{"id":21921,"date":"2025-09-09T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=21921"},"modified":"2025-09-02T17:53:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:53:44","slug":"so-this-is-why-so-much-of-fantasy-sucks-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/so-this-is-why-so-much-of-fantasy-sucks-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"So this is why so much of fantasy sucks right now\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u2026because it&#8217;s impossible to write a villain who&#8217;s truly evil if your moral compass reflects our current-year&#8217;s understanding (or lack therof) of good and evil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Seriously, it explains so much, especially the concept of &#8220;emotional ethics,&#8221; where characters are deemed to be good or evil based on how likeable or relatable they are. This happens ALL THE TIME in modern fantasy, and I HATE it. I don&#8217;t care if your character has friends or pets a cat or has a thorough and well-written backstory. If they do something I find to be wrong or immoral, I will judge them accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4cv659HLRUg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Great video. Worth watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026because it&#8217;s impossible to write a villain who&#8217;s truly evil if your moral compass reflects our current-year&#8217;s understanding (or lack therof) of good and evil. Seriously, it explains so much, especially the concept of &#8220;emotional ethics,&#8221; where characters are deemed to be good or evil based on how likeable or relatable they are. This happens&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/so-this-is-why-so-much-of-fantasy-sucks-right-now\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">So this is why so much of fantasy sucks right now\u2026<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[458,1956,1794,636,522],"class_list":["post-21921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-good-and-evil","tag-hilary-layne","tag-long-form-podcasts","tag-morality","tag-villains","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-5Hz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21943,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21921\/revisions\/21943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}