The Lazy Fantasy

I love fantasy and sci-fi, nothing beats the good old sword-and-magic kind of story. When I first discovered the genre, it was all about the epic, I only cared about the main story and fight scenes, but as I went on reading more and more fantasy, and of course became older, one thing became quite clear to me, that the topic being discussed is always inspired by something real, some political topic, some real-world wars, or real injustices happening around the world, or just around the writer. It is kind of rare, if not impossible, to find any good fantasy book and not identify in it some hints of where the author got their inspiration from.

And as a side note, one thing that came to my attention recently due to world politics, is that most people didn’t know that Star Wars was inspired by Earthly Wars, like the Vietnam War, and this surprised me. I believed it was something kind of obvious, well, not for me in my teenage years, but as I watched it again after having some real-life experiences, it was kind of there, all over the place.

But I digress.

Back to fantasy, usually authors create some rules for their characters, their magic system, their world, their politics, and so on, and so far so good, perfect even. However, and this is my biggest problem with most superheroes, quite fast the authors forget the rules that they themselves created for their fantasy, and this is kind of infuriating.

I’m not a kid anymore, so one could say that “this is not for your age group”, which makes little sense, as most hero movies and series are targeted at young and older adults, and I’d go as far as to say that some of those movies and series are definitely not for kids.

One thing that frustrates me about superheroes specifically, like X-Men, The Flash, Batman, Guardians of the Galaxy, all of them, all the famous, infamous and forgotten ones, is that the world there has rules, their powers have rules, but those rules are often forgotten to make something happen just because. The Flash, for example, there’s even a TV series trying to make it kind of scientific, but the power of the Flash can’t be just being super fast, he also needs to be the ability to never need to breathe, super strong skin, unbreakable bones, eyes made of super powerful material, or the superpower to ignore friction, otherwise his super speed would never work based on the rules defined by his own fantastic world. And this happens with every superhero, the X-Men all possess their unique ability, and of course they all have in common the superpower of being extremely strong and resistant, because the cartoons and movies all portray them receiving huge impacts, being thrown against a wall or pillar with a force so strong that it makes the wall or pillar break, and they just get up and continue fighting, I mean, wasn’t your power just shooting lasers through your eyes? Why do you now have skin and bones stronger than a concrete wall?

Some of those heroes, after a while gets a patch, like The Flash I used in this example at some point got another super power called “Speed Force” that ignores all the rules of the world and somehow makes him able to breath normally even going at speeds close to the velocity of light, go figures, besides this being a lazy patch, it is still a patch invented after to try to make the main power more “ok”.

Because of this kind of situation, this kind of too-fantastic fantasy, where they don’t respect the fantasy rules they created, I can’t get myself to like superheroes in general.

I still love a good fantasy or fiction though, a book I read quite recently had a very interesting power system, and the author made very good use of the established rules, they were still humans, as fragile as any other human, they just had some kind of powerful weapon on them in the form of a superpower. The books are Vicious and Vengeful, two books of the Villains series by V.E. Schwab, and I recommend staying with only those two books, don’t read any other material from this series.

Another very good example of great fantasy that respects the rules it created is the Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist, 4 excellent books, characters with some magic in them, but just because someone there can create a fireball doesn’t mean they are now stronger than concrete.

Comparing my good examples with the bad ones, I can safely say that those books are way, way better than any superhero fiction, regardless of if movie or comics, just because of the fact that the rules are followed through to the end, respecting those rules gives us tension, because if anyone can survive anything, or their power is just broken not respecting their own rules, no fight or conflict matters.

I do love a good fantasy, fiction and sci-fi to take me out of my everyday life, even though I know the author is using everyday problems seasoned with some magic to tell a story. I just wish more writers would pay attention to the fantastic world they are creating and not bypass the rules defined in their world just because of laziness.