[ SECRET POST #1575 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1575 ⌋


Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL/EMOTIONAL ABUSE

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TRIGGER WARNING FOR INCEST, RAPE

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 132 secrets from Secret Submission Post #225.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeats ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fireez.livejournal.com]

While Tolkien made the genre popular, he did by no means invent it. Just because nowadays people think that "fantasy" is synonymous to "something with elves and dwarves and epic quests" doesn't mean that's true. Most literary historians agree that the genre of modern fantasy came about around half a century before Tolkien wrote LotR.

Also, I agree with meadowphoenix in that flowery prose, when used to excess, can actually slow down a plot. I really don't need the umpteenth description of the swamp bog our heroes were just walking past. But I realize that's something of a personal preference.

[cephiedvariable.livejournal.com]

Just because nowadays people think that "fantasy" is synonymous to "something with elves and dwarves and epic quests" doesn't mean that's true.

Yeah actually it does?

I am well aware of the history of the fantasy genre and exactly who influenced all the early greats including Tolkien himself. It was a mess of medievalists fiddling with myth retelling, children's novels, allegories with only a few scattered works we would consider properly "fantasy". Nothing we'd give its own shelf at the bookstore. The fact is that Tolkien pulled all these disparate elements together in a single work that defined the genre as it exists today. Pretty much every literary genre has authors or works or isolated movements like this- I dunno is what with this reluctance to acknowledge that Tolkien is the one who did it for fantasy?

[fireez.livejournal.com]

...I take it you've never heard of China Mieville, then. What about sword and sorcery? That one had its own bookshelf before epic fantasy came along.

Listen, I'm perfectly fine with Tolkien being one of THE big influences in fantasy. But I'm not OK with defining a genre as diverse as fantasy as "stuff with elves and dwarves and epic quests", because fantasy is so much more. It's epic quests. It's magical realism. It's vampires and romance. It's elder gods and tentacles. It's shapeshifters and talking animals. It's so much more.

[cephiedvariable.livejournal.com]

Paranormal/Supernatural =/= Fantasy

Lovecraftian Horror =/= Fantasy

These elements have certainly been incorporated into fantasy, especially in recent years, however the tenants of the "High Fantasy" genre is self contained, world-building myth and aversion to allegory (which uh, are things that China Mieville himself has pointed out and attributed to Tolkien as the one who caused the paradigm shift).

I dunno, this seems to me like a weird argument to even be having? I was just commiserating and admitted that my gut reactions about Tolkien are irrational. I said later on in the thread that I get why people don't read him and I'm glad the movies exist for that reason because they are fantastic?

I'm just confused about this ~*~genre~*~ that existed pre-Tolkien. Like there was the Worm Oroborous and there was Der Rings Der Nibelugen and there were all these kids books with fairies and MacDonald and a small but passionate movement to translate and modernize Nordic and Anglo-Saxon myth, but none of these things were connected or recognized as a coherent genre. That's kind of the whole point of that famous essay 'On Fairy Stories' and the big reason Lewis and Tolkien argued so much over the validity of allegory in "Fairy Stories" in the first place. ~(-_-)~

[fireez.livejournal.com]

I guess my view is just a bit broader than yours, since I include Low Fantasy under the "fantasy" umbrella, too. And I started the argument without knowing you were talking about High Fantasy only, else I wouldn't have even butted in.

...ok, lie, I would've still butted in on the idea that too elaborate and flowery prose can actually stall a plot, but that's a whole other can of worms that has to do mostly with personal taste :P.