Low Fantasy

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Low Fantasy is a fantasy Setting Aesthetics term which practically no two people agree on the precise definition of, beyond being the polar opposite of High Fantasy. At its core, it adheres much closer to a "realistic" version of a semi-historical world - it's usually set on a world other than Earth, though, which helps distinguish it from historical fantasy, but not always.

A Low Fantasy world generally has a "shades of gray" approach to morality, often slanting towards the cynical, which is why the term is often confused with Dark Fantasy. Magical elements and users are either extremely rare, weak and/or either very subdued; alternatively, they can be quite powerful but coming at a terrible price for the user/their allies/everyone else, so there are few who dare use it, and terrible punishments for the practitioners if found out. Dinosaurs are more likely to appear than dragons, and even then still be rare; the world is distinctly humanocentric, with minimal (if any) demihuman presence and even less divine presence. Adventurers are usually normal people who have taken up a cause, if not just wandering psycho bastards.

The genre was for a long while largely below the general public's radar, mostly owing to the fact that prior to the 00s and Lord of the Rings movies the Fantasy genre in general was regarded as being niche and was just getting over the nerd/geek stigma of the 70s and 80s. The Low Fantasy however would get kicked off into the stratosphere with the Game Of Thrones series that lit the audiences on fire, at least until the last season that is.

This however turned out to be both a blessing and a curse as GoT inspired a slew of copycats that replicated the surface elements and aesthetics in the most hack way possible, focusing on sex, slaughter and suckynes while having meh plots at best with some shows outright ditching any traces of Fantasy like magic or non-human races and becoming historical dramas (with a lot of them going the Viking route and quickly oversaturating an otherwise awesome setting/culture).

Notable examples of Low Fantasy are:

• Game of Thrones, especially in the initial stages, later it moves towards High Fantasy and Dark Fantasy
• How to Train Your Dragon, albeit it straddles the line by merely having dragons which are a staple of High Fantasy
• In the Name of the King
• The Dresden Files
• The Borrowers
• That Hideous Strength
• The "Thief" vidya series