Thread #97905461
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Fantasy games have never recovered from being based on one of the least imaginative, and most mollycoddling proliferation of cliche. 5e, and D&D with it as a whole, is what it is because of Tolkien's goody-goody adventures for kids.
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>>97905461
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>>97905461
¿Que?
LOTR is good because of the details and world building. The evolution of languages, of ethnic migrations, on the mythology.
>>97906638
You'd think they'd bring up how the red book of westmarch was transcribed by an Anglo-Saxon whom was told by the elves his people would make the greatest empire in the world. Which means the elves knew of the millions of people the brittish empire would murder for money and they were cool with it.which is why I don't want to be an elf-friend, self-serving bastards. Few can match the piety of Thranduil indeed
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>>97906549
>esl
Tolkien is huge in fantasy literature, and his influence is even larger.
Simply ignoring Tolkien derived fantasy does not work. It occupies a large portion of the fantasy literature space.
All you can do is consciously go against the norm.
To relate it to /tg/ terms, imagine if you enjoyed a particular genre of tabletop games. Now imagin that a dogshit system was hugely popular and dominated almost all the discussion around that kind of tabletop game. Every time you try to talk about the games you like, it is framed in terms of this one piece of shit game with dogshit rules and dogshit dumbass players. And now because that one tabletop game got popular, every single game tries to emulate it. Even games that you previously enjoyed are becoming infected.
Would it better your favorite type of tabletop games to ignore the giant piece of shit and say nothing? Or do you consciously try to fight against the bad design decisions that that game makes?
Hypothetically, of course.
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>>97905461
>>97905463
>>97905486
I remember this guy.
He was one of the people spearheading the nu-fantasy/weird-fantasy movement a few years back.
This whole movement in fantasy writing seemed to be predicated on circlejerking how modern writers are better than tolkien while seething that Tolkien is to blame why they never become as popular as him.
It was like a whole subreddit dedicated to coping how replacing elves and dwarves with treehugging plantpeople and drinking mining bugpeople is the real creativity.
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>>97906786
>To relate it to /tg/ terms, imagine if you enjoyed a particular genre of tabletop games. Now imagin that a dogshit system was hugely popular and dominated almost all the discussion around that kind of tabletop game. Every time you try to talk about the games you like, it is framed in terms of this one piece of shit game with dogshit rules and dogshit dumbass players. And now because that one tabletop game got popular, every single game tries to emulate it. Even games that you previously enjoyed are becoming infected.
>Would it better your favorite type of tabletop games to ignore the giant piece of shit and say nothing? Or do you consciously try to fight against the bad design decisions that that game makes?
>Hypothetically, of course.
The problem is that they never address why its bad nor do they try argue it from an objective standpoint.
With Systems you can pinpoint some flaws, like with how modern D&D removed a lot of mechanics to streamline the rules, make it seem simpler without understanding what its purpose was (Dungeon Turns for example) which is why nowadays modern D&D players seem to believe that dungeons are the most boring part of the game.
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>>97905461
When people "dis" fantasy, they're actually referring to the low-tech, medieval-esque kinds of stories, not just Tolkien. But it's still misleading & unfortunate, because fantasy is the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable; not just swords & magic.
>cod-Wagnerian
The fuck is this, another /lit/fag buzzword like "Watsonian" or "Doylist"? If you're an English-speaking reader of English works, speak English, not gibberish.
>glorying in war
Tolkien always professed that war is Hell, that there's no glory in it.
Consolation is not mollycoddling.
For someone trying to come off as well-read, he sure doesn't know what words mean.
>fantasists (not a word) have ignored
Yes, there are creative types who do have a sense of personal agency. The people who don't aren't the responsibility or the fault of Tolkien. It would be equally retarded to say any one of the authors this faggot namedropped rotted his brain.
>fantastic aesthetic
It's disappointing that someone trying to affect great culture, importance, & knowledge believes fantasy is something so superficial, when it can go much deeper than that.
I guess he doesn't actually possess that culture, knowledge, or importance he wants people to think he has, huh?
>alienate, subvert, undermine
They are ways to go about telling stories, yes, but they are not inherently good ways. It's all about execution, otherwise you end up with shit like Looper, in which one character literally lampshades the faulty in-world mechanics by saying not to think about it too much, or like any other of Roundhead Johnson's works.
>the pleasure in fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity
Yes, this is completely, and absolutely correct.
This is not, however, an excuse to denigrate any author, Tolkien or not. It also isn't proof that those lacking in agency are Tolkien's fault or responsibility.
Now how about we talk about games?
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>>97906786
>Hypothetically, of course.
Thats a nice and good and he might have had a point in an alternative reality where breathing through your ass is the norm but whenever I see someone using the phrase "subvert and undermine expectations" unironically I know that its an honest to god midwit trying to larp as an intellectual.
>>97906846
Getting your expectations subverted.
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>>97905461
Make no mistake, Tolkien clones are a cancer upon the genre, stagnating it and forcing it to be samey boring generic dogshit, but this faggot's point is even worse.
Tolkien clones aren't a cancer because of elves and dwarves on their own, it's because everyone says "if your fantasy setting doesn't meet [arbitrary set of requirements that make it a tolkien clone] then it isn't REAL fantasy" which is a retarded thing to say.
>>97906868
Agreed, it shouldn't be about subverting your expectations, it should be about keeping the genre from stagnating by providing fresh, alternative takes to the gray slop of tolkien clones that try to be the world of The Hobbit but are infinitely lesser as a result. Stop trying to copy one guy's vision of fantasy and start getting weird with it.
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>>97906851
It's bad because it causes stagnation of the genre. It prevents the potential for new ideas or mechanical niches because it's "not real fantasy" because it isn't a clone of something tolkien wrote except 1000x as shitty (such as any edition of D&D, yes this includes TSR). instead of encouraging people to make the genre their own, it's saying "You have to do X Y and Z or your system/setting isn't REAL fantasy" and a bunch of retarded faggots fall for it hook line and sinker.
People don't understand that greatness isn't something that can be achieved by copying better men, it's something that occurs when your passions align with those of others to the point you find lightning in a bottle. Anyone can shit out another humans-elves-dwarves-hobbits fantasy game with fighters and rangers and wizards or what have you, but only an individual focused on making something they enjoy and want to run and play can make something worthwhile, because rather than chasing market shares and dollar signs, they're putting their own passions first and foremost. That's what makes something interesting, not "here's another rendition of the same slop fantasy TTRPGs have been shitting out for the past 50 years".
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>>97906916
Sure, someone won't make something great just by trying to lazily copy something great.
But someone also won't make something great if they're just glancing over their shoulder at the thing they're trying to avoid copying, and just doing the exact opposite.
Lazy subversion isn't any better than lazy copies.
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>>97905461
>challenge, alienate, subvert, and undermine expectations
I feel like the last 20 odd years have proven that anyone who says these things are actually insane authoritarians who, should someone seek to challenge, alienate, subvert, or undermine their own works will lash out with anger and any authority they may have in censorship and blacklisting. It's never that they want to challenge the status quo, but rather they want to implement their own status quo.
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>>97906902
>it should be about keeping the genre from stagnating by providing fresh, alternative takes to the gray slop of tolkien clones that try to be the world of The Hobbit but are infinitely lesser as a result. Stop trying to copy one guy's vision of fantasy and start getting weird with it.
Trying to reinvent the wheel is just as bad denying the usefulness of the wheel.
Its like saying that Thievesworld or Fafhrd & Gray Mouser dont exist.
Saying that Tolkien is to blame that they never became as popular as Tolkien is delusional.
>>97906906
>Subverting expectations is a normal thing that happens. Like in jokes where it looks like people are fucking but actually nothing dirty is happening .
Why are you talking about something you know I didnt mean?
>>97906916
>because it's "not real fantasy
Why do you guys constantly make up shit in your heads and then get upset all on your own over it?
I have never once heard anyone say "Its not real fantasy because it doesnt have Dwarves or Elves"
>make the genre their own, it's saying "You have to do X Y and Z or your system/setting isn't REAL fantasy" and a bunch of retarded faggots fall for it hook line and sinker.
Yet here you are saying "You have to do X Y and Z or your system/setting causes stagnation of the genre"
Do you notice the issue?
I keep hearing how fantasy is "stagnating" yet if you ask for the solution you get the same stagnant answer of "be weird"
>Anyone can shit out another humans-elves-dwarves-hobbits fantasy game with fighters and rangers and wizards or what have you, but only an individual focused on making something they enjoy and want to run and play can make something worthwhile, because rather than chasing market shares and dollar signs, they're putting their own passions first and foremost.
And this on the other hand I agree on.
I just dont see why "humans-elves-dwarves-hobbits fantasy game with fighters and rangers and wizards " would preclude that.
Thats not what made Tolkien good.
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>>97907014
I feel the same.
Thank you for managing to put into words what I couldn't for the longest time.
Now that ive read your post I feel like this one of the main things that was bothering me about the nu-fantasy/weird-thing all along.
"Dogma bad, so we have to replace it with my dogma"
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>>97905461
I agree that Fantasy tends to suffer the just copy Tolkien, Howard, Moorcock and had many of the "basic fantasy troupes" back in the day. However what I think is killing it today isn't the troupes they whine about but it is tourists and activists trying to claim and change it into their commie queer soapbox. All while shitting on the people who built fantasy to what it is today. Plus they just using two of the fantasy troupes hoping to claim their badly made fanfic with enough changed to be it's own IP at best or these fuckers ARE writing for the IP and change everything cause they want to make the characters and setting be their mouth piece as well as add their Mary-Sue OC in that is the "bestest evar."
I mean how many classic IP pull that whole "let get rid of the white male heroes and replace them with queers, blacks, and the most forced thing ever, the ugly white girl with a lesbian or woke hair cut who may or may not be queer." As well as the classic make every region, town, etc have "diversity." So nothing looks different and every place has a gay couple, blacks and arabs but often little to no white guys unless they're queers, betas or a villain. Speaking on that, love the "we are against stereotypes and how hurtful they can be". Then tries to push the "evil white man" stereotype and deny that they're even trying to make that a thing. Or even say that it's true so it's should be allow. Yet will whine about people bring up "13/50" and call them racist.
Then when their woke commie slop trying to push the "white man's patriarchal empire losing to a white girl and a ragtag group of poc and queer pushing commie viewpoints" bombs and fails they cry it's cause of Tolkien and the white men not going to see it and fantasy needs to be more different. Then fail to talk about how many of the biggest anime fantasy has no problem getting big and making a scene with fantasy fans.
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There's no point in arguing with Tolkiendrones because they're a bunch of ESL retards with no knowledge of literature who think a book written in the 1950s is "old literature" and think grey morality did not exist in literature before the publication of game of thrones.
Imagine telling these people that Walter Scott was writing historical adventure novels that have grey morality in them in the 1810s. Never even mind Shakespeare, or Homer, or Defoe, or any other of the great writers of the western canon.
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>>97907304
He's a prog, they're convinced that sounding pretentious and contrarian makes them sound more like an intellectual.
Seriously, there is no one on 4chan that is more contrarian or prone to intellectual masturbation than your average BsC (Bronze swimming certificate) in social sciences.
They will look at the most common sense bullshit and go 'I'm too smart for that, clearly the truth must be the opposite because the plebs believe it and it's all social constructs anyway'
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>>97905486
Dude has a point.
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>>97905463
>a walking antifa cliche hates thing for every reason you already had on your Bingo card
Boring beyond description.
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>>97905461
>Western classic is bad, says a guy named China
Fascinating, tell me more.
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>>97907333
I do, do you? Cause game recognizes game and you're looking very unfamiliar right now, did you get lost trying to go to bluesky again?
But back to what I was saying. For every good short story and novel we get. We get flood with woke slop pushed by DEI and Blackrock backed companies. Hell, have the writers admit they're just try to get anything bought by Netflix in point of leapfrogging to Hollywood and all. (That's most of the woke writers in comics and half of the people that were doing gaming sites before they burn any good will they had with their political takes when they should just be reviewing games and systems.)
Why do you think many comics are doing all those "cafe scenes where they just talk" over action scenes and stuff that came from comic writers not someone trying to sell a fucking script but failed and got a job as a DEI hire for Marvel or DC?
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>>97907421
>having virtue means your works are complete black and white morally
??????
>>97907448
The Lord of the Rings is not a "western classic" you ESL.
Read some literature before pretending Lord of the Rings is up there in the western canon.
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>>97907459
>Read some literature before pretending Lord of the Rings is up there in the western canon.
Of works from the last ~100 years it absolutely is. Tolkien was always a mediocre storyteller but his world building stands on its own.
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>>97907467
>Of works from the last ~100 years it absolutely is
It isn't by any means
>Tolkien was always a mediocre storyteller but his world building stands on its own.
Imagine thinking making up imaginary worlds makes something a work of literature.
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>>97907459
It's a hundred years old and even your pretentious little chinese friend thinks the influence is strong enough even though he doesn't like it because it's more popular than his gay fanfiction, so yeah I'd call it a classic. Faggot.
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>>97907467
To be fair I wouldn't say Tokien was a mediocre storyteller. However, his thing was all about making a world around the story then a story around the world. It's harder to do but when you pull it off. It's better than just making a story and the world make the story feel more real and gives it more weight. (Simple things matter more if you care about the people, locations, etc.)
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>>97907485
>It's a hundred years old
A work published in 1954 is a hundred years old? Are tolkiendrones this bad at math?
>and even your pretentious little chinese friend thinks the influence is strong enough even though he doesn't like it because it's more popular than his gay fanfiction, so yeah I'd call it a classic
I despise China Mielville. But I don't think a work published in the 1950s is a work of old literature. You absolute retard ESL
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>>97905461
>>97905463
Retard.
>>97905486
Truth.
And I'm not even a fan of Tolkien, and will almost always place "weird shit" higher.
There's no value in "subversion of le expectations xD" and """creativity""" for its own sake, and anything with a "message" to prop onto the reader is almost always inherently cancerous.
If you have something to explore, explore it, and do so earnestly, both as a writer and a reader, or shut the fuck up.
>>97906859
Woah, cool it with the antisemitism.
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>>97907664
I think he misunderstands "oeuvre" as a matter of influence, not as in the body of work. He just likes to use complicated words because he thinks it makes him sound smart, when in reality it just makes him look retarded to anyone with access to an online dictionary.
Tolkien's body of published works is actually quite small, if we discount his academic writings. It's basically just the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Silmarillion. He did some other minor stuff but no-one pays attention to those anyway.
I have at least five or six different fantasy writers within immediate reach that produced or produces more, that I can see just on my shelf. Howard, Lovecraft, Robin Hobb, Granström, Jack Vance, and Perumov. I am sure there are countless others, but this is just what I can see right in front of me at this very moment.
Dude just doesn't know what oeuvre means. Because he's a tryhard retard.
>>97907459
>The Lord of the Rings is not a "western classic"
You're either retarded or profoundly disconnected from the real world. This statement might have held some validity prior to the LotR films, but it has not been true for at least 20 years at this point. It went from genre staple to pop-culture significance, and has absolutely entered the western canon at this point.
I don't even like Tolkien, but you're being retarded if you're trying to argue otherwise. He's arguably more relevant than Shakespeare at this point, at least in recognition and relevance if not in actual fact.
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>>97907656
>There's no value in "subversion of le expectations xD" and """creativity""" for its own sake
yes, you can have something to be different for the sake of it
if i decide to wear a red shirt tomorrow when i had worn nothing but blue shirts previously, i do not need a reason, just changing it is just good enough a reason
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>>97907628
The entire tradition of weird fantasy was better than Tolkien, but Tolkiendrones don't even realize that. The Broken Sword was released in the same year as Fellowship of the Ring and it's way better than LOTR.
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>>97907737
That says more about you than the critiques of China Mieville against Tolkien. I think you just like things to be easily communicated in memes because it's spoonfed to you. If someone put the critiques from the OP into a meme, you'd lap it up. Simpleton.
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>>97907680
Not an argument.
>>97907734
>popularity means le western canon
So marvel movies are in the western canon? Are marvel comic books great works of western literature?
ESL's are delusional.
>I don't even like Tolkien, but you're being retarded if you're trying to argue otherwise. He's arguably more relevant than Shakespeare at this point, at least in recognition and relevance if not in actual fact.
Imagine thinking Tolkien is more relevant than Shakespeare, LMAO. Peak genre kiddie delusion.
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Imo the bigger issue is not the Tolkienification of DnD but the DnDification of fantasy as a whole.
Pic related, this is what sells nowadays and this is what shapes expectations at the table
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>>97907880
Atleast call it ASL, American second language then. Nobody likes england, they have not been relevant for ages and by now they are ESL themselfs because of all the muslim filth they let in to their country.
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>old thing made by smart man bad
>new thing made by homosexual drug addicts good
I have never read Tolkien, nor would I say I'm a fan of the movies. But I sure as hell will give credit where credit is due, and I hate people who don't.
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>>97907885
>So marvel movies are in the western canon?
In the western canon of what?
Cinematography? Yeah.
No matter how much you or me or anyone dislikes it the first Avengers movie still hold as masterclass in writing a tight script with well structured set-ups and payoffs.
>>97907900
>random screenshot of some literally who writing his isekai story
>OMG THIS IS THE DOWNFALL OF FANTASYWRITING AND D&D AND TOLKIEN IS TO BLAME
You are the same sort fartsniffing midwits the sped in OPS pic.
You are doing more damage to fantasy by simply existing and being ignorant than those people do.
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>>97907961
>In the western canon of what?
>Cinematography? Yeah.
>No matter how much you or me or anyone dislikes it the first Avengers movie still hold as masterclass in writing a tight script with well structured set-ups and payoffs.
OH NO NO NO
Genre Kiddie delusion is putting marvelslop next to tarkovsky
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>>97907961
ESL retard where did i say Tolkien is to blame?
I'm saying that the rise of rpgslop directly impacts the expectations at the table and thus directly affects the rpg market
See Pathfinder vs the absolute garbage fire that is 2e
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>>97907951
People who like Tolkien have an opinion of their own. You never even tried to do that.
Stop trying to portray yourself as an enlightened intellectual so desperately, its off-putting and you're the only one who doesn't seem to be aware of it.
You haven't written shit, you haven't published shit, yet here you are trying to tell people what is good and bad literature.
Get a fucking grip.
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>>97907971
>Tarkovsky
lmaoooo you don't need to further prove to anyone here that you're a pseud and poser, I am sure I wasnt the only one who could instantly tell.
I explained to you why something is a conventionally well-made movie in a see of slop and you shat yourself and out the most basic bitch poser answer you could come up with like a redditor.
Next you will be telling us that Aguirre was secret masterpiece and that Werner Herzog is an unappreciated genius you poser cunt.
>>97907979
>calls everyone ESL
>cant read for shit
>gets mad because he cant read
Im starting to think that you were the ESL all along which is why you preemptively refer to everyone else as ESL.
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>>97907781
No, no it's not.
The Broken Sword is a fun book, but it's not much more than a bunch of tropes tied together with a throughline of "whoa did you know you could be TOO awesome?!" and mistaking misery for depth. It's well-written, and filled with great ideas, but it's ultimately hollow.
Tolkien has a soul and truth to it.
The "soul" part is perhaps not as blatant as C.S. Lewis's "Aslan is Jesus" business, but Tolkien laid down an interweaving net of ideals and morality that manages to avoid being too preachy too often. As far as the "truth" of it, Tolkien was not a young man when he wrote LotR, and had lived a fairly eventful life. He had even fought in WW1, including participating in the Battle of Somme, where 3 million men fought and 1 in 3 were killed or wounded.
Though TBS and FotR came out in the same year, Tolkien was nearly 30 years Anderson's senior, and had not just lived as a writer. The differences in life and experience is pretty pronounced, particularly in how they ended their stories.
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>>97908067
At the end of The Broken Sword and Lord of the Rings, both protagonists have suffered greatly and have been changed by war. But, Skafloc's main suffering comes from (spoilering) his (spoiler), while Frodo's comes from being tested by a corrupting force more powerful than any addiction and ultimately losing to it but being saved in the last moment by a chance wrought out of him being merciful and compassionate to another who had previously succumbed to that corrupting power.
Frodo returns to the Shire with a wisdom that elevates him above his peers, and while saving his home (and the world), he ultimately can no longer stay because he himself has changed too much.
Skafloc dies without having learned anything and having "saved" the elves who by that time had produced fairly convincing arguments that they were not only not worth saving but that they were also fairly impartial to the whole extinction thing anyway and were going to move in that direction regardless, and their king was also pretty much in the wrong the whole time and the trolls deserved to wipe them off the face of the earth.
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>>97905461
his seething over Tolkien is retarded
the problem he identifies is that the majority of fantasy writers (decisively unlike Tolkien himself) are entirely influenced by other existing works of fantasy and it has consequently ended up in an incestuous ouroboros of just rehashing the same concepts over and over again, which has nothing to do with him
>>97905463
okay never mind he's just retarded
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>>97908067
>Tolkien has a soul and truth to it.
The "Soul" of being filtered by Shakespeare's Birnam wood? Of thinking England "needed" a mythology when it is rich and culture in mythology already?
>He had even fought in WW1, including participating in the Battle of Somme, where 3 million men fought and 1 in 3 were killed or wounded.
Plenty of British people fought in the somme and went back and wrote pulpy novels, it doesn't make a novel inherently good if the person who wrote it went to war.
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>>97908136
Really? Because it reminds me of Pic related.
>oooOOOOOoooOOOOOoooo watch out here come the creatives!
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>>97908192
>it doesn't make a novel inherently good if the person who wrote it went to war
That's right.
Tolkien being a good writer is what made his novels good.
>>97908245
>what have you written tho?
"My car is having trouble starting, and the exhaust is leaking black smoke."
(You): HOW MANY CARS HAVE YOU MADE THO ??
"My floor has a slight tilt to it, round objects keep rolling when I set them down."
(You): HOW MANY HOUSES HAVE YOU BUILT THO ??
"My sandwich has a literal turd in it."
(You): HOW MANY SANDWICHES HAVE YOU MADE THO ??
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>>97908256
>alienation and subversion are god
this is pretty much the core of every newbie hack writer. pretty much narcissistic midwits who never grew and now think everything they produce is pure gold. and if nobody buys their dogshit stories, it's because of the media illiteracy of the plebs.
death to all of them.
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this is like the genre fiction version of the warhammer table spam
no actual discussion, if I namedrop a handful of authors in a zero substance post then I can pretend to be hot shit and not some shitforbrains retard that's been laughed off of /int/
let alone the zero discussion about other RPGs which don't fit in theadmittedly very largebox of what a contrarian considers tolkienian
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>>97905461
I think it was a comment that was made on the Between Two Cairns podcast but Tolkien's influence on fantasy and its current state was surpassed by an even more hideous and unimaginative beast: Dungeons & Dragons.
D&D was a cultural zeitgeist and projects like Dragonlance and its ilk were massively popular and irreparably changed fantasy. you can't even call them a flanderization of Tolkien because it was an even more debased version of Tolkien clones like the Shannara but wrapped in a thick blanket of Mormonism and packaged as for mass consumption without the slightest airs of nuance
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>>97905463
>>97905461
Is anyone else exhausted on deconstruction? That is what this Rebel without a cause is crying for, endless works that mock, deride, break down or outright villainize “traditional” fantasy. I find this exhausting.
But I find it exhausting for a completely different reason than the standard, “stop tearing down the things I like.” It’s because I guarantee he can’t take what he gives. It’s always that way with these people; I can deconstruct your narrative, but if you try and deconstruct mine you’re a Nazi/Chud/Monster. If I can’t call “urban fantasy” boorish and drab without getting yelled at then I can plainly see this isn’t an argument to “expand my horizons,” it’s an attempted conversion that saw the victim becoming aware of the programming.
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Why do tradcuck conservatard tolkien fans ITT LARP as if tolkien was some kind of based english right winger when in reality he was an East Prussian philosemite catholic cuckservative, a philosemite who loved the jews, and whose great-grandson is a jew who campaigns for left wing causes in britain today?
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Tolkien has truth, honor, soul and speaks directly to the hearts of White people.
That is why subhumans dislike and want to destroy it, despite all of the veneer of "nuanced criticism" or whatever pseud shit these vermins may come up with.
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>>97908550
>vermins
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>>97908558
And your mom is a whore, does that make your sister a whore also?she is, the two for one special is quite special indeedThis sins of the father reasoning makes you either the conservative you hate or a purity spiraling till the nth. generation commiebrain.
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>>97908241
There's degrees of pic related and they're heavily influenced by the motivation of the creator. In the image you posted the employee is projecting a fantastical image onto a bitchy employer but failing to project a suitable image on herself. In her vanity she considers herself special and different, demonstrative of a lack of self-awareness or two-way application of the visual allegory. She should be the blue winged monkey and certainly not smirking with a self-assured smugness at having non-verbally infantilized her boss. This is why she will never be the "creative" she thinks she is because her mental image is purely cope rather than an abstracted understanding of the situation.
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>>97908475
how mentally ill are you to assume that every time you come across this common idiom it's the exact same guy?
I suppose acknowledging it's an idiom meaning "to state the obvious" would involve a tacit acknowledgement that whatever pre-existing definition isn't overrruled by whatever a bunch of nerds decided to borrow the word to mean
which then means you can't use it as an excuse to tell everyone that you're a super smart widdle engineering undergraduate
your school bully let down the team not thumping this faggotry out of you
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>tolkienfagging
People just don't know what they're missing out on.
Science fiction and fantasy are both incredibly similar genres. There are some key differences in the base premise/qualifiers for each genre, but they are 95% the same.
In science fiction, you see a huge range of stories and settings in many different subgenres, and plenty that doesn't fit into any basket. Science fiction can include a Jules Verne novel, Frankenstein, Dune, Blade Runner, Star Trek, The Martian, Fallout, a Stanislaw Lem novel, etc.
There are so many different ways you can go that it's hard to even list them all.
Now look at fantasy. Fantasy is so creatively bankrupt that it's almost comical. Instead of exploring radically different premises the way sci-fi does, fantasy just iterates on aesthetics. It's Tolkien but the elves are edgy. It's Tolkien but everything sucks. It's Tolkien but magic has rules now!! It's Tolkien but the main character is "morally gray" (i.e. follows standard normie morality but edgy).
All the genuinely creative works are pushed to the side to make room for more Tolkien slop. MAYBE you get some urban fantasy slop or a Conan clone, but that's all. I guess it's what tolkientards want, but it's sad to see a genre with so much potential reduced to Brando Sando and whatever the fuck this is >>97907900
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>>97908751
No, but I'm all for adding woke shit for a simple reason - the faster genre dies, the faster it can reborn. Let the market crash so from the ashes a new generation of creators will rise who will care about genre, not about making a quick buck.
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>>97908789
If you truly believe the "we need more creative fantasy!" argument is made in good faith in 2026, then I don't know what to tell you
If anything we need the exact opposite of that. We need to go back to proven, soulful formulas, double-down on it and stay there.
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>>97905481
second post, most accurate post.
>>97906549
I'm glad to see we still have brains on 4chan.
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>If I keep saying drone I can slurword my way out of having to make an argument
Words aren't magic spells.
You can't just say skidaddle, skedard, fuck off retard and expect the other person to disappear.I should know, you're still here after all.
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Tolkien is soi incarnate
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>>97909378
He's describing an explorative writing process to another author.
Robert E. Howard said Conan came to him fully formed one day, as if stepping out of a dream and seemed to tell his own stories.
You are a brainlet.
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>>97905461
>>97905463
People who hate Tolkien are literally just evil.
You don't have to love Lord of the Rings, hell, you don't even have to like it. But anyone who can mount a venomous, foaming-at-the-mouth screed like this is guaranteed to be a disgusting freak.
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>>97909861
>People who hate Tolkien are literally just evil.
>You don't have to love Lord of the Rings, hell, you don't even have to like it. But anyone who can mount a venomous, foaming-at-the-mouth screed like this is guaranteed to be a disgusting freak.
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>>97908789
See >>97908486
People are exhausted with arguing in good faith because we know you and your own will never listen to our points. It's always, "you're wrong, and I'm right" with you people. There will never be a world where I can explain why I don't want black people in fantasy without walking over a dozen eggshells that will instantly deactivate your willingness to listen. There will never be a world where I can safely explain why I think rainbow-hair fantasy is fucking exhausting without knowing I'm making myself a social pariah in doing so.
And the fact you're probably thinking, "then just let people enjoy things" is exactly the point. It's a position of utmost privilege, because you can pick and choose what you wish to listen to and anything that goes against the narrative can be comfortably silenced. The unspoken implication behind, "let people enjoy things" isn't "everyone gets to have a place at the table" it's "everyone I like gets to have a place at the table." I've seen how you people treat dissenters in supposedly open-minded places and it's disgusting.
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>>97909946
>I'm tired of arguing about why I don't want black people in fantasy! It's exhausting :((
>Therefore I will reply to your post about the lack of creativity in mainstream fantasy by bringing up black people out of nowhere
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you even read what you're writing?
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>>97910056
>What the fuck are you talking about?
NTA, but I think you know exactly what he's talking about.
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>>97906976
>Anon can't read
Many such cases! Anyway, like I said subversion for its own sake is also pointless. You create using your own interests and passions as inspiration, that's how you get something great. You don't do it for money, you don't do it for authority, you do it for the love of the game and that's how you make good content.
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>>97907056
>I have never once heard anyone say "Its not real fantasy because it doesnt have Dwarves or Elves"
I have. Anything that isn't in line with what tolkein had is not considered real fantasy.
>Yet here you are saying "You have to do X Y and Z or your system/setting causes stagnation of the genre"
I'm saying that there are no rules on what makes fantasy fantasy, other than magic is somehow involved. That just determines the sub-genre. For example, star wars isn't sci-fi it's Science Fantasy. It's got blasters and starships alongside weird wizards with laser swords. It is categorically a sub-genre of fantasy.
>I keep hearing how fantasy is "stagnating" yet if you ask for the solution you get the same stagnant answer of "be weird"
You need to be fresh, not weird. If you're gonna have any of the usual tolkein clone shit, at least do something unique with it instead of just "this is tolkein's elves and tolkein's orcs and tolkein's dwarves and tolkein's not-hobbits" or whatever. But yes, being weird certainly helps.
>I just dont see why "humans-elves-dwarves-hobbits fantasy game with fighters and rangers and wizards " would preclude that.
Because there is a high chance that it's going to just be tolkein clone slop.
>Thats not what made Tolkien good.
Certainly wasn't his writing. It's all flowery, wordy nonsense.
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>>97905461
Oh yeah, reheating Alan Moore was so much better, you absolute hack.
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>>97910584
>For example, star wars isn't sci-fi it's Science Fantasy
The original trilogy really is closer to pulp adventure than anything else, but the prequels and the media they've put out since are all sci-fi, down to using robots and space stations as a means to discuss our own politics and the issues of the time.
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>>97910559
>subversion for its own sake is also pointless
You're all naive.
Read about "the long march through the institutions"
Pseud "critics" are apologists for this kind of shit because supposedly it gives them clout and make them look "intellectual", while not even knowing where it comes from. Academia is filled with this kind of retard. The one in OP is a textbook example.
There is nothing worse than a midwit with an unearned sense of self-importance
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>>97911145
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>>97908789
Just because a concern is stated in a simplistic and inarticulate manner doesn't mean it's invalid.
Shoehorning blacks in the game for the sake of modern fad politics isn't creative. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most people aren't stupid. They can tell the difference between a black character that's there because the artist envisioned a black and one made to be a tick in a nonsensical diversity checklist.
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>>97911256
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>>97911281
>Fantasy should be more creative
>Oh so you want to insert black women into fantasy?? THAT'S FUCKING STUPID!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S NOT CREATIVE AT ALL!!!!!!!
The issue is not with how the "concern" is articulated, the issue is that it has fucking nothing to do with what I said.
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>>97911321
>>97911323
>>97911332
https://
discord
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/mMKVPM5VeF
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>>97911314
>fantasy is creatively bankrupt
>how do you know
>IT JUST ISNT OKAY BECAUSE TOLKIEN
>what did tolkien do?
>HE IS HOLDING A GUN TO MY HEAD FROM HIS GRAVE TELLING ME IM NOW ALLOWED TO WRITE OTHER THINGS
Its funny how try to paint yourself a reasonable person while blaming everything and everyone because your Bugman-Fantasy novel resonates with no one.
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>>97911314
Again, I repeat;
>They can tell the difference between a black character that's there because the artist envisioned a black and one made to be a tick in a nonsensical diversity checklist.
If you can't do this, you are either a dumb gorilla nigger or you are intentionally being dishonest.
Diversity quotas aren't creativity, they are corporate compliance.
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>>97912189
Everyone knows it’s dishonesty. They feign ignorance because then you have to explain yourself and, through the explanation, find nit-picks to refute. I refuse to believe somebody could have lived through 2012-2024 without absorbing even a single bit of the cultural zeitgeist.
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>>97906846
It's alright, story of a bunch of people trying to save a city from their own mistakes despite it being a horrible dystopia.
Ending sucks for such a long ass book though: I don't mind a complete downer in a short story, but if I've invested myself in reading a phonebook-like tome I'd rather have a little emotional catharsis rather than "And then everyone was dead, crippled or on the run from the state. The nice bug lady you liked has brain damage reducing her to a childlike state where she's just aware enough to know she's damaged and her boyfriend is going to have to try to get them away from the law whilst changing her every time she shuts herself and cries"
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>>97907336
>Definite good and evil
Good if you want clear stakes and a clean base narrative, yes.
>Morally instructive
Unnecessary if shooting for a reading level higher than an eight year old.
>transcendent, evident virtues
Honestly, Tolkien might be a good worldbuilder but the Catholicism left a few holes in his brain. His characters never discuss religion, yet the final climax of the main narrative of LotR is Frodo failing his quest then getting bailed out by God reaching down and giving Gollum a little nudge into the lava. The Valar are clearly classical style gods but are downplayed because he's scared of Writing A Heresy in fiction. He even says it's not up to him to declare where orc souls go when they die because he's not god.
Still, it is what it is.
>Wouldn't it be clever if everyone was awful and the world was grey and immoral
No, not really. Even shit like 40k works best when there's a few decent regular folk for the grimdark to be happening to.
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>>97912189
Don't be a disingenuous retard. We all can agree that the average Netflixslop fantasy series (let's be honest, no one here actually reads) slaps minorities in their media because their marketing department tells them to do so, but it doesn't change that the contrarian post-2016 subhumans shitting up this board aren't here to make genuine discourse. If the Orlando Furioso was released nowadays they'd seethe nonstop about there being positive representation of Muslim characters.
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>>97912509
Oh, shut up and stop acting like this is some callous marketing ploy. We all saw with Witcher that these people are true believers who genuinely believe in what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean they do it well, and that doesn’t mean they do it without corporate encouragement, but the Diversity Graph used for Overwatch was neither custom-made for the company nor met with *any* resistance. These people hire their own and they keep among their own until entire industries are dominated by their voice, and as others pointed out any attempt to undermine or question that voice is sharply reprimanded - again, like how Henry Cavill was lynched on Twitter because he dared to disrespect the social hierarchy of modern corporate culture.
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>>97912568
Of course they're believers in globalism, it leads to a grey market of slop with no differences in culture and social perspective and even basic tastes. It makes for an easy demographic to sell to without having to play competition with groups that sell different products. Like, it's something that happened in other industries far before entertainment. I understand people want some epic narrative of what is TRULY happening and that they are TRULY hiding from us, but this is just post-modern capitalism at work. You're not wrong, but bitching nonstop about the latest conspiracy theory on race replacement led to the very specific situation in which, nowadays, people just aren't reacting to elites eating and raping children.
But to be fair this is really just a matter of anons being annoying and repetitive in my board for elfgames.
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>>97912622
>people just aren't reacting to elites eating and raping children
I'm so fucking bitter that the total response to literal evidence that elected officials are doing the most vile shit imaginable was, "heh, March Madness is coming up soon." We really are just cattle.
>But to be fair this is really just a matter of anons being annoying and repetitive in my board for elfgames.
On the topic of this, I think the point that should be reiterated for newfags and oldfags alike is one that I stumbled into while talking with a friend on Discord. For context, I was in a bitter mood at how gay LANCER typically tends to express itself, and my friend was enticing me with LANCER artwork that flies starkly in the face of the assumptions I made about the system(to provide context on this, every bit of artwork I've seen of LANCER is gay, or trans, or brown, or some annoyingly bland "realistic" person, and my friend posted a bunch of hot white guys and women with huge breasts hanging out in the hangar bay.)I was being snide towards my friend because I didn't want to get lured into what I felt was a system "not meant for me." My friend responded, "and yet, here is this art" and it clicked in my head.
All I said was, "never let them keep you from having a place at the table." That's really the crux of every argument here; people don't realize the way to change the industry, or the culture, is to show up and express your beliefs despite knowing you can face pushback against it. I know this tactic is well-known to the LGBT community, but it's worth emphasizing for *everyone* who gripes and groans about not getting what they perceive to be their share of the sun. You gotta push for it, and you gotta push knowing it's going to hurt.
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>>97912386
>>97912189
The adorable thing about you people is your idiot naivity.
You hate the pandering of "diversity?" The fuck did you retards think those studios were doing when every tv show and comic book accentuated tits and ass and showed big strong white dudes in exactly the right way to get fifteen year-old boys to fork over their allowance.
It was always pandering. You're just butthurt because it's no longer pandering solely to you.
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>>97912683
I don't disagree, anon. All we can do is build our own spaces and stand in defiance of the fact a hobby that should be about expressing yourself, creating cool fantasy shit and having fun with your friends is being twisted by forces that just want it to be an excuse to sell merchandise. Like, big titty women and mechas go hard, if that's not the hardline of the community, fuck them.
I do admit I am always kind of on the edge for the LGBT matters because, as a bisexual guy, I always feel like the corposlop is patronizing, fake, and gets people to simply grow annoyed with bad representation being stuck everywhere without a thought regarding quality, but 2025-2026 have kinda shown me the state of the world without shitty rainbow capitalism and people just seethe nonstop about stuff that really isn't much of an issue (like the aforementioned post-2016 anons).
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>>97912724
I think there's a genuine argument to be made on how much pushback against "woke" messaging is due to bigotry and how much is due to visceral distaste towards dishonest corporate marketing. Like, I was one of the people getting called "chud" back when it meant something sharp and cruel, yet every time I watched a genuine queer story written by LGBT people, I found myself utterly invested. Was I getting angry at Ghostbusters because I thought women shouldn't be Ghostbusters, or was I angry because the media worshiped the concept and called any dissenters "virgin losers?" As more time goes on, I think it's the latter and not the former.
But there are many people who can't see that distinction, and they've blended the two together into what we're seeing today. People have been trained on decades of cynicism and dishonesty that it's hard to tell when something's being genuine. Personally? I blame Wendy's Twitter anthropomorphizing unfeeling corporate conglomerates.And then you get into the idea that the aforementioned culture wars were perpetuated by the same Epstein class that's eating children, and it really throws water on the fire everyone's insisting you should eat.
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>>97911801
>>97912189
>but I really want to talk about NIGGERS!!!!!
What the fuck does that have to do with what I said? How are you not understanding this?
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>>97912768
I think it is 100% is the visceral distaste toward corporate marketing for most people.
I think one of the big reasons a lot of people look at say, the harfoots in season 1 of the rings of power is that they are supposed to be a small, insular society that has little to no interaction with outsiders because outsiders scary. Why the fuck do they all look so different then? They look like a bunch of randos from downtown LA in 2024. LA only looks like that because it's a huge place where lots of people from all around the world move to because they think there's opportunities there. An insular society should look inbred as fuck. Most of them should have similar skin tones and hair color and such. That it looks like a modern diverse city population breaks the suspension of disbelief of it being a bunch of weirdo inbreds that all look similar. Had they made all the harfoots look like the one played by the black actor, I think a lot less people would have been as annoyed. The breaking of the suspension of disbelief for DEI ESG good boy points by the studio is fucking annoying.
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>>97912839
Anon it was always corporate pandering. They pander to the people they think will buy the things they advertise. You're noticing because sometimes it's not you being pandered to, any more. But it was always, ALWAYS, naked pandering. The only difference is that it always used to be pandering to people who look like you.
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>>97912712
>he fuck did you retards think those studios were doing when every tv show and comic book accentuated tits and ass and showed big strong white dudes in exactly the right way
why do people like it when they put things people like in a piece of media???????
how is this possible????
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>>97913040
I think in your rush to try to get your question mark button unstuck, you failed to understand the words you read. I'm not knocking it, anon. I'm explaining to you that it was always pandering. The difference isn't that suddenly corporate America is pandering to people. It's that suddenly corporate America is pandering to people other than just you.
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>>97912816
>>but I really want to talk about NIGGERS!!!!!
What the fuck does that have to do with what >>97911801 said?
Did you lose the plot or something?
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>>97912440
>You have absolutely no idea why those decisions are being made. You're inventing strawmen because of your own bias.
You just did the very thing you're accusing him of.
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>>97905461
Life is a fucking grind sometimes, why the fuck would I want to play a misery simulator? I like heroic fantasy because I'm never going to have the chance to do something heroic in real life so why the fuck would I want to play some hobo poorfag nigger walking around dying in 1 session just to make some bald failure retard happy? Who the fuck is this idiot anyway? Some fucking shithead failure that probably can't write and just cries online because it's unfair he's a shit writer with no readers. I hope someone beats his fucking head. MAybe that's my heroic action. Tracking this fucking cancer patient looking faggot down and ending his life on video and uploading it here. Fuck off.
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>>97908730
>Fantasy is so creatively bankrupt
In what sense? Look at the most popular non-Tolkien fantasy that even normies know about: Witcher and Game of Thrones. Both of these are nothing like Tolkien's setting at all.
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>>97913165
It's not a matter of centrism, it's a matter of crying wolf. If Scientology dudes and people who believe in the Hollow Earth or psychic powers or reptile people can unironically publish books and you have to hear your naive parents and coworkers wailing about them, you will eventually have droves of people who roll their eyes at actual pedophilic elite rings. It's not even a new big thing, last decades a bunch of CIA shittery on sabotaging countries and political movements was declassified and the people really just shrugged or went "Oh, yeah, sure, another weird conspiracy".
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>>97913147
China Melville wrote his pissy little piece that started this whole argument because "his" version of fantasy is like, the Zorbongs who communicate through seven mouths (all of which are saying different things to layer their speech) got addicted to memetic language and now it's up to autistic septuplets who are mind-linked in order to communicate with the Zorbongs to fix them. That's one of his books, by the way (Embassytown) though significantly dumbed down and ran through the shitpost filter.
What we're dealing with here is a garden-variety fart-sniffer who wrote some interesting books and, rather than find comfort in his niche, decides to throw snide accusations at the hoi polloi that dare to eat what he believes is slop.
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>>97913203
>China Melville
never heard of him
>he became a Marxist at university.[7] A book version of his PhD thesis, entitled Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law
Yeah he should be taken into a ditch and shot in the back of the head.
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>>97913194
>you will eventually have droves of people who roll their eyes at actual pedophilic elite rings. It's not even a new big thing, last decades a bunch of CIA shittery on sabotaging countries and political movements was declassified and the people really just shrugged or went "Oh, yeah, sure, another weird conspiracy".
The unfortunate reason I think this happens is that most Americans know, at least implicitly, that they are utterly powerless to stop these things from happening. Everyone cheered when that UnitedHealthcare CEO got shot, that doesn't happen unless people know that American Healthcare is predatory. Everyone knows Epstein didn't kill himself, everyone knows Boeing murdered those whistleblowers. I've never met someone who doesn't think those didn't happen.
But all of them also know that surveillance in America is ubiquitous and effective. People are scared of what they could lose if they act out against the establishment, not just legally but societally as many Gen Xers and Millennials are waiting for their boomer parents to die to get the 30+ trillion inheritance coming along in the next couple decades. We are a country of fear.
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>>97905461
>>97905463
His critique is fair. But incomplete.
There is a place for easy, simple comfort food. Imagine your relationship with food if every meal had to be medically optimized for ideal nutrition. The purpose of food, of cuisine, is not just to provide your body the perfectly optimal set and ratios of molecules. Comfort food exists for a reason. And it isn't to be a radical challenge to "status-quo", whatever the fuck that even means in a fantasy literature context.
It's ok to have clichés in literature. When you boil it all down in a super reductionist manner, everything is a cliché or else we wouldn't be able to communicate. It's precisely the shared lexicon of symbols that allows literature to even exist. So sword-and-sorcery might seem a bit infantile if you're a joyless twat huffing your own farts like China fucking Mielville, but he's literally missing the fucking point just as much as that moron who tried to make that Onions complete nutrition replacement product years ago.
One really must wonder how he manages to bathe or wipe his ass, because surely he finds such rote repetition of mundane banality revolting? Or does he devise radical, novel methods every single day to get the task done? Each day, a new, nuanced, gritty and ambiguous method to wipe his productive asshole...
He's the sort of dunce who would complain while watching cable news and a doctor comes on to explain that we all need to be eating more fiber in our diets. "Oh come on! That's so boring, dude, it's not radical! We've heard that one so many times before! That 'just take care of yourself' stuff has spread like a virus!"
Fucking spare me. It's ok to dislike Tolkein's ultra-nationalist early 20th century patriarchal bullshit. Every fucking author has their own worldview informed by their particular context in time, place and culture. Even bald, dim assholes who think every word they write is worthy to replace a classic that founded the fucking genre in the first place...
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>>97913492
Oddly, the parse-filter here changes it to onions... which is hilarious, but anyway, a link for nostalgia's sake:
https://onions
lent.com/collections/complete-meal-shakes
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>>97907885
>popularity means le western canon
Who are you quoting? Certainly not me. Adoption and recognition is not the same as "popularity", you imbecile.
>So marvel movies are in the western canon?
Completely irrelevant to anything I said or that was discussed, but whether you like it or not, the impact that Marvel has had absolutely puts it in the western cinematic canon, and its writing and style of filmmaking has practically defined the last 20 years. The effects of the MCU, for better or worse, resonates within every field of filmmaking, and will likely keep affecting western filmmaking for at least another 30 to 50 years. You're profoundly ignorant if you can't see that.
>Imagine thinking Tolkien is more relevant than Shakespeare
I can only assume that you are genuinely illiterate at this point.
>if not in actual fact.
>if not in actual fact.
>if not in actual fact.
The reality of the English language and its actual development pales in importance to the perception of reality which dominates, and that's ignoring the fact that Shakespeare is of little relevance outside the core anglosphere, whereas Tolkien is practically a household name across the western world, or at least gis conception of fantasy.
You can feel free to stay mad and die mad about it, but I suspect you can't even comprehend what's been said.
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Fucking LMAO
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>>97914741
>Target eliminated. Good work Agent 47.
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>>97907014
>It's never that they want to challenge the status quo, but rather they want to implement their own status quo.
What exactly do you think the point of challenging a status quo is? Just jerking off and going "hur hur would you look at that"?
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i mean the next greatest thing after tolkien should be a story about the protagonists overthrowing a near utopia and turn it into an oligarchical dictatorship and people being better off for it or something. it would definitely subvert expectations
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this man was accused of rape by an ex and he sued her and he "won" in the sense that she got minor details incorrect and thats enough. anyway if you say this anywhere his fans will email him and he'll email the web admin and screech and demand for your IP so he can send you a threatening letter telling you to stop talking or else you'll be sued in a british court and forced to say you're very very sorry and wrong if you can't prove he's a rapist
he will be emailing 4chan and demanding my IP for this post
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>>97913492
>Tolkein's ultra-nationalist early 20th century patriarchal bullshit
hey everyone, my name is Skerples and I'm a pretentious faggot who thinks LOTR should be banned (I hate it, and I cannot stand people liking things I don't like) but you should know I'm not as cringe as THIS GUY, he dislikes tolkien because its boring, I dislike it because I'm heckin' feminist
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>>97915118
Unironically yes. This culture insists that ALL culture, authority, and morality should be challenged and subverted. It was something that united hippy and punk culture, that there should be no authority, rules, or status quo.
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>>97915118
>>97915666 (Me)
Oh, and take it from someone retarded enough to get a humanities degree: colleges and writers circles are infested with people who do nothing but jerk off at challenging the status quo.
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>>97915118
>"no no you dont get it, challenging the status quo and replacing it with my own so now I can be at the top and pull the ladder up is how its supposed to work"
Its always funny when weirdo activists say the quiet part out loud.
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>>97915828
Can you really not tell that you are so unlikable, so utterly unpalatable in your behaviour that people would rather keep the status quo than give you even a sliver of power?
Its not that others are contrarians, its that you are such a massive faggot that you dealing with you turns them into contrarians just to spite you.
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>>97907618
If you consider wuxia fantasy, or magic realism fantasy(which Terry Pratchett aggressively asserts it is, while also saying all modern fantasy has a direct connection to Tolkien), then you acknowledge there's fantasy traditions from lineages disconnected from Tolkien himself and discuss fantasy without him.
You can argue HP Lovecraft has an influence on magical realist fiction thanks to Jorge Borges translating his works into Spanish and also being influenced by his writing, but that's not something you can argue for Tolkien.
Tolkien's influence on Chinese fantasy like wuxia and xianxia exists, primarily with historical settings being traded in for conworlds. But that's an extremely recent influence, so recent that JK Rowling and Harry Potter was being introduced around the same time.
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>>97908192
>Of thinking England "needed" a mythology when it is rich and culture in mythology already?
That's a lot of writers globally, it's a natural feeling. The Kalevala wouldn't be collected and written down and organized into book form without it.
And Tolkien specifically wanted something akin to the Odyssey
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>>97906857
>>97908422
>>cod-Wagnerian
>The fuck is this, another /lit/fag buzzword like "Watsonian" or "Doylist"? If you're an English-speaking reader of English works, speak English, not gibberish.
He's saying Tolkien is fake-Wagner, a wannabe-Wagner, a Wagner rip-off. Tolkien vehemently denied taking any inspiration from Wagner's Ring Cycle and hated LotR being compared to it. And if you don't know who Wagner is then I don't know what else to say
Watsonian and Doylist are valid terms btw, especially when talking about games of all things.
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For those who don't know. Richard Wagner was a 19th century German composer and writer, most famous for Opera's like Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and the Ring Cycle, which consists of four opera's: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.
Mieville brings him up either because Tolkien's style reminds him of Wagner's which was often criticised as being over the top and bombastic. Or because he is a marxist, because a man by the name of Adolf was fan of Wagner.
Lohengrin is still his best work btw.
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>>97914027
You stated that pop culture signifcance means it's part of the western canon. By those standards marvel movies are.
The Cantos by Pound have zero signifance in pop culture yet are part of the western canon. Dunce.
>Completely irrelevant to anything I said or that was discussed, but whether you like it or not, the impact that Marvel has had absolutely puts it in the western cinematic canon, and its writing and style of filmmaking has practically defined the last 20 years. The effects of the MCU, for better or worse, resonates within every field of filmmaking, and will likely keep affecting western filmmaking for at least another 30 to 50 years. You're profoundly ignorant if you can't see that.
Marvel movies are not part of the canon. They have no impact in the filmaking canon. There were plenty of shitty movies made in the 50's that were hugely popular yet nobody remembers them and do not remain part of the canon.
>I can only assume that you are genuinely illiterate at this point.
You literally think marvel movies are art.
>The reality of the English language and its actual development pales in importance to the perception of reality which dominates, and that's ignoring the fact that Shakespeare is of little relevance outside the core anglosphere, whereas Tolkien is practically a household name across the western world, or at least gis conception of fantasy.
The Tolkiendrone expsoes himself as the ignoramus he is. Shakespeare is hugely influential in all of the civilised world. He was so hugely popular in 18th century germany that germans started proclaiming him as being a secret german because they loved him so much. you pretending that shakespeare is not known outside of the anglosphere is showing your cretinous ignorance of literature.
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>>97916383
It's just there to piss off Tolkien's ghost, since Tolkien despised people detecting Wagner influences in his work.
There were a lot of socialists who loved Wagner, not just the national- type, but that's unrelated
Anyone who doesn't know who Wagner is should be raped off the board btw tho desu. That's just insane.
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>>97912768
>Like, I was one of the people getting called "chud" back when it meant something sharp and cruel
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>>97920995
>there's a genuine argument to be made on how much pushback against "woke" messaging is due to bigotry and how much is due to visceral distaste towards dishonest corporate marketing
It legit does not matter. When the corporations are blatantly pandering to that demographic it says "Haha it's ours now just make your own [insert business product here] then!" and when the pandering stops, because it's directed toward groups that don't produce a profit, they immediately slide back into "Uhhhh akshually we always knew it was rainbow capitalism!"
That is the cycle and how this always goes: A group of cultural activists infiltrate a space, socially engineer it to eject anyone that isn't conducive to their worldview, and then act like they're the victims when it all goes to shit. The product isn't shit, it's just that the fanbase are bigots! The "wider audience" will come along any day now you'll see! You should be grateful they're taking a giant shit on your plate because they worked really hard to do so! Then they lose their jobs and blame the corporation for cutting them loose.
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>>97912768
Oh my bad this was directed at you: >>97921081
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>>97912768
>I think there's a genuine argument to be made on how much pushback against "woke" messaging is due to bigotry and how much is due to visceral distaste towards dishonest corporate marketing.
The former always existed but then it took over the latter
Steven Bannon of Breitbart fame has openly bragged about helping that become the case
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>>97905461
Absolute retard pilled.
>you mean chivalric romance, a story telling genre that lasted 1,000 years not 1 author
god I fucking hate how ignorant marxists are.
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>>97908486
best post. no deconstruction is not interesting or intelligent. it's boring unoriginal slop that teenagers do and it's so intellectually dull watching 2 generations of adults stuck in teenage mode for life.
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>>97908730
Sci-fi is my favorite genre but most of it is unreadable bc it's too f-ing weird with green, weird looking humanoids and tentacles.
Thank god the expanse change how belters looked for budget bc it made the books able to take seriously and they are the best 21st century series so far, but original was a joke bc they had to have the completely unbelievable verisimilitude breaking weird humans to be "sci-fi"
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>>97910056
Here is the thing in case any lurker is looking for real answers-
most of us are on some level of the spectrum. we obsess over the details of fantasy worlds, the logistics / numbers that make things possible. That's why we are nerds.
Black people should never exist in a European fantasy setting, bc cosmopolitanism, easy, ubiquitous, and cheap travel can't exist without modern technology. You have destroyed our ability to buy into the world before we even get started with the story.
Leftist turn this into not liking black people bc for them, professing gratitude for black people is more important everyone else should just do that.
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>>97922077
Yup.
I mean shit.
I'm a full blown Chud.
No brakes, no self-doubt.
I still read and enjoyed the source books for Glorantha's "Pamaltela", because it's an anthropologist's fantasy Africa, so it feels organically enticing, in a way some diversity-twat's panderfest never can.
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>>97921786
HAHAHAHA
>I didn't actually read the OP
>no clue who the guy is but didn't even enlarge the image to know if I knew him or not
>just knew someone complaining about Tolkien was a commie d-bag
>so I called him a commie d-bag
mfw actually reading the thread and discovering he is an avowed commie d-bag
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>>97916350
>Watsonian and Doylist are valid terms btw
no, they aren't
those are pretentious /lit/fag terms only used by pseudos trying to LARP as academics or 'cultural elits' and are complete divorced from actual living culture
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>>97908499
Because he was more of right winger conservative than the "muh joooooos" fagots that simp for muslins and third word, anti western revolutionary ideologies at every chance
Your confusions comes from your lack of knowledge of any conservative philosophy and exaggerated attachment aesthetics and contrarianism
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>>97905461
>boys-own-adventure glorifying in war
Presumably this lackwit meant boys-on-adventure, but also it’s clear that he understands none of the themes or perhaps has never actually read Tolkien, substituting the Peter Jackson films (and not even truly paying attention to those). Tolkien’s characters all lose quite a lot in their questing, it’s not a glorification of war in any meaningful way. There’s an acceptance of the necessity to fight and the futility of passivity in the face of evil, but not any glory.
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>>97922108
This, diversity in media should mean diverse stories, not fucking with the casting in the 11 millionth remake of the same old properties.
I don’t want negress Tony Stark, it doesn’t fit the character as a playboy born with a silver spoon in his mouth who has the privileged audacity to demand crazy EULAs for his super-tech, to the point where he strong arms the government out of the fruits of a project they help him fund. Give me a different super-hero character that’s a black woman and do so without having to backhandedly reference some old boogieman of a character you resent while telling that story! Make her story reflect her reality and have her grow to surpass it.
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>>97909946
>There will never be a world where I can explain why I don't want black people in fantasy without walking over a dozen eggshells that will instantly deactivate your willingness to listen. There will never be a world where I can safely explain why I think rainbow-hair fantasy is fucking exhausting without knowing I'm making myself a social pariah in doing so.
This is the most damning part of the last 10 years. Every time somebody even broaches the subject of, "don't add black people into this story" it suddenly becomes a witch hunt or, at the very least, a dressing down. People have become so scared of getting lynched for voicing what is probably a very reasonable concern that people have simply learned to take it. Generational apathy leads to the death of culture - but that's what these people want, isn't it? Destroy the culture so you can replace it with your own. Makes sense why they want all the teaching jobs.
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>>97924382
>anon: I don't want black people in fantasy and I'm tired of being a pariah for saying it! I have reasonable concerns and that doesn't make me racist!
>anon, 1 post down: I hate niggers so much its unreal
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>>97923359
>Why did x character leave
>Well in the story it's because he died in a car crash(Watsonian), but irl it's because the actor left for another job(Doylist)
They're valid terms
Your character died from his head getting crushed by a rock(Watsonian) because you got a bad roll(Doylist)
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>>97925174
Those are pretentious ways to say "in world reason" and "out of world reason", there only purpose is to LARP as an academic intellectual and are only used by /lit/fags pseudos and obfuscate what is being said
It's unnecessary and unhelpful jargon that does nothing but signal the belonging to a clique, making them invalid
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>>97911281
> They can tell the difference between a black character that's there because the artist envisioned a black and one made to be a tick in a nonsensical diversity checklist.
This doesn't actually happen. It is almost if not always just braindead racist seething and to the extent there is any difference being noticed it's solely between old good and new bad.
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>>97922077
>Black people should never exist in a European fantasy setting, bc cosmopolitanism, easy, ubiquitous, and cheap travel can't exist without modern technology. You have destroyed our ability to buy into the world before we even get started with the story.
This is just not true at all. Plenty of mass migrations over great distances happened throughout history, see the Indo-Europeans, Turks, Mongols, Austronesians, Romani, Bantu, etc. Of course it never historically happened in our world that there was any significant migration of black people from Subsaharan Africa into Europe in post-paleolithic and pre-modern times but it's not something that would've been literally physically impossible, and especially in your FANTASY WORLD where conditions can be radically different in any number of ways there's absolutely no reason there couldn't be black people in your fantasy Europe equivalent.
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>>97927006
NTA.
People find that cheesy, but it's not the real crux of the matter.
The real crux is that we know they don't just stop at fiction.
See: BBC historical dramas, and the like, games that purport to historical settings, etc, or whitewashing of narratives like in "The Woman King".
And it isn't just races of people being mixed up; it's this weird cult of "Representation" of "Minorities" (non-white, non-straight, aka, people who don't have white children) even if said representation is ahistorical, and stepping on the toes of the "representation" of -history itself-
When you see Black "Aragorn" or Black Woman "Robin Hood" it's a statement of intent.
It's saying "Your history is ours now, just like your institutions and your lives"
Ironically, it's not usually just some lay member of this group making this statement; they may or may not be au-fait with this whole thing.
But some appointed ideological "representative" (handler) who may not even really be a member of said group, See: Kamala Harris as a great example; she's a biracial woman, so she's a "threefer", and by diversity-logic that makes her the best representative for "the oppressed", hence why it got to the point of her awkwardly code-switching with horrendous accents depending on what demographic she was addressing at the time; white, black, or Indian.
Black victorians, black vikings, your history must be made into that meme with the white chick on the couch.
If I decided to dress up as Shaka Zulu for Halloween I'd be pilloried.
Everybody can see it, the only thing is, do you have the sense to care?
Because this is what betrayal and subversion looks like.
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>>97927873
Oh and the university of Cambridge's department of Anglo-Saxon studies decided a couple of years ago that "Anglo-Saxons are a myth, because Britain has always been Diverse".
This is like, a spiritual metaphysical struggle permeating through every layer of our culture.
And it fucks me off that it's even spoiling playing with my little plastic men somehow.
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>>97927873
>>97927952
Reminds me of seeing somebody on Discord, in real time, excuse Gawain being Pakistani in "The Green Knight" while condemning Heathcliff being white in the new Wuthering Heights. It's saying whiteness or, to be more blunt, "nativeness" is irrelevant unless it's the chosen caste. And I use nativeness because Netflix was quite comfortable with insisting Cleopatra was black until there was an upswell of outrage from Egypt itself.
The past 15 years has been one long declaration that our heritage, our culture, our people and our homes are nothing more than products that can and must be packaged for "mass audiences." Anything you make can be taken away from you, anything you cherish must be shared among the class. The opposite, of course, never happens. Could you imagine the outrage if somebody insisted on tossing white villagers into "The Woman King" because Carthaginians had visited the Ivory Coast since as early as the 300s BC? Of course not, because immigration is only one way; a reflection of modern demographics. Which, in essence, shows the blackwashing is in fact not "fantastical" at all, but a representation of political trends today.
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>>97927873
>i don't actually care about the content only my political project
Yes we know, this is why it's always so blatantly obviously when you people try to lie and claim actually it's not about racism it's about realism or whatever the fuck.
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>>97906549
He said "lance the boil", as in "stab it". It's a real technique used by doctors to drain a boil by cutting it open with a scalpel.
He's using it as an idiom to refer to how to the best thing a writer can do try to escape Tolkien's influence ("the boil") is to consciously remove ("lance") it.
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>>97928082
forgot picrel, to illustrate what "lancing a boil" refers to
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>>97905461
>Tolkien!
Tolkien is only responsible for the aesthetics nowadays, Moorcock is responsible for all the dogshit D&Disms that plague tabletop these days. Need a remind you that he was the faggot who spearheaded the retarded moral axis shit that dominated the cosmology of every setting for like 40 years straight.
Tolkien didn't do that.
Elves aren't the reason your game is shit, genre tropes cribbed directly from Moorcock and, recently, anime/video games are the reason your game is shit.
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>>97928081
Have you ever considered the reason people have to jump through all those hoops to defend themselves? Because people like you will lynch anyone who honestly says, “I don’t want black people in this.” That should be something people feel comfortable saying.
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>>97928134
The whining is the point, anon. It’s an expression of deep frustration. The fact you see it as “petulance” points to the claims people have been making throughout this thread; you’re not interested in being challenged, you’re not looking for a “dialogue.” You’re here to force your views on other people.
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>>97928152
Except in reality nothing is being forced on you. You aren't being forced to play DND with black characters or watch a Netflix special with black actors or whatever, what you're actually mad about is merely the fact that these things exist, which is why you keep whining.
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>>97928167
Oh look, more lies, the actual problem is that these things have increasingly crowded out the stuff that was for white nerds. If there was just some fantasy for black people stuff that existed in it's own corner, that would be one thing, but that's not what is actually happening and you know it.
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>>97905461
>>97905486
I mean do we really blame the rest of authors in general for not wanting to spend a couple of decades studying history, mythology, and linguistics to the level of an Oxford professor to surpass Tolkien?
Yes, authors could be better, but the bar Tolkien set was so high that it is nigh-insurmountable for the average person who wants to write books for a living and can't afford going on a 20-30 year side trek learning things to produce a fully immersive world.
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>>97928348
Sorry but your buddy already told on himself. >>97927873
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>>97922077
They can exist, but as oddballs or (rich) foreign visitors and dignitaries.
Inserting black people everywhere in the northern-european-regions of a fantasy setting, and as hipster urban poets and sassy queens and sacred oppressed minorities, is a sign that the fantasy setting was artificially made to conform to the ideological aesthetics of californians with Social Justice on the brain.
The status of black people as a sacred oppressed minority is an artifact of the historical peculiarities of earth's trans-atlantic slave-trade.
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China is retarded but so are half the people itt. There's nothing difficult to understand about this quote, even if it is stupid. If you can't figure out what "lance the boil" then you should stick to video games.
>>97906857
>cod-Wagnerian
>The fuck is this
Tolkien cribbed a lot of the Lord of the Rings from Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs, which China is referencing here
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>>97916287
>you acknowledge there's fantasy traditions from lineages disconnected from Tolkien himself and discuss fantasy without him
Yes. But what you are talking about isn't the "fantasy genre" which is a shorthand for "fantasy novels written for adults."
Talking about wuxia and magic realism as though they were the same as fantasy despite having a different medium than the genre is to me, rather reductive. Tolkien codified the fantasy genre down to making the three book trilogy the default medium.
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>>97907900
First series that did that was Everybody Loves Large Chests, of which it was innovative and made sense inside of its own series. The events of the series was from a self aware NPC in MMO that did not know both it and its world were not real. It came out on Royal Road before it got edited into the Amazon version people will find when searching for it. Everybody Loves Large Chests started in 2014.
Having said that, yes the people that copy it generally are trash. They do not understand why it was done in the first place, to show this story's world is not real.
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>>97933550
Yeah, that's honestly how I feel about anti-tolkienfags in general.
>waahhh Tolkien had the whole world on a silver spoon how can I EVER compete?
>and only draw from the shallow pool of pop culture for inspiration
It's not just that, the further we get away from Tolkien you get more and more derivative
>draws inspiration from Illiad and Beowulf
to
>draws inspiration from Tolkien
to
>draws inspiration from Robert Jordan and GRRM
to
>draws inspiration from fucking Christopher Paolini and fanfic writers?
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>>97933589
>waahhh Tolkien had the whole world on a silver spoon how can I EVER compete?
And there it is, the dirty secret of sour grapes wannabes. Tolkien had a rich, storied life. He was a college professor, he made deep dives into historical cultures and their languages and customs, fought in a world war, lost friends in war, got married, had kids, etc etc etc. The best writers had very interesting lives, you'll find. These modern cunts are almost to a one spoiled nepobabies who only made a skim of the shallowest, most accesible material around and feel entitled to the same prestige as the greats, becoming bitter and angry when they inevitably can't measure up. they know on some level they're only pretenders, so instead of bettering themselves they try to tear down everything that came before them so they can make themselves look good in comparison. Most anti-tolkien faggots are also ardent leftists, this is no coincidence.