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What is "middle fantasy"?
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<blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6264405" data-attributes="member: 6677017"><p>Well, it seems to me that the term "high fantasy" is more and more losing most of its meaning due to being used in entirely different ways. Most likely our preferred usage stems more from how we first heard it used than any other consideration.</p><p></p><p>For me, high fantasy (as I was introduced to it) it primarily about the scope, both in power level and in <em>significance</em>. High fantasy is about good vs. evil, fate of the world, knights in shining armor and dragons kidnapping princesses. Dragonlance and Lord of the Rings are some well-known examples of high fantasy.</p><p></p><p>While high fantasy is pretty much always set in an alternate world, being set in an alternate world provides zero "points" towards getting the high fantasy title. Its an incidental (if ubiquitous) trait, rather than a defining one.</p><p></p><p>Level of magic is also entirely irrelevant. Lord of Rings had a very low level of magic on a day-to-day basis, for instance.</p><p></p><p>Things like Game of Thrones (with moral ambiguity and a focus on politics), Peirs Anthony's Xanth novels (lots of fantastical elements), or Conanesque stories (where it's just about killing things and taking their gold--kinda like some playstyles of D&D) are not high fantasy.</p><p></p><p>I admit, I actually get kind of frustrated on this particular issue, because it seems like people have changed the meaning primarily on the basis of misunderstanding the term. People starting mistakenly thinking that "high fantasy" meant "a high amount of fantasy elements", which generally meant "high magic," and weren't corrected, and it just stuck.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: Let me second the link that Cadence provided: <a href="https://www.worldswithoutend.com/resources_sub-genres.asp" target="_blank">https://www.worldswithoutend.com/resources_sub-genres.asp</a> That's a really good description of various sub-genres of fantasy.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sword of Spirit, post: 6264405, member: 6677017"] Well, it seems to me that the term "high fantasy" is more and more losing most of its meaning due to being used in entirely different ways. Most likely our preferred usage stems more from how we first heard it used than any other consideration. For me, high fantasy (as I was introduced to it) it primarily about the scope, both in power level and in [I]significance[/I]. High fantasy is about good vs. evil, fate of the world, knights in shining armor and dragons kidnapping princesses. Dragonlance and Lord of the Rings are some well-known examples of high fantasy. While high fantasy is pretty much always set in an alternate world, being set in an alternate world provides zero "points" towards getting the high fantasy title. Its an incidental (if ubiquitous) trait, rather than a defining one. Level of magic is also entirely irrelevant. Lord of Rings had a very low level of magic on a day-to-day basis, for instance. Things like Game of Thrones (with moral ambiguity and a focus on politics), Peirs Anthony's Xanth novels (lots of fantastical elements), or Conanesque stories (where it's just about killing things and taking their gold--kinda like some playstyles of D&D) are not high fantasy. I admit, I actually get kind of frustrated on this particular issue, because it seems like people have changed the meaning primarily on the basis of misunderstanding the term. People starting mistakenly thinking that "high fantasy" meant "a high amount of fantasy elements", which generally meant "high magic," and weren't corrected, and it just stuck. EDIT: Let me second the link that Cadence provided: [url]https://www.worldswithoutend.com/resources_sub-genres.asp[/url] That's a really good description of various sub-genres of fantasy. [/QUOTE]
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