Nah, man, I want to see some malazan wars on TV. Soldiers throwing explosives at one another and charging horses while summoned demons clash in the air and magic is going back and forth trying to cancel one another and when one side gains advantage it's utter chaos and death and destruction on the losing side.
Magic isn't Deus ex machina unless there's no RULES.
Eh, sorry, gotta disagree.
Back in the late aughts/early 10s, I had just read ASOIF (this was before the HBO series was even announced) and had expressed to my circle of friends how much I enjoyed it. Everyone then kept insisting I read the Malazan series. After putting it off for a while, I finally started reading the first book. It's been a while, so I don't remember the details, but as I recall, a character is introduced, killed early on, and the next chapter talks about how they were going to resurrect him/her. That was a huge turn off for me because it made me feel like there were no stakes. In a high-magic world, pretty much any plot point can be made inconsequential. There's always time-travel/resurrection/soul recovery/what have you that can be called upon, even if there are rules set up.
Maybe they do a better job of laying out the fictional rules to the magic in the world later, but it was already too late for me, I bailed.
I'll never understand why people want to do fantasy stories but take out as much of the fantasy as possible.
If you want to play with swords but think dragons are dumb, then make a period piece.
Playing it light with fantasy elements at first can make them seem more amazing when they do come in.
Yeah low fantasy is the best fantasy. Otherwise you just end up with WIZARD Deus Ex Machina all over
(that's not what low fantasy means)
What do you think it means? My interpretation lines up quite well with consensus from a quick Google (and the discovery there's a low fantasy wikipedia article!)
Low fantasy: real world setting with fantasy elements
High fantasy: fictional world setting with fantasy elements
The King Arthur myths are (usually) low fantasy. A Song of Ice and Fire is high fantasy. Depending on your interpretation of the "Red Book of Westmarch" framing device, Middle-Earth could be either or both.
That's all, really. Everything else is just a subgenre of high or low. Urban fantasy, e.g., can be both high and low fantasy; something being classified as urban fantasy depends more on how much the world depicted is recognizable as a modern world, as opposed to being recognizable as the real world.
Magical realism is basically as described by @smrtnik.
Malazan is, according to people who I don't think are insane, one of those series that takes awhile to get good.
I would not know having bounced hard after a couple hundred pages of book 1. It felt like those old D&D books where somebody novelized their campaign, but less good.
Magical realism is when you sprinkle random weird magic into otherwise mundane. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing the story of a family across several generations off real history but then like one of the aunts grows wings and flys off to heaven one day.
Magical realism is when you sprinkle random weird magic into otherwise mundane. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing the story of a family across several generations off real history but then like one of the aunts grows wings and flys off to heaven one day.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an offhand description of magical realism I didn’t like, but this is a true mastery of the form.
I bounced off Malazan, too. It didn't make any sense to me. It felt like background flavor fiction for a tremendously complicated tabletop RPG.
That's because it was basically a novelization of Erikson's D&D campaign.
Yeah, if memory serves it was GURPS, but same deal. Most people who like the series won't blame people for bouncing off the first book, largely because of how rough and dense it is. It went from Campaign -> Movie Script -> shopped around and not picked up so converted into book (which is why the first third is like an extended prologue with a different set of main characters from the next section of the novel) -> shopped around and not picked up -> sitting on a shelf for like a decade until he got a book deal after getting more experience with other novels -> oh hey he got a contract, publish it now.
His writing quality takes a noticeable jump in book 2. If people quit the series it's typically in book 1 or book 8 (he gets a bit introspective/navel-gazey in the last three books). Doesn't help that his style was already very...dense. I've heard it compared to the way short stories are written in their density, but novel-form. Shit comes back which was slipped into earlier books which you think is flavor text but which actually mattered. It rewards re-reads, but also makes them slower and more tiring reads than most books from my experience? I think that's why I liked Dancer's Lament so much - it was the same world and characters, but read like a 70s pulp fantasy novel.
Maybe they do a better job of laying out the fictional rules to the magic in the world later, but it was already too late for me, I bailed.
Most stuff is gleaned from context, a lot of it is spelled out in book 3 and then later some history/finer details in book..7, I think it was.
Anyway, my original post would probably have been better served as "malazan-style" - I was basically trying to swing it to the other extreme of "if it's going to be fantasy, give me some SPECTACLE." I'm actually on record thinking Malazan itself wouldn't translate well to a TV show (too much downtime between events) unless maybe as an animated series so they could really get into some of the absurd stuff. With the notable exception that some storylines (specifically the Chain of Dogs) could make some pretty great movies, in isolation to the other storylines in the same books.
I'll never understand why people want to do fantasy stories but take out as much of the fantasy as possible.
If you want to play with swords but think dragons are dumb, then make a period piece.
Playing it light with fantasy elements at first can make them seem more amazing when they do come in.
Yeah low fantasy is the best fantasy. Otherwise you just end up with WIZARD Deus Ex Machina all over
(that's not what low fantasy means)
What do you think it means? My interpretation lines up quite well with consensus from a quick Google (and the discovery there's a low fantasy wikipedia article!)
Low fantasy: real world setting with fantasy elements
High fantasy: fictional world setting with fantasy elements
The King Arthur myths are (usually) low fantasy. A Song of Ice and Fire is high fantasy. Depending on your interpretation of the "Red Book of Westmarch" framing device, Middle-Earth could be either or both.
That's all, really. Everything else is just a subgenre of high or low. Urban fantasy, e.g., can be both high and low fantasy; something being classified as urban fantasy depends more on how much the world depicted is recognizable as a modern world, as opposed to being recognizable as the real world.
Magical realism is basically as described by smrtnik.
Not to get too into the weeds of pedantry, but:
Would Carnival Row (as depicted in the Amazon show) be low fantasy or high fantasy?
I'll never understand why people want to do fantasy stories but take out as much of the fantasy as possible.
If you want to play with swords but think dragons are dumb, then make a period piece.
Playing it light with fantasy elements at first can make them seem more amazing when they do come in.
Yeah low fantasy is the best fantasy. Otherwise you just end up with WIZARD Deus Ex Machina all over
(that's not what low fantasy means)
What do you think it means? My interpretation lines up quite well with consensus from a quick Google (and the discovery there's a low fantasy wikipedia article!)
Low fantasy: real world setting with fantasy elements
High fantasy: fictional world setting with fantasy elements
The King Arthur myths are (usually) low fantasy. A Song of Ice and Fire is high fantasy. Depending on your interpretation of the "Red Book of Westmarch" framing device, Middle-Earth could be either or both.
That's all, really. Everything else is just a subgenre of high or low. Urban fantasy, e.g., can be both high and low fantasy; something being classified as urban fantasy depends more on how much the world depicted is recognizable as a modern world, as opposed to being recognizable as the real world.
Magical realism is basically as described by @smrtnik.
I don't think whether it is based on the real world or the fictional world comes into it, more how similar it is to the real world. The names of people and places aren't relevant, if it existed completely apart from the Game of Thrones books, the Hedge Knight books would be 100% low fantasy. It's set in something that looks like the middle ages, and is about peasants, knights and lords doing things that peasants, knights and lords would have done in the real world.
Whereas something that had a plot like Dragonlance, but the setting was Julius Ceaser's draconic legions invading an Ancient Britain defended by Boudica's sisterhood of pegasus chariots and a society of sorceror's, all the whilst the Roman and Celtic Gods clashed at the same time, would be high fantasy.
I'll never understand why people want to do fantasy stories but take out as much of the fantasy as possible.
If you want to play with swords but think dragons are dumb, then make a period piece.
Playing it light with fantasy elements at first can make them seem more amazing when they do come in.
Yeah low fantasy is the best fantasy. Otherwise you just end up with WIZARD Deus Ex Machina all over
(that's not what low fantasy means)
What do you think it means? My interpretation lines up quite well with consensus from a quick Google (and the discovery there's a low fantasy wikipedia article!)
Low fantasy: real world setting with fantasy elements
High fantasy: fictional world setting with fantasy elements
The King Arthur myths are (usually) low fantasy. A Song of Ice and Fire is high fantasy. Depending on your interpretation of the "Red Book of Westmarch" framing device, Middle-Earth could be either or both.
That's all, really. Everything else is just a subgenre of high or low. Urban fantasy, e.g., can be both high and low fantasy; something being classified as urban fantasy depends more on how much the world depicted is recognizable as a modern world, as opposed to being recognizable as the real world.
Magical realism is basically as described by smrtnik.
Not to get too into the weeds of pedantry, but:
Would Carnival Row (as depicted in the Amazon show) be low fantasy or high fantasy?
I've always thought of high and low fantasy being divided by the pervasiveness of the fantasy elements. E.G. Harry Potter would be high fantasy, 'cause shit be magic. Want to travel? Magic travel. Want to cook? Magical pots and pans. Want to fight? Grab your wand.
Something like GoT (until the last couple seasons) was what I'd consider low fantasy; 99.99% of the population will never see a dragon or cast a spell or hear about magic beyond whispers and rumours. Being a witch will get you burned at a stake rather than be considered a prodigy. I'd consider Carnival Row somewhat of a middle-ground, since there isn't much 'magic' for most people, but there is certainly fantasy elements everywhere in the different races going about their daily life. Magic is still rare spooky stuff, though.
I think "High fantasy" used to mean concerning the events of nobles and kings, and "low fantasy" meant the adventures of ordinary folk.
I've never thought in terms of "high fantasy," but your usage makes grammatical sense and I like it as a discriminator between tight character-driven pieces and epic tales.
I've only thought of it terms of "fantasy" or "low fantasy" where the latter is comparable to hard sci-fi; the supernatural deviations are kept to a minimum, not central to the story, and an attempt is made to present them as plausible.
Ex: Dragons and other fantasy races presented as natural organisms, low-level magic presented as the logical force or effect of MacGuffium.
I'd consider Carnival Row somewhat of a middle-ground, since there isn't much 'magic' for most people, but there is certainly fantasy elements everywhere in the different races going about their daily life. Magic is still rare spooky stuff, though.
Same; but also because it's unclear how much of the supernatural exists outside of what we were shown so far. The nature of werewolves, whatever the Pact are, etc, could nudge it firmly toward high/full-on fantasy.
I think "High fantasy" used to mean concerning the events of nobles and kings, and "low fantasy" meant the adventures of ordinary folk.
It's also that because genre definitions are fuzzy and usually one thing (grand fantastical world facing huge world ending threat and magic everywhere) goes with the other (kings and nobles and such).
Generally it's just not worth getting too concerned with imo. They are mostly terms to help describe something to someone who has not read/seen/etc it yet.
Anyway, I came back cause I heard about the GoT showrunner thing from a few days ago and it's just ... it's goddamn hilarious. I'm at once surprised and not.
Like, I knew these guys were hack writers skating by on the work of a better writer who's work they were adapting seemingly without really understanding it. I thought it was pretty obvious early on that any time they had to do some writing themselves, or had to insert their own plotting into the mix or felt they had to change something, the precipitous drop in quality was pretty obvious.
But I always kinda figured they were like, decent at their jobs at least. And that they were fans of the work. Like, a particular type of fan you would find who was mostly obsessed with the "shocking twists" and complaining about all the boring character work and themes, but still someone who cared and had gotten the job on some sort of merit.
It's all just kinda crazy.
Mostly though, I'm glad for the future in that it seems like they are not getting projects I might actually care about and so hopefully somebody actually competent can helm those things instead.
It blows my mind that they fundamentally didn't understand what make the Red Wedding work as a twist. It about the themes and motifs and established rule being upturned but it's also about the hints and crumbs that in hindsight make it an inevitability not a twist.
By the way, I felt I should mention that the reasons I bailed from the Malazon books are the same reasons that I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan (despite it, on paper, containing every element of fantasy that I normally love) and also why my wife and I bailed on Supernatural at around season 5, I think (When Sam comes back from hell).
In the former, the magic rules made no sense and could be used to plug pretty much any plot hole, (time spinner!) while in the latter, the fact that certain characters could come back not only from the dead, but from actual, for real, soul destruction (i.e. "this person isn't just dead, their soul is destroyed! Oh but look, they're back now!").
3DS FC: 1547-5210-6531
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Way back when people were talking about season 1 there was all that discussion of "Oh hey they are really changing Shae's characterization around, maybe that's because they are gonna do something interesting and combine her with Tysha, but that'll really mess up Tyrion's character arc if they ignore it"
So with the extra context that they knew fuckall what they were doing they just fuckin made Shae into Tysha while having Tyrion follow the exact same path with Shae as book Tyrion without the whole damn character development of finding out the truth about Tysha.
It's huge and knowing that these idiots took none of that into account when they made season one infuriates me to the nth degree now.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I'll never understand why people want to do fantasy stories but take out as much of the fantasy as possible.
If you want to play with swords but think dragons are dumb, then make a period piece.
Playing it light with fantasy elements at first can make them seem more amazing when they do come in.
Yeah low fantasy is the best fantasy. Otherwise you just end up with WIZARD Deus Ex Machina all over
(that's not what low fantasy means)
What do you think it means? My interpretation lines up quite well with consensus from a quick Google (and the discovery there's a low fantasy wikipedia article!)
Low fantasy: real world setting with fantasy elements
High fantasy: fictional world setting with fantasy elements
The King Arthur myths are (usually) low fantasy. A Song of Ice and Fire is high fantasy. Depending on your interpretation of the "Red Book of Westmarch" framing device, Middle-Earth could be either or both.
That's all, really. Everything else is just a subgenre of high or low. Urban fantasy, e.g., can be both high and low fantasy; something being classified as urban fantasy depends more on how much the world depicted is recognizable as a modern world, as opposed to being recognizable as the real world.
Magical realism is basically as described by smrtnik.
That's a new one on me. I suppose it's part of the issue with these terms that there is only very loose consensus at best.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
No high fantasy is like when in the Witcher you take fisstech and visit the local succubus.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Way back when people were talking about season 1 there was all that discussion of "Oh hey they are really changing Shae's characterization around, maybe that's because they are gonna do something interesting and combine her with Tysha, but that'll really mess up Tyrion's character arc if they ignore it"
So with the extra context that they knew fuckall what they were doing they just fuckin made Shae into Tysha while having Tyrion follow the exact same path with Shae as book Tyrion without the whole damn character development of finding out the truth about Tysha.
It's huge and knowing that these idiots took none of that into account when they made season one infuriates me to the nth degree now.
There's a thing in sports that have relatively few stoppages of play and relatively few scoring plays (e.g. soccer, hockey) where at a high enough level, whenever a scoring play is made, the thing to do among analysts is roll back the tape until you find the first mistake someone made. You follow the result of that mistake and the way other players reaction to it, and it's usually it's the eventual direct instigator of that scoring play.
In the second episode, Benioff and Weiss made what I would call their first definite mistake. They added in Cersei telling Catelyn about her first child...a child with black hair. This child didn't exist in the books. It's an early divergence point. Book readers would have had questions, and show-only watchers might have been thrown off the trail. Did she kill the boy herself, or did he actually get sick and die? Or did she make it all up on the spot in order to show sympathy for Catelyn and plant seeds of "she's a mother who lost her first son, she could never do that to someone else's boy" in case the investigation pointed to her?
All interesting questions that could have changed the character of Cersei from the books (for better or worse) or made clear her cunning. And none of those possibilities are ever even hinted at, never mind resolved, because the rest of the storyline plays out almost exactly as it happens in the books. They just threw in a scene that dramatically ran counter to the character's main arc for the season because...????
(This is purely from a narrative standpoint, not a production standpoint. Knowing that they just didn't have many long episodes in season 1 and went back and added stuff in (such as a the Robert/Cersei discussion) messes with the "first mistake" bit, but it's still something I notice.)
By the way, I felt I should mention that the reasons I bailed from the Malazon books are the same reasons that I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan (despite it, on paper, containing every element of fantasy that I normally love) and also why my wife and I bailed on Supernatural at around season 5, I think (When Sam comes back from hell).
In the former, the magic rules made no sense and could be used to plug pretty much any plot hole, (time spinner!) while in the latter, the fact that certain characters could come back not only from the dead, but from actual, for real, soul destruction (i.e. "this person isn't just dead, their soul is destroyed! Oh but look, they're back now!").
While I don't begrudge anyone who jumped off Supernatural at the end of season 5 (it was the original planned ending, and the quality was at best erratic afterwards), I do think it deserves explanation, and though that event is 10 years old, I'll spoiler it.
Sam's soul was never destroyed. It was tortured, flayed, etc. When he comes back, it's without his soul, and it takes a half season (6x11) for him to get it back, and it's a trial for him for over a season (7x17), when divine intervention removes it from him, at a cost. Can't find when that cost is fully paid (my google fu is weak), and it's been a long time since I watched it.
But essentially, it's about two years to 'fix' Sam.
That might not be a satisfactory storyline, but I think two seasons to get back to "normal" was a reasonable duration to pay the price. It's definitely something they didn't gloss over.
By the way, I felt I should mention that the reasons I bailed from the Malazon books are the same reasons that I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan (despite it, on paper, containing every element of fantasy that I normally love) and also why my wife and I bailed on Supernatural at around season 5, I think (When Sam comes back from hell).
In the former, the magic rules made no sense and could be used to plug pretty much any plot hole, (time spinner!) while in the latter, the fact that certain characters could come back not only from the dead, but from actual, for real, soul destruction (i.e. "this person isn't just dead, their soul is destroyed! Oh but look, they're back now!").
While I don't begrudge anyone who jumped off Supernatural at the end of season 5 (it was the original planned ending, and the quality was at best erratic afterwards), I do think it deserves explanation, and though that event is 10 years old, I'll spoiler it.
Sam's soul was never destroyed. It was tortured, flayed, etc. When he comes back, it's without his soul, and it takes a half season (6x11) for him to get it back, and it's a trial for him for over a season (7x17), when divine intervention removes it from him, at a cost. Can't find when that cost is fully paid (my google fu is weak), and it's been a long time since I watched it.
But essentially, it's about two years to 'fix' Sam.
That might not be a satisfactory storyline, but I think two seasons to get back to "normal" was a reasonable duration to pay the price. It's definitely something they didn't gloss over.
Sam
Is just one example though. I believe there are several characters as I recall that appear to get destroyed beyond death and still come back
Both of Winchester parents (the mother twice, I believe)
Their friend with the trucker hat (forgot his name)
The yellow-eyed devil who killed their dad
Ruby, I think her name was
I wanna say the character played by Felicia Day, maybe (memory hazy)
Other miscellaneous demons and angels
I may be wrong on some of those, and some of them may have been retroactively justified, but it was enough that I couldn't get invested in the show's stakes anymore
That being said, my wife and I will still occasionally seek to fill silent moments by raising our arms in the air and yelling "PUDDING!" now and then.
Way back when people were talking about season 1 there was all that discussion of "Oh hey they are really changing Shae's characterization around, maybe that's because they are gonna do something interesting and combine her with Tysha, but that'll really mess up Tyrion's character arc if they ignore it"
So with the extra context that they knew fuckall what they were doing they just fuckin made Shae into Tysha while having Tyrion follow the exact same path with Shae as book Tyrion without the whole damn character development of finding out the truth about Tysha.
It's huge and knowing that these idiots took none of that into account when they made season one infuriates me to the nth degree now.
There's a thing in sports that have relatively few stoppages of play and relatively few scoring plays (e.g. soccer, hockey) where at a high enough level, whenever a scoring play is made, the thing to do among analysts is roll back the tape until you find the first mistake someone made. You follow the result of that mistake and the way other players reaction to it, and it's usually it's the eventual direct instigator of that scoring play.
In the second episode, Benioff and Weiss made what I would call their first definite mistake. They added in Cersei telling Catelyn about her first child...a child with black hair. This child didn't exist in the books. It's an early divergence point. Book readers would have had questions, and show-only watchers might have been thrown off the trail. Did she kill the boy herself, or did he actually get sick and die? Or did she make it all up on the spot in order to show sympathy for Catelyn and plant seeds of "she's a mother who lost her first son, she could never do that to someone else's boy" in case the investigation pointed to her?
All interesting questions that could have changed the character of Cersei from the books (for better or worse) or made clear her cunning. And none of those possibilities are ever even hinted at, never mind resolved, because the rest of the storyline plays out almost exactly as it happens in the books. They just threw in a scene that dramatically ran counter to the character's main arc for the season because...????
(This is purely from a narrative standpoint, not a production standpoint. Knowing that they just didn't have many long episodes in season 1 and went back and added stuff in (such as a the Robert/Cersei discussion) messes with the "first mistake" bit, but it's still something I notice.)
A lot of the extra scenes were because they realised they were short, and some major characters had barely any screentime. Guess it's then just character drama 101 to pair them up with as many other characters as possible to see what the combination of the two characters in a scene brings up.
By the way, I felt I should mention that the reasons I bailed from the Malazon books are the same reasons that I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan (despite it, on paper, containing every element of fantasy that I normally love) and also why my wife and I bailed on Supernatural at around season 5, I think (When Sam comes back from hell).
In the former, the magic rules made no sense and could be used to plug pretty much any plot hole, (time spinner!) while in the latter, the fact that certain characters could come back not only from the dead, but from actual, for real, soul destruction (i.e. "this person isn't just dead, their soul is destroyed! Oh but look, they're back now!").
While I don't begrudge anyone who jumped off Supernatural at the end of season 5 (it was the original planned ending, and the quality was at best erratic afterwards), I do think it deserves explanation, and though that event is 10 years old, I'll spoiler it.
Sam's soul was never destroyed. It was tortured, flayed, etc. When he comes back, it's without his soul, and it takes a half season (6x11) for him to get it back, and it's a trial for him for over a season (7x17), when divine intervention removes it from him, at a cost. Can't find when that cost is fully paid (my google fu is weak), and it's been a long time since I watched it.
But essentially, it's about two years to 'fix' Sam.
That might not be a satisfactory storyline, but I think two seasons to get back to "normal" was a reasonable duration to pay the price. It's definitely something they didn't gloss over.
Sam
Is just one example though. I believe there are several characters as I recall that appear to get destroyed beyond death and still come back
Both of Winchester parents (the mother twice, I believe)
Their friend with the trucker hat (forgot his name)
The yellow-eyed devil who killed their dad
Ruby, I think her name was
I wanna say the character played by Felicia Day, maybe (memory hazy)
Other miscellaneous demons and angels
I may be wrong on some of those, and some of them may have been retroactively justified, but it was enough that I couldn't get invested in the show's stakes anymore
That being said, my wife and I will still occasionally seek to fill silent moments by raising our arms in the air and yelling "PUDDING!" now and then.
Re: Supernatural
The absolute key thing to remember is
(season 14/15 spoilers)
God is using them as characters in his own narrative (yes, that author prophet character was who everyone thought he was), so he’s literally pulling off deus ex machinas to drive his story.
From memory though, none of those characters were permanently destroyed, everything has some afterlife they go to and can be pulled back from.
By the way, I felt I should mention that the reasons I bailed from the Malazon books are the same reasons that I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan (despite it, on paper, containing every element of fantasy that I normally love) and also why my wife and I bailed on Supernatural at around season 5, I think (When Sam comes back from hell).
In the former, the magic rules made no sense and could be used to plug pretty much any plot hole, (time spinner!) while in the latter, the fact that certain characters could come back not only from the dead, but from actual, for real, soul destruction (i.e. "this person isn't just dead, their soul is destroyed! Oh but look, they're back now!").
While I don't begrudge anyone who jumped off Supernatural at the end of season 5 (it was the original planned ending, and the quality was at best erratic afterwards), I do think it deserves explanation, and though that event is 10 years old, I'll spoiler it.
Sam's soul was never destroyed. It was tortured, flayed, etc. When he comes back, it's without his soul, and it takes a half season (6x11) for him to get it back, and it's a trial for him for over a season (7x17), when divine intervention removes it from him, at a cost. Can't find when that cost is fully paid (my google fu is weak), and it's been a long time since I watched it.
But essentially, it's about two years to 'fix' Sam.
That might not be a satisfactory storyline, but I think two seasons to get back to "normal" was a reasonable duration to pay the price. It's definitely something they didn't gloss over.
Sam
Is just one example though. I believe there are several characters as I recall that appear to get destroyed beyond death and still come back
Both of Winchester parents (the mother twice, I believe)
Their friend with the trucker hat (forgot his name)
The yellow-eyed devil who killed their dad
Ruby, I think her name was
I wanna say the character played by Felicia Day, maybe (memory hazy)
Other miscellaneous demons and angels
I may be wrong on some of those, and some of them may have been retroactively justified, but it was enough that I couldn't get invested in the show's stakes anymore
That being said, my wife and I will still occasionally seek to fill silent moments by raising our arms in the air and yelling "PUDDING!" now and then.
Re: Supernatural
The absolute key thing to remember is
(season 14/15 spoilers)
God is using them as characters in his own narrative (yes, that author prophet character was who everyone thought he was), so he’s literally pulling off deus ex machinas to drive his story.
From memory though, none of those characters were permanently destroyed, everything has some afterlife they go to and can be pulled back from.
Aw man for real? I tapped out in like season 8 but that's super lame.
I think "High fantasy" used to mean concerning the events of nobles and kings, and "low fantasy" meant the adventures of ordinary folk.
Initially "High Fantasy" was meant to try and add critical and literary heft to works like Tolkien and CS Lewis to distinguish it from fairy tales for little kids. Because at the time any kind of fantasy wasn't serious literature. After it was finally allowed out of the kids table the terminology kind of drifted to be whatever.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
If’n it’s got elves, it’s high fantasy.
If’n it don’t, it ain’t.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Eh, my definition of high fantasy would be, if you needed like, a bear dealt with would "I will go and visit a wizard and have them deal with this" be a decision a sane person with a solid understanding of risk might make.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
High fantasy:
Have you ever thought about elves....on weed?
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
If a wizard COULD do this, but, the costs would be more than the mortal mind could comprehend then we're in Dark Fantasy. If a wizard would be capable of doing it, but they would use some kind of magic shotgun, then its Urban Fantasy. If a wizard could do this, but they would be too busy brooding and being sultry in high school, then its Young Adult Fantasy. If noone would ask a wizard to do this because noone believes wizards exist, then its low fantasy.
If a wizard COULD do this, but, the costs would be more than the mortal mind could comprehend then we're in Dark Fantasy. If a wizard would be capable of doing it, but they would use some kind of magic shotgun, then its Urban Fantasy. If a wizard could do this, but they would be too busy brooding and being sultry in high school, then its Young Adult Fantasy. If noone would ask a wizard to do this because noone believes wizards exist, then its low fantasy.
And if a wizard could do it, but it's more bother than it's worth and anyway he's late for a five-course lunch (the five-course breakfast ran (or at least waddled) late), then you're at the Unseen University, the Discworld's premier (i.e., only) institution of higher learning.
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Eh, sorry, gotta disagree.
Back in the late aughts/early 10s, I had just read ASOIF (this was before the HBO series was even announced) and had expressed to my circle of friends how much I enjoyed it. Everyone then kept insisting I read the Malazan series. After putting it off for a while, I finally started reading the first book. It's been a while, so I don't remember the details, but as I recall, a character is introduced, killed early on, and the next chapter talks about how they were going to resurrect him/her. That was a huge turn off for me because it made me feel like there were no stakes. In a high-magic world, pretty much any plot point can be made inconsequential. There's always time-travel/resurrection/soul recovery/what have you that can be called upon, even if there are rules set up.
Maybe they do a better job of laying out the fictional rules to the magic in the world later, but it was already too late for me, I bailed.
Low fantasy: real world setting with fantasy elements
High fantasy: fictional world setting with fantasy elements
The King Arthur myths are (usually) low fantasy. A Song of Ice and Fire is high fantasy. Depending on your interpretation of the "Red Book of Westmarch" framing device, Middle-Earth could be either or both.
That's all, really. Everything else is just a subgenre of high or low. Urban fantasy, e.g., can be both high and low fantasy; something being classified as urban fantasy depends more on how much the world depicted is recognizable as a modern world, as opposed to being recognizable as the real world.
Magical realism is basically as described by @smrtnik.
I would not know having bounced hard after a couple hundred pages of book 1. It felt like those old D&D books where somebody novelized their campaign, but less good.
That's because it was basically a novelization of Erikson's D&D campaign.
I'm sure it was absolutely wonderful for his players.
Grease is magical realism?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an offhand description of magical realism I didn’t like, but this is a true mastery of the form.
Yeah, if memory serves it was GURPS, but same deal. Most people who like the series won't blame people for bouncing off the first book, largely because of how rough and dense it is. It went from Campaign -> Movie Script -> shopped around and not picked up so converted into book (which is why the first third is like an extended prologue with a different set of main characters from the next section of the novel) -> shopped around and not picked up -> sitting on a shelf for like a decade until he got a book deal after getting more experience with other novels -> oh hey he got a contract, publish it now.
His writing quality takes a noticeable jump in book 2. If people quit the series it's typically in book 1 or book 8 (he gets a bit introspective/navel-gazey in the last three books). Doesn't help that his style was already very...dense. I've heard it compared to the way short stories are written in their density, but novel-form. Shit comes back which was slipped into earlier books which you think is flavor text but which actually mattered. It rewards re-reads, but also makes them slower and more tiring reads than most books from my experience? I think that's why I liked Dancer's Lament so much - it was the same world and characters, but read like a 70s pulp fantasy novel.
Most stuff is gleaned from context, a lot of it is spelled out in book 3 and then later some history/finer details in book..7, I think it was.
Anyway, my original post would probably have been better served as "malazan-style" - I was basically trying to swing it to the other extreme of "if it's going to be fantasy, give me some SPECTACLE." I'm actually on record thinking Malazan itself wouldn't translate well to a TV show (too much downtime between events) unless maybe as an animated series so they could really get into some of the absurd stuff. With the notable exception that some storylines (specifically the Chain of Dogs) could make some pretty great movies, in isolation to the other storylines in the same books.
Not to get too into the weeds of pedantry, but:
Would Carnival Row (as depicted in the Amazon show) be low fantasy or high fantasy?
I don't think whether it is based on the real world or the fictional world comes into it, more how similar it is to the real world. The names of people and places aren't relevant, if it existed completely apart from the Game of Thrones books, the Hedge Knight books would be 100% low fantasy. It's set in something that looks like the middle ages, and is about peasants, knights and lords doing things that peasants, knights and lords would have done in the real world.
Whereas something that had a plot like Dragonlance, but the setting was Julius Ceaser's draconic legions invading an Ancient Britain defended by Boudica's sisterhood of pegasus chariots and a society of sorceror's, all the whilst the Roman and Celtic Gods clashed at the same time, would be high fantasy.
I've always thought of high and low fantasy being divided by the pervasiveness of the fantasy elements. E.G. Harry Potter would be high fantasy, 'cause shit be magic. Want to travel? Magic travel. Want to cook? Magical pots and pans. Want to fight? Grab your wand.
Something like GoT (until the last couple seasons) was what I'd consider low fantasy; 99.99% of the population will never see a dragon or cast a spell or hear about magic beyond whispers and rumours. Being a witch will get you burned at a stake rather than be considered a prodigy. I'd consider Carnival Row somewhat of a middle-ground, since there isn't much 'magic' for most people, but there is certainly fantasy elements everywhere in the different races going about their daily life. Magic is still rare spooky stuff, though.
I've never thought in terms of "high fantasy," but your usage makes grammatical sense and I like it as a discriminator between tight character-driven pieces and epic tales.
I've only thought of it terms of "fantasy" or "low fantasy" where the latter is comparable to hard sci-fi; the supernatural deviations are kept to a minimum, not central to the story, and an attempt is made to present them as plausible.
Ex: Dragons and other fantasy races presented as natural organisms, low-level magic presented as the logical force or effect of MacGuffium.
Same; but also because it's unclear how much of the supernatural exists outside of what we were shown so far. The nature of werewolves, whatever the Pact are, etc, could nudge it firmly toward high/full-on fantasy.
It's also that because genre definitions are fuzzy and usually one thing (grand fantastical world facing huge world ending threat and magic everywhere) goes with the other (kings and nobles and such).
Generally it's just not worth getting too concerned with imo. They are mostly terms to help describe something to someone who has not read/seen/etc it yet.
Like, I knew these guys were hack writers skating by on the work of a better writer who's work they were adapting seemingly without really understanding it. I thought it was pretty obvious early on that any time they had to do some writing themselves, or had to insert their own plotting into the mix or felt they had to change something, the precipitous drop in quality was pretty obvious.
But I always kinda figured they were like, decent at their jobs at least. And that they were fans of the work. Like, a particular type of fan you would find who was mostly obsessed with the "shocking twists" and complaining about all the boring character work and themes, but still someone who cared and had gotten the job on some sort of merit.
It's all just kinda crazy.
Mostly though, I'm glad for the future in that it seems like they are not getting projects I might actually care about and so hopefully somebody actually competent can helm those things instead.
In the former, the magic rules made no sense and could be used to plug pretty much any plot hole, (time spinner!) while in the latter, the fact that certain characters could come back not only from the dead, but from actual, for real, soul destruction (i.e. "this person isn't just dead, their soul is destroyed! Oh but look, they're back now!").
So with the extra context that they knew fuckall what they were doing they just fuckin made Shae into Tysha while having Tyrion follow the exact same path with Shae as book Tyrion without the whole damn character development of finding out the truth about Tysha.
It's huge and knowing that these idiots took none of that into account when they made season one infuriates me to the nth degree now.
That's a new one on me. I suppose it's part of the issue with these terms that there is only very loose consensus at best.
There's a thing in sports that have relatively few stoppages of play and relatively few scoring plays (e.g. soccer, hockey) where at a high enough level, whenever a scoring play is made, the thing to do among analysts is roll back the tape until you find the first mistake someone made. You follow the result of that mistake and the way other players reaction to it, and it's usually it's the eventual direct instigator of that scoring play.
In the second episode, Benioff and Weiss made what I would call their first definite mistake. They added in Cersei telling Catelyn about her first child...a child with black hair. This child didn't exist in the books. It's an early divergence point. Book readers would have had questions, and show-only watchers might have been thrown off the trail. Did she kill the boy herself, or did he actually get sick and die? Or did she make it all up on the spot in order to show sympathy for Catelyn and plant seeds of "she's a mother who lost her first son, she could never do that to someone else's boy" in case the investigation pointed to her?
All interesting questions that could have changed the character of Cersei from the books (for better or worse) or made clear her cunning. And none of those possibilities are ever even hinted at, never mind resolved, because the rest of the storyline plays out almost exactly as it happens in the books. They just threw in a scene that dramatically ran counter to the character's main arc for the season because...????
(This is purely from a narrative standpoint, not a production standpoint. Knowing that they just didn't have many long episodes in season 1 and went back and added stuff in (such as a the Robert/Cersei discussion) messes with the "first mistake" bit, but it's still something I notice.)
While I don't begrudge anyone who jumped off Supernatural at the end of season 5 (it was the original planned ending, and the quality was at best erratic afterwards), I do think it deserves explanation, and though that event is 10 years old, I'll spoiler it.
But essentially, it's about two years to 'fix' Sam.
That might not be a satisfactory storyline, but I think two seasons to get back to "normal" was a reasonable duration to pay the price. It's definitely something they didn't gloss over.
Their friend with the trucker hat (forgot his name)
The yellow-eyed devil who killed their dad
Ruby, I think her name was
I wanna say the character played by Felicia Day, maybe (memory hazy)
Other miscellaneous demons and angels
I may be wrong on some of those, and some of them may have been retroactively justified, but it was enough that I couldn't get invested in the show's stakes anymore
That being said, my wife and I will still occasionally seek to fill silent moments by raising our arms in the air and yelling "PUDDING!" now and then.
A lot of the extra scenes were because they realised they were short, and some major characters had barely any screentime. Guess it's then just character drama 101 to pair them up with as many other characters as possible to see what the combination of the two characters in a scene brings up.
Re: Supernatural
The absolute key thing to remember is
(season 14/15 spoilers)
From memory though, none of those characters were permanently destroyed, everything has some afterlife they go to and can be pulled back from.
Aw man for real? I tapped out in like season 8 but that's super lame.
Initially "High Fantasy" was meant to try and add critical and literary heft to works like Tolkien and CS Lewis to distinguish it from fairy tales for little kids. Because at the time any kind of fantasy wasn't serious literature. After it was finally allowed out of the kids table the terminology kind of drifted to be whatever.
If’n it don’t, it ain’t.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Have you ever thought about elves....on weed?
Already done in Tolkien. Old Toby was the Bubblegum Kush/Pineapple Express of Arda.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
... yes?
Ed: or, at least, the overall WarCraft oeuvre is definitely high fantasy, though portions of WoW might not be.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
https://www.wowhead.com/quest=28637/a-taste-for-bear
Wizards can do this quest = High Fantasy.
If a wizard COULD do this, but, the costs would be more than the mortal mind could comprehend then we're in Dark Fantasy. If a wizard would be capable of doing it, but they would use some kind of magic shotgun, then its Urban Fantasy. If a wizard could do this, but they would be too busy brooding and being sultry in high school, then its Young Adult Fantasy. If noone would ask a wizard to do this because noone believes wizards exist, then its low fantasy.
And if a wizard could do it, but it's more bother than it's worth and anyway he's late for a five-course lunch (the five-course breakfast ran (or at least waddled) late), then you're at the Unseen University, the Discworld's premier (i.e., only) institution of higher learning.
Anyway.
https://www.themarysue.com/george-r-r-martin-hbo-deal-winds-of-winter/
I think I'm finally done and just accepting that the books are never getting finished.
He clearly has.