[ SECRET POST #2120 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2120 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 069 secrets from Secret Submission Post #303.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - random image ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

" High fantasy plot in the vein of Tolkien, which is what you're referencing, wasn't original in the first place. It's widely agreed that Tolkien took his plot from Wagner's The Ring Cycle and shunted it to one side precisely because he gave a fuck about world-building."

nnnnnnope. Certainly, Tolkien was influenced by Wagner's plot, and more broadly by the myths, folklore, archetypes, and traditions of Northern Europe; that was the material that he used in creating LotR (and, in that sense, you could call him 'unoriginal' - although I would argue that being influenced does not make one unoriginal, merely well-read).

But Tolkien wasn't interested solely in world-building; I would argue that his world isn't that realistic, and to the extent that it's realistic, that's its least interesting quality. As M John Harrison said, "The great modern fantasies were written out of religious, philosophical and psychological landscapes. They were sermons. They were metaphors. They were rhetoric. They were books, which means that the one thing they actually weren’t was countries with people in them." And although he was profoundly influenced by previously-existing archetypes and stories, that doesn't mean he wasn't doing things on his own; his work is not identical with Wagner's Ring Cycle and does things different from it. I really think you're mis-understanding Tolkien's originality and the nature of his writing.

I agree that people need to find different authors, especially as most of the people directly influenced by Tolkien are rather bad. But Tolkien himself is excellent from a literary perspective, not just from the perspective of his world building or linguistic creativity.

[(Anonymous)]

maybe people reading fantasy aren't doing it for the literary perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think I said anything that disagreed with or disparaged that, and if I came off that way I'm sorry. I wasn't responding to a comment saying "Tolkien isn't fun", I was responding to a comment that was saying that Tolkien isn't original and that LotR is derivative of the Ring Cycle, and I don't think that's true. If you're reading fantasy for entertainment, that's cool.