When I was first considering taking on writing as a career, I correspended with several (then) well known authors within thier own genre niches. Each of them told me one thing...
Fantasy is both the easiest and the hardest to write.
A Fantasy fan won't ask why magic works, it just does. The jungle can peter out to desert within a few miles of hills, and nobody asks why.
Fantasy also attempts to be progressive and modern minded, often putting modern morals on the novel.
Travel is slow, and can set the pace of the fantasy novel. It will allow character interaction, exploration into new and fantastic regions, and challenge the character's mindset, physical body, preconcieved notions, etc.
"Don't do it." Was by far the most advice I got.
Which is why I switched to horror and post apocalyptic writing.
Workshops, classes, speeches, etc all showed me something about fantasy that was somewhat of an epiphany.
People want the romanticized view of medivel times, where the citizens have modern day morals and beliefs, where everyone abhors violence except the bad guys, and the good guy has the "reluctant hero" bit going on.
Most of the people who bashed on Tolkien and Lord of the Rings couldn't write the equivelant to save thier lives.
The standard was shifting quickly, into strange territory, making me glad I'd stayed away from it. In thier own way, fantasy was rapidly becoming as bad as Science-Fantasy. (Star Trek and Star Wars fit in Science Fantasy best) as far as infighting, bitchiness, entrenched positions that made the Western Front look like two guys throwing snowballs across a street, and people that were convinced that thier next novel would change the world and "open people's eyes to the truth of reality" (No kidding, I heard an author claim this about her next fantasy novel, how it would open people's eyes to the fact that everyone is racist)
One thing I noticed in Fantasy, was the encroaching and creeping: "Lack of progress" as far as civilizations went. An empire had existed for thousands of years, but had not changed, there had been no evolving of the empire either technologically or spiritually. Yet they had 20th Century morals.
Fantasy also became a way to make political statements. The most famous I remember is a short story, I kid you not, where Hillary Clinton was transported to Valhalla, where she berated the male Gods and caused a revolt. IIRC it even won awards. It was crap. Let's be honest, logically, Odin would have crushed her mortal butt for mouthing off and shrieking at him like the story described. But it was considered "innovative" and "clever" instead of politically correct claptrap.
Then came possibly the most horrible thing to happen to fantasy...
The "Old Guard" began dying out, or just going insane (Piers Anthony, I'm looking at you. "The Magic Fart"? Come on, you used to write OK books, this is just stupid) and writing all kinds of crazy crap. The Wheel of Time kind of began wandering around like a drunken wino trying to find a doorstep to freeze to death in. At least Eddings had the good graces to end his two series, despite fan demands.
New fiction began to read more and more like modern day people without the tech base. Angry, petty, and vengeful Gods passed from vogue. Strong characters were replaced by "innovative characters" that were so physically/emotionally/mentally crippled it's a wonder they survived childhood.
And people were still in love with medieval European "hovel-esque" architecture and society. Things got warped and even turned into downright jokes. I've read novels where samuria swords cleaved through platemail like butter. Where everyone owned a sword, voted in elections, and the king was either wise and all knowing, or a bitter tyrannical despot, strangely enough, both of them were crafted in such a way as to mimic the appearance, attitude, etc of modern (then) world leaders.
So politics had REALLY infected fantasy.
Then came the Joe Everyman hero. I HATE that bastard. I wish someone would develope a time machine, find who came up with that damn idea for heroes, and bash in his mother's head before he infected literature.
Joe Everyman replaced Conan, Fafred (sp?), and all the others. He had modern morals, modern mental/emotional problems, was weak, unwilling to do what he was being pushed into doing, and basically, really pissed me off. He wasn't special, because everyone is special, if you get my meaning.
Then came removing conflicts. I know, for those of you who have studied writing, conflict and resolution are an intregal part of a novel. But yet people began trying to remove conflict from the hero. The villians had conflict and violence, but the heroes conflict was more along the lines of an internal conflict rather than open violence.
By this time, more and more Fantasy was watered down.
No more wonderous locations. "Keep locations simple, complex locations can confuse the readers." In other words, you are an idiot, so I'm going to use simple things to keep your head from imploding.
No more complex, inhuman races, unless they are to be used as misunderstood villians who only want to live in peace, or are totally alien locusts. "People like to be able to understand the motivations of races, so they have to be easily accessable and identifiable to readers. Readers want races that are misunderstood, just as they are..." In other words, you're dumber than a bag of hammers and won't understand that the [fill in the blank] are xenophobic
s, but will understand that they were pushed into fighting the hero's side because of someone invading thier farmland.
Stick to a single plotline, with no more than one sub-plot per character to a maximum of three at any given time. "It's too hard for readers to follow multiple sub-plots, so keep it simple so they don't get confused and hurl feces at the wall." In other words, you're too stupid to keep track of too much.
And it goes on.
Resulting in kind of bland settings and characters. Many of which are cookie-cutter.
Can't forget the types of heros and anti-heroes. But that's a rant for different time.
So, people's fantasy has become watered down. They've become enamored or too locked into medevial hovel-esque-ness, and don't like powerful/strong characters. At least, according to "market research" and "consumer polls" that are always flashed around.
So the standard paradigm is a somewhat watered down setting, where nothing changes until our heroes come along, unless it is at least 200 years ago. Things are cookie-cuttered, and often have modern morals attached. The hero is just some guy along for fate's ride, not someone going out to make a difference because they want to.
But, since I'm about 3 shots in further than I was when I started, I'll close with this...
In the standard fantasy setting, there are multiple niches, and each niche has its own defenders, many of whom will fight to the death to protect and validate it. They will yank out cites, evidence, and even sound-bites to show that thiers is the primary paradigm that is better than every other one.
What it boils down to, is the whole crowd needs to shut the hell up and let people enjoy what they like, instead of trying to ram what they like down everyone's throat.
If you like Hovels and Serfs, cool. If you like Flying Castles & Snooty Elves, good for you.
Just quit trying to tell me that it's superior to what I like, so I need to abandon what I like.
Go play somewhere else, preferably in your own sandbox, and stop crapping in mine.
