Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

Every genre has problematic attitudes, tropes, and habits that are sort of intrinsic to its realm. Crime noir has its Italian gangsters and the femme fatale. Horror has its tendency to use mental illness to create its killers and monsters. Well suffice it to say, fantasy has its own controversial parts as well. That’s what I want to talk about today. I want to discuss some of fantasy’s issues, and how we worked to overcome them in Manticore’s Shadow.

The first is, of course, misogyny. For the longest time, women were the damsel in distress, maybe the lesbian fantasy babe (think Red Sonya or Xena), maybe a lucky few political type queens, or more often, the wicked witch or other corrupted villain. Finally, mostly via YA and self published fiction, we started getting more female authors, and male authors who were finally realizing that women read fantasy, and wanted to see female character who were able to be normalized and hold their own. This issue has not fully been resolved, but it has come a long way, especially over the last 15 years or so. This was something that Clevenger and I felt strongly about, and we made sure to include female characters who were equals, women who could stand on their own, yet were also fully realized, with multiple, complex dimensions to them.

Another longstanding issue is race. Unfortunately this issue hit fantasy fiction from two sides. From the worldbuilding side, many non humans in older tales were pulled from the mythologies of their various regions. This gave us the Leprechauns and other wee folk from the British Isles, the Dwarves and Gnomes from the Germanic regions of Europe, and the Dark Elves and Giants of the Norse mythologies. After Tolkien, and especially when social games started developing around the fantasy themes Tolkien created, several of these fantastical races became corrupted to be used as stand-ins for European intolerance over certain peoples, primarily the Jewish and Romani peoples. I’m not going to go into what caricatures and stereotypes in particular were used. You can do your own research on that, if you want to learn more. Just know that it was a thing, it was horrible, and modern gamers and fantasy enthusiasts try hard to correct these issues whenever they are found.

The other racial issue in fantasy actually started with Tolkien himself, and was just adopted into mainstream gaming and storytelling, that of in-story racial tensions. It is just taken as common knowledge that Dwarves and Elves fight and squabble. Dwarves and Goblins are always at war, while Elves and Orcs are always mortal enemies. D&D went so far as to codify it in their lore, having all three of these racial fights built into the history of the different races’ deities. The other half of that, however, is the intrinsic idea that some races, player races (read European-centric) are always good, while other, barbarian and tribal races (read non-European) are inherently cruel, evil, and irredeemable. This is very slowly changing. It was primarily adopted with the early gaming community because it provided very black and white, easy to identify allies and enemies, back when the games were more combat oriented, rather than used for more group storytelling. Modern fantasy novels and games are moving away from the more simplistic views of black and white, knight in shining armor style storytelling, and moving to more grey storytelling, where it is acknowledged that even the best of people have bad habits at the least, and not all problems can be solved by defeating some villain.

This leads me to my final point I want to talk about, which is… villains. Fantasy has always had a habit of moving to the inhuman or superhuman for its villains. Books are teeming with witches, liches, demons, undead, and all sorts of “evil” monsters for their BBEG (big bad evil guy). I think this goes back to the black and white, heroic mentality. A nonhuman villain is less problematic to show being defeated at the end of the story. It is sanitized, clean, and unproblematic. It is unrealistic. I would rather read about villains who are flawed yet realistic people. Individuals who aren’t just being evil for evil’s sake, but truly believe they are working toward some just goal, even if it requires questionable choices. I doubt that Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk sit on top of a Scrooge McDuck pile of gold coins, cackling maniacally. They likely view themselves and their situation as reasonable and justified. These are the villains that we are trying to incorporate in our stories, as these are the type we like to read. The Horned King looks cool, but he is so one dimensional next to Darth Vader.

So there you have it. A few questionable issues with fantasy storytelling, and my opinions on them. I would love to hear comments and opinions. Until next time…

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham.