Medieval Fantasy = finished genre?

[Anonymous No.21309349]

Castles, Kings, Soldiers, Dragons, Orcs, Trolls, Magic, characterization, etc.

Essentially every cartoon, video game, MMO (with medieval fantasy elements)... has appealed to kids and teenagers since the early 2000s - like it was crack or heroin for capitalistic purposes.

What is so different from Tolkien, GRR Martin,etc.. now ?

[Anonymous No.21309387]

>>21309349
>What is so different from Tolkien, GRR Martin,etc.. now ?
Tolkien is the only fantasy author to have literary merit

[Anonymous No.21309404]

>>21309387
Tolkien is commercial genre fiction. Literary fantasists are people like Mervyn Peake or John Crowley.

[Anonymous No.21309428]

>>21309404
>Literary fantasists are people like Mervyn Peake or John Crowley.
You never read Tolkien and it shows.

[Anonymous No.21309437]

>>21309428
I have, actually. He's closer to other commercial genre writers than to literary writers. And I have analyzed where he stole from to go even further and label him as a creative fraud.

[Anonymous No.21309458]

>>21309349
Do you have permission to post this image?

[Anonymous No.21309462]

>>21309458
this is the one you're looking for

[Anonymous No.21309643]

>>21309349
I'm trying to write some shit fantasy lore in English to challenge myself since its not my native language. I'd like to go for a dark fantasy style where a piece of land the size of New York is floating like an island in nothingness. No one knows how or why but that's how it is (everything would be done from the inhabitants' point of view)

This setting should be depressing, people struggling to gather resources in this world, survive against unnatural phenomenons and so on.

Any good books to read or general recommendations for this ? Even short stories.

To give a quick example, Mordheim from the warhammer franchise is a strong starting point for the overall atmosphere I'm trying to create.

[Anonymous No.21309926]

>>21309643
>This setting should be depressing, people struggling to gather resources in this world, survive against unnatural phenomenons and so on.

See this? This shit right here? This is the kind attitude that explains why the genre is dead. Tolkien wrote about a world in peril but the world itself was good and lively and worth fighting for. This modern fascination with misery, bleakness, darkness and sorrow are why so much fantasy literature falls to the wayside. Because it's not written as enduring. Not timeless. Not a world of dreams and fantasy. It's a world dreamed up by cynics and people looking to shock rather than immerse.

[Anonymous No.21310251]

>>21309926
>/r/lotrcirclejerk

[Clyde White No.21310297]

>>21309404
Peake is a much, much, MUCH better stylist. But Tolkien put in a far more serious effort to build his setting. Peake just made up a lot of goofy traditions as he went, so goofy no on in the story even knows their source or even guesses at it most of the time. Tolkien fleshed out his setting with great depth, the fact that he used history and epic as a model is no criticism, it is like criticizing an author for using real persons as the basis for the psychology of his characters. Peake also does excel at psychology but all his characters are quixotic and zany as his setting , which makes his task also much easier than Tolkien who tried to write elves as so on as psychologically realistic and yet uhuman. To simply dwell on Peake having a superior style and a more “literary” plot is to rig the game so as to ignore Tolkien’s strengths

[Anonymous No.21310309]

>>21310297
>Tolkien fleshed out his setting with great depth, the fact that he used history and epic as a model is no criticism
He stole from pre-existing myths. There is no merit in that. He didn't just use it as a model.
> it is like criticizing an author for using real persons as the basis for the psychology of his characters.
lol what? That's delusional false equivalence.

[Anonymous No.21310310]

>>21309428
Toklien was the guy to get mainstream popularity because of communist hippie stoners and that's why he's the only fantasy author you've ever read

[Anonymous No.21310311]

>>21310251
He's right though. I'm not a huge tolkien fan but there's a reason he's an international classic while many of his contemporaries and even predecessors of higher quality remain only niche favorites. Nobody but a sociopath would want to live in Westeros but everybody wants to live in the shire. There's a degree to which the entire point of LotR is to pit the Shire against Westeros and prove it the victor.

[Anonymous No.21310359]

>>21310311
GRRM is a "niche favorite"? You're delusional lol

[Clyde White No.21310367]

>>21310309
He did an adaption of old myths and his adaption had an extensive degree of his own touch, invention and creativity in it. You might as well say Shakespeare “stole” Hamlet since the character and story are an old myth

[Anonymous No.21310394]

>>21309387
Fpbp

[Anonymous No.21310421]

>>21310367
Shakespeare took an old myth and made a play based on it. Tolkien took old myths and bastardized them in an attempt to do some "original" kitschy national epic.

[Clyde White No.21310455]

>>21310421
I don’t consider his work an attempt at a national epic, the fact that he drew on the English national epic (Beowulf) is beside the point, since he said in his letters at an early age he turned against classical studies in favor of Anglo-Saxon studies in an act of rebellion against his adoptive father (who was a Catholic priest and naturally wanted Tolkien to study classical literature). I don’t really see it as kitsch either unless one is exasperatingly cynical and is upset that it doesn’t dwell on lower vices of the characters

[Anonymous No.21310479]

>>21310455
>I don’t consider his work an attempt at a national epic,
That's how he considered it. In his letters he says he attempts to write a national epic for the English because they lack one. That's all fine and dandy and the hobbits feel very English but everything else is stolen from other cultures and myths.
>I don’t really see it as kitsch either unless one is exasperatingly cynical and is upset that it doesn’t dwell on lower vices of the characters
It's kitsch because he mixed all these different myths but gave them a modern, anglicized morality and point of view. He gave shit to Lewis for this but he did exactly the same.

[Anonymous No.21310520]

>>21309387
More like one of the last fantasy writer to have literary merit; Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn was also pretty good

[Clyde White No.21310526]

>>21310479
And Wagner also gave it a contemporary German morality. And Shakespeare gave Hamlet a contemporary English morality. Let’s not even get into Ivanhoe

[Anonymous No.21310530]

>>21309387
>who is th white
>who is cs lewis
>who is Ursula k leguin
This really is 4chans dumbest board

[Anonymous No.21310552]

>>21310526
You forgot point of view. The hobbits have modern things like names for months (e.g. April), clocks on the mantelpiece, the narrator compares some shit to trains (lmao), they wear jackets, etc. And this is supposed to happen in a time before history. Very kitschy and tacky. Might as well discuss Churchill and the tories while watching the BBC.

[Anonymous No.21310611]

>>21310311
LotR is all about Middle Earth going to shit (both slowly and violently) and all the privileged people leaving for Valhallinor. The Shire is the tiniest part of that story and half of that is the place getting scoured. Way to do a weird cherry pick there.

[Clyde White No.21310622]

>>21310552
In Coriolanus there is a reference to spectacles, and in Golding’s translation of Ovid there is a reference to muskets. I’d say Tolkien’s anachronism’s are not that serious

[Anonymous No.21310653]

>>21310622
Spectacles existed in Roman times. Tolkien's anachronisms are just tacky and exude anglo vulgarity. He should've known better but I guess his work is meant for little kids after all, like JK Rowling and Percy Jackson.

[Clyde White No.21310672]

>>21310653
If you look at the commentary in any play of Coriolanus you will see it is listed as anachronism. Steel has evidence of existence hundreds of years before the birth of Christ but featuring it prominently in literature would be considered an anachronism. Moreover commentaries insist Shakespeare knew this but his performers were frequently making reference to contemporary matters. In King Lear not eating fish is presented as a virtue, which is meant to mean one doesn’t observe Catholic fasts against meat, a virtue to Protestants but of course anachronistic here since the setting is pagan England.

[Anonymous No.21310742]

>>21310530
>>who is th white
>>who is cs lewis
No one knows who they are.

[Anonymous No.21310746]

>>21310672
One reference to spectacles is far from "featuring it prominently." And it's also nowhere near close to talking about trains or clocks on the mantelpiece in a pre-historic era. The hobbits feel more like a caricature of modern rural Britons than some ancient fantasy race.

[Anonymous No.21310754]

>>21310359
Do you see that little dot that comes after the word "favorites"? That's called a period it marks the end of a sentance showing that a complete thought has been expressed. The next word that begins with that one letter that is bigger than all the others? That's called a capital letter and it is most often used to signify that a new sentence is beginning which will communicate a new thought.
Do you also think I was trying to say that GRRM was "contemporary" or "predecessor of higher quality" to Tolkien? I mean, do you believe that? It would explain why your reading comprehension is so dogshit.

>>21310611
You didn't understand LotR. Here's a hint, just because you can contrive a description of something doesn't mean you've described what it is. I don't think you even realize what the "scouring" of the shire even meant. Here's a hint, look up what it means to scour something.

[Anonymous No.21310757]

>>21310742
>no one knows the Chronicles of Narnia
what a strange cope

[Clyde White No.21310759]

>>21310742
They use anachronisms as well interestingly enough

[Anonymous No.21310772]

>>21310757
> She has outsold The Davinci Code and half the Harry Potter series

That is genuinely shocking to me. I don't hate on She like allot of people like to do but I did not expect it to have been THAT successful.

[Anonymous No.21311203]

>>21309437
It's not a good sign when people recognize you on an anonymous board. Especially for being a whiny faggot. Stop shitting up every Tolkien thread, and go read Maze Runner or whatever the fuck.

[Anonymous No.21311219]

>>21311203
Why would I read that shit? Readers of Tolkien are the ones who read that kind of low tier genre fiction. Go watch Rangz of Powah, faggot.

[Anonymous No.21311251]

>>21311219
>NOOOO! Tolkien stole from the Finnerinos!

[Anonymous No.21311279]

>>21311251
And the Icelanders, the Germans, the Greeks, the Celts, the Slavs... The man's a creative fraud. It's funny that you posted the average Tolkien reader.

[Anonymous No.21311375]

>>21311279
Are you still mad? Let it go.

[Anonymous No.21311396]

>>21311375
It's simply an opinion of mine like any other reader has. Not sure why it bothers you specifically. As if everyone should have the same view on a topic, like NPCs.

[Anonymous No.21311438]

>>21310421
>nooo its different when he does it

[Anonymous No.21311459]

>>21311438
Well, to put it nicely, he's no Shakespeare, let me be direct here. Shakespeare took a myth, wrote a play based on it, and kept the title. Tolkien took different aspects of different myths and put them in a blender to try to pass them as his own in a padded narrative.

[Anonymous No.21311465]

>>21310552
>The hobbits have modern things like names for months (e.g. April), clocks on the mantelpiece, the narrator compares some shit to trains (lmao), they wear jackets, etc.
Isn't the lore explanation that the Red Book of Westmarch was translated and modernized by Tolkien?

[Anonymous No.21311484]

>>21311465
That's the cope he came up with after the fact. In reality, he had written a silly, campy book for kids. He had to edit The Hobbit to make it suitable to fit the other books that came later.

[Anonymous No.21311497]

>>21311484
>That's the cope he came up with after the fact.
And? It's still a good enough explanation.

[Anonymous No.21311525]

>>21311497
If you have low standards, sure. Personally I don't buy it. It's lazy.

[Anonymous No.21311531]

>>21311525
How?

[Anonymous No.21311615]

>>21311396
Because you keep posting it on every Tolkien thread?

[Anonymous No.21311678]

Is he to pulpy for /lit/ or something?

[Anonymous No.21311684]

>>21310759
Absolutely seething, you're just a shit communicator