I abjectly refuse to even hate-watch Blood Origin but the YouTube reviews I saw made me realize what the exact thing is that irks me about modern fantasy stories like Rings of Power and even a lot of recent tabletop RPG modules: the characters all have the personalities of 21st century social media addicts. Not just that the show tries to
appeal to those people, which it's obvious that's the goal, but that every protagonist or sympathetic character has that
exact personality with small variations. Here's Jaskier swearing like a 15 year old Whedon fan, for instance:
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My favorite thing about fantasy and even historical fiction is when a writer is good at exploring how different times and circumstances can affect a character's priorities, fears, etc. The HBO series
Rome was really good at this. But Blood Origin elves are just coastal urban liberal bubble humans with rubber ears. It's not a new problem but it seems so egregious here that it allowed me to put a description to the vague thing that's been bothering me about mainstream fantasy.