Why Most Fantasy Stories Are Bad- A Mini-Essay

It's time for another Random Blog!

I didn't title it as such this time, however, as this isn't so much a blog as it is a...mini-essay? Casual essay? No idea what to officially call it, but basically I'll be sharing my thoughts and opinions on why I think a lot of modern fantasy really falls flat in comparison to some of the greats (J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, Jenny Nimmo's Children of the Red King series, Brian Jacques' Redwall series, the list goes on).

Funny enough, I actually finally pieced this together while playing a game I am sure you all are familiar with, which is Bethesda's Elder Scrolls V- Skyrim.

Now, Bethesda is a company that is extremely successful due to their Elder Scrolls series as well as their Fallout series (or, rather, Fallout's 3-4 and co., 1 and 2 were not directly made by them according to my understanding), but they have started to get some criticism regarding their tendency to rush out seemingly high-quality games in short, intense bursts, resulting in hilarious (and oftentimes gamebreaking) glitches and bugs.

I, personally, am able to look past all these problems and still enjoy the game for what it is, or, at least, was able to look past Fallout 4. It was the first entry to the Fallout series I ever truly sat down and played through, and I fell in love with it, warts and all.

Skyrim, on the other hand, was something entirely different.

I never played Skyrim when it first game out, so perhaps this is part of it, but I really don't think the game has aged all that well. The combat is rather awkward at times, hitboxes are wonky, and the character models are just ugly as all get-out.

To cut a long story short, I had many issues playing the game that simply annoyed me on several admittedly petty levels, so I never was truly able to sit and binge hours and hours of the game like some people can.

That is, until a certain quest from the DLC reached a certain point.

The quest was in the Dawnguard DLC, and required me to collect water from several basins. It places you in a nearly pitch-black tunnel system (made worse by the horrendous dynamic lighting system they have, to the point where I had to spam magelight and waste torches just to figure out which way was up). I hated this quest for the first half, because there were enemies that would drop down in the dark and attack me, and I'd have to slash around wildly to hit them because I used a two-handed sword and goddamn it if I was going to waste levels using a one-hander just so I could hold onto my torch.

But eventually, painfully, I made my way to the first basin, and noticed something strange. When I filled my magical ewer or whatever fantasy ritualistic bullshit they implemented as an excuse for a game mechanic, I was given access to a portal to a different area, called "Forgotten Vale."

"Huh," I thought to myself, "Prolly gonna be some stupid dark area again because 'evil' or 'corruption' or whatever"

Not in the slightest.

Instead of having to continue searching through the dark for more basins dealing with harsher and harsher threats, I was treated to a shining, beautiful, relatively HUGE expanse...practically a DLC area in and of itself, covered in glittering grass textures, glacial mountains, and a crystalline sun. Strange creatures, nearly alien in appearance but just familiar-looking enough to suggest at something resembling an existing member of the animal kingdom, galloped by.

And on the map, I found that the other basins I had to fill were at each corner of the map.

i was kind of awestruck. I know it sounds corny, but I was amazed that, rather than have me go through a generic stupid dungeon that reused the same assets and textures a million times, I was given this unique, vast wonderland to wander through- encouraged, in fact, to wander its expanse to complete a quest.

This was the most fun part of the game for me- the introduction to a new, glittering wonderland and the permission to explore any amount of it I pleased.

Now let me ask you a question, dear readers- when was the last time you read something and experienced the same sort of wonder, the same excitement and sense of adventure, the same eagerness to explore and excavate, wander and perambulate?

For me, the last fantasy that made me feel like this was Made in Abyss and Skyrim- but some traditional media sticklers may not count anime or video games as art, so for the sake of argument and for brevity I'll not include them too much in my argument.

When I pick up a lot of the modern fantasy books, I don't feel that same sense of wonder. I don't experience the same sense of excitement. It can get close with some well-written action or perhaps some power-fantasy schlock that tugs on those primal roots just a tad.

But I cannot say for certain that anything that has come out in recent years has made me desperately want to jump in like a desert castaway into a glacial spring, has enticed me to take a gander with the protagonist or his swarthy companions in this beautiful world they live in.

This, I believe is the main problem with modern fantasy books.

Now, being an avid supporter of the pulprev and taking part in their recent exploits, I can safely say that many are attempting to bring this sense of wonder back into fantasy, albeit in their own way. They want gripping action, sweeping romance, and nerve-wracking suspense. They want to instill wonder in their audience in the way they know best- by causing everyone in the audience to be wildly entertained and teleported into another world through simple, evocative, masterful storytelling.

However, as a bibliophile first and pulprev advocate second, I would be just as happy if ANYTHING came out nowadays that could evoke that sense of wonder in me that I felt as a teenager reading the Inheritance Cycle, or as a kid reading Redwall.

There will be some of you that remember one of my earlier posts mentioning that character should be before anything else, including worldbuilding. I do still stand by this, and I still do think that everything should be in moderation, but after thinking on it and studying other pieces of media than books, I think I have finally realized the true value of proper worldbuilding.

This is coming from someone who firmly believes in stripping a story down to its smallest pieces and telling a tale as efficiently and simply as possible; Hemmingway is one of my biggest influences. So when I say worldbuilding in fantasy is important (in moderation, of course!) you can be assured that this is the case.

And, truth be told, worldbuilding is almost entirely absent from stories now (almost every urban fantasy story known to man), or so overdone it's cloying and impossible to deal with in a few sittings (all of Game of Thrones). It seems many have lost the art of masterful worldbuilding, and as a result tarnished its name, either by never including it and making the average reader assume it is unnecessary, or by including so much of it the average reader stays the hell away from it.

What about you? Are there any stories you've read recently or pieces of media that have whetted your appetite for adventure? Perhaps you have some modern book recommendations to prove me wrong, or simply want to inform me that I am less than informed about the subject- All is welcomed!

Leave a comment or question down below- I'll do my best to answer them!

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