/hobby/ - Hobby

>>46461
That video is long as hell and it seems he's debunking some kind of premise put forward in some other videos that it was forced by Hollywood or something. If you to 8 minutes, "on stage and in public speaking" he says exactly what I was saying, that if you were taught in classical acting, meaning Shakespeare, you would learn to do some kind of learned Britishy accent/diction.

>>46459
>>46460
Wouldn't you say that he has an American thespian accent, though? I think its different from a British thespian accent.

What's the dumbest fantasy trope?

For me, it's "The Balance of Good and Evil."

It's always the stupidest shit when it shows up. Literally the meme about centrists thinking you can't only have good things, you need some bad things to balance out the good things, but directly, explicitly and manifested into a grand cosmic order within a fantasy universe. I think it might be a bastardization of Michael Moorcocks Law vs Chaos, but he deliberately made them as replacements for Good vs Evil where they're actually alien cosmic forces that would destroy reality as we know it if one of them actually won their grand cosmic conflict, and their best aspects come out the most when they are in balance with each other, thus making The Balance the true good guys. Turning that into Good vs Evil is just fucking retarded and typically requires convoluted and contradictory reasons why you wouldn't just want Good to beat Evil. Bonus points if it's always Evil disrupting the supposed balance, so you're just rooting for the Good to beat Evil anyway, and so it's just a hackneyed cliche for the sake of hackneyed cliche.

>>46524
I think this trope can work serviceably when there is little moralizing involved, like using the meddling of an olympian god, who wants to restore "balance", as an inciting incident. What's your take on KOTOR II, fun subversion and/or ancrap wank?

>>46524
What's weirder is when Evil is like all about taking over and doing world domination and that seems to work out just fine for Evil but like if Good overtakes Evil then it's somehow a problem for Good, and that it's only really Good that needs the balance.

i'm currently reading snow crash and honestly Y.T. is a better written character than Hiro. Hiro chapters are only made bearable because of the metaverse and the investigation into snow crash.
yes, i know it's not fantasy but there's no sci-fi general ;-;

>>46531
Love snow crash. I'm making my girlfriend read it now.

>>46524
Highly agree.

>>46534
finished it. tbh i found the ending to be rather underwhelming and the plot starting from when Y.T. gets kidnapped and Hiro just ups and goes to oregon to be kinda confusing specially when Hiro goes on that whole exposition about the virus.

>>46524
The absolutely worst is "the chosen one". Oh you though the protagonist is an underdog heroically struggling against insurmountable odds? Well fuck you, they are actually a cosmic nepo baby destined to win no matter what. Who needs tension in their story anyway.

>Read House on the Borderland
>It's some of the fantasy I've enjoyed most
>Follow up with The Night Land
>It's repetitive slop
>Regret finishing it
What the fuck was his problem? He can write well, so why didn't he on his most famous novel?

>>46568
Chosen one but they fail
Chosen one but they are actually just chosen by some human institution not divine powers
Chosen one but they turn bad
Chosen one but they are incompetent
Chosen one but there's actually several of them as backups and they end up fighting each other
Chosen one but the forces that chose them are actually the bad guy
Chosen one but you find out they're not the chosen one and just some guy
Chosen one but the grand plan for them is bad and they have to deal with that
Chosen one but they don't get any special help and it's just a burden

>>46572
series was entertaining while Rand was going insane, went to shit when he fixed it and turned into Wizard Jesus though

>>46572
wheel of time based

>>46569
yea most people recommend the abridged version, altho the book was highly influential it's spawned Clark Aston smith's Zothique and in turn inspired Jack Vance's Dying Earth series.

>>46573
i preferred early books rand, afterwards it feels like a different character specially after merging with lews therin

anyone here ever heard of tékumel? it first appeared as role-playing game similar to dungeons & dragons and then the creator wrote some books in the setting.
i found out about it when i was reading about raymond feist's riftwar cycle (which i STILL haven't gotten around to read) cause apparently he copied some of tékumel's setting.
some years ago there was a bit of a catastrophe when someone did some sleuthing around and found out the author, mar barker, was a secret neo-nazi who wrote a nazi sci-fi novel called serpent's walk and was in the editorial committee of some neo-nazi magazine as well.

so anyway i ended up reading the first novel, called man of gold, and honestly? the world building is quite kino which was what interested me the most when i first read about it.
the author bizarrely enough, on top of being a neo-nazi was also a professor and a linguist who taught southwestern asian studies and urdu and arabic and was a muslim convert (mar standing for muhammed abd-al-rahman, seriously wtf). he created a whole new language combining aspects of urdu, pashto, nahuatl and maya and interestingly enough the in-book world doesn't feature anything like a superior race or racism or even white people. all the humans in tékumel are brown or yellow skinned, with black hair, vaguely asian/native american/south asian/middle eastern features and something like blue eyes is even thought of as being a curse, or sign of misfortune or being a witch and essentially make you a disfigured ugly motherfucker that no one wants to marry.
the setting is both sci-fi and fantasy, tékumel being a planet that was terraformed at some point by humans (while doing a little genocide on the native species!) and then settled by them and their allies plus some stowaway hostiles. afterwards something or someone causes tékumel to be cleaved from the rest of the universe and fall into a pocket dimension. advanced technological society and knowledge collapses but "magic and gods" are discovered (in reality extra-dimensional energies and entities).
the cultures of the peoples seemed a mix of mesoamerican/european/and different parts of asia, despite the author being a muslim convert i don't perceive any overt islamic or middle eastern influence on the setting. there are stepped temple pyramids, massive fortified roads called sakbe (like the maya roads), the gods are divided between the lords of change and stability (which i think might be a riff on the mesoamerican lords of the day and lords of the night), supreme emperors, people are divided into clans, kilts are the main male clothing and feathers are commonly worked into one's outfit, there are no horses, metals beyond bronze, copper, gold and silver are extremely rare, cities are razed and rebuilt every so often, tradition and custom are everything, there is polygyny AND polyandry (and i just found out that polygamy is not gender specific!) etc…

i started reading the novel cause i wanted something quick, easy and that might be slightly interesting to go through. i wasn't expecting anything particularly good tbqh cause crazy nazi muslim convert rightoid author and originally an rpg but it surprised me and it was actually quite fun to read. like i said the setting is kino and feels very well constructed, lush and alive. the characters were nice and endearing and the plot was entertaining. as an esl i also appreciated the use of many fancy and rare words cause i like to learn such words when reading books. frankly think i'll read the next book as well but that will be it cause the other three books mar barker wrote are apparently a giant drop in quality and they're also not available anywhere online and i'm not going to pay for a physical copy of them tbqh.

i think one of the most surprising things in all these is that the author turned out to be an actual fucking nazi. i know there are right leaning sff authors and all but they're usually not THAT far right. i'm also a bit surprised that dumb ass chuds haven't tried to make tékumel a thing now but then again chuds are usually only into normiecore slop and can only really be counted to read lord of the rings and the first dune book if at all.

>>46640
>>46573
I loved the later books version of Rand. Loved the early ones too, but the later books were great in how they explored him forcing prophecy to happen his way by studying his own prophecies and choosing how to interpret them for his own plans. I thought that was great.

>>46641
damn thanks for the overview anon i might give this a read

>>46641
Even funnier is that his estate knew he was a nazi and quietly covered it up for years. I didn't find it terribly surprising when the news broke after I'd just read The Man of Gold. Not because of the content, but genuinely when has a whiteoid convert to islam ever not been a chud?

>>46651
>but genuinely when has a whiteoid convert to islam ever not been a chud?
Certainly explains Bosnia and Albania.

>>46641
finished reading flamesong.
the overall plot is quite similar to the man of gold but the shadings are different, both involve the discovery of an ancient superweapon that has the power to change the balance of the war being fought and a group of characters is involuntarily brought together who start exploring the world of tékumel as they try to find their way home but this time the protagonist comes from the opposite religious faction, we get different alien companions, some more sympathetic characters from the enemy country and we get to explore a much bigger chunk of the world and its cultures.
there's more character development and character cast is bigger and much like in the man of gold the background is intricately constructed and rich (exposition dumps are less well placed however).

reading the book i couldn't help but think of what a massive waste this world was.
it feels like you could've gotten some really cool and well written stories in here and there's certainly glimmers of that in the story.

finally, there's some irony in the tsolyáni custom of "noble action" and being true to yourself and your beliefs in what you do and the author being a secret nazi.

>>46651
i feel bad for tékumel fans. doubt there were many rightoids among them

>>45130
>>45131
whenever I DM I just avoid the whole orc discourse by having the default horde faction made up of multiple player-races and have it function like a loose confederation similar to the Xiongnu with a medieval european conception of corporatism where every group in the confederation is like an organ in body led by an orc il duce

>>46641
comes across as somesort of guenon adjacent perennialist type of far-rightists imho

>>46684
There really shouldn't even be an orc discourse, and the baddies actually being multi-racial doesn't really protect you from this stupid discourse, as some discussions of the Covenant from Halo will demonstrate.

>>46641
Out of curiosity, how did they find out that Serpent's Walk was authored by MAR Barker?

>>46690
this page talks about it:
>The Tékumel Foundation, who has controlled the Tékmuel IP rights since Barker's death in 2012, has known about the novel since July 2012, after an archivist turned up "the manuscript, the original cover art, the publishing contract, the photocopy of the payment check, and the proof copies of the book" amidst Barker's papers, according to the archivist; the archivist further says that two of the Foundation members knew about it previously.
>The first public hints of the novel appeared in 2018 when independent researcher Amina Inloes wrote an academic paper for The Islamic College of London, later published in The Muslim World (1911-Present) titled "Muhammad Abd al-Rahman (Phillip) Barker: Bridging Cultural Divides through Fantasy/Science-Fiction Role-Playing Games and Fictional Religion". In that article, the author referenced a "pseudonymous novel" written by Barker, refused to name it, and instead offered the following footnote: "Discussing this novel posed an ethical dilemma. The work is clearly Barker's — not only does his share his writing style and interests, but it is published in the name of one of his ancestors. … However, the novel explores potentially inflammatory political viewpoints, and it was impressed upon me that it was best to preserve the facade of anonymity. I thus will leave it to the interested reader to dig it up …". Discussion of this article seems to be what eventually revealed it to the wider public this year.
https://www.rpg.net/columns/advanced-designers-and-dragons/advanced-designers-and-dragons63.phtml
the tékumel foundation later put out a statement confirming his authorship
https://www.tekumelfoundation.org/post/the-tekumel-foundations-board-of-directors-statement-on-serpents-walk

>>46174
I think you can have both. The nature elves are the "wood elves," while the advanced, magical elves are "high elves."

>>46689
its funny that you mention the Covenant since I always thought they were one of better written default horde factions of p much any big video game franchise or at least the writers actually tried to develop the Covenant into an actual living breathing society with culture and history and motivations instead of just being mindless drones.

>>46698
Is the Covenant a "horde" though?

>the witcher has literal elven commandos waging protracted people's war against racist humans which want to exterminate them and their battle cry is "humans to the sea"

What did Andrzej Sapkowski mean by this?

>>46878
I don't know about that, but I stopped watching when the second episode had that obvious Palestine/Israel metaphor and his solution was to tell the Palestinians they need to accept that Israel took their land and they need to move on and find somewhere else to live now.

> In 1240, Geralt is hired to investigate grain thefts in Posada, and is followed by Jaskier the bard. They encounter a Sylvan named Torque, who knocks them unconscious and takes them to his mountain cave. There, Geralt meets Filavandrel, the elven king, and urges him to lead his people to better lands after being banished by the humans. Instead of killing them, Filavandrel frees Geralt and Jaskier, taking the witcher's words to heart.

>>46879
Better summary:
>Jaskier and Geralt awaken to find themselves bound and harassed by Toruviel, an elf who is sick. Filavandrel, king of the elves, reveals that he had the Sylvans steal food and medicine for them to help their sick and starving populace, driven out from their homes by force. This confuses Jaskier, who thought the elves graciously left the land to retire to "golden" palaces, when in actuality they were simple caves.

>Geralt advises Filavandrel to move elsewhere and to rebuild if he refuses to integrate with humans, and claims not to be human, so Filavandrel lets him go. Geralt leaves his bounty with the elves in thanks, and Jaskier sings a new song he created from the experience while Geralt follows behind him.

>>46879
the show is trash
I haven't consumed any other witcher media and I can tell it doesn't give a fuck about source material because nothing makes any sense

>>46879
>>46880
Yeah, I don't know how it plays out yet but in the book Triss the sorceress is sick and they stop at a way station to try and get help. There's a bunch of merchant wagons held up there because the guard fort got attacked, and Geralt walks in on an argument between a racist knight that wants to exterminate all non humans and a few other humans that are basically saying the non humans are rebelling for legitimate reasons. They go on to say
>they're not bandits but "commando" (a gnome loan word) units
<the racist knight says the evil empire is using them to cause trouble
>their battle cry is "humans to the sea"
<humans are outsiders to this setting after some kind of reality convergence dumped people and creatures from various different realities here

So far it's been a bunch of stilted dialogue and kind of tedious scenes but now I'm kind of intrigued.

>>46234
Not exact at all. I wouldn't even call that paraphrased. >>46234

>>46878
>>46879
>>46880
The show doesn't really follow the books at all.

I feel like this should have been obvious when the Nilfgaardians showed up wearing penis scrotum armor. That wasn't in the books.

>>46881
i liked the 1st season. never seen or read anything from the witcher before that

>>46903
The first season was really good. It's what got me interested in the books. Don't know what the fuck happened to season 2.

>>46904
the writers who hate the source material started writing their own ideas instead of following the books, and eventually it made Henry Cavill leave because he wanted the show to follow the books. it was reported through the entire production how much he was playing script doctor to get the show closer to the books and he ultimately lost to the writers.

it's a common issue with adaptations where you need to attach a production to an existing property to guarantee interest, but the writers don't necessarily care about the material because it's a business decision. when you have adaptations made by people who actually understand and care about the source material adaptations tend to go better.

>>46905
What I don't understand is why you would have writers and a showrunner who openly despise the material. Why not just put people who like the material on the project?

>>46911
To the suits making these decisions its all the same stupid crap.

>>46911
It's because people get assigned to these projects based on relationships and contracts and not really something related to familiarity to the material. Entertainment media is a business and the "craft" of making it is not usually given much consideration. The suits calling the shots basically treat these things like they treat stocks, you're investing in an idea that's either good or bad and the rest is interchangeable.

On the point of Netflix adaptations, the rare case where people actually liked it, One Piece, already lost the original showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda who were attached to the project based on being familiar with the original. Maeda became just a producer after season 1 and Owens left after season 2. Owens (who is black) made public statements on Hasan Piker's stream about Netflix cutting a large portion of Usopp's character moments in particular (the black main character). Owens was vague about exactly why he left, but the point is even when they land a showrunner who can cite stuff the original author forgets, they still fumble it.

>>46911
Other than what other anons wrote, lot of writers want to do their own thing, write original stories, but are stuck in an industry where everything being made is a sequel, prequel, reboot, or known IP adaptation.

>>46914
It's just a shame that when they do their own thing it fucking sucks

>>46918
I dont want to defent them too much, because from what I heard the TV writing industry is incredibly nepotistic, but also the result is rarely one persons vision, but a patchwork of dozen writers forced to work together, mangled further by scrutiny of marketeers and financiers.

>>46921
A lot of big TV series have what is called a "showrunner" as a kind of lead creative, and while the show might not be the product of any single writer, it is usually all in line with the general vision of the showrunner.

>>46932
If shit like the recent Star Treks are anything to go by it seems like even that position has been severely diluted. I wonder if the concentration of capital has made it so that you've got way too many of these "showrunner" level people, and so they get crammed into projects, leading to a loss of focus.