What are you tired of in fantasy?

[Masha du Toit]

Oh all of the above!  Also I'm tired of beautiful main characters.  Sour grapes?  Could be!  

Also petulant teenagers.  And that whole "they are fighting because they are attracted to each other" thing.

People who learn impossibly complex skills like fighting or magic after a week or less, or with no training at all.

More seriously, I also don't like sexual violence being glamorized.   Or villains who are just Chinese/Muslims/Russians/Nazis/Black people in disguise.

[drenfrow]

Some of mine have been mentioned already.  I want a series to wrap up in three books.  More than that and it feels like you're just never getting an end to the story.  Also, my biggest pet peeve with fantasy is unpronounceable names.  If an author is going to use them how about a pronunciation guide, is that asking too much?

I don't mind tried and true plots if they are done really well and have at least some twist that makes them different.

I was looking through my goodreads shelves and I realize that the last two fantasy series that I loved were definitely not the same old-same old.  Last year I really enjoyed The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie, very dark and gritty.  Today I am finishing The Inheritance Triology by NK Jemisin which is on my top 10 list for the year.

[nogdog~6op6ou]

Oh all of the above!  Also I'm tired of beautiful main characters.  Sour grapes?  Could be!  
...

Worst of all: beautiful young women with green eyes. 

(Hey, I'm all for them in real life, but it's become such a cliche in all sorts of fiction, not just fantasy.)

[Geoffrey]

Euro-centric settings.

But if you're going to do them, do them with the detail necessary to make them feel right - Think Katheryn Kurtz or Lawhead.   Don't do the Ren Faire version of medieval Europe.

[Chris Strange]

You want to know what else I'm sick of in fantasy. Magic frickin' swords. Or swords made of [insert made-up material] steel.

Where are all the magic halberds? The treasured flail that has been a symbol of the House for generations? Gimme a pretty-looking javelin, at least.

[Bleekness]

Pretty much everything everyone's said up to now...

What can I add...

Lone heroes whose best friends are animals--wolves, hawks (perched on shoulders no less), dragons, that sort of thing.

Young princes on quests.

Magic. Too much magic is as appealing to me like too much ketchup on a burger. If, in the book, every second neighbour is a wizard or practicing magic, something's wrong with the world.

Language--fantasy folks using too many modern expressions. (Steven Erikson).

Stories that really plod along--where the first hundred pages go by and the main characters are still in their kitchen.

Oh, and saving the world. I mean... god people.

But if someone can tell a story, I can be forgiving. (Joe Abercrombie, for example, gets away with a lot in his First Law series)

[Andrew Warwick]

Part of the reason I love reading sword and sorcery short stories/novellas, like of the kind written by Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber and co, is that much of that stuff is missing.

[CharlieLange]

Antagonists who are only bent on destroying or taking over the world and have control over dragons or an undead army. Every fantasy story does not have to be a "save the world from destruction" scenario. As was mentioned earlier, usually in this same scenario a nobody becomes a hero, either through a "chosen one" or "serendipity" character arc.

Orcs, trolls and ogres. Why are they always bad?

[Andrew Warwick]

Orcs, trolls and ogres. Why are they always bad?

Not in Warcraft   Everyone knows they are the good guys (For the Horde!) while the humans, elves and dwarves are the narrow-minded, bigoted, xenophobic war-mongers

[CharlieLange]

Not in Warcraft   Everyone knows they are the good guys (For the Horde!) while the humans, elves and dwarves are the narrow-minded, bigoted, xenophobic war-mongers

Exception that proves the rule? lol touche.

[CoraBuhlert]

Ditto. Only, in the view of this European, that most often traslates into : 'settings that pretend to be Medieval Europe but the author didn't have a clue and didn't bother to go beyond 'folk knowledge' (which usually gets it wrong)'.

I'd like to see a well researched , believable, Eurocentric setting that moves away from pseudo-Northern Europe (more pseudo than Northern) every now and then.

Yes this.

Because many of the pseudo-European settings are about as European as Disneyland.

[Dara England]

What are some plots/characters/themes that you're tired of in fantasy works?

Prophecies. I never want to see another one. That said, fantasy without prophecies or farm boys turning into great warriors would be like a romance novel in which the hero is ordinary and humble. Even if someone wrote it, who would read it?

[Selina Fenech]

Prophecies. I'm with you all there. The only one that didn't worry me recently was Harry Potter's, but I think it was ok because it worked around actual story events, rather than being "just because".

I was trying out an editor for my own fantasy book, which I made sure wasn't prophecy based on purpose, and this editor suggested I make the following improvements to the story-
1. Start the story with some background about the land's history.
2. Spend more time talking about what the characters are eating and wearing.
3. Work a prophecy into the story to make it more "epic".

Yep. That editor wasn't for me!
Number 1 of that list is also something I can't stand in fantasy or any genre- the narrative at the beginning to describe a bunch of backstory which just goes and gets explained again in story anyway.

[sarahsbloke]

Elves.  I hate, detest and loath the pointy-eared dandelion-eating holier-than-thou pretentious gits.  Tolkien gets a free pass because 1) he did them first and 2) if you've read the backstory you know that they aren't the perfect race that so many knocks offs tend to make them.

Oh, and Pratchett also gets a free pass as his are downright evil, which is what elves are.

You should read, Three Hearts and Three Lions - Poul Anderson
His male elves are vicious killers, and the female elves enjoy kinky sex.

[Geemont]

Prophecies. I never want to see another one. That said, fantasy without prophecies or farm boys turning into great warriors would be like a romance novel in which the hero is ordinary and humble. Even if someone wrote it, who would read it?

What about a fantasy where the prophecies turn out to be a whole lot of horsesh!t written by someone after down after smoking too much opium?

[Bleekness]

1. Start the story with some background about the land's history.
2. Spend more time talking about what the characters are eating and wearing.
3. Work a prophecy into the story to make it more "epic".

Oh geez, good call there on getting another editor.

[JBarry22]

Every fantasy story does not have to be a "save the world from destruction" scenario.

Some make believe version of me wants to tattoo that on my butt. You're absolutely 100% right.

[Mark Boss]

Great idea for a thread!

1.  Inherited magic.  Why must magery be genetic? Why can't you learn magic the way you learn carpentry?
2.  Happy Shire settings that will be destroyed if...  I think rural life in most fantasy settings should be tough, not idyllic.
3.  One Super Powerful Artifact.  We'll win the war against overwhelming odds if only we can find this one ring or sword or whatever.
4.  How come the bad guy is always a sorceror and never a fighter? Just once I want to see the villain come down out of his tower, get in the front of the shield wall, and do some damage.
5.  Fellowships.  Do we really need a representative of every single group in the party in order to complete the mission? Maybe we should leave the drunk gnome at the castle?
6.  Wildly unrealistic fight scenes.  I once read a scene where a single idiot on horseback (armed with a sword but no shield or armor) charged uphill and routed a party of 20 archers.  Apparently his horse was so agile it could dodge arrows.  Author should have made the horse the protagonist.

I could go on, but I think a lot of this comes down to seeing devices we liked the first five times driven into the ground by overuse.  And honestly, I love Erikson's Malazan series, but I have dedicated fantasy reading friends that don't.  To each their own.

Merry Christmas all! 

[Geoffrey]

I could go on, but I think a lot of this comes down to seeing devices we liked the first five times driven into the ground by overuse. 

THIS.   I see someone do something brilliantly and then 100 others come along and make a hash of the very same thing.   If you're going to use a standard fantasy meme, then at least have the decency to do it well.

[Chris Strange]

I was trying out an editor for my own fantasy book, which I made sure wasn't prophecy based on purpose, and this editor suggested I make the following improvements to the story-
1. Start the story with some background about the land's history.
2. Spend more time talking about what the characters are eating and wearing.
3. Work a prophecy into the story to make it more "epic".

Yep. That editor wasn't for me!

I'm surprised that editor didn't want you to put in a hundred pages of appendices as well, with detailed family trees, pronunciation guides, and the lineages left by every character in the book, right down to the barmaid's pet cat in chapter 3.

[S Jaffe]

I think a lot of this comes down to seeing devices we liked the first five times driven into the ground by overuse.

This happens so much because of market forces. Publishers saw Tolkien do well, so they wanted as many Tolkien-esque stories as they could get. Right now, it's urban fantasy -- vamps and werewolves and such.  For me, I get tired of maps.

Well, let me clarify.  I can have a real appreciation for some of the beautiful maps that grace many books, but I dislike when an author knows there will be a map and then relies on the map to help the reader see what's going on.  The book should be able to stand on its own and the map just be a bonus.  But some books are so poorly described in geographic terms that you must have the map.

[Masha du Toit]

..  Author should have made the horse the protagonist.

Now THAT would be interesting! 

[DebBennett]

All of the above.

But I really hate quests. Especially magical quests to find the mythical plot-device-A, which will send our heroes to Town-B, just in time for Event-C to happen which in turn will generate plot-device-D hidden by peasant-girl-who-is-really-a-sorceress-E, which will SAVE THE WORLD from evil-tyrant-F... (yawn)

[Colin Taber]

So much of the above is spot on!

I don't mind an author using formula elements or cliches, but turn them and twist around great characters to present them back to us in a fresh and invigorated way!

[RuthNestvold]

Totally agree on the quests. I know it's like the ur-story that's supposed to tap into our collective unconscious, but if it's so obvious to be painful, it can't really be unconscious anymore, right? 

Other things I can't read anymore:

- vampires

- urban fantasy with plucky first-person narrators (who usually track down demons)

- generic fantasy settings with lots of inns and barkeepers and dwarfs and trolls

- magic thingies that pop up exactly when the protagonists need them without being previously introduced or without a price

I could probably read books or short stories with all of these elements if they were introduced in an engaging or original way, or something else about the story had already caught me and drawn me in. A short story parody of all these tropes, if done right, would probably have me rolling on the floor.

Come to think of it, that reminds me of The Princess Bride (book and movie) which I love, and which uses a ton of over-used fantasy cliches in such a way that they are hilarious.