High fantasy is defined as fantasy where the setting itself is original (as opposed to low fantasy, which is the real-world setting with fantastical elements). So technically, ASoIaF fits.Palindromemordnilap said:
What franchise do you consider to be the perfect Tolkien-esque Fantasy setting?
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It's a moot point, because Age of Sigmar isn't Fantasy Battle. It's a continuation of it, yes, but it's so far removed in setting and tone that...well, let's just say I there's a reason why it got a new branding.Thaluikhain said:
TBH, I don't really think of 'periods' for Fantasy Battle, though they probably exist. I first became aware of it during 5th edition, started playing with 6th edition, and lost interest sometime after Storm of Chaos...
...which adds to what pisses me off, that Storm of Chaos was retconned to "nup, Chaos wins, deal with it!", but TBH, me becoming disenfranchised with 40K and Fantasy was down to plenty of reasons. But even looking at Storm of Chaos, I wouldn't call that over the top - it's not over the top by the standards of the setting (Chaos incursions have occurred before, and with similar force), and by the standards of high fantasy, "armies of evil threatening the world" isn't exactly out of left field. Lord of the Rings itself does it (and that's not even touching on Morgoth).
Tolkien is pretty OtT. I mean Aragorn in the books is constantly showing off his sword to complete randos and just automatically expecting fealty. He's kin of a massive douchebag in Fellowship because he's there tossing up whether he should help Frodo or just simply kick in the doors of Minas Tirith and simply take the throne as if one would take candy from a baby.Thaluikhain said:
Then you've got fucking Gandalf who is like; "Lol, I'm the biggest mofo this side of Mordor...." So on, and so on and so on. Throw on Tolkien's patently racist ideas and his musings about the humanity of people who are simply just not Caucasian, which can be summed up as basically just screaming 'I truly am this British!' considering his time and place.
Tolkien's stuff is pretty OtT. Let me remind people that Tolkien described the Orcs as as if the ugliest specimens of the Mongoloids ... yeah, that patently racist. People can scream 'political correctness gone mad' when they display orcs as the more friendlier depiction of fantasy tropishness of green skinned, tusk-mouthed barbarians ... but just remember that's not what Tolkien was thinking when he was writing about his orcs.
He was thinking Genghis Khan. And this is the interesting thing of Tolkien's works. Is that publicly Tokien despised apparent racism in European society, all while failing to critically interrogate his own works and being incredibly racist. The Lord of the Rings is basically an exercise in how people carry unconscious biases even as they write them down.
So when people say that Tolkien is the 'father of high fantasy' ... I honestly think we've done a bigger paint job of his works than people would actually care to realize.
Because the fact of the matter is that orcs as basically caricatures of East Asians wouldn't fly and even (hopefully) to all those types of people that would just mindlessly scream 'SJW' at the slightest hint of applied critical theory would also (hopefully) feel somewhat uncomfortable if patently displayed as intended in things like the movie trilogies or cover art of the books.
Moreover, what exactly did Tolkien do but reimagine real world constructs like concepts of God (and Eru Iluvator), and misappropriating things like Celtic traditional fairy tales? It even has a weird take on the Irenaean theodicy and Purgatory and Excalibur. IMO people like Lewis and MacDonald were more high fantasy worlds (in C. S. Lewis' case) ... or MacDonald in terms of an evolution of traditional fairy tales.
Stuff we've done with high fantasy that we attribute to Tolkien have gone through so many creative lenses and transformation it's kind of like calling a bar of soap and a stone slab and wash basin as the 'parent of the top loader washing machine'.
Sooooo world saving, tea sipping, good eatin', hairy footed, cowardly halflings are Britons or maybe Frenchies?Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Think you went overboard a tad bit with your accusations and interpretation of Tolkien's intent.
Fantasy authors draw a lot from history, cultures, superstitions, legends etc. If you put forth thesis, that appropriating and then rehashing such material is inherently evil (done with ill-will) you can just as well call all fantasy racist, sexists etc. (cause these are part of human heritage) and be done with it. Example, in many European countries mongoloid is synonym of brutish, ugly, uncommunicative and ill willed. These come from deeply rooted fear (in their ansectors shaping these languages) of hun hordes (and in general nomadic warring tribes) that were for centuries coming to Europe from Asia just to murder, rape, burn, steal and abduct people to slavery.
It was a clash of 'relatively' peaceful agricultural society (former nomads...) with nomadic society. One preyed on another but ultimately failed due to inefficiency and unreliability of nomadic based society. Now trying to purify language or assign ill will for mere usage of word of that language is both ignorant and disrespectful to history, culture and heritage of people using that language.
Part about 'top loader washing machine' is spot on though. Just you went overboard on poor Tolkien's ass
Okay, source needed on the whole orcs = Mongols thing, because that really doesn't come across in the text. Since the orcs are described as "black skinned and red lipped" in the books, if anything, they're a play on African stereotypes. If you want an actual Mongol example in LotR, it would be the Variags.
As for the whole 'appropriation angle...that's pretty much what fantasy does, or at least, any fantasy that takes any inspiration from real-world history. Don't see that as a bad thing.
(Okay, seriously, how did this become a discussion about racism?)
As for the whole 'appropriation angle...that's pretty much what fantasy does, or at least, any fantasy that takes any inspiration from real-world history. Don't see that as a bad thing.
(Okay, seriously, how did this become a discussion about racism?)
I do believe it was in his letters to Zimmerman concerning correspondence about how a hypothetical theatrical presentation of his works should look like. Also I'm pretty sure you're referencing the snufflers, which were a different breed. Snufflers were described as black skinned goblinish sized creatures.Hawki said:
... besides, no one said he wasn't just referencing skin colour in his letters. And their black skin made be a reference to the fact that they routinely killed their own kin. He's described various types of orcs (including 'goblins') as being multiple hues.
Secondly its not just inspiration from the real world but that of existing fantasy and fairy tales. A lost blade heralding the return of the 'True King', a person who is the real heir but has been cast out by circumstance and their kingdom lost to them and time? Someone who just so happens to unite a collection of gentry and militia as part of their gallantry and leadership? Who just so happened to have a powerful mage that assisted in their redemption and their rightful ownership as but distant heirs of a throne once thought utterly broken?
Hell, even the whole naming of swords he totally lifted from Arthurian legends and associated Celtic fairytales over the centuries of their distortion since. Caliburnus isn't the only one .... there is a metric fuckton. We owe more to Irish fairytales the idea of 'enchanted weapons' in D&D than we do Tolkien. We owe to Celtic tales and Shakespeare, and other distant writers modern depictions of fairies, demons and dragons.
We owe to 17th century romantics common fantasy tropes of chivalric orders that are rife in fantasy. Even the idea of druids in D&D have a positively Arthurian bent and lineage.
As I was saying before. What we owe to Tolkien is pretty fucking slight. A lot of people may argue that he popularized fantasy as a storytelling medium, but that's simply not true. Victorian appetites of evolved takes on ancient fairytales were extensive. The subject matter moved mad volume of stories. And clearly Arthurian legends are pretty fucking quintessential to evolved ideas of things like British nationalism and its own mythos creation of its peoples, cultures, and self-identities.
King Arthur is to fantasy, mystical adventure and high magic, far more than Tolkien's works will ever be to creating all the tropes of what we consider 'high fantasy'. And arguably mosdern writers of fantasy are doing more with their ideas than Tolkien could ever allow himself. C.S. Lewis is still arguably a bigger influence over our ideas of sheer escapism on its own... and Lewis had no problems moving books.
Not only that, but Arthurian legends were infinitely more creative with what one may consider 'high fantasy' elements. Like a scabbard that when worn meant that your wounds would simply seal magically, allowing you to fight longer and harder, and survive most attacks... Blades constructed of light that could pierce any hide... Secretive domains of existence containing the whimsical Fair Folk... High magic allowing sorcerers to communicate with animals and trees and lives in a land where apple trees spring up as if grass, and where grape vines creep everywhere... and where mortal men will be spirited away and held prisoner to their own desires for eternity...
As I said this is taken overboard.Hawki said:
What I found is "...squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." as citation from Tolkien's letter no 210 from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. published by his son in 1981 (but I was unable to verify, I don't have that publication).
Either way to me he is just being descriptive and not at all offensive, just uses language to paint his vision.
Absolutely. As I was saying before, it's more an aspect of time and place. And honestly his attitudes were probably better than the average Briton. That being said, just by going offthe stuff he wrote there's kind of reasons why we have re-packaged it.Jamcie Kerbizz said:
I swear, you commit a handful of genocidal campaigns that creates a major Caucasian diaspora of tribes to run roughshod over Western Europe and whitey never lets you forget it.Fantasy authors draw a lot from history, cultures, superstitions, legends etc. If you put forth thesis, that appropriating and then rehashing such material is inherently evil (done with ill-will) you can just as well call all fantasy racist, sexists etc. (cause these are part of human heritage) and be done with it. Example, in many European countries mongoloid is synonym of brutish, ugly, uncommunicative and ill willed. These come from deeply rooted fear (in their ansectors shaping these languages) of hun hordes (and in general nomadic warring tribes) that were for centuries coming to Europe from Asia just to murder, rape, burn, steal and abduct people to slavery.
It was a clash of 'relatively' peaceful agricultural society (former nomads...) with nomadic society. One preyed on another but ultimately failed due to inefficiency and unreliability of nomadic based society. Now trying to purify language or assign ill will for mere usage of word of that language is both ignorant and disrespectful to history, culture and heritage of people using that language.
Part about 'top loader washing machine' is spot on though. Just you went overboard on poor Tolkien's ass
Yeah, in the same way the word 'vandal' has been misappropriated. The difference between vandal and Mongol-types is that the word 'vandal' doesn't then go on to list a bunch of qualities as perceived by dehumanizing caricatures of East Asians... Once again, I'm willing to overlook Tolkien's ideas because he was probably better than the average Briton of his time period. You know, the people that made and perpetuated those caricatures not in terms of 'being descriptive' but in terms of blatant xenophobia. But to pretend it doesn't exist, or whywe've somewhat made the orcs far more alien in comparison to many of their descriptors that Tolkien spoke of exists for a reason.
As for drawing inspiration ... a lot of what I'm going to say is stuff that I've already written to Hawki that I'm just repeating myself, but in my honest opinion we owe more to Arthurian legends than we do Tolkien in terms of current fairytales and 'high fantasy'. I mean Aragorn is almost copypasta .... in a way Aragorn is also describes and illustrates an Arthurian Messianic figure in tandem with Arthurian legend dimensions...
Secretive fey sequestered away from the lands of mankind? Check. Building an alliance of lords and common soldiers in fraternity? Check. Powerful, nigh-immortalesque magician that accompany the hero? Check. Enchanted swords and equipment? Check. I mean things like D&D magic and enchanted gear has more in the likeness of Arthurian legends than it does Tolkien.
Like druids and shapeshifting, and having a preternatural connection to the natural world and the fey? Arthurian...
Current Western fantasy writers channel King Arthur far more than Tolkien, and Tolkien almost directly rips many major plot elements from Arthurian legend directly. And I honestly still think Lewis is more influential to ideas of a fantasy worldbuilding ... precisely because Lewis was allegorical in writing and Tolkien was not. So even his contemporaries were more adventurous with ideas of escapism and the human condition, and concepts of high fantasy and the reinvention of fairytales for the 20th century that were rife in 19th century fantasy writing.
Basically Tolkien is responsible simply for removing allegory out of current fantasy. And if we're being honest, that probably presents more problems than it does benefits. So much so current producers of high fantasy products try to reinsert it.
Like philosophy and the Rule-of-Threes in the Planescape setting of D&D and its various products.
The supreme irony is that people claim that 'Tolkien made fantasy an adult consumer good' ... but it's actually the flipside of that that is true. By removing allegory, it removes its own contemplative nature of why fairytales exist.
My dad telling me some of the 'old country' fairytales his parents told them, and their parents told them, are far more adult than anything Tolkien has produced. Precisely because they carry a note of what it means to be human in a world that is routinely unfair, and almost naturally exists to disappoint you and inflict evils.
Fairytales concerning changelings were coping mechanisms for having a child with birth defects. Fairytales concerning shapeshifting sorceresses were misogynistic tales of the whimsical and paradoxical nature of women. Fairytales concerning the valiant steed that carries you to victory were repurposed tales from chivalric orders and moral lessons not to give in to hunger by killing and eating your horse during a siege. That it is better to mount them and grant your last war horse a death in battle than simply the cowardice of sating a temporary pang of hunger.
All of these are 'darker' and 'more adult' than anything of what Tolkien writes.
If it has to be Tolkien-esque, then that doesn't leave much choice. Elves and Orcs only exist in so many settings. Apart from Middle Earth, D&D Forgotten Realms probably comes closest. It dialled Tolkien up to 11, codified and expanded on so much lore and backstory and gave gamers the world over an immense, rich world to adventure in. Elder Scrolls also has certain elements. Fantasy races, different nations and cultures, magic, good gods and evil gods (aedra and daedra), it does a lot in a similar vein.
My personal favourite fantasy worlds are probably Eddings's Belgariad and Jordan's Wheel of Time. But they don't have elves, dwarves or orcs. The former does have dryads, and the latter has trollocs, which are more monstrous versions of orcs, but not so much of Tolkien per se. The Belgariad gives us seven gods and an all-father, similar to Tolkien, and each god chose a people. One, the youngest, was jealous of his elder and stole his Orb, a powerful artifact. Each god has Disciples, sorcerers who use their Wills to use magic.
In the Wheel of Time, the world was created by a creator, with his opposite, the Dark One coming into being at same time as the world and the great Wheel that drives it. There are seven Ages which come in turn, events and history repeating and people being reborn in different forms as the Wheel turns, weaving a pattern. The weaving motif is a vital element of the world...not only is reality known as the Pattern that the Wheel weaves as it turns, individual people and events are "threads" in the Pattern and the three main protagonists are unique in that they exist separate to the Pattern, their destinies being outside of the Wheel. Also, magic in the Wheel of Time world is harnessed by Weaving threads of the elements together in different combinations and ways. One "weave" could open a gateway to another place, another could send out an invisible blade of air, another could compel someone to be truthful or trusting, etc.
They aren't directly Tolkien-esque, but IMO what Tolkien really did that was superlative, beyond writing timeless and well told stories, was creating a rich, believable world. He wasn't writing a story, he was creating a mythology and it started with the Elven languages. His genius was in creating such a believable, fantasy world from the Shire to Lothlorien, Moria to Rohan, Mordor to Gondor, all detailed and believable. Now Eddings and Jordan managed the same thing and as easily as I can describe Tolkien's elves and dwarves, I can describe Eddings's Tolnedrans, Alorns and Murgos, or Jordan's Andorans, Aiel, Seanchan or the rest.
Jordan also gave me my second favourite fictional character ever. While Hobb's Fitz is my favourite (how could he not be?), Nynaeve al'Maera is a close second. (Both characters appeared on the r/Fantasy best characters poll [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/3xhnn8/the_rfantasy_favorite_characters_poll_results/].
My personal favourite fantasy worlds are probably Eddings's Belgariad and Jordan's Wheel of Time. But they don't have elves, dwarves or orcs. The former does have dryads, and the latter has trollocs, which are more monstrous versions of orcs, but not so much of Tolkien per se. The Belgariad gives us seven gods and an all-father, similar to Tolkien, and each god chose a people. One, the youngest, was jealous of his elder and stole his Orb, a powerful artifact. Each god has Disciples, sorcerers who use their Wills to use magic.
In the Wheel of Time, the world was created by a creator, with his opposite, the Dark One coming into being at same time as the world and the great Wheel that drives it. There are seven Ages which come in turn, events and history repeating and people being reborn in different forms as the Wheel turns, weaving a pattern. The weaving motif is a vital element of the world...not only is reality known as the Pattern that the Wheel weaves as it turns, individual people and events are "threads" in the Pattern and the three main protagonists are unique in that they exist separate to the Pattern, their destinies being outside of the Wheel. Also, magic in the Wheel of Time world is harnessed by Weaving threads of the elements together in different combinations and ways. One "weave" could open a gateway to another place, another could send out an invisible blade of air, another could compel someone to be truthful or trusting, etc.
They aren't directly Tolkien-esque, but IMO what Tolkien really did that was superlative, beyond writing timeless and well told stories, was creating a rich, believable world. He wasn't writing a story, he was creating a mythology and it started with the Elven languages. His genius was in creating such a believable, fantasy world from the Shire to Lothlorien, Moria to Rohan, Mordor to Gondor, all detailed and believable. Now Eddings and Jordan managed the same thing and as easily as I can describe Tolkien's elves and dwarves, I can describe Eddings's Tolnedrans, Alorns and Murgos, or Jordan's Andorans, Aiel, Seanchan or the rest.
Jordan also gave me my second favourite fictional character ever. While Hobb's Fitz is my favourite (how could he not be?), Nynaeve al'Maera is a close second. (Both characters appeared on the r/Fantasy best characters poll [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/3xhnn8/the_rfantasy_favorite_characters_poll_results/].
While I agree Warhammer is close, its a little too grimdark. High Fantasy is all about swords and sorcery, knights with shields fighting dragons and wispy Elven hotties being wispy and Elves and hotties.
Warhammer is more of the 'the women of the town were gang-raped by Chaos Marauders who skinned the men alive to summon a greater Daemon, and we have to go in there and burn everything to the ground with fire magic, including the women who are tainted by Chaos seed' type setting. Darker than Game of Thrones. At least Westeros doesn't have a literal rape God.
Warhammer has the knights and dragons and Elven hotties, but Chaos and Skaven really spoil the party. Too much implied torture, rape, dismemberment and demons to be considered a High Fantasy.
Warhammer is more of the 'the women of the town were gang-raped by Chaos Marauders who skinned the men alive to summon a greater Daemon, and we have to go in there and burn everything to the ground with fire magic, including the women who are tainted by Chaos seed' type setting. Darker than Game of Thrones. At least Westeros doesn't have a literal rape God.
Warhammer has the knights and dragons and Elven hotties, but Chaos and Skaven really spoil the party. Too much implied torture, rape, dismemberment and demons to be considered a High Fantasy.
IMPLIED?!Silentpony said:
When a City has been taken over by the forces of chaos, the populace's mutilated bodies are merged together to form newly built Chaos walls.
Dark Elves's Witch Elves go on a literal murder spree across any settlement to satisfy the blood night dedicated to the Lord of Murder Khaine!!!
And Slaanesh is Slaanesh.
Implied in that they use words like 'violated' and 'debauchery'. Its rare a Warhammer story, fantasy or 40k, uses words like 'rape' and 'penetration' and penis/vagina or whatever, and actively writes in a rape scene.Samtemdo8 said:
Not the actual definition m8.Silentpony said:
High fantasy: "Fantasy set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than "the real", or "primary" world. The secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world."