Tag: sword and sorcery

Whenever I see ASOIAF discussed in a meta sense, it always seems to be regarded as a deconstruction, and subsequent reconstruction to some, of a fairly abstract “standard fantasy”. I’ve got relatively little exposure to non-dark fantasy, so while I’ve got an idea of the tropes and/or cliches at work I haven’t seen them in action too much. Can you recommend a few that would help give insight into “standard fantasy” in action?

Well, there’s always been multiple variants of fantasy, which you can array on a spectrum from High Fantasy to Heroic Fantasy to Sword & Sorcery to Low Fantasy. When people talk about standard fantasy, they’re usually talking about either High or Heroic, and they’re usually talking about your Standard Fantasy Setting in some vaguely Medieval European direction. 

Hopefully those TV Tropes pages should give you some examples, but you won’t go far wrong if you read a cross-section of Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons novels, David Eddings, and Terry Brooks.