Everything is Fantasy

Or, as an alternative title, “Fantasy is a very broad genre that contains many sub-genres (and can also borrow several elements from other genres) and as such it’s a bit fucking daft to impose arbitrary limitations upon it, or to state that X or Y cannot be Fantasy simply because it doesn’t fit your own narrow definition, so shut the fuck up Kevin and let people enjoy their magic books in peace.”

Honestly, I could probably leave this post at that. But there’s a certain conversation in fan spaces — one that seems to pop back up every four months or so — that I’m just so tired of hearing at this point. It’s one that centres around the exclusion of some subset of fantasy books from the larger whole. It’s the idea that X or Y isn’t really Fantasy, in a no-true-Scotsman kind of way. And it’s fucking weird.

I’ve seen this kind of non-logic applied to books because…

• They aren’t set during medieval times
• They don’t feature a great evil to be conquered
• They feature too much romance
• They aren’t serious or “challenging” enough
• They aren’t fun or “escapist” enough
• They’re too “young adult”
• They’re too “adult”
• They belong to a sub-genre so established that it has become “its own thing” (think Paranormal Romance or Urban Fantasy)

All of this among other stuff. And I just… I don’t get it.

I understand that (obviously) every reader has their own tastes, their own likes and dislikes. Following on from that, I understand that it can be frustrating to have found “your” genre in Fantasy, only to eventually read a bunch of books bearing the same label that aren’t really to your taste at all.

As a hypothetical, if someone were introduced to the genre through books like Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, Babel by R.F. Kuang, or The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Y’know, big books tackling big topics)… and then went on to pick up something like Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, or The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (books intended as cozy escapism)… That person would probably be a little confused. It might be that the second variety of books isn’t for them, and that’s fine.

But when you then start putting up fences, pulling on a kilt, and declaring “No! That’s not true fantasy! This stuff here, this stuff that I like, this is real fantasy!”… Then you just look like a bit of a knob, honestly.

Fantasy is broad, and weird, and different. If you wanted to, you could read 10 books back-to-back that wouldn’t resemble each other at all in terms of setting, aesthetics, tone, or content. For me, that’s one of the main strengths of the genre. Like we sometimes say on this site, there’s room for everyone at the Fantasy inn.

I’m tempted to be glib at this point and say something like “If you don’t like a certain subset of books, then just don’t read them.” But that’s not really a helpful statement in and of itself, and I feel like it ignores a big cause of frustration for some readers — which is that even in such a broad genre, new releases can follow trends. And sometimes publishers follow those trends hard. In a given month, it can feel like every new book that’s being released fits the same mould. And if you don’t like that particular mould… yeah, I guess it can feel like your favourite genre is pushing you out, a bit.

I’ll admit to having that frustration myself from time to time. As an example, these days I’m not really a fan of what I’d call “bag of tropes” books. Which is a disparaging way to refer to them, I know, but bear with me.

What I’m referring to are those books that take “X trope plus Y trope” as a selling point — something like “assassins meets magic school!” or “enemies to lovers with a dark lord!” — but never really evolve the concept beyond that. Where there’s not a lot of original authorial voice, where the characters are very closely wedded to their archetypes, and where the whole thing can sometimes feel a little… stock footage.

I’m probably still sounding uncharitable here, but I hope you get what I mean. Books where the intent was never originality, but instead exploring combinations of old ideas. Throughout 2021 to 2022, it felt to me like a big trend among new releases was a focus on these trope combinations. And so at a point where I was hoping for brand new ideas and bold new social-commentary-via-dragon or some shit, a lot of what I was being presented with (but not all!) were things I found too familiar.

But at the same time, I’d see other readers having the opposite reactions. “Oh shit, an assassin magic school! You mean the good guy and the dark lord actually fuck? I’ve been wanting this for years!”. And so, again… Fantasy has room for everyone, and I can only see that as a good thing.

I don’t see the point in being exclusionary for the sake of some misguided attempt to uplift my own tastes. I’ll probably never enjoy those bag-of-tropes books the way some others do, but I sincerely hope you’ll never find me out there in the streets with my kilt on, shouting shit like “That’s not real fantasy! That’s just fantasy Lego!”. Please, if I’m ever acting that much of a dick, someone slap me.

Besides. The other benefit of such a big genre? A great, big, fuck-off backlist.

Sure, it can be frustrating when the recent recent releases of your our genre don’t seem to fit you like they used to. But we’re always complaining about those massive TBR piles of ours. Maybe this is just nature’s way of telling us to actually read the fuckers.