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.
88 posts and 35 image replies omitted.>>46240Nobody said he invented fantasy, just that he influenced the whole genre.
>>46241The 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 changeI 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.
>>46254It'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.
>>46330Exactly.
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>Asian elveslol
>>46431Why tf are they speaking regular modern English at all? We know that canonically the characters are probably actually speaking other languages since the story takes place in a very different setting from the modern world. It's not really any more jarring than seeing something that takes place in Rome having characters speak English instead of Latin.
On the other hand, more fantasy could go farther with the way characters speak and I don't mean full Tolkien conlang stuff just like thinking about how characters speak and giving them quirks specific to the setting instead of boring standard stuff like copypasting IRL English accents based on class differences. Stuff like having them speak more like Shakespeare characters or coming up with a gimmick like Yoda goes a long way to making them feel more different and fantastical. The ones who are supposed to be more normal and mundane should probably still speak more or less like the audience though so they're more relatable, at least in stories where the fantastical stuff is seen through the eyes of a regular person.
>>46456>Oh, you think Tolkien is the Ur-Racism of fantasy?No.
>I guess you've never read a Robert E. Howard short story featuring actual black people.Yeah, Howard's work can get pretty racist, though I sometimes wonder how racist he really was. You have to remember that he was a pulp author writing for a magazine in the 20s and 30s, and so he was under pressure to play to certain tropes. Like in one Solomon Kane story, Solomon Kane is clearly attracted to this black African queen lady (when race-mixing was a big fucking no-no in his time), and then in the very next story another black girl shows up, but then the text basically says that she pretty much looked white, okay? Maybe she was mixed with North Africans or something. Then the Conan stories go out of their way to clarify that, for all Conan's travels across the world and all the women he's bedded, he's only fucking white chicks.
>>46432That's not really an American accent. That's what I call a thespian accent. ChatGPT is calling it "Theatrical Mid-Atlantic" and that's also coming when I search for thespian accent(which I guess I'm inventing as a term)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_American_Speech>Good American Speech, a Mid-Atlantic accent,[1][2][3] or a Transatlantic accent[4][5][6] is a consciously learned accent of English that was promoted in certain American courses on acting, voice, and elocution from the early to mid-20th century. I know what a Mid-Atlantic accent is in reference to old movies, but to me, the "thespian accent" which is what the Americans who were trained on Shakespeare like, James Earl Jones and Denzel Washington. But James Earl Jones really leans into it more than Washington. Washington usually does more natural voice roles, where as James Earl Jones usually does these very Shakespearian type roles. Although he does stuff in modern vernacular and someone made a really funny edit of his voice from those kind of roles with Darth Vader.
>>46534finished 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.
>>46568Chosen 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
Unique IPs: 26