• ikiru@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        From reading his biography, it seemed he mostly liked creating languages and then crafted stories and worlds based off them.

        Tolkien’s the GOAT.

        • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          He was a philology teacher, so that’s indeed the case. You see it with how much details the language have, like real languages dialects and evolution. It was really his craft.

        • leftzero@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          He only wanted to create languages, for fun… but he wanted to do it properly, so he needed full cultural backgrounds for his languages, including epic poetic sagas written in said languages… and to do that properly he needed a whole history of the world said languages and cultures had developed in… so the maniac built that. And then he wrote a children’s book set in that world, for his kids, as one does.

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not impossible! It’s fairly niche and finding others who appreciate it before the age of the internet would’ve been tough.

        Modern Tolkien would’ve probably been part of the various conlang communities, doing challenges and whatnot.

    • JoKi@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Not only the languages but also an etymology for them to explain, how they developed.

    • Sebeck0401@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Wish he was better at naming characters though. Not every son needs a name that starts with the same letter as his father’s.

      • Rwaterhouse@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        lol Herbert had some weird fantasy about a guy named Duncan from Idaho. Only explanation for some of that stuff.

        • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          He got a flat tire once in Duncan, Idaho. It was the early 60’s so things got freaky fast when he was picked up by a colorfully painted bus . . .

          Let’s just say the memories will never die.

    • novibe@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Frank Herbert is what happens when a genius writer takes too much shrooms while studying dunes. Like that is literally what happened.

      • D3FNC [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I also like to kidnap my entire family in my used hearse then do a shitload of amphetamines in the Mexican desert immediately after completing a formal education in the newly developed science of ecology that ended with learning about the inevitability of man made climate change continuing to accelerate the greatest and final planetary mass extinction event, the holocene era

        Yeah I feel that shit in my soul bro, for sure

        Whomst amongst us hasn’t done a Herbert once or twice

      • interolivary@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Calling him a genius writer is probably being a bit too generous, what with all the beefswellings and all that

    • deadh34d@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Fuckin Herbert just decided to write philosophy disguised as a sci-fi story lol

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Tolkien is clearly the best, but I don’t have a problem with Martin borrowing from real-life history. History is incredibly cool, and full of amazing stories. Stealing from other authors is bullshit, though.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Then you have the author of Twilight that started world building after the first book, created a number of characters with interesting background lore, then proceeded to do nothing with any of it.

    • TrenchcoatFullOfBats@belfry.rip
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      1 year ago

      It’s even worse than that - Twilight was originally fanfic for Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, so it’s all just Lestat with a fake mustache and sparkles.

    • D3FNC [any]@hexbear.net
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      It’s really hard to criticize anything about Twilight after you learn it was literally self published fan fiction written by a Mormon house wife with ten kids that has never once in her life even seen a healthy or fulfilling relationship from a distance, or had a meal containing any form of seasoning, and will almost certainly die without having ever experienced even an aliquot of sexual pleasure

    • ScrewdriverFactoryFactoryProvider [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      Also, normally when you write supernatural fiction that rips off indigenous mythology, you don’t name drop the tribe that you’re taking from and proceed to integrate their real-world reservation heavily into your setting.

      • D3FNC [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yet, somehow this would still probably be the most respectful treatment of any of the first nations by any Mormon, ever

        The history of the Mormon church is like oops hahaha all war crimes I’m so silly

    • frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I read that series out of spite when it was popular, and actually started getting interested in the lore and world when she started introducing fucking X-Men powers. Huge build up, huge hype, and then… fucking nothing. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but alas.

  • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    To be fair the children’s story came first. In that regard Tolkien and Rowling had something in common, their first books were written for a much younger and simpler audience. It wasn’t until they took off commercially that the more adult and deep lore was developed.

    EDIT: I’m wrong

    • Phrodo_00@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What? No. First was the story of Arda in a prototype version of the Silmarillon and Unfinished Tales.

      • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Huh, interesting, I didn’t realize Tolkien had started writing portions of the Silmarillion in 1914. I had to do some looking based on your response and learned something.

        • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          From what I know, he never really wrote “for” the silmsrillion either. He wrote stories for him to flesh out the history of the world but not with the intention of publishing such stories. Some of them were even just notes about what happened in the world and some weren’t finished.

          Someone correct me if I’m wrong

          • Two9A@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            According to the Tolkien Professor (during his YouTube streams on the History of Middle Earth series) there was always the intent to publish the Quenta Silmarillion (the central tale of the Silmarils) as a First-Age story of the Elves, but it kept getting revised and rewritten and never reached a publishable form.

            Until Tolkien’s son wanted to complete that piece of the legacy, and found multiple (sometimes contradictory) sets of notes and mostly-finished stories, and Editorial Decisions had to be made.

        • Phrodo_00@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’d need to look up the dates, but he might’ve started creating the languages even earlier than that

  • shaman1093@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Steven Erikson: here’s a world that contains millennia of anthropologically grounded cultures that got spiced up by some interdimensional elves, orcs, gods & dragons that me and my buddy use to play D&D in, have fun reading through the eyes of over 1000 characters lol

    • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Erikson ruined fantasy novels for me. Book of the Fallen was the most challenging and rewarding read of my life. It made almost everything else feel like YA fiction.

      • Statlerwaldorf@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Seriously. I only finished the main Book of the Fallen series this early this year and just can’t get interested in anything else fantasy now.

        It’s one thing to make you feel something when a character you’ve been with for 10 books dies, but when an author can do the same with a character you’re with for a handful of pages, it’s something else.

        !Abasard’s death in Reaper’s Gale still resonates with me. !<

      • Bebo@literature.cafe
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        1 year ago

        Felt the same when I finished that series. Didn’t feel that I could read fantasy again.

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Currently in book 9. Moving ever so slowly so it doesn’t end too quickly, cause then what will I read? 😭

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Also, fun fact: Tolkien converted C.S. Lewis to Christianity, who almost immediately disappointed him by adopting Anglicanism instead of Catholicism and then decided Tolkien’s stories weren’t Christian enough, so he basically wrote the Narnia books out of spite.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Tolkien is the best ever, but a lot of his stuff is inspired or ported directly from Catholicism.

    • ElmarsonTheThird@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      This but also various mythological bits and pieces from England, because Tolkien wanted to create an English mythology akin to the Odyssey, Edda or Niebelungen.

      • Bungobongo@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. I absolutely love LotR. But read the niebelungen and certain poems from the Poetic Edda, not to mention Beowulf, and you see how heavy he was influenced by the stuff. Which is fine of course, everyone is influenced by things before them

    • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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      A lot of that Catholicism stuff is just Christianity with local gods and figures retconed in using saints expansions.

      And that whole Christian thing is just a Mediterraneanised/Latinized Zoroastrianism.

      • Taniwha420@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        … And Zoroastrianism is just hyped up druidism. The Persians were part of that Indo-European world.

        • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know what drugs the Persians were into, but now I’m imagining a priestess ripping a massing bong and saying

          “Okay, what if instead of alllll the trees, it’s just about one tree?.. And the tree is a dude”

        • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          There’s an idea. A fantasy for American audiences using geography from South America. They’ll never know unless you show them a map that includes opposite coasts.

    • greenskye@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s all fanfiction all the way down from the original cave drawings anyway

  • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Writing world building is fun!

    Writing actual fiction is boring and dull because if it’s not a monomyth your editor is gonna removed about it

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      That’s mostly true, though sometimes a writer can make a killing writing contrarian edgy slop where anyone approaching a monomyth is brutally killed off as a recurring gimmick until not much really happens ultimately except a cycle of sensationalistic violent and/or sexually violent gotcha moments until it sputters out before its undelivered last book. brrrrrrrrrrrr

    • The Picard Maneuver@startrek.websiteOP
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      1 year ago

      She was one of the first AMAs I remember being there for on reddit. It was before people had PR handlers doing the AMAs for them (maybe 2011?), and it was so cool to hear her talk about the books.

  • shiveyarbles@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Yeah the Hobbit was the first book I ever read, at six years old, lucky me I became a lifetime nerd