>Yrku the Wise, son of Arku the Strong whose father built the Bridge of Tears in the Fifth Era of Darkness when Tupor still ruled Fumia with injustice and cruelty thanks to the power of his mighty sword Uyy-na'rin and his magic Oyalinian armor, was on his way to hunt some Jekko goblins in the old city of Yumuleth founded by Muya-T'len who was [...]
Worldbulding has fallen, billions must die.
>these days
It's been a problem since the 30s. Fantasy (as we know it today) just isn't that good, or really it hasn't been around long enough to produce more than three truly great authors.
>It's been a problem since the 30s.
Not quite.
ASOIAF is not the best series.
>it hasn't been around long enough
lmao
It hasn't. Again, not as we know it today. Don't be like this, anon.
>as we know it today
As anglo publishers commercialize it today. But fantasy existed before Tolkien, homosexual.
You're not interested in doing anything but argue. Have a nice day.
You're not interested in the truth but in normie lies. Have a nice day.
Genre fiction.
Whattayagonadooo?
The 'best', most 'adult' series (ASIIAF) ...let's face it: sorta shit. Entertaining, esp when it first came out and was new and huge and fun n funny to talk and learn about but fug now I dunno...
And anyways the books have always been horrible, lol.
Read that 'leaked' Arya chapter from Winter, holy shit, BAD
And I love these characters and
have spents yeears with them...
ASOIAF is shit from beginning to end. Who honestly thinks politics in fantasy is a good idea? Politics didn’t work in here, it didn’t work in Star Wars with the prequels (Star Wars is space opera fantasy, let’s be real here), and it won’t work in any future fantasy works. I just want to scream to them to stop with the reddit shit already.
The Hobbit is just about the only thing I can tolerate when it comes to fantasy. It doesn't jam you with a ton of worldbuilding shit on the first page. Rather, it introduces small a small bit to you slowly while still showing you familiar things like green grasses, green trees, a family tree, and small homes.
Yes, that one is good.
Hobbit is best, followed by LOTR.
The rest is basically all hobbitslop, except for Game of Thrones, which is depraved renn faire nonsense.
>The rest is basically all hobbitslop
Couldn't be more wrong.
I remember as a child I was once gifted some random fantasy book whose title I can't even remember by a distant relative on a birthday. That shit unironically started off with a 30+ page loredump, to this day nothing has ever made me drop a book quite as fast as that did.
>these days
You could tell me this was written by Dunsany and I'd believe you.
Lore is just made-up description writing. Nothing of value in it. One of the good things in Game of Thrones(the books) is that much of the lore is done in rumours and non-confirmed sh*t.
Fantasy authors copy too much or at least copy the shit parts.
I hope I can write a good fantasy story some day. I'd it important to describe the history of the world on the very first page?
>important to describe the history of the world on the very first page?
In real life, history lives as traces in the people and places of the world, which is what Tolkien does in his fiction. Writing a lore dump about it is not writing a good story
One lore dump I liked is when Gandalf talks explains history of the ring and Sauron to Frodo. It's still lore dumpy, but it feels more natural with how dialogue was constructed.
yeah and it isn't like he is writing an encyclopedia entry, he is explaining it to a hobbit based on what he knows of it
Leave the lore dumps for the appendix in the back, like LotR does.
Kek did you copy/paste this from Bakker
all meaningless exposition no sustance, that's the problem
I have read Hobbit and its three-volume remake and all I can remember are the descriptions of that hobbit village. The adventure itself was pretty forgettable save for the dreadful songs. It's as if Tolkien invented Disney musical before it was a thing. At risk of sounding like an edgy contrarian, I must admit I enjoyed Howard more than JRRT.
I also used to be an avid reader of Discworld series in my early teens, but even then I noticed its gradual decline from half-decent adventure comedy into a written cartoon of Reddit-tier social commentary with forced, constantly recycled jokes.
I mostly remember the 'Riddles in the Dark' chapter. Certainly the highlight for me.
This style of writing is not just boring, it's also a terrible way to actually convey information. If a textbook was just a bunch of densely packed facts written with no didactic concern nobody would use it.
Please rate the intro to my own prospective fantasy novel.
~~~
This happened in a far-off inn, at the end of a long day of wet travel and no food.
Really wretched autumn travelling it was. Curse these hill-places, where the paths are too narrow for even a fox, and a hundred wayside bonfires sting your eyes with woodsmoke.
But I had been ordered to these parts, and ordered by authority of the orchard-master. He wanted my report on a new variety: a fine mottled type, and the only thing he had spoken of for two months past -- but you do not care, I am sure, about pears. Only know this: that I was weary, and there by the track was the inn.
Its door was so sunk among the dripping brambles that, had a pale nag in the gloom not neighed out to my horse, I would have ridden right by. I tied her to the same post, and gave a grateful stroke down the nag's mane, and left the pair to their nuzzling.
And sunk still further, down into the earth, was the stony floor of this place when I entered. It was a low, expansive place, like the great tuber-cellars of the fenland farmers. Tuber-like, too, were the faces all round me, deep in their wet leather collars. Dim eyes looked then looked away. I did not feel upon me the spiteful scrutiny one feels in a trading town. They had the indifference born from exhaustion, these men like heaps of leather. Though what they toil at beyond their innumerable bonfires I cannot imagine.
Then came the pink flash of bare feet on stone, and up pattered a woman in an embroidered apron, all spotless. And as she led me further within, below the beams and the hanging herbs, she spoke with the quiet, inner stillness known only to peasant women and forest pools. It unnerves me, this stillness. And there are men who say a peasant woman is a frolicsome, hot-blooded thing.
I asked her, Did they have lamb? They did not, only a sort of hill-fowl, roasted. But it would do. And I seated myself in my nook, very deep now in this strange place, and no one about me. All the dreary day's moisture began to seep from my travelling-coat, my sodden boots, and made rivulets on the floor. I felt lighter by the moment as I expunged this chilly weight.
She brought me my beer -- a porter, very good -- and while I drank I studied the icons that hung there on the walls. There were icons of the limbless martyr and the wasp-stung martyr and others of the familiar sort, but I could not identify the curious species of glossy black wood from which they were carved. This was fine amusement, after a day lost among bracken. And for a moment I thought of writing a few verses on these icons: these 'mournful, lustrous icons', perhaps. But I compose at my best only when replete and well-fed; and really at that moment I was ravenous. For I had not yet received my roast.
Where, in the name of the martyrs, was my roast?
If you allow me to digress a little, when I was playing Final Fantasy XVI, in the prologue, there was a line that was like
>A Morbol!
>This far to the south!?
It made me wonder, why is this remark necessary? It's obviously never mentioned that Morbols live in the north, or why a Morbol would be this far in the south (like there was a reason for it), but even then, this line seem to be some kind of illusion that there was world building behind it, but there wasn't, it's just an empty line with no purpose, doesn't give you any new information, someone just thought it sounded cool to imply that Morbols don't live this far to the south.
That's what a lot of fantasy is, let's just pretend for a minute that there's a lot going on behind the scenes but without elaborating on it, it might feel more real for you if characters say stuff that you don't understand but the thing is the author doesn't either.
You might enjoy this mini-essay:
http://harmonyzone.org/text/monsterparty.html
It is like that. Fantasy works today are too much inspired by the fantasy genre itself and D&D now, and come from people who have little experience in life except the enjoyment of escapism. Authors churn out meaningless secondary worlds that use the fantastical elements as a crutch because they lack substance and depth. Meanwhile, the authors believe that world building techniques and gimmicks are a defining marker of a successful fantasy author. The most enduringly successful and influential fantasy - classic and modern - is almost always conspicuously inspired by other domains. You see in Tolkien, Martin and LeGuin a familiarity with stuff like mythology, history, philosophy, anthropology. Their experience in life or in their profession also shines through. When someone with no interest in the world or experience in life tries to write about another world, it is practically inevitable that it will be shallow and cringe.
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