 hello everyone hello I hope you've all had a good week since our last meeting I didn't what's wrong epic fantasy I released 10 more trilogies on Tuesday and all of them were exactly the same a dark lord tries to destroy the world and then a chosen one hero stops him yeah I keep telling you man you need to try something different oh you're one to talk how many urban fantasy stories are just about some hero trying to stop bad guys from exposing the masquerade not all of them sometimes they're about magical serial killers all right let's tone it down no need for hostility remember this is a support group epic fantasy have you ever considered using more Asian inspired settings I mean just the other day I saw that they had their own section at Barnes & Noble doesn't putting fantasy based on other mythologies into their own categories just further cement my Eurocentrism yeah but this way your protagonist can use a katana instead of a long sword that makes it exotic I haven't been exotic for a long time what's wrong science fantasy nobody likes me anymore Star Wars stole all my thunder and since then everyone's been trying to recapture the magic but it never works they just make a generic space opera and then throw in a few sword fights or they just get rid of the magic all together or they just get rid of the science all together even the last final fantasy game got rid of most of the sci-fi elements you still have warhammer 40k that's pretty great and the minis sell for a ton of money the only ones who like that are nerds with too much time on their hands it's not mainstream enough well now you're just being picky all of us are fueled by nerds with too much free time grimdark you're being awful quiet today I have nothing to say nothing at all nothing about how your heyday is long past and now you're just seen as the domain of teenage edgelords nope have you been staying sober of course not all my protagonists are alcoholics they need to drown their tortured memories at the time they burned down an orphanage for shock value or the time they massacred an entire village but not because they want to they were totally forced to and now they have to angst about it and are you still obsessed with looking cool over all else of course but I'm having trouble finding new ways to do it I've tried gritty realism and gritty pseudo realism but it's all just starting to feel the same you could try having your protagonist fight with three different weapons at the same time that doesn't make sense I can't carry that many weapons in my hands you don't have hands none of us do we're just a visual metaphor for problems of various genres of fiction I thought we were a personification of our creators frustrations with fantasy no no we're clearly representations of critical response to popular tropes like a political cartoon that can talk I'm pretty sure we're manifestations of things that people find annoying about our namesake genres it doesn't matter what we are all that matters is how we see ourselves oh you're here everyone we have a new member please introduce yourself um hello I'm young adult fantasy nice to meet you all did did I do something wrong you're not even fantasy you're just smut with a fantasy setting so that the author can throw in sex scenes with fairies hey don't make me tap the sign oh yeah because king killer chronicles didn't devote a hundred pages to fairy sex that's different that's male focused fantasy that means complete self-indulgence is totally fine okay okay simmer down YA fantasy what brings you to our group well I'm probably the most popular genre of fantasy right now but I just feel empty it's like I'm always just going through the motions a teen girl gets to be super special and fond over by the boys then she has to overthrow an evil government by being a spy then there's some love triangles even the settings are always the same it's like I'm junk food I'm tasty but I'm not filling you should have more horrible things happen to the protagonists why would I do that I just think that if you're going to have a bunch of women in your story they should be horribly abused to show off how evil the setting and or villain are grim dark cool it with the misogyny we talked about this no it's okay most of my romantic relationships are horribly toxic and even when I attempt to have strong female characters they're still often reliant on others to do anything and defined entirely by the relationships with men so you're just a mirror image of me kind of on the plus side you being aimed at women means the anti-sjw crowd won't rile up their audiences about you shat diversity spent literal hours crying about how one of my female characters were pants that a joke not even a little bit YA have you ever considered aiming for a gender-neutral audience or even a male one it would force you to mix things up at least a little bit I don't follow okay it looks like we're about out of time now but I'm happy with the progress we've made today next week we're being joined by another new member his name is isekai anime nope I'm out me too he doesn't want to be helped he wants to say the same forever I'm gone he's even more the misogynist than me I am so getting fired again