Often when when talking about leftist fiction, it is in relation to speculative science fiction.I'd like to have a thread to discuss not only fantasy with leftist themes, but fantasy in general.So, read any good fantasy recently?
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But it's bewildering because the people involved seem to have neither the talent to pull off the musical parody of anything nor even enough of a surface level understanding of the original material to be able to construct a parody of it that makes any sense. It's a little shocking how bad, confused, and ill-conceived it is, and it became a bit of a meme because of this.
>>25261>Oh you mean like Pink Floyd's stuff?Yes.
>and damn that's cringe-inducing.It might be the current high water mark for internet cringe.
>>27240I think it's weirder for hobbits to be diverse per se than to have black hobbits. Black hobbits per se isn't necessarily odd. I vaguely recall descriptions of hobbits being brown, or maybe specifically their hands/feet looking brown. People tolerate drow being pitch black in the underdark even though logically they would be extremely pale.
Hobbits
all having dark skin for some reason would be one thing, but having a small and famously sedentary group of people be diverse makes no sense at all - where do the different phenotypes come from? I guess you could have an explanation but there is a weird trend in fantasy lately to completely ignore actors' and characters' ethnicities even when it raises obvious questions. If you want black hobbits just make them all black or change what hobbits are so it makes sense. Occasional black halflings in D&D is fine because the lore is totally different and they live all over the world, but for what the lore is in Tolkien it's weird to have significant diversity in an area that's roughly equivalent to rural England.
>>30824In the Silmarillion, Men came wandering out of the east when they first encountered Elves iirc. I think proto hobbits also had a similar wandering period before settling down in the Shire. If I was writing the show, that's how I would explain it at least, that this community has picked up different hobbity folk in its history of travel. IIRC, Smeagol isn't a hobbit either, but his people are related to hobbits. I'd imagine that this group is also made up of not quite hobbits, before settling down into what will become the hobbit community.
Or you can just say that Eru works in mysterious ways.
>>19438>Embedding error. This fucking site…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBEEBXsFeRk Samurai Jack - Final Question (Season 2, Episode 2)
>>34723skill issue
check this out
>>34755 Retard, I'm saying the Embeds are functional initially, but when there's some new update to the site or other /tech/ fuckery, a ton of the embeds are gone with "Embed Error" afterwards because the site's embed system is janky.
>>34748>black company serieI personally didn't like it very much, it feels a little like GATE and just goes way to hard on the "realism meets fantasy" aspect that I've frankly found tiresome at this point. I'd rather just read the shitty isekai pennybacks from Russia, because those are at least funny and weird.
>>34743 You mean the "one more step" YTP?
Been looking at some obscure fantasy films of the past and found some that I remember from when I was a kid that are interestingly different.
First is The Black Cauldron - the almost forgotten Disney flop based on a trilogy of books that are themselves based on Welsh mythology, written by Lloyd Alexander.
The Second is The Princess and the Goblin, a story based on a 19th century novel of the same name.
Third is The Swan Princess, which is an interesting reinterpretation of the Swan Ballet.
All of them differ from the traditionally action-adventure genre of Swords and Sorcery fantasy that is commonplace and is instead more in the original vein of fairy tale stories. It's unfortunate they were not quite up to scratch of some more classic, well known fairy tale interpretations. Cutting out the graphic scenery was a mistake in Black Cauldron.
Frankly, other than the Black Cauldron I though the other 2 were Don Bluth films but surprisingly are productions of other animation studios that have essentially vanished in all but name - the producers of the third film have since only made 1 other decent cartoon - The Trumpet of the Swan - and otherwise focused on making terrible Swan Princess sequels and the shitty 3D Alpha/Omega series.
The creators of the second are an obscure Hungarian film studio that has made numerous unknown fairy tale films.
Cut scenes from the Black Cauldron (pic rel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRzdVzeOBqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3iRGmRDaFU The troubled history of Black Cauldron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIuK4OZCWbU The Princess and the Goblin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fERWxl4c4s Princess Swan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qqqi_M7ais review
>>37663Disney Diversity is a good term for it.
But more than "how do I insert black people into Tolkien-based fantasy?" the way to actually do diverse media would be to do fantasy based on African folklore. There is plenty of material to work from.
Tolkien style fantasy races probably just shouldn't be done in live action. They ought to look different enough that you can't make up an actor to portray it. The humans shouldn't
really look like IRL humans either. They're not going to have the same ethnicities and clusters of traits as Earth humans. Fantasy humans should look to us kind of like they're mixed-ancestry but you can't tell what.
>>30824It would be less weird if they were all black than to have them be mixed for no reason, or all black with one white hobbit, or there's some tribe of black hobbits we've never seen for some reason. If you have a race of people who predominantly look like one type of people and live in the same general region (middle earth is just a small corner of its world), it's unrealistic to insert random others into that group without some in-universe justification. What they should have done is hired more African and Middle Eastern actors and written in some Men of Rhun or Haradrim. But they don't want to do that because westoid diversity is simply diversity of appearance. They only want people who look different but think exactly the same, which is why whitoids are racist against Chinese people who keep their Chinese names but are happy to socialize with ones who assimilate into the Anglo monoculture.
But it's already been established by LOTR movies that in the Peter Jackson universe, Middle Earth's denizens are white Angloids and the only brown people are the foreigners who side with Sauron. Otherwise Gondor should all be Greeks or Turks because they're basically the Byzantine Empire, instead of looking like redheaded Irishmen. They made them all white already and try to patch it up by adding some token blacks, and end up just making things worse. That's not really representation, it's just advanced level tokenism.
I noticed this in Dishonored too, where Dishonored 2 has black people on Serkonos but they're just there, they didn't create another island with its own culture where they could have originated, even though the setting could have badly used a couple extra islands to add variety of cultures. Instead there's an Anglo island, Nordic/Slavic island, Italian/Med island, and weird Irish island, and black people just exist with no origin and uniqueness. That's worse than not having them there. At least in the Elder Scrolls, Redguards have their own culture and history instead of just being darker Imperials who pop up halfway through.
>>37727dishonored setting never truly made sense, all the islands are part of an empire, but the slav island is seemingly just le 1984 ussr cummunism. I don’t fully understand the complaint about there being black people since dishonored while based on irl world, isn’t really logical and also I am pretty sure dishonored 1 already had black people, black aristocrats, black bottle street gang members etc.
Honestly speaking I always found it funny how fantsy tards love complaining about black people in fantasy media, even if the setting is something like dishonored, I understand complaining about lotr, but dishonored lmao. You guys will believe in shitty roman empire rip offs existing side by side with elves, but not into the possibility of black people being around with whites in some magical continent, that was created by some god or whatever. Maybe I am just misunderstanding the complaint.
>>37743Black people in fantasy shouldn't just be tokens. There should be entire cultures and continents worth of different peoples. Unless individual characters are just popping into existence, they have to come from somewhere. If you have people with clearly distinct ancestry, it raises questions about who their ancestors are, where they're from, and why the different groups are separate and distinct from each other. It's good for stories to be diverse, but there should be actual thought put into how the world works. Diversity isn't just about faces. It's about culture and history too.
And seriously, there is enough fantasy that's lazily ripping off European history and culture. We could definitely use more stories based on the folklore in the rest of the world, that doesn't even have white characters in the setting.
>>13735>Harry potter literally takes place a school where the mechanics of magic are explained at length.Well… not really, theoretically yes, but we don't actually know the mechanics of it or what constitutes as magic, it essentially does what you want it to do, so long as you have the will to make it happen. There is no energy or particles or whatever that create magic in Harry Potter, and explanations are mostly about how to DO magic, not what it is, or why and how it works. This is something fans of the series did and partially how Harry Potter got so popular, its method of describing yet not explaining magic, led to people coming up with their own explanations, letting the way it was written be very fluid, See my post
>>5174 But I digress, point is that magic in fantasy is not scientific unless specifically written that way in a story, and frankly it's what makes it, well, magical - the impossibility of it.
>>13716>>13731>>13735>>38762I think there are two primary types of fantasy writers: worldbuilders and people who just kind of make shit up on the fly. Magic in a work produced by a "worldbuilder" is very likely going to wind up feeling like its just an alternative kind of science, while magic in a work produced by writers who just make shit up on the fly is going to feel much more mysterious. They both have problems, though. Obviously, with the person who just makes shit up as they go along, eventually their complete lack of worldbuilding is going to catch up with them and they'll run into inconsistencies or implications they didn't originally intend. With worldbuilders, on the other hand, have a tendency to over-explain their settings to the point that it essentially becomes a sort of "rationalist fantasy" with little that's actually strange, whimsical and mysterious like you would expect out of fantasy. I think Rowling has the initial appearance of a worldbuilder, but in reality was just making shit up as she went.
One of the writers who managed to thread this particular needle, though, was Tolkien. Tolkien is famous for his extensive worldbuilding, yet his world still isn't over-explained. Making Middle Earth seem like a real, lived-in place that's also still very mysterious is no mean feat.
anyone read the powder mage serie ?
basically the french revolution in a magical setting, where there is opposition between the "traditional" mages integrated to nobility and power structures and the "newer" mages that have power related to gunpowder, who dont have privileges despite their usefulness on the battlefield where gunpowder is becoming increasingly prevalent, and even discriminated against in some countries. Also include start of industrialization, revolutionary state against reactionary states, and a based story of taking down a "god" (actually just an old super powerful mage)
>>38768the above is a great example of how magic existence can absolutely be integrated in a story about technological advancement
not a book but arcanum setting also comes to mind
also, 40k, where magic is basically just a parallel dimension that can be tapped into and can be fucked with through science
>If anything, magic would make industrialization happen faster debatable, and highly dependent on the setting specifics, if your magic is hereditary it obviously will reinforce nobility like power structures, and mages can also naturally be a concurrent class to the bourgeoisie and part of the traditional power structure like a clergy and want to repress something that could be an alternative to their services. Is the use of magic free, can it actually replace labor long term is also not always true.
>they would benefit most from educating as many people as possible about magic since more wizards = faster development of magical theory and knowledgewhy would you assume they'd want that rather than make it highly secretive to keep competitive advantages towards other mages. Hoarding knowledge is a classic way for a class to have power
>Wizards would replace the bourgeoisie as the "middle class" in feudalismonly if there are enough mages and they can use this magic on a sufficient scale to not be basically states super weapons / independent cabals ala witcher
>>34768>it feels a little like GATE sounds pretty unfair, the fun part of gate was just shooting dragons with rockets and knights with machine guns, but it was overall just wanking of their military, a harem and a forgettable story
I really liked black company, especially the realist take on "no good sides, all armies are home to sociopaths, everyone is ruthless in politics" even in a magical setting. The big mages are rare and akin to having some super weapons, the small mages can be big force multiplier but mostly thank to deception and surprise.
When in the later book they go to some india inspired country with tons of sects and they go full underground guerilla its also pretty interesting. The "searching for your own history" stuff and seeing how they actually have nothing in common to what they were when they started is also pretty good.
>'d rather just read the shitty isekai pennybacks huh you do you, but again, feel pretty unfair toward black company
>>38769>debatable, and highly dependent on the setting specificsTrue, but even if magic is hereditary it could and would be subject to study and refinement. Eugenics would actually become important to controlling power in that case, which would likely cause a weird intersection between inbreeding and magic. On the other hand, bastard children of magical parents would be way more of an issue than IRL bastards were.
As for industrialization specifically, the only real question here is whether magic can be used as a significant source of energy. If it can, it can be used to power steam engines. If that's the case, magic will become in high demand quickly the same way coal did. Unlike coal, magic output is mainly bounded by population size, and the more of it you have the easier it gets to get more (exponential increase if mages generally take on apprentices). Even with the things magic can produce, transport alone would make steam engines highly important since wizards can't usually teleport the sheer mass that you can load on a train.
>mages can also naturally be a concurrent class to the bourgeoisie and part of the traditional power structure like a clergy and want to repress something that could be an alternative to their services.Maybe, but there's not much that reasonably could function as an alternative to actual magic. Magic users would have a pretty effective monopoly.
>Is the use of magic free, can it actually replace labor long term is also not always true.Magic is almost never "free" unless it's for very trivial effects, but the point isn't to wholly replace labor but multiply the productivity of labor power. 1 mage can produce X quantity of Y product that you would need maybe 10, 50, 300 manual laborers to do. Like think of how much a Shape Stone kind of spell would alter construction practices.
>why would you assume they'd want that rather than make it highly secretive to keep competitive advantages towards other mages.Mages who keep secrets would be at a disadvantage to the ones who share knowledge, because they would have access to less knowledge overall. Also they would be wasting a lot of resources in conflict with each other and hiding things and would not benefit from synergy between multiple experts collaborating.
>only if there are enough mages and they can use this magic on a sufficient scale to not be basically states super weapons / independent cabals ala witcherIf magic can be taught to any significant degree, then it should be assumed that there would at least be some kind of artisan class learning that. There might be resource limits (like you need to keep consuming mana potions) or exclusive magic (hereditary), and there might be more than one of these types in the setting. Whatever form of magic has the fewest limits on it will be the most popular, and if there is a form that anybody can learn, anybody will. You would essentially need some kind of dedicated witch hunt organization to root out peasants who accidentally discover the "free" types of magic to stop this from happening.
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