Most fantasy authors choose a low-tech setting for their alternate worlds. Without going into the reasons for that, which are themselves fascinating and sometimes illogical, I will go straight to the result: by choosing low-tech we catapult ourselves backwards into history, often choosing to build a society that is less progressive than our own.
This ensures your mages reign supreme over swords and arrows (although some medieval weapons were badass, if you ask me) – but that’s not the only reason to do it. The more road blocks you can put in front of a character, the better. Readers tend to identify with the underdog, the person who is struggling against great injustices, and therefore what’s better than putting him in a society where things are unequal?
But then we get to the women. Romance gets complicated when you have a historically-adjacent setup of empowered males and disempowered females. In the United States, where this blog resides, women constitute 51% of the population but make up only 17% of congress, and they continue to struggle for control of their own reproduction. We moderns have not succeeded in working out our own issues, so portraying them is tricky. What’s worse is that romance in itself – its tradition of broody men and devoted women – is a ‘how not to’ guide for our daughters. (more…)
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Raised in a small town,