Ask Lemmy

Everyone is speaking english. Even when the story says they is more than one language, the story is full of puns that dependion english, wsear words from english (swearing is realistict in real life but in books exceccs that shold be cut with no harm to the story)

I'm so sick of exceptionalism. Every damn thing seems to center around some shitty thinly veiled oligarch, their kids as some hero, or unhappenable origins and an impossible hero. Everything is geared towards cultural acceptance of some authoritarian neo feudal dystopian future.

Stories can be interesting in other spaces. We all exist within those real spaces. We can fantasize about better places and times within similar realities as our own. I view all this exceptionalism like collective narcissism. I can't tell if it is an universal writing bias or a publishing bias, but I don't like it.

Dragons are cool, but god am I sick of them. The worst part is they are either evil and directly attack people or good and completely missing for 90% of the story.

I dunno if it's considered "bad", but I personally hate when one of the characters gets amnesia, or the group meets a character that has amnesia. It just feels like a laziness by the author who can't think of any other way to make a storyline interesting.

You're looking for opinions? I got opinions.

• The Chosen One who gets dragged around like a sack of potatoes until they Come Into Their Own and go on to Turn The Tide.

• The Wise Yet Enigmatic Sage.

• The Sharp-Tongued Princess.

• The Rogue With A Heart of Gold.

• Plots based on misunderstanding ancient prophecies that are so vaguely written they could be cookie recipes.

• Gods that slot into neat roles on a godly table of elements.

• Magic systems so detailed and prosaic you may as well call them technology.

• Elves that are exactly like every other elf character you've ever read about except for one glaring but superficial difference which is there to make you think the author's not plagiarising their own favourite author.

Zero consistency to magic systems. I get it, having all sorts of spells in the story is fun and gives a lot of creative ways to make fights more interesting, but...

• If teleportation magic exists, why don't people who own it teleport everywhere?

• If time travel magic exists, why isn't everyone doing everything in their power to get it and use it? Looking at you, harry potter.

• The villains usually have spells that are supposed to be ultra powerful and can kill anyone quickly but somehow it doesn't work against main characters and there's no excuse for why fights drag on for so long. Imagine seeing the villain introduced by vaporizing someone but never seeing them do it again.

• Main character(s) breaking the rules of magic just because...

I'm a fan of stories like Avatar the last airbender or Witch Hat Atelier because their magic is very consistent. It makes things way more interesting when a character can't just pull something out of their ass to save them in the middle of a fight.

Shoutout to every story that alludes to the fact that mages can run out of mana but is insanely inconsistent how and when it happens. Sometimes they spam spells for hours and sometimes it's just "Oh no, I can't use [spell] anymore because... Um... The plot says I can't!"

You meet your party at the tavern...

Treating wands like guns in fights instead of using spells creatively