Do Tolkiendrones realize that fantasy existed before Lord of the Rings and that it suffered greatly from Big Fat Fantasy and other sloppy derivatives that grew like viruses from Tolkien's wen? https://voca.ro/1Rwc7lMX0hfT
>reactionaryhey alright
leftists are so petty and gross
>Wants to subvert expectations>I expect China to write books challenging social and aesthetic lies>He does itWhat did he mean by this?
>>24939820>Bald>Ugly shirt>Probably a faggotOpinion discarded.
GRRM saved fantasy
>>24939856Literally a Marxist.>>24939922It didn't need saving, George.
nigga named china
>>24939990I suspected it when all of his complaints about high fantasy is what's typically not communist about it. And then goes on to include Peake in his praise. And while I adore Peake as well, I think I know why he would and it isn't for the exquisite prose or entertaining characters.
>>24939820He's not that bad but yeah his fanboys are dumb
>>24939820>why isn't Tolkien an unsuccessful self-loathing retard like me?Communists really are ugly, ugly people
>>24939820>To normies fantasy is seen as this one thing. The Tolkien thing.>Though it is infectious, it is a narrow world of absolutes based on bygone days of lore.[Mollycoddled autists scream foul]>But the good news is there are plenty of great mold breaking fantasy works>All I'm saying is, this genre ought to be limitless, wide open for wonder that is wider than the same old clichesHe's just encouraging people to think outside that Tolkien box. Stop trying to tread in Gandalf's footsteps. You'd be trespassing, poaching Illuvitar's own. Quit your whining.
>>24939820I’m a Howardfag and an Ouroborosfag, and I also don’t like how overwhelmingly influential Tolkien is, but these have to be the most retarded criticisms against him that I’ve ever seen
>>24939820This fag has read neither Tolkien nor Wagner lol.
>>24940259It's likely China Mieville himself posting it. He was spamming this image in /sffg/ for a while now I guess he decided to make his own thread because people stopped biting on his bait.
>>24940232outside-of-Tollien IS the box. It was the box in the late 70s, already. To this baldy it's not enough, because he's a post-modernist boy loving amoral twat, who won't be happy until the worst villain will become the "hero".
>>24939820>war bad>hierarchy bad>Wagner badLMFAO talk about a self report
>challenge the aesthetic lies>look inside: degenerate who wants to fuck mothman
>>24940420The larger box of "fantasy" is much much larger than people are writing in. Many writers are still looking to the classic mythic and/or medieval framework. To some success sure, but still near if not entirely in that Tolkien box. >To this baldy it's not enoughGRRM got a tv deal to make his sterile turd into a series. Just heard about this next Lord of the Rings side quest thing. People are still making this kind of garbage. >Oh no, the villain will be made a heroThe antihero has been used to some good effect here and there. Not what he's driving at.A really great example I think is that wild card Star Wars series Andor. It's influences are from spy movies and prison break films etc. Really tells a solid story, feels fresh and inspiring. Love Tolkien but I love Andor too.
>>24940457t. Self reporting cuckDamn. Selfowned quick. Go back, man.
>>24940420Those works subvert Tolkien. They do not exist apart from him, but in opposition to him. They are the Nietzschean lion to Tolkien's dragon. What China and many others want is western fantasy that is actually outside of the paradigm, that exists independently without reference to Tolkien.
Grow up manchildren.
>>24939820Anyone who says things like this knows that his deviant mind and vile, goblinoid appearance forever bars him from a comfy life as a gentlehobbit in the Shire, or indeed any sort of wholesome existence. This man read LOTR and saw himself in descriptions of bow-legged, vaguely Oriental-looking orcs with their love of all things horrid, and got offended by the fact that Tolkien had the measure of him decades before he was even born.
>>24940559>He doesn't get it.>Blind rage fills his crying eyes>Resorts to name callingWrite a fantasy setting, somewhere original, about all those lovely virtues, put some personal twists to it, whatever you like. Now make the main character/hero homely, an outcast by the likes of you, shy and self conscious, but he grows as the story progresses.Dare I request that you fill your fantasy setting with good hearted and the wretched all mixed around. The reader may expect one thing and be surprised that some coarse tongued goblin turns out to be a strong friend of some sort?
>>24939820>NOOO I WANNA KNOW THOUSANDS OF POINTLESS DETAILS ABOUT THEIR GOVERNMENTNerds were a mistake.
Do Tolkien's detractors write good stories? I'd love to read fantasy that isn't inspired by the middle ages, but all these guys sound insufferable.
>>24941164Peake's GormenghastBulgakov's The Master and MargaritaMichael Moorcock's most famous for Elric series.M. John Harrison's ViriconiumStefan Grabinski, Dark Domain? People don't talk much about him. "The Polish Poe"Bruno Schulz Him eitherAlso Ursula K Le Guin's EarthseaWolfe's Book of the New Sun
>>24941319moorcock is utter trash
>>24941366Your mother is
People are acting like Tolkien went out of his way to do any of this. Tolkien didn't care about "fantasy" more broadly, he wanted to create a story and a world all for himself, he wasn't deliberately trying to set a paradigm or establish trends. Blame the publishing companies for that.
maybe fantasy was just a shit genre
>>24939820Tolkien broke him.
Fantasy as a genre is shit and Tolkien transcended well beyond it. The seething will continue, their book sales will stay low.
>>24939820>challenge social and aesthetic liesThat's what Tolkien did.
>>24941441>Tolkien transcended the fantasyslop of the late 20th century but publishing well ahead of the curveLOL Maybe you have trouble with years
>>24941455I feel like people don't really grasp that when LOTR was actually coming out, it was already countercultural in a right-wing way, in comparison to the pop culture of the moment. Let's not forget that it hit the big time in THE SIXTIES. LOTR is basically the polar opposite of 1968.
>>24941366Arguably the second or third most influential fantasy writer of all time, but ok.
>>24939820>Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?The CCP will ban your novel for being too transgressive.
So what is the "real" fantasy. I unironically want to know about fantasy that is highly divorced from elves and orcs
>>24941534The old stuff, basically. Howard, Dunsany, that sort of thing.Conan is basically what everybody is looking for if they want "non-Tolkien" fantasy. No orcs, no dwarves, no elves, the only inhuman things are usually the monsters, and the occasional unevolved ape.
>>24941531what a crazy delusional world you live in
all these authors are smarter than me
>>24940499>What China and many others want is western fantasy that is actually outside of the paradigm, that exists independently without reference to Tolkien.That's impossible. Tolkien is popular, deal with it.
>>24941531The only reason anyone remember Moorcock is because Games Workshop ripped him off in 40k.
>>24939820China is a shitmouth with a two digit IQ. He's never been good. The best pro-Tolkien argument is that the people who hate him are universally hack frauds.
>>24941531The guys who ripped off Morecock's work are more influential than he is.
lotta manchild seethe itt
>>24939820https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrGQDLOZWXg&pp=ygUgYXBvbGxvbmlhbiBnZXJtIGdlb3JnZSByciBtYXJ0aW4%3D
Most modern fantasy is absolute garbage so I'm going to assume anyone complaining about Tolkien is just an assblasted retard.
>>24939820Truth is, no leftoid faggots wanted to touch fantasy before Tolkien. In the 30s and 40s they were much more into genres like science fiction and thought fantasy was some kind of neo-romanticist nazi shit. Then Tolkien became popular with the proles and like flies to shit they had to destroy it with their ugliness.
>>24940484I am not talking about an anti-hero. IK am talking about a piece of shit character that does nothing of worth, fuck shit up and you're supposed to give him a blowjob. That's the pomo hero. They're philosophically amoral and, as a result, fight lauding of the good. What about it do you not understand?>People are still making this kind of garbage. GRRM is the anti-Tolkien. Only way to not smack of Tolkinen is to stop thinking about Tolkien, which is not what baldy is doing. He is the problem. Oh no, some book has orcs--who fucking cares? Is the spin original, yes or no? WoW did a better job of transcending Tolkien, than all these circle-jerking midwits. Just stop thinking about stupid sexy Tolkien, retards.
>>24940259>HowardfagHoward had far more natural talent than Tolkien.
>>24942028Modern fantasy is the product of Tolkien's influence, retard
>>24939820I understand maybe not liking Tolkien but this whole "fantasy is meant to subvert LE EXPECTATIONS" bullshit that pervades every corner of fiction is fucking stupid. Subverting expectations is the most easy, midwit way to make your story "stand" out. Instead of making actual compelling prose, characters, ideas, themes or whatever, you rely on le ebin plot and LE TWISTS!! I love other types of fantasies, pre-Tolkien and his contemporaries included, but this smarmy, smug "critique" of what essentially defined most of modern day fantasy is faggotry, plain and simple. >>24939990>Literally a Marxist.Why am I not surprised?
>>24941534King of Dragon Pass
>>24941385Also this. Ledditors can't even fathom that a man did this for fun and published it without meaning to get the attention of millions of hippie man-children all the way across the sea.
>>24941493>I feel like people don't really grasp that when LOTR was actually coming out, it was already countercultural in a right-wing wayYup. It's also the reason why most of the knee jerk reactions from the writers at the time was to immediately "subvert" it (i.e. make it fit the new postmodern status quo).
>>24942181>That's the pomo heroChina isn't telling you or anyone else to write your "pomo hero". If you want to go down that path, it ought to be a story that lead the reader to see something in the story, not to see the lead as a hero. This is why some characters are just called the protagonist. They're just central to the story, not a model to aspire to.>GRRM is the anti-TolkienHe's not really. He's just a bad putty sculptor to Tolkien's classical marbles. He thinks about Tolkien and tries to subvert.
>>24940420>because he's a post-modernist boy loving amoral twat, who won't be happy until the worst villain will become the "hero".damn anon, you completely demolished that strawman
>>24941782>>24941862>The guys who were influenced by him are more influent---- You guys are not smart. At all.
>>24939820Based Moorcock.
>>24940499People have been trying to escape this mfrs shadow for like 400 years bro. Just accept the impact and move on.
>>24942519I was just reading about Amleth, which inspire his Hamlet.Yeah, he wasn't all that. Just a good interpreter and prose stylist.
>>24942534>Yeah, he wasn't all that.I honestly don't understand why people on this board seethe so hard about S'speare
Obviously, China disagrees with much of Tolkien's ideology which is pretty directly written into his work. But the real problem is that, alongside Elves and Dwarves and magic rings, Tolkien's ideology has infected most of the rest of the genre. Subtly, if not overtly. Many authors don't even realize that they've copied these things. E.g. the asspull miraculous ending/"eucatastrophe" (literally by the grace of god) present in so many fantasy works is not just a storytelling trope that exists in isolation from theme and message, but something that is lifted directly from Tolkien's religion and worldview. You can't just throw that in with no consequences.Arguably this is not Tolkien's fault. But he is the cause of this phenomenon.>>24942365He doesn't mean subverting expectations by doing le ebin plot twist. The point of writing fantasy is to write in a world that is different from our own. What people seem to do today is just write a world that is 99.99% the same as our own, with some magic and political/philosophical wish fulfillment tacked on. Tolkien at least had the excuse that was explicitly mythologizing an imaginary history of Earth, but modern authors have no excuse. Ask yourself this, is the average fantasy setting different from our own world in a way that is meaningful to the theme or message? What purpose do these differences serve, why did the author choose them, what do they say about our own world? I find that the answer is, most of the time, the author didn't even consider any of these things and just wanted magic and elves and shit. The difference is most obvious when you look at science fiction, which largely does consider these things. Or rather, is forced to consider these things, because you do not have a widely accepted predefined template in Tolkien.>some caveatsThe problem is not that this happens, but the scale of it. The average person doesn't even think of fantasy outside of the Tolkien-sphere as fantasy. Even big writers like GRRM constantly get asked about Tolkien and how their works relate to or are influenced by his.Similar things happen in other genres, but it's not ubiquitous like it is in fantasy.I think the biggest example in Science Fiction is cyberpunk. A lot of people copy the aesthetics just 'cause. Of course I would say that people better understand the reasons behind choosing to write a cyberpunk world than the reasons behind choosing to write a Tolkienesque world.
>bitter, spiteful communist hates beauty>seethes about itMany such cases. Sad!
>>24942584It's really a mental illness. It's no surprise that many commies are also faggots.
>>24942560There is plenty of diversity in the fantasy genre. Both then and now you had lots of authors doing their own thing and being creative. The problem is that other types of media such as movies, tabletop rpgs and videogames have a boner for adapting Tolkienesque settings specifically, because the recognizable visual themes and iconic character archetypes are useful for marketing in a visual medium. The highly derivative slop like legends and lattes or dungeon crawler carl or whatever that get posted here as rage bait are actually downstream from those visual media adaptations in terms of directional flow of influence.
>>24942460It's true though. Same reason more people know about Tolkien than Wagner.
Chinese fantasy is the least Tolkien inspired fantasy there is.
>>24942535Because the fanboying is quite cloying A reaction. He's clearly great and influential >>24942584NO. He's railing against derivative and backward nonsense cluttering things up. Stop making homages that simply do not fit the times. Some game awards coming up and someone made mention of this flop called Avowed. I looked at it. It's derivative Tolkien slop. >>24942595GO AWAY.
>>24942666>Same reasonNo it isn't. The reason Germans know Wagner more than Tolkien means something. And look up the word "influence"Think harder.
Walter Scott invented fantasy, I will not elaborate.
>>24942686next you are telling me Germans know Goethe more than Shakespeare
>>24942861They certainly prefer the plays they can read in their own language.>>24942790Which work?
>>24941164you're in for a treat
>>24942910Low-quality bait and writing.Also,>that isn't inspired by the middle agesGo to bed, George.
>>24942910He's a Tolkien derivative. He is a prime example of what China is talking about.
>>24943042>He's a Tolkien derivative.How? Because they both feature dragons?
>>24941568So all fantasy is either conan or Tolkien? That's pretty boring
>>24943758Dracula, Lovecraft novels, etc. are also fantasy.
>>24942534>"prose stylist">wrote plays in verse???
>>24942036How would you know that?
>>24941455>fantasy existed prior to tolkien and he was a poor example of it and i hate him>tolkien invented fantasy, and i hate him because the genre isn't what i want it to beeither way you're a homosexual
modern fantasy sucks because it's written by communists. it wasn't the inventiveness of the "worldbuilding", it was tolkien's ideals. his ideas of beauty, of justice, of right and wrong. those are what made his works enduring classics. the genre is shit because the secular dykes and faggots writing it now only idealize ugliness and evil.go read your GRRM diarrhea and rape stories and let tolkien be. it wasn't for you. it was never for you.
>>24945601Your sanitized manchild escapism slop will always be there for you to (not) read.The rest of the world is moving on from boomer infantilism.
>>24939820What an absolute cunt of a person. He'd absolutely be seething over Shakespeare or Milton or Dante or any other stand out titan regardless of their actual impact and greatness.Fuck, I imagine this fuckwit has issues with The Epic of Gilgamesh being about the emotions between friends and losing them.
Propose creating a separate board for fantasy. There is always seething about it which seems not lit related.
