A RICH FANTASY LIFE

Lord of the Rings isn't the first entry in the fantasy genre, but it was the fantasy story which defined the genre as a whole. Lord of the Rings and its predecessor, The Hobbit, adhere to the fantasy formula with devotion erring on cliche. Legendary stories can get away with cliches because they're considered the defining examples of their respective genres.

The traditional storytelling outline of your average fantasy novel remains the same: an adventure is presented to the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, who is reluctantly forced to accept it. He receives assistance through a cadre of supporting characters that offer a variety of talents. They travel across Mordor, introducing the audience to every facet of the encountering a variety of challenges which the party surmounts until they reach their final objective. The final adversary is usually a great, evil entity.

Elves weren't a new storytelling convention either, but Lord of the Rings did make them a staple of fantasy literature. Almost every fantasy story includes elves. Gaelic influences are usually utilized for elven culture, while the rest of your typical fantasy setting is swathed in the sword and shield format of the medieval English periods.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

REALITY

The reality portrayed within The Anubis Gates is an alternate timeline. Steampunk is often speculative fiction; fiction that takes a certain point in history and hypothesizes on its survival, and because the steam industry was pioneered by the British, steampunk as a genre is often inexorably linked to Britain as a setting. In The Anubis Gates, the British have conquered Egypt and essentially erased its culture, playing on Britain's own history of imperialism to create a realistic antagonist for an otherwise fantastical novel. Though the story involves time travel (which is a perfect format to explore the altered aspects of this new reality), it is still rooted in a historically accurate foundation.
Read more

THE FICTION OF IDEAS

In the context of a futuristic dystopia in which individualism and free thought is seen as an affront to society, ideas are often dangerous and revolutionary in nature. To think and formulate ideas is to go against the comforts and stability of the hivemind. Often the peoples of these self-indulgent empires have been lulled into a sense of complacency, their minds dulled from neglect, to the point in which any deviance from the norm is profoundly upsetting. Rydra explores new ideas within the context of her field as a writer but that evolves into terror and sedition as she investigates the origins of the mysterious language. As a mind reader, she has keen insight to the human psyche and it's her profession of a writer that, in a more romantic sense, represents the power of language by placing her in a position where she has total command over it.
Read more