Author Topic: "Podcastle is very feminine"  (Read 33431 times)

deflective

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Reply #50 on: October 14, 2009, 11:30:49 PM
we're well past time for a full scale cgi high magic blockbuster.  it's kinda like the year or two before the matrix came out, the tech to do a cgi version of the wirework swordmaster movie had existed and just needed one example to set the mould.  we saw a good sample of a magic battle in the Dumbledore/Voldemort battle a couple years ago, add some Doc Strange effects w/ runes and shielding and we're well on the way to creating a new movie sub-genre.

a few new traditional fantasy stories that i strongly recommend are the name of the wind, a game of thrones, and the curse of chalion.  warning tho: all begin series that haven't been fully written yet, in case that worries you (damn wheel of time).



gelee

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Reply #51 on: October 15, 2009, 12:16:58 AM
See, the best thing about the first (and only, really) Conan movie was that it made *no* concession to the family market.  Conan is not Hagrid with a sword.  A lot of people dissed Arnie's acting in that film, but I think he (non)acted it perfectly.  Conan was not supposed to be Kevin Sorbo.  He was just supposed to slay, drink, and glower a lot.  Not a real deep character, but a lot of fun to watch.
They were very cheap to make, and they were cranked out like spaghetti westerns in the 80's.  Xena and Hercules pretty much damned the genre to TV obscurity.
Fire and Ice *did* succeed in some ways.  The art was actually pretty good, as was the animation.  The story, sadly, was exactly the   sort of thing people are talking about when they say they hate S&S fantasy.
Other good places to look for S&S fantasy fiction: Any of Moorecock's Elric stuff.  Sort of a skinny albino sorceror mopey goth Conan.



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Reply #52 on: October 15, 2009, 12:33:49 AM
Other good places to look for S&S fantasy fiction: Any of Moorecock's Elric stuff.  Sort of a skinny albino sorceror mopey goth Conan.

Elric is the anti-Conan.  Physically weak, uses sorcery, he's basically everything Conan isn't.  The only thing they've got in common is that they swing swords.

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gelee

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Reply #53 on: October 15, 2009, 12:37:59 AM
Other good places to look for S&S fantasy fiction: Any of Moorecock's Elric stuff.  Sort of a skinny albino sorceror mopey goth Conan.

Elric is the anti-Conan.  Physically weak, uses sorcery, he's basically everything Conan isn't.  The only thing they've got in common is that they swing swords.
Yeah, that occured to me when I was typing "skinny albino sorceror mopey goth."
The stories themselves, though, are very much in the same vein.



lowky

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Reply #54 on: October 15, 2009, 12:47:14 AM
Hey, there's always that Dungeons and Dragons movie... ::)

They have not made a Dungeons and Dragons movie yet, and I refuse to listen to any such crazy talk that they have.

Quote from: Deflective
we're well past time for a full scale cgi high magic blockbuster.  it's kinda like the year or two before the matrix came out, the tech to do a cgi version of the wirework swordmaster movie had existed and just needed one example to set the mould.  we saw a good sample of a magic battle in the Dumbledore/Voldemort battle a couple years ago, add some Doc Strange effects w/ runes and shielding and we're well on the way to creating a new movie sub-genre.

The problem is they focus on things like the dragons and monsters, and not the story with these kinds of movies.  The special effects are easy, the problem is the lack of writing.

As for Kevin Sorbo I much preferred him in Andromeda to Hercules.  Xena was pretty much just for titillation. Why they had to introduce the whole, "She's a strong woman so she must be a lesbian".  It had potential.  I guess there are too many men threatened by strong women. 

The whole patriarchal society suppression of women thing is as annoying as the equally extreme men are evil response to it.  I was looking at some Wiccan/Pagan information this morning and that is one of the things that always bothers me when trying to find more information on expressing and studying my religious beliefs.  Women used to have power, Evil MenTM took it from us, therefore men are not welcome in our religion/No one ever worshiped a god, just goddesses.  Things like this are why terms like Feminazi exist. Not everything is or should be Masculine, Not everything is or should be Feminine.


lowky

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Reply #55 on: October 15, 2009, 12:50:15 AM
Other good places to look for S&S fantasy fiction: Any of Moorecock's Elric stuff.  Sort of a skinny albino sorceror mopey goth Conan.

Elric is the anti-Conan.  Physically weak, uses sorcery, he's basically everything Conan isn't.  The only thing they've got in common is that they swing swords.
Yeah, that occured to me when I was typing "skinny albino sorceror mopey goth."
The stories themselves, though, are very much in the same vein.

Hence the subgenre name Sword & Sorcery.

Can we blame Elric for Emo kids?  Of course Elric had a little more reason to be depressed, his sword had a nasty habit of killing his friends/companions.  Ah the trials and tribulations of using a Chaotic Evil, Intelligent sword.


jrderego

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Reply #56 on: October 15, 2009, 01:40:16 AM
Other good places to look for S&S fantasy fiction: Any of Moorecock's Elric stuff.  Sort of a skinny albino sorceror mopey goth Conan.

Elric is the anti-Conan.  Physically weak, uses sorcery, he's basically everything Conan isn't.  The only thing they've got in common is that they swing swords.
Yeah, that occured to me when I was typing "skinny albino sorceror mopey goth."
The stories themselves, though, are very much in the same vein.

Hence the subgenre name Sword & Sorcery.

Can we blame Elric for Emo kids?  Of course Elric had a little more reason to be depressed, his sword had a nasty habit of killing his friends/companions.  Ah the trials and tribulations of using a Chaotic Evil, Intelligent sword.

Elves ruin fantasy for me, as do dwarfs, gnomes, etc... I can't stand Tolkein, or anything that borrows the mechanics of his stories, or the mythology contained within. I see "elf" and roll my eyes back so far I can't see the pages anymore. For me Fantasy pretty much starts and ends with Howard.

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Talia

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Reply #57 on: October 15, 2009, 02:46:22 AM
I have to confess that I love elves. They're my mostest favorite type of mythical (? not sure if that's the word I'm looking for or not) critter.

Although I confess I wasn't a huge fan of the string of elf stories PC ran some months ago.

I guess you weren't a fan of the LOTR movies then (but they were so great! :P one of the few examples of truly excellent fantasy in cinema movie history! And how can you not love McKellen's Gandalf :P).



lowky

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Reply #58 on: October 15, 2009, 02:56:28 AM
I have to confess that I love elves. They're my mostest favorite type of mythical (? not sure if that's the word I'm looking for or not) critter.

Although I confess I wasn't a huge fan of the string of elf stories PC ran some months ago.

I guess you weren't a fan of the LOTR movies then (but they were so great! :P one of the few examples of truly excellent fantasy in cinema movie history! And how can you not love McKellen's Gandalf :P).

I think I like elves less than I do Fairies.  I like the stories that show elves are not all these nature loving tree-hugger neo-hippy wannabees.

I like that Fairies are frequently viewed as evil or at the least chaotic.  Enough of this we've lived so long that we don't want to get involved in anything anymore because it's all so temporary neutrality bullshit.  Maybe its why I like stories about Loki, Coyote, and other trickster gods too.  Mischief and chaos are fun, and can be powerful tools for change.  We humans take ourselves too seriously and need to be made fun of/to have fun from time to time.  While I like Tolkein and the LOTR movies are definitely the best Fantasy to hit the screen in decades, Too many people focused on his environmentalism with their stories of Elves.  Tolkein is very derivative of Germanic/Norse legends.  The people who came later are derivative of Tolkein.  it's just like photocopying things, a copy of a copy of a copy is blurry and unreadable, same with alot of the people who copied Tolkein, their work is unreadable.


deflective

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Reply #59 on: October 15, 2009, 04:35:27 AM
Quote from: deflective
we're well past time for a full scale cgi high magic blockbuster.
The problem is they focus on things like the dragons and monsters, and not the story with these kinds of movies.  The special effects are easy, the problem is the lack of writing.

i could agree with that.  there's been a fare number of big screen magic duels over the past decade, from lotr to potter, and they all look virtually the same: shoot missiles at each other (fire or force) and use telekinesis to throw things about.  it's the easiest thing to animate, sure, but technology is at the point where we can do more interesting stuff.  we saw a hint of this in the Dumbledore/Voldemort battle.  a wall of flame was summoned so Dumbledore brought the water out of a fountain as protection, then used the water offensively to try to drown his opponent (as i remember it).


Elves ruin fantasy for me, as do dwarfs, gnomes, etc... I can't stand Tolkein, or anything that borrows the mechanics of his stories, or the mythology contained within. I see "elf" and roll my eyes back so far I can't see the pages anymore. For me Fantasy pretty much starts and ends with Howard.

fantasy races are ok if done properly.  the warrior bears in the golden compass (the book, the bears were disappointingly diluted in the movie) were interesting but elves tend to rub me the wrong way since they're usually supposed to be super-awesome.  live longer, wiser, more in touch with nature, deadly, smarter, etc.  Pratchett keeps them out of discworld for more or less exactly this reason, he even wrote one book where they tried to invade and impose their glamour of superiority (his elves have more in common with traditional fey, like Gaiman's do).



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Reply #60 on: October 15, 2009, 04:49:07 AM
Elves ruin fantasy for me, as do dwarfs, gnomes, etc... I can't stand Tolkein, or anything that borrows the mechanics of his stories, or the mythology contained within. I see "elf" and roll my eyes back so far I can't see the pages anymore. For me Fantasy pretty much starts and ends with Howard.

fantasy races are ok if done properly.  the warrior bears in the golden compass (the book, the bears were disappointingly diluted in the movie) were interesting but elves tend to rub me the wrong way since they're usually supposed to be super-awesome.  live longer, wiser, more in touch with nature, deadly, smarter, etc.  Pratchett keeps them out of discworld for more or less exactly this reason, he even wrote one book where they tried to invade and impose their glamour of superiority (his elves have more in common with traditional fey, like Gaiman's do).

Pratchett also doesn't really much care for anything seen as, well, super-awesome. His introduce-the-new-race-to-Ankh-Morpork books are reveals of hidden awesomeness (Golems, Goblins, Trolls to a certain extent) slash immigrant tales. He tends to pick somewhat distasteful things and then show the wonder in them rather than try to take the beautiful and make it more mundane and distasteful. 

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stePH

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Reply #61 on: October 15, 2009, 05:00:04 AM
Quote from: deflective
we're well past time for a full scale cgi high magic blockbuster.
The problem is they focus on things like the dragons and monsters, and not the story with these kinds of movies.  The special effects are easy, the problem is the lack of writing.

i could agree with that.  there's been a fare number of big screen magic duels over the past decade, from lotr to potter, and they all look virtually the same: shoot missiles at each other (fire or force) and use telekinesis to throw things about.  it's the easiest thing to animate, sure, but technology is at the point where we can do more interesting stuff. 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8oWAb5NVALw&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/8oWAb5NVALw&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;</a>

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jrderego

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Reply #62 on: October 15, 2009, 12:44:43 PM
I guess you weren't a fan of the LOTR movies then (but they were so great! :P one of the few examples of truly excellent fantasy in cinema movie history! And how can you not love McKellen's Gandalf :P).

The movies were okay, though I admit to liking the Rankin/Bass cartoons from the 1970s based on The Hobbit and Return of the King better than the Peter Jackson films. The books were insufferably boring, The Silmarillion was incoherent pap, and The Hobbit was 100 pages too long. The only Tolkein-centric anything I've read and enjoyed was his biography.

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gelee

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Reply #63 on: October 15, 2009, 01:01:06 PM
I think Tolkien told a great story, but in the style of his day: clunky, thick, and wordy.  For the most part, his contemporaries wrote in the same style.  I, too, dread "elves" coming out in story.  Fantastic races, as originated by Tolkien, where just personifications of certain human traits that he wanted to isolate and highlight.  A lot of SF writers do the same thing with aliens.  Handled well, you get Donaldson's Amnion.  Handled badly, you get Drizzt Do'Urden.  Blech.



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Reply #64 on: October 15, 2009, 02:15:51 PM
I like Drizzt. :p



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Reply #65 on: October 15, 2009, 02:29:39 PM
I think Tolkien told a great story, but in the style of his day: clunky, thick, and wordy.  For the most part, his contemporaries wrote in the same style.  I, too, dread "elves" coming out in story.  Fantastic races, as originated by Tolkien, where just personifications of certain human traits that he wanted to isolate and highlight.  A lot of SF writers do the same thing with aliens.  Handled well, you get Donaldson's Amnion.  Handled badly, you get Drizzt Do'Urden.  Blech.

I don't have a problem with clunky thick and wordy, hell my favorite authors are Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. It's that I couldn't find a way to identify with, or care about, Middle Earth or anyone in it. I had no emotional attachment to any of it, and even though in places his prose was lovely, it added up to very little in the way of advancing a VERY simple and, considering the ground that's been trod since first published, very obvious plot. Plus, the continuous linguistic stuff got extremely tedious. I know that creating the elfin language was Tolkein's favorite thing in the world, but like esperanto, or Klingon, or any other useless language, the time spent learning it is wasted.  

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Reply #66 on: October 15, 2009, 07:40:45 PM
I think it's a bit unfair to criticize Tolkien's plot as "obvious" because of all the plots written since the Lord of the Rings. 



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Reply #67 on: October 15, 2009, 08:02:11 PM
I think it's a bit unfair to criticize Tolkien's plot as "obvious" because of all the plots written since the Lord of the Rings. 

The fact that I read a whole mess of stuff that aped it first, from kid's lit when I was a kid, to grownup lit when I was a grownup, before reading Tolkein doesn't make the plot of his books any less obvious. I am sure if I'd been alive in the 40s when it was first published and read it then when it was still original, then sure, it wasn't obvious then.

But it sure as hell is now. And, it's not a criticism of his writing, but of how the world has recycled his plots countless times.

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Reply #68 on: October 17, 2009, 01:04:13 AM
woah, what's with all this Tolkien hating?!
I loved those books, the movies were entertaining, and the Simarillion was crap.
I forget ALL of it. :D couldn't tell you much about the series, but I remember being entertained!
LEAVE TOLKIEN ALONE! *sob*

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Heradel

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Reply #69 on: October 17, 2009, 02:20:35 AM
I think it's a bit unfair to criticize Tolkien's plot as "obvious" because of all the plots written since the Lord of the Rings. 

The fact that I read a whole mess of stuff that aped it first, from kid's lit when I was a kid, to grownup lit when I was a grownup, before reading Tolkein doesn't make the plot of his books any less obvious. I am sure if I'd been alive in the 40s when it was first published and read it then when it was still original, then sure, it wasn't obvious then.

But it sure as hell is now. And, it's not a criticism of his writing, but of how the world has recycled his plots countless times.

To be fair, LOTR is a monomyth/Hero's Quest/Journey, and you don't get that huge amount of differentiation in them apart from setting and details.

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lowky

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Reply #70 on: October 17, 2009, 03:04:39 AM
woah, what's with all this Tolkien hating?!
I loved those books, the movies were entertaining, and the Simarillion was crap.
I forget ALL of it. :D couldn't tell you much about the series, but I remember being entertained!
LEAVE TOLKIEN ALONE! *sob*

Only Tolkein I can say I truly hate is Silmarillion.  Never finished it.  Utter shite!
I enjoyed the others, but he mostly collected much of the stories of Germanic myth, Dwaves and the like, fleshed them out a little and used them to tell a story about ending war and fighting environmental distruction.


stePH

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Reply #71 on: October 17, 2009, 05:08:54 AM
woah, what's with all this Tolkien hating?!
I loved those books, the movies were entertaining, and the Simarillion was crap.
I forget ALL of it. :D couldn't tell you much about the series, but I remember being entertained!
LEAVE TOLKIEN ALONE! *sob*

d00d, you need to put on way-too-much eye makeup and upload a histrionic video rant to YouTube.  ;D

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