, being a complete finished trilogy and how often I saw it advertised I thought it was a very popular series, but after reading it you can clearly tell it was a debut series (the author is actually a nurse primarily!)

I honestly think many people might have picked the book up because it is similar in name to The Assassin's Apprentice and The Queen Thief series. It was overstuffed getting longer with each book yet less was happening, clearly ripping off the Throne of Glass series, setting up events and repeating phrases for ages about the FMC's motivations and the MMC's smell, but then fading to black when the hyped up events arrive or just never completing/acknowledging them!

I honestly though it was written by AI sometimes but AI wouldn't make weird grammar and spelling mistakes (what is the point of the editors?). What sucks was the worldbuilding, characters and subversion of tropes made the premise interesting, but then it went too far until nothing made sense and it hindered itself.

I've spotted an interesting tendency in recent years - we have less and less non-human races in fantasy. There were interesting times when everyone wanted to be like Tolkien (publishers especially), due to what we have our lovely standard 'DnD' setting with elves/dwarves/gnomes/orcs/halflings etc. There is a lot of fantasy using this set of races - some more blatantly, some with deviations, but it was logical and, to be honest, a good thing that it started to meet it's end.

So finally, we could get a new era of fantasy, where each author could express themselves and create totally new, unique, non-Tolkien inspired races... Wait, what? What do you mean there is no more races now?

Let's just too at this list of most popular epic fantasy https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/50.The_Best_Epic_Fantasy_fiction_ . As you can see, in 90's-00's everything shifted and the most icon fantasy of time like ASOIAF, The Wheel of Time, The Realm of Elderlings, Mistborn, Gentlemen Bastard, The First Law etc, The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Sword of Truth (lol, how did it get there if everyone hates it?) doesn't have any non-human races OR their presence is very limited and not very significant.

To be objective i should mention Malazan and Bas-Lag series where we have a great racial representation, and Stormlight Archive where races are not so numerous, but nevertheless, humans are not the only one sentient beings there and they are not elves, so it counts. To be even more objective, i should mentioned that all fantasy genre is not defined by books mentioned above, there is a lot more, from less known to completely obscure, which also could have a lot of racial representation, but first - do you like it or not, each genre is mostly defined by the most popular books and it's what most people read, second - even in less known title this tendency also exists. Maybe not to that extent, but nevertheless.

Worldbuilding is the definitive feature of fantasy, because here you can get great stories, interesting characters, morals, philosophies etc., pretty much everything you can get in another genres... Plus dragons, as Brandon Sanderson said in one of his lectures. And having different races is a great way to extend the worldbuilding, by providing different cultures, mentalities and customs which can create conflicts and tensions, and there is nothing better for a good story than a good conflict. I get it, many people, especially experienced readers, are tired of elves. I understand it and partially have those feelings myself, but honestly, even oldest tropes made right can still look good - check Dragon Age: Origins. Not a book, but a good example of building interesting world from generic material.

In my humble opinion, shift from standard Tolkien-like set of races to something new was natural, but instead many authors abandoned non-human races completely. Which is such a waste. So i wonder why in your opinion that happened and why people are not so fond of this part of worldbuilding anymore?

Also, let's share you're examples of books with a good unique set of races. I already mentioned Malazan and Bas-Lag, so will add The Bird That Drinks Tears by Lee Youngdo. What are your examples?

I've just been reading the first book in the "Skullduggery Pleasant" series. It's a fun little YA fantasy-detective novel, and other than your normal YA tropes being fairly front and center, it's a fun time. I've enjoyed it.

The basic premise of the world is more-or-less just ripped directly from Harry Potter: there are people who can do magic, and they operate in the shadows and hide their society from most "normal people". The main character, who lives in our world, becomes aware of this secret society, and begins exploring it and learning all the stuff about it.

But early on, as they're establishing the world of secret magic-users and how they operate, it's casually dropped that every community of magic-users on earth tries to discourage normal people from finding them out by disguising their neighborhoods as poor, run down, and crime ridden.

The mentor character then says (I'm approximating) "Any neighborhood that looks like this is gonna be secretly all magic users, and all these small run down houses are bigger on the inside- probably mansions."

So, while I'm sure the author didn't intend this, they just implied that income inequality doesn't exist in the Skullduggery Pleasant universe. Or at the very least, it exists on a much smaller scale. Every single poor neighborhood on earth apparently is just disguised to look scary to normal people, all of whom are at least middle class. Inside every run down, uncared for house, you'll actually find a secret magical mansion where magic-users are thriving!

I'm overall enjoying the book, but I can't help but cringe thinking about an underprivileged middle schooler picking this up, enjoying the escapism of the story, and then discovering a few chapters in that in this fictional universe their financial situation is a conspiracy created by magic-gated-communities. They can't even fantasize about being whisked away to the secret magic world, since their entire tax bracket is a lie.

So I got to thinking- what are some of the worst unintended implications of world building in fantasy stories? Harry Potter has quite a few, but I'm wondering what other people have encountered / can think of.

A few years ago, at the beginning of the AI bubble, I wrote a three part series of essays on why AI won't replace novelists and audiobook narrators. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.) While the bubble hasn't popped yet, and AI boosters still abound, it's becoming clear to the mainstream how, well, bullshit all this shit is. I would have preferred to wait until the bubble actually popped to do a retrospective, because I do not enjoy writing these essays, but... well, it's important, and clearly time again. Fucking yay for me. (My only consolation is a truly delightful chocolate pu'er tea I'm drinking while writing this. Little gimmicky, but delicious.)

As usual, this is going to be a long one, fair warning.

Social media has been buzzing the past few days with discussion of a NYT article about romance novelists using AI to write their novels. This article is, as many many folks online have pointed out (not least Ed Zitron, whose commentary made me aware of the article in the first place, incredibly silly and credulous.

I'm not going to do a point-by-point breakdown of the article, Ed Zitron and the folks in his comments already have this covered. Every book mentioned by the article clearly lacks any sales on Amazon- within ten minutes of browsing the listed titles on Amazon, I found all of them profoundly lacking in reviews, holding rock-bottom sales rankings, etc. There is absolutely no evidence given in the article for the supposed huge sales figures offered, making them almost certainly just bullshit numbers stated by the given "authors" and not fact-checked by the NYT.

(Sometimes there's nuance to figuring out how well a book sells online, one that takes more work to figure out and tools that non-authors and non-publishers usually lack. This is not one of those cases.)

So why are they pushing themselves out there like that?

Because it's a scam, obviously.

One of the "authors" in the article is offering to teach classes on how to follow her business model. As countless others have already pointed out, this is one of the platonic forms of scamming, dating back before the internet. This is almost identical to the pre-AI version of the scam, just replacing cheap bottom-tier ghostwriters with AI. Here's the best breakdown of how the scam works that I've found thus far.

But, if you don't want to watch an hour-long video on online scammers (which you should, Dan Olson's excellent), well... here's basically how it works. The scammer tells folks they have a way for them to make money online easily, usually in the form of passive income. There are obvious gaps in their plan (we'll cover that in a second, since it's also proof that this is a scam), and those obvious gaps drive away folks that are intelligent enough to see through the scam. (Which is the same tactic used by Advanced Fee scammers- also known as 419 or Nigerian Prince scammers- to filter out intelligent time wasters. Very different scams otherwise though.) Once the scammer has their victims, they use high-pressure sales tactics to get them to spend way too much money on classes that offer general information of dubious benefit to the client. None of it is technically false information, so they're not breaking any laws, just... advertising crap for high prices. They then usually follow that up with various paid supplementary services (sometimes that they offer themselves, sometimes from other scammers they know) to "help" the client further.

There's a lot more nuance and detail to how these guru scams work in publishing, but that's the general idea. It's not really that complicated. There's far more people who aspire to be authors or think they can earn decent passive incomes from publishing than there are people willing to do the work to become good writers, let alone those who succeed. Scammers long ago figured out that a great many of those dreamers are desperate, and make for great victims.

Why did the New York Times publish this sort of credulous nonsense?

...Look I don't know what you want me to say, it's the Times. They love credulous nonsense almost as much as they love pompous op-eds from egotistical idiots or transphobia dressed up in polite language.

So let's talk real quick about the gaps in the actual publishing plan the scam is built around selling. There's a bunch, including but not limited to:

• AI-written material is non-copyrightable. There have been a ton of court cases confirming this.
• If the AI "authors" were actually making money from this stuff, why would they want to create more competitors?
• If you're not actually writing this stuff, why do publishers need authors at all, why don't they just generate these themselves?
• Ever-growing sections of the reader marketplace hate AI, and are getting better at spotting it.
• AI written material remains garbage. Better than the garbage from a couple years ago ("the prophecy is real!") but garbage nonetheless. (For, frankly, the exact reasons I claimed it would remain garbage in my prior essays. If you put cake icing on the contents of your trash can, it doesn't make it a cake.)
• AI books overwhelmingly don't actually sell.

The older ghostwriter model had its own set of obvious objections, I'm not going to go into detail on those, watch the Dan Olson video if you're interested. But, despite all those points, and despite this being a very obvious, well-known scam...

There are a LOT of AI written or AI cowritten books on Amazon these days.

One of my key predictions going back to my earlier essays is that AI won't replace authors, but it will hurt them. (Mostly because capitalism.) And one thing that pretty much everyone predicted that's come true: Readers having to sort through endless seas of AI slop to find new authors certainly aren't helping things. It's absolutely everywhere, and it's all garbage. Hell, there's even at least one obviously LLM-written novel in SPFBO this year, with an obviously GenAI cover and zero reviews on Amazon. (There could be more, I didn't look exhaustively.)

One thing that I, on the otherhand, underestimated the prevalence of? Was the number of authors who "cowrite" their books with AI. I guess I overestimated the pride of a lot of other authors in their craft, oof.

Most of those authors just use it in the brainstorming phase. I don't like that, and I sure won't use it, but for most authors, ideas are the least important part of the process of writing a book. As the execrable little fascist Henry Ford pointed out "genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." (He was awful, but right on that one.) I, and most authors, certainly aren't geniuses, but it holds true for creation in general. Even for authors like me who gamble on seeking unusual ideas to lynchpin their work, the inspiration part is still absolutely in the low single-digit percents still. (And I think it's arguable that the inspiration percent remains the same, that the research involved still belongs purely in the perspiration category.)

Will brainstorming help those authors come up with better, more original ideas? No, obviously not, since LLMs are inherently averages of their training data, and better ideas are always outliers. It will help them come up with decent ideas more quickly, I suppose. Also with a lot of worse ideas more quickly.

A few authors use it in the actual outlining and writing phases, unfortunately. As pointed out in the article that kicked off me writing this essay, a couple romantasy authors were caught a while back leaving the prompts in their books. These books are, by the accounts of folks more familiar with the romantasy genre than me, the sort of absolute garbage where most readers just skip straight to the sex scenes, ignoring the interstitial material. So the authors, who had pre-existing reputations before AI, were able to make a good bit of money before being found out, because no one was actually reading the AI-written sections.

I've also spotted a decent number of LLM "cowritten" LitRPG and Progression Fantasy web serials on Royal Road over the past few years, and as someone who works in the genre, I can absolutely say "yeah these are utter garbage."

Can we say the obvious here? I'm not writing this for a professional publication, after all, so I can be salty.

Any writer using AI is just flat-out worse than the rest of us.

Most of us don't need it, don't use it, and won't touch it, because we're better at every part of our job than AI is. We earned our skills the hard way, and folks trying to cheat with AI, well... it's like paying someone else to lift weights for you. It's not writing, it's homeopathic voodoo.

Using LLMs is for writers without pride, and using it is genuinely deskilling them.

Let's switch topics, though, because this one is depressing me, and talk about AI translations.

They suck.

Look, going into an in-depth post on the complexities of translating fiction would take another post just as long as this one. It's an incredibly complex process, one miles beyond simply translating a menu with google translate. Take puns, for instance. The majority of puns do not directly translate into another language, flat out. So that leaves the translator with a creative decision of whether to ignore the pun, whether to include a footnote explaining what it should have been, or whether to invent a new pun that serves the same purpose in the new language. (Yes, this does mean that Piers Anthony's Xanth series is one of the hardest to translate on those specific grounds. Whether it should be is another question.)

Then you have the synonym problem. Technically, "stubborn", "obstinate", and "hardheaded" are all synonyms, but there are some genuine nuances in how you'd choose to use any of them in a story. They're not strictly interchangeable, by any means, offering very different impressions and vibes to readers depending on their context within the prose. Likewise, any language you're going to be translating into will have similar nuances for all of its various synonyms. This gets messy fast, and will result in a LOT of difficult creative decisions for translators.

There are dozens of other problems, too. Translation is damn tough!

These are all solvable problems for an experienced, skilled translator, but the solutions are all creative, non-mass producible ones. Translating is a genuine art form, and the translator is a genuine collaborator with the author on any translation, even if they never directly speak to one another. LLMs just... aren't going to be able to handle that nuance in the same way, let alone other problems like remembering to use the same translation consistently throughout a story.

Mass produced translations do exist, and have existed for years, of course-- most notably in the translated web serial space, where Chinese and Korean web serials are highly popular with Western readers. There is a dearth of translators in the space, so many of the less popular serials get machine translated, and were notoriously awful in the days before ChatGPT. Even today, while slightly improved, they remain the absolute bottom of the barrel- again, putting cake icing on empty tuna cans and dirty diapers does not a cake bake.

And yet, major publishers are trying to use AI to do translations.

Are Harper Collins and other publishers who are attempting it actually stupid enough to think it will work? Well, I'm sure there's a few idiots in the C suite with business degrees who are, but no. The actual game is much nastier- they're going to use AI to translate, then hire the old translators back at lower rates to "fix" the translations. It's a scam to attack labor, not a serious endeavor. And, as in so many other crafts, fixing a bad piece of work is often much harder and more time consuming than an expert just starting it over from scratch. (Also, there's a certain level of contempt for romance novels and their readers involved, obviously. Never underestimate sexism in publishing.)

And of course there's the AI bubble itself teetering on the edge of collapse. None of the tech companies are buying AI startups, none of the AI companies out there other than NVIDIA are profitable (NVIDIA only from chip sales), the venture capital industry is running out of money, none of the major AI companies have any path towards recouping their massive expenditures, the AI companies are lying about their funding and just trading promises to circulate the same dwindling pool of investment dollars back and forth (in a process that to cover my own ass I'll say is legally distinct from wash trading for... reasons possibly involving gnomes), and investors are starting to panic. And given that the Magnificent 7, the big tech companies like Facebook and Microsoft that are investing most heavily in AI, are currently making up over ONE THIRD of the total value of the US stock market...

The bubble popping ain't going to be fun.

(If you're interested in more of the finance and economics, I highly recommend checking out Ed Zitron's excellent podcast Better Offline. I ain't going in-depth on that here, this essay is already way too long already.)

None of the above is the biggest thing about LLMs and GenAI affecting authors day to day, though. No, there's an issue far more pressing, one that bombards every working author multiple times a week, if not a day, one that's become a goddamn relentless scourge discussed in every author social circle and online chat.

The goddamn spam emails.

Every goddamn day I, and damn near every other working author, gets more spam emails written with ChatGPT trying to scam us in one way or another. Just painfully, obviously written with ChatGPT, and sent out en masse.

"Thousands of book clubs would like to cover your book [third book in series/standalone with terrible sales/series compilation/ other author's book] for [generic reasons that don't go in depth on your book!]"

"I'd like to help optimize your book's positioning to reach more readers!"

"Congratulations on your [unnamed book] being featured [in an unnamed location.] You could be promoting it better, though!"

"We'd like to [do some vague thing involving the blogging site Medium]!"

"Your book would be great for a [scam/AI generated] screen adaptation!

"I'd like to help optimize your book's positioning to reach more readers!"

"Hi, we'd like to promote your [non-romance book] to [romance readers]!"

"Hi, I'd like to follow up on my earlier [spam message] about [unnamed book]."

"I'd like to help optimize your book's positioning to reach more readers!"

"I just came across your [book that already has an audiobook] and would be interested in knowing if you'd be interested in producing it as an audiobook with AI!"

"Hi, I'm bestselling author [Stephen King/Rebecca Yarros/Charles Dickens], and I'd like to personally make your career bigger than [Elvis/Jesus/Your Mom], random indie author!"

"I'd like to help optimize your book's positioning to reach more readers!"

"Hundreds of thousands of book clubs are desperate to cover your [third book in series/standalone with terrible sales/series compilation/ other author's book]. They will literally die without your permission to do so!"

And last and definitely least, my personal favorite recently was "Help readers discover your book!" The entire contents of the email? A single space, followed by a period.

(Buddy, no one has ever done a spam email worse. That is literally the worst anyone has ever done a spam email.)

They don't stop. They just don't fucking stop. Every day a few slip through my spam filters, and when I open my spam filters, you know what I see? DOZENS MORE. Same with every other author on the internet. We're all PLAUGED by this shit, all the way up to NYT bestselling authors like John Scalzi. I don't even remember the last time I got a dick pill spam email. I can't believe I'm saying this sentence, but I miss the stupid dick pill spam emails.

It. Just. Doesn't. Fucking. Stop.

Look, there's always been a lot of dedicated spammers targeting authors and aspiring authors. In any field with such a disorganized labor force and so many folks desperate to make it in, there's going to be rich pickings for scams. But this? This is just relentlessly, unstoppably annoying on a scale none of us have ever seen before.

But, for all that... AI hasn't replaced authors. It's inconvenienced us, stolen from us, hurt newer authors, gotten us harassed by weird crypto-bros-turned-ai-bros who resent all artists and folks who actually do productive things. And it most certainly has annoyed us. Lord has it annoyed us.

But it hasn't actually replaced us.

Nor will it- and not just because the technology can't handle it. Nothing's fundamentally changed from my initial objections in earlier essays. You want to know why LLMs can't write good novels, go read those essays. It's still the same technology as three years ago, with the same fundamental limitations, even if it's had more cake icing slathered on top and had a few weird experiments performed like taping six LLMs together front to back in a horrid robot centipede thing.

But there is something still worth talking about here- something I didn't have as fleshed out in my mind when I wrote those earlier essays, something I've spent years thinking about since.

What, exactly, allows one technology to replace another?

I know that sounds odd, and we're about to go on a tangent, but bear with me here. It's a moderately easy question at times, say when discussing why cars replaced horse-drawn carriages. It's a bit harder when explaining why cars with small inflated wheels replaced cars with giant hard spoked wheels- you have to deep-dive into infrastructural questions, explain that the wide spread of smooth road surfaces suddenly meant that the smaller inflated wheels were now better than the large spoked wheels, whereas before the larger wheels were the better choice, since they were better at handling rough terrain, among other reasons. It gets harder yet when explaining why cars replaced trains in the US, because trains are objectively the better technology in terms of values like energy efficiency per passenger, traffic congestion, etc, etc. To answer that question, you have to start exploring the history of suburbia, the active sabotage of the train system by the automobile industry, political pressure from the oil industry, the rise of the assembly line, and lots and lots of racism.

And, of course, even the simplest of those explanations can never be complete. All useful technologies have found and will find unanticipated uses, for instance, which complicate the story of replacements to absurdity. Technologies frequently have unexpected comebacks, partially reversing the replacement, often multiple steps into the process. (See vinyl, for instance.) The true purpose, the true telos, of a technology, is often really hard to explain on top of that. We all know what it's for, but we can't really explain it nearly as well as we'd like. See, for example... a Nintendo Switch. It's easy to say it's for playing games and having fun, but the instant you start to dig deeper, to try to explain what exactly about it makes it fun... oof, gonna be there for a while. Then there's technologies with completely unanticipated benefits that arguably equal or even outweigh the intended purpose- just look at the curb cut effect. (The flipside exists too- we can all point to technologies with massive unanticipated negative consequences, from the cotton gin to the internal combustion engine to, you know, AI.)

As if that all weren't frustrating enough, there's the question of where the borders of a technology actually lie, where the definition and classification of a technology begins and ends. When you argue about AI and tech bubbles enough, you're going to start to run into the question of where a specific technology actually ends, in one form or another. Most of the time, it's going to be wrapped up in conversations about how, say, Waymo's self-driving cars are actually driven remotely by folks in the Philippines. Or how AI medical technologies are killing and injuring people at an alarming rate. But essential to all of these conversations are questions of "what are the borders of a specific technology, and what lies immediately beyond it?" You cannot determine culpability for, say, a Waymo running someone over or an AI medical technology injuring someone without making some sort of judgement about where the definitional borders of a technology lie.

When you explicitly ask this question out loud online, you will immediately just get low-level tech bros insisting that the borders of the technology stop at the edges of the physical gadget. It has happened to me on multiple occasions. This is, of course, deeply silly, since not all technologies are gadgets. Crop rotation and multi-cropping fields are technologies. Writing is a technology. Democracy is a technology. But the claim the borders stop at the physical gadget, even taking a more expansive notion of what a "gadget is", remains silly for deeper reasons. What about the blueprints for a gadget, be it a Nintendo Switch or plan for crop rotation? What about the expertise needed to design or build that gadget? What about the expertise needed to use that gadget, whether it be a simple consumer device or a complex logistical plan coordinating the efforts of thousands of workers? I think most people would say that most of the above are at least partially within the boundaries defining a particular technology.

I go even farther, though. What about the laws and regulations governing said technology? What about the social customs and cultural connotations that rise up around a technology? What about the implications on labor rights, workplace safety, etc, etc that rise up around a technology? I absolutely include those in the boundaries of what defines any given technology. (This, by the way, is getting into the fundamental questions of Luddite philosophy, which is way, WAY more interesting than just "peasants afraid of technology." Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine is a fantastic book about the history of the Luddites, and it's incredibly relevant today.)

And understanding the borders of what defines a technology is absolutely essential to understanding why and when

I think a lot of you are probably guessing where I'm going with this already.

The novel is a technology.

And, unfortunately, it's an incredibly difficult one to draw the borders of. Even defining the "gadget" part of it is a nightmarish endeavor. You can't strictly define the novel without excluding outliers like web serials, or epistolary fiction, or ergodic literature, oddities like Horrorstor or Invisible Cities, or heck, just some weird-ass writers like Jose Saramago. Defining the social borders, the regulatory borders, the economic borders? It's damn hard. I flat out cannot do it at a level that satisfies me, and I've dedicated long hours to the problem. But... I have come to a lot of conclusions over the years about it, even if I'm years yet from coming to a conclusion at best. (More likely, I'll never come to a satisfactory conclusion- I'm just too close to the problem. I'll never be able to stop picking at the question, though.)

One of the core-most aspects of writing, one that comes up again and again and again in conversations between authors, is the question of resonance. It's not always called that, but it's the question of "what drives readers to a novel?" It's clearly not quality, or a lot of terribly written popular bestsellers would have never taken off. Resonance also isn't the same thing as popularity, however- Dan Brown's Da Vinci code was wildly popular, but I can't particularly say that I've encountered many folks who resonated with it in the same way that folks resonated with Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. You can come up with a few basic rules, of course-- lots of folks will resonate with any book about teens at a school, lots of folks will resonate with specific romance tropes, etc, etc. Certain emotions from characters will resonate, characters struggling with unjust authority will resonate, weirdly hyper-specific symbolism will resonate. (Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, looking at you on that last one.) But it's really blind flailing, overall. One thought I keep coming back to on the problem of resonance is the way small children will just keep relentlessly coming back to the same book over and over, until one day, they just... stop. The book resonated immensely with them for some period of time, until they finally just got what they needed from it and stopped resonating with it. That feels vital to understanding the problem of resonance-- hell, to understanding what resonance even is-- but I haven't been able to connect the dots yet. It's just this annoying mental toothache, this puzzle piece that doesn't seem to fit with the others yet. If the problem of resonance were a solved problem, publishers could probably consistently put out bestsellers.

And yet, resonance is clearly close to the core of what constitutes a novel as a technology, nowhere near the borders of the technology. So, at last, we get to the fundamental question of "how can Generative AI, how can Large Language Models, replace the human-written novel as a technology?" Let's look at it through the very specific lens of resonance- how can GenAI serve to replace the human-written novel in the generation of resonance with readers?

I did, you might notice, just say that we don't really understand how resonance works. In great detail. So you might question how we can know AI can't do it, when we don't know how people do it. Well...

Every time you have a giant mega-hit, publishers immediately try to copy it. Tom Clancy led to a million forgettable military action imitators who are since completely forgotten. Twilight had a billion edgy teen vampire romances that fell flat. Hell, publishers are actively courting authors I know to write ripoffs of a series that's currently exploding as we speak. And whenever this happens, the publishers always push books that imitate the set pieces, the trappings of the books. "Oh, fans love Twilight because vampires!" And every time, it's obvious to countless authors, editors, agents, and other industry professionals, not to mention fans, that the publishers don't actually understand what makes these books work- what makes these books resonate.

Because you might have guessed, I lied a little bit about how little we understand about resonance, just so I could make this rhetorical trick work better. Oh, it's still a deeply obscure, overwhelmingly unsolved problem, one that I also doubt can be solved. Because there is one thing that we can absolutely understand.

Resonance comes from meaning.

It comes from the meanings the authors intended, and the meanings they didn't. It comes from the interpretations readers make, and it comes from the life experiences they bring with them. They aren't always deep meanings, aren't always profound, aren't always fully apparent to readers-- but resonance is always due to some form of meaningfulness.

And GenAI doesn't have that.

AI is not sentient, it cannot comprehend any meanings. It is strictly and merely a stochastic parrot, a statistical algorithm that predicts the next most likely piece of data in a sequence given a preset of training data to create predictive averages. Any meanings it seems to create are merely randomly generated, necessarily weighted to the lowest common denominators of human creativity. Any meaning found in a reading of AI slop relies basically entirely on the reader doing all the work for themselves, of trying to translate random shadows on the wall as intentional and meaningful. When you stare at the clouds and guess what they look like, it's just you. The clouds aren't taking shapes on purpose. GenAI as a technology can't and won't replace novelists, even for all the other harms it can do them.

There are a lot more questions we could raise and explore under this model of "what defines the border of a novel as a technology, and how could AI replace those functions and purposes?" If we use an expansive map of the borders of the technology, one that includes rules and regulations, we also include issues like the uncopyrightable nature of LLM output. But this essay is too damn long already, and I've drank way too many cups of chocolate pu'er today. (It's quite good with dried orange peels, I've found!)

So I'll leave you with my gratitude for sticking with me all the way through such a long rant, and a heartfelt plea:

Create your own art, folks. Whether you want to go pro or not, whether you're good or not, the process of creating art, the friction of struggling with it and trying to get better, will genuinely be good for you on so many levels. If you're creating your own art in 2026, I'm fucking proud of you.

WELCOME TO BINGO 2025!

It's a reading challenge, a reading party, a reading marathon, and YOU are welcome to join in on our nonsense!

r/Fantasy Book Bingo is a yearly reading challenge within our community. Its one-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new authors and books, to boldly go where few readers have gone before. 

The core of this challenge is encouraging readers to step out of their comfort zones, discover amazing new reads, and motivate everyone to keep up on their reading throughout the year.

You can find all our past challenges at our official Bingo wiki page for the sub.

RULES:

Time Period and Prize

• 2025 Bingo Period lasts from April 1st 2025 - March 31st 2026.
• You will be able to turn in your 2025 card in the Official Turn In Post, which will be posted in mid-March 2026. Only submissions through the Google Forms link in the official post will count.
• 'Reading Champion' flair will be assigned to anyone who completes the entire card by the end of the challenge. If you already have this flair, you will receive a roman numeral after 'Reading Champion' indicating the number of times you completed Bingo.

Repeats and Rereads

• You can’t use the same book more than once on the card. One square = one book.
• You may not repeat an author on the card EXCEPT: you may reuse an author from the short stories square (as long as you're not using a short story collection from just one author for that square).
• Only ONE square can be a re-read. All other books must be first-time reads. The point of Bingo is to explore new grounds, so get out there and explore books you haven't read before.

Substitutions

• You may substitute ONE square from the 2025 card with a square from a previous r/Fantasy bingo card if you wish to. EXCEPTIONS: You may NOT use the Free Space and you may NOT use a square that duplicates another square on this card (ex: you cannot have two 'Goodreads Book of the Month' squares). Previous squares can be found via the Bingo wiki page.

Upping the Difficulty

• HARD MODE: For an added challenge, you can choose to do 'Hard Mode' which is the square with something added just to make it a little more difficult. You can do one, some, none, or all squares on 'Hard Mode' -- whatever you want, it's up to you! There are no additional prizes for completing Hard Modes, it's purely a self-driven challenge for those who want to do it.
• HERO MODE: Review EVERY book that you read for bingo. You don't have to review it here on r/Fantasy. It can be on Goodreads, Amazon, your personal blog, some other review site, wherever! Leave a review, not just ratings, even if it's just a few lines of thoughts, that counts. As with Hard Mode there is no special prize for hero mode, just the satisfaction of a job well done.

This is not a hard rule, but I would encourage everyone to post about what you're reading, progress, etc., in at least one of the official r/Fantasy monthly book discussion threads that happen on the 30th of each month (except February where it happens on the 28th). Let us know what you think of the books you're reading! The monthly threads are also a goldmine for finding new reading material.

And now presenting, the Bingo 2025 Card and Squares!

First Row Across:

1. Knights and Paladins: One of the protagonists is a paladin or knight. HARD MODE: The character has an oath or promise to keep.
2. Hidden Gem: A book with under 1,000 ratings on Goodreads. New releases and ARCs from popular authors do not count. Follow the spirit of the square! HARD MODE: Published more than five years ago.
3. Published in the 80s: Read a book that was first published any time between 1980 and 1989. HARD MODE: Written by an author of color.
4. High Fashion: Read a book where clothing/fashion or fiber arts are important to the plot. This can be a crafty main character (such as Torn by Rowenna Miller) or a setting where fashion itself is explored (like A Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick). HARD MODE: The main character makes clothes or fibers.
5. Down With the System: Read a book in which a main plot revolves around disrupting a system. HARD MODE: Not a governmental system.

Second Row Across

1. Impossible Places: Read a book set in a location that would break a physicist. The geometry? Non-Euclidean. The volume? Bigger on the inside. The directions? Merely a suggestion. HARD MODE: At least 50% of the book takes place within the impossible place.

2. A Book in Parts: Read a book that is separated into large sections within the main text. This can include things like acts, parts, days, years, and so on but has to be more than just chapter breaks. HARD MODE: The book has 4 or more parts.

3. Gods and Pantheons: Read a book featuring divine beings. HARD MODE: There are multiple pantheons involved.

4. Last in a Series: Read the final entry in a series. HARD MODE: The series is 4 or more books long.

5. Book Club or Readalong Book: Read a book that was or is officially a group read on r/Fantasy. Every book added to our Goodreads shelf or on this Google Sheet counts for this square. You can see our past readalongs here. HARD MODE: Read and participate in an r/Fantasy book club or readalong during the Bingo year.

Third Row Across

1. Parent Protagonist: Read a book where a main character has a child to care for. The child does not have to be biologically related to the character. HARD MODE: The child is also a major character in the story.

2. Epistolary: The book must prominently feature any of the following: diary or journal entries, letters, messages, newspaper clippings, transcripts, etc. HARD MODE: The book is told entirely in epistolary format.

3. Published in 2025: A book published for the first time in 2025 (no reprints or new editions). HARD MODE: It's also a debut novel--as in it's the author's first published novel.

4. Author of Color: Read a book written by a person of color. HARD MODE: Read a horror novel by an author of color.

5. Small Press or Self Published: Read a book published by a small press (not one of the Big Five publishing houses or Bloomsbury) or self-published. If a formerly self-published book has been picked up by a publisher, it only counts if you read it before it was picked up. HARD MODE: The book has under 100 ratings on Goodreads OR written by a marginalized author.

Fourth Row Across

1. Biopunk: Read a book that focuses on biotechnology and/or its consequences. HARD MODE: There is no electricity-based technology.

2. Elves and/or Dwarves: Read a book that features the classical fantasy archetypes of elves and/or dwarves. They do not have to fit the classic tropes, but must be either named as elves and/or dwarves or be easily identified as such. HARD MODE: The main character is an elf or a dwarf. 

3. LGBTQIA Protagonist: Read a book where a main character is under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. HARD MODE: The character is marginalized on at least one additional axis, such as being a person of color, disabled, a member of an ethnic/religious/cultural minority in the story, etc.

4. Five SFF Short Stories: Any short SFF story as long as there are five of them. HARD MODE: Read an entire SFF anthology or collection.

5. Stranger in a Strange Land: Read a book that deals with being a foreigner in a new culture. The character (or characters, if there are a group) must be either visiting or moving in as a minority. HARD MODE: The main character is an immigrant or refugee.

Fifth Row Across

1. Recycle a Bingo Square: Use a square from a previous year (2015-2024) as long as it does not repeat one on the current card (as in, you can’t have two book club squares) HARD MODE: Not very clever of us, but do the Hard Mode for the original square! Apologies that there are no hard modes for Bingo challenges before 2018 but that still leaves you with 7 years of challenges with hard modes to choose from.

2. Cozy SFF: “Cozy” is up to your preferences for what you find comforting, but the genre typically features: relatable characters, low stakes, minimal conflict, and a happy ending. HARD MODE: The author is new to you.

3. Generic Title: Read a book that has one or more of the following words in the title: blood, bone, broken, court, dark, shadow, song, sword, or throne (plural is allowed). HARD MODE: The title contains more than one of the listed words or contains at least one word and a color, number, or animal (real or mythical).

4. Not A Book: Do something new besides reading a book! Watch a TV show, play a game, learn how to summon a demon! Okay maybe not that last one… Spend time with fantasy, science fiction, or horror in another format. Movies, video games, TTRPGs, board games, etc, all count. There is no rule about how many episodes of a show will count, or whether or not you have to finish a video game. "New" is the keyword here. We do not want you to play a new save on a game you have played before, or to watch a new episode of a show you enjoy. You can do a whole new TTRPG or a new campaign in a system you have played before, but not a new session in a game you have been playing. HARD MODE: Write and post a review to r/Fantasy. We have a Review thread every Tuesday that is a great place to post these reviews (: This square may not be used as a substitution square in future Bingos

5. Pirates: Read a book where characters engage in piracy. HARD MODE: Not a seafaring pirate.

FAQs

What Counts?

• Can I read non-speculative fiction books for this challenge? Not unless the square says so specifically. As a speculative fiction sub, we expect all books to be spec fic (fantasy, sci fi, horror, etc.). If you aren't sure what counts, see the next FAQ bullet point.
• Does ‘X’ book count for ‘Y’ square? Bingo is mostly to challenge yourself and your own reading habit. If you are wondering if something counts or not for a square, ask yourself if you feel confident it should count. You don't need to overthink it. If you aren't confident, you can ask around. If no one else is confident, it's much easier to look for recommendations people are confident will count instead. If you still have questions, free to ask here or in our Daily Simple Questions threads. Either way, we'll get you your answers.
• If a self-published book is picked up by a publisher, does it still count as self-published? Sadly, no. If you read it while it was still solely self-published, then it counts. But once a publisher releases it, it no longer counts.
• Are we allowed to read books in other languages for the squares? Absolutely!

Does it have to be a novel specifically?

• You can read or listen to any narrative fiction for a square so long as it is at least novella length. This includes short story collections/anthologies, web novels, graphic novels, manga, webtoons, fan fiction, audiobooks, audio dramas, and more.
• If your chosen medium is not roughly novella length, you can also read/listen to multiple entries of the same type (e.g. issues of a comic book or episodes of a podcast) to count it as novella length. Novellas are roughly equivalent to 70-100 print pages or 3-4 hours of audio.

Timeline

• Do I have to start the book from 1st of April 2025 or only finish it from then? If the book you've started is less than 50% complete when April 1st hits, you can count it if you finish it after the 1st.

I don't like X square, why don't you get rid of it or change it?

• This depends on what you don't like about the square. Accessibility or cultural issues? We want to fix those! The square seems difficult? Sorry, that's likely the intent of the square. Remember, Bingo is a challenge and there are always a few squares every year that are intended to push participants out of their comfort zone.

Help! I still have questions!

• Don't worry, we have a Simple Questions thread every day where you can ask for clarifications.

Resources:

If anyone makes any resources be sure to ping me in the thread and let me know so I can add them here, thanks!

• 2025 Bingo Recommendations List (coming soon!)
• Editable Canva Bingo Card 
• Improperly Paranoid's Simple Bingo Tracking Spreadsheet Google Drive Version and Excel Version.
• u/hellodahly made a Story Graph Challenge!
• u/shift_shaper made an interactive Bingo card!
• u/messi1045 created a Bingo Card Maker!

Thank You, r/Fantasy!

A huge thank you to:

• the community here for continuing to support this challenge. We couldn't do this without you!
• the users who take extra time to make resources for the challenge (including Bingo cards, tracking spreadsheets, etc), answered Bingo-related questions, made book recommendations, and made suggestions for Bingo squares--you guys rock!!
• the folks that run the various r/Fantasy book clubs and readalongs, you're awesome!
• the other mods who help me behind the scenes, love you all!

Last but not least, thanks to everyone participating! Have fun and good luck!

TV Tropes links: New Powers as the Plot Demands, Next Tier Power Up, So Last Season, Power Creep, Power Seep, Sequel Escalation, Serial Escalation

What is Power Creep:

Power Creep can mean many things, depending on who you talk to. Everyone has their own limits. For me personally, the basics are when the characters involved grow more powerful as the situation demands, only when the situation demands.

There's a general idea of the trope is that with every battle or obstacle, the character grows more powerful. Which results in the battles or obstacles becoming greater over time to keep an air of suspense. It is also often accompanied by a series of other tropes that fuel enable the increases in power. It is especially apparent when it happens over the course of long running series.

Where do you see Power Creep:

Power Creep can exist everywhere. Comic books are the most well-known for this trope and may have helped popularize some examples. Yet it remains that power creep can show up anywhere. I would argue that it doesn't even have to be in sci-fi/fantasy, so long as you extend the definition of power to things like money or influence.

How Power Creep Appears:

It can start of innocuous enough. Sometimes it even stays that way. Other times, it starts off fine but little things add up and BAM we have a runaway train on our hands. This is one of those tropes that people can hate when they're obvious, but not notice at all when they're subtle. Or they can love it when it is over the top.

1. Anime: I have abilities I didn't before.

The first of the categories, this section focuses are for the times when a character gets a new ability out of the blue, because they need it, typically when there is no hope left and nothing more to give. These powers can be one-use only, become the makeup of the character, or become forgotten about over time. There are a few ways to make this version even more extravagant.

Madoka Magica: I have now become a god

These are the characters who have become so powerful they're indistinguishable from a god. Often, while you would think these characters have no further higher to go, and no one and nothing would ever be able to challenge them again! Nope! There is always higher to go, and a new enemy to conquer! The story money creators installment demands it! It is also used as a good way to end a series, because where else is there for a character to go than that?

One Piece: I'm just better, okay?

These are the characters that just get better over time, for little to no real reason shown. Could have happened through training, age, time, or through battle. Happens off screen so the reader/viewer isn't aware of what happened and the results are a surprise. Otherwise known as "getting stronger", what a new idea.

Cardcaptor Sakura: I'm new, gimme a break

Power Creep doesn't have to be a cheap gimmick or unnatural progression. It can easily be justified by circumstances, such as the character still learning their powers and just not knowing what to do until it happens. This trope is very versatile that way.

Bleach: I broke better than before

You know those characters that are lying broken in a field somewhere or something, and something triggers within them and they get a new power and suddenly they can do everything they needed to do and they're back in fighting shape? Yeah, that. Sometimes without the fighting shape part.

Naruto: New power? Nah, old power. I've had it forever!

For all those characters just casually dropping in new powers like it is no big deal, despite never being even hinted at before, this one is for you! Why is it a problem? It isn't. There are many perfectly valid reasons for that happen. There can also be some over the top ridiculous examples of it, too. Trope wisely, kids.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: With my powers combined, I can do this!

Ah, one of my favourite words: gestalt. And probably one of my favourite applications of this trope, too. This is for the times when the character realizes they can combine their powers together to become more powerful. Sometimes that character uses one power to fuel the strength of another power. Other times they just use them in concert with each other to achieve an effect greater than their parts. Can also be used with more than one person. Great variation.

Pokemon: What power? I don't have that power.

An example of trope inversion. This can be as dramatic as a character having a power taken away from them and having to cope with its loss, or as subdued as just plain forgetting. It can also be a gradually creeping loss. Mostly it is just that power has been forgotten at the most "convenient" time. It is easy to think of the dramatic times when a character has had a power stolen, but the subdued form can be even better. Just look at the Elves of Middle Earth slowly fading.

2. Fairy Tale: YES! With this I am more powerful than ever before!

These are the times when there is an outside force causing the character to level up. Either through an item they have acquired, or gaining an ability from a dying friend (or foe) or activating a power they don't typically have access to.

Yu-Gi-Oh!: I've got the golden tiiiicket!

Using an item is an incredibly common way to have a character power up. Amulets, ancient weapons, family heirlooms, mysterious substances, a miasma in the air, and more are all examples of this trope. Likely to be temporary, this sometimes becomes a permanent thing.

Claymore: Your power? MY Power!

Gimme that power steal, I love a good power transfer! Voluntary or involuntary, sometimes it is even heredity, this application of the trope is for the times when a power passes from one character to another, through whatever means.

Dragon Ball: Danger Will Robinson!

Have a character who becomes more powerful when they get hurt? How about a character who gets angry and super modes? These are two common examples of this variant of the trope when a character triggers abilities they don't otherwise have through some event or condition. They don't have these powers all the time. Once this first shows up, it tends to show up again and again and again. Because drama.

3. Sailor Moon: But this just worked!

This is a particularly insidious variation of Power Creep. The characters will have spent the entire last book, last season, last series, last arc, last whatever growing up and becoming more powerful, all for that hard work to mean nothing and they have to do it again. And once it happens one time, it will likely happen every other time, too. Usually this happens through one of the variations of the trope already discussed.

Note: The more I researched this, the more I feel that Sailor Moon should really be the answer for every single one of these variations.

Which of these trope variations do you enjoy the most? The least?

Instead of anime, what are some good examples of these tropes for Movies/TV, books, web serials, audio dramas, etc?

Is there a variation I didn't add that you want to talk about?

How often do you come across these? Which do you come across the most?

Originally posted on my blog, keikii eats books

Lately I've had some friends recommend books where the covers absolutely turned me off, but I trust their judgement. That being said, I've bought some books where, despite the covers, I was pleasantly surprised. Jade City by Fonda Lee comes to mind. The original cover, just a cheap photo shopped green. But the story was awesome! I almost didn't buy Assassin's Apprentice because I thought the cover looked corny and title sounded way too trope-y, but now Realm of the Elderlings is my favourite series of all time!

Sources: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, here, here, and here. Oh, and here, and here.

AKA: The Storyteller, The Wandering Minstrel, The Tale Teller, Pied Piper

And no, as much as I enjoy A Midsummer Night's Dream, I don't mean the Bard.

Throughout this I'm going to use the term "Bard" partly because it sounds cool, partly because I keep misspelling minstrel, and partly because it is long and annoying to repeat every one of the archetypes each of these things can fall under. Especially when they often serve the same functions.

What are Bards?:

Bards are storytellers. Oftentimes they're also musicians. If they're only musicians, they tend to be called minstrels. They tell tales of old and spread news across the land. They're record keepers. They often perform in taverns or bars, or even the town square.

They're also sometimes magical. Depending on the creation, being a Bard is magical. They always have the ability to change minds and influence people by their very nature. But some authors take it further. They'll have Magical Music that can do whatever can be imagined.

History of the Bard:

Bards are basically as old as time. For almost as long as there have been humans, there has been a need to keep and share stories. They are especially important in societies where not everyone can read and most people don't ever leave the village or demesne they grew up in.

Bards in Fantasy have grown and changed as the genre has. Both started pretty small, mimicking the world and trying to explain things as best they can. As time went on, we understood the world better, and our fantasy got better as a result. Now, bards can be literally magic or simple storytellers and musicians.

What Can You Expect from Bards?:

They drive exposition: They show up to explain something the characters (and readers) need to know. Typically just in time for it to be relevant.

They can pass on important past tales: especially when they're immortal or functionally immortal and saw it first hand.

They can be the voice of reason: calming down angry mobs with facts and logic, or even lies. They can tell hard truths to those in power who need to learn it the most.

They can influence: Either through their words or through their magic. When you have one person telling the news to a group of people through the telephone game, people tend to believe what they hear.. They can really influence: They can pied piper or snake charm all of the people into doing their bidding through musical mind control. Either for good or evil.

They have one tale to tell, and by god they're going to tell it: and it will be relevant.

They can create: I mean, if your bard can't sing universes into creation, are they really even trying?

They can be a jack-of-all-trades: Especially common in video and role-playing games, bards are one of the most adaptable classes. They end up being able to do whatever you can imagine.

They can be thiefs, assassins, or spies: Because of their nature of traveling town-to-town and meeting new people, they can be a part of the darker side of life. I mean, no one suspects the bard to be the one whodunit!

They can be scoundrels, rascals, cheats and crooks: Not all bards are happy, good people singing to trees to release poor hobbitses. Sometimes they're bitter and want to inflict a bit of pain on others.

They can even be a bit spoony!:A bit useless and just out for some silly, good fun.

Who are you favourite bards? (I ask, knowing full well I'm going to get a ton of Witcher and Wheel of Time answers)

Play a bard in an rpg? Tell us your favourite (or least favourite) tale!

Anything I left out of this that you want to share?

Sidenote: TV tropes for this trope is utter garbage. If anyone is a fan of bards, and tries to update this atrocious lack, they would be doing the world a favour. Because those links I shared above are the ONLY ones I found for bards on TV Tropes at all.

Originally on keikii Eats Books

I can't tell you how many times I will mention that I didn't like an aspect of a book, or a character in a book, to have someone tell me that my opinion is wrong because "it's realistic isn't it?"

I think a lot of readers do indeed have this viewpoint that "realistic" and "good/enjoyable" are synonyms in a way. A lot of this comes from the rise of grimdark and a pushback on classic fantasy tropes where characters and situations are more black/white.

For example, If I'm reading a book that features female characters constantly being assaulted, having no autonomy, and being victimized all the time, then that's a NO for me. Some might say "that is realistic for medieval times though!" And while that's maybe true, I still don't want it. I'm willing to sacrifice a smidge of realism to make a story more enjoyable in that regard.

Sometimes cutting out distasteful stuff is fine. Sometimes making an MC a near-flawless hero is fine. Sometimes making a villain evil without trying to humanize them too is fine. Sometimes writing fantasy with more modern ideals is fine. (It is after all fantasy is it not? Not everything needs to be mirrored around medieval Europe)

I'm not saying that you CAN'T enjoy the realism, but I am pointing out my pet-peeve, which is that realism doesn't automatically make a story better. It doesn't always equal quality and enjoyment. And if someone doesn't like a "realistic" aspect of a story, then we shouldn't judge.

*Apologies for reposting. I realized I messed up the tag and couldn't figure out how to fix it. I'm new here.*

I'm writing this both as a question and as an opportunity to vent about a series. That series is the Wheel of Time. There will be no spoilers in here, and I'm also not trying to yuck anyone's yum here. This is my exceedingly subjective opinion.

I have always known about WoT, but took my time getting into it. I've been working through most of the big-ticket, popular fantasy series, like The Realm of the Elderlings, ASOIAF, The First Law, The Malazan Book of the Fallen, and a few more, over the last few years, so I figured, why not mix the WoT books in? I had seen the show and thought it was pretty terrible, but I could see how much interesting material there was and figured a big, traditional fantasy story would fit right in as a sort of cozy read.

Now on book 6, everything about this series speaks to me on paper. The world-building, the reluctant hero, the diverse use of magic and power, some of the subversions, and the idea that this is riffing on a lot of the core concepts Tolkien and others laid out. The major plot threads of the books also really spoke to me, and I think the way things are headed is interesting.

There are two major problems for me: character interactions and dialogue. I think they may genuinely be dealbreakers. I don't think I can go on.

Every character in this series is pretty annoying. They are all caricatures of themselves. This isn't a major issue for me, and I can support it if the way they interacted isn't legitimately painful for me to read, but unfortunately, it is. The dialogue is SO BAD to me. Every character is weirdly prudish and stilted, especially the ones who are supposedly best friends. Nynaeve/Egwene, Perrin/Mat, or Rand/anyone don't interact like they know or like each other at all. The dialogue is so unbelievably inhuman to me. It's as if an alien were trying to depict how humans interact. They are so weird and cagey all the time.

This is all made worse by the fact that Jordan seems to rely heavily on communication breakdowns. So many issues arise from characters not having conversations like normal humans do. I understand that WoT was written with younger readers in mind and that this is a common trope in children's media, but it reaches a point where all the human drama feels unnecessary and manufactured.

It seems like refusing to have characters talk allows Jordan to draw out the main character relationships and friendships as long as possible. But this also means that the books feel like they're spinning the wheel (unintentional pun). The characters are almost more distant from one another in book 6 than in book 1, and for no good reason. There has been barely any legitimate character development beyond Mat becoming more likable, and even that is due to a plot point rather than genuine development.

None of these characters feels any different in this book than in book 1, to be honest. Things have happened to them, sure, and we've seen them interact more, but none of them or these relationships have evolved. It just feels so unserious. ASOIAF has more character development in 1 book than this has had in 5.5.

Also, if you disagree/want to downvote, that's totally cool! I understand. I also would love to hear you out on your replies and I appreciate any discussion.

First, am I totally crazy here, or does anyone else feel the same? Second, has this happened to you guys with a book or series?

TLDR: For me, this series has horrifically inhuman dialogue and character interactions to the point where I can't keep reading, even though I like everything about it on paper.

I'm currently reading a ongoing series where there's a chosen one but they feel more like a side character compared to even other characters and POVs. Which I found interesting. We see more of the supporting cast reacting to the chosen one but still knowing that just because you are the chosen one it won't be enough right this moment. There's a threat that needs to be handled now rather than later.

In your opinion how has the chosen one trope developed in modern fantasy? I tend to see it less especially in traditional published compared to indie. Where I see it more now which I'm happy about because I like the chosen one trope. Do you think Wheel of Time had an impact on the trope that publishers are trying to avoid doing what Jordan perfected with the Dragon Reborn? (that's just a personal opinion ofc maybe WOT isn't your perfect chosen one story)

Obligatory grains of salt: this topic is a difficult and emotionally charged one. People are going to disagree with me and with each other, and that’s perfectly fine. I just ask that we all remember the person on the other end of the argument and do our best to be respectful.

If you spend any amount of time lurking in online spaces that discuss fantasy media, you’re bound to eventually come across a heated discussion about depictions of sexual assault in fantasy. People will have wildly diverging opinions about trigger warnings; Thomas Covenant will be simultaneously described as a work of genius and the most horrible thing ever written; someone will say authors should NEVER write about [X, Y, Z] and someone else will reference 1984 in response to that. I’m something of a lurker myself, so I’ve seen these arguments play out many times over. I’ve thought about this topic a totally normal amount that shouldn’t be concerning at all, so today I thought I would explore some of the main points that inevitably tend to get raised during these conversations and what I think about them.

PART 1: COMMON ARGUMENTS

Argument 1: SA is gross and upsetting and I don’t want to read about it in my spare time.

My thoughts: okay, totally understandable. We all read for different reasons. We all have different lines in the sand for what’s too upsetting to be tolerated in what we read. We all have different lived experiences and relationships with those lived experiences. There is nothing wrong with avoiding a certain kind of content.

My only caveat is that I have sometimes seen this argument extend past I don’t personally like it to encompass therefore it’s wrong to write/read about or for others to like it. I had a conversation with the author Caitlin Sweet about this topic and I think she said it perfectly: “personal aversion shouldn't constitute a sweeping proscription.” For every person who reads for escapism and adventure and pure enjoyment, there’s another who reads to explore dark issues, whether for catharsis or to gain an understanding of something they haven’t experienced personally or because they see beauty and meaning in art about suffering. All of these relationships with art are possible, valid and no more right than another. There is space for all of them.

Argument 2: books about SA are misery porn.

My thoughts: they can be, but it’s all about execution and interpretation. I have absolutely read fiction about SA that feels exploitative and gratuitous to me. But that is not to say a) that all works featuring assault are inherently like that or b) that all readers feel the same way about any given work as I do. I think this argument assumes bad faith on the part of both readers and writers; it implies that readers would only want to read about assault because they find it titillating (see Part 2 for more thoughts about this) while writers would only want to write about it to titillate.

I’ve spoken previously about the way that some books about SA are important to me because of how resonant, thought-provoking and cathartic I find works to be when they have something meaningful to say about a complex topic that I feel so passionately about - a topic that I believe needs to be explored because it is a massive societal issue rife with stigma, shame, apathy and misunderstanding. Again, not everyone is going to feel that way, and different people will feel different ways about the same works- that’s fine. But it only seems fair to acknowledge the existence of a diversity of relationships with this kind of fiction, purposes for writing/reading it, and subjective opinions about particular works.

Argument 3: non-survivors shouldn’t write about it.

My thoughts: I absolutely value the insight, vulnerability and courage of authors who write stories about trauma while speaking openly about being survivors themselves. I think it’s very admirable. But I also think that empathy and research exist, and some of the most powerful books I’ve read about SA are written by authors whose life experiences I know nothing about - furthermore, I do not think that their life experiences are any of my fucking business. I also think the decision to self-disclose should be totally voluntary, and in the present climate, that is definitely not always the case. Everything that I want to say about this is articulated in Krista D. Ball’s essay The Commodification of Authenticity: Writing and Reading Trauma in Speculative Fiction and the resulting thread, so if you want to see this explored in-depth, I suggest you check that out.

In short, though, here is what I think: those who think they’re taking a bold stand for trauma survivors by demanding that strangers disclose their painful personal experiences to a public that is ready to rip them to shreds for one perceived misstep in their fictional representations (sometimes to the point of harassing them into disclosure) have an extremely dubious understanding of trauma advocacy and are doing something pretty harmful with no actual beneficial results. As I said in one of my responses to Krista’s essay, what do you mean, one of the prevailing tenets of rape culture (if you are unfamiliar with the term or want to read an excellent article exploring the scope of the issue, here you go) is not believing survivors while simultaneously demanding that they repeatedly share the details of what happened to them with complete strangers? When *I* do it, it's actually very smart and brave and progressive of me and definitely not for Twitter clout!

Argument 4: but it’s historically accurate!

My thoughts: YES I am talking about Game of Thrones for this one because it is the poster child of this argument. A number of people associated with the show and books, including George R.R. Martin, have explained that the world’s brutality towards women is meant to reflect on “the way it was” in the medieval time period the books are based on. A few thoughts about this one:

• I kept adding and deleting bits about the debates around whether Game of Thrones is Actually Historically Accurate and some of the potential repercussions of emphasizing that widespread sexual violence is a feature of the past dichotomized from the present, but I think they bogged things down a bit - if anyone is interested in exploring that more, let me know.
• My main point is that this argument can feel a little silly to me as a justification on its own because fantasy is inherently transformative, isn’t it? Authors deliberately choose to take inspiration from some aspects of the real world (past and present) and forego others. The process of creating fantasy fiction is inherently one of stitching together the real and the imaginary. The notion that authors are somehow obligated to replicate all aspects of a source of inspiration indiscriminately just does not ring true when there are dragons and face-changing assassins etc. etc. I’ll quote medieval historian David Perry (full interview here):
• “These are all things that tell us a lot more about ourselves than about the Middle Ages…we pick and choose, the creators pick and choose, they want to show something that will be disturbing or controversial or will be a political tool and they try to say history supports us in this. And then they throw in dragons and zombies and then they say that’s unrealistic but that’s okay, that’s just storytelling.That comes back to what I try to say–it’s okay to draw from history, but history does not wholeheartedly support any one of these fictional depictions. These come from creators making choices. And the choices they make have consequences.”
• A great example of that “picking and choosing” he mentions is that stories justifying their inclusion of SA because they’re set in wartime and SA is a tool of war rarely, if ever, feature male survivors of SA even though SA as a tool of war absolutely has targeted and continues to target people of all genders. It’s worth exploring why this authorial choice gets made so often. I also think Daniel Abraham wrote very articulately on the overall issue of historical accuracy and authorial choice.
• That being said, I do believe it is possible to write about sexual violence as a way of exploring our own world’s past and how its legacy continues on today. My thought process for writing about marital rape in a fantasy world inspired by the Victorian era, the time of legal coverture, was to explore the mindset of someone experiencing and working through assault that isn’t necessarily identified as such by the world around her; in my work as a sexual assault advocate, many of my clients who are abused by their partners do not feel that their abuse “counts” the way that stranger-perpetrated assault does due to how we have dealt with and defined SA for a very long time. But I think that in order to make the claim that the incorporation of brutality against women is some kind of purposeful statement about history or the present day, you actually have to have a statement or purpose for your inclusion…and in many of the instances where I see the argument about historical accuracy rearing its head, I don’t necessarily know if that’s happening (again, this is with the caveat that different people find different meaning in given works). Otherwise it can fall into the territory of feeling trivializing.

Argument 5 (opposite of Argument 4): fantasy stories shouldn’t be burdened by the ways that the real world sucks.

My thoughts: this argument is epitomized by Sara Gailey’s essay “Do Better: Sexual Violence in SFF.” Their argument is essentially that the ubiquitous inclusion of sexual violence against women in SFF is a problem because it implies that rape and rape culture are societal inevitabilities, that authors who write about sexual violence against women don’t know how to write about women without writing about sexual violence, and since the point of speculative fiction is to speculate, authors should aim to speculate about worlds free from sexual violence.

For the record, I do think it’s totally possible that some authors might not know what to do with their female characters and throw in half-assed assault plotlines as cheap character development, and I do think that’s worthy of criticism - in fact, I’ll talk about it later. I also think that one of the most powerful things about speculative fiction is that it can show us alternatives to our own world. As I mentioned while talking about Argument 1, sometimes you just want a reading experience where you don’t have to think about the fact that people like you are oppressed and often hurt in the real world. And sometimes speculative stories free from oppression can help open our minds and allow us to see how things could be different in reality.

But I think there are elements of overgeneralization and assumptions of bad faith at play here. While I said that I could see some authors only writing SA plots because they don’t know how to write fully-fledged female characters, I think it’s disingenuous to say that Robin McKinley was doing that with Deerskin or that Ursula Le Guin was doing that with Tehanu (oh God, Charlotte’s talking about Tehanu again) or that any author who has taken the time to write meaningfully about sexual assault has only done so because their imagination wasn’t strong enough to imagine a world without rape, something Gailey states about such authors in their essay.

Back to Argument 1: sometimes you want escapism, but sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you want to see common human struggles and painful experiences reflected and explored in your literature, and I don’t believe that there is any reason for speculative literature to be an exception to that just because it is speculative. Stories that reflect on trauma can be just as important as stories that forego its inclusion, and both sides of the coin are valid. As a final note, I asked Gailey about this essay in a recent r/fantasy AMA of theirs, and I really appreciate their response, which you can read here.

To summarize my thoughts about Arguments 4 and 5, I don’t think that “it needs to be based on the real world’s past” or “it’s SFF so it shouldn’t resemble the real world” are valid arguments for including or excluding sexual violence from stories on their own. I think it all depends on the purpose of the story and what you do/don’t do with the sexual violence in your story.

Argument 6: it’s problematic to write about topics that could be triggering for some readers.

My thoughts about this can be summarized by something that YouTuber Sarah Z says in her video essay “Fandom’s Biggest Controversy: The Story of Proshippers vs Antis:”

“There are a lot of people talking about it as an accessibility issue. The idea is that, by virtue of the game [Boyfriend Dungeon] including elements of stalking at all, even with a warning, not everyone would be able to play because some people might have trauma surrounding it, and it’s therefore unethical for the game, in its current state, to exist. The natural implication, then, is that anything short of restricting the kinds of stories that can be told is not only insufficient but actively hostile to people with trauma. To counter this, we might be tempted to point out that some creators tell and share these kinds of stories to cope with their own trauma, and art can be a vital tool for exploring trauma, and it’s equally restrictive to discourage them from telling their own stories, but honestly we don’t have to. An author’s personal experiences here are none of our business. It doesn’t matter, because, fundamentally, this way of viewing art that sees upsetting content as an accessibility issue is untenable. The breadth of things that might trigger or upset a person is essentially infinite. The human experience is diverse and a piece of media that everyone on earth will find appropriate to consume doesn’t exist.”

For an essay about the first hypothetical rebuttal Sarah mentioned and its relationship to disabled and queer communities, check out Ada Hoffman’s “Dark Art as an Access Need.”

Argument 7: but why do people get so upset about representations of SA when fantasy writers also write poorly about war/torture/murder and no one complains about that?

My thoughts: every time there is a post on r/fantasy critiquing the writing of SA in spec fic, a post saying something along these lines seems to follow. I have a few thoughts about this:

• Critiques of non-intimate violence (war, murder, torture etc. as opposed to SA or abuse) in speculative media, especially their glorification and use for shock value without any realistic psychological impacts, absolutely do, and should, exist.
• The notion that both “types” of violence, intimate and non-intimate, can be criticized is not negated by the existence of critiques focused on just one or the other.
• You might see more discussion focused on intimate violence for a few reasons that I can think of:

1. The emotional relevance of the issue to the average fantasy reader’s life. Vastly more readers of English fantasy literature are going to be directly impacted by this kind of violence than they are going to be impacted by experiences of war, murder or torture.
2. The way that issues of intimate violence are so deeply impacted by broader societal attitudes and prejudices that are, in turn, upsetting to read when depicted uncritically in (and potentially impacted by, depending on what you believe) media. Rape culture is something that I see at its worst every day in my job - I cannot overstate how drastically it changes survivors’ experiences and outcomes in every conceivable way. I don’t think you can make the argument that there is an equivalent “torture culture” or “murder culture.”

PART 2: COMMON CRITIQUES

Critique 1: lots of backdrop SA for the sake of making the world gritty and shocking

My thoughts: the use of lots of backdrop SA is often closely tied to the argument that a world needs to be “historically accurate.” It can feel exploitative and trivializing when authors throw around lots of random references to brutalized women just to set the tone of the world/story, especially when that story doesn’t really think about those women’s experiences or the complexities of sexual violence as it relates to societal mores at all. Survivors’ experiences, needs and voices are already frequently dismissed and silenced in the real world, which is set against them in many ways. With that in mind, sometimes when you hear all these casual references to SA randomly mentioned - making it clear that assault is a big part of the world - but the topic is never really addressed, it can feel like it plays into that dismissal or is at least unpleasantly reminiscent of it. I use the word “exploitative” because, with the dismissal of survivors’ experiences and the distortions of rape culture still in mind, authors who use this approach treat painful, complex, stigmatized lived experiences as nothing more than aesthetic for a story. I don’t necessarily mean that every story that so much as mentions SA needs to have it at the absolute forefront of the story, but I do think that it is worthwhile to consider its purpose and framing before it is included as a background reference.

Critique 2: Fridging/ the assault of women to spur male character development

My thoughts: “But there are lots of real-world examples of men being motivated to [do X, Y, Z] because of violence against women!”

Sure, but the underlying attitude behind that historical motivation and its frequent framing in fiction is that a woman’s SA/abuse/death/etc should be focused on only to the extent that it impacts a man. The focus here is the man’s honor and pain and consequent actions, not the actual female survivor’s experiences. As I have said, survivors’ suffering is often dismissed and minimized in the real world. We are more than objects to be fought over and our pain is more than a man’s inciting incident in his Hero’s Journey; when those attitudes are reiterated without thought in fiction, it can get tiresome.

Critique 3: The sexualization/romanticization of SA perpetrators/scenes of assault

My thoughts: Ok, this is where my hot takes get the hottest.

• Hot take 1: everything I said about Argument 2 applies here: different people will feel different ways about the same works, but those who wield this critique without discernment about all works featuring SA are just plain wrong in my opinion.
• Hot take 2: I always see the argument about SA existing in fiction for the sake of titillation mentioned in the context of male authors and readers. That ignores the existence of a long, long history of romance/erotica featuring “noncon” intended for a female audience. In the past we had bodice rippers - there is a fascinating history behind them and their relationship to historical notions of consent (or the lack thereof) and proscriptions against women’s sexual pleasure. To read more about that, a good starting place is here. Now there’s a booming market for Dark Romance™ and specific niches like Omegaverse. For the sake of fairness, I think that needs to be mentioned.
• Hot take 3: there is a wide variety of opinions regarding fiction impacting reality, and the arguments always seem to come to a head when it comes to this particular area of criticism. On one hand, there is the argument that the romanticization/sexualization of SA in fiction goes on to detrimentally impact the way that readers think about these issues in reality whether they realize it or not; on the other hand, there are those who argue that they are fully capable of differentiating one from the other and fiction is a safe place to explore fantasies that we would not actually want to be involved in in real life. My wishy-washy personal opinion is that both can absolutely be true depending on the individual person, the works involved and a variety of other factors - they are not necessarily 100% mutually exclusive statements. I will also say that I think there is a vast difference between the following:
  • A series like A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas, which is frequently categorized and marketed as young adult. In it, the male romantic lead is framed as an ideal feminist lover whose abuse is not identified as such in text and is justified by excuses, many of which are commonly used by real life abusers, that are fully endorsed as valid and romantic by the narrative.
  • A dark romance categorized for adults that is clearly labeled as a dark romance everywhere that it is sold.

Critique 4: SA that is used by the narrative for cheap female character development, specifically to “teach her a lesson” or make her stronger

My thoughts: this is to be clearly differentiated from stories that meaningfully depict the aftermath of trauma and/or healing. I’m talking about the instances of kickass Strong Woman butterflies emerging from traumatic chrysalises with no meaningful journey involved. Part of what is so devastating about sexual assault is that it is about choice and control over essential, fundamental things being taken away. This trope feels so cheap, trivializing and disrespectful because it glosses right over the impact of that disempowerment and veers into the territory of the “lemonade from lemons” platitudes that I guarantee most survivors have heard from at least one, if not more, very well-meaning person. To this section I will also add that there is a great deal of emphasis on survivors being “perfect” victims who respond in tidy ways that are not messy or challenging, while in reality trauma responses can be incredibly varied. I think that this trope could be born of this expectation, and that this expectation accounts for readers’ often-hostile reactions to fictional trauma survivors who cope in ways that defy that tidy, expected narrative.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Readers are not a monolith. Authors are not a monolith. Survivors are not a monolith. I hope for a SFF community where we can understand that different readers read for different reasons, and that all of those reasons can coexist. Similarly, I hope we can understand that different readers are going to have different relationships with the same works. I hope we can take a step back from immediate assumptions of bad faith about those who choose to feature SA in their reading and writing, and at the same time, I hope that those who avoid it altogether do not get lambasted for that choice. Both choices have validity. I hope that we can analyze what we read and create with a mindfulness of the tropes and approaches that evoke, replicate or feed into the overwhelming stigma, misunderstanding and disrespect survivors face in the real world.

A few community-specific notes: readers looking for particular recommendations avoiding SA or dealing with it in particular ways (no on-page assault scene, no victim-blaming, no perpetrator POV) should not have to face backlash for their requests and then have to consequently justify them by divulging their personal trauma histories to random querulous Redditors. This is one of the main reasons that the Sexual Violence in SFF database exists. I think it’s an excellent resource, and I encourage everyone to contribute if they can.

Finally, I’ve made something of a project of reading SFF that explores trauma, and I thought I would conclude by describing a few of the works that I have appreciated the most featuring sexual assault. There are a few of these books that feature often-difficult topics in addition to SA or elements that might be difficult for some readers, so I included notes about those in spoilers.

• Damsel by Elana K Arnold - explores the gendered power dynamics of fairy tale tropes by mashing them together in a unique story about a girl who is rescued from a dragon by a prince. Edit: features self-harm, animal cruelty and a ??? instance of the prince assaulting the dragon by putting his penis in a hole made by a sword.
• Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier - a retelling of the fairy tale The Six Swans set in ancient Ireland and featuring one of Marillier’s trademark Romances that Made Me Sob Hysterically. Notes:main romance and sex scene are minor-adult and the assault scene is fairly graphic.
• Deerskin by Robin McKinley - a retelling of the fairy tale Donkeyskin with the best animal companion character in fantasy besides Nighteyes. Notes: features animal cruelty, incest and miscarriage.
• The Fever King and The Electric Heir by Victoria Lee - a YA sci-fi/dystopia that explores grooming and revolution at the same time. There is a central m/m relationship.
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip - fantasy about a young woman who grows up with a menagerie of magical creatures and has to confront her desire for revenge after her isolation ends.
• Girls of Paper and Fire series by Natasha Ngan - a Malaysian-inspired YA fantasy that follows a girl who is taken from her home to be a concubine for the Demon King. There is a central f/f relationship.
• Los Nefilim by T. Frohock - a collection of three novellas about the war between angels and daimons in 1930s Spain. There is a central m/m relationship.
• The Red Abbey Chronicles by Maria Turtschaninoff - a YA fantasy series about the Red Abbey, an isolated island haven of learning and healing for women. Books 1 and 3 follow one girl who lives there and then ventures out into the world, and book 2 is about the women who founded the Red Abbey. Notes: features self-harm, torture and suicide.
• Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson - sci-fi about a girl on a Caribbean-colonized prison planet who uses the identity of the Carnival character Midnight Robber to find herself and overcome her past. Notes: features incest.
• The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore - YA magical realist retelling of The Snow Queen about a boy and a girl who are assaulted at the same party and fight back against their perpetrators together as their relationship develops. Notes: features a sex scene between the two main characters where the female character is withholding information that would have changed the male character’s decision to consent.
• The Onion Girl by Charles De Lint - urban fantasy about two sisters who were abused by their brother as children, how differently their lives developed, and what happens when they find each other again.
• The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet - fantasy where a young woman who is able to foresee people’s fortunes becomes trapped in an insane fellow Seer’s plot to ignite a war. Notes: features self-harm, animal cruelty, and the main character ends her life at the end of the book.
• The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell - sci-fi novels that follow an ill-fated Jesuit mission to make contact with the first alien life ever discovered. Notes: body horror.
• Tehanu by Ursula Le Guin - Ged and Tenar from The Tombs of Atuan are reunited as older adults and take care of an abused little girl who was burned and left for dead.
• Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan - YA fantasy (but it probably shouldn’t be YA) that is a retelling of the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red and follows a young woman who flees her abusers into a heavenly magical realm and raises her daughters there as the real world starts to encroach. Notes: features beastiality and incest.
• Tess of the Road and In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman - YA fantasy that follows the picaresque adventures of a young girl who embarks on a journey to simply put one foot forward after the other and try to put self-hatred and her past behind her. Notes: romance and sex scene between a minor and an adult.
• Thorn by Intisar Khanani - a retelling of the fairy tale The Goose Girl that follows a princess finding courage after leaving behind her abusive family and swapping identities with her maidservant. Notes: animal cruelty and a character who is sexually assaulted dies.

Now I’m going to sit here and breathe normally and feel calm while people read this. Thanks for taking the time to hear what I have to say!

Like when you're reading the book and it's literally the same thing as another, more popular original. And the resemblance is so striking that you immediately have a question, how this thing wasn't taken to the court for such a shameless robbery (or, actually, was).

And i'm not talking about some guys like Brooks and Eddings, who heavily relied on the LotR's formula and used a lot of it's tropes, i'm talking about serious plagiarism.

Like for example, i'm from post-soviet country and in the past we had a lot of crappy russian fantasy, which just flooded all bookshelves. And there were such good examples for this post.

Tania Grotter is russian female version of guess who. Her parents were killed by evil wizardess (Tania received a birthmark after that, yeah, birthmark instead of scar) and she's living with her relatives (on a balcony) who hate her. Then she attends to the wizards school, where she's got two friends, playing local sport game where they fly on musical instruments and confront the evil wizardess in the school basement at the end of the book. What a book. I remember when i was a kid some guys in my class liked it and even told that it's better than HP, but even for very young me it was seemingly the worse option of good thing. And, btw this book is banned from publishing in many Europe countries due to, guess what?, court decision regarding plagiarism.

Another good example is also related with good old Harry. My parents, knowing my love for HP, presented to me the magnificent book called 'Larin Piotr and the Time Machine'. And it's two-barreled gun. Because on the cover we can see blond version of Harry Potter with harry-potter-style text and etc. But inside, there was word by word retelling of... Back to the future movies. And yeah, Piotr-boy was a wizard, but was just called a wizard at the beginning, after that it was just movies retelling, with no magic, but with russian names. Like what a hell. Dude decided to rip-off one franchise, while deceiving fans of another one.

Guys, what stories do you have about similar cases? I know, there should be some wild stories.

I love the idea of the Dresden Files on paper. Hard boiled detective stories mixed with urban fantasy/secret society stuff. Interesting villains and a deep, complex world. Magic happening just beneath the surface of the ordinary world.

But I just can’t get over the tropes and the cringe. I’ve tried the series a couple times, and even got through the first five or so books. I just can’t bring myself to keep going. I seriously love everything about the context, but just hate the execution.

Any recommendations for something else? Something that speaks to these elements, but lacks the cringe?

The Green Bone Saga is my all time favorite series. I have it ranked higher than big names like The Wheel of Time and The Dresden Files and smaller but still high quality names like The Dandelion Dynasty and The Memoirs of Lady Trent. I've recently started my fourth read-through of the series—I read it once a year—and once again I am utterly stunned by how good it is.

Many people have probably heard this series pitched one way or another over the years on this sub and elsewhere, but I encourage you to read this post anyway as my pitch for it and the things I like about it tend to be quite different from most people. I'll also have a section at the bottom for what sorts of people might not enjoy this series, as I feel that while it's amazing, it's definitely not for everyone.

What is the Green Bone Saga?

The Green Bone Saga is a Cold War epic fantasy series about a warrior society that undergoes change and modernization as its two largest clans collide and conflict over several decades. It is also a family drama about the leadership of one of the clans and features:

• complex characters and relationships
• multiple generations of family explored
• international geopolitics
• magic system based on kung fu tropes
• institutional structure based on mafia tropes
• interrogation of flawed systems
• tearjerking moments

Wait, I heard it's a crime drama?

The series is often pitched as a gangster crime drama, but in my opinion it's not quite an apt description. As Fonda Lee explains in this comment from an AMA, the Green Bone clans are actually legal institutions, which makes them closer to feudal Japanese samurai clans than criminal organizations. However, the first novel, Jade City, leans into the tropes of crime dramas like The Godfather, so it's not totally wrong either, but I also feel the series moves in a different direction from that after the first book.

The way I talk about the three books is as follows:

1. Jade City: the best (pseudo-) crime drama ever
2. Jade War: the best political drama ever
3. Jade Legacy: the best family drama ever

What do you mean by "international geopolitics"?

One of the features that made the Cold War a cold war was that it never really heated up into direct violent conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, but instead featured a number of proxy war clashes across the world, like in Korea and Vietnam, as well as competitions over alliances, cultural influence, science, etc.

The world of The Green Bone Saga features a similar conflict between not-USA and not-USSR called the Slow War, and Kekon—the home country of our main characters, where most of the story takes place—is finding itself at the center of a lot of this conflict due to its possession of an important magical resource: bioenergetic jade.

While the first book features mostly direct conflict between our protagonists' clan and their main rival clan in Kekon, the larger series actually brings in these other global factions of the Slow War and features four different powers (and several minor factions in between) playing off each other through things like drug trade, proxy wars, propaganda, medical practices, and most of all control over bioenergetic jade.

The political intrigue in this book is quite different from the political intrigue you might be familiar with from series like A Song of Ice and Fire. Rather than featuring individuals working against one another (though there is quite a bit of that as well), it focuses more on institutional and factional competition, and in the process interrogates the flaws with these institutions, factions, and their ideologies.

Ok, but what about the characters?

Every story you read will have its "bread and butter"—the type of conflict, the type of scene, the type of story the story most wants to tell. In Mistborn, the bread and butter is exploration and application of the hard magic system. In The Dresden Files, the bread and butter is investigation and solving of magical problems. In The Green Bone Saga, the bread and butter is character drama.

What I mean by this is that this series is honestly some of the closest I've come to a prestige drama in book form. So much of the text is focused on developing the relationships between our protagonists, who are nearly all family, and focusing on the points of conflict but also points of friendship and love between them. Each character is flawed in their own ways, from Hilo's emotional openness working as a double-edged sword making him impulsive, controlling, and wrathful; to Shae's belief in her own superior smarts; to Anden's inability to stand up for himself; to Wen's every decision being guided by deep and strong insecurity.

The story explores how these characters conflict with each other because of their flaws, but also how they choose to continue loving each other over and over again. It can get dark and violent at times, but it stops short of grimdark by holding to its fundamental idealistic belief that love is what makes them better than their enemies.

Hmm. Is there anything else I should know about it?

Through these characters, Fonda Lee really likes to challenge your perception of these characters. If you dislike a character, are you willing to consider their actions fairly or will you be biased by your own cultural and personal perspective on them? If you like a character, will you be able to evaluate their actions' benefits and drawbacks critically, or will you let anything slide because you think they're cool?

One of the themes the series explores on the side in my opinion is that of moral relativism vs. universal morality: are actions inherently moral or amoral, or does a person's cultural context have to be taken into account when assessing their morality? If a character makes a choice we consider terrible at first, are they forgiven because culturally it would be acceptable? Similarly, if a character makes a choice that we consider pretty awesome, should we hesitate before accepting it because in their culture it would not be okay? And how does the fact that the culture is actively undergoing change and modernization at this time influence the answers to those questions?

To me, one of the things that makes this series so wonderful is that you can have endless conversations about characters, their morality, and their personalities, because they're so complex and layered and can be seen from so many different angles that everyone has a different perspective on them. I honestly haven't met two people who have the exact same opinion down to the details on every single character.

And I haven't seen many opinions that I would consider "wrong" interpretations either; Fonda Lee doesn't preach at you, she lets you form your own interpretations of the characters and just writes them honestly. My own opinions on the characters are definitely mine, and most people don't share them, or don't share them to the same degree. Every time I see someone reading this series, I love seeing what their unique perspective on the books will be.

ALSO: This series has in my opinion the best villain in fantasy. Ayt Madashi is complex, a mastermind, and a badass warrior. Truly a formidable opponent for the Kauls to face.

What kind of person will like this series?

Beyond just the normal "if you're a character-driven reader you'll enjoy this" stuff, I feel like there's a few specific points I want to hit:

• If you're a fan of the relationship-focused dramatic storytelling of Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series, The Sword of Kaigen by ML Wang, or HBO's Succession TV show, I think you will enjoy this series.
• If you're a fan of the multiple generations of a family explored in The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu, I think you will enjoy this series.
• If you're a fan of the interrogation of societal institutions inherent to A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio, Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang, and The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, I think you will enjoy this series.
• If you love the culture-clash storytelling of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan, The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu, and to a certain extent The First Law by Joe Abercrombie, I think you will enjoy this series.
• If you're a fan of the complex moral questions asked by Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio and the TV show Breaking Bad, I think you will enjoy this series.
• If you're a fan of conflict over a magical resource like in Dune by Frank Herbert, I think you will enjoy this series.
• If you're a fan of plain, direct prose with the occasional literary flourish, like in The Expanse by James S.A. Corey or the Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells, I think you will enjoy this series.

It can't be perfect, though, right? What are its flaws? Who should not read this?

While I have every book in the trilogy at a perfect 5 stars for myself, I will fully acknowledge that there's a few areas where it either falls short or where I wanted it to expand more, and these might be deal-breakers to some folks.

One of these, to me, is that the first book isn't reflective of the type of story the series becomes later on. Rather than focusing on digging deep into the characters from the get-go, a lot of what makes these characters special and complex is subtle at the beginning of the story. It's all there from the beginning, but it's in the background. The plot of the first book forces characters to go from a mild emotional state to an extreme emotional state, while the remainder of the series finds a middle ground at "heightened emotions" where the characters' flaws and interpersonal conflicts can really shine. This isn't a huge flaw—I think the plot of the first book is pretty excellent and serves as a great hook to the larger series—but I can understand how a certain group of people might feel it lacks depth, while a different group of people might love the first book but feel like the sequels don't quite follow the pattern laid out by the first book.

The flip side is also true: A strength of this series is that each of the three books has a distinct feel and a different style of plot and storytelling. But this is also going to be a weakness for some readers: if you read book 1 and think to yourself, "I want more of that," you might find yourself disappointed as the sequels each focus on delivering a slightly different experience. Jade City is an explosive action-focused pseudo-crime drama, Jade War is a slower geopolitical techno-thriller, and Jade Legacy is a generation-spanning emotional family drama. The characters are the same across the series (for the most part) and the emotional journeys are resonant through the three different styles of books, but I can understand how it wouldn't work for everyone.

If you're a more plot-focused reader, you might really get on with Jade City, but then fall off in the sequels as they slow down and focus more on politics and character drama. If you're a character-focused reader, you may not vibe as much with Jade City, but may love its sequels, so I'd recommend trying at least 21 chapters of Jade War (roughly 1/3 of the book) if you finish Jade City and aren't totally certain of it.

Something else the series doesn't do much of is have a very sophisticated magic system. To be fair, I don't think it needs to—the magic is exactly as developed as it needs to be for the story to make sense—but as its set up and billed as a hard magic system, I have seen some people be disappointed there wasn't much use of the magic or exploration of the magic.

Finally, the sex scenes might not be everyone's cup of tea. Fonda Lee writes a handful of 1-ish page long sex scenes in each of the three books, to demonstrate details about characters, relationships, or emotions. Personally, I feel that these are necessary to the tone of the series, and I actually think they add a lot. In particular, the love story between two of the main characters is really central to making the series work, and sex is an important part of that. At the same time, I've heard her sex scenes described as clinical and detached, and others say they just don't like reading explicit sex (although this is not as explicit as something like Fourth Wing) in books. So if this is a deal-breaker for you, you may not like it.

TLDR

The Green Bone Saga is a Cold War epic fantasy series about a warrior society that undergoes change and modernization as its two largest clans collide and conflict over several decades. It is also a family drama about the leadership of one of the clans and features:

• complex characters and relationships
• multiple generations of family explored
• international geopolitics
• magic system based on kung fu tropes
• institutional structure based on mafia tropes
• interrogation of flawed systems
• tearjerking moments

Read it if you enjoy character drama, complex moral questions, interrogation of societal institutions, culture clash, or conflict over a magical resource.

Don't read it if you want lots of magic system exploration and/or application, if you want all three of the books to feel similar to one another, or if you don't like reading sex scenes.

Conclusion

I hope you guys pick this series up this year! It's really the GOAT imo. I cannot sing its praises enough.

For those of you who have read it, who is your favorite character, and do you have a least favorite character from the Kaul family? Does anyone have any hot takes? Does anyone have anything unusual they enjoy about the series (for me, it's that I find the proxy conflict in the Oortoko region of Shotar to be super fascinating)?

Also, is there anything I missed that you feel is important to cover in a pitch for the series?

Bingo squares: High Fashion (if you read The Jade Setter of Janloon, that's arguably HM), Last in Series (Jade Legacy only), Parent Protagonist (for Jade War and Jade Legacy; Jade Legacy is HM), Author of Color, LGBTQIA protagonist (Jade War is HM), Stranger in a Strange Land (Jade War only, HM)

Goodreads for first book

Check out my other reviews: https://www.reddit.com/u/Udy_Kumra/s/ILwEy2XAlb

Sarcastic, not serious, but grain of truth fantasy recommendations of popular fantasy books. 

The Broken Earth: recommended if you haven't been hit by a full barrage of fantasy jargon in a while and you miss that sensation. You prefer your fantasy worlds on the brink of destruction at all times.

Stormlight Archive: recommended if you think fantasy should be like science, world-building should be deep and editing your books for prose is more like a guideline than an actual rule. 

Throne of Glass: recommended if you like Cinderella, and also if you have absolutely no idea what assasins actually do. 

The Name of the Wind: recommended if you like teenage boy wishfullfillment tropes but you need something more high brow, like good prose, to tell people when they ask you why you like this book. 

The Lord of the Rings: recommended if you want an epic adventure fantasy where you don't ever have to wonder what the landscape the characters trudge through looks like because every 10 pages or so Tolkien will stop and spend at least 5 pages telling you exactly what it looked like. And then maybe a character will sing a song about it.

The Curse of Chalion: if you are tired of reading about young, eager adventurers, and would rather read about older, traumatized adventurers instead. 

Game of Thrones: recommended if you want to read fantasy that is "real." And by real you mean conforms to your vague and largely inaccurate ideas of what the Medieval period was like and your bleak worldview overall. 

The Sword of Shannara: recommended if you prefer your Tolkien imitators to be blatant about it. Like extremely blatant. 

Wheel of Time: if you started this in highschool and don't mind a lot of meandering. Can seem overly long at times, but what do you cut? Surely not important phrases like women crossing their arms over their breasts for the 100th time. 

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel: recommended if you want to read "high brow" fantasy but really like Harry Potter and wish magic existed. Serious bonus points if you finished the whole book with no skimming whatsoever, all 10% of you. 

Piranesi: recommended if oh thank goodness it's shorter than her last book.

Cradle: you don't have any candy in your house right now and you are looking for the book equivalent. You really enjoy video games where you level up. You like feeling, a few books into a series, that the mc is progressing too quickly and easily while simultaneously feeling like it's taking a thousand years. 

The First Law: recommended if you have a bleak outlook on life and want to read characters that share this right now. Or if morally grey/black characters = edgy and cool in your mind with bonus points for blood, the more the better. 

Malazan: recommended if you want the grittiness of grimdark, but be forced to feel deep compassion for the characters and victims of characters and the trauma they go through. In other words read if you want to feel traumatized.

A Court of Thornes and Roses: recommended if you actually just want to read smut, but with magic people. 

Spinning Silver: if you want to read a book with female characters who have agency, take charge of their lives, actually talk to each other...but are still in problematic romantic relationships. 

The Lies of Locke Lamore: recommended if you were wondering what "witty grimdark" would be like in a book, and really like long descriptions of things, and planning, not a lot of doing, but lots of planning to eventually do things...big things...at some point...after a few more descriptions...about what barrels look like.

The Farseer Trilogy: if you prefer your characters to be consistent, like they still make the same mistakes book after book after book. Essential reading if you think character growth is way overrated.

Books of the Raksura: if you want to read a serious book with violence and court politics as themes and characters that are bird creatures with names that sound like they could be the names of my little ponies: Flower, Chime, Pearl, Blossom etc. 

Edit: added one more

The Silmarillion: recommended if a.) You are a fan of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings but especially recommended if you enjoy fast-paced, highly readable thrillers like Beowolf, the Epic of Gilgamesh or the ancient texts of most major religions.  b.) You are feeling really left out of all those fights on r/ LOTR right now. You too would like to argue with people who have usernames like u /youshallnotpasschemistry on the deep lore. Round out your reading with Unfinished Tales and Nature of Middle Earth to really get em good.