I noticed a big shift in how people write fantasy prompts here since 2020

Back in 2019, most fantasy prompts were about epic quests and chosen ones. Now I see way more prompts about ordinary people dealing with magic in everyday settings. Like someone finding a spellbook at a garage sale or a barista who can hear thoughts. I think the pandemic made people want smaller, more relatable stories. Has anyone else seen this change in the types of prompts getting upvoted?

3 comments

3 Comments

grant.nina24d ago

God, can you two just get a room and argue about data sets already? Honestly, this whole debate makes me feel like I'm back in my stats class from college, the one I dropped after two weeks. Like, who cares if it's a trend or not, if the front page is all toaster curses and friendly ghosts right now, then that's clearly what people want to see. You both sound like the grumpy uncles arguing about whether the new Marvel movie is better than the old one, meanwhile the rest of us are just here for the cursed toaster. Let's just enjoy the weird, small magic stuff while it's hot, yeah?

hayes.jake24d ago

Actually I've been scrolling through the archives and I'm seeing TONS of epic quest prompts still getting tons of upvotes. A lot of the "small magic" stuff was already big before 2020, like that whole urban fantasy with the magical librarian series. The pandemic just made more people talk about it online but the numbers don't really back up the shift.

park.robin24d ago

@hayes.jake is cherry-picking data if you ask me, since the front page is clearly drowning in slice-of-life magic prompts now compared to 2019. Just look at the most upvoted posts this week, all about finding a cursed toaster or a friendly ghost in a laundromat.