Is it "muh escapism" that you don't like? is it the tired conventions? Of course I'm aware most fantasy authors tend to produce entry level work but I've even seen swiping statements such as "fantasy is not even literature". Or is it all just the no fun allowed dank memes at work?English is not my first language, sorry for errors.
>>7649915
All of them really, fantasy is just an exhausted genre and most of the time is just escapism and badly written .
I like Wolfe fantasy thought.
Fantasy, detest it. By the numbers childish garbage. Grew out of it by seven. A cold porridge of a genre.
>>7649915
Because, with the exception of writers like Wolfe and Tolkien, it is poorly written, extremely derivative, and, in my opinion, really boring.
>>7649922
>Ruskis
>male retarded post
>sorry english isn't my first language :P
this is the word meme to ever hit 4chan. not only is it obviously untrue, being unfamiliar with the english language does not excuse your terrible opinions - which is always exactly what's trying to be defended with that statement in a runaround way.
well it don't work kiddo.
>>7649920
would you please tell me what exhausted means in this context? After thousands of years of written language I'd assume every genre in existence already has an overwhelming amount of works.
>>7649922
You are free to dislike it.
>>7649923
I understand your position, thanks.
>>7649929
I only make mention of it since I've seen how autistic you get with grammar. Regardless, I'm not defending my opinion.
Literature is, in general terms, written works with artistic merit. If the goal of the author is to visit a far away place, without pretending to be teaching anything but just to provide care-free entertainment, why the condemnation?
They hide their unwillingness to make good anything by the setting alone. Something fantasy will save their bad characterization, overly complicated plot, pointless cultural exposition and strange mechanisms of reality, it gives great handicap to the literary craft itself. Not saying they are all like this but they do fall into that predictive pattern. Literature can make a mockery of the tools but when you do it in fantasy it warps the reading and confuses the text.
>>7649951
I've never seen it like this before, thanks a lot for the perspective. It's kind of sad when you think about it, that maybe they aren't unwilling but just not skilled enough in most cases.
>>7649942
Clichés mostly, most of the time there is no innovation or anything new just the same "high european medieval fantasy" type of thing.
>>7649955
I don't want to complain about the series but the wheel of time is a good example
why is it so good, because it's so long
the plot became a parody of itself, in a true litrature you cannot write 12 books on one plot (that diverges) that's against all forms of normality. But apparently if it's fantasy it's okay, people buy it because it always ends on a cliff hanger. Materialism of reading.
>>7649915
Perhaps it's because I didn't dive too deep into the genre but all fantasy works I read seemed to lack fantasy the most. Same tiresome plots and tropes over and over again, simplistic characterisation and pointless new cultures. Besides that, magic is either abused as plot device or taken overly serious without any regard for ... realism.
>>7649951
>overly complicated plot
The fuck? How is this a con if it isn'T overly complicated for the sake of it?
>>7649972
complication is best if it's short
when it is over ten books on the same plot no matter how much more stuff you want to introduce to it it is still the same plot
the plot is suspended in time and the complication of the plot makes the books
a group of 5 becomes 10 then 3 groups of 8 then 4 groups of 7 and so on.
why, to write more about various numeric combinations, or in other words ran out of ideas
>>7649988
Eh, then "complicated" doesn't seem like the right word. It's needlessly long and bloated in that scenario, and indeed fucking disgusting.
I'm a big sci fi fan and don't have anything against genre fiction, but (and I might be making a gross oversimplification here) fantasy seems to not have as great a depth or range as sci-fi. Other than LoTR, there's not much in fantasy that can stack up against sci-fi classics like Dune or Foundation.
>>7649915
It's literally just the fact that most of it's badly written. As for why people say it's not literature, as you put it
>Literature is, in general terms, written works with artistic merit
and being badly written disqualifies it from that.
>>7649915
You need to understand that /lit/, like other boards like /fa/, is filled with pretentious hipsters. They call fantasy "not literature proper" because they perceive it as something made for the plebeian. Just dont listen to them and read and talk about whatever you like, we have fantasy and sci-fi threads sometimes
>>7649922
Kek
cause it's 90% built on the back of misunderstandings about tolkien. and it's also really fucking boring.
>>7649915
wtf?! the whole damn board is a fucked up fantasy!
A lot of people dislike it simply because they are parroting the opinions of the board collective.
Personally I think it's silly to judge a whole plethora of works as a whole. I do love Wolfe and Lem.
>>7649915
You know Sturgeon's Revelation? Aka, 90% of everything is crap.
Well, most people never get past the crap. And the crap tends to be popular with normies. Stuff like Harry Potter and Twilight, which are trash that people immediately associate with the genre. Even the best known fantasy series - the Lord of the Rings - isn't some spectacular piece of literature(nor was it meant to be, really). Few fantasy writers aim to say anything meaningful through their writing and guess what it fucking shows. It's fine if you want something to entertain you, but certain elitist fuckheads get up on their high horse about it so they have enough height to shit on it.
>>7650389
The elitist thing is true to an extent, but I also think that a bunch of the people shitting on fantasy here wouldn't shit on it as hard in real life. It's just that there are so, so many places to talk about popular genre fiction, while /lit/, despite being pretty shitty, can still be one of the better places to talk about some books with a little more depth.
>>7650061
Good job completely disregarding all of the good points made in this thread
fantasy isn't just not even literature, it isn't writing at all
like movies before filmmakers were not art, but a craft.
>>7650389
>(nor was it meant to be, really)
What do you mean by this?
>>7650478
I mean I know you´re not being literal here but come on.
This is analogous to not liking orange and going around saying that orange is not a fruit, or even food. It comes off as childish and hyperbolic to the point of absurdity.
>>7650486
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings were done by a very intelligent, educated man in his spare time as a hobby, the greatest example being the Silmarillion which was basically a solitaire version of D&D. They were initially stories he told his son, and then short stories he sent to the same son during world war 2. He didnt sit down to write a great novel, he was essentially playing modern games with ancient genres like the Chanson de Roland, Beowulf and the Eddas. Eventually he had so much content that he put it together and sent it out to a publisher, and then rereleased after criticism regarding some issues of continuity regarding Riddles in the Dark.
>>7650506
While you do seem to have a knowledge of Tolkien's influences and chronology, your statement is still very ignorant. Tolkien's works were much, much more to him than a "hobby" or "a solitaire version of D&D." I would recommend you read one of the best critical treatments of Tolkien, Tom Shippey's The Road to Middle Earth, so that you may be better informed.That came of as very condescending, but I do mean it genuinely
>>7650506
Source btw is tolkien preface to the second edition, where he sort of wearily shits on all scholarly analysis of his work, and says it was never meant to be high literature worthy of allegory and study, merely something for his son while he was serving in south africa.
>>7650519
You're one of those people who wants to save Tolkien-the-scholar from Tolkien-the-writer by mischaracterizing the relationship he had with his own work just so you can continue to believe that fantasy "isn't real literature"
>>7650526
Not that guy but disregarding what he's saying is not the same as proving him wrong.
>>7650526
You are one of those people who assume and know nothing.
I actually love Tolkein, and think he is as worthy of being called literature as anything by Stanislaw Lem and Gene Wolfe or stuff like Ouroboros.
I was merely answering the anons question regarding the other anons statement of "nor was it meant to be, really".
And yes I think you are wrong, I believe that at the end of his life if you had asked Tolkein how he would have defined himself, he would have looked towards his academic career and love of scholarship, not his brilliant work in fiction.
>>7650533
*Tolkien
>>7650122
>everything is built on the back of Tolkien
You fags that don't actually read fantasy and comment that everything is based off Tolkien, or that Tolkien created it really piss me off, just kill yourselves.
>>7650551
>just kill yourselves
How mature of you
>>7650551
see
>>7650530
I would suggest that MAYBE tolkien was influenced by the poetry of Poe, the fiction of Scott, and the King in Yellow, but the bridge between epic poetry, pre christian Scandinavian minor mythology, and history of the middle ages and the modern fantasy novel is Tolkien, and occasionally Howard.
Please suggest some high fantasy "quest" literature from 1800-1940.
>>7650061
>You need to understand that /lit/, like other boards like /fa/, is filled with pretentious hipsters.
If you desperately need to believe that the hate for genre fiction is coming solely from "pretentious hipsters" and never those who are discerning then you go right ahead.
Whatever will comfort you.
The people who say fantasy is all the same thing dont actually read fantasy,
And I dont get the complicated plot criticsm since many of these "great works" are hideously long and plodding.
>>7650560
the worm ouroboros
I think when fantasy is about reflecting human nature, or about confronting problems universal to us all, it can be absolutely amazing. IMO the best kinds of fantasy are the sort or dark/grotesque fairly tales. If anyone has seen the movie Coraline or Where the Wild Things Are those a pretty good examples. Ironically some of the best fantasy tends to be written for children. Unfortunetly most fantasy is written mostly for immersion/world purposes rather than confronting human nature.
I was always fond of the book "The Phantom Tollbooth".
>>7650757
Yea that is the real problem with most fantasy today, instead of telling stories people are just making worlds to "live" in. And the expected trilogy/series format makes it all the more comfortable for the train to keep going.
Not shitting on worldbuilding itself, since that can definitely be a profound thing in itself if handled correctly. But when made up locations and "magic systems" are more important than the characters and their struggles, something went wrong,.
>>7650711
>If you criticize what I dont like you must not be familiar with it
>>7650806
Anyone who actually does read fantasy knows there's been a concerted effort to be out of Tolkien's shadow for eternity and a day.
Not to mention it betrays supreme ignorance of the genre when you can only name the meme titles like Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time as evidence.
because /lit/ is made for people who like books that nobody else they know does.
normal people don't need to make threads about (good) fantasy on obscure japanese imageboard, they can just talk to one of their friends who likes it too
>>7650757
>when fantasy has literary merit it's good.
Coraline and Phantom Tollbooth i still reread, Coraline has aged badly but Phantom Tollbooth i've read to cousins and nephews and they've all loved it.
>>7651996
I beg to differ, Coraline to me is the best children's horror. With the possible exception of scary stories to tell in the dark
I'm a big sci-fi/fantasy fan but I see it as a different thing than more literary fiction (and I'm not a gayboi who says fantasy isn't literature - it's absolutely literature, saying otherwise is just semantics).
Fantasy/sci-fi tends to be more fun to read, plot-heavy and reliant on twists and turns. Literary fiction is usually more reliant on examining interesting real-world themes, raising interesting questions, or just communicating in prose in a beautiful way. As I see it, there's not always such an even divide - The Road, for example, is an example of sci-fi that reads more like literary fiction.
Note that I don't think any is intrinsically better than the other. Hell, my favorite author is Bradbury, and no memelord will ever take that from me. But a lot of people on /lit/ see the fun, plot-heavy genre fiction as intrinsically worse. Sometimes they have decently detailed and well-informed opinions considering such, sometimes they're shitposting, sometimes they're just elitist fags. Just don't let it bother you and read what you want to read.
>>7649915
>lowly regarded on this board
yup. here and only here.
