What's the point of Low Fantasy?
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- čas přidán 24. 08. 2024
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For me as a writer, the point of low-fantasy is to have a realistic setting that is not limited to our world. You can't really invent a war between England and China in 1305, because it just didn't happened. However, a war between Genericas and Kingdomia is something new, without having to use dragons or magic. I find it interesting to do a just complete different version of our world, with a long and different History.
THIS. I've been trying to pin point why I usually fancy grounded settings more than high fantastical ones but couldn't really put it into words.
Huh, I would call that "alternate world" or "alternate history" stories. Or "historical fantasy" if they contain supernatural elements.
I have one in the drawer in which Louis XIV. has been assassinated by magic and since then all the monarchs of Europe have been employing court sorcerers to defend them against magic attacks and to fight for them against the forces of other monarchs.
I classify it as "historical fantasy".
@Johanna Geisel i'm pretty sure alternate history is along the lines of stuff like Man in the high castle and the story you referenced about Louis XIV being assasinated by magic. Anything that has a direct literal references to historical figures, places and events plus either a branching what if scenario where the rest of the world ( or the factions involved) are gravely impacted, or the ocassional fictional elements added in for flavor.
what Axel was probably referring to was being able to explore those 'what ifs' devoid from being set on our earth and history as a setting. It may be governed by the same rules, and people/places/events/technology may be similar, but history is only used as a basis in it's construction. I guess a crude example would be Mount and Blade. It may be set in a roughly medieval eurasian continent, but neither the Rhodoks nor Calradia exist on our earth.
@@enriquecadlum189 Ah, ok, I may have misunderstood it.
I thought that the comment was saying that if you wanted to write about an event that never took place IRL but could have been interesting (like that war between England and China in 1305), you could choose to set it in a fantasy world but make it low fantasy.
So, I thought, why not simply write the story set in our world, but as an alternative historical event?
@@johannageisel5390 But historical fantasy tends to be considered the same as historical fiction and alternate history: different/fantastical things set in a version of our own past. As they said, it's hard to make a grounded feeling knights vs Chinese empire story in that because it would involve copious amounts of alien space bats to make a historical fiction/fantasy version of that work. Whereas a straight up low fantasy world doesn't come with the baggage that makes it feel silly
The irony is that quite a lot of low fantasy works we know of are children's novels. The Indian in the Cupboard, Tuck Everlasting, The Borrowers, Mary Poppins, The Snow Spider, The Underland Chronicles, quite a lot of fairy tales....the magic is small and intrusive, the world is close, and the conflicts are human. And yet most people thinking of "low fantasy" never even think of that because they assume that focusing on human conflict means focusing on human evil, especially excessive human evil.
I just want to say that you've commented what for years I couldn't properly articulate.
actually Mary Poppins is magical realism. there is a difference. magical realism usually takes place in "the normal world" the magic in magical realism is usually very obvious, whimsical and often ridiculous but is barley acknowledged or explained as its more of a symbolic tool to drive an emotion based character driven story. most examples of magical realism are also children's media, things like Mathilda, (or really anything by Roald Dahl) Gordimer gibbons life on normal street, Paddington, the unfinished angel etc. (things like "100 years in solitude" and "The Diary of Edith Finch" also fall into this Genre")
Grey morality in Low/Dark fantasy is more often just grey and black morality. I think that is the reason Tolkien's work still shines to this day, because his vision doesn't bleed with cynicism and that is what people inspires and draws them to a fantasy setting in the first place
That's fair. The Touhou project has an interesting sort of optimistic grey morality, but it also is high fantasy, just not related to Tolkien.
The way I see it, these kinds of grimdark settings tend to punish characters for trying to be good or noble in such a fucked up world, but in a way that makes the heroes who know they're unlikely to benefit from doing the right thing and choose to do it anyway all the more heroic.
I've never watched or read Game of Thrones, though, I'm just making a general statement about the genre. I just don't think that grey morality in stories necessarily has to be cynical; it can be used to push a very moralistic kind of message about the necessity for doing the right thing even if you don't benefit from doing so.
there is a bit of a grey dark morality to the lord of the rings though: the human kingdoms are corrupt, the elves are dispassionate about preserving mortal life, and obviously Frodo, the most wide eyed, compassionate good boi ends up failing, and broken. Tolkien might be the codifier of epic / high fantasy, but his work definitely has the seeds for darker branches of the genre - alongside with prior sword and sorcery works such as Conan which were a major influence on dark fantasy.
@@maximeteppe7627 That's right
I also Really Enjoy the silmarillion for that reason, I might prefer it over his other works. It blends his epic storylines with a tragic undertone. Many heroes and their kingdoms are virtuous but experience treason and tragic fate nonetheless. But it remains clear that these virtues must be preserved at all coasts. I Think this was the morale of Tolkien's story After all; not really complex but profound and honest
If you want dark, read the Silmarillion, if you never wondered if the good guys would ever get a break, then you didn't read it properly.
If you look at Aragorn, people think he's like the one ordained king, whereas he is the last hope to get somebody with some semblance of destiny on the throne. Gondor has been losing for over a thousand years, the other kingdoms (Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur have been destroyed) And for the longest time it was a losing streak with once in a while a tiny win or some maintaining the status quo before the rollercoaster goes for another slide down.
Aragorn isn't just a fantasy king, he's the first one since Elendil to actually turn the tide of loss. And Tolkien is relentless, he envisioned that within one or two generations of Aragon's reign people would start to worship dark things again ...
Everybody thinks Tolkien is about happy stoner Hobbits and crazy wizards, when it's all bad things piling on top of each other. The only difference is that Tolkien had the good taste not to wallow in the gory details.
The point of "Low Fantasy" is that the fantastical elements remain rare and fantastical. They don't become expected or stale. In a world with 3 dragons, dragons are scary. In a world with thousands of dragons, seeing a dragon no longer feels fantastical (i.e. "the Skyrim Effect"). The same principle applies to other fantastical elements, such as magic users. If everyone uses magic, it's not magic anymore.
Like how Star Wars is better when there aren't a bunch of Jedi everywhere?
@@AresAlpha Yes
Why not explore the consequences of common magic use on a society instead of being children about it so you can actually explore the outcomes in a meaningful way? Because it diminishes sqashbuckling, "get ye flask" and "oh no wizards"? I'd be fine with this if the other aspects of the world were even given enough thought and I don't mean ball-achingly obsessive political drivel or stories with a thousand characters a puddle deep. Its Seinfeld-is-unfunny syndrome. Go do something new instead of trying to capture an era there's already an insufferable abundance of.
Edit: Looking forward to weird nerds coming out of the cracks to screech uncontrollably at me.
@@osakanone Lol.. all I'm going to say is it's hilarious you imply that high fantasy is "something new" when people have been writing tales of high fantasy since the Iliad.
@@stigs6610 And where did I say that high fantasy was something new? Do you consider high fantasy a meaningful exploration of those concepts? The fact you equate those things as alike doesn't mean everybody else does because meaning is in itself subjective. Most of the issues I personally consider meaningful really can't exist in fantasy without the genre probably becoming something fundamentally alien to itself at all but here we are. You invented that inference with your own imagination. Pity the genre doesn't have more of it to go around now, isn't it?
I've always wondered how people could dislike a priori a story just because of its genre. A good story is a good story ; genres/categories are just here to be informative, not for its actual content to be judged as a whole. There are shitty and mediocre stories in every genre, maybe more in some of them, but that's definitely not a reason to despise or reject all the stories that can be put in such categories. "I don't usually like historical fiction/low fantasy/space opera/romance stories": such a statement is less reductive and, at least, don't put different stories that share a common genre in the same trashcan
I agree. There are many sci-fi books I don't like but I love to read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy because it makes me laugh. I find the politics in Dune intriguing. Shadow of the Conqueror has some interesting character dynamics. Who wrote it is more important to me than the genre.
People learn from experience and have a limited time to experience an unlimited amount of stories. If someone reads in a row 20 fantasy stories and hates them all, that is their right, and if they refuse to pick another one up and prefer to stick with scifi, I won't say a word.
It could also just be preference. I personally just don’t like non-fiction. The entire genre. I already live in the real world and I’d rather not read about it, no matter how good the book is. Put a dash of the paranormal or some magic, and then we’ll see.
I want fantasy, and sci-fi - something out there and not so familiar.
@@zachanikwano wdym by "non-fiction"? Do u mean stories that r grounded in our very reality? If it's so, it can still be fiction
@@verybarebones The point I'm trying to make is just to read good stories. Genres aren't that important: there's a majority of trashy and mid stories in all of them. I don't understand why someone would read "in a row 20 fantasy stories": it'll really not be surprising if u get disgusted by a genre after reading successively a whole bunch of this kind of stories, especially if they're not among the best or good ones. I just want to say to give every good book a try and not to be repulsed by the narrowing category it has been put in
Game of Thrones is not about r*pe and the Red Wedding, it's about people trying to deal with things that were put in motion a hundred years before they were even born, struggling to achieve their own happiness amidst a chaotic and unstable world. The Red Wedding is not good because characters with names died, it's good because it shows "heroic" characters getting punished for their unheroic actions. It's a scheme pulled off so perfectly that nobody anticipated it, but that has clear motivations.
The thing is many die in game pf thrones and only the characters with an important name matter.
At the start, its not obvious which characters are the "main" characters, after the red wedding, we do get of whos "safe", and really, thats only untill the end, where everyone is fair game.
Book Tyrion doesnt look like he will get a happy ending
You're right, it's not *about* rape, because many rape stories can actually use it to say something. In game of thrones rape is just cake dressing.
@@jasminv8653 well said. I hated thr in got. Its not realistic its fan service masquerading as world building.
I agree with your assessments but I think this form of writing suffers from predictable outcomes as well as any High Fantasy story. (Though people pretend one is more cliche than the other).
People dying or being expendable is actually quite expected in a series like Game of Thrones. As is an unhappy/bittersweet ending.
My problem with it is once you kill off the interesting characters or the heroic ones you aren't left with any compelling reason to keep watching/reading.
So to each their own but I prefer my stories to have drama, death and struggle but ultimately with some hope or heroism involved. Which is why I tend towards High Fantasy.
I think it's just the continuation of the early 2000's 'everything is dark and edgy ' and the late 2000's 'everything is brown and gritty' ideas. It's not that low fantasy is inherently bad or pointless, there's just a lot of cheap quick low fantasy out there because it's on trend. Exactly what happened with zombies and vampires and high fantasy etc etc: you still get incredible new films and books and tv shows all the time, they're just not stand out because of the tidal waves of executive junk
There's also the fact that low fantasy is simply cheaper. You need far less CGI and fantastical props if everything is gray and miserable.
@caitlyncarvalho7637 That's a fair point, too.
@caitlyncarvalho7637 idk
worrying about silly media "normalizing occultism" is extremely goofy imo
@caitlyncarvalho7637 because worrying about occultists is silly
@caitlyncarvalho7637 I don't really think occultists are anything to worry about. Politicians are far more prevalent and evil.
Low fantasy tales can frequently focus on smaller stories. The Grey Mouser, Conan and Geralt of Rivia( in the Last Wish) are just men in an ancient and harsh world searching for purpose. Destiny comes to high fantasy protagonists, low fantasy protagonists seek and forge their own destiny.
Eh, you can have existentialist high fantasy and essentialist low fantasy.
The Lord of the Rings books, which are literally the most iconic examples of high fantasy, make a point of centering their stories around the hobbits, who have no particular destiny, power or influence to speak of. Yes, they rub shoulders with many major world figures, but it is often their humility, courage and compassion that most enables them to affect great change upon the world.
The point of low fantasy can just be that you don't want to use the real world. Maybe you don't actually want your story set in 18th century London, even an alternate history London, you just want it set in a London-like. Maybe you don't want people complaining that you've mixed 13th century armor with 16th century armor, or you want to avoid some of the social justice type debates that pop up when you either stick with or alter certain elements of reality, or simply because sanitation systems didn't actually work the way your story describes.
One could take the idea of dismissing the entire not-Earth setting to an extreme by applying it to high fantasy as well. Why didn't Robert E. Howard set Conan in regular Earth? Howard already used elements of the real world as a creative shorthand, so why not just make the whole setting an alternate history Earth? The answer is that he had more freedom.
Agreed, sometimes you want a fictional world for your setting without having to develop a magic system or throwing in any other supernatural elements to make it more like traditional fantasy. I've actually done this a few times for short stories. Mind you, there are still things happening in these stories that couldn't or didn't happen in our world (e.g. ancient Egyptian-type people meeting pre-Columbian Mesoamerican-type people, or humans coexisting with non-avian dinosaurs), but they don't need anything magical or mystical.
Yeah. Ace Combat does a similar thing with the present, so that they can have multiple conflicts on the scale of a world war per decade, with fighters from all over the world fighting on both sides, while not taking sides in real conflicts.
This
Conan is actually an alternate history earth. It’s just in an age so long ago all traces have vanished. All of the races and kingdoms map loosely onto real world early civilizations. Still probably counts as low fantasy though and going back that far does give him the freedom you’re talking about. It’s so far back it may as well be another planet
This is the best explanation of this I’ve ever heard, also, it’s good to see another Conan fan.
The point of low fantasy is that many high fantasy elements become so abstract and absurd they no longer mean anything. Fantasy magic often adheres to barely any rules or structure, or is ridiculously powerful to the point that comparisons of power feel meaningless - fantasy battles are often ridiculous and stupid when you realize that a well placed move could end the whole thing. It's a way of reducing the stakes, so when an escalation occurs it actually means something. It's only modern copycats and grim-dankness shows which reduce low fantasy to the grimy hate-fucking glorification of the worst parts of us and our history. Tolkien and adjacent high fantasy only works because it starts as somewhat lower fantasy, and then escalates as it goes - tolkien derivatives start with bullshit magic and crazy stuff straight out the gate, and it mangles storytelling.
I'd argue that low fantasy isn't actually that far from high fantasy, the critical parts of a good story remain the same everywhere. The reason for low fantasy's jump in popularity (even bad low fantasy) is because of the larger failings of high fantasy in producing convincing and meaningful stakes, personal and global. High Fantasy has become the poster boy of poorly conceived world logic, nonsense storytelling, and ridiculous stakes that mean nothing.
If you want a good classic example of something which is low fantasy, look no further than Redwall (the book series). It's characters are anthropomorphic animals but it depicts a relatively subdued society and the kind of struggles you'd expect from the world it constructs, with reasonable consequences to actions. Just because it includes a few fantastical elements doesn't mean it goes off the deep end with them - that's the whole point of low fantasy.
You didn't read enough high fantasy
@@sebastiancoe4708 I've read too much. All the good high fantasy is the old school or slow-escalation (usually both) kind.
Damn, never considered Redwall to be low fantasy. This just recontexturized my childhood.
@@GnarledStaff recontexturized is the best misspelling of recontextualized I've witnessed
Can you give examples of the high fantasy you're talking about? You seem to have a much bigger issue with soft magic systems (essentially "when magic can do anything with little to no cost or drawbacks"), but utilizing the traits of a world poorly is detrimental to literally any type of media.
I find it just as jarring when low fantasy stories focus on a few characters having sword fights, when the plot should instead be guided by developments in artillery and military strategy; just like high fantasy needs to give you a reason to care about the "special" protagonist in a sea of magic users, low fantasy needs to tell you why one specific knight or mercenary is so important in their world (Berserk's Golden Age arc is the only example of a story of that kind that actually managed to interest me)
I think people conflating GoT with “low fantasy” instead of “middle fantasy” is part of why the final season was so bad.
The massive world-threatening army of undead that had been built up since the very first scene of the show was resolved in a single episode because that was too “high fantasy” and what the writers thought was important was who gets to sit in the big pointy chair because “low fantasy”
that was the director's fault bro they got an offer from star wars so they rushed things... only to be dropped by star wars to, martin was very angry at the last seasons
I agree 100%. Game of Thrones is mid/high fantasy masquerading as low fantasy, though that is much more obvious in the books. It’s a shame what became of the show, and that the audience wasn’t trusted to handle the deeper fantasy elements of the GoT world
The point of low fantasy is to be down to earth “emotional thriller” and believe-able but the genre suffers in this modern clone age like how I think all modern media does past the first entry that got the genre popular to begin with and I think it just come down to passion/skill of the author ultimately
One great use for low fantasy is to bring back awe and majesty when you apply the fantastical elements.
High fantasy is often dull because it takes the amazing and makes it mundane.
Low fantasy can invest you in the mundane, then blow your mind with the fantastic by subtle and sparing use.
My personal take on the question you pose is basically a point you made earlier- the human element, and a tighter focus on characters and their conflict. But, as you noted, most low fantasy is bad, nowadays. I would suggest reading some older books, like The Road West, by Gary Wright, for one, which is a Low Fantasy story in a High Fantasy world. Might even be in a TTRPG setting- not entirely sure, but it's well written.
I like a low fantasy that's really just fun to watch. A character finding themselves in life sort of thing and working to achieve something. Without that gritty murder rape BS.
I'm writing low fantasy, with it's main distinguishing factor being how different the cultures are from anything in the real world. It's focused on things that don't exist within the real world, but that don't nessicarliy violate the laws of physics.
"Magic and dragons are just cool. You don't need any more reason than that to enjoy something. More intellectual reasons are fine, but secondary."
Preach, babe.
Right, and yet somehow that fact discredits the purpose of fantasy that doesn't go that far? That seems stupid.
Yes, but they're even cooler if you have a compelling history, rules, and limits behind them, you don't even need to go all weird and edgy with it.
The problem with just including things for being 'cool' is that they're incredibly shallow and make you wonder "Why the hell did I watch this again?"
@@richardakajazzyamx9690 that's just bad writing. You can have a million rules to your magic system and still be a bad, shallow writer.
@@fadedpages Yes, that is true...but if you have those rules, and follow them consistently, you are far more likely to have a good readable story.
Bad writing with rules is like saying in one chapter that magic cannot bring back the dead, and in the next bringing little Timmy back to life with it, completely making a farce of the rules you made.
@@richardakajazzyamx9690 Yeah, no, that's not how stories are made. The quality of stories are determined by how they emotionally resonate with the reader, and I've never emotionally resonated with "oh look the spell operates the same way throughout the entire book''.
I think the real issue with low fantasy in TV particularly these days is that because of what people have assigned the audience-grabbing power of the shock value plot twist, they've forgotten how to write characters with any kind of consistency. People killing each other without abandon, backstabbing their friends, or having sex with unexpected people isn't interesting or fun - the reason it worked in the early seasons of Game of Thrones was because of limited perspective and overarching character motivations. Littlefinger doesn't have Ned Stark killed for no reason! The Red Wedding doesn't come out of nowhere!
But without the legwork to make these kinds of shock value moments work, shows just fall flat, and all the characters look and feel... even more like a cunt than they actually are. Nothing is interesting and has any stakes, because anything could happen at any moment, and that _isn't a good thing_.
I thought low fantasy were things like Matilda or Tuck's Everlasting. Stories that takes place in our world, except for few magic stuff here and there.
I think that might fall under the genre of urban fantasy
@@akshathahegde6550 Urban fantasy has to be a modern, urban setting. Something like Tuck Everlasting is neither modern nor urban.
@@Sabersquirl Your right I guess lol. I only knew Matilda and I just googled tuck everlasting
@@akshathahegde6550 It would be Historical Fantasy
That would be magical realism.
A big part of what I think people miss about the grit of things like GoT and a lot of other good low fantasy, like many of the Norse sagas, is that the reason these people in medieval settings do things we would consider bad is because they're operating on a different moral system than modern people. But bad writers see this and only see people acting in ways we consider bad, and just add horrendous acts to make it dark without thinking about why those elements are there and how people would act with different moral standards than the modern one(s)
Yes! Watching fantasy and medieval shows with my mundane non-medieval and non history teacher friends can get very awkward because they just don't understand realpolitik sometimes.
"They had different morals" isn't a reason either. It's an observation. Simply recognizing that is not going to cause you to write any better - it doesn't in and of itself make those characters motives easier to understand. As a matter of fact, without the contemporary lense through which we view these ancient morals bleeding into the characters and their motives, a fantasy setting that simply includes them for the sake of "accuracy" would be intolerable in its cruelty. So I think the impact of this is overstated at best.
mho in modern times we have the privilege to not have to do those things. If you had brigands trying to rob you or worse every time you went to wal mart or left town, you wouldn't feel bad if later you saw those same brigands hung up on the side of the road. The bad writers want everyone to act like modern day liberal Christians at a dinner party. I also think that the whole "we can't do anything cos it'll make us as bad as them" idea is bullshit. Not doing anything makes you as bad as them cos you are going to allow their plans to go forward.
Ok great video, bit like... Bloodborne isn't low fantasy. It's cosmic horror and the fantastical elements do require a level of interpretation to get, but they are pretty goddamn ubiquitous
Indeed. from the moment you can't go outside without stumbling on a zombie or a werewolf, you aren't in low fantasy anymore. You're either in a dark fantasy world, or perhaps discworld.
🤓
@@maximeteppe7627 It's discworld when a puppy thrown in a sack then into the river lands on the surface of the river and has to drag itself to the bank while tied in said bag because the river is so polluted.
14:54 Little correction here, that thing was too big to be called a sword. Too big, too thick, too heavy, and too rough, it was more like... a large hunk of iron
I think high fantasy is most most defined as a recollection of folklore. Low fantasy is a more modern response to that using more modern tropes and understandings of the world, not necessarily a less-magical or less-fantastical version of high fantasy.
It's modern cynicism projected on a pseudo-historical fantastical setting; ASOIAF did it well most of the times, but it tends to get stale very quickly
Is high fantasy necessarily old folklore and is low fantasy necessarily modern?
High fantasy
The evil dark lord can only be defeated by the magical sword of destiny!
Low fantasy
The dark lord died from dysentary!
I actually think that the show Arcane handled its fantasy elements very much like a low fantasy show would, and it handled it _really_ well. Also the story takes itself seriously and is very character driven and yet there isnt an overabundance of edginess.
Those are all pretty weird criticisms: there are tons of high fantasy that is set in generic west european medieval settings, just with lots of dragons and fireballs- though I admit most of the low fantasy I'm familiar with IS usually set in european inspired settings.
A lot of your criticisms are about poor handling of "mature" theme (AKA sex, violence and general pessimism) but that doesn't relate to low fantasy but dark/grimdark . Slice of life fantasy, by the nature of having lower stakes often is or feels like it's on the lower end of the magic spectrum, and it's a genre that focus on heartwarming moments, taking the low fantasy focus on human scale storytelling without the edginess, and usually doesn't need too deep or complex a world to work.
In the end, this is a criticism of poor imitators of mainstream successes. But similarly to poor GoT clones, there are plenty of uninteresting High fantasy too. You could make the same argument that stories about exceptional people in magical settings kill the epic fantasy genre because all those things stop being exciting if they are the norm. while I understand the impulse to criticize tendencies in a genre (it would be nice to see non white authors brought to the forefront, and see other settings than diet medieval Europe) these criticisms will always be solved by trends that will bring their own set of poor imitators and problems.
You can have slice of life High fantasy. It's the main thing I seek in my MUDs. Hell, I quite like powerful characters doing slice of life, too. Just because you're Olin Gisir, does not mean your daily life is all about magic and research.
@@runakovacs4759 well sure you can have slice of life stories in high magic universes, but the nature of slice of life stories tend to put the magic in the background. legends and lattes and ascendance od a bookworm both take place in high magic worlds, however magic mostly plays a role in action scenes and not so much in the day to day relagionships that are the main aspect of the story.
@@maximeteppe7627 Tropes with high magic I can see and have seen for slice of life:
A transgender character toiling away to afford a magical transformation to cure their dysphoria, and have a body that matches their soul.
Someone recovering from a severe injury thanks to magic, but still needing to take it easy.
Using magic to replicate, and surpass modern conveniences of life (long distance communication, visual art, heating, hygiene)
Using magic as a way to improve society (for instance, Forgotten Realms elves have a thing where each full moon the village gathers beneath the clear sky. At this gathering, they engage in a form of mind-meld: sharing their recent experiences AND the emotions they felt going thru those experiences with everyone else in the village. This leads to people recognizing others' individuality better, and understanding that what may not offend/hurt them, may feel very hurtful for someone else).
All these require a high-magic setting, and make for a lot of fun as slice of life topics.
@@runakovacs4759 Absolutely, I just mean that the point of slice of life being relationships and daily life, even high magic settings end up feeling a bit more grounded - just like a slice of life story in our world is more grounded than say a james bond movie.
Even high magic slice of life stories tend to keep the flashy magic for their few action scenes, and plots tend to focus on more intimate applications of said magic - the examples you've given being cases in point.
I’ve always been a little bothered by the idea that a high fantasy, good versus evil type story like Lord of the rings is somehow “not mature.“ Yeah, it’s not “realistic” in it’s setting and plot, but it still manages to intelligently explore some of the deepest and most compelling aspects of human nature. It’s one of the most mature and sophisticated pieces of writing in the history of the human race.
There’s definitely a place for dark and gritty worlds and stories. The god of war series of video games is one of the most unapologetically brutal and violent pieces of fiction ever created. Yet it’s also a deep and sympathetic story about a very relatable and compelling character. It’s well written, and has a lot of intelligent things to say about compassion and hope.
In short, both high and low fantasy can accomplish remarkable feats of great and “mature” storytelling. It’s simply a matter of whether it’s well executed or not.
"They are copying someone else without knowing what they are copying" This might as well be the thesis of this channel.
I don’t want edgy fantasy but I do like when magic takes a backseat to people being people. In particular I dislike when fantasy makes magic feel mundane rather than mysterious or wonderous. In the fantasy setting I’ve been cooking in my head for a few years, I decided that magic is largely incompatible with civilization due to its chaotic and unpredictable nature. Wizards aren’t really a thing either because magic can’t quite be controlled like that, certainly not by humans.
Good luck on your story!
About your magic I have to ask, what kind of role does it have in the story? You mentioned humans can't use it, so are there other beings that can? Like elves or perhaps devine entities? Or perhaps there are magic creatures which usually don't integrate too well into human society, similar to how magic worked in Way of Kings in the Stormlight Archives.
I'm just curious. Again, good luck.
I don't like too much focus on magic, because either we end up in some "magic system" territory where the magic is presented with pseudo-scientific precision and starts feeling like a D&D rulebook, or we end up with magic being abused to solve plots with deus-ex-machina, give characters power ups just when they need it and generally cheese the plot. I like when magic is rare, weak or mysterious rather than schools for wizards or everyone is super-powered.
You're right that character-focused fantasy can be great, especially if we change the rules that formed our society, or geography / natural environment and people have to face some configuration which didn't happen in the history of Earth. Same with introducing fantasy races which aren't just recolored humans. Show me people interacting with elves or dragons or orcs that aren't just thinking like a human.
@@andrewredden9563 so I have a few ideas about the role of magic. The core principle is that magic is tied to places rather than people or actions and is kind of like freak weather but more chaotic and unpredictable. Stuff like a cloud that rains blood or a swamp where time flows differently or trees that mimic the last words of the dead. No one is causing magic; it just happens on its own when the poorly understood conditions are met. The other bit is that some kind of faeries are associated with magic but are extremely alien and whimsical to the point that humans might describe them as insane. Importantly the faeries aren’t evil per se, just different to the point their moral rules are confusing and nonsense to everyone else. The recurring theme is that magic and anything associated with magic is mysterious, alien, and often frightening, so people generally try to avoid magic. There might be a few characters who have found ways to slightly alter the flow of magic, but they still aren’t really in control. I’ve even played with the idea of long term exposure to magic poisoning people’s minds and causing psychosis, similar to mercury poisoning or lead poisoning.
@@mollywantshugs5944 ok, sounds interesting. However, there is a small word of caution. Be careful not to make it seem like deus ex machina. If magic solves a problem at the end of your story, it may come across that way.
Another word of caution is that a good story has a strong relationship between cause and effect. And I believe this also applies to magic. Of course, just because the reader doesn't understand all the rules doesn't mean that you cannot provide a sense of cause and effect. A good example of this is in Lord of the Rings. We don't know exactly what the Ring Wraths are capable of, but we do know that the farther they go from mordor the weaker they become. We know that they are effectively immortal as whenever they die they only go back to Sauron. We know they can sense the ring, but how accurate this sense is kind of varies. The lack of knowledge makes the wraiths more mysterious and intimidating, however you do learn some of their weaknesses (such as water) which provided a cause and effect. Perhaps these faeries have incredible power, but it doesn't work near an open fire (just an idea), meaning humans need to keep some torches lit around their city walls.
I hope some of that made sense. Not sure if it was applicable. Again, good luck.
Magic being incompatible with civilization is a really cool idea. Reminds me of the game Arcanum. Which is about magic and technology clashing in an industrial revolution set in a fantasy setting
I think probably the best example of dark (and arguably low) fantasy I've ever read is Black Leopard Red Wolf. It's... a lot (so. much. weird. rape.) But at the same time it really effectively tackles the themes of truth, history and its relationship with violence and political manipulation with effective and original prose and set in a fantasy version of pre-colonial West Africa (a welcome break from the whole medaeval europe thing.)
idk I just want to have a Dieselpunk low fantasy where orcs, humans, elves, and dwarves shoot at each other from behind trenches rather than flinging magic everywhere
Write it.
that's 40k basically, depending on which army you follow
Templin Institute almost made that but their community voted against it
It’s interesting to think about ATLA as high fantasy, since it is so aesthetically different than the traditional associations of the genre. It seems to focus on character driven arcs and very grounded world building that is assisted by it’s magic system and it’s “chosen one” plot. To me, that weaving of aspects from those things makes it a wonderful and very original experience
The point of low fantasy as you describe it is due to frustration with constant generic D&D or tolkienesque settings like the elder scrolls, Warcraft, warhammeror every fantasy anime or jrpg ever. I'm talking about the medieval West European civilization with orcs, dwarves, and elves as the main races
I'm not sure Warhammer belongs on that list. It has a pretty unique twist on the fantasy races, and it has a MUCH different tone from the other three
@@Gloomdrake Warhammer is much more into the dark fantasy than generic fantasy IMO.
Calling Elder Scrolls and Warhammer "generic" is a bit of a stretch...
Warhammer 40k > Warhammer fantasy
Elder Scrolls doesn't really belong on that list when it's done right. Skyrim maybe, Oblivion maybe, but the Elder Scrolls universe as a whole definitely not. Elder Scrolls isn't generic, it's frickin' weird. Shame the games have done such a poor job of showing off just how unique and creative the Elder Scrolls universe really is.
To be fair, Game of Thrones doesn't focus on everyday people, either. Sure, they're mentioned in passing, but practically every POV character is nobility or a member of an at least somewhat notable lord's house.
Davos is maybe the closest thing to a common man, but even he became a lord before the start of the series.
Low fantasy makes magic special. If magic can do almost anything then any thing it can do is not important. If the only magic is the ability to understand the feelings of pine trees it becomes meaningful. Meaningful individually to those who experience it, but not critical to the world. But since we experience it as a reader meaningful to us. Afterall walking on water doesn't matter much if Jesus ran into the rest of town having a morning stroll on the waves and Star wars loses a lot of feeling if the force is scientifically quantifiable.
You know, ASoIAF it's really Low Fantasy. When you think about it, it has just about as much magic and fantasy elements as LoTR, but they just don't get as much focus. I'd say that the average Middle Earther and Westerosian have about equal chance of encountering some strange magical thing. You have ice zombie hords controlled by ice demons just beyond an absurdly tall ice wall, fire cultists seeking a chosen one, a society of face changing assassin's, lost ancient empires who conquered the world with dragons, and so on. The true difference in ASoIAF is the narrative focus on "real" things like politics, war, and grimdarkness. Honestly, if ASoIAF is Low Fantasy, then so is LoTR.
ASoIAF has a lot of magic but it's barely understood by the characters
In the 3rd age of middle earth, most characters also don't understand magic and magic in Tolkiens world is directly related to the powers of gods there. Most magical phenomena there come from angelic or demonic beings created by gods or gods themselves, and can't be understood by mortal beings
I always saw high magic when magic is a big thing that is integrated within the society a lot, like in mythology, Alice in Wonderland, the Star Wars prequels or the She-Ra remake. So it kind of surprises me when LotR is considered high magic. But I see the argument for it.
They're both high fantasy because they deal with world ending events.
@@JamesM1994 that's prolly not how that works?
I have neither watched GoT nor The Witcher, specifically because the "realism" makes me too depressed.
If I wanted to see rape and murder in my media all the time, I could just read Amnesty International reports. :(
lol sorry you made me cackle with a guilty aftertaste
@@augustanxv414 That's ok. I'm a great lover of dark humour that puts the finger in the wound.
I dont remember the Saxon stories ever being low fantasy ( it was more history porn with surprisingly few r*pes) so I dont see how it could have "abandoned" this aspect when becoming a tv show ( 6.47 ) --- having never had any fantastical facets to the story to begin with.
Apart from that, the rest is completely spot on, its a terrible shame of a show
Yeah, I thought that too. I really enjoy the books, they're good fun, but they were never low fantasy. Its sort of dramatised historical fiction and the author always has a note in the back explaining the actual historical context and where he took liberties. The tv show is absolutely terrible, it tried to replicate GOT and failed spectacularly.
13:34 It's worth mentioning that that's an issue inherited at least partially from the reboot it's based off of. The reboot trilogy has this issue where it's deathly afraid to get *too* fantastical beyond like, super powered zombies. They even have this whole DLC in the second game where Lara has to fight Baba Yaga and she has the house with the legs and the flying mortar(?) and everything, but actually no it's all a hallucination and she doesn't actually have any supernatural powers. It feels like a copout, basically.
If anyone wants a good Low Fantasy setting just watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail
There is a low fantasy universe that isn’t dark or grimdark; Tove Jansson’s Moomin universe. She created a universe in which fantasy creatures with a variety of personality types live together in a rural forest village and face various crises both natural and supernatural. Magic does exist, but the problems it can cause are dealt with in a practical way. For example, a magical hat belonging to a sorcerer known as the Hobgoblin and can cause drastic transformations in anything that comes in contact with it comes into the possession of the Moomin family and their young son is accidentally transformed beyond recognition and it takes his mother’s unconditional love to change him back. The community is an anarchist’s ideal with no central authority or power struggles. Which doesn’t mean that there are no difficulties or arguments, but that they’re settled by unity and improvisation rather than backstabbing and intrigue.
I could fuck with more mythical fantasy stories, where it's historical in nature but from the point of view that all the mythology and superstition of the time and place is real. That would be great.
Adding "Beautiful, Pastoral, and Wholesome Low Fantasy" to my list of potential story ideas now, because I'd like to see more of that.
Sounds wonderful :)
"They're copying somebody else without knowing what it is their copying."
Damn, that applies to so many shit movies and adaptations.
Hey quick question, why do you sometimes put sonic the hedgehog characters in your thumbnails? Makes me think you're going to think about sonic lmao
Gotta go fast!
Because Sonic is Goated
I enjoy the idea of thinking of "low fantasy" as a sort of variable control for writers. If I wish to write a story about the succession drama of a besieged kingdom, I may only as a writer desire to have one or two sprinklings of magic being used or dragons being implied or somesuch to really use the magic as a narrative tool in the way that I want to. In fact, elevating magic to a more commonplace in such a story (somewhat but not entirely an implicit requirement for making it "high fantasy") might invite undesired plot holes á la the Great Eagles of LOTR; or some sort of cascade of worldbuilding implications that are outside of the scope or interest of the given story.
why did the existentialism bit 5 mins in inexplicably make me realise what neon genesis evangelion was getting at
"Magical Reality" is basically new low fantasy. For me, high magic settings are best for xenofiction, epic mythology, and contained loops that almost always make sense. Low fantasy is for worlds where humans act just like Earth humans, but with our deepest fears and desires made secretly manifest. Both types of fantasy can have larger-than-life characters, but in low fantasy the characters can be more self-contradictory (like real people). I write in both sub-genres, sometimes through fanfiction, other times in a low fantasy alt-Earth that my late brother helped create. Both sub-genres can be fantastic. Both can fail.
I think you mean "magical realism" and while all literary definition seem to have giant disagreeable chasms of wiggle room, a key characteristic of magical realism seems to be the casual acceptance of spontaneous magical happenings. While I know you didn't say anything on the subject itself, a lot of comments highlighted how "impressive" low fantasy makes magic in the context of the story. It's harder to come by and has more of an impact. It's not like this can't be true in some ways in magical realism, but it's less awe inspiring and earth shattering and more whimsical and dreamlike
@@futurestoryteller You're right that I meant "realism" and not "reality." Well said overall. But no genre or subgenre is a homogenous whole, and sometimes characters react with amazement when they learn that star signs foretell their fates, while other times it's treated as no big deal that dreams foretell reality.
7:58 I usually disagree with James on everything, but this is spot on, especially for warhammer, game of thrones and other such series, they need someone, anyone to be a tolerable, normal person that isn’t a:
Sister rapist
Xenophobe
Allegory for political characters the writer likes/ hates
Or other generically bad trait.
It's "low" fantasy for a reason. Maybe you want Lord of the Rings, but not Middle Earth, and vice versa. It's up to personal preference. I prefer low fantasy and urban fantasy bc it's easier for me to get attached to it bc you don't have to keep up with an entirely made up reality, but it depends on the story. I'm currently writing a low fantasy and an urban fantasy, so I'm probably biased 😖
Many people misunderstand "Low Fantasy" for "crapsack world full of tits, blood and cynical c*nts". For me the perfect example of "Low Fantasy" done well is Dragon Age 2: Hawke is just an immigrant trying to scrape by in the big foreign city, bad things happen, good things happen, weird things happen but at the end of the day it's a story closer to a game of D&D about a group of pretty ordinary people trying to get themselves and their loved ones to a comfortable life. High Fantasy is a Michael Bay movie, larger than life and filled with pathos, whereas Low Fantasy is like a Guy Ritchie film, clever, a bit grimey but always charming.
Even GRRM ran his ASOIF into a wall by writing himself into a inescapable corner.
Something I've been told by Worldbuilding communities many times, is that moraly gray is good, and objective evil/goodness is bad. And that magic has to be logical and make perfect sence. This a trap that kind fucked up my worldbuilding fundamentaly. I sort of felt forced to make a low fantasy setting.
I believe many other feel this way.
so here's the thing: if magic is rare, it actually doesn't have to make too much sense to work, since it will be a rare enough occurrence not to break your world. I'd argue however hat a high magic world kind of needs rules to work.
As for moral grayness, I'd tend to actually agree that generally nuance enriches moral conflicts, but that doesn't have to happen across the board: you can have an uncomplicatedly good protagonist and an uncomplicated evil antagonist with more neutral characters caught between and have an interesting story there. Or moral nuance might come as a detriment to your pacing or plot structure, and be an acceptable thing to trade to make your story the best it can be.
Morally grey is theoretically easier to make interesting because it automatically generates certain types of conflict. Objectively good/evil can create boring characters. The hero gets involved just because he The Good Guy(TM) and the villain twirls his mustache as he does every cliche'd evil act possible simply because he's evil. Also, every culture has different ideas of what is good and evil. You can definitely make a genuinely good person go up against a genuinely evil person, but make sure that they have personalities beyond Good Guy and Evil Guy.
You don't need to have magic completely spec'ed out, but it needs to be consistent. If your main character always needs to speak their spells, then everyone else needs to speak their spells or a reason has to be given why it's different for others. If every character's fire magic is red, don't have someone make blue fireballs without the color change having a meaning. Also, don't introduce some neat spell/device early on but then drop it after it solves Problem 1 because it's so powerful that using it consistently would solve almost all the problems in the story (*cough* Hermione's time turner *cough*).
low fantasy: gray world
High fantasy: Moral battle between good and evil
i prefer high fantasy Very important in this time of the world for me
Reminds me of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories", his explanation as to why fantasy and myth are so important to human beings because they're direct metaphors for deep spiritual truths we all feel.
@@walter1383 yeah, i love the universal themes in high fantasy:
>heroism, courage, hope and love.
friendship and trust. generic they maybe but undeniable still effective.
grey is one of my favorite colors
James talking about Berserk is my favorite thing.
All of your low fantasy examples were horribly innapropiate lmao:
How is How to train your dragon low fantasy exactly when the opening scene is a landscape brimming with fire breathing dragons of many species lmao.
Same goes for Berserk lol... Its first ever page features a naked woman turning into a monster with no anticipation whatsoever.
The witcher is yet another that literally opens with a monster fight scene.
And being a Soulsborne fan, i can precisely say that their games are everything except low in fantasy or magical elemments. A game about killing zombies and beasts and aliens while being undead... low fantasy, seriously?
How the hell are all of those "limited and extremely rare" magic elemments?
How in hell are things that explicitely tell you to expect a lot of fantasy thru and thru low fantasy exactly?
As a DM for many games over the years, I think the point of low fantasy is that sometimes you want to not be contrained by limitations of our world, but you don't want the story to be ABOUT the new fantastical things.
I create worlds and want them to be more than a real life simulation, but I don't want the story I'm telling to be about wizards rewriting reality.
The problem comes from the perception that high fantasy or just fantastical stories in general must be the product of a particular set of tropes that have very little relation to people's lived reality. As a response, low fantasy always seems to give in to/intensify the unfortunate/adult realities of our world to create a place where it is even more unreasonable to have any hope in the first place. What I love about the best fantasy works is that they take us out of the world we live in so that we can approach the problems of our life with imagination and hope rather than bitterness and resentment.
Personally I have become more and more a fan of higher fantasy. Where magic is overflowing and non-humans are everywhere. Whether it is whimsical or has dark elements doesn't matter. There is of course a place for more ''realistic'' fantasy but for me it's just as important to push the human imagination with these more magical worlds.
Wait wait wait... so Beastars would be a low fantasy?
Disco Elysium is a great recent example of low fantasy that not only avoid these cliches in its style but strongly justifies the purpose of the mode in multiple ways. Scant fantasy elements are used most prominently to highlight the contrast between the intuitive worldview of the main character and his rationalist partner. This approach works especially well when that main character is an amnesiac, unreliable narrator in an often deeply mundane world, leaving the player questioning whether which aspects are mere delusion or genuine fantastical reality right up until the end.
I don't know if it's the case that people genuinely think that low and dark fantasy are the same thing, or if it's just that it's easier to make fantasy dark if it's low fantasy. While you can make high fantasy dark, it's more challenging because when magic is extremely prominent in the story, you have to put a lot more time and effort into making it to where the magic doesn't ruin the suspense and terror that dark fantasy is supposed to capture than if magic was rare.
Elden Ring is high fantasy and dark af
@@YaBoiDREX I know, I'm saying that's generally what people do because it's harder to do high fantasy and make your story dark without ruining suspense. Especially if it's grimdark. That's why A Song of Ice and Fire is low fantasy, Martin has said so.
Edge Lord Genre #23
It's despair porn, that's the point.
My stories contain rape, but the rapes themselves are never shown. When it comes up it’s because of how rape effects people, especially kids. I was raped several times as a kid so I have plenty of insight.
One character (a little girl named Lyono) experienced several rapes while she was sex trafficked, these are never shown. What is shown is how she acts after, in the days, months, and even years after. You first meet Lyono in the low point of her life, having just been adopted/bought by a young woman who wanted to raise her as her own daughter rather than a slave.
The thing is, the young woman (Noyish) does not know what happened, so she see’s a violent and distrusting young girl, where in reality Lyono is terrified of being raped again, something I experience regularly. Lyono is a Fennorein, a race of bird people, and as a result she has talons and a near deadly kick. The culmination of these is that if you try to get her into a bedroom, she will all but kill you in an attempt to flee what she believes to be her worst nightmare. When a little boy tries to befriend her, she mistakes his friendliness for predatory behavior, and doesn’t trust him. When this same boy tries to give her a hug (very normal in that culture) she assumes he was about to try to rape her, and beats the shit out of him in her escape. Durring that same escape, she reveals to have hidden a knife in her dress, and slashes the hand of the father of that boy, who was only trying to help.
Not one rape is ever shown, because it’s really not what matters at all.
Lyono and that same dad eventually bond over their shared understanding of trauma, since he was a soldier.
When you see her again, ten years later, she’s still skiddish around people, and has regular flashbacks and night terrors. She has to learn to hide how it effects her so she can hold down a job, and keep up relations with her new family. Still, it’s only been ten years, so she’s pretty resentful of life for putting all this suffering on her plate, and attempts suicide multiple times throughout the stories. One of those suicide attempts takes place in her first story, with the stolen sidearm of the dad from earlier.
And she’s not the main character, she’s the main characters adopted child. Most of the story takes place from her mothers perspective, and all the complex feelings involved with raising a traumatized child. She sometimes buckled under the stress, and isn’t always a great parent. She loses tons of sleep, because her daughter will only sleep curled up with her because the kid won’t feel safe enough anywhere else. Problem is Lyono has those previously mentioned night terrors. Things go on, life goes on.
Edit: I experience the fear of rape, not actual rape. I moved out of my adoptive parents home.
The Last Kingdom is based on a series of books by Bernard Cornwell. Who also wrote the Sharpe series. He's a Historical Fiction writer. Even his King Arthur series is non-fantastical.
I like that despite the title of your video, you spend a lot of time exploring what can be great about low fantasy, while also pointing out what's wrong with how people are using it in popular media today. (Even though I personally dislike low fantasy for precisely the descriptions you've mentioned.)
For me the point of low-fantasy has always been obvious and valuable: it makes what magic there is actually feel cool and special. High fantasy tends to make magic feel mundane and boring by overdoing it.
It’s nothing inherent to low fantasy in general I suppose, but I’ve found the characters from low fantasy to just be more compelling than the average high fantasy character (I *love* the Cosmere, but I don’t think Sanderson’s character work is comparable to Martin or Abercrombie’s). I’m not sure why I feel like way. I don’t think that edgier = better. But I do find myself more invested and interested in individuals like Tyrion, Jon, and Glokta more than characters like Kaladin, Vin, Rand, etc.
If you look at the landscape of fantasy currently, across any media from books to films to streaming tv shows, I think there is an unspoken understanding that you can have a high fantasy setting with the humanity of a low fantasy story. While not neccesarilly within any of the main 3 mediums, any campaign of Critical Role embodies this sentiment perfectly: while it is a story full of the typical high fantasy concepts you'd find in any DnD game, both Matt Mercer and the cast's interactions bring the world a sense of depth and palpability that you wouldn't find in a story created by just one or two people
5:22
I'm just going to go ahead and tell Eli (Plague of Gripes) that we've found his long lost son, okay?
“If everyone is a scumbag, why should I be invested?“ I partly agree with this. If everyone is being a scumbag for scumbag sake, then yeah, it feels like it’s hard to really relate to anyone. However, we will care for individual characters if they themselves believe what they are doing is right. 40k is a prime example of this in which everyone is an asshole or some flavor of evil, but most believe themselves to be justified in doing so or act simply as forces of nature. Necrons believe they have an inherent right to rule due to technological superiority, Humanity believes the ends truly justify the means and they have a divine right to be dominant, Eldar simply want to be saved from the hands of Slannesh, and Tau believe they are making the Galaxy a better place. While Orks, Tyranids, and Chaos all act more as forces of nature.
I defnitly woun't put The Witcher books in the low fantasy category. Magic is like, literally everywhere there, the protagonist themselves are literally magic holders.
"Grimdark is what happens when you take a unmedicated teenage nihilist and ask him how he thinks the real world works." Ahahaha, yes! So very yes!
There's also what could arguably be called the cozy end of low fantasy (if such a thing exists) with works such as Legends and Lattes or the videogame Coffee Talk, where there are more fantastical elements, but the story is about the protagonist owning a coffee shop (or trying to build one ) and how they interact with other people through this. The question of whether Low fantasy does or can include cozy stories probably proves the exact point this video was trying to make about the conflation of low fantast and Dart fantasy or grimdark though.
exactly, If you liked legends and lattes, chances are you'll enjoy Nathan Lowell's Ravenwood (an herbalist settles in a recently built village for winter) as well. And it's much lower fantasy but keeps the cosy character interactions and diffuse sense of magic.
Another thing that bothers me about the GOT copy cats is that they think GOT is just a shitton of gore and sex scenes and that will make their book just like it. And now even the good ones aren't exempt from this thinking, low fantasy or otherwise
If I may also add something. Can we please, for the love of Heaven, have them wear something besides black leather and clothing.
The costume design of early GoT was amazing and then they stopped caring
15:00 Bravo. Fantasy is being plagued by the same issues scifi is facing. Its always the same shit. No complicated magic spells with diverse settings? Where are the fucking animals? What unique cultures even exist? Fuck, what food do the characters even eat? Does literally EVERY live action fantasy show have to be european??
I know that I at least want to use low fantasy for a theme. My world is sort of this renaissance era. Humans reign because they’ve cast out and defeated most monsters in the land, spellcasters are rare and people fear them, and industrialization techniques just do better. The whole backdrop is a kingdom that’s suddenly been turned into a republic, with the characters being reactionary royalists.
At least to me the conflict isn’t about magic or dragons. It’s about progress and the staunch opposition to it. So progress away from myths and magic and monarchy towards modernity works well with low fantasy, for me at least.
For me personally, I think all of these features are within the matter of writing than the genre itself, although I do see your point about the recent takes/turn of mainstream low fantasy shows.
I've also seen some high fantasies that also tackles sociopolitics and conflicts in an either/both realistic, cynical, or edgy sense, regardless on how peppered with heavy magic system it can be. May it be for shock factor, writer's primary world pov, suspicious self insert agendas, or a simple criticisms of humanity's not-so sparkly side.
Like the atla for example. The world maybe filled with such strong magic system, but it's conflict, struggles, collective trauma, cultures, setting, impact etc heavily based on colonial era tragedies of our world specifically in Asia.
As an Asian, I see the atla world as more of a grim reflection of our world with only their magic system and some few fantasy tidbits as the only source of escapism.
I've seen and read enough bad high fantasy to know that magic and dragons are not always cool. Execution is always paramount.
I too am incredibly tired of "dark" world building that essentially boils down to "everyone gets raped and/or murdered." It's also very telling that shows set in the past, (or like in GOT's case, a fantasy world that closely resembles medieval europe), writers and fans will justify the graphic sexual assault themes by saying, "That's just how things were back then. It's historically accurate!" But the actual women being assaulted still have perfectly smooth skin with shaved legs and straight teeth. THAT sure as hell is not historically accurate, but we all know why the women are so well groomed: the men in the audience will be more grossed out by body hair and bad skin than they are by watching someone be raped.
As I've aged and developed a more astute understanding of fantasy fiction and its tropes, I've come to realize that "Grim High Fantasy" is what speaks to me most overall. As an enthusiast of history, I find that I would often much rather participate in something historically-grounded as opposed to most general low-fantasy that chooses to play close to real world sensibilities. Or, perhaps "hidden-world fantasy" as an alternative for settings which want heavy use of real-world themes but also want to separate themselves from reality.
But what works for me with "Gim High Fantasy" is that it has the ability to both play with the grander, more...well...fantastical ideas and stories but ground them with a sense of consistency and psychological realism that keeps the characters and stories feeling relatable. I'm talking about fantasy settings like Warhammer or Spire, where magic and monsters abound but the heroes are a little more flawed, the streets are a little more dangerous and the wizards are a little more crazy. There may be evil, army-commanding despots and wise, exalted kings, sure...but there are also smaller injustices to be righted. Where heroism comes less often at the end of a sword and more often with a defiant word, a stubborn intercession or a willingness to sacrifice personal ambition for the sake of something more selfless. It basically allows for more relatable characters in a setting that doesn't have to compromise on imagination or, better yet, lets us explore such an imaginative world through the eyes of more "realistic" kinds of people.
I'd argue that the "vampires" in the twilight series aren't actually vampires but demons or fairies. If "drinks human blood" is literally the only single trait that matters to consider something a vampire, then mosquitos are vampires.
which is why I eat garlic everyday.
I'm a Philip K Dick fan and an underlying theme in his work is "question reality" and "reality isn't what you think it is" , I like the idea of demons lying about being vampires to trick people
The problem with high magic isn't high magic, it's the inability of artists to enact it logically. If you can teleport and communicate through fire hearths, you would prioritize installing fire hearths throughout your civilization, not continue with magic trains, ships, magic brooms, and magic flying cars and motorcycles, and written letters. If you have a suit that can beat hulk, you would wear it all the time. If you have a ship that can launch aircraft and destroy battleships over the horizon, you would stop building battleships and build aircraft carriers. If eating other humans gave you super strength and regenerative powers and endless life, people would do it, not just let the bad guys do it. ... Other sentient races shouldn't be considered high magic, though they are. There is nothing magic about neanderthals. But the average person thinks the existence of an elf is as magical as spontaneous mass generation and gravity manipulation.
hell if all it takes to make an elf is the knife ears, then spain alrady has those. maybe will even get to live as long as elves in 70-100 years
Ok i have the same question for you... Why would i care about character who always right and who will end the story as i predicted after reading first chapters of a book ?
Thats why people like low fantasy . It can make analogy with our world history. You can recreate WW2 in a fantasy decorations ! Explore themes which are taboo subject for some countries just by saying "its not USSR , its dragon empire" or smth like this. You can ask people "what if " .
What if there was a specific job for slaying monsters ? The answer is Witcher. Explore how would this person think and why he would he say "if I have to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all" ?
And list can go on and on
Hearing how you describe low fantasy in the rest of your video and your problems with it. Are you still sure that How To Train Your Dragon is a low fantasy franchise? From what I’ve seen of the movies, it doesn’t seem to fit how you describe most other low fantasy TV shows/movies in the rest of this video. I get that I’m kind of playing into the type of comment that you talked about in this video, so I just want to say that I’m asking more out of curiosity for why you classified it this way. Rather than a desire to refute it with facts and logic or the like.
I guess he said that because there aren't spellcasters? But I agree that to me that's high fantasy, since fantastical creatures abound. Same for Bloodborne.
One series that is low fantasy but not dark fantasy is the Mount and Blade games.
Low Fantasy is kinda my default genre for world-building (usually for role-playing games) and honestly this video really helped me think about how to do it better. Like your point about villains being a realistic and relatable type of evil, and therefore the heroes needing to be a realistic and relatable type of good really helped me think about how I approach the characters I create and the advice I give for character creation. Your point that low fantasy typically explores non-magical aspects of a fantasy world like political conflicts or social institutions rather than fantastical ones like killing gods or destroying magical rings was also really valuable, it really articulated what I've been trying to get out of my campaigns where I want the focus to be on exploring real world issues in an unrealistic setting freed from the constraints of historical accuracy.
Actually I think the historical accuracy thing is important to the discussion as well since nearly your Viking examples of low fantasy are supposed historical drams but really feel more like low fantasy because they're mostly devoid of historical accuracy (except for maybe the Northman, which I haven't seen so can't say). It really feels like when historical drama comes unmoored from historical accuracy it just sort of becomes low fantasy by default. This then means that a big part of low fantasy is that it's about things that could realistically happen, like a matriarchal feudal society or the conflict caused by nomadic mammoth herders being forced south by bad winter, but did not in real world history. As such I pose that the point of low fantasy is to explore real social phenomenon without being bogged down with real world context.
"Everyone wanted to be different, and they tried to be different in the same way... It's no longer a subversion; It's the norm."
DAMN... I had to get back and hear that again.
I think using fantastical elements sparingly can help ground a setting and makes you appreciate it more and adds more weight to the few times fantastical elements present themselves
Low fantasy allows you to focus on realistic challenges people deal with making it far more interesting to all audiences.
GoT would dial up the fantasy ramping up these challenges from human to biblical. The tension ever increases and stakes get higher keeping people interested.
I've designed my world from the ground up, including climate, ocean currents, tectonic plates, vegetation, political boundaries, and economic trade routes. From the climate of my world I figured there'd be 50% more atmospheric oxygen than earth has, so there's massive insects with millipedes reaching upto 9 feet long, and your average size ant being 1 1/2 inches long...stuff like that. I let the realistic fashioning of my world determine what many of the peoples are like. Letting my realistic setting determin the parameters of what my civilization could ultimately be like made my stories far more organic and epic than I could ever have done by my free flowing imagination. It's far different than any kind of living on earth, yet realistically plausible.
I just hope you don't have any split rivers.
@@thanszh Nope 😆
I feel like everyone trying to steelman low fantasy in the comments hasn't actually watched the video
When I think of fantasy my first thoughts are Arthurian tales or conan, as thats what i first saw as a child, rather than DnD, Tolkein or the more modern dark fantasy. As it turns out these two avenues are often unexplored nowadays, with Conan being relegated to nostalgia baiting the Arnold movie or Arthur usually getting a really bad blockbuster type movie (with exception to Green Knight, which was cool that happened at all). Pulp fiction is oft the middle ground between low and high fantasy, often fueled by horror or the more sword and sandals aesthetic. I'd like to see more writers try those two things again as those settings allow for a high degree of choice of how much magic one wants or how dark/optimistic it can be.
Im aware some contemporary Arthur books exist but they are usually just subversivist trash that's more of a political talking point than an entry into fantasy.
yeah the whole "grittiness for the sake of grittiness" thing is so fucking annoying. like you can have stories like that, but you've gotta be able to justify it?? Like, what power structures are incentivizing this sort of behavior?
i feel like a lot of people just take for granted this ultracapitalist idea that "human nature" is to be cruel and competitive, which is hot garbage lmao. tbh i think the only thing you can say for certain about human nature is that we're social. beyond that we're pretty malleable, and ppl tend to behave in ways the system they live under incentivizes. if survival is contingent on participating in a hierarchical system, people will tend to be more competitive. but if we lived in a society that incentivized cooperation, or at the very least DIDNT force us to compete for survival, then cooperation would be more the norm.
Then again, i guess it's not TOO surprising, given that the vast majority of these stories take place under a fucking monarchy. but that's a completely different leftist rant
The Winner's Curse series was a surprisingly great low fantasy series; the politics were well developed and integral to every step of the plot. Definitely a standout, especially for YA.
The best answer I can come up with for the point of Low Fantasy is that sometimes high fantastical elements can undermine the central theme of the story. The best example I can come up with to explain this is the "Conan the Barbarian" movie. It has a really strong theme about how willpower and determination all but make someones invincible in the face of oppression. Would that theme have been as powerful if Conan was a mystical demigod hero?
Another thing is if the intrusive nature of a fantasy element enhances the theme. If I was writing about the responsibly that comes with absolute power in a world where very few people have any, then a protagonist who IS a mystical demigod would (probably) work.
My problem with GOT's take on Low Fantasy is that they planted so many seeds for a large return for magic. Sam expressing his dream of being a wizard and then much later going to study with the maesters. The Maester of House Stark showing off his clasp that showed he was one of the few who got to attempt their hand at learning magic. In season 2, the warlock who steals the dragons says with their rebirth, magic will slowly return to the world. And then nothing. Absolutely nothing comes of it. Most infuriating, no magic for Sam, which was what kept me going as the seasons went on.
what is the relevance of the last kingdom in regard to "low fantasy"? it's not intended to be "fantasy" in the genre sense its a fictionalized historical epic that places a fictional character within a real historical setting alongside actual real life (now long dead) people who's names are still known via chronicles and other writings.
I disagree on the definition of Low Fantasy- it's not about how magical the _setting_ is, it's how much the _narrative and main characters are impacted_ by magic.
ASOIAF may have zombie armies and dragon empires, but the vast majority of what affects our characters is politics and courtly intrigue, so it's Low Fantasy.
Also High Fantasy can have realistic character motivations and not just a Chosen One; LOTR's hobbit characters were all regular people who decided to fight for a better world.
Otherwise I agree 100% that Darkness is totally separate to High/Lowness, when they're conflated too often.
Yes, more dragon age appreacitiation