when ursula k leguin said “In stories, [war] evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win.” and when she said “[war as a moral metaphor] is puerile, misleading, and degrading.” I felt that
I specified romantasy before but war as a core plotline for fantasy is like. practically inescapable. it makes sense in a genre that owes so much to tolkien, obviously, and no not every fantasy is about “the unquestionable good guys must defeat the unquestionable evil guys”, there is often something more being said about the human condition there - but still at this point I feel like fantastical war is mostly noise to me. I fundamentally do not care which guy has what sword and sits on which big chair to be in charge. Im sorry. I am deeply bored of being expected to care about these things. even if you subvert something meaningful down the line, 2+ sides at war are still the scaffold for so much of the genre, and so much of it still feels like a fantasy about being the most badass person to ever live and being the most badass means you are the most important. and I feel like such a bleeding-heart hippie when I mention this to fans of any of these authors but like seriously can we not come up with something more interesting! can you not think of more interesting problems in this whole ass world you came up with! Im BOOOOOORED and feeling very cynical about it
