The Modern Fantasies

If you are reading this expecting another rant, please don't - because this isn't really so much of a rant as a "Two cents". Now there is a subgenre of fantasy novels that take certain elements and themes from them and put them into modern times. Typically, the only kind of fictions I see that are set in modern times are steamy romances, crime novels, suspense novels detailing stuff like terrorists with nukes or Ebola outbreak, and every cliche written by Tom Clancy. It's kind of uncommon to see something like a fantasy novel set in a modern-esque era. Typically when people are writing about sci-fi or fantasy, it's set in a fictional society most comparable to Ye Olde British Isles with the occasional obvious influence of "oh it's not just this country" and other cultures inspired a little by real life cultures is seen. (See World of Warcraft.)

Humans & Undead = british probably (though the undead look more like a Tim Burton film)
Dwarves = Scottish, Irish, Celtic, Russian. (for some reason they're ALWAYS Scottish)
Trolls = Jamaican, Caribbean islander
Orcs = well probably african.
Gnomes = maybe Jewish, I dunno
Tauren = Native American
Draenei = Eastern European, Russian, protoss. (THESE DO NOT BELONG IN A SWORDS & SORCERY GAME!!!)
Elves = stereotypical forest-dwelling xenophobic magic-loving long-lived thin-bodied bow-using 90% female Elves that can be traced back to Lord of the Rings. Cept the Night Elves are hippies - blood elves are magic addicts with girls who act like teenagers.

well okay maybe they weren't the best example to use - We all know that the writers thought "SCREW THE LORE - WE HAVE x MILLION PLAYERS!" back in 2005.


But anyways, thinking of a better example where the lore didn't jump the shark, you can see that in Golden Sun and in Guild Wars. Golden Sun has the player go through European style societies to asian monasteries to Middle Eastern societies and Pacific Islanders. And Guild Wars of course is another good example...
Prophecies = Europe, maybe South America or West Africa, India.
Factions = Korea, China, Japan.
Nightfall = Northern and eastern Africa
Eye of the North = ...well to be honest, I think they sorta jumped the shark here, but it still does make sense. The norn are obviously Norse despite Jora's choice of clothing.


Now what was I going to talk about before I went off in that little tangent?


Now the modern or Urban Fantasy...that's a setting I particularly like and I admit I am quite a sucker for it. You can tell from my characters that I like to have stuff like anthros and draggies and magic coexisting with Kneeling Buses and skyscrapers. I mean, basing the concept of the fantasy you can just change some things around and put it into a medieval swords and sorcery setting. Heck, look at Dark Tower - you can easily put that in Ye Olde British Isles. Same with Guild Wars Nightfall...while we've seen stories of corrupt rulers and demons everywhere, they chose to deviate and set it in Africa. Heck, why set Guild Wars: Factions in an Eastern Asia-like setting? You can just rearrange the name and set it inside a european-like empire that's not evil. Who says Shiro has to be an assassin?

A pattern I notice is that this is set in our world. We have stuff like presidents and democracies, but at the same time we see what I recognize all too well from animes.

Second Society
(Also known as Sunnydale Syndrome)

Well Sunnydale Syndrome is known from Buffy - And Sunnydale Syndrome is often used for comedic effect. In Buffy and Angel, they were fighting vampires and demons like it happened every day (Which it did) but the rest of the town had dno clue what the heck was going on. In fact they rarely even noticed stuff like their mayor being a demon. and that's actually kind of what its charm was, they just didnt' notice or care.

But the second society, on the other hand, is more like Harry Potter. Harry didn't know a thing about the magic events happening, just that there were some odd people and in fact it's a second society within the U.K. in general - they have their own ministry and practically have their own culture. You can notice this in Buffy as well. And in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians, no one knows a thing about what they're doing. And same in that one Neil Gaiman series about another world or whatever. (Forget what it was called).

Typically one cliche I notice is that someone doesn't know a thing about this society until they are forced to join it and then have a specific amount of power for one reason in this society - Harry Potter had that prophecy that people thought he would fulfill, Grifter was an almost full dragon (and thus a target), Buffy is a Slayer (Despite others being able to fill her shoes), and Percy Jackson is also another potential prophecy target due to his birth, etc. Of course this probalby isn't as common as I notice - I mean there're 80's books. And who knows most are probably not like that...notice those are targeted at more of a pre-teen or teenage age.

Well what is my point? This is just a two cents. I like this kind of stuff, think of the crazy settings you can create if you combine or think enough.