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.
>>440491m95 for male elves, 1m80 for females
>>44049I find tall women to be attractive.
>>44053Oh so I'm thinking pretty tall. Maybe 7 to 8 feet. I think fantasy stories don't do size difference enough. Only like the monstrous humanoids like ogres, while all the intelligent ones are roughly human size or sometimes midgets like hobbits and dwarves.
>>44049Different tribes of elves with different heights between them
>>44049whichever have largest tits
>>44058Wouldn't that just be the tallest ones or do you mean proportional to their bodies?
You know what grinds my gears with fantasy? The dipshits who say something like
>B-but it's fantasy! There's wizards and dragons!
when something doesn't make any sense.
Good fantasy is supposed to have coherent worlds that feel like the could exist. Like this could be a real place in some parallel dimension, not like someone's just making shit up.
>>44413I think there's a bit of a disconnect on this tbh. There's (broadly) two kinds of fantasy in this regard. On the one hand you have "grounded" fantasy with well established rules, and on the other you have fantasy that runs on vibes and will get away with anything. Maybe you could think of it as a spectrum, too since sometimes they mix these elements, like in Lord of the Rings having a detailed history but also very soft magic.
always thought fantasy was for faggots but then I read Conan
>>44417>Conanthat's gay as fuck anon
>>44422Is that praise for it?
>>44039Good taste, anon <3
>>44049Women larger than the males. 😉😉😉
How would you balance elves being immortal (or just very long-lived) in a game system where characters level up or get more skilled over time?
>Longer lifespan and slower growth/aging means higher XP thresholds
>You can lose XP/skill with time (also lets elder races respec organically)
>Some other drawback (and not reducing attributes since elves are ageless)
>>44961>>Longer lifespan and slower growth/aging means higher XP thresholdsThis is the solution i've seen most often. It looks to be the best fit from a flavor and game mechanic standpoint, but on the face of it raising XP caps seems like bad game design.
The approach you can kind of extrapolate from Elder Scrolls is stacking minor elemental weaknesses until damage taken from most enemies seems to be fair in relation to offensive strength and human attributes. This approach definitely enriches character building, yet might not even the scales enough or be hard to justify lorewise.
Other tweaks might include having humans be more favored by gods (if they're a part of gameplay) or charismatic to members of certain races, locking in races for certain class/alignment combinations or giving a race more difficult sustenance requirements (see zangband's vampires, ghouls and golems).
>>44961Honestly, I just kind of operate on the idea that this is the elf's first real adventure
>>44107>Wouldn't that just be the tallest ones or do you mean proportional to their bodies?The latter.
The thicker the shelf, the hotter the elf.
>>45008I remember reading about a society following the elf archetype that lived in a grand city made entirely from light tent fabric, like a more dignified version of dwarffortresses hippie elves. The first pic has a somewhat similar vibe.
>>44998I finally understand now
>>45130The silly thing about Orc Discourse is there's usually always some other monster that just takes the place the orcs used to have, like gnolls, hobgoblins, orgres, etc.
>>44961>How would you balance elves being immortal (or just very long-lived) in a game system where characters level up or get more skilled over time?What kind of game are you talking about? Like Elder Scrolls? What does living long matter? Not that many ingame years pass right? If you mean in a game that takes place over generations, like Chivalry, I'd just have it that the elves are just a lot less fecund. So you're stronger/more skilled, but losing characters hurts more.
In like an Elder Scrolls game I'd just balance the races by giving them various strengths and weaknesses on the stats like most games do.
>>45132Well if you have a video game where lifespan isn't going to come into play it'd really just be an immersion thing - why would the elves who are 400 years old not be vastly more skilled than the humans who are 30? But in a context where lifespan does come into play, either a video game or a tabletop game that takes place over decades, any characters with a longer lifespan would gain an innate advantage from being able to stick around longer and keep gaining XP. I guess you could make the shorter lived races tougher, but it'd be a little weird for that to be a standard difference between them.
>If you mean in a game that takes place over generations, like Chivalry, I'd just have it that the elves are just a lot less fecund. So you're stronger/more skilled, but losing characters hurts more.This is a good answer for games where you're managing large numbers of people as opposed to individual characters. Shorter lived races tend also to have flavor that gives them higher fertility, like humans or goblins typically breeding more than the typical dwarf or halfling.
Are D&D retroclones reactionary?
>>45131>The silly thing about Orc Discourse is there's usually always some other monster that just takes the place the orcs used to have, like gnolls, hobgoblins, orgres, etc.Just like burgereich "whiteness" discourse. I used to think Latinos were next up to become white, but now I believe it's Indians.
>>45131That's the weird thing, isn't it? The orc discourse is specifically about orcs. If I made a fantasy setting and described trolls as a race of savage monsters that live in caves and beneath the earth who come out to raid and terrorize the countryside, or described the beastmen as a race of twisted mortals who functioned as mortal demons, hating the sunlight and all that is good and grows upon the earth and plotting the destruction of all creation, no one would care. They're just fantasy monsters to act as baddies in your campaigns.
The discourse is about orcs ''specifically."
>>45137I dunno, I've seen discussions about it on tumblr where the issue is with the fact that there's an evil race that it's deemed morally good to destroy, and orcs just happen to fill that spot most of the time because of Tolkien.
Though I wonder if that's even true in lotr. Like it's presented as pretty uncomplicated because of the circumstances, but then there's the episode where sam and frodo infiltrate Mordor and there's a conversation between a couple of orks about maybe just bugging out and setting up somewhere else out of sauron's control. So like, in that respect orcs aren't all unthinking slaves, and if that's the case then in the logic of lotr there's capacity for good orcs.
>>45138I think they might dislike that broader idea, but I think it's specifically the orcs that trigger it. I think it may be because orcs are distinctively more human in appearance than other monstrous races.
For instance, I haven't heard anyone complain about the portrayal of the Garthim in the Dark Crystal because they're weird evil insect crabs. As another example, gnolls often fill a very similar roll to orcs in the fantasy settings where they appear, but don't seem to trigger the same conversations because they're weird hyena monsters.
>>45139You might be right, and I suppose I don't necessarily blame them, especially in regards to other internet zeitgeist stuff like the ubiquity of orc/elf rape fiction and the tropes that tends to employ.
>>45135>Are D&D retroclones reactionary?lol
No they are just updating an old ruleset to be more accessible with better formatting and such.
>>45137>>45138Orc discourse is
usually about orcs and only orcs, but
sometimes it broadens to the more general concept of evil or monstrous races. You even sometimes have people making arguments about how certain creatures being framed as "monsters" instead of just another species (especially intelligent monsters that aren't "races" like beholders) is weird and gross. Which has a point, since the games and other media usually treat being an extinction event for the "bad creatures" as a good thing. This is arguably rooted way way deeper in the ideology of fantasy than any particular "bad race."
>>45143>especially in regards to other internet zeitgeist stuff like the ubiquity of orc/elf rape fiction and the tropes that tends to employ.Here, I feel like D&D is partially responsible. Before you could play as an orc, only half-orcs were playable, and the half-orcs were explicitly stated to be the product of just such a dynamic, just orc/human instead of orc/elf.
>>45144Here's the thing, fantasy creatures having wildly different mindsets and motivations to our own is partially what makes them feel like a fantasy creature. This goes all the way back to ancient mythology and folklore where fey creatures would have significantly different mindsets, motivations and a sense of morality to humans. For example,t hey typically show little or no value for mortal life, but will treat games and riddles like the most sacred of laws.
If you don't have this, fantasy creatures start all feeling like variant humans.
>>45146That's true but if anything it's a testament to how boring an "evil race" or "evil culture" almost always is. Even if you make your orcs Yakubian monstrosities that only know evil, it's way more interesting to actually explore that dynamic and its pragmatic implications than to just have them be fodder for your sword and board heroes. It's also robbing the story of a lot of powerful emotions and themes if you simply reduce the enemy to acceptable and disposable targets when the characters might have mixed feelings or at least more interesting motivations for why they fight these enemies.
There's also a vast and wide open space you can explore in the realm of "their psychology is different from humans." Star Trek did this significantly better despite usually still being unrealistically reductive and silly (which is more an issue of doing alien-of-the-week instead of spending more time developing the worldbuilding).
>>45147>That's true but if anything it's a testament to how boring an "evil race" or "evil culture" almost always is. Even if you make your orcs Yakubian monstrosities that only know evil, it's way more interesting to actually explore that dynamic and its pragmatic implications than to just have them be fodder for your sword and board heroes. It's also robbing the story of a lot of powerful emotions and themes if you simply reduce the enemy to acceptable and disposable targets when the characters might have mixed feelings or at least more interesting motivations for why they fight these enemies.Screenwriter John August wrote a good blogpost on this years ago.
https://johnaugust.com/2010/screenwriting-and-the-problem-of-evilScreenwriting and the problem of evil
>In most movies, the villain isn’t really “evil” — he’s just at cross-purposes with the hero. Darth Vader does not perceive himself to be doing wrong. The queen in Aliens is protecting her brood. The shark in Jaws is, well, a shark.1
>The villains I’m writing fall somewhere in between zombies and robots: more sentient than the shambling dead, but less purposeful than Skynet. The challenge has been figuring out how to articulate What They Want in a way that makes sense in a popcorn movie.
>If I were writing a junior-year philosophy paper, I’d be able to fold in some Nietzsche and Sartre quotes and call it a day. But that won’t play at 24 frames per second. It needs to be satisfying without external support. So I’m left to look for parallels in other successful movies. personally I thought the warcraft orcs were a lot more interesting when they were just straight up evil before they became lame noble warriors tricked into being evil by a demon or whatever
>>45149It was interesting at the time because IIRC Warcraft III was the first major piece of fantasy media to go with that angle. There was a time when "good orcs" was a pretty fresh and unique take. And at least in Reign of Chaos, the Undead had taken up the mantle of very evil baddies that the orcs dropped.
>>45150>the Undead had taken up the mantle of very evil baddies that the orcs dropped.And they do far better job at it too. Orcs lack the cool factor as villains, they are just violent "ooga booga Grog smash" cavemen.
Concerning the shifting fantasy attitude towards orcs, I think its because even when they are supposed to be unambiguous bad guys, they get depicted as evil people, with culture and individuality, rather than evil monsters. Even back in the begining, Tolkien noticed the moral dilemma implied in that.
>>45166Yeah it's another casualty of covid. The puppets required the puppeteers to be in very close quarters that would violate regulations (most puppets required more than one operator). It's a shame. It was extremely impressive from a technical perspective and the puppets manage to feel like characters and carry a show without regular human actors. They only used a marginal amount of CGI to make minor tweaks to the faces and lip sync IIRC. Other than stuff like backgrounds and erasing puppeteers of course. It really helped sell the idea of an very different/alien world.
It was also pretty on the nose about class struggle. Unlike most fantasy where the status quo is good, it's explicitly a system of domination and exploitation. This is more clear than in the original movie - the show depicts and discusses the Skeksis appropriating surplus, which is identified in-universe as an injustice and explained to be the material basis of the class society. IIRC that's just the first episode. It's a feudal system not a capitalist one of course, so it's not
that radical, but class struggle is still fundamentally the driving conflict of the show.
>Clap! Snap! the black crack!
>Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!
>And down down to Goblin-town
>You go, my lad!
>Clash, crash! Crush, smash!
>Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!
>Pound, pound, far underground!
>Ho, ho! my lad!
>Swish, smack! Whip crack!
>Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
>Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,
>While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
>Round and round far underground
>Below, my lad!
>Fifteen birds in five fir-trees,
>their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze!
>But, funny little birds, they had no wings!
>O what shall we do with the funny little things?
>Roast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot;
>fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
>Burn, burn tree and fern!
>Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch
>To light the night for our delight,
>Ya hey!
>Bake and toast 'em, fry and roast ’em
>till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;
>till hair smells and skins crack,
>fat melts, and bones black
>in cinders lie
>beneath the sky!
>So dwarves shall die,
>and light the night for our delight,
>Ya hey!
>Ya-harri-hey!
>Ya hoy!
.
>>45323>>45324I love goblins.
>>44415>very soft magic.by "soft magic" do you mean it doesnt have well defined rules, or "low magic"? latter ofc makes no sense with LotR but i'd also argue LotR challenges your initial premise, since it is extremely detailed and largely internally consistent, but also a world & story that operates according to mythological presumptions, not naturalistic ones. its less like the fantasy derivative of it than it is like if there was a greek/norse myth that prioritized the actions & lives of mortals/lesser demigods
>>45389The post already explained, "soft magic" means not specific rules for how it works. Soft magic is like Gandalf being able to vaguely use magic to protect the fellowship from danger. Hard magic is like having spell slots and doing math.
>>45390Hard magic is okay in an RPG context where you need well defined rules and numbers to make the game work, but it typically feels too rationalist in a fantasy narrative. I think magic is supposed to be somewhat mysterious.
This is one of my problem with the new Warcraft lore. Originally, the various forms of magic were mysterious and generally unrelated to each other. Then they retconned and reworked it into this stupid hard magic system (pic related.)
This is just one of many things that has ruined the setting, but this was not a fucking improvement.
>>45390Actually, Tolkien had a magic system in mind and concrete ideas about how various magical things worked, he just kept it deliberately vague in his published books and tended to go over them mostly in letters and notes. For instance, he says in a letter that each mortal life has a certain lifespan allotted to it, and magical life extension worked by stretching that lifespan out, and as a consequence it sort of gets thinner and, well, stretched out. In the book, Tolkien only vaguely alludes to this, like when Bilbo reaches the great age of 111, and yet doesn't seem to have aged at all, and later remarks to Gandalf "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
In addition to this, there's also the fact that most "hard" magic systems kind of operate like an alternative version of physics, while Tolkien's magic system wasn't anything of the sort and seem to be based on Neoplatonism like a lot of the rest of the book. Like in one part of the book, the Hobbits mention that the elves have magic like Sauron does, causing Galadriel to be somewhat taken aback that they think that the power of the elves and the power of Sauron are the same, but concedes that to those unfamiliar with these things, it would all seem to all just fall under the umbrella of "magic." In a letter, Tolkien explains that the power of the elves comes from the ideal of beauty, while the power of Sauron come from the ideal of control and is related to a type of evil he calls "The Machine." Which is all very different from most other magic systems which, like I said before, tend to be more like an alternative form of physics, while his magic is essentially emanations of Platonic ideals, made all the more obtuse that he deliberately keeps it all vague and mysterious in the books themselves.
>>45415Platonism is still "alternative physics" just that it's an idealist version of physics vs a materialist version. The Greeks had physical theories, they were just very different from what we have developed through science. To have a really "soft" magic in this sense would require magic to work more by fiat and hand waves (which isn't totally unreasonable depending on the story).
>>45422Didn't the Catholic church absorb a lot of these Greek/Platonic theories and reasoning over their centuries of discourse on temporal and supernatural subjects? Would it be fair to say that the would of lotr functions along these lines given Tolkien's influences?
>>45423Yeah but the thing is that this idea of physics is much more vibes based because it's idealist. In that sense it's still a more "soft" magic. It might be very elaborate and detailed but it's not necessarily concrete or consistent like a set of rules.
>>45425Isn't it all kind of vibes based, though? Even with magic that mimics physics, it's kind of up to the author to decide exactly what that means.
Recently I watched two low budget 90s LOTR TV adaptations, one Finish, Hobitit (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHFKdgjEugs), which presents the story almost entirely from the perspective of Frodo, and the Russian Khraniteli, which adapts only the first book. Neither in a language I understand. They are both basically theater productions, with Hobitit being a more competent one, doing the best it can with its non-existent budget (although they could picked shorter actors for hobbits so that Frodo isnt taller than Aragorn). That also makes it a less interesting one, just not much going on. The only notable thing which made me laugh is when Gollum showed up, because he is literally just a naked fat bald guy, acting like he is tweeking on meth. Also Aragorn's wig makes him look like he is in 80s hair metal band. And Boromir has sort of punk look going on, dressed in black, shaved sides of head with a tattoo on one side. The actors should have been switched, Boromir has much more serious, royal aura to him.
Khraniteli on the other hand has a lot going in it. It is like a 2 hour long LOTR shitpost. Has weirdly psychadelic quality to it. "Effects" and costumes are laughable, greenscreen (or whatever the Russian 1991 version of it is) is abused even when there is absolutely no need for it, performances, I dont even know how to describe them, funky electronic music used as a Nazgul theme, just everything.
>>45649That 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.
>>45650Would the long ones start sagging as they age? (Do elves age?)
>>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).
>>45656Just 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.
>>45661Showbiz 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.
>>45662Even 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.
>>45663Interestingly, 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.
>>45665That 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.
>>45666Why would brass knob be anachronistic?
>>45667Brass wasn't developed until the early modern period
They also mention golf in The Hobbit lol
>>45668According to wikipedia brass was used even in bronze age.
>>45673It'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.
>>45674Indeed 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.
>>45661Does 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.
>>45662god this looks so cheesy
>>46231I 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.
>>46232The 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.
>>45657Bone 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 >>46240I 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.
>>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.
>>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.
>>46246Nobody'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.
>>46250But 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 touchstoneWhat that even mean lol.
>>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.
>>46255It means read a book
>>46257Which book says cultural touchstone?
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.
>>46312It'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.
>>46317Tbh 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.
>>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.
>>46308No 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.
>>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.
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.
>>46456Maybe try reading Michael Moorcock. I heard Elric of Melnibone was a fun riff on Conan and fantasy tropes in general.
>>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.
>>46461That 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>>46460Wouldn't you say that he has an American thespian accent, though? I think its different from a British thespian accent.
>>46524I 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?
>>46524What'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 ;-;
>>46531Love snow crash. I'm making my girlfriend read it now.
>>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
>>46572series was entertaining while Rand was going insane, went to shit when he fixed it and turned into Wizard Jesus though
>>46572wheel of time based
>>46569yea 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.
>>46573i 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>>46573I 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.
>>46641damn thanks for the overview anon i might give this a read
>>46641Even 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.
>>46641finished 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.
>>46651i feel bad for tékumel fans. doubt there were many rightoids among them
>>45130>>45131whenever 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
>>46641comes across as somesort of guenon adjacent perennialist type of far-rightists imho
>>46684There 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.
>>46641Out of curiosity, how did they find out that Serpent's Walk was authored by MAR Barker?
>>46690this 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.phtmlthe 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 >>46174I think you can have both. The nature elves are the "wood elves," while the advanced, magical elves are "high elves."
>>46689its 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.
>>46698Is the Covenant a "horde" though?
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