Happy Monday, book pandas! 🐼 I’m excited to be back with another Fantasy with Friends post today. Also, I’m so sorry if parts of this don’t make sense or if I’m more rambly than usual. I’m fallen ill and the medicine just hit me as I started writing 🤣
What is Fantasy with Friends?
Fantasy with Friends is a discussion meme hosted by Briana and Krysta on Pages Unbound. Questions are posed every Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works. The yearly schedule is available on Pages Unbound so you can prepare way in advance! Don’t forget to leave a comment and link on the scheduled day so your post can be linked up. You can also tag @pagesunbound on Twitter and/or Bluesky!
Today’s Fantasy with Friends question:
Do anachronisms in fantasy bother you? Should fantasy be “similiar” to the time period it’s based on, either in terms of language used or things like invention, fashion, customs, etc.?
First off, what are anachronisms? A simplified definition is: “something (such as a word, an object, or an event) that is mistakenly placed in a time where it does not belong in a story, movie, etc.”
When first thinking about my answer to this, I thought “no, I don’t really care about it”. But that was a straight up lie as my brain proceeded to bombard me with flashes to all of the times I commeneted in my reading journal or in a review how “my main issue is that it’s unclear what time period this fantasy is set in” or “the use of modern/present day verbiage was really jarring when the setting was clearly historical”. So, I guess it does bother me to some extent, but it’s not every time, and I can’t really say when it will or won’t because it depends on the overall writing, story, characters, etc.
That definitely clears things up, doesn’t it? Lol 😅
I mean fantasy is fantasy—there are made up settings, magical/mythical/supernatural creatures and being, and abilities that don’t exist in the real world. The fantasy worlds authors create is whatever they want it to be and I think that allows for a degree of flexibility when it comes to the accuracy of these elements because they play around with what they choose to create, right? What makes it tolerable in some instances and not in others? I really don’t have an answer to that.
I notice that it tends to bother me the most when it comes to language use and inventions (to a degree) and less with fashion or customs because I’m an expert on it. It is an issue when it’s so obviously wrong that even I can tell and then it would annoy me, but for the most part, I’m not that picky about it. Where it does bother me though is when I can tell an author is clearly trying to stay true to aspects of a time period, but then they suddenly mix modern elements (esp langauge!) that is so unfitting it causes me to do a double-take. Usually, the more that’s repeated, the more obvious it becomes, and the more it will distract me from the story entirely.
Now that I’m thinking about it, this might be a big reason as to why I’ve struggled with a lot of recent fantasy romance (“romantasy”). I don’t notice it so much in older fantasies, but I’ve not read a whole lot of them recently and the ones I’ve read (Robin Hobb) are beyond fantastic and I love them! With romantasy though, I’ve noticed that while the worlds are usually some kind of historical setting, the verbiage used by characters can sometimes be so modern that it kind of makes me cringe… 😬 A couple of very popular titles I’ve read had this issue and I was constantly frustrated and yelling “nooo, please, I beg, stop saying or doing that!” I’ve pretty much almost stopped reading them now, and I’m not averse to reading more, but I’m a lot pickier with what I choose!
Okay, well, I feel like I just went around in circles but TL;DR: it bothers me sometimes but I’m not always that picky. What do you think, friends? Do anachronisms bother you?
dinipandareads 
Agreed! I’m very much of the opinion that an author can do anything, as long as they do it well! And sometimes . . . the anachronisms are not done well. One, in fact, gets the feeling the author doesn’t even realize they are occurring, so they come across as mistakes and definitely not intentional choices.
I think romantasy has this problem, as well. It’s frustrating when any genre gets big because then you can see the publishers kind of not caring about quality, and I’m sure romance is worse in the sense that romance readers have alawys been knowing for wanting volume. You can imagine the publishers thinking, “Well, these people just want to read three romances a week. They just care if they’re romantic. They don’t care if they’re GOOD.”
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So very true! I guess that something romantasy does is make fantasy more accessible to readers who don’t normally read the genre—and that’s great—but then because the romance is still the core, the fantasy aspects just kind of get dropped in. Which, I think, is a real shame because it *can* (and should) be both, but I get the feeling that in a lot of these romantasy releases, that’s not the case. Obviously I’m generalizing based on what I have read…
I think it irks me even more when I learn that the authors aren’t well-acquainted or well-read in the time period or other inspiration they’re drawing from! 🫣
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[…] Dinipandareads […]
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So sorry that you’re ill at the moment. I hope your medication takes effect quickly and that you feel better soon
I definitely don’t like anachronisms especially when the setting is clearly meant to be some point in the past. I think it’s more prevalent in romantasy because even if the story is set in some mythical past, the characters have to behave in modern ways and that possibly leads the author to use more modern language? Maybe?
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Thank you!
I think there’s some flexibility to a point in terms of ‘modern behaviour’, and I also don’t expect the story to be written in old English or more formal styles or anything like that. But also, if you’re giving me characters who use modern slang in a setting that’s very clearly historical, that is so jarring and it will definitely annoy me 😂
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Hahaha I love the 360 change of opinion at the start there. Language is definitely the thing that annoys me the most, but I do think if it’s set in a fantasy world or a more fluid time period then I’m a little more lax in my annoyance.
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[…] Fantasy with Friends: Anachronisms in Fantasy […]
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