What the Hell is Happening to Fantasy?

[@josh_from_xboxlive]

Find me linktr.ee/haventseenpod instagram.com/josh_from_xboxlive/ letterboxd.com/jeshuam/ patreon.com/Josh_from_xbolive

[@highfive7689]

The true definition of fantasy is escapism. Without escapism, fantasy becomes supernatural horror. Or modern paranormal sci-fi. Where science is so advance that it seems magic and feels like magic. As in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. On the other hand. mythological stories offer us a teaching moment. Expounding virtues and correct living. Now, these psychologically driven fantasies use psychological characterizations as filler, especially in movies to reduce amounts of expensive CGI. More talk less adventure saves money. The same in modern Sci-fi. You'll find that it began to happen a lot to lower CGI cost in movies and TV series in about the late 1980's to fill in movie time. In the end does it improve written fantasy or not? In books it adds written pages, as the character works out his angst. It's like the idea of whether we should add tons of passages about sitting eating at the campfires or doing toiletry things. Ah - no. But is it enjoyable. In most cases you can edit it out most of it and you find it makes no difference to the story. We read fantasy to escape our angst driven world of problems not to relive them in our reading.

[@anonym_incognito]

This video makes some excellent points regarding the loss of understanding of symbolism in dream logic in modern fantasy but is at the same time filled with assumptions about what makes mythology and spirituality work that are so off the mark as to be downright grotesque. I agree in seeing the value of the "simple" archetypal story where the entire story is a metaphor for human psychology and that many people today completely miss this. I do not agree with pitting symbolism and psychological complexity against each other as if the later is something inherently "modern" divorced from spiritual and symbolic depth. That itself is a deeply modern presumption! You seem to want to defend this manichean, black-and-white view of the universe as a struggle of good vs. evil as if it inherently what archetypal stories always were about until modernity came along and complicated things with psychological naturalism. But that view is only the product of a particular branch of religious thought, the abrahamic, zoroastrian and similar. Many ancient pagan mythologies viewed the world often differently with deities, heroes and sometimes even demons being plenty multifaceted and complex. Gods embody both the magnificent and the terryfying aspects of their domains. Heroes greatest virtues are often the flipside of their most tragic flaws. That complexity was expressed in a completely different and often symbolic way that differs from modern writing, but it is still there! In the hands of a skilled writer, psychological complexity can absolutely be transcendent and spiritual and connected to the cosmos. It is not something "human, all too human" that needs to be overcome. I fail to see anything aspirational or spiritual about flat characters and our heroes should not strive to become them. Same goes for purely good and purely evil characters. You say in the closing line, if I don't want those, why am I writing fantasy? Well here is the thing: if a character is purely good, that menas their virtue doesn't mean anything! In order for me to be impressed by their moral choices, they have to have the capacity to choose wrong. Same vice versa for a purely evil villain. How are we supposed to hold them accountable for their evil if I don't see how they could have had a capacity to choose good? And no, I didn't miss the point about them being facets of the human psyche. Because the same character trait is often a virtue or a flaw depending on how we express it, which flawed heroes and sympathetic villains could be a great metaphor for. A sympathetic villain with a humanizing backstory could stand for qualities that we have demonized or supressed in ourselves, causing them to come back as something toxic and twisted - that's literally Jung's Shadow Concept 101! A flawed hero meanwhile could embody the part of us that feels like it wants to do good but can't. Our psyche can't just be reduced to shoulder angel vs. shoulder devil, as you seem to imply. I really hope you read my comment and think about these points, even though I basically wrote a novel (how modern of me!) Oh, well. Your video essay was lenghty too, so you shouldn't have a problem with that.

[@Jack9C]

@18:18 is background audio a Path of Exile song excerpt?

[@anonym_incognito]

This video makes some excellent points regarding the loss of understanding of symbolism and "dream logic" in modern fantasy but is at the same time filled with assumptions about what makes mythology and spirituality work that are so off the mark as to be downright grotesque. I agree in seeing the value of the "simple" archetypal story where the entire story is a metaphor for human psychology and that many people today completely miss this. I do not agree with pitting symbolism and psychological complexity against each other as if the later is something inherently "modern" divorced from spiritual and symbolic depth. That itself is a deeply modern presumption! You seem to want to defend this manichean, black-and-white view of the universe as a struggle of good vs. evil as if it is inherently what archetypal stories always were about until modernity came along and complicated things with psychological naturalism. But that view is only the product of a particular branch of religious thought, the abrahamic, zoroastrian and similar. Many ancient pagan mythologies viewed the world often differently with deities, heroes and sometimes even demons or monsters being plenty multifaceted and complex. Gods embody both the magnificent and the terryfying aspects of their domains. Heroes greatest virtues are often the flipside of their most tragic flaws. That complexity was expressed in a completely different and often symbolic way that differs from modern writing, but it is still there! In the hands of a skilled writer, psychological complexity can absolutely be transcendent and spiritual and connected to the cosmos. It is not something "human, all too human" that needs to be overcome. I fail to see anything aspirational or spiritual about flat characters and our heroes should not strive to become them. Same goes for purely good and purely evil characters. You say in the closing line, if I don't want those, why am I writing fantasy? Well here is the thing: if a character is purely good, that menas their virtue doesn't mean anything! In order for me to be impressed by their moral choices, they have to have the capacity to choose wrong. Same vice versa for a purely evil villain. How are we supposed to hold them accountable for their evil if I don't see how they could have had a capacity to choose good? And no, I didn't miss the point about them being facets of the human psyche. Because the same character trait is often a virtue or a flaw depending on how we express it, which flawed heroes and sympathetic villains could be a great metaphor for. A sympathetic villain with a humanizing backstory could stand for qualities that we have demonized or supressed in ourselves, causing them to come back as something toxic and twisted - that's literally Jung's Shadow Concept 101! A flawed hero meanwhile could embody the part of us that feels like it wants to do good but can't. Our psyche can't just be reduced to shoulder angel vs. shoulder devil, as you seem to imply. I really hope you read my comment and think about these points, even though I basically wrote a novel (how modern of me!) Oh, well. Your video essay was lenghty too, so you shouldn't have a problem with that.

[@anonym_incognito]

This video makes some excellent points regarding the loss of understanding of symbolism in dream logic in modern fantasy but is at the same time filled with assumptions about what makes mythology and spirituality work that are so off the mark as to be downright grotesque. I agree in seeing the value of the "simple" archetypal story where the entire story is a metaphor for human psychology and that many people today completely miss this. I do not agree with pitting symbolism and psychological complexity against each other as if the later is something inherently "modern" divorced from spiritual and symbolic depth. That itself is a deeply modern presumption! You seem to want to defend this manichean, black-and-white view of the universe as a struggle of good vs. evil as if it inherently what archetypal stories always were about until modernity came along and complicated things with psychological naturalism. But that view is only the product of a particular branch of religious thought, the abrahamic, zoroastrian and similar. Many ancient pagan mythologies viewed the world often differently with deities, heroes and sometimes even demons being plenty multifaceted and complex. Gods embody both the magnificent and the terryfying aspects of their domains. Heroes greatest virtues are often the flipside of their most tragic flaws. That complexity was expressed in a completely different and often symbolic way that differs from modern writing, but it is still there! In the hands of a skilled writer, psychological complexity can absolutely be transcendent and spiritual and connected to the cosmos. It is not something "human, all too human" that needs to be overcome. I fail to see anything aspirational or spiritual about flat characters and our heroes should not strive to become them. Same goes for purely good and purely evil characters. You say in the closing line, if I don't want those, why am I writing fantasy? Well here is the thing: if a character is purely good, that menas their virtue doesn't mean anything! In order for me to be impressed by their moral choices, they have to have the capacity to choose wrong. Same vice versa for a purely evil villain. How are we supposed to hold them accountable for their evil if I don't see how they could have had a capacity to choose good? And no, I didn't miss the point about them being facets of the human psyche. Because the same character trait is often a virtue or a flaw depending on how we express it, which flawed heroes and sympathetic villains could be a great metaphor for. A sympathetic villain with a humanizing backstory could stand for qualities that we have demonized or supressed in ourselves, causing them to come back as something toxic and twisted - that's literally Jung's Shadow Concept 101! A flawed hero meanwhile could embody the part of us that feels like it wants to do good but can't. Our psyche can't just be reduced to shoulder angel vs. shoulder devil, as you seem to imply. I really hope you read my comment and think about these points, even though I basically wrote a novel. Oh, well. Your video essay was lenghty too, so you shouldn't have a problem with that.

[@autoingrement]

I think one problem with modern fantasy shows is that the show runners think fantasy is childish and ridiculous and they are scared to lean into it thinking it will turn away audiences. So instead they make dramas with fantasy elements to capture the biggest possible audience.

[@carlcramer9269]

Very much this! Drama is the doom of a good epic story.

[@khatack]

Modern show runners are soulless. The sense of mystery and wonder is gone.

[@squirrelsyrup1921]

JJ Abrams showedhis contempt for the audience when he bragged for ten years abous his "mystery box" writing style which corpos realised they could clone forever.

[@khatack]

@@squirrelsyrup1921 Then again, there are still countless of people who watch this modern crap so perhaps the contempt was warranted.

[@LawfulBased]

You are totally overthinking this. The cause for all of this is much more simple. We live in age of lazy, untalented l0s3rs who think they can be on par with people of passion & talent far out of their league. But sadly the IP's wander into the hands of the untalented, because the chance of a worthy heir to inherit the legacy, is just that small. We live in such times. Basically it shows that no matter the amount of money, or publicity, hype & advertisement... all of this cannot make up for the lack of talent & vision. Writers & actors void of the essence of greatness, can only come so far.

[@thefinalday5858]

modern fantasy is often written by people that look at classics and think "i can do better than that" and procede to slap sitcom humor on it

[@Crisofora_]

"The office" but with cloaks.

[@joyfulyes]

sitcom humor and/or soap opera drama.

[@animezinglife]

That, combined with whatever half-baked political "message" they feel entitled to insert into the work.

[@blugger]

@animezinglife literally every work ever has some form of political message, as polticia literally determine our lives Lotr, for example, is oft cited as virulently anti-fascist The difference? Lotr was written with passion, and it was the adapted with passion in cinema...and now Amazon got its up to make a buck off of

[@alexissandren1884]

​@@bluggerLotr are many things but in very few instances is it read as anti-fashists. On the contrary, in countries like Italy it has openly been used by far-right for decades. To quote Giorgia Meloni, the openly fashist prime minister of Italy: “I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in. I don’t consider ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy, more a sacred text.” Although it should be pointed out that this started already in Tolkien's lifetime and he was NOT happy about it. Tolkien was not a fashist, and the ideals he there's and ideals he put in his work was not ment to be read as such. But the themes and ideals are still there, making it very hard to claim it to be anti-fashist.

[@michaelyoung7261]

“For all the fantasy writers out there…your audience is not attracted to fantasy because they want to see characters that embody the same doubts that they experience in their daily life, but just the opposite. … it’s about making a choice to be good. And if you think mankind has gotten tired of that story, gotten tired of seeing these tropes again and again, gotten tired of seeing worlds where there’s good and evil, then why the hell are you writing fantasy” Thank you for summing up so many of my thoughts about media so succinctly. Thank you sir!

[@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ]

The allure of fantasy for amateur writers is that they believe that in fantasy you can get away with leaps of logic, deus ex machina, plot holes etc more easily than in other realistic genres. Newsflash, you can't

[@thodan467]

Buffy had something to say about that

[@kerikson]

This exactly.

[@twirlima7425]

@@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ Yep! To me that's all the opposite of what fantasy is. Fantasy requires construction and logic and sound story-telling to be coherent, let alone effective. People who joke that things happen in fantasy "because magic" make me want to tear my hair out!

[@SunStorm_EUC]

This is bullshit and for that prase I finally click a dislike. I want fantasy to be filled with realistic personalities and motivations. But fantasy setting let any plot twist be possible and give a lot of opportunities for exploring interesting worlds. And the "evil because it is evil" is what I dislike greatly. There are many reasons why write fantasy with gray morality.

[@Wol333]

We NEED sincerity

[@josh_from_xboxlive]

Amen!

[@muffinman472]

Sincerity leads to connection and they don’t want connection. They want admiration

[@Henbot]

One thing I will add is Tolkien himself didn’t believe in absolute evil,or irredeemable evil he did however believe in absolute good. The problem truly is too much execution of films or shows that are embarrassed to even be fantasy. It’s why a lot of anime is so popular because it knows what it is and proud of it.

[@kedrprao]

LOTR was completely good and evil.

[@duck_entertainment]

@@kedrpraoNaw Sauron believed himself to be in the right, Middle Earth needed order and law. Pretty much all of the main characters are also tempted by the one ring.

[@plebisMaximus]

@@duck_entertainment If you go deep lore, Sauron was also just as much a victim of Morgoth's manipulation as the ringwraiths were of Sauron. There is absolutely an ultimate pure evil bad guy in Tolkien's stories, he just doesn't play a big role in the main story set in that world.

[@duck_entertainment]

@@plebisMaximus Was responding based on LOTR, Morgoth as I recall had the same ambition of Sauron. Ungoliant though is pure evil.

[@plebisMaximus]

@@duck_entertainment Morgoth wanted to destroy all of creation because he was jealous of Eru. Sauron just wanted control.

[@mysticalG33]

Modern fantasy feels like a reskin of real life, just with magic and stuff.

[@an8790]

It's because it's propaganda.

[@Ithirahad]

Calling them real life or magic is overgenerous. Specifically a post/modernist Western lens on real life, just with fake physics. "Magic" is as much if not far moreso an experiential phenomenon as a physical one, and a lot of nominally fantasy series lack that.

[@piotrwisniewski70]

​@@an8790 wdym

[@an8790]

@@piotrwisniewski70 Studios are more concerned with a political message than with timeless storytelling. That's why the narratives always just mimic reality and never feel fantastical. They just dress current issues in a fantasy setting. Imo, since all ideologies are very flawed, it makes the stories a lot worse as timeless virtues such as kindness or bravery is replaced with the current day morality.

[@an8790]

@@piotrwisniewski70 Current day morality = woke

[@Strange9952]

Modern fantasy is trying to use MCU humor, but that humor doesn't work in Star Wars or LOTR because it automatically breaks the FANTASY

[@joaodeves928]

cause everything needs to look and sound like california

[@nateoak10]

Yall just say anything , since when did the new LOTR use MCU humor?

[@harrythedirty4256]

Erm, in English please?

[@NoobTamer]

@@nateoak10 He probably meant Rings of Power, LOTR was almost certainly a typo on their part. Of course the hobbit movies also contained cringe MCU style dialogue.

[@alb0zfinest]

What? Star Wars is a Spaghetti Western in space lol. It definitely has MCU cringe humor starting from the first movie, that's why it sucks. Definitely wouldn't work for Lotr though, and than god there is none of that in the actual books, or even Jackson's movies.

[@nightmarishcompositions4536]

You can have a tragic empathetic villain while still being absolutely diabolical and terrifying. Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 is a great example. He has a very tragic fall from grace, a messed up childhood, tons of betrayal and manipulation, mental health breakdowns, destroyed by his biological father and controlled by a false alien mother, etc. Still an absolute menace to society. Griffith from Berserk is another great example. Very tragic character that is a product of the cruel world he was raised in, but still very hatable and terrifyingly evil.

[@Bustermachine]

I'm quite fond of Silco and Jinx in Arcane. It's very clear that there's a sincere love between them. But Silco is so utterly twisted, and Jinx is so mentally vulnerable, that even his sincere effort to love her ends up creating a monster. One thing you cannot say about Silco is that he's unconscious of his hypocrisy. He really BELIEVES in his vision of Zon and he's aware of the brewing conflict within himself over how to handle Jinx as she becomes more unstable. And then it all boils over in his death and Jinx going over the edge.

[@LawfulBased]

What I liked most about Berserk was that I felt like I did not just understood every character. I also thought they felt like real people when it came to all of their actions. Every member of the Hawk and especially Guts & Griffith. Griffith is a victim but at the same time a villain. Guts is a victim, but at the same time he is a _"Berserker"_ and far from a Hero, even if in his rampage he sometimes acts heroicly. This is what I like about Guts the most btw. Just like Goku he does what he does because it is what his hearts tells him to do. In all of his calmness and all of his rage. He does not do it for glory or a big morale compass. He is raw, simple, manly and kinda feral cause he never knew how to live otherwise. Peak authenticity.

[@nightmarishcompositions4536]

@@LawfulBased Totally agree! Berserk has incredible character depth.

[@MerlinTheCommenter]

Your statement is true but it would be a disservice to the comments section not to mention the skill level and patience required to execute such a villain trope effectively. You basically said “a wizard can perform an S class spell,” and my reply is “yes, but you need to actually be S class here.” Virtually any villain type is possible but requires skill and patience but majority authors and directors will never be able to pull that off. The video uploader is simply presenting a solution that is more feasible to the creative public.

[@lightworker2956]

Yes, but still -- Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are such memorable stories because ultimately they're about how hard it is for normal people to stand up to evil, and then them doing so anyway and winning through perseverance, and furthermore the protagonists winning is an unambiguously great thing and they're heroes. Meanwhile if you have a tragic sympathetic villain -- yeah it's memorable, yeah it's good story-telling, but it's not inspiring. The protagonists beating an evil doer who had a really tragic childhood doesn't inspire me, while Lord of the Rings does inspire me. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars make me want to be a better person and do good in the world. Meanwhile the morally gray stories don't.

[@Asankeket]

It seems to me that for many postmodern filmmakers and writers, there is no morality, there is just power. And thus they imbue their protagonists with power and let them use it as their primary method of resolving conflicts, self-assertive and never struggling with moral quandaries, and never stop to consider that for the rest of us, this is a villain's trait. As a consequence, these stories can never be aspirational, they'll just replace one tyranny with another.

[@tomigun5180]

Well said. It's because it stems from Marxism, which, as history taught us, is all about power and immorality.

[@randomthoughts6680]

Reading this comment in particular made me realize why my mom liked Callum from The Dragon Prince series, since for her "fantasy stopped being likable in 2010". I mean, the show is very much modernized in several aspects, but his refusal to use dark magic (aka powerful and easy, but at cost of living beings and corrupts the mind and soul of those affected by it) shows a level of good morality that often we don't see too much in modern shows. He feels like an older archetype of hero in comparison to the ones you mention. It's like the show itself will never say "evil is evil no matter the reason" outright, but there's several occasions where it leans on the "taking advantage of others is evil, no matter if the intentions behind were good".

[@Harbringer12]

I never thought about it that way before, but it makes sense. Will keep this idea in mind going forward.

[@han3wmanwukong125]

Yeah, that's a very good point. When the idea of a moral basis is gone and all you have is power dynamics as your framework for of reality, how can you demonstrate an understanding of something like honor, or integrity, or moral dilemmas.

[@nonsensicalrants1703]

That's exactly it. This is confounded by the fact that a lot of these writers view half or more of all people as literally Hitler and thus appropriate receivers of such violent resolutions. Even from the viewpoint of being exploration of modern politics, psychology or morality they fail miserably in addition to failing as fantasy. It would be like if a large majority of media was being made by extreme right wing Christians who never read the Bible and viewed everybody to the left of ayn rand(who they also hadn't read) as worthy of death. Sometimes this stuff literally revolves into power fantasies of people are genuinely extremists and unwell people.

[@JohnBelluci]

Amazing analysis. I cant believe they said "OK" in rings of power

[@MarionFR]

ok

[@Begler1]

I think a good example of this is the recent Puss in Boots movie The Last Wish, as it went ahead and included all the types of villains it could. We got a straight up evil one, an archetypal force of nature one, and the morally grey possibly redeemable villain as well. Along with some interesting main characters it ended up working well actually, as along with the psychology the story still touched on good vs evil and attaining goodness.

[@trinstonmichaels7062]

I think the problem with modern fantasy is the lack of mystery nowadays they explain everything in the world leaving nothing to wonder about.

[@luthor24127]

I feel like that's a good tell of an insecure writer or execs pushing for more clarity. These writer worldbuild everything they can, make characters 'with depth' and then just... tell you everything about it to your face, instead of trusting their audience to piece it by themselves. Like helicopter parent they will hover around to make sure you 'got it'.

[@Slater2113]

It highly depends. If your series is 1-3 books long you can get away with leaving a lot to the imagination but the larger the scope of the story becomes, the lazier omissions in your world building and narrative begin to be perceived. Ambiguity in the wheel of time feels worse than ambiguity in the Hobbit (I’m taking the hobbit out of context of the larger middle earth canon in this example)

[@Ithirahad]

Explaining things, turning over stones, and drawing back curtains is not a sin! The problem is how exactly it is done. You can have a well fleshed-out world that still feels epic and wondrous, but a lot of times the explanations given unnecessarily dull the effect that elements of the world should otherwise have. Sometimes it's an excessively mundane or closed-ended choice for what the details are, and sometimes it is little more than a matter of bad phrasing.

[@claytonwestphal682]

There’s still so much we don’t know about though? Most people I know who are into the sciences are full of wonder and curiosity about the unknown.

[@LawfulBased]

Unexplained mysterys are a 50-50 element I'd say. I am someone who can enjoy both aspects. Mysterys but also lifting them with complete understanding. And when I am tired of enjoying my own lack of insight, I tend to enjoy clearing things up. Rings of Woker Sauron is a grotesque disappointment cause he is just a living clichee. This is not what most people wanted to see behind the mystery of the big flaming eye. A much cooler, calmer, calculated and also cruel evil instead of what this "Halrand"(?)/Sauron was supposed to be, I think this is what people wanted to see. When the expectations become too high, many autors themself shy away from revealing questions about their franchises, which they know is what fans are asking themself for years, sometimes even for over a decade and more. Cause it is hard to deliever satisfying answers even for the majority of people, the longer something becomes a big thing. I felt Sauron should have pretty much been like Lucifer in the purest, rawest sense. Understanding the lesser beings fully, but holding no sympathy for them. Being aware of his unfair superiority over them, but only enjoying it instead of being reluctant to it. Having only the will to make the worldly realm his own since this is the true nature of things. Survival of the fittest. Rule of the mightiest. And Sauron is pretty much the mightiest being left in the mortal realm. Although he needs the Ring to become whole again and become the mightiest again. To see Rings of Woker Sauron speaking with Orcs like he cares for their will when he is still fairly whole, is so cringe. Tolkien suggested that as the powerful being that Sauron was, he simply does not need the consent of beings like Orcs or Humans. Elves & Dwarfs are specially handcrafted by the gods. So maybe they alone can withstand his mere will if he would try to enslave them. But Orcs & Men of no special power simply cannot stand up to Sauron in mere *WILL* alone. If he commands you with the divine power he is infused with, even if the to be subjugated person knows they are threatened, they feel and overwhelming urge to obey. And they will feel that it is only natural to submit. Just how every mortal Man accepts the rising of the coming of day or night as a natural cosmic force they cannot do anything against. Sauron simply *COMMANDS* lesser beings. For he is too much of a divine, higher order being who does not need the consent of those beneath his station, in just all manners of creation. To see Halrand/Sauron speak with Orcs and they being able to coup against him, was so cringe.

[@jazzflute]

Ok that Jamie Lee Curtis TRAUMA supercut was funny as shit 😅

[@kolonarulez5222]

I'll tell you what was TRAUMA: making Halloween Ends a romance story barely featuring Michael

[@JesusHammer]

@@kolonarulez5222 Lmao bro didn't understand a movie partially made by Danny McBride lmao imagine being that retarded

[@Simeon_Neese]

I think this perfectly summarized the problem I’ve had with a lot of modern fantasy. I’ve always described it as “feels like they’re trying too hard to sound smart.” It works if it’s written well, but I feel like it’s so much easier to mess up because it’s hard to write truly intelligent stories/dialogue and make it feel natural to the reader/viewer.

[@plebisMaximus]

I feel like that's an issue with entertainment in general. Being a writer, whether on a page or for a larger production, is more about smelling your own farts than writing something a consumer would enjoy. I think it's a more broad societal issue, everyone wants to flex being a genius, but don't care about anything past what it can do for their image.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

Intelligent people dont try hard to use complicated words and language to get points across, they try to get complicated ideas across using the most simple words and language they possibly can. Even LOTR which is the gold standard for language in fantasy, doesnt use a lot of complicated words or sentences. It uses archaic English words, some of which had already fallen out of use in Tolkiens time. I had to look up a lot of words in a dictionary first time I read it. But its not doing that to try to sound smart and doesnt come across as pretentious like the cringey metaphors and language used in Rings of Power. Of course, Tolkien was a professor in old and middle English, so that helped him do that. You need to be really good at a language to be able to do that without coming across pretentious.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

@@plebisMaximus The people that write modern mainstream entertainment look down on the customer, they dont even want to write something you would enjoy, that is too low brow for their refined tastes.

[@Simeon_Neese]

@ yes I agree completely. I think you hit the nail on the head as to why the language feels natural in the books and forced here. Tolkien wasn’t trying to emulate anything, it was just something he was so inundated with that it came naturally for him to write that way. Most of his professional career was based around studying old English, so he just naturally had a much broader vocabulary filled with archaic words most writers would not think to use. And he was very deliberate about which words he used and how they sounded in a sentence. It’s something that cannot be emulated by simply picking up a thesaurus. And like you said, he wasn’t trying to sound vague to fake intelligence. He was being very specific about what language he used because it meant exactly what he needed to use it for.

[@jonahhekmatyar]

I can't wait for the skibidi rizz joke in Rings of Power Season 3

[@yessounds1973]

You mean its cancelation?

[@DragonMaster360]

...why? Just why?

[@MangoIsLove55]

​@@yessounds1973 will it get cancelled? LETSS GOOOO!!

[@TheSuperappelflap]

@@MangoIsLove55 They cant cancel it, theyre contractually obliged to make 5 seasons. Thats what they paid the Tolkien estate hundreds of millions for, and im sure there will be a fine of another several hundred million if they dont keep their obligations. Meaning its cheaper for them to just produce the slop theyre making with 0 expectation of ever making a profit, just to maybe recoup a bit of their losses, compared to canceling it and having a 100% loss.

[@MangoIsLove55]

@TheSuperappelflap that's fucking sad 😭 LOTR image getting ruined for the new generation

[@balbibiggons2148]

I don't comment often, or really ever, but this is legitimately one of the best youtube videos I've ever seen, and I'll probably watch it a couple more times to study it. Thank you for putting into words something that I didn't know how to express when it comes to fantasy fiction.

[@Novastar.SaberCombat]

The world really needs something fresh but professionally crafted. Zon, Hollywon't, and Didnay can't do it. Not even after years of ignoring exemplary storytelling basics. Go figure, right? 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength, resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ --Diamond Dragons (series)

[@ccronk]

Couldn’t get past more than 10 mins in tbh… just another unqualified KZbinr making statements presenting as factual without any backup (it means to state or show your proof of reference!). If he has some degree(?) he should state that from the beginning than randomly talk about the 19th century or whatever… yeah, all high fantasy is doomed lol

[@Yora21]

Yeah, this is something you don't grasp in all its complexity and implications in one viewing.

[@granite_4576]

Full agree. I was playing around with a fantasy story last year and kind of put it down (and got addicted to CK3...) And now I just want to go write it.

[@shellyzzz6440]

Is that the hero of rhyme?

[@Lord-of-D]

So, from what I'm getting here, where the Mythological and Contemporary are centered around presumptions of the divine, the Enlightened revolves around the reaching for and reckoning with it in ourselves.

[@josh_from_xboxlive]

I think you said it better than I did!

[@Novastar.SaberCombat]

Whatever the case may be, Hollywon't, Zon, and Didnay are so far from the mark on crafting exemplary storytelling, they might as well be broadcasting from UY-Scuti. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength, resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ --Diamond Dragons (series)

[@citycrusher9308]

@@josh_from_xboxlive You miss the elephant in the room. The modern remakes are empty because they are made by fem in ists who wish to defame the originals because they appealed to a male audience. Humanizing the orcs is about saying - ''you men aren't the heros you think you are. You are the bad guys''. It is to take the enjoyment of the sense of victory out of the story for men as well

[@creatrixZBD]

@@citycrusher9308personally I see that as more of a side effect of over-deconstruction, rather than any nefarious plan of one of the sexes.

[@citycrusher9308]

@@creatrixZBD Than you are coping. It's the other way around. The down fall in quality is the side affect of fem in ist h8. You see it in the Barbie movie, MCU's Captain Marvel, and Rachel Zeglers snow white. (just to mention a few off the top of my head)

[@chrisdiokno5600]

I think a majority of it comes down to how popular "dark fantasy" has become. Which yes it CAN work well, in some cases, it's mostly "How much gore and sex can we throw in?"

[@harmonlanager2670]

Yeah but that’s Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of anything is crap. The only reason why the past seems so good is because we only remember things that were good enough to be memorable. We forget the other 90%. Anyone remember the movies that tried to ride off LoTR success? Eragon? Seventh Son? Clash of Titans?

[@chrisdiokno5600]

@@harmonlanager2670 Seventh Son was decent. But yea

[@nightmarishcompositions4536]

Only for movies and shows. A lot of dark fantasy books are actually really good and tend to focus on intense character development and complex character analysis more than anything.

[@guerreiroazul3230]

That's because Movies and series lose what makes dark fantasy so interesting in the books because most adaptations focus on spectacle in order to draw in the most normies as possible, while the books were meant to be focused on character writing and the story telling.

[@the13inquisitor59]

@@harmonlanager2670 The Eragon movie did everything wrong. Nobody likes to remember that movie and for good reason.

[@GraphiteBlimp27]

Love this video. I remember watching all the LOTR films extended with my friends and deeply rewatching them with as fresh of eyes as possible. A lot of the themes came out clear as day. A big overarching concept that hit me was that in real life, we are all ring bearers. There is always the temptation of doing wrong or evil, acting selfishly- it is a burden that weighs us down as we try to be as virtuous as possible, but nobody can deny it. It’s human nature to mess up and act from these impulses. LOTR shows us that nobody can do it alone, and keeping good company and maintaining good relationships can help us through. This is a great example of externalizing the internal consciousness in fantasy.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

The way I interpreted it is that its a choice. Not everyone bears a burden like that, but if you want to do something good, if you take duty on yourself, it is a burden. And it is morally right to do so. This is a theme in a lot of other fantasy as well. Lan Mandragoran from Wheel of Time: "Duty weighs heavier than a mountain. Death is lighter than a feather." It is a choice to carry a duty and not choose the easy way out. And yes, the relation between Frodo and Sam is a great example of friendship in that regard. So many great quotable lines, too.

[@systemblaster]

wow you figured out it has a christian theme. great job

[@Anonymous-sb9rr]

The first Thor movie is the only Marvel movie that leans towards the mythological side of the fantasy spectrum.

[@andrewcotter2036]

And it's quite literal in its execution, too, might I add!

[@TheGeorgeD13]

That's the Branagh effect, I imagine, with his Shakespearean influence.

[@Jeebus-un6zz]

This reminds me this video kind of points at the issue with all nerd media since the 2010s made geek culture popular. The sin of mass audience appeal is that either the mass audience doesn't have a taste for an otherworldly setting which takes itself seriously or else the authors don't trust that a mass audience has the palette for that. I'd argue it's the fault of the authors. People seem to gravitate toward the good shit no matter how much money Amazon spends to shove Rings of Power in our faces or Disney likewise with Star Wars.

[@ristoravela652]

I don't agree with that. To some extent, most superheroes are mythological creatures, broad vehicles of symbolic storytelling, and a whole bunch of the better superhero movies reflect that. (This is also kind of why superheroes or villains generally speaking can't really die.) Civil War for example has a lot of very mythologically tinted storytelling, as does Endgame. Nolans Batman trilogy is another extemely mythology-adjacent superhero movie series.

[@TheAurgelmir]

Star Wars has an amazing storytelling through Luke's outfits in each movie, that I hope was intentional. In the first movie he's pure of heart, he's not seen the world yet, so he wears a White pristine tunic. He's full of ideals. For a while in the later part of the movie he becomes a warrior clad in red. In Empire Strikes Back he's been thrown into a conflict, and his red is torn off as he struggles with internal conflicts, now his clothes are grey until he faces the shattering of his world, and his descent into the abyss (both literally and figuratively) In Return of the Jedi he wears black - both as a sign of his potential fall to evil, a potential every human bears, but also as a way to mourn his fathers fall. Then once the emperor is defeated, and his father is saved through sacrificing himself to save Luke: A small white triangle is formed when his tunic is opened. Showing Luke finding the white in his own heart again. His path returns to the light.

[@RussellB]

I've felt like they are all chasing George Martin not realizing either: that style might not work in their fantasy universe or: They can't quite nail the writing

[@lightworker2956]

George can't even make GoT work. I think there's a reason he hasn't released a new book in forever. I think it's fundamentally impossible to write a subversive, deconstructing, "everything and everyone sucks, backstabbers win" narrative and then also have it be an inspiring, motivating tale after the whole series is finished.

[@PowerfulLeadahYas-Yas]

​@@lightworker2956 you have never read the books or don't understand them if you think that's what they are about.

[@Halophage]

​@@lightworker2956 I wish people would stop saying this. There's absolutely no need for it to be inspiring and motivating when all is said and done. At this point it would be weird if it were.

[@mentallyinsane3344]

@@lightworker2956 that is absolutely not the message of asoiaf. maybe just GoT the show by the showrunners but grrm's big messages in the books are "all this pointless fighting is horrible, we must work together to defeat a great evil" and "the world may be horrible and unforgiving, but we should always have hope and believe things will be better, because it will get better".

[@JesusHammer]

@@lightworker2956 You literally have never read the books. He wrote an entire POV for Brienne that's literally just her trying her best to be an honorable knight. That's literally all the Dunk and Egg books are too.

[@kakhakheviashvili6365]

You can have deeply sympathetic villains in a fantasy... as long as you also have the archetype of a pure evil. Grey only makes sense in a world with black and white, it's supposed to represent stained purity, not status quo of the world. At least in mythology, goal of which was always to define and teach morality. Savage Enkidu nobly stops noble Gilgamesh from commiting savagery. It's such a striking picture in the most ancient literary work we have on our hands, and we should learn from it. Enkidu demonstrates contemporary savage, who needs to become godlike, while mythical Gilgamesh needs to abandon some of his divine rights and become more humane, more savage. One strives and needs to become more archetypical, while other needs to become less archetypical. And they learn from each other great deal. We see greyness, different moral flaws and strengths in both of heroes. But there always is purely evil Humbaba, who has to be slain. And there always are perfect gods, both of our heroes should aspire to be like and ultimately become ones. Interesting, that in meta themes, the most ancient literary work available struck better balance, than most modern writers are capable of. And, imo, main reason is hubris. Most modern people have the belief (often internal, implied) that ancient humans have nothing to offer to us. That we are better, smarter, wiser. But we really aren't. We have better technology, better society, better systems, but it was their struggle, that led us here. Their questioning of status quo, that slowly changed things to better. So instead of dismissing them as evil and backwards, we should accept, that we owe our moral high ground to them, since they hauled all that soil to make that high ground to begin with. Even if they never stood on it. Their basic struggles were hardly different than ours, and their lessons often are as valuable today, as they were back then.

[@arnowisp6244]

Exacly. Black, White and the Grey in Between.

[@lightworker2956]

Good point.

[@JesusHammer]

Enkidu was a gay twink that sucked of Gilga

[@franug]

Great point. The worse offenders are those that not only dismiss our ancestors but try to impose current day morals into them, which makes no sense at all and comes from such an arrogant, ignorant, and non-empathetic place

[@lilowhitney8614]

Not at all. It's very possible to pull of grey morality in a story without also having black and white morality. That's the entire point of it. And comparing modern and ancient classics in such a way is (for lack of a better word) stupid. With modern stuff you get to see all the good and bad that's coming out. With the ancient stuff you only have the best that preserved over the centuries. I promise you that there were shitty fiction writers in the past too and that modern writers aren't somehow uniquely awful.

[@Disthron]

I do appreciate having villains that do in fact know they are villains and love that shit.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

Or just having them not care about morality or wasting time questioning their actions. Just unapologetic evil. Completely ruthless and calculating

[@TheNerdyCowgirlReads]

That last line sums up my entire feeling towards modern fantasy screenwriters, it seems like they don’t even like these stories! And want to subvert every trope we know and love.

[@aviaveria8307]

Higher-ups just hate genres, it feels like, and there is a scary amount of people who have lost all sense for understanding genre conventions.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

Everything has to be high brow art, oscar bait, drama. Just a genre work is not good enough for the tasteless fart sniffing nepo babies who run the companies. Not that I think they understand art. If they did theyd be able to see the beauty of a simple genre work, an amateur painting, a B movie. They just want to make A movies because theyre pretentious and have no taste, so making whatever they think other people consider "good art" is how they want to get praise. Of course any real artist will tell you that making what you think someone else wants, instead of what you want to make, is the death of art.

[@Blackinght11]

Fantasy shows lately feel like the showrunners go "I know you want me to adapt the source material, but I can make it all about me and my original creations," and honestly that kinda sucks. No drive to make their own worlds/stories and piggyback from established IP's they have no love for whatsoever. I've seen a lot of people flee to anime, books and videogames and I don't blame them, movies/straming shows suck more often than not.

[@tomigun5180]

Regarding video games they already admitted they want to destroy the industry. But those who know this ideology, can tell you they want to do the same to our whole culture and civilization, it's one of their fundamental dogmas.

[@VenetianBlinds]

It's like they don't even try to understand what the deeper appeal was of the original work. They seem to think that they can simply make "content" with some aesthetic similarity and expect that the fans of the original will automatically gobble it up.

[@JesusHammer]

Man you people are so bad at finding any show or movie that isn't directly advertised to your face huh

[@xBINARYGODx]

sorry, but you are complaining about is not actually, its a crime as old as time. "the book was better" is not always said for this reason, but more often than not it is, and has been said for over a hundred years (they use to say it about plays based on books).

[@stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis1369]

Yeah I also said that, fantasy animation rn has some pretty awesome stuff idk about the other stuff tho

[@ericlewisauthor]

The entire grimdark subgenre would like a word with you...

[@xXx_Oshino_xXx]

FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!

[@DuelingDragonAdventures]

No more grimdark No more black pills No more morally gray Reclaim Fantasy

[@nightmarishcompositions4536]

@@DuelingDragonAdventuresGrimdark has been around just as long as epic and high fantasy. Conan, Elric, Black Company, Thomas Covenant, Acts of Caine, Black Sun Rising, Wagner’s Kane, Drenai Saga and many others. Not all fantasy should be the same. One of the beautiful things about fantasy is the massive amount of subgenres that appeal to different audiences.

[@CitanulsPumpkin]

​@@nightmarishcompositions4536 that's fine. No more nihilism.

[@TrashMail-ri3ci]

FAITH IN THE GOD EMPEROR

[@anne.1205]

I think what makes LOTR so great is its timeless storytelling. It tells stories of good and evil, of honour and betrayal, of fear and valor, of love and death. And that the smallest among us can make a difference and change the world to the better against all odds. That´s the kind of story that touches something inside us. And I miss that in modern fantasy.

[@davidannderson9796]

What all of these characteristics of classic fantasy have in common is that they all connect us emotionally to a higher ideal. That is the problem with contemporary fantasy: it's missing the point of mythology. It's questioning the ideal. It's not questioning one ideal in favor of another; it's questioning idealism itself, in favor of despair. This is what is wrong with a lot of icky modern television and movies (especially television), and this is what is especially wrong with contemporary fantasy. It's imitating the forms in order to be escapist, but it's actively fighting against the original point of mythology. That is what makes JRR Tolkien and George Lucas work so well and so powerfully: not only are they imitating the original faithfully- they are actively putting in a very good idealism. They are actively seeking to connect us emotionally to a higher ideal. While contemporary fantasy is trying to convince us that this higher ideal does not exist.

[@josh_from_xboxlive]

True

[@Ghibli-Dude]

This is so true. In hindsight, that's why I became a Star Wars fan from a very young age. It's better off if we don't know what the specific job of a Jedi is. "Jedi" simply means "honorable hero".

[@lightworker2956]

Yeah indeed. Nowadays everyone is constantly trying to criticize and subvert and point out how stupid and bad everything is and how awful people are. Rather than actually building something good, or trying to promote an ideal. Those subversive stories might theoretically be "good storytelling", but it's not ultimately inspiring. It doesn't nudge people to be better. And it's also frankly easier and less courageous to just criticize and subvert anything rather than promote a positive ideal.

[@birdslovewords]

Thank you for this comment! New fantasy gives us nothing to believe in, whereas old fantasy makes you believe in standing up and doing what’s right.

[@VenetianBlinds]

@@lightworker2956 the subversion strikes me as both nihilistic and self-aggrandizing, like these writers view themselves as worthy enough to tear down what was built by those before them.

[@Veritas.0]

To the Fantasy Writer: Don't let your therapist ghost write your works. Snark aside, you've made an insightful video essay. I think you nail the parts the critical fans are missing and not articulating in their dissatisfaction. Well done.

[@hoos3014]

Fascinating essay. One thing I'm not quite clear about is in your discussion on morality with regard to contemporary vs mythological storytelling. Psyche was literally a Greek goddess. Zeus was the biggest a-hole since the creation of the spoken word. All of the Jungian archetypes describe the full range of human experiences. Our mythical beings were complicated as hell. They were rarely black and white. I think you said it best when you said that sometimes people are nostalgic for a time that never existed.

[@xBINARYGODx]

its not sometimes, its literally a requirement for the feeling. Your youth, for example, is full of, to you, bad time and boring times, not just never ending fun and no consequences or responsibility (which is a lie we tell ourselves later - teenagers feel responsibility to many things, grades/sports/getting into college/friends/etc.). People filter out a lot when they look back, even if they are casting some time as a negative or a "year(s) of hell". But yes, its also true people take a limited view of something historically and end up with equally false views to get bittersweet about.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

@@xBINARYGODx Conversely, its also true people can have a limited view of something at the time, and after getting more context, look back and think, hey, that was pretty good. I hated growing up in the 90s. The awful music. All the traditions that didnt make any sense, and if you asked an adult, theyd just say, "thats how things are". The clothes, and the interior design, and so many other things. Hated it. Now, 30 years later, looking back. Things are so much worse now. The music is even worse. All those traditions we abolished, yeah turns out those were there for a reason. Interior design has devolved in minimalist Scandinavian IKEA copy and paste where everyones home looks exactly the same, everything is white and square and there is no humanity or warmth in it. I dont view the 90s through rose colored glasses, I genuinely believe it was a better time.

[@SkiBeeTeaTap]

Additionally modern tv fantasy writers dont understand that half if not most of "magic" comes not from sparkles and whimsical music but from the unknown. Its a metaphor for the adventure and discovery of the big diverse world. And they try to put in the today world we know into it. Its basically missing the whole point. Like having Marco Polo discover Europe.

[@MsQuikly]

The worst offenders are those that interpret magic as a technology

[@TheSuperappelflap]

hahaha, that was funny. Would make for a great satirical story actually. Write a Marco Polo novel but all he does is go around Europe and describe the most mundane things people do that everyone already knows about.

[@2012sonora]

I think this the the Brian Sanderson effect. Hard magic systems are seen as the only way to go, but like you said, it basically reduces magic to yet another force that can be harnessed and worked just like electricity. Magic as a science strips away the wonder. But I think a lot of fantasy feels like the modern world because the people writing it are navel-gazing. They aren't worried about anything bigger than themselves, they've never been truly challenged, they can't step outside of themselves to write characters they disagree with. They exist within a tiny world of the here and now, so when they write fantasy, that's where the fantasy takes place. There are a lot of sub-genres in fantasy and that's great. But post-modernism has infected them all, and that sucks

[@DarthBackspace]

Idk about you but even knowing how electricity works I’m still constantly in awe of how we use it. Also I don’t think hard magic systems differ too greatly from other ways to connect with something outside of ourselves. Most religions have rites and rituals which work in the same way I’ve seen a lot of magic systems work: we don’t know why these steps work but we know they work.

[@MsQuikly]

@@DarthBackspace The fundamental difference between a hard magic system and using magic as a technology (like electricity) is that technologies are optimizable thanks to our understanding of how they work. And that creates an expectation on the narrative about using magic in a certain practical and utilitarian way. But magic is not meant to be effective or efficient in this way. Magic is meant to represent transcendental knowledge and capacity that works in mysterious ways and comes from numinous sources, at least that's the argument on the video and OP's comment. A hard magic system is not technological, it is consistent, but that doesn't mean I can optimize my practice for better results it means I can kinda predict what will happen if I use it in a certain way, that's all. "Hard" and "Soft" are analytical categories they are not inherently descriptive. When a technology appears in a narrative, unless we are given a reason not to a priori, there is a necessity to optimize our use of it. I don't shoot a gun without aiming, I don't try to open a door by leaning into it, I don't start a fire with wet wood. We expect that the solution the technology provides is "developed" to be better than the previous instance of the solution. Magic often comes with conditions of access and variability of usage, it is not "accessible" in the same way. Magic is fundamentally, methodologically and epistemologically different from technology, even fantastic technology.

[@joyfulyes]

at about the 29 minute mark, a tiny clip from Amadeus! Where Mozart says, "Elevated, elevated! The only thing a man should elevate is his doodle!" Love this analysis. You're so right about the contemporary angle. i personally disliked several of the changes Jackson's LOTR films made to certain characters to make them 'relatable" ---chiefly Faramir -- but also Aragorn and Gandalf, whose motives were also humanized in ways that weakened their effect as archetypal symbols.

[@commandercaptain4664]

The most intrinsic trajectory of a Star Wars character is that, even if a character starts out gray, eventually, through choice, they either embrace good (Han, Lando) or evil (Vader.. up until his journey's end).

[@Jeebus-un6zz]

This. More recent writers being handed the Star Wars IP fundamentally don't understand or care about the universe. They think they're the first ones to inject moral complexity into the star wars universe because they're refusing the black and white dichotomy of the force but what they fail to understand is that there's an unbelievable amount of moral complexity which arises from that dichotomy because people aren't themselves one thing or the other- good or evil. The Jedi are often disconnected and can be seen as arrogant in their inflexible adherence to their code. Certain Sith can be seen as virtuous and at the very least the one lesson you should've taken from the prequel trilogy is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and from the original trilogy we should gather that it's never too late to turn back to the light. The individual characters have a ton of agency within this system and don't perfectly fit into either category. Light and Dark are like natural laws- it's how the universe's magic system responds to the morality of the characters. If these writers actually liked star wars, this would be painfully obvious to them.

[@cactuskuzma6581]

@@Jeebus-un6zz it sounds ironically from you. I'm not going to start a heated discussion, or try "to educate you", I am just really annoyed and tired by people considering jedi disconnected and arrogant, while there wasn't any bad jedi (except Anakin and jedi-turned-inquisitors, of course). Luke, Kanan and Qui-Gonn weren't exceptional, they were just normal jedi. Jedi in prequels were placed in a difficult situation where they could choose between participating in war fabricated exclusively for their downfall or standing down and watching the world burn, and thus betraying their purpose. They were never disconnected, they always tried their best, it's just that the villain used their kindness against them in every possible way.

[@evangelinesplayground2415]

@@cactuskuzma6581 "Impossible. The Sith have been extinct for a millennium." - Ki-Adi-Mundi (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace)

[@cactuskuzma6581]

@@evangelinesplayground2415 And? How does it contradict what I said?

[@evangelinesplayground2415]

@@cactuskuzma6581 You can figure it out.

[@JonCrs10]

You ever heard of Bionicle?

[@sheev2829]

It, too, is an amazing example of this.

[@snuppssynthchannel]

Indeed, always thought it had this dream like, archetypal and mystical sensation to it. Like a 70's sci fi/fantasy painting by Roger Dean brought to life.

[@YamiAi]

You ever heard of the tragedy of....

[@tahunuva4254]

Gathered friends...

[@diesel2526]

Which, if you're curious, takes great inspiration from the Maori body of mythology. He atua, he tangata.

[@smallsignals]

This was an EXTREMELY good video. What a fortuitous day it is when I find a content creator of such high-quality ideas; who values substance over style.

[@tedsowards]

"The solution to bad progress is not noble regress but better progress" well said!

[@stegosandrosos1291]

And we don't know what exactly what he meant

[@Spoutnicks]

You can`t progress if you undermine your foundation, by definition. The fault of modern progressivism is to the think that nothing of the past relates to the present or the future, where the truth is human nature is unchanging regardless of time and space, which is what good fantasy exposes.

[@somiplayerbee5425]

@@stegosandrosos1291 We know exactly. He just told us in this video. :) Nost just listen, hear it please.

[@alexanderzwinger6620]

I would argue a lot can be learned from cultures of the past and beliefs system, the idea that we somehow need to throw away a lot of the good its done because some of it was shitty is an insane concept to me

[@auxiliodei6811]

This is a fascinating breakdown of everything I have been thinking but unable to put into a coherent argument. Thank you for making this. I will be sharing this with everyone I know.

[@herenti]

I feel like its a lot of corporate mainstream pandering, and no appreciation for making art.

[@Lupostehgreat]

So I think it ultimately comes down to the reasoning for Fantasy/Sci-fi/Horror (as the late Harlan Ellison referred to them, speculative fiction), is to examine ideas and concepts in the contemporary era whether they are timely or universal. Fantasy is grounded in myth and fables, folklore. Sci-fi is grounded in speculation about new worlds, or worlds that could be if we work towards it. Dystopian sci-fi does much the same, but functions as modern prophecy (this is where we are going if we do not change our course). Horror is meant to be the training ground of resilience, as well as a repository of warning stories. I say all this to say I believe the people writing fantasy for mainstream outlets, nowadays, are often very arrogant people who throw out methods and techniques along with ideas.

[@Bustermachine]

I mean . . . Tolkien straight up said that Magic in his work was a direct metaphor for machines/technology and their ability to extend the power of a single person to control. At the end of WW2 when he heard about the Atomic Bomb he even said 'the machines have won'. Tolkien also liked to say he hated allegory while writing a lot of allegory. That's not to say there isn't distinctions. But I don't think it's accurate to fit anyone, even Tolkien, into neat little boxes. They just don't fit. There's a reason, after all, that Orwell and Tolkien are often considered two sides of coin grappling with the same post war reality from a Conservative/Socialist perspective.

[@angelotuteao6758]

This was a deeply insightful essay - I got so much from this after being gutted by the Rings of Power’s abysmal failure to deliver- thank you 🙏

[@phdost3267]

This spectrum concept is really interesting though I'd argue you (and most modern writers) tend to get lost in 'meta hell' while you forget in the process that the essence of good/fun is often a lot more basic than your abstractions. Take the horror genre as an example.. a good scary movie succeeds not because it strikes a lore balance but because the director knows exactly when and how to evoke basic emotions like fear out of the audience. The same idea is true for other genre even if the emotions they want to elicit are more complex. That's not to say you shouldn't ask yourself where your story is on the spectrum but please remember that what matters is how you leverage that position to make the audience feel 'something'. In the end, it doesn't matter if the characters are multi-dimensional or mythical figures as long as the choices you make are holistic and craft a fine-tuned rollercoaster of sensations.

[@ninjafoxgamesgeekery]

Your comment made me think of the line Epic Rap Battles of History gave Alfred Hitchcock "I squeeze screams out of chocolate syrup!" Like you said, a director that knows when and how to evoke basic emotions and Hitchcock did indeed do so with chocolate syrup.

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

I wouldn't say he's lost at all. The goal was to figure why we watch lotr "a billion times" and we both know it's because it's much more deep than just being good fun.

[@aguspuig6615]

This comment to me is the equivalent of saying ''you either got it or you dont'', yes, good directors will know what concepts to show and what emotions to elicit at the right times trough pure intuition, but that intuition is built on knowledge.

[@aguspuig6615]

@@ForbiddenFollyFollower not just that but to figure out were we should go next. I think thats why this video is important. Sure, proving that LOTR is good is fun, but it becomes Usefull when you can use that information to find a new direction to progress in to make things even better.

[@phdost3267]

@@aguspuig6615 then you both missed my point which was that the knowledge necessary to make good art is found at a much lower level of abstraction than where the author of this video is searching. Good artists are made by repetitively observing how people react to stimulus. Over time they build mental models that can predict reaction and this is what they leverage to make good art. Any explanation that stray too far from population studies is a red herring

[@dhjgjkd]

The old fantasy was inspired by myths, traditions, legends, tales, religion and history of our civilization (and not only). So on things that, for hundreds of years, countless people from peasants to royals, shared and believed. They had common themes, they were often useful or gave meaning to real life, kids learned about the world through them and adults had simple means to use, they were incredibly wise and profound, even in their simplicity, and formed a cultural community and a common knowledge of the world. It was, in fact, the "culture". The FOLKLORE. It had a place in the real life of basically everyone. Old fantasy works was deeply inspired by this folklore. So it felt autentic. Because it's foundations were shared and tied to our culture much more deeply than we tought. Modern fantasy is inspired by the works who were inspired by the folklore. Not by the folklore itself. "Tainted" by modern beliefs, they're separated from the stuff that made those first fantasy works so great. In fact, often the new autors openly despise them and try to "deconstruct" these works and the culture that inspired them. New Fantasy is a recycle of a recycle. That is often made out of spite, resentment and political motivation. That's why they all seem so forced and fake. The first ones were absolutely great, because they were inspired by autenthic stuff. The new one sucks because they're totally disconnected and hostile towards that particular culture. A culture that, with all it's flaws, was able to product and inspire absolute artistic masterpieces.

[@MALICEM12]

This 100% You are one of the few who see it completely as I do and this is one of the best comments out of the hundreds

[@RebeccaAnthony-x2j]

Excellent take.

[@w4lk4]

Whenever I hear "OK" in anything but contemporary fantasy, it just pulls me right out of it. I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees this.

[@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ]

It's worse than King Arthur with an american accent.

[@dursty3226]

but like... you obviously draw the line somewhere. you have a problem with "OK" because it's "too modern", but what about the word "hello" as a greeting? that's just as modern as "OK." do you accept every other modern English word being used, or do you require your medieval fantasy to use period accurate Middle English?

[@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ]

@@dursty3226 hello, goes all the way back to the 18th century. OK was never in common use in Britain before WW2. British English is the dialect of medievalish fantasy

[@dursty3226]

@@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ if you're specifying British English, then "hello" as a greeting is even more modern than it is in American English. the earliest attestations of "hello" being used as a greeting are from the 1840s in the American West. before then, it was merely a word one would shout to grab someone else's attention. it rose in popularity in the 1880s due to winning out over "ahoy" as the word one should say when answering the telephone. but even as late as the 1920s, British folk were using "hullo" with equal frequency as "hello." so by your reasoning, medieval fantasy should at least be using "hullo" instead of "hello," but probably not either of them because they're only a common greeting due to the invention and rise in popularity of the telephone in the 1880s.

[@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ]

​@@dursty3226Hello and hullo are the same word so there's no real distinction. Tolkien wrote dialog mostly following the conventions of English historical fiction which rose as a genre in the 1800s. And there are several books of that genre were "hello" or any of it's variants are used. And since Tolkien is a benchmark for medievalish fantasy prose "hello" has a pass. Anyway, the main problem with ok is that is an abbreviation and abbreviations were seldom read aloud as abbreviations but spoken in full. A person from the early to mid 1800s might write i.g. but always read it aloud as "for example". I was taught to read abbreviations in full back in the 1980's although by that time reading them aloud abbreviated had become much more common due to the widespread use of telegrams in the 19th-20th century were the telegrams were spelled out, rather than read. The main problem with modern American medievalish fantasy is that it's full of neologisms some of which are new even to 40 year old me.

[@sirkamyk9886]

This video accurately diagnoses the problems, but it falls for the revolutionary conceit. Frodo and Sam are the heroes even though they are not as "powerful" as Gandalf or Aragorn or Luke Skywalker. The goal is not to become divine by becoming powerful. The goal is to become divine by being good. Not everyone can become powerful, and this is not something to be fixed, it's human nature. Everyone can however be good.

[@Hirfel]

36:11

[@A42AI]

I'm not sure how you watched the video and came to the conclusion that he thinks power equals the divine or heroic. He even says what you wrote in your comment, practically word for word, that it's about a moral choice. Even without that last part, the ideas in the video taken together don't suggest 'revolutionary conceit' or power as being ultimately desirable. Quite the opposite.

[@vandrar3n]

@@A42AI Some people comment without ending videos

[@PriorPethran]

So great was his reign in life, when he ascended to the heavens he was made lord of the Divines. So rise up! Rise up, children of the Empire! Rise up, Stormcloaks! Embrace the word of mighty Talos, he who is both man and Divine!

[@YouWinILose]

But that's not his conclusion at all... Please rewatch the video alllll the way to the end.

[@ihaveouid3518]

After months of feeling like I was failing in my writing, your video gave me the reassurance that I am on the right path for the story and world I aim to create. Thank you for giving me the confidence to continue writing my story.

[@davidpo5517]

You raise some great points, but I think you missed what connects them. The thing you're describing with the "modern consciousness" is just the rise of individualism as a feature of grand narratives. Individualism has always existed at the micro-level, of close-knit families and friends. But in larger communities like family trees and tribes and nations, the individual was always subject to the collective. The Enlightenment thinking changed this to mean the most important thing in a society is the individual and their autonomy, and literature reflects that slow change. Instead of poetry that gives a communal mythos, where the individual represents their group and their place in it, we see just the subjective individual. I love how you touch on morality tho. Morality is a thing connected to depth and meaning. Meaning in a person's life comes from outside of themselves, and so too does morality. This means you cannot be hyper-individualistic and be moral, because it becomes all about your perspective at the expense of others. Your our points on us thinking grey is better than good hits home, lol. Is it realistic, yes cuz we're grey, but pure good is better than us, and outside us, and needs to be depicted or we'll never reach for it to become better ourselves. Also the modern psychology of the characters is spot on! The one good thing the TV show Rings of Power has done well is that one episode where Celebrimbor slowly realizes Eregion has been destroyed while he's been under Sauron's spell...which was only possible because they invited him in. Evil can only enchant you if you invite it in so you can fulfill what you most desire-that's mythology. And it's one of the only things that works. Adding psychology takes away symbolism. They try and make up for the loss of symbolism with representation, but it's not deep enough. I find it interesting that you think the goal should be a new mythology like Star Wars where the mortal becomes immortal, and humanity reaches for the divine/impossible. There are mythological stories about this-and it never ends well. This is why I think Lotr is better than Star Wars. The infinite should assist and complete our finite-ness, the finite should not try and become infinite. I also don't like the idea of there being a moment (kind of like a Singularity) where human becomes divine. The definition of mortal is that we change-to reflect immortality means an eternal journey, not a destination. Perhaps that's not what you were getting at, but it's what it made me think of.

[@TimothyCHenderson]

That was also an important development in the Romantic period. Our ideas around literary individualism began in the 19th century along side the early inception of "modern" fantasy.

[@OrchinX]

I can’t agree with you more. This all goes back to the enlightenment and the French Revolution. Ever since then, the west has become Promethean.

[@aguspuig6615]

I personally love his take. I see alot of two arguments nowadays, either we have to reject everything from the past because its outdated, or we have to retvrn to the past because its impossible to progress beyond that. Tolkien did some amazing stuff, and it is true that the story of reaching for the divine and it ending badly is prevalent, but i still dont see why we shouldnt try, we went to the moon, we eradicated many diseases, i think we should try to do more, instead of staying in the past, even if that past does work and is coherent and good in many ways.

[@davidpo5517]

@@aguspuig6615 I agree a little bit. Yes, we should progress and keep reaching further in a sense. But we went to the moon "because it was there." Lol, it was kinda a dick measuring contest between nations. We reach for the stars, not because we want to become like them, but because we're curious and like to explore...like in Star Trek. That is good. But stars aren't "divine" or "impossible," they're just difficult. Try teaching the Mongols science and how to reach the moon, and they'd just want to conquer it, because who we are here on earth is who we will be up in the stars. In order to keep progressing society, we need to make sure we don't change ourselves too much, or the future will look so different it may as well not be us. Star Trek is the perfect example because it likes to deal with all these deeper issues. Reaching for the divine is more things like eugenics where we want to perfect the human gene pool. (The problem with that is there's no such thing as a genetically perfect human, the concept doesn't even make sense, and thinking that way leads to racism). Transhumanism where we want to augment humanity through technology (at what point are you no longer human?--there's not even a correct answer to that question, and it begs the question: is it bad to become no longer human? Because if that's the case, then human life isn't sacred anymore...what will that do to our society?). Or immortality by downloading consciousness onto a computer chip (it's a cool sci-fi concept, and so the gut reaction to that is "cool, what's wrong with that," but again there are a whole LOT of real world problems with that that we don't think about because it's "cool"). The balance I guess I'm trying for is we should "look to the impossible" to inspire us to progress today, but we shouldn't look to the impossible and give up everything we have now to reach it. Let it evolve naturally--let's direct and guide our evolution, not just decide there's something better and cut and paste. We look to stars and wonder what's there--our reaction is curiosity, which is good. We look to immortality or being "perfect" of any kind, and our gut reaction isn't curiosity, it's desire. That doesn't turn out well for little things in life, it's not going to magically turn out well for the big things in life. Dreams are good, nightmares aren't.

[@mortache]

Yeah I lost it when he went on about Medusa being given subjectivity and tragic backstory TODAY, while that backstory was made up during the reign of Augustus, 2000 years ago to show their current day politics. Augustus was "the son of a god", and the writer's purpose was to show the gods as unjust and cruel

[@raspberrybellini]

Tolkien wrestled with what orcs were. Ideas such as being from the earth or the abomination creatures created from tortured elves. In the second idea he wondered whether or not orcs could breed, could choose good over evil, have love and therefore have a soul and was the eradication of the orcs a a blessing or genocide with a being that has the same right to life as other living creatures. Taking into account what this essay is saying, it seems later in life Tolkien himself began to take in this concept from mythology to contemporary thought.

[@Bustermachine]

Part of the problem I'm having is that I don't think the gap between 'mythology' and 'contemporary' is as rigidly defined as the author is suggesting.

[@LailaJohanna]

What a surprising gem of a video. I randomly clicked on it and it may just best express what I have been feeling about fantasy for a long time, and find hard to express when I realize not everybody comes to fantasy looking for the elevation of human spirit. You actually moved me, party with very good choices of background music to enhance your point. Definitely going to see what else you talk about and take this advice to heart if I ever start writing again.

[@eddiepuffy]

This video is the very definition of ''don't judge a book by it's cover''. Outstanding work, mate. Was about to click away in a few short minutes, but not only have I been entrapped by the discourse you're presenting and the arguments brought up - with very clear and eloquent ideas, I have also found a new movie I'm very excited to watch . I sincerely thank you and I will proceed to watch the rest of the video, fantastic stuff!

[@KangKadmus]

Tolkien was literally one of the top scholars in the world and is irreplaceable. Good luck finding another one of those.

[@SanguineUltima]

Tolkien created a living, breathing mythos comparable to the classical Era. Men like that simply don't exist in this cynical, postmodern world. It's a real tragedy, all our "progress" has cost us our souls. Good luck finding another Beethoven, Nietszche, or Caesar. We get lukewarm, half-baked, milquetoast imitations from here out.

[@_greenrunner_]

He was not

[@SNWWRNNG]

@@_greenrunner_ He was one of the most important philologists of his time, at least. I wouldn't call him irreplacable, but the combination of great scholar + great fiction author is quite rare.

[@lightworker2956]

He was exceptional, but the original star wars was absolutely amazing too, and Lucas wasn't a top scholar in the world. Even if you want to argue original Star wars is one tier below lord of the rings, well, I'd love to have more of those caliber of stories anyway.

[@KangKadmus]

@@lightworker2956 I've listened to Lucas a lot, he knows just as much as actual scholars.

[@MelleDemieLune]

Reacting to the idea that Fantasy is largely a literary genre first (as stated around 11min), I need to argue that inside the literature community (the francophone one at least, but I do strongly think it does apply to anglophone's too), "imaginary literature" (including fantasy, syfy, horror, etc.) is a tagged as "genre" (aka B-kinda-literature, and not a A+Literature with a capital L). Some Literature-reader refuses some authors tagged as "imaginary-literature" and even some author (who actually writes something that falls into "imaginary genre" refuses to be associated with the tag, arguing they write Literature, and not literature, whereas other authors of "Imaginary-Literature" with deep character arcs and strong philosophical or moral argument, struggles as hell to be accepted as serious writers because... genre. In the novel milieu, the idea that "imaginary" means "brainless" or "shallow" or "no character development" is still very strong in the minds of some, unfortunately. v_v

[@josephmarch7142]

Enjoyable video. I'm glad that you were succinct in making your case and I do agree with your points! Thanks for sharing.

[@danieljohnston4960]

One of the more genius videos on KZbin. I want to write a book now

[@corneliusquincydavenportic1913]

This is probably why Game of Thrones and A song of Ice and Fire in general doesnt have a good ending yet. George is struggling with this dichotomy between wanting contemporary and mythological beliefs mixed together in his story. It's just hard to pull both extremes together and make it make sense while also bucking the traditional methods of storytelling.

[@bilis2866]

Nah He knows the ending, how they get there is the hard part

[@billsprestonesq.226]

I think GRRM's problem is deeper than that: he doesn't know how to make a happy ending because he doesn't BELIEVE in happy endings. George can criticize, he can deconstruct, he can subvert -- but any kind of "happy" ending, even a very dark or grey one, is anathema to his identity. All he sees is more fire, and never that people can rebuild something better.

[@shawnn7502]

ASOIAF was always going to be hard to give an ending because it is a contemporary story working towards a fantasy ending.

[@bilis2866]

@@billsprestonesq.226 womp womp

[@bilis2866]

Notice how everyone is focused on the ending part but not the journey that gets them there, which is what he is struggling with Also people miss that Asoiaf is not just fantasy inspired, it takes from Shakespeare drama, sci-fi and Lovecraft, All which can have terrible endings for the characters and still works great

[@sersnuggles7697]

GREAT VIDEO! Personally I feel like Mythological is more for children and Contemporary for adults, I used to cringe at how simple old movies were, yet I cringe at the contemporary attempts at fantasy as well. Writing elevated contemporary fantasies is the hard part as I feel like the writers need to be really intelligent, honest with their insecurities, and mature their minds far ahead others to be able to write good "ENLIGHTENED FANTASIES". So I agree yes your spectrum of finding balance is a great resemblance of the Contemporary vs Mythological chart, but I think it is missing a vertical ladder of quality of said fantasy. To separate the well thought of and written ones, from the simple ones.

[@TheRockerX]

Sounds like the mythological aspect you've been craving in modern fantasy is what I feel anime does extremely well. It's also why Avatar The Last Airbender (which is influenced heavily by anime) captures that feeling so well for you.

[@stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis1369]

Its got both a pretty hard system with bending which allows for cool logical discussion and a mysterious world of spirits that opens up to a magical awe

[@aske1602]

Bravo. This video started off weird, but turned out to be one of the best KZbin videos I have seen in a long time.

[@ApplesandDragons]

Carl Jung said that paradoxical views that are not made conscious will be played out in the world as fate. As I was watching this I thought to myself, to write fantasy is to attempt to portray the paradoxical views that your society is playing out as fate.

[@williamdrake65]

This video speaks to something so many are feeling, but so few can articulate, let alone so well.

[@xensonar9652]

This is really well put together.

[@IDieHardForever]

very profound. you hit the heart of what other videos on the subject have noticed but can't quite articulate. the closest i had seen before this was a recent video on how films are no longer "earnest". the analysis couldn't get much beyond that because it was a kid but they were on to something. this truly spells it out.

[@JamesELFERS]

Thank you! That was brilliant! Too many writers want to insert modern psychology, especially "daddy issues" By the way Thomas Leitch whom you quoted is a friend and was one of my professors at the University of Delaware. His analyses of films is brilliant and highly entertaining. His course on Hitchcock is life changing. I learned so much about how we see films and how we see stories from him.

[@Durgenheim]

What’s happening to fantasy is what’s happening to everything else that people are passionate about and spend their time with. Corporations are ruthlessly commodifying and exploiting fantasy just as they are doing with music, sports, games, etc. There is no room for creativity, originality, and niche audiences. It all needs to be made to appeal to the broadest section of the population with the singular goal of making money. All the quirky, unique, bizarre, and beloved franchises of the past that succeeded on their own merits are relics from a time long past.

[@xdarkjimmyx]

Wow. Just… wow. I landed here after watching S2 of RoP and searching for videos criticizing it, for fun, and I got served with one of the most insightful videos I’ve ever seen. I’m writing (or trying to write) a fantasy novel, and I got stuck at some point. Got all tangled up with my characters and my world, and I couldn’t get back to it because I didn’t know what the problem was. And now I feel like writing again with what you said here in mind. TLDR: Came for RoP roasting, left with cured writer’s block, my mind blown, and a new channel in my sub feed.

[@RapsandRiffs]

19:20 I really like what you said about how the villains in lord of the rings represent internal struggle personified as opposed to classist struggles like in “Light” which I also like, but now I can separate the two experiences.

[@douglasphillips5870]

So it sounds like the problem isn't the modern elements, but integrating them into the world building. I think the rest is personal preference.

[@gumballthedilf948]

Truly speechless. This essay summed up the exact feelings I have about the state of modern fantasy. I am excited to share this with my friends that have listened to me endlessly ramble about the topic, one that your essay captured in under 40 minutes. Excellent!!!!!!!!!

[@bookishbrendan8875]

Fantasy of old was interested in telling *timeless truths* while fantasy today believes in no such thing.

[@yahnatanlevi6894]

Unfortunately it doesn't

[@Michael-bw7tz]

bingo

[@josealzaibar5274]

I appreciate you using Yuna in your thumbnail. Final Fantasy X really belongs up there with the greats of modern fantasy abs the concept you propose of "enlightened fantasy".

[@Maig]

Luke Skywalker throwing away the lightsaber at the start of The Last Jedi was the moment they rejected the mythological dimension of Star Wars

[@JesusHammer]

Lol yea okay of course this dork liked your stupid ass dork comment. Btw that's one of the few decent parts of TLJ because they just stole it all from a Star Wars game made 20 years before it which I bet you'd love except apparently not because you're retarded

[@MasterMLG07]

I read that as Kathleen Kennedy urging the writers to "subvert expectations" again, meaning "bastardize the original material and fill it with the now cliche hollywood ideological bombardment"... so there's a strong male character who represents goodness? Conflate "good" with "power" and make him reject it so we can be like "arent we progressive, showing males with zero proclivity for leadership, just like how we view men in the world today" and of course "then put a chick in it, make her lame and gay"... they already ruined the narrative integrity of the SW world in ep 7 when they made storm troopers fully autonomous people instead of barely intelligent clones. The character of Fin suggests that these non-force-sensitive people in the story have an internal sense of external or spiritual good and bad, which in SW means everyone is force sensitive and can feel the balance of the light and dark sides. So they implied that all the bad guys knew they were doing evil and were fine with it, including the storm troopers who they simultaneously tried to present as innocents caught in the middle, because they must all have always had a conscience and they are free-willing agents. As the next 2 episodes fleshed out, the main problem was really the conflating of goodness with power, causing a fundamental misunderstanding of the original material, and revealing the sad truth about modern Hollywood and Disney writers. It could've worked just fine with a female lead character and even containing the tropes of former male leaders passing down the mantle of responsibility, if they really wanted to make that ideological statement about patriarchy theory and modern femininity. It only would've ever worked if they were consistent with the established mythos, that the light and dark represented goodness and evil as opposite ends of a divine supernatural spectrum, both ultimate sources of power that could be channeled through characters in the world after study and practice, and the force itself representing a spiritual realm that powerful characters can sense more clearly than others. Disney replaced this mythos with their own churlish understandings, that divinity is essentially the same as magic, and that good and evil are subjective unless you're the protagonist or an NPC.

[@szepi79]

It happened long before that. It was when they brought in the midiclorians. (however they backed down, once they have seen the reaction. But the damage has been already done)

[@MasterMLG07]

@@szepi79 i think this is a misunderstanding of the genre but I get where its coming from. SW has always been a space opera fantasy, so not technically science fiction, and I've heard many people voice frustration over midichlorians being introduced in the prequels because they feel it was an attempt to add science to the fantasy world, and that these two things shouldn't coexist in a story setting or some similar notion. I think its a stretch reaching for nostalgia combined with general distaste for the prequels. OG SW had plenty of sci-fi tropes involved, and it worked perfectly, plus this is its very own unique genre of fantasy world building. If we treat the force like the magic system of the fantasy, just like any other fantasy has a magic system, there's no reason midichlorians can't be considered like mana or magicka, a measurable base form the magic can physically manifest in. Works just fine in any fantasy that uses these things, and it doesn't subtract from the OG mythos, nor does it necessarily turn the magic into science. Theres still the significantly spiritual aspect of the force at play in the prequels, which drives the plot around anakin's character arc. Theres still power which isn't simply conflated with the force, or with good or bad, except in the minds of the characters who are called out for having this misunderstanding. The reywalker trilogy is completely severed from that spiritual context. If the fantasy world manifests the psyche of the characters in it, the characters in eps 7-9 were tripping hard through a fever dream and couldn't care less about good vs evil.

[@szepi79]

@@MasterMLG07 I don't mind mana / magicka / etc, but I disagree with you in that this is the case here. In the sw universe it was already established what the force was, and adding midiclorians is not an update, but a redefinition. I wouldn't have had a problem with midiclorians, if they were consistent with the force in the previous films. To me, it seems like the sole reason why the midiclorians were added was to show how the young Anakin is strong with the force. (the reason I think that is because they were not mentioned ever again in the movie) But this could have been solved by different means. For example, when then had to choose which planet to land on, there could have been 2-3 choices, and Qui Gon and Obi Wan would instantly choose Tattoine. Or Qui Gon stumbles a bit when he meets Anakin for the the first time. These examples preserve the mysticism, and don't go against the previously established lore.

[@rustybrooks8916]

The only thing you need to know is that modern stories are created for the modern audience. The classical depiction of fantasy has always been niche. Fantasy can't become mainstream without adopting mainstream concepts. People think that nerds are now the norm, but elves and magic aren't what made people nerds, it was that the contents that nerds primarily consumed didn't contain relatable human drama. Nerds wanted their drama to be bigger than life, while most people aren't really interested in that at all. It doesn't matter what the aesthetic is, be it wizards and dragons, just as long as the characters are flawed, do stupid things, argue a lot and are just...well relatable to any lay person.

[@MatthewDiClemente-s7u]

You were never rambling, Josh. You are very intelligent and speak eloquently. Thank you for sharing your mind with us.

[@lboyd1817]

This may be my favourite video of all time. Certainly the most interesting, and equally entertaining, I have seen in years.

[@KatAdVictoriam]

I like your t-shirt. This is a really good, thoughtful essay. It reminds me of a comment section discussion I had recently in regards to the degradation of Star Wars (via recent Disney endeavors) and academia's dismissal of Campbell, Freud, Jung, etc. as outdated and irrelevant. I have noticed something among current book publishing --- especially among the female-centered (or marketed this way) of "Greek retellings" or retellings of any mythologies in which it's entirely of modern day language, belief systems, politics, ideology, etc. with a main character named Ariadne or Antigone, with very little actual understanding of the sources stories. A Wiki-level grasp is what suffices these days. Schools no longer spend an entire semester on all of the Greek and Roman mythos, which would lead into deep study of Shakespeare. That's practically unheard of now. I'm old though, so.... My longwinded final point is that fantasy, Mythological (and Philosophical) science fiction are my favorite genres in books and film and there is no rewatchability or immersion or anything to ponder and take away when the stories and characters are crafted solely to reflect "modern audiences". When people live a life reflected of themselves via social media (and yt) and live in echo chambers, it bleeds into the worldbuilding and characters they're writing. Writers are no longer able to separate themselves or their own worldview in order to create anything new. Be innovative. There is a warped sense of "all that is now requires representation and self inserts" instead of creating something universal in a more elevated way. Or... I'm talking nonsense, and I'm totally off base here. This was something that struck me watching your essay and wanted to throw out there.

[@mikehoffler4097]

The 80s were the era of B-movies with A-movie ideas. Sure, it's probably my bias given that it's when I grew up, but there's so many "cheesy" movies that helped introduce concepts of heroism, sacrifice, filial love, esoterica, betrayal, and yes, trauma. Just take Krull, The Last Starfighter, Beastmaster, Dark Crystal, Neverending Story, Labyrinth, Legend, as well as the obvious, great ones like Blade Runner and Excalibur. These movies were almost universally flops, but still great, certainly better than most of the crap churned out today.

[@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ]

Excalibur is the best fantasy adaptation ever AND I WILL DIE ON THAT HILL

[@PowerfulLeadahYas-Yas]

In the end they all made money on home video. Because people wanted to revisit them and celebrate them. Maybe the reason Hollywood doesn't care about writing anymore is because the aftermarket is dead and theres no profit to be made after 3rd weekend, so a movie only needs to have enough plot to fill a trailer.

[@stephennootens916]

You seem to lack the understanding of what a B movie is. Originally a B movie wss the second movie shown the bill, they were low budget and short runtimes. Later you got what we called drive-in movies which were independent low budget films than they turned into exploitation films. The eighties all but killed the b movie and most of the studies went under or were bought out by one of the big boys duo to budgets. The big studios saw money to be made in big budget genre films that were largely at home with those B movie studios. Those left went to making their movies for straight to video.To be a B movie it must be a movie with a low budget genre film.

[@MALICEM12]

Very true, even a big dumb schlock action movie could be inspiring and awesome in a campy way, like the lesser Schwarzenegger films.

[@SusanDelgado1177]

Adore 80s fantasy movies

[@normmandine134]

This is amazing! Seeing someone eloquize my internal struggle with myth, especially with the need for myth and the desire to rob contemporary writing of its gold (so to speak) is really heartening. I’m really glad there are other people thinking these same things.

[@Mediados]

It's something that happens to all of entertainment right now: Making it more efficient. Companies have grown so large that they want to get the most profit, meaning trying to please everyone. But by trying to get everyone, you lose the audience you already have who feel like the thing is not for them anymore. Ironically, smaller entertainment companies and indies still know this.

[@BabyFarkMcIsaak]

I have just started replaying FFX and seen that scene you use for the first time since roughly 22 years, man it still has so much emotion.. I wish modern series and movie scripts could evoke such mature and complex feelings, without mixing it with modern believes, psychology and politics, that lessen the purity and the believability of that world...

[@yogsothoth7594]

I get some of the points you're trying to make but if we take an example you bring up yourself regarding Medusa. Medusa the horrible monster and Medusa the unjustly punished woman are.... both found in ancient texts. Mythological texts are hardly disinterested in the internal works of people, the tragedy perhaps most often so with both the fact that all good tragedies modern, medieval and ancient present not just the events themselves as sad but tend to include things like dialogs and monologs where the speakers lament their grief and perhaps their regrets to the audience and the classical tragedy often as a character's internal fatal flaw as a core element driving the plot and the character towards their inevitable doom. Post-modern thought has brought heightened focus on critical modes of thinking but its hardly true that this is all entirely new. Plenty of ancient texts approach the question of how should man relate to the gods or discuss about the goodness of the gods not always assuming perfect moral action in the divine by any means.

[@anthonybernacchi2732]

William Morris also makes Medusa a sympathetic character in "The Earthly Paradise," which presents her death as essentially a mercy killing by Perseus (IIRC, he hesitates until he actually hears her say she wishes she were dead).

[@kyleVanZan]

You're ending thesis actually made me cry. Genuinely thank you for this video.

[@ThePowerofStoriesDK]

Absolutely fascinating video. I don't agree with some of your conclusions and assertions (particularly the opinion that the best fantasy has to be about the pursuit of enlightenment and man becoming the divine), but overall this is one of the most thought-provoking analyses of the fantasy genre I've ever encountered. Bravo! Lot's of food for thought and extremely entertaining at the same time. I look forward to seeing more from you.

[@lethaldream50]

right?! this is one of the best video essays on fantasy i've seen in a while, and i watch a lot of video essays. at the same time, i feel like some of the conclusions don't leave room for nuanced discussion...part of me is compelled but another part of me balks?

[@jacobharper4501]

I now understand a little better why The Stormlight Archive series checks so many boxes so well. It seems to be the perfect example of what modern enlightened fantasy can be. What so many have been waiting for. There is just nothing else like it.

[@DjTrustNo.1]

Quality content, damn. Was a pleasure, thanks for this video. Amazing points and compelling presentation throughout!

[@TheFBIorange]

19:53 - I really love the Scott Pilgrim comic for this concept. It takes place in contemporary Toronto, but Scott's inner life is manifested in the fantasy of its world. Scott deals with Ramona's ex boyfriends by literally battling them, with rock music as a sort of magic system, as well as martial art and various video game elements. The genius is that it elevates a standard "loser dude dates new cool chick but has to deal with her past" into something exciting and compelling at a visual level, enough to make a graphic novel, where it might otherwise be limited to a novel for all of the inward thought going on

[@John-Smith93]

This may well be my favorite video on KZbin. And I didn't even know your channel prior. Mind-blowing. A perfect summary of what fantasy is and should be. Thank you for being a creator!

[@Strange9952]

Conan the Barbarian is a fantastic movie!

[@Warhead-haggis]

I practically taught myself to read, write and spell by reading these books. Dyslexia did not exist in 1970. I gained a very unique vocabulary. However, the unfortunate side effect of course was that I now write, speak and indeed think as someone in a Robert E. Howard Hyperborian fantasy. I didn't realise this until much later in my teenage years. Just you try looking for Damsels in distress these days. Talk about tetchy!..

[@SilenzioDiEsistenza]

the first woke movie 🤣

[@MALICEM12]

​@@Warhead-haggisthat's the funny thing people have lost, the knowledge of just how much what we consume and our language mold us

[@jodieg6318]

My favorite fantasy author is Sir Terry Pratchett, and he did a good deal of deconstructing fantasy in his Discworld, but unlike a lot of fantasy were getting today, Sir Terry did it from a very Humanist view. Heroes, villains, and everything in between have their psychology examined but no one's villainy is justified, as Granny Weatherwax states: "If you do know Right from Wrong, you can't choose Wrong. You just can't do it and live." eventually there will be accountability as people will only put up with so much, even if it comes in the distilled form of Granny Weatherwax or Sam Vimes, characters that have their psychology and motivations deeply examined and are almost always tempted to turn to the dark, but they can't choose wrong and live because there will always be someone or something that checks the scales, and a lot of the times doing the right thing does come with its own fiendish pleasures: "The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed." Even if you did do the right thing and set the world to rights again, the fact remains, you still won and that can be very, very stratifying.

[@Ohbowz]

This is the best breakdown I've seen on why modern fantasy has been lacking. We all see it, but it's hard to define the real issues. Well done!

[@SizzleCorndog]

Honestly I think that encouraging writers to lean into the inherently mythological nature of fantasy might be the most important aspect of the genre. One of the things that I've been learning as I've been looking more into creative writing is the importance of "morals" in characters and settings, and mythology is in many ways the perfect place to look for inspiration on this topic because myths are designed to instruct someone on what the morals of the time and place are. Anyway, fantastic advice and I really hope we do start seeing more writers engaging in writing more esoteric and "meaningful" stories.

[@krozal6892]

This was very interesting and I will most likely re-watch this multiple times. I appreciate the clarity in expressing exactly what you are trying to say by defining the terms you use and giving examples to make it easier to understand. I also appreciate that not only did you offer a critique of "elevated fanatasy" but showed how the fantasy genre can truly evolve. I believe you demonstrated your point with class without making any concessions. There is quite a bit of depth in what you are saying and this video essay will be a great tool in helping me make sense of fantasy media as well much more I suspect Excellent work and thank you!

[@gusty7153]

i think "elevated" should refer to whichever is still referenced and remembered fondly by the general public long after the decade has passed. a lot of "flops" and "b movie slop" have since become "cult classics" while many "biggest movie of the year" are forgotten until a serious movie nerd can remember them.

[@davidwilson6577]

We're just waiting for Stormlight. Give it like 5 to 10 years, fantasy will be back on top.

[@sander7989]

I think the "flat" character mythological aspect is part of why anime/manga is increasingly serving as a replacement for many (even if imperfectly and from a very different cultural background), since while many villains in anime are explicitly tragic and many end up redeemed, they are often unambiguously evil in a way that allows the reactions to them to serve as more important storytelling. Frieren, as the best recent example, has demons who are by nature only capable of deceit, and do not understand family, loyalty, or love. But they can mirror what they see others doing in order to be better at killing people, leading to normal people wanting to give them a chance they are incapable of living up to. The main character is so dangerous in part because she has not the least hesitation to kill these evil creatures and use their natural weaknesses. Ironically, this flatness is itself a depth to her character, and the hesitancy of others shows their *weakness*. Later in the story, there is actually an arc where a human uses this evilness of demons for his own ends, but despite it involving the demon helping people, the focus is not on the demons being grey but the man being a fool who knew he was making a deal with the devil and didn't care.

[@agogischesparerib5112]

Fantasy used to be a way to escape our world, now our world has become part of so many fantasy franchises it doesn't feel fantastical anymore.

[@Tyrannus_Gaming]

Elevated = "I got lost in the world, and for a moment.... I imagined it was real."

[@Halak014]

Having a villain being a villain and being out for "ME" have become rare one indeed, This was a good talk about the nebulous problem with modern fantasy, bleeding in with the modern gray scale of morality, humor and value.

[@daniellewillis2767]

Grey is so much more interesting than black and white ...not always, but usually.

[@mirnastoryworld]

Audiences are attracted to the fantasy where their doubts and fears are conquered. I miss fantasies with a good main character as opposed to the lukewarm, grey morality "heroes" we are often being shown. Thank you for making this video.