Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 9390045" data-attributes="member: 2205">Because that's what fantasy--as a genre--is defined by. If it doesn't have those tropes, it's atypical and doesn't feel like fantasy. I guess the deeper question then is why do I want fantasy at all. I think the romanticism of medievalism is something that's been part of Western Civilization since the dawn of the Industrial Age and the Romantic Period in art, literature and music back in the earlier 1800s. It's not about historical accuracy, it's about projecting our own society back into a period where problems were simpler, life was more idyllic, and people were more heroic and all that. You could probably do something similar by having fantasy based on the Old West or the Golden Age of Piracy or the Bronze Age or Warring States China or something rather than medieval Europe... but it always feels very niche because the tradition of fantasy being medievalist is now itself really old and well established.The evolution of grimdark out of that is interesting maybe, but it feels more like a kind of simplistic inversion for purposes of some deconstruction or just because we've become more cynical as an audience rather than a completely different frame of reference. It's looking at the same frame from another point of view.UPDATE: Curiously, of course, as space opera was being established, they also went with a kind of feudal capes &amp; rayguns in space that was surprisingly medievalist, albeit again romanticized, at least in a social and political sense if not technological. I think there's something about the Anglophone psyche that yearns for the pageantry and heroic ideals of romanticized medievalism so that all of the escapist genres we've created default to it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 9390045, member: 2205"] Because that's what fantasy--as a genre--is defined by. If it doesn't have those tropes, it's atypical and doesn't feel like fantasy. I guess the deeper question then is why do I want fantasy at all. I think the romanticism of medievalism is something that's been part of Western Civilization since the dawn of the Industrial Age and the Romantic Period in art, literature and music back in the earlier 1800s. It's not about historical accuracy, it's about projecting our own society back into a period where problems were simpler, life was more idyllic, and people were more heroic and all that. You could probably do something similar by having fantasy based on the Old West or the Golden Age of Piracy or the Bronze Age or Warring States China or something rather than medieval Europe... but it always feels very niche because the tradition of fantasy being medievalist is now itself really old and well established. The evolution of grimdark out of that is interesting maybe, but it feels more like a kind of simplistic inversion for purposes of some deconstruction or just because we've become more cynical as an audience rather than a completely different frame of reference. It's looking at the same frame from another point of view. [B]UPDATE[/B]: Curiously, of course, as space opera was being established, they also went with a kind of feudal capes & rayguns in space that was surprisingly medievalist, albeit again romanticized, at least in a social and political sense if not technological. I think there's something about the Anglophone psyche that yearns for the pageantry and heroic ideals of romanticized medievalism so that all of the escapist genres we've created default to it. [/QUOTE]

Verification