#fantasy references

And this encouraged me to finally do the post I meant to do since a very long time: talking about some of my favorite depictions of gods in fantasy works.

Well... "Talking" might be a too-broad word, because I don't want to analyze or explain everything, due to this entering full spoiler territory - I prefer to leave you the surprise to discover them by yourself...

But I want to list here specific fantasy works that involve gods in fascinating, clever ways that work so hard to make us feel what a god or goddess is, while also avoiding the Americanized, super-heroized way media has been showing us the gods for decades now. I also will NOT be talking of specific works adapting or subverting specific mythologies. I am not talking here about stuff like Percy Jackson, or God of War, or the Vei comic book... I will make one exception for Neil Gaiman's "mythology melting-pot" works, but only because they are more interested in what "divinity" and "deity" means than playing with specific myths. I am mostly focusing here on what you would call the "fantasy pantheons" and the fictional gods.

First and foremost being: The Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the first fantasy I ever read where the gods actually FELT like gods. Not only that, but there is a full exploration and analysis, interwoven with the plot, of many god "tropes" people complain about in the fantasy genre, questionssuch as "Why must the gods rely on a human clergy to do things if they are so powerful" or "If the gods know everything, why don't they prevent stuff happening in the first place?" or "Why isn't the god a deus ex machina solving everything?"

Honestly, the gods of Chalion are probably my number 1 representation of gods in fantasy novels.

Not quite "traditional fantasy" but of course, when dealing about the creation, exploration and subversion of gods, Neil Gaiman has to be brought up. More precisely two of his works, "sisters" so to speak: his Sandman comic book series, and his American Gods novel.

The Endless of the Sandman world are NOT gods, this is their whole point, they are ABOVE the gods... but they are still a marvelous and complex exploration of what it means to be the supernatural personification or embodiment of something - plus, the Three, of course. Sandman also introduces the topic that is fully investigated and played with in American Gods: the nature of divinity, what is a religion or a cult, the consequences and limits of faith, and the idea of vanishing gods, dying gods, and divine births... It is due to this deep thematic exploration that I decided to still include this novel, despite it mainly using beings from actual religions and folklores of the world.

If you want to keep the same motifs, themes and explorations present in Gaiman's work while diving into more traditional fantasy, you of course must go take a look at Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Who needs to present this series today? The most hilarious fantasy parody ever, the peak of humoristic fantasy, and yet the most thorough deconstruction and reconstruction of all the cliches, archetypes, tropes and settings of the fantasy genre.

Religion and gods are a recurring thread across the Discworld. One specific sub-series (the entire series being organized in "cycles so to speak) deals with the existence and adventures of anthropormophic personifications: the "Death cycle", following the titular character of Death, the Grim Reaper. Specific books I could suggest are "Mort", the first book of the cycle, "Reaper Man", and "Hogfather", about a psychopathic assassin trying to murder Santa Claus, and the Reaper having to replace the jolly old man... However, if you are truly interested in gods, and Pratchett's exploration of myths and religions, there is an unescapable trio. "Pyramids", about the fantasy parody of Ancient Egypt ; "Small Gods", about how Discworld's version of Jesus came to be ; and "Monstrous Regiment", about women having to enlist as men in the army in a war-torn, hyper-religious country... These three books are very thorough observations, parodies and deconstructions of what a "god" is, of what a "religion" is, and how the relationship between faith, the acts of faith, and the object of the faith...

You also have several books which involve Discworld's pantheon of gods while not actually exploring religious themes - just parodies of archetypal myths and the traditional appearances of gods in fantasy books: the first two books of Discworld, "The Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic" ; "Sourcery", about Discworld'd version of the Apocalypse, or the illustrated novel "The Last Hero".

I said the first time I actually felt like I was reading about gods in fantasy was in the Chalion books - but there is another specific scene where the idea of divinity was perfectly conveyed. Now I can't speak about the whole series because I only read the first book: but the Fionavar Tapestry has some excellent godly depictions. Shout-out to the scene of the God encountering the Goddess - you'll know what I mean - it is an absolutely splendid thing.

A little-shout too to Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. It doesn't have "gods" in it... But it is the best and most accurate fantasy depiction I saw of "saints cult" and the whole way saints ACTUALLY worked in old European Catholic-Christianity. Even down to fantasy transpositions of the "folk-Christianity" which intermingles the saints with legendary figures and pagan deities. And while they are not gods, there are also some badass powerful supernatural entities/natural personifications that play delightfuly on old European myths. [It unfortunately is also ranking at the tops in the category of "Insanely promising series with most disappointing ending"]

Shout-out, of course, to A Song of Ice and Fire - though Pointy Hat's video already covered it enough...

And to conclude, I will drop here not a fantasy book series, but a COMIC SERIES! Because yes, there are fantasy comics we should not forget about - one in particular I quite love being DIE.

(Oh yes and it was also adapted as a roleplayng game)

DIE was from the same creator as "The Wicked + The Divine", and you can summarize it as "A darker and edgier version of Jumanji, where the characters are taken to a fantasy RPG world instead of a jungle" - while also gleefully tearing apart at all the "portal fantasy" Narnia-style... The world of DIE is a great homage, deconstruction and "dark parody" of the tropes, conventions and archetypes of fantasy RPGs - while the plot explores the various roots and origins of the modern fantasy RPG universe (from Tolkien to Lovecraft passing by the Brontë sisters). And as such it does include a pantheon of gods, tied to its own version of a "cleric" (here rather a tamer and "debt collector" to the gods)...

Now, while some of the clever worldbuilding and inventions behind these gods is subtly conveyed throughout the actual comic, unfortunately (or fortunately if you like these things) to get the full extent of it all you need to read the interviews, articles and bonus content located at the end of each issue - but trust me, it is worth the read, because the pantheon of DIE was specifically designed to twist and subvert the cliche archetypes of gods in fantasy RPGs. From the god of nature, who is not a "flower-loving hippie" but a giant ferocious bear ; to the common "god of light and goodness" who turns out to be a sinister and sorrowful mourner crying forever over the world, passing by my favorite - Mistress Woe, the "goddess of luck", except that she embodies bad luck and misery and is the spirit of the "natural 1".

Oh yes, of course I also cannot forget to give a shout-out to the one who truly made the mythopoeia genre what it would be today: Lord Dunsany, who not only was one of the forefathers of fantasy well before Tolkien (and without which Tolkien wouldn't have written the works he created), but also created the famous The Gods of Pegana - who is still to this day a full pantheon and mythology completely fictional, but also free of use since it falls in the public domain...

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“I looked up at your face and those eyes, they drew me in.”

“It was too late for me.”

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Ivy gets sick, and Evelyn takes care of her

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Title from “Cliché” by Mxmtoon.

I did 1/3 of this like 4 months ago and the rest over the last 2 weeks. Sorry if it hops around a lot, I’m still new to writing :’)

This can be read as a Oneshot for now while I work on the other installments in the series. This is an alternate universe to my main story btw!

Also Ivy and Evelyn are like in 8th grade in this so they are still young.

Enjoy!!

(3,243 words)

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Ivy slowly opened her eyes, the bright light blinding her momentarily. She had a pounding headache and an extremely dry throat. She slowly sat up and suddenly got hit with a throbbing pain in the right side of her back. She slowly slid out of the small twin bed, making the pain in her back worse. She stumbled around, leaning against a nearby wall to regain her balance. Her head felt dizzy, and she was sweating profusely. She felt like she was high on some drug or something.

On top of having an article centered around the French fantasy specifically, the "Modern Success" issue of the BNF Fantasy series also has an article (again written by Anne Besson) covering the topic of "Fantasy throughout the world". Here is, once again, a rough translation by your humble servant:

While heavily dominated by an English-speaking production, fantasy literature found its place in numerous European countries, and managed to cross several continents.

Born in England, grown in parallel on the two sides of the Atlantic oceans, and becoming a mass-phenomenon in the United-States, fantasy is without a doubt an anglophone genre. Even today the fantasy market has a MASSIVE unbalance, and the modern fantasy successes prove that the mondialization of the imaginations is dominated by the cultural superpower of the USA. But ever since the 1970s, as the translations of Tolkien spread across the world and role-playing games conquered the heart of teenagers, "native fantasies" started to appear in various European languages.

German fantasy is a good example of one of those "local takes" - it does help that Germany has a literary background including the Romantic movement, and the brothers Grimm fairytales. After the enormous success of Michael Ende's Never-Ending Story in 1979, the German fantasy did not stop. Many successful authors appeared. Wolfgang Hohlbein gained an internal fame, with his 1982 Märchenmond or his 1999's Chronicles of the Immortals. Cornelia Funke was a famous German youth author, with her trilogy "Inkworld" in 2003. Kai Meyer reworked Germanic legends in his 1998's Loreley or his 2001's Nibelungengold. Walter Moers created the continent of Zamonia, and popularized the character of Captain Blue-Bear (hero of a 1993's children television show, of two novels, and of a 1999's movie).

But very often, international fame only latches on one specific author that is well-known outside of their country's frontiers. In Poland, this author would be Andrzej Sapkowski with his 1986's Witcher series, adapted in 2007 as a video game, and in 2019 as a television series). In Spain, it would be Javier Negrete with his 2003's Tramorea.

Crossing the continents, it becomes very tempting to mix together the magic of fantasy literature with specifically cultural supernatural domains - the Hindu pantheon, the Chinese ghost stories, the kami and the yokai of Japan, the witchcraft of Africa or the Caribbean Isles...

South-America is rich of a literary tradition that in France we compare to our own "fantastique": the short stories of Argentina's authors Jose Luis Borges or Adolfo Bioy Casares in the 40s, the magical realism of Alejo Carpentier in Cuba (The Century of Lights, 1962), of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Columbia (A Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967) or Carlos Fuenta in Mexico (Terra Nostra, 1975).

On the side of the African continent, The Road of Hunger, in 1991, by Nigerian author Ben Okri, is also part of this more "legitimate" current, a form of fantasy much closer to "general literature", but there is a new African generation, dominated by English-speaking women (Nnedi Okorakor, Nisi Shaw, Lauren Beukes) that fully appropriate and absorb the fantasy genre.

If you recall, not too long ago I posted a rough translation of an article by the BNF (National French Library) called "A cosmogony of French fantasy", taking a look at the fantasy genre in French literature. Well I just discovered something that blew my mind.

The journal this article was part of, was actually one of a series of journal-reviews published by the BNF entirely centered around fantasy. The article "Cosmogony" was from the issue centered around "Worldbuilding", but I found another article talking about the history of the fantasy genre in French literature, this time coming from an issue of "BNF - Fantasy" with for theme "Modern success".

So here is the rough translation of: Fantasy in France, a long road... Originally written by Anne Besson

Fantasy has been present in France for numerous decades, but it had to wait until the turn of the 21st century to actually be recognized as its own genre, thanks to the work of fans and of independant publishing houses.

The main reason fantasy arrived quite "late" in French literature was due to a lack of identification. Numerous fantasy works were already published in France for a long time - but there was no specific collections dedicated to fantasy, and the very name "fantasy" wasn't used. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was translated in France in 1972-1973, by the publishing house Christian Bourgois - which is VERY late compared to other European countries, that had done a translating work long before. Other main works of fantasy only came in France under the shadow or as satellites of other literary genres. First, under the fantastique genre, with the collection "Aventures fantastiques" (Fantastical adventures) by Opta, then under the science-fiction genre. [Note: I said it before, but "fantastique" is a genre of French literature centered around a supernatural element arriving into a mundane and realistic setting very similar to our own. Dracula is "fantastique", for example] The works of Jack Vance were translated by the "Club du Livre d'Anticipation" (The Anticipation Book Club), Roger Zelzany's Chronicles of Amber was found originally in "Présence du futur" (Presence of the future), then in "Folio SF". In fact, for a very long time the term "science-fiction" will dominate the French edition, used as a general category for many non-realistic work - even what was identified by the 80s as "heroic fantasy" was named by French editors "science-fiction".

It is only at the end of the 1990s, and at the beginning of the 2000s that the word "fantasy" appeared - it was when specific collections and specialized publishing houses also formed themselves, such as Nestiveqnen or Mnémos, all derived from the editing industry of role-playing games. In 2000, the publishing house Bragelonne will decide to translate the works of David Gemmell and Terry Goodkind, great fantasy authors that hadn't been translated in French yet, and which were massive successes that helped the expansion of the fantasy industry in France.

Fans are definitively those that make fantasy live the most in France. Alongside the fantasy boom of the 90s-2000s, numerous actors appeared in what was called the "micro-edition", a very dynamic but very fragile world. Numerous festivals started popping out everywhere, and fandoms appearing thanks to the Internet became the main sources of information about the genre.

The growing importance of this sector, and the apparition of "experts" of fantasy, is translated by a new care for fantasy as a genre. Numerous classical authors ignored until this point get translated (such as William Morris, by "Aux forges de Vulcain", "In Vulcan's forge"). Numerous "integral" editions are offered by Bragelonne, Pocket or J'ai Lu. You also have several re-translations, offering a new French text closer and more respectful towards the originals (Patrice Louinet reworked on Robert E. Howard, while David Camus offered new H.P. Lovecraft translations, and Daniel Lauzon completely redid the French Tolkien works).

But truly French fantasy works - as in, French-written fantasy works created by francophone authors - were for a long time considered as "secondary" works. Late to the party, they had a hard time imposing themselves among the many translations of English-works. But today, we can consider that the French creation reached a level of "full maturity". In fact, we re-discover today an old French fantasy that had been forgotten by previous generations - Les centaures by André Lichtenberg in 1904, re-edited by the Callidor editions in 2017 ; or the duology Khanaor by Francis Berthelot in 1983. But, again, it was at the end of the 90s that the "New French School" of fantasy appeared, embodied by the trio of Mathieu Gaborit (Les Chroniques des Crépusculaires, 1995-1996, The Chronicles of the Dusk-people), Fabrice Colin (Arcadia, 1998 or Winterheim, 1999-2003) and Henri Loevenbruck (La Moïra, or Gallica, both starting in 2001).

Editors started accepting in their ranks authors with very unique, peculiar or demanding imaginations. Among these specific works we can find the Horde du contrevent (Horde of the counter-wind) by Alain Damasio, in 2004, by the house La Volte, or Jean-Philippe Jaworski's works (Récits du vieux royaume, Tales of the old kingdom, 2007, or Rois du monde, Kings of the world, 2013) in the house Les moutons électriques.

Went around exploring. Visited an old rural cerimonial altar

There were lots of bronze age tombs all around, and most importantly many huge rocks with moss on them. More than you could count-