I write fantasy mystery stories. My books simply can’t be classified as one or the other. Without the fantasy world, the situations Blake finds himself it simply wouldn’t exist. Without the mystery, there wouldn’t be any story. I’ve seen numerous iterations of the quest, the prophecy, and the dark lord. I’m running a fantasy roleplaying game using those themes, again, because my group are all young and inexperienced. To them, it’s new.
As I write this, I’m listening to Animusic, which was created in the early 2000’s. As music, it’s adequate. The music is fairly repetitive within each song. The melodies are catchy, but not breathtaking. From the animation side, it is pretty dated. There aren’t fantastic textures or anything that makes you go, wow! However, put them together and they are magical.
This re-imagining has a long tradition in literature. Don Quixote, considered by many as the first novel, was in fact a comedic take on the stories of that had been popular for so long on the continent. It is comedy. It is a story of chivalry. You simply couldn’t have one without the other and still have it be Don Quixote.
Urban fantasy started as a fringe idea, imagining fantasy creatures in a modern world is interesting. It is even better if you go beyond the vampires and werewolves, like Jim Butcher did with the Dresden Files. Now, there are multiple movies, books, and even TV shows using that as a premise.
One of my favorite bands is Apocolyptica, who are classically trained cellists playing heavy metal. Linsey Sterling plays dubstep/pop violin. Pentatonix use their amazing voices to somehow make a cappella DJ/electronic sounding music. Thomas Bergersen composes orchestral music with a combination of voice and rock themes to make epic music with his production company 2 Steps from Hell.
Inspiration is all around us. All we have to do to tap into innovation is to think “Why don’t we…” or “What would happen if…”. What would happen if a country in a medieval style fantasy world used diviners as detectives to solve crimes? I don’t know. Let’s find out together.
