I can tell that I don’t know much about fantasy because anytime someone mentions a fantasy trope that’s “really overdone” it’s one that I’ve literally never heard of before. like:

• humans are the only race that can’t do magic but they’re also the only race that has technology

• angels are evil and demons are good (my paracosm is this but I’ve never seen it anywhere else)

• dwarves really like holding grudges

in all three cases these were thrown out as obvious examples of overdone tropes, as if everyone is already aware of them and also tired of them. which i find pretty surreal because like, I’ve played Skyrim, Runescape, World of Warcraft and lots of other fantasy games but I’ve never encountered them before at all

@kasdeya never encountered number two and three, but I'm sure I've seen the first example before. Like, once.

@kasdeya Huh. I think people who say those tropes are overdone are experiencing highly specific sub-genres of fantasy. Or they're talking about specific examples of a more general trope. Like, number one is really common in isekai light novels in particular. Number two is kind of a sub-trope of the more general "flipped morality" that has been really common in Hollywood-produced fantasy but not nearly so much outside of that.

But I've never heard of number 3 other than as a sort of extension of the idea that immortal or generally long-lived races tend to hold grudges longer.

@kasdeya it thinks dwarves holding grudges goes back to Tolkien.
angels being evil and demons good seems like a very obvious inversion to go for, but we struggle to think of an example.

@kasdeya I’d say it’s less about how little you know and an a tribute to how you branch out and read a wider variety of fantasy based fiction.

@kasdeya the dwarves holding grudges is really more of a blown out of proportion warhammer thing which probably was inspired by tolkiens dwarves and elves having that age old beef with each other.

But somehow the warhammer dwarves have become very popular on reddit. With places like dwarfposting having probably it's biggest share from there.

Angels being evil strikes me primarily as an anime trope which is rooted in Japan having a rocky relationship with the christian faith.

Humans being totally unable to do magic is a new one as a trope to me.