{"id":1956,"date":"2018-04-26T07:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/?p=1956"},"modified":"2018-04-25T15:40:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T21:40:55","slug":"perils-of-the-writer-trend-chasing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/perils-of-the-writer-trend-chasing\/","title":{"rendered":"Perils of the Writer: Trend Chasing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, the other day I was on a fantasy-lit based message board, and saw someone comment, &#8220;I want some fantasy-inspired music, but I don&#8217;t like heavy metal.\u00a0 What else is there?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And I thought, &#8220;What are they talking about?\u00a0 How is heavy metal the go-to trend in &#8216;fantasy-inspired music&#8217;?&#8221;\u00a0 And then it hit me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>fantasy music:heavy metal::fantasy lit:grimdark<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(If I gave you SAT flashbacks with that, I apologize.)<\/p>\n<p>But the analogy fits&#8211; both fill the same subgenre niche, and both seem to be a popular trend at the moment.\u00a0 And, I&#8217;ll confess, I&#8217;ve never been too keen on the grimdark (nor heavy metal), but people like it and it&#8217;s got some good stuff out there. Or, more correctly, there are a lot of works out there that I recognize their quality, while also recognizing that they are not for me.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s OK.\u00a0 That&#8217;s the thing with trends&#8211; sometimes they&#8217;ll be happening around you and you feel out of the loop because you just don&#8217;t get why it&#8217;s a thing.<\/p>\n<p>Grimdark feels to be a strong trend in the genre right now, at least in the circles I have my eye on.\u00a0 But trends change, so we&#8217;ll see what&#8217;s next.\u00a0 I certainly would like it if people gravitated toward heroic fantasy, epic in scope but personal in scale.\u00a0 I may know a book or two along those lines.<\/p>\n<p>But what will the next fantasy trend be?\u00a0 If I&#8217;m reading the tea leaves correctly (and lord knows I&#8217;m probably not), it&#8217;s non-traditional secondary-world fantasy.\u00a0 Things that really play with their worldbuilding, creating settings that are recognizable in totally different ways.\u00a0 Stuff like the 1960s-ish secondary Asia of\u00a0<em><strong>Jade City.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Or the upcoming\u00a0<em><strong>Titanshade<\/strong><\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>by Dan Stout, set in a magical 1970sesque setting with 8-tracks and disco.\u00a0 I&#8217;m looking forward to that one.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe that&#8217;s why a part of my brain is churning away with a vague idea involving a dieselpunk secondary-world setting and this helmet.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/DbCKPbxWsAAq_Ot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"295\" height=\"389\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s still just early churnings.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll see what develops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, the other day I was on a fantasy-lit based message board, and saw someone comment, &#8220;I want some fantasy-inspired music, but I don&#8217;t like heavy metal.\u00a0 What else is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1957,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions\/1957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}