Exactly. And I realized after I posted that he's read Harry Potter too-- but again, that's a story that got much darker and more serious than most boarding school fantasies do, and wasn't afraid to kill off characters.
D&D has gotten a little less blatant about its basis in LotR in recent versions, but the core is still there, and the core is aaaaall Tolkien. Most fantasy writers seem to have either been inspired by LotR directly, or by D&D, or by both, which leads to a lot of derivative writing. Now the trend seems to be pushing back; people either seem to use the high fantasy setting but subvert it as much as possible, or they're writing in subgenres like urban fantasy and steampunk.
Working backwards like Mark has just makes things more difficult. I know it's often hard for me to read the older fantasy just because things that were probably groundbreaking when they were published don't seem as interesting to me. Both outdated/overused tropes and the older writing styles are too distracting and I end up not being able to focus on the story. Mark doesn't seem to worry much about writing styles, but I do think he ends up misinterpreting things or getting offended by things because he's looking at older works through a modern context.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-03-06 10:18 pm (UTC)D&D has gotten a little less blatant about its basis in LotR in recent versions, but the core is still there, and the core is aaaaall Tolkien. Most fantasy writers seem to have either been inspired by LotR directly, or by D&D, or by both, which leads to a lot of derivative writing. Now the trend seems to be pushing back; people either seem to use the high fantasy setting but subvert it as much as possible, or they're writing in subgenres like urban fantasy and steampunk.
Working backwards like Mark has just makes things more difficult. I know it's often hard for me to read the older fantasy just because things that were probably groundbreaking when they were published don't seem as interesting to me. Both outdated/overused tropes and the older writing styles are too distracting and I end up not being able to focus on the story. Mark doesn't seem to worry much about writing styles, but I do think he ends up misinterpreting things or getting offended by things because he's looking at older works through a modern context.