askchapo

Touching on the monarchism worship, I gotta gripe about a game I was playing that does exactly this in a setting that I think could use a lot more exploring since it's quite literally right up our ideological alley.

In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel you're set into a world that's blurring the line between the very end of the high middle ages and the industrial revolution / era of imperialism where the old feudal world's just beginning to transition into an industrial society.

You get to see a proverbial Holy Roman Empire / German Empire (here's another one that grinds my gears, why is it always the fucking krauts) with its political and economic structures coming under the stresses of change that occurs as the bourgeoisie begins to grow in economic power, education becomes more normalized, technological developments leads to automation and increases in productivity, etc. Its essentially a story of "what if we made a fantasy version of the emergence of the Victorian Era".

It's a very interesting story with very enjoyable worldbuilding that really makes you think about how rapidly shit began to change. Of course the actual game itself is tropy as hell and back again with plenty of annoying shit that's common for weeb shit, but what really tilted me was how there was a fucking revolutionary movement in the game and you think "oh shit are we gonna see conflict between the developing bourgeois and the entrenched feudal powers?" And boy did it fucking subvert my expectations for the worse.

It turns out it was a fucking counter-revolutionary movement of the feudal aristocracy hell-bent on rolling back the reforms granted on behalf of the "lower classes" and to decentralize the government to restore power to the regional lords aka themselves so they could restore dignity and honor to the empire and put the uppity peasants in their place.

I was so fucking tilted by that and it didn't stop there, if it wasn't for the outright over-the-top anime fantasy plot making me go "wtf kind of campy shit are they gonna come up with next" keeping me somewhat interested in following the story, I might have dropped it by like game 3.

Feel like I should post a link to the first chapter of my fantasy novel, Byzantine Wars, which defies all or nearly all of these annoying tropes. You can read the whole thing there for free, although that website is kind of not my favorite. I can also just send an epub to those who message me. All I ask is that if you like it, please share it with other people who might be interested. The story is basically Jumanji in Byzantium, plus slave revolt, with a magic system mostly inspired by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The tropes I countered were:

• chosen one(s): peasants and workers are the heroes, people can only change things by working together in the name of universal human liberation (the "bad guys" can only fight them by acting like vampires); it's not good versus evil, it's imperialists versus workers; anyone can learn how to use magic;
• the only people who care about bloodlines are imperialists;
• good characters look like shit, bad characters are beautiful;
• Many different cultures are represented here, with many different characters belonging to one culture or another; there are many good and bad Greeks, Muslims, Jews, etcetera, along with plenty of Kurds, Iranians, Africans, Arabs, Armenians, Roma, Assyrians, Turks, Georgians, and more!
• the story is about the Roman Empire versus a slave republic; the Roman government is generally depicted negatively, but most Romans support it; the slave republic is generally depicted positively, though its leaders and people argue with each other and question one another;
• the slaves aren't afraid to do violence against Romans and rarely hesitate to use their own weapons against them;
• I'm super annoyed at how the most popular fantasy series (Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, even Harry Potter) just ignore economics almost completely. We see cities that consist of a castle, and that's it. How do these people get their food? Where are their farms? So I definitely paid a lot more attention to this, but worked it into the story. I'm not a fan of writers like KSR interrupting their stories with miniature magazine articles.
• the series mostly takes place in what is now Turkey, Georgia, and the Middle East.
• honestly I like how GRRM includes disabled people in his work (even if he sucks in many other ways) so that was one thing I went for;
• no SA or very little SA;
• the barbarians are more civilized than the Romans;
• women can be horny but are not just objects of lust;
• four main characters: two good ones, one "morally gray" one (sorry), one bad one;
• plenty of trans people (redditors call this "presentism": CW transphobia but
  spoiler

  didn't you know that trans people never existed until a few years ago and anyone writing about trans people is just inserting George Soros's woke agenda to virtue signal about how pure and good they are unlike me, a redditor who readily admits that he is scum?
  );

We live in the reality where hereditary and luck are the most important factors in success. So the chosen one, secret lineage, noble ancestors isn't a trope. That is just real life.

As far as actual tropes I dislike. Mind powers. Hypnosis, telepathy, whatever else. It has fallen out of favor of late but especially in older works it was everywhere. Granted it was still scientifically feasible in the 70s that taking a drug could get you so high you could read minds. We now know it isn't but it just feels so cheap anymore. Even if it was in the realm of science it doesn't lead to good storytelling I think.

RIP. UlyssesT, you would've loved this thread

I can't stand stereotypical "dumb barbarians". "Me want to break things and drink all the ale" yeah great, man. Even Star Wars did this with the big guy in the Bad Batch (I heard it got better later but that debut episode in Clone Wars...ugh).

They can be done well but a lot of times they're written the exact same way with the same carbon copied quips.

The chosen one trope hands down all the time. I would love to get through Wheel of Time but I cannot stand chosen

spoiler

Rand and everyone around him is

That series I have put down so many times. Having a "hero" protagonist that is essentially unkillable (because they are the title character) I don't mind, Conan for example. We all know Conan won't die because there is always another story about him. But he is not fated for anything, no grand destiny he has to achieve or the cosmos suffers.

Second is also another that has been touched upon - the goodness of divine authority. Especially if it is light flavored. And nobles divine right to rule set as a standard of good etc. Give me stories of folks fecking up the system and creating their own anarchistic communities while continuing to feck up the system.

For fantasy, most of the central, important characters come from royalty or aristocrats in high positions. Or, they’re peasants who manage to climb up to self made royalty to rule benevolently. This isn’t even just because it’s my politics. I just find it annoying

Everything haooens so fucking fast. A cultivator usually becomes increadibly рowerful in under a century, when it should take them at least a thousand times longer. Soaring the heavens does this well. I little over a hundreth years the mc is just starting his cultivation and his hometown is already unrecognizable, after tens of thousands of years he is baerly the match of those old monsters

Foreman is building steamshiрs a few years after being isekaid, when in reality it should be an acomрlishment to just cast and rifle the cannons, lest the darkness fall does it well in that regard; because he ultimatley cant cast them.

Interstellar wars should likewiese take thousands of years, like in forever war.

All these tyрes of stories would be better if they took рlace across generations of normal рeoрle.

I definitely hate the last two points, especially the second last point, and I'm glad that certain satire films like starship troopers make light of how obvious a crutch this is in the Sci-Fi genre