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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2929101" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, if fatnasy is about what cannot be, then this totally works if you're magic-wielding elves in the dark times of the planet. Cuz it'll NEVER be. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I fall into this camp, too. Hell, I think MOST books I look into are disturbingly boring. It's part of why I play games instead. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> There are exceptions, if you define fantasy broadly enough. I'm not even a big fan of the Tolkien/Lieber/Howard Holy Trinity myself. But Guy Gavriel Kay writes some nice stuff, and Jacqueline Carey has a knack for suffering. Susanna Clarke can make a thousand pages breeze by. Pratchett will NEVER go out of style. JK Rowling ain't half bad, simple as it may be in the earlier books. Phillip Pullman does some REALLY cool things. And Niel Gaiman is my new idol. If you are willing to expand into movies, we've got M. Night Shalyman, the Pixar films (yes, CARS is fantasy. Unless your porches can talk?)....lots of good stuff.The most prolific authors generally ARE rather poor, thriving off of fanboys, fangirls, and clever genre stunts that attract 13 year olds to the idea of "Ooooooh, a WOMAN as a KNIGHT!" or "He's had a TRAGIC HISTORY so he's BADASS!"But think about the books I mentioned above. Alternate history, religious issues out of Milton, hefty doses of humor, classic themes straight out of myth, a mixture of wonder and horror....nary an elf, ork, or farm-boy-turn-paladin among them. No cliched "dark," no real modern politics (despite, in some cases, involving fully modern characters)....90% of everything is crap. But there's at least 10% that is done well, and, IMHO, some of the above do it real well. I still think they're ALL fantasy.</blockquote>

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