Is there fantasy set in the 21st century but is set in a secondary world?
A bit of a tongue in cheek topic, I know. But try to approach it from a realistic point of view, difficult, I know, considering it's just a fantasy story.
Flitwick is a former duelling champion. Probably not many of them out there. Yet he teaches First Years how to levitate feathers. Seems a waste of potential from our modern perspective. It's like a Heavyweight Boxing Champion becoming a PE teacher.
Dumbledore is a world renowned war hero, Parliament Speaker and apparently President of the UN. Yet he's a Headmaster of a school...
If you approach those conundrums from a certain angle, they seem ludicrous. I know, I know. The Wizarding World is small etc. etc. But to me it still seems a bit off. Flitwick could be teaching aurors or running a duelling school and Dumbledore could be whatever else he wanted. Yet, they teach snotty brats.
On the other side Durmstrang had a former terrorist as Head. Which just shows that Hogwarts really is better.
I know it’s due for a revamp, especially for the 1W marines… but I’m thinking of stepping into World Eaters.
The Zerkers are great, so are the Red Butchers…
I’ve subbed in a Bloodthirster for both flavour and a monster and some hounds for speed.
I’m just wondering what you competitive few are using, not for a GT but just for a strong list… I’ve come across some people who have been using alarm for shooting I believe…. But to me that doesn’t seem fitting with an army that seems to want to be in combat so much.
Anyway just curious, maybe even just more because I’d like to know if close combat marine lists do well or if they drop trying to get across the battlefield. In this edition I honestly don’t know how well an army with no shooting or psychic does 🤷♂️
In recent years, I am seeing a huge push toward fairy tale retellings and hidden magic fantasy, while a lot of epic fantasy classics are being reevaluated for iffy gender politics and other flaws of the time periods they were written in.
My question is this: what are your favorite new examples (meaning, series that started in the last 10 years or so) in the secondary world epic fantasy niche? Works like Wheel of Time and Riftwar were incredibly formative for me in my teenage years, and I always like finding new series in that subgenre.
Some recent examples I've loved: The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter, Ashes of the Sun by Django Wexler, Savage Legion by Matt Wallace.
Edit: Please let's skip Sanderson. I am already a huge fan and have read everything he's written, so there's no need to bring him up ;)
I had the Kii in my port for a long time, but never really played It too too much.
I just played it like an Amagi with the conservative ass boring club survivability build. That works fine and overall i think the Kii is pretty strong at t8.
10x410 mm guns on a 30 second reload is nearly best in class, only coming short to Amagi, with 1.8 sigma. So you basically get the most bonkers broadside at t8. The turret angles are also fantastic and the armor scheme is good against AP when angled. Sure it gets dumpstered by 460mm+ guns and cruiser caliber HE, but other than that it's more resilient than you might think.
So the ship by itself is a capable mid to long range platform.
But you can build it so its a threat at all ranges.
The Kii does get 4 Kitakaze branded Turrets per side. Those pen 37mm with ifhe and reload every 2.6 seconds with the build. But there is a twist. Instead of the 1200 damage of a Kitakaze HE shell, its HE shells deal 1700 damage for some reason. Im sucky at maths, but i still know that this is a considerably increase in damage output.
You also get 4x 140mm amagi secondaries per side. Those get the Massachusetts accuracy formula AFAIK. They don't carry this build, but they are there.
This being said, this build is made possible by the commander rework. Before that i would have needed to invest almost all captain points for an IFHE secondary build. Now it's just seven. Back in the day the kii also had a max secondary range of like 7km or something.
So it was completely junk and im glad this rework made builds like this possible. It's just a shame that you have to pay either captain xP or doubloons in order to build craft in this game. IMO captain resets should be free as in wows legends, but i think some of you read my post about this already.
So, let's go over the captain skills real quick. I choose Yamamoto for this and im going to explain why in a second.
1st slot: fire chance
2nd slot: ifhe
3rd slot: AR, secondary range
4th slot: fire prevention, man secs, concealment.
You basically just have to sacrifice the extra heal and maybe the 3 point fire duration skill. So basically i invested 9 points into seconaries. That leaves me with 12 points spare which is serviceable.
Yamamoto also comes into play, since he basically has two ways of giving you additional healing: the first blood and kraken achievements. Sure you won't activate those every time, but they are nice to have.
But in general this build allows you t
... keep reading on reddit ➡I’m looking for an Isekai but from the pov of a native resident from that world, and the person who gets transported, summoned, or reincarnated is a supporting character.
Any format manga, light novel or anime.
Here’s a short list:
1. I found out that I have complex sleep apnea after my entire life (33 yrs old currently) with living with the condition and never knowing! Biggest discovery of my life. Period. However, I would have never suspected I had it until I went through the emotional trauma of breaking up with my ex and quarantine. Being in emotional pain, and in quarantine totally sucked shit, and I became aware of my sleep patterns for the first time in my life and realized that constantly waking up during sleep is totally abnormal.
2. Subsequently, my father was also diagnosed with this disorder with his whole life having had it undiagnosed. We’re also almost positive that my grandfather also passed from complications from this disorder early in life at the age of just 67. We had been wondering for years why his heart gave out suddenly and he died in his sleep. Well now we know why. Huge discovery.
3. My ex and I broke up because we were having issues, primarily with her and her undiagnosed autism. She was aware she had it, but had not been diagnosed. Her parents denied that she had it for her entire life but suspected she had it when she was young, but basically didn’t do anything about it. Our break up spawned her to finally seek a diagnosis.
4. My ex's parents did/do a thing that I became aware of during the break up with my ex. They are new age people and they do this thing called “Spiritual Bypassing”, which is a terrible trait of the new age community, and the behavior became rampant during covid. This is the cause as to why my ex's parents “bypassed” her autism diagnosis. They thought that if they just “loved” her enough and “meditated” that her autism would turn out not to be autism, even though it totally was and she desperately needed help. I tried to help her, but could not reach her or her parents in this process. So her parents now are in a place of confronting their myopic spiritual/emotional bypassing.
5. My aunt, mom and step father are finally having to grapple with the fact they aren’t the center of the universe, hate having to quarantine and can’t stand being alone, whereas introverts like myself LOVE quarantine for the most part. (other than the whole breaking up with ex and sleep apnea part). They now have to finally sit with themselves, and realize some internal things for once in their lives. Let’s just say now is not a great time for extroversion.
**6. The george floyd protests were very sad to watch, but
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https://aeon.co/essays/how-us-high-school-culture-brought-teen-values-to-the-world
Short summary: Teens are essentially cut off from other age groups during their high school years. Which means that to them, adolescent behaviour becomes the norm. That norm sticks long into adulthood, and that's why we see so many adults displaying adolescent behaviour and a general 'adolescent culture'. Of course this has benefits as well (more tolerance, less rigidity).
I never realised that teens being in contact with mostly other teens is such a new situation, but it makes sense: before there was anything like high school they would just work. With adults.
@ mods: I know this should be a link post. My previous (link) post was removed because I didn't comment my submission statement in time, and now I'm not allowed to post the same link again within 90 days. I didn't want to wait 90 days to share this, so I hope you'll allow my post.
I see a lot of books without glossaries nowadays, on the kindle editions atleast. Is this because writers are now required to be as clear as possible in the actual story and therefore readers just don't need them anymore or readers are afraid to look and accidentally get spoilers. I remember when I read The Rage of Dragons, I really craved for a glossary especially for the calendar and other terminology. I kind of just went with a lot of assumptions. Given that it was also a relatively new book it didn't have a fandom wiki (And you don't want to visit these wikis when reading anyway for spoiler purposes). Then on the other end you have books like The Wheel of Time or ASOIF that had a glossary or appendix and it helped a lot. What are your thoughts? Do you need some kind of guide especially on first read or you are fine without. Maybe they are just no longer a thing
The Stariel series by AJ Lancaster has been my new obsession this past couple of weeks, occupying far too much of my brain space and keeping me up way past my bedtime. It’s secondary world fantasy romance/fantasy of manners series, with faeries, set in a time period similar to the begining of the 20th century. It’s absolutely charming and engaging, with most people caring about each other and a lot of great family relationships, while also having serious stakes and danger.
These 4 books complete the series, but there is a spin-off standalone planned for next year, that I’m very excited for.
I’ll try and give my thoughts for each book in the series separately, so the short review for book 2 will probably spoil book 1 and so on, read as far as you’re ok with. If you haven’t read the books at all I’d rec stopping with this post after the review of book 1, since even the blurbs give out info. I also have some hidden full-series squeeing thoughts at the very end
- Genre: Fantasy Romance
- Age group: Adult
- Pub. date: 2018 – 2021
- Format: Ebook
- Pages: around 1500 if you end up binging the whole series
- Goodreads link
https://preview.redd.it/w6281ke7r1q71.jpg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb961c1e71a0ae39cd151fdd33c616a3799aa24a
The Lord of Stariel
>***The Lord of Stariel is dead. Long live the Lord of Stariel. Whoever that is.***Everyone knows who the magical estate will choose for its next ruler. Or do they?Will it be the lord’s eldest son, who he despised?His favourite nephew, with the strongest magical land-sense?His scandalous daughter, who ran away from home years ago to study illusion?Hetta knows it won’t be her, and she’s glad of it. Returning home for her father’s funeral, all Hetta has to do is survive the family drama and avoid entanglements with irritatingly attractive local men until the Choosing. Then she can leave.But whoever Stariel chooses will have bigger problems than eccentric relatives to deal with.Winged, beautifully deadly problems.For the first time in centuries, the fae are returning to the Mortal Realm, and only the Lord of Stariel can keep the estate safe.In theory.
Book 1 is sort of an inheritance story, as Hetta has to come home from her fun job and independent life in the city for her father’s funeral and the ceremony that decides the new Lord of Stariel. We don’t learn a lot about how Stariel is magical but it’s still very i
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Hey, everyone! I've finished writing the first volume of my Gothic Fantasy webnovel (you can take a look at it at RoyalRoad or Tapas, if you'd like further story context, but it's not really necessary) and, as I'm going through and revising the last chapters, I started feeling the urge to make a bit of a big change to the story, in terms of worldbuilding. Yet, I'm not yet sure whether that's just a typical case of "writer finishes something and immediately wants to tear it apart and do something else with it, rather than allow it to exist as is", or if it would really make the story better. So, I'd like to ask for your opinions. Ultimately, I know that the choice is mine and I'll do what I think is best, both for the story and my own enjoyment of writing it. I'd just like to hear some opinions to get out of the echo chamber that's my head, so I can better ponder my options.
The change in question would be making the MCs world of origin be our own, modern one, instead of the secondary one I have built. I initially opted for the secondary world because I wanted to have one where it was always night (for, you know, the gothic mood) and to have the MCs locked up and isolated in towers, tended to by inhuman carers, dolls and automatons.
But, upon revising, I realized that I could have all that, along with everything else I love about that world, transported to a more or less post-apocalyptic version of our own. I can have the expedition that found the Nephilim ruins and their tech (and the dolls and automatons with it) in the original do the same in this one. I can have said Nephilim (who are nothing more than humans who advanced beyond what we call humanity, really) bring about a cataclysm that plunged the world into a timeless darkness; again, like it happened in the original. And, if I want to simply make the origin world our own, as it is, and have the one they pass onto be the only timeless, dark one, for greater contrast between the two, I can keep the mood by having the characters only able to come out at night as a result of the powers they've obtained, or because that's when the demons they hunt come out, or something of the kind. (So turns out there are three options!)
The themes I want to explore, which were clearly worse in the 19th century, from which my setting takes so much from, are still relevant today a
... keep reading on reddit ➡Alternate history fantasy: fantasy set in our planet's past, such as "Her Majesty's Dragons" (but not stuff like urban fantasy or superhero fantasy and such)
Secondary world fantasy: fantasy set in an entirely different world, even if resembling a period in our history (like "Shadow Campaigns" clearly resembles the Napoleonic Wars of our world but is set in an entirely different world)
"Her Majesty's Dragons" and "Shadow Campaigns" both play out an alternate version of the Naploleonic Wars but the former is set during the actual Napoleonic Wars on an alternate history version of our planet, while the latter plays in an entirely different world in an entirely different reality.
The latter (secondary world fantasy) comprises the vast majority of fantasy.
Its interesting to me that we love to take real-life settings, history, cultures and issues, but transport them to an entirely fictional world.
Why is that? Why is alternate history fantasy so rare? If you are already taking so much from our real-world, why not have it take place in an alternate version of our world, too?
There are a couple reasons I can think of. One is that you have more freedom to do whatever you want, without having to think about what consequences that would have on our own history. In a secondary world you can just represent a snapshot of your world during that time and dont have to worry about explaining how it got to that point. But in an alternate history setting you would have a lot of explaining to do why the Roman Empire still exists in the year 2000, but also somehow the United States of America exists just like it does in our timeline.
Another reason I could think of is that a secondary world setting avoids controversy. You have a lot more freedom of changing a culture to what you want it to be with a secondary world setting than with an alternate history setting. In the former setting you can take a real-life culture as inspiration and then change it to fit your needs, and as long as you do it respectfully, controversy should be at a minimum. But doing the same in an alternate history setting, well, that's just misrepresenting a real culture during an almost real time period.
Similarly, showcasing a fantasy culture with real life roots being oppressed is one thing, showcasing a 1 to 1 real life culture in an alternate history setting be oppressed can easily be construed as political.
Dont get me wrong. Both are political takes. And political t
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This intrigued me, as I was already curious about what the other faction for the destination could be. I have to wonder how and why they're there. Could it perhaps be tied to "Osiris" confiscating the Crown of Sorrow from the Glykon?
Typically, you only see aliens in sci-fi adjacent works and I can't really think of any strictly fantasy novels that feature them off the top of my head.
Which led me to think - is it because the idea just wouldn't work that well in fantasy, since you already have a layer of "unreality" in a secondary world?
As an example, in the story I'm brainstorming, the world (secondary world) would be visited by giant alien monoliths that come down from the sky. Kilometres-long pillars that just float in the air, and slowly start transforming the landscape around them, irrevocably changing plant and animal and human life. The areas around the pillars are deadly, containing the transformed animals and humans, who transform physically and mentally and become drones of the pillars.
The story would follow a specific kingdom trying their best to survive a Pillar arriving on their land and essentially terraforming it. There will be an elite band of soldiers that go around and rescue civilians and villagers, and take care of the threat of those that have transformed.
Is this an idea that could work? Or is the idea of aliens and alien objects in fantasy too jarring?
