No.298 [View All]
why are you celebrating tolkenism and tolkien based fantasy
instead of wishing it to end and die
we need to revive the fantasy genre
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No.339
>>328
>you can blame the Northern Crusades for the destruction of that heritage.
Most definitely not.
In fact, what little we know of those mythologies and folk tales was written down by the Christian converts. It's thanks to the Christians we even have a record of that part of our history at all.
>>329
Druidism and Celtic paganism wasn't destroyed by Christians. The Anglo-Saxon invaders didn't convert to Christianity until after they had driven out the native Brittonic people.
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No.457
>>330
regarding that, i like how they have a different take on the dwarves
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No.458
>>330
A lot of the creation lore and stuff about the high elves is taken right out of The Silmarillion.
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No.466
>>339
Christians recorded what they didn't destroy. And then distorted it according to their agenda.
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No.663
>>330
could be great but ruined by not being very good games and having shitty main stories
i dont think bethesda gives one fuck about world building
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No.667
>>663
i hope you're only referring to oblivion and skyrim
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No.671
But nobody writes good fantasy anymore lol
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No.683
>>671
This is because no one is studying the classics anymore.
Really.
Anyone attempting to tell a “fantasy story” now, is doing so because he read and loved other books in the “fantasy genre” already. Because Harry Potter is so successful, along with the tidal wave of Young-Adult Fiction books that have appeared since.
Some of us also love the Black Company series, and the Dresden Files, and Elric of Melnibone, and anything churned out by TRS—the D&D novels (even if you haven’t read them, most fantasists somehow know who Drizzt Do’Urden is).
Shanarra, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Narnia, Dragonlance, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, Song of Ice & Fire, His Dark Materials, Redwall, Mistborn, and of course, ‘’Discworld’’
Worse, many young intellecuals begin writing without having read anything at all. They get into it because of the Final Fantasy games, the Zelda franchise, and Warcraft. Somewhere between these guys and the readers are people who have only ever read manga and comic books. And this is where a lot of throwaway fiction is coming from.
A very small number of people are reading THE BIBLE with an author’s eye, or the Volsunga Saga, and the Nibelungenlien, and the Eddas, which Tolkien quite litterally plagiarized in some respects. People only know of Beowulf second-hand, typically, and JRRT read it in its purest form. I hadn’t even heard of the Kalevala before I picked up Tolkien.
“Fantasy”, and I think fiction as a whole, suffers from a kind of intellectual inbreeding. Of all the authors mentioned above, most of the successful ones educated themselves on the same things that gave JRRT his edge. To be original, you must study the ‘’origin.’’
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No.684
>>683
The origin Tolkien draws from has such a value. It gives you insight into the mind of our ancestors unlike anything else. The view isn't the greatest, almost like Plato's shadows on the wall, but it's the best we can get.
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No.686
>>683
It's terrifying how modern fantasy fiction, especially outside literature, like video games and movies (which is what most people ever experience), is influenced by works themselves influenced by D&D so the connection is lost and people think fantasy equals D&D. You get ravings about how "Tolkienesque" sucks while the complaints are about aspects heavily influenced by tabletop roleplaying game mechanics, or worse, about lack of adherence to conventions risen from game mechanics.
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No.687
>>298
Most "Tolkien based fantasy" doesn't feel like Tolkien at all.
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No.688
>>328
>>329
>the destruction of that heritage… and so much more.
>he destruction of the druids in Albion, is especially grievous to my mind. What art and knowledge was lost?
>what originally attracted me to Japan
Couldn't help but cringe when you said those.
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No.690
>>324
>bow-legged, long-armed, smaller than a human,
Sound more apelike than piglike
DnD BTFO
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No.1002
I think I may have replied to the wrong person
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No.1006
>>688
>the cringe
Yes, it's natural to feel a negative gut reaction to anything vaguely smelling of otaku, but I don't think that's what he meant. Shinto is not as pure & authentic as your average Weeb will tell you, but he's right when he says it has not been outpaced by the Semitic religions like all western paganism.
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No.1032
>>686
I remember, years ago, on /lit/, someone brought up the age-old question "how do we fix fantasy" and getting away from Tolkien was the most frequent response. Not a one of them mentioned the effect that other media have had on the genre, or that calling it a genre at all has had a monstrous effect on it as well.
I would say getting away from "game mechanics" is a top priority altogether. Only the other obsessives in /lit/ are going to care about your concise and unique "magic system."
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No.1033
>>1032
>I would say getting away from "game mechanics" is a top priority altogether. Only the other obsessives in /lit/ are going to care about your concise and unique "magic system."
Definately. Magic as an arbitary fictional model of extended physics is contrary to it actually being magic. When learning a set of fake physics is a requirement for understanding the story, the author has disappeared deep inside their own ass long ago. (With fake I don't mean speculative, which can be decent enough, but that is mostly seen as "sci-fi" thing.)
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No.1036
>>1032
>Getting away from Tolkien.
Yes because getting away from one of the only two good literary bodies of work left is how you fix it. Lets get away from CS Lewis while we're at it I suppose. Bunch of filthy lefties.
What can be done to fix fantasy is to force writers to actually look beyond just modern writing and read legends and myths of old. That's how Tolkien's work was so good. It was emulating and basing itself on old myth, not just in an endlessly shittier recursion of whatever is popular at the time.
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No.1040
>>1036
Hack authors ignore the aeon spanning shoulders of the many giants and just build their shit on the tip of the current pyramid.
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No.1077
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No.1102
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No.1115
>>1102
DnD stories aren't really like Tolkien. It's just the general character archtype, and really just appearance, not even backstory.
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No.1116
>>1115
I'd call the similarities cosmetic, like everything else people copy from Tolkien. You could have a huge story about space and different alien races and have it be more Tolkienian in spirit than something featuring elves and dwarves honestly.
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No.1117
>>1116
>I'd call the similarities cosmetic
Even in that regard it's barely similar at all
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No.1293
>>1117
I just went through the books again and ran into something I'd overlooked about the elves.
D&D elves, famously, don't sleep. They 'meditate' for 8 hours before they can go back to operating on all cylinders, and that always struck me as weird.
Well, in Two Towers, the text describes Legolas as able to rest himself in a half-dream state even while walking or keeping watch over the camp while traveling with Aragorn and Gimli, "after the fashion of his people" implying that all elves could do that. I was impressed by this, forever thinking Gygax & Arneson had invented that trait. Go figure.
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No.1294
>>1293
Eh, maybe they're more similar than I though, I was more talking about modern fantasy in general I guess, which is filled with bloated stereotypes.
I probably hate nu-elves more than anything else.
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No.1299
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No.1302
>>1293
I'm pretty sure this is something that goes back beyond even Tolkien.
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No.1304
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No.1306
>>1304
modern-fantasy elves, obviously
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No.1307
>>1306
I've never really been interested in modern fantasy, so if you could describe how they are vs. Tolkien elves I would appreciate it.
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No.1308
>>1307
Biggest "development" is inheriting the need to be "balanced" compared to other species from D&D game mechanics. Typically this materializes as turning physical and (hard won) moral superiority into impotent arrogance. Most works also lack proper world building and have only blind aping of (usually pitifully recent) earlier works, so elves along with numerous other superfluous critters appear in settings without being a fundamental part of them.
Considering this rose from what was awful game design in the first place, it's a wonder this kind of thinking continued to carried along like a tumorous package even to works completely unrelated to games.
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No.1641
>>466
This is 100% correct, I heard someone say it on youtube.
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No.1643
>>1307
Tolkien's elves were above humans but below the gods, somewhere between angels and humans. Yes the elves did have less differences between the genders, skewed to the feminine (from the human perspective), male elves resemble human women, without breasts. Dwarves in contrast, are skewed to the masculine with even the dwarven women supposedly having beards.
>>1308
Yes in reality Tolkien's world was full of hierarchy. The Elves were the superior race in Middle Earth after the few wandering beings of higher power. Their weakness was that they didn't really reproduce much, because they did not die of age.
They also had no use for high technology because of their magic and temperance.
Balancing is a result of gaming and the unimaginative method of balancing.
>>1306
The sexualization of elves is due to the fact that they are the most attractive race. The fact that the whole race is more feminine/ladylike also means humans when making derivative fiction, attribute them to being subby and secretly desiring of rape. When in Tolkiens reality Elves would rather die, and most likely would out of grief, from having their honor and purity taken from them. The elf memes are all an expression of the human desire to bring the high low, a corruption fetish.
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No.1647
>>298
The problem is that modern fantasy is that it is basically the supernatural/occult genre, if it is set the the present day. Harry potter is an example, although being anti-nazi propaganda because brits hate themselves and all Aryans. In anime, flying witch, or the Fate series, are good examples of modern fantasy. Sci-Fi is in many ways the more relevant genre although some threads on /pol/ could make a good occult/fantasy setting.
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No.1657
>>1643
Orrrr it could be a desire to commune with something higher, you gnostic.
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No.1659
>>1116
>You could have a huge story about space and different alien races and have it be more Tolkienian in spirit than something featuring elves and dwarves honestly.
what is dune?
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No.1666
>>1643
>male elves resemble human women, without breasts.
Nah, man.
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No.1683
>>1643
>They also had no use for high technology because of their magic
They had arguably the greatest smiths in the world
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No.1688
How do we define "fantasy" as a genre? And a lot of the talk in this thread is about things like mythology. If we're talking modern mythology, people are gonna hate this answer, but the closest you're gonna get is capeshit comic books. They have the most complex and fleshed out lore of any works ever created. The DC Universe in particular gets into the mythological aspects much more explicitly, with The Justice League and the other heroes and villains semi-explicitly being a modern pantheon of gods, all actually being embodiments of some fundamental force, up to and including life itself. Even the ones with sci-fi based origins (most prominent being Superman, Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern) are actually about magic at their core, because on a deep enough level they are the representation of different core concepts, like emotions or imagination or human determination, and the sci-fi elements are simply how they manifest in that universe, that low level of reality.
Also, while the modern stuff is what gets most focus, there is actually a rich history covering many different eras, from before the dawn of time to after the end of time. You have important stuff about cavemen, sword and sorcery from many different eras, and even stuff about cowboys or World War II being treated as myth that informs modern day. Not to mention tons and tons of material that covers eras from before the earth or humans existed.
I know I'll get shit for this, but it's the deepest mythology there is. If we're only talking about stuff where creatures called Elves or Dwarves are particularly important, though, then it might not count. They're around, just not that important.
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No.1690
>>1666
[x] Fukeen told
[ ] not told
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No.1709
>>1683
>Elven supremacist here
I would say that honor goes to the dwarves. Though the Elves did make better magic weaponry.
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No.1710
>>1666
Nah, Satan. Although I should say that in Tolkiens context human mean Aryan, with the except of the evil Muslims down south that sided with Soron.
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No.1711
File: 033be66a78206b1⋯.jpg (Spoiler Image,268.05 KB,1700x1067,1700:1067,5040a0cbc4bf37134323da702f….jpg)
I don't know what you are specifically referring to, but thank you for the compliment. As a wizard, knowledge is my highest calling.
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No.1732
>>1709
>He hasn't read the silmarllion, or even a single page of Tolkien's works
Kek
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No.1733
>>1710
>>1711
Mods ban these shitposters please
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No.1753
>>315
>we need to come up with new things anon
>we being someone who isn't me
Start writing or shut the fuck up, you obviously have no intention of bringing about any of this "needed" work.
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No.1784
>>1733
>Waaahhh ban the posters. I don't like discussion.
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No.1793
>>1784
Stop shitting up the board asshole, discuss LOTR/Silmarillion without bringing up irrelevant shit or fuck off.
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No.2176
Tolkien's elves were mariners and other-worldly. Belegaer is the threshold between worlds like water was thought of by celts and norse. I think all elves had the sea longing, so that if they heard a gull, they could never be still again. Nobody's done much with that part of them.
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