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File: 1729464470783.jpg (67.47 KB, 736x414, mirkwood.jpg)

 

Elf edition.

Since a bunch of the old threads were basically nuked with the server transfer, I wanted to revive some of them.

General discussion of the fantasy genre.
62 posts and 20 image replies omitted.

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>>45652
Ears are made of cartilage which isn't particularly good at healing. Maybe longer elf ears would tend to become crooked or something because the longer you live the more likely you are to get injured. Having big ears also makes them easier to get hurt, so maybe as elves get older they tend to develop something like cauliflower ear.

>>45651
>That blog made me check out Rings of Power S2, and it officially crossed into so bad its good territory, if only it was a feature film length and not 8 hour long season. It is so blatant that whatever the declared budget is is fake for the purpose of tax evasion, writers not giving a fuck, editors not giving a fuck, special effects artists not being given enough time to polish the turd, awkward performances, the scenes arent even lit properly, what a disaster.

That's really unfortunate. Alas. At least Christopher isn't alive to watch his father's magnum opus get raped (any more than it has).

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Anyone else really love Jeff Smith’s Bone? Rat creatures have a pretty great design

>>45653
Even the cheapness of costumes aside, the whole design of armors reminds me Dragon Age or something, like it is completely divorced from reality. Someone made a concept art they thought looked cool, and absolutely no thought was put into how the armor would actually function, or if it makes sense in the setting. So you have armors like Galadriel or the orc pictured, made out of random shit glued together, the exactly one elf who wears wooden breastplate, or the ruler of Mordor dressing in old rusty trash.

>>45656
Just to demonstrate how either insanely lazy, or more likely rushed and assembly line the show must have been shot, at the end of penultimate episode one of the main characters gets killed, and in the next episode he is back like nothing happened, not with any in-universe explanation or anything like that, the show just has such a poor continuity. My guess is that the script called for scene where the villain meets a hero on the battlefield, and defeats him. But when they shot that scene, I guess the director literally did not read the rest of the script, that this character in fact should not die here, and interpreted "defeat" as "murder". So you see a guy get repeatedly skewered in the chest, and then the next episode he is just fine. He is not wounded, nothing like that, the previous scene with him was simply forgotten about.

>>45661
Showbiz in general has this problem of seemingly not recognizing armor is functional. It's not just reflected in the designs but in the way they choreograph fight scenes, where you often see things like a sword stabbing straight through platemail.

>>45662
Even just in this clip the continuity doesn't make sense. You see the good guys have maybe 2 dozen people left and then we cut to a big battle lol.

>>45663
Interestingly, I dont think plate armor is even supposed to exist in Middle-Earth. I am currently re-reading LOTR, and any time armor is described, it is mail. In general, the aesthetic of the setting at should be early middle ages.

>>45665
That makes sense given Frodo's mithril shirt is supposed to be notably good. The setting is highly anachronistic though. Despite supposedly taking place in mythic pre-history Bilbo's front door has a brass knob.

>>45666
Why would brass knob be anachronistic?

>>45667
Brass wasn't developed until the early modern period

They also mention golf in The Hobbit lol

>>45668
According to wikipedia brass was used even in bronze age.

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>>45650
Had some short ears for a ren faire once, is was fun. I wish I was an elf.

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>>45661
>medieval period was all gloomy so fantasy medieval land must also be dark with people drenched in mud

>>45673
It's not even supposed to be medieval really. They can make it look however they want. It's also a case of thinking dark and gritty = prestige TV for mature audiences such as myself.

>>45674
Indeed it's not medieval. Taking literally not even ASOIAF or The Witcher are medieval because the societies they represent are only aesthetically and superficially influenced by Europe: there's no confluence of Germanic migrations interacting with an old Roman power to create something new.

Someone probably studied this but it's a 'medieval' aesthetic made true by an stereotyped view of the Middle Ages that seeped into entertainment media.

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>>45661
Does that orc's armor have spines inlaid in it?

What a bizarre detail. Orc armor was chaotic in the Jackson movies, but it was all functional armor.

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How "in tune with nature" and how technologically developed should elves be?

There seems to be quite a lot of variety on that idea. The mythical origins of elves is in stories of fairy folk who live in the woods and are associated with the remaining wild parts of the world that agriculture hasn't taken over yet. There's also some racist tropes that get mixed in based on colonial attitudes towards indigenous people. And of course elves tend to be more magically inclined than humans, and this magic often has some degree of "nature" flavoring. This may even be somewhat innate like DnD giving them the fey creature type that causes animals not to attack them among other things.

Where do you see elves falling on the question of being attuned to nature, avatars of the natural world, or more akin to LotR elves who are quite technologically advanced and producing superior metalwork to humans?

How the Right Abuses Tolkien

>For Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and other figures on today’s far right, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien have become a cultural touchstone. Pity they don’t understand the first thing about them.


https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-the-right-abuses-tolkien

>>45662
god this looks so cheesy

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the peak of pointy ears is poison elves

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Charles R Saunders was the founder of african inspired fantasy with his Imaro series during the 1970s, sometimes called "Sword and Soul". In 1975 he wrote an essay in Toadstool Wine magazine called "Die Black Dog: Racism in fantasy", exploring the racial stereotypes in older pulp fantasy.

This popped up in my Feed™. Thoughts?

>>46231
I saw that too, good video. I of course still like Moorcock but it does serve the lesson that people shouldn't be trying to copy or up-do tolkien. although i disagree with what she say's "tolkien didn't do anything special" that i don't think is too true.

>>46232
The fact that fantasy after Tolkien is in some way or other almost entirely reacting to Tolkien kind of suggests that he did indeed do something special.

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>>46233
that's exactly what terry pratchett said

>>45657
Bone rules, I have to reread it soon. Been forever.

>>46231
>>46233
>>46234
>The fact that fantasy after Tolkien is in some way or other almost entirely reacting to Tolkien kind of suggests that he did indeed do something special.
That's bullshit. People give him way too much credit. Sure there a lot of obvious Tolkien clones but he didn't invent fantasy or fantasy epics. A lot of other works predated him or were contemporary with him. Ok he invented, orcs. He didn't invent elves and dwarves, but if you have orcs, elves, and dwarf races in a story, it's a LOTR inspired story.

>Wizard of Oz series predates his works

>Narnia series contemporaneous with him
>Alice series predates him

>>46240
I was going to say as well, all this Tolkien hype reminds me of the Beatles especially, but anyone like that. Like the Beatles existed in a vacuum and everything they did was never done by anyone else before or by their peers at the same time. Yeah, the most popular artist is probably the most influential, but doesn't mean they're even original. So pretty soon, in popular critical discourse, whoever popularizes a thing, becomes known as the inventor of the thing, and people call other people copycats of the guy who popularized it, even if they didn't invent it.

>>46240
Nobody said he invented fantasy, just that he influenced the whole genre.

>>46241
The fixation on distinct fantasy races with their own cultures and languages was original to Tolkien. Elves and dwarves exist in earlier myth and fantasy but Tolkien was the one who spelled them with the v instead of the f and almost all contemporary elves and dwarves take more after Tolkien's races than mythical/fairytale creatures.

>>46245
>Nobody said he invented fantasy, just that he influenced the whole genre.
But he really didn't. In what way?

>The fixation on distinct fantasy races with their own cultures and languages was original to Tolkien.

No it's fucking not. Of course every fantasy race has their own culture in every fantasy work. Look at the OZ series. Look at the books they say
<Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin.[T 1] He explained that his word "orc" was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability",[T 1][17] and
I'd say what was maybe new for him was he shifted the focus away from the traditional fantasy adventure format, where the hero, goes on journey, meets this strange creature, this magical character, etc. etc.(which The Hobbit fits more into that mold) and shifted the focus onto a large scale war. Like everyone says about the obvious WW2 allegory of LOTR.

>Elves and dwarves exist in earlier myth and fantasy but Tolkien was the one who spelled them with the v instead of the f and almost all contemporary elves and dwarves take more after Tolkien's races than mythical/fairytale creatures.

<Minor spelling change
I wouldn't say that at all. His dwarves and orcs fit neatly with all previous portrayals and descriptions for the most part. And once again how silly it is to try and claim he has the trademark for what he tweaked from popular folklore and mythology.


And top of all that, not all fantasies are Tolkien inspired. There's a lot of fantasy out there. I won't repeat myself again but I hate this shallow media literacy that leads people to make grand sweeping statements about a genre they really know nothing about. Yeah it seems that way to you that the Beatles or Tolkien were completely original artists and all artists after them are copycats of them specifically, but if you had some media literacy you'd understand what work came out before them and at the same time as them, they were inspired by their peers, people today maybe more inspired by one of their contemporaries than them, but their work may share similarities with that other artist they weren't inspired by. To make these broad sweeping statements about the course of an artistic genre, you'd need to have like encyclopedic historian knowledge of literally everything that was coming out then, being written about, being talked about, etc. and even then, you can't really know what was the situation then just from whatever surviving documentation is around.

>>46246
>But he really didn't.
It's pretty incredible to claim that lotr hasn't been massively influential, as though it hasn't been a cultural touchstone for the better part of a century and a central influence on all sorts of media even beyond just fantasy literature.

>>46246
Nobody's calling Tolkien completely original lol. Why are you fixating on that? The fact is his minor idiosyncratic skew on common fantasy tropes have become dominant interpretations in the genre. You talk about media literacy but you can't even understand the points people are making in the posts you're arguing with.

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>>46231
Watched the video. The points are

>Tolkien is often cited at this massive pillar of fantasy that all other fantasy is based on, but that's not really the whole story

>The truth is that a book publisher lead by the Del Rays intentionally started deliberately publishing "Tolkienesque" fantasy literature on an established formula in the 60s based on a very surface-level and often inaccurate reading of Lord of the Rings
>Michael Moorcock then responded against the Del Ray formula, while misidentifying his target as Tolkien. This supposedly "Anti-Tolkien" (really anti-Del Ray) formula reached its zenith with JRR Martin. While what Moorcock and JRR Martin do might seem really fresh and original at first, you realize that it is just an inverse of the Del Ray formula. Whatever the Del Rays would have wanted you to do in their fantasy formula, just do the opposite.
>Then just recently, we've had a contrarian response to the Moorcock and Martin contrarian response.
>All of this is really just shitty, corporate formula and has nothing to do with Tolkien.
>The only way for fantasy to break out of its rut and have another Lord of the Rings phenomenon is to embrace genuinely original works rather than just formulas and then contrarian formulas and then contrarian formulas to the contrarian formulas.

>>46250
But that is simply not true. You didn't understand anything I said btw. I could repeat it again but there is a low chance you will get it this time.

>>46253
>everything is Tolkien
<because everything is del rey
>bit del rey actually has nothing to do with tolkien

>>46248
>cultural touchstone
What that even mean lol.

>>46254
It's more like Del Ray's formula was an impression of Tolkien rather than being based on any kind of genuine understanding of Tolkien, which causes Del Ray "Tolkienesque" literature to actually differ significantly from Tolkien's actual works while maintaining surface-level similarities.

Which is important, since many critiques of Tolkien aren't actually critiques of Tolkien at all, but of the Del Ray formula. "Epic Pooh," for instance, is pretty much just a critique of the Del Ray formula, but is so inaccurate as a critique of Tolkien it makes you wonder if Moorcock actually read any of Tolkien's works.

>>46255
It means read a book

>>46257
Which book says cultural touchstone?

this is a good video series

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😎

What do you guys think about Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series? I've been thinking about trying it out since I liked The Dispossessed, although that's more sci-fi.

>>46312
It's been a long time since I read wizard of earthsea but I remember enjoying it. It's not a long read either so you should give it a try.

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>>46308
>I don't want to see a single Nordic inspired culture
>Asian Elves
I honestly don't even completely disagree with this. Having a fantasy setting based on the myths and legends of a non-European culture would be cool. But, time and fucking again, they prove that all they mean by this is "what if we just race-swapped all the characters in an otherwise typical Northern European fantasy setting." I figure shit like this must be bait, because I don't know how you stumble at the first hurdle.

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The Wheel of Time TV show got cancelled.

Honestly, good riddance. I cannot understand why people make "adaptations" and then make big changes to the source material.

>>46317
Tbh I thought it would have been cool to do this with the blue wizards from lotr. They're practically a blank slate and license to go nuts past the known borders of ME. If Tolkien's ME was him riffing off of European medieval fiction, they could have taken the same opportunity with African or Asian literature as well.

>>46330
Exactly.

The only problem it would face is that people would call it fanfiction, but since we're already in a fanfiction era, you might as well go full new material fanfic instead of ruining established material.

>>46308
No lose weight, Hayley. However if they are going to be "plus size" it needs to make sense, they need to do something that requires strength over everything else and be strong fat, not the diabetic cupcake multiple neckroll shit blood circulation completely sednentary fat most burgers are.

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>>46338
Ironically, there's tons of "plus size" characters in fantasy. It's just typically not done in that specific "representation" sort of way.


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