Remove the concept of innate evil from your stories and worlds. It forces you to think about motivation, resources, drives and embraces complexity.

It's frustrating that a lot of nerds are trying to imitate Game of Thrones style fantasy while completely ignoring anything that was good about A Song of Ice & Fire

By removing the idea of innate heroes and villains, of monsters and men, you just end up with stories of people and their struggles as they come into conflict with one another and our stories are better for it.

Historically speaking, any war in human history where the motivation was "drive out the evil infesting that place" turned out to be lies justifying genocide and oppression.

I think a nostalgia for colonialism and genocide runs through the undercurrent of a lotta fantasy stories where innate evil exists. The ability to easily rationalize away violence and bloodshed by dehumanizing your enemies.

Personally speaking, I'm very bored with the heroic fantasy novel of some protagonist cutting swathes through hordes of countless faceless enemies without ever stopping to think or ponder on the lives they've taken or their own lost humanity. Empty, shallow war propaganda.

This thread did some numbers. If you want to check out my stuff, I wrote a sci-fi novel starring a trans woman grappling with some of these questions alongside a cowboy robot and other wacky characters https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DBCKNXR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CLaZDbJC2HNCD