/hobby/ - Hobby

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.

>>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.

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.

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

>>46308
that's a thing it's called "sword and soul"
>>46230

What do you guys think about the idea that American accents are out of place or inappropriate for fantasy? Lots of fantasy series are going out of their way to hire British actors and teams or to train American actors to speak in British accents out of the belief that this is more appropriate for fantasy.

I find this odd, because a lot of the more iconic fantasy shows and series in the past used American accents without issue. What do you guys think? Do you find American accents off-putting in fantasy film or TV shows (in comparison to British accents)?

>>46431
lmao, I tried downloading the second video, but I didn't realize the downloader was only downloading like 5 seconds in the middle for some reason.

>>46308
>Asian elves
lol

>>46431
Why 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.

Can I just say trying to read "pulp fantasy" has been atrocious so far. Robert E. Howard and Fritz Lieber. Keep in mind these authors are separated by how many years? Flat characters, purple prose, boring worldbuilding. It's literally written worse than some fanfiction out there, I am genuinely astounded that these authors had any sort of lasting impact.
Oh, you think Tolkien is the Ur-Racism of fantasy? I guess you've never read a Robert E. Howard short story featuring actual black people. Good for you, because if you think Tolkien is the Ur-Racism, I can't imagine the reaction you would have to an actually racist depiction of actual black people. Jesus Christ.

>>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.

>>46456
Maybe try reading Michael Moorcock. I heard Elric of Melnibone was a fun riff on Conan and fantasy tropes in general.

>>46432
That'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.

>>46431
>>46432
>>46459
I think modern British accents would also most likely sound goofy in fantasy too. Imagine a medeival fantasy with people that sound like this.

>>46459
>>46460
I thought the Mid-Atlantic thing was a myth.

>>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?