>Deconstruction of high fantasy
How would you do it?
>>47800804
Dungeon Meshi.
>>47800804
Typically horror. Adding horror themes and styles to a high fantasy world can be a dark tonal shift that makes sense in the genre, which is why you see it in sections of fantasy a lot.
>>47800804
I honestly never saw the appeal of deconstruction in games, as most of the times it's not done too well as it is too gimmicky.
Shamelessly plagarising pratchett.
>>47800804
>Our heroes are Orcs fighting to reclam their gods power and win new lands for their people
>The villains are brutal, heavily armoured human knights that kill dozens of Orcs on their own, all while joking and laughing.
>>47800804
With magic
>>47800837
Dark != Deconstructive, but I still think that there's potential for it.
Like, when you think about the kind of adventuring group who'd be able to make wide-scale changes and go toe-to-toe against ancient evils, they'd have to be more than a little terrifying. Especially if they're the kind of heroes who see everything in black and white.
>>47801049
You could go in another direction: with no magic. The sorcerers are all just crazy or looking for money, and the setting that seems to have magical influences everywhere is really actually mundane.
Of course, that wouldn't be much fun.
>>47800804
Once the players kill the BBEG, they manage to break free of their delusions as the director of the mental asylum they are in lies dead before them.
Now it's CoC
>>47801019
Sounds very SAD
>>47801122
>Of course, that wouldn't be much fun.
But you make it fun, with witch hunts and burnings.
Deconstruction of these threads, how would you do it?
>>47801184
We did that. The players woke up after escaping a zombie apocalypse only to find they were the characters from the game prior to the apocalypse one, and they had been in an enforced coma/dream state.
>>47800804
I wouldn't do it. Deconstruction is a puerile pastime for edgy faggots who want to seem clever (but really aren't).
![latest[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/32VNtcL.jpg "latest[1].png")
>>47800804
Endless Legend?
Why is /tg/ fixated on beating the same fucking ideas into the ground for years on end and then preen around about how clever they are?
>>47800804
Deconstructions are universally lame. Who the hell wants a deconstruction of fantasy? What's the point?
>>47801567
So people can point at things they don't like and say "Nyah nyah, this is how things would ACTUALLY happen!".
>>47800804
What does deconstruction even mean?
>>47802039
de-construction: to destroy or tear down, the opposite of construction.
>>47800804
Steam power, literacy, constitution, modern agriculture and stuff like that.
Alternate: Same but with magic.
>>47801544
DUDE GOOD NECROMANCERS, BBEG PALADINS, AND REDEEMED SUCCUBI LMAO
The most important part of a deconstruction is to work out all minor details.
Like logistics, birth, childhood, training, core power levels, society structure.
And at some point in the details, the actual details start to show. And those details is the deconstruction.
Like how the Elves are civilized hoarding super murder hobos, or how the gods actually do their jobs.
>>47802079
You mean the apocalypse of a high fantasy setting?
Magic virus kills everything ala eldrazi, and the eldrazi win.
>>47802039
You know, it's where you put on a historical play but everybody is speaking jive and wearing high tops.
... so yeah. Just make that movie with Martin Lawrence into a campaign setting.
>>47802156
>Who the hell wants a deconstruction of fantasy?
This a thousand times.
The "easiest" method of deconstructing anything is to apply its internal logic to its absurd extremes.
>>47802243
Didn't mean to put that quote in but w/e
>>47800804
I won't, it's childish
>>47800804
> There is a lot of magic
> It's a bad thing
Good PCs must work at making the world more mundane. Things of old MUST PASS.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a good example of a fantasy deconstruction, I think. There are even hints ofmagic and otherworldy thingsin the epilogue.
>>47800804
Far too vague a thing to deconstruct.
>>47801240
Storytime?
>>47802039
It's when you take a genre or work and apply critical thought to it, exposing its internal logic as absurd. Or at least that's how it's used. For "real" deconstruction, read Derrida.
>>47800804
>Deconstruction
Take your postmodern shit out of here.
>>47802786
Mad reactionary spotted.
>>47802845
Okay so you want to write a deconstruction of fantasy? But then why? What's the point? What's the appeal? Do you really wish to examine how a high fantasy setting would really play out if done more realistically? To which I ask: would such a thing really be fun at the table?
Most people who throw in the word 'deconstruction' only know it via fucking TV Tropes, a website which is basically a breeding ground for pretentious idiotic autist who think they understand writing but only excel at grasping its bad components, generally with no understanding of how said story components actually form a good story. They just see story elements and 'well we gotta tear those apart because...um, I don't know, fight the power or some shit!' without never really understanding why these story components, or tropes, were actually there to begin with.
I'm saying 'take your shit out of here' because odds are whatever will be cooked up will be some really fucking shitty setting that think it is twenty times more clever than it actually is, most probably ran by a really pretentious autistic GM who think he's a genius but is in fact really fucking dumb. Not to mention post-modernism bring its whole baggage of bullshit, a lot of which usually end in the 'high brow' version of the nihilistic teenager who think nothing has any meaning whatsoever.
>>47802932
>Okay so you want to write a deconstruction of fantasy?
No, and since the rest of your post seems to be based on the assumption that I would, I see no reason to read any further.
>>47802946
Fair enough.
>>47800804
I wouldn't deconstructing classic tropes for the sake of deconstruction is pretty boring after all the previous attempts by others.
I'll just do shit the way I want and not really care how other people think about it beyond my immediate player group.
>>47802985
This. If you do it just for the sake of doing it, it come off as fucking pretentious. If you do it in a more natural way, taking one aspect of a fantasy setting and try to make some interesting story based on what could feasibly really happen, then odds are it might work and not just come off as some thought experiment of 'more pretentious and deep than thou'
>>47801567
The reason to break things down to their constituent parts is to look at them and figure out how they work and why. The reason to do that is so when you put them back together, the unified whole can work better than it did before you took it apart.
Of course, most people stop at the "taking apart step," which is universally the most boring part of the whole process.
>>47802205
so..
it's a parody?
>>47800804
By presenting everything in the world in such a way that invokes an amusement park ride with bad animatronics, where all the stuff claimed to be magic sounds hollow because everything can be seen as obviously mundane, and boring, made possible with mundane and boring things
Or at least that's how I'm trying to do it.
>>47800804
>Deconstruction
Define this.
>>47801507
Is it really deconstruction? It's a cooking pot of fantasy, 40k and sci-fi tropes pleasantly subverted, adjusted or left the same
>>47802932
>>47802985
>>47803006
Okay so I just thought one possible way you COULD have a completely and utterly post-modern setting, one where the philosophy (if we can even call it that) is taken to its logical extreme.
Its a scifi-fantasy-whatever setting. Humans have become so utterly indivualistic, living off their own experience with no coherent whole or truth they have basically become truly alien hyper-dimensional-whatever-the-fuck creatures who disregard reality, sanity and the laws of physics. They are the ultimate post-modern and progressive wet dream, a creature so individualistic and weird, living in its own bubble of reality, without anything anyone else can define (Gender? Bitch please, this one define itself by its transdimensional glurmok based on the axiom of colors) wtf they are. Each one is basically a god living by its own rule (and delusion). The problem is that none of these creatures can interact together as each is its own living reality. They're not even evil or misguided, they are just so crazy and weird without anything coherent to them they can't help but be a walking clusterfuck.
I guess PC are part of a group which has enough in common to interact, or the 'primitive' and 'reactionnary' humans who live like post apocalyptic cavemen in the clusterfuck of a world where these things just roam around. Instead of dragons and demons and shit, you got each of these things which was once human but is now some weirdass barely-definable thing which disregard any truth to the world. Like I said, they aren't evil so much as incoherent.
>>47800804
>How would you do it?
Like this:
>>47803062
>The reason to break things down to their constituent parts is to look at them and figure out how they work and why. The reason to do that is so when you put them back together, the unified whole can work better than it did before you took it apart
I basically applied this to my favorite D&D setting, reducing everything to it's base origins, reworking them so that everything, including the magic system made sense intuitively.
It wasn't a Fantasyland parody, it was fantasy deconstructed, then reconstructed.
>>47803315
>shitty people have tricked him into thinking that's what post-modernism actually is
Why do hipsters always ruin everything? Post-modernism is an actually cool and intelligent mode of thought that's had its reputation completely ruined by idiots. It's not a rejection of reality. It's a call to test your ideas against to reality to see if they still hold up, and a plea to let go if them if it turns out that they don't.
>>47803462
Give example And tell us about differences in the reconstructed setting?
>>47803462
Could you tell more of the process, please? How it went down?
>>47803562
Not him, but
Normal Fantasy Setting
>"We beat up the Dark Lord! Hurray, we're heroes!"
Decon Fantasy Setting
>"We beat up the Dark Lord! But the war cost a lot of people their lives, collapsed most of the neighboring kingdoms, we've destroyed more things than we've saved, and the Dark Lord was the only power keeping the hordes of other bad things from invading the world. Now everything sucks and all because we never considered talking to some of the orcs, goblins, demons and imperial soldiers instead of just assuming they were evil to a man and killing them."
Recon Fantasy Setting
>"While it may have taken us longer than we could have to beat up the Dark Lord, and we made a lot of personal sacrifice along the way, we at least took the time on the front lines to protect the neighboring kingdoms from the Dark Lord's armies instead of rushing straight to the castle, accepted small setbacks to avoid undue collateral damage, and found out about all the things the Dark Lord was keeping out before putting our all into the final offense. Maybe things are iffy right now, and we may have lost more than we've gained in the long run, but at least we have a fighting chance. Even if the war isn't over and the real fight has only just started, our end goal hasn't changed. The path will be arduous, but everyone's happy ending is within our grasp."
>>47803706
No, no, that's just taking a setting and turning it into "grim & mature" (i.e. edgy)
Deconstruction would start by asking what role does the Dark Lord serve in the setting, and why he needs to be taken down. This reveals the expectations and unwritten morals of the setting (that the Dark Lord is breaking because he's seen as evil). From there you question whether these are worth upholding, and which should be transgressed against. Then you come back to use these findings to make the power dynamic between the setting, Dark Lord, and the player characters more rich and believable.
>>47804015
> "grim & mature" (i.e. edgy)
How is "oh god we fucked up" and "well things look bad now, but they'll get better" fucking edgy?
>>47800804
Blood Meridian with orcs
>>47804027
>"We beat up the Dark Lord! But the war cost a lot of people their lives, collapsed most of the neighboring kingdoms, we've destroyed more things than we've saved, and the Dark Lord was the only power keeping the hordes of other bad things from invading the world. Now everything sucks
>Now everything sucks
Edgy, is it not?
>>47803685
>Could you tell more of the process, please? How it went down
>>47803562
>Give example And tell us about differences in the reconstructed setting
Well, the best example I have off the top of my head is the races.
I liked the various humanoid races, but their varied and vague origins bothered me.
I started with the traits of the race and their civilization and thought about what conditions would be needed to develop them.
Reducing them to core elements, it seemed unlikely they would share one ancestry.
So the divergent races made sense only if they developed in parallel or if there was design, either divine or by a precursor race.
I chose design.
So I needed creation gods.
Since I had reduced the races to about 8 main races, I chose to start with 8 gods, this matched deconstructing creation myths down to the four elements, then the para-elements.
Separating Earth from Stone helped a lot.
Then I just worked out the story of how we got from 8 gods making 8 races, to the mixed up jumble of life I wanted.
I had the end, and now the beginning , and just needed to construct the middle so it made sense.
>>47804362
>Dwarves:
I deconstructed what I "knew" dwarves needed to be, then I tried to determine what sort of being would eventually develop into that.
I came up with divinely crafted mole people, (so original I know. But once I found that a group of moles is called a "labor" it was over)
But to to explain a race-wide cultural focus on the secular and physical world, I needed a powerful event.
As one of most secularly focused cultures is the formerly religious, I constructed a narrative of a tightly formed, devoutly religious race of developed molemen, betrayed by their God, so they turned to hard work and industry as their salvation.
There are a lot more steps and details, but I'm typing on my phone and I think I gave you the gist.
At any point in the de- or re- construction things could have gone much differently, but each decision made sense and built upon previous ones.
As for how my dwarves are different from the dwarves they started as?
They aren't much different.
The major difference is that at no point are they a certain way, or do a certain thing "because they're dwarves."
There's always a deeper reason that can traced back to the beginning of time If needed.
What the fuck does deconstruction even mean today? Hasn't everything been turned on it's head, inverted already? It almost seems like deconstructing fantasy would to just make it as generic as possibly and invoke ALL of the cliches.
>>47800804
I think I'd take a look at every part and question it, both from within and from outside the setting. "Why? How? What?", that sort of thing. The main point of a deconstruction is to take a closer look at the things people just take for granted, so as to create something that might have a bit more depth even if it's not "realistic".
I'd probably try to research the origins of many fantasy monsters and the different iterations they've gone through, and come up with something using a bit of that. I'd probably need to work out a good system for magic and the higher powers too, and one that didn't make them too mundane.
>>47804421
It's not about turning everything on its head or inverting it, unless you're kind of lazy.
>>47803487
>It's not a rejection of reality.
It is when taking to its 'logical' conclusion,
>>47802039
>>47802419
Usually nowadays 'deconstruction' in literature and media means taking a setting or genre and invert them, or twist several of its tropes. Doesn't necessarily mean applying critical thought per se, since deconstruction can retain the tropes just fine and they can make as little sense as they would originally.
Examples are easiest:
- Evangelion takes old super robot anime and adds a depressing twist by having the lead character be spineless as opposed to heroic.
- Madoka takes magical girl anime and removes the "love conquers all" -element by making the cute little magical animal do faustian contracts.
- Watership Down takes an animal fable and plays it straight by having the natural world be cruel and dangerous.
If you want deconstruction that applies critical thought, a good example would be the movie Ex Machina with its robot waifu trope. Usually that's just stupid, the movie thinks about it a bit and makes it uncomfortable instead.
>>47804362
>>47804402
Dis guys alright
>>47804620
>Evangelion takes old super robot anime and adds a depressing twist by having the lead character be spineless as opposed to heroic.
Gundam and Ideon did it first. And this is coming from an Evangelion fan.
>>47804156
>Fighting on the losing side of a war is about survival rather than victory, and any survival comes at a huge cost.
>Empires regularly subsume the surrounding nations under the banner, by virtue of being empires.
>Rushing to the boss instead of fighting the war means breaking a lot of shit and preserving less shit than you break.
>The fall of an empire tends to lead to a power vacuum that is essentially a breadbasket to every sufficiently-ambitious warlord in the area.
>Edgy
Further proof that the word doesn't mean anything anymore.
>>47804620
You're missing something.
Evangelion is a deconstruction not because Shinji is spineless and unheroic but because he's a FUCKING CHILD BEING TOLD TO FIGHT INVINCIBLE MONSTERS INSIDE A GIANT WEAPON THAT PHYSICALLY HURTS HIM EVERY TIM IT GETS HURT.
That's what a deconstruction is. It goes "hey remember that thing we gloss over for the sake of escapism? What if we didn't gloss over it and actually pointed out how fucked up that is". In Eva's case it was looking at all those old "Little Boy pilots a giant robot and fights monsters" anime and then making you go "You realize a normal child in that situation would be TERRIFIED right?"
>>47804591
How can post-modern thought reject reality when by definition it relies upon reality?
>>47804716
Because it reject all form of truth to become nothing but individualist 'there is no truth' nonsense, where one's lived experiences and how they FEEL about it become more meaningful than the facts of reality.
See: Transgender and otherkin
>>47803706
>>47804015
I don't really like this kind of definition, since it's just kind of adding a weird spin and twist.
Your dark lord setting made me think of Chaika, that seems to do a kind of reconstruction-y thingy.
The setting had a dark lord. He was killed, and the world is at peace for the first time in quite a while. There is no grimderp apocalypose waiting at the turn of a corner, but there was a lot invested in the war. Now the alliances that were keeping the nations unified against a threat are starting to crack. There's a lot of soldiers who are now out of work and wandering the world as adventurers. The war materiel was not destroyed, A postwar restoration agency is trying to clean up all the messes around the continent. Some weird things and weird people are still being seen throughout the land.
It keeps the fantasy spirit, but is not trying to subvert it or run it to the ground. All the tropes are still there. The setting just looked a bit further on "what would happen if x or y" without trying to shit on it.
>>47804764
That doesn't make any sense, most because that isn't what it does. What you're describing is something else that has been mislabeled post-modernism by either you or someone else.
>>47804817
Transgenderism and feminist theory is heavily rooted in post-modernism, where they basically look at the order of things and go 'we have to reject it all because its ruled by white men and all creations of the white man is bad'. Then they jettison all form of science, reason or logic because those are deemed to be social constructs.
>>47804711
That's how I'd put it. When you deconstruct something you want to find or look at something that wasn't made apparent before. In the process you'll usually find some ideas you like, and you can take it as far as you like.
The TV tropes is strong ITT
>>47804620
>Madoka takes magical girl anime and removes the "love conquers all" -element
Madoka LITERALLY uses the power of love to become a god-like entity, thenHomuraalso used it to rewrite reality so she could spend time with her waifu.
dumb troper
>>47804873
Tropers only recognize tropes but do not understand how they function or interact.
>>47804711
This is a good point. I retract my case from above, at least partially.
But I still feel a deconstruction doesn't mean something has to be critical. It can just twist one or several elements and try to think what would happen without intentionally trying to remove what was enjoyable in the tropes in the first place.
>>47804883
As an ignoramus, how would one begin to understand tropes and how and why they work and interact. I'm an aspiring writer and I believe that one of my faults is that I don't understand enough of what makes good stories good
>>47804862
What, in your opinion, was the world like before post-modernism?
>>47804839
>Transgenderism and feminist theory is heavily rooted in post-modernism
[citation needed]
feminism is a plague
>>47804839
What someone did with something and what that something is aren't the same thing. Post-modernism is the logical extension of critical thinking. It's not about rejection. It's about doubt. Like, do the people in charge of us have our best interests at heart, and if not, who can we put in charge who does? Is it possible that the beliefs and values I've been raised to have are completely out of context with reality and should they be replaced with something more relevant? Modernism was about how everything old is great and nothing new will ever be better than what we've had before, and post-modernism is about how we should seriously consider whether or not the old stuff was wrong, throw it against a wall, keep the good and discard the bad. What other belief systems or modes of thought arose from it as the result of other people's actions says more about those people than it does about post-modernism.
>>47801240
>"It was all a dream!"
>>47804906
Why are you asking me?
>>47804839
Postmodernism is an artistic movement and has no ideological bias in itself, apart from a general rejection of absolutes and universals.
What you're talking about is more "critical theory," which is basically Marxist concepts applied to non-economic matters. Critical theory is not postmodern in itself, and in many cases runs antithetical to postmodern thought because of its desire to explain and compartmentalize.
>>47801343
>I wouldn't do it. Deconstruction is a puerile pastime for edgy faggots who want to seem clever (but really aren't).
what about reconstruction?
>>47804937
No, wait. I'm mistaking modernism with something else. Modernism was "we have to break out of tradition and make something new, right now because what we have now sucks!" and post-modernism was all "There's nothing new under the sun, so we should take what we have already, look at it with our future-eyes and rebuild it with our future-hands so it can at least suck a little less and maybe even be pretty good."
![playingwithredux3_867[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/IsNzHjr.png "playingwithredux3_867[1].png")
TO EVERYONE THAT DONT KNOW WHAT A DESCONSTRUCTION OR RECONSTRUCTION IS, SEE PIC
>>47804905
By reading/viewing/consuming the works instead of relying on a wiki. You should be able to spot emergent patterns.
>>47805007
Basically going "Remember how this stuff edgy people now deem passé? Yeah it was pretty cool."
>>47805007
That's basically "new sincerity."
>>47804985
Obviously not because I'm curious.
>>47804905
>>47805034
This: while a wiki is useful, relying solely on some autistic need to quantify everything. Its one thing to have a list of tropes of a genre and another to actually see them in action, how they work and why they work.
Its like saying you understand, for example, mecha anime when you've only see Evangelion and Gurren Lagann but you've read a lot of TV Tropes entry about other show. Having read TV Tropes entries but later having watched the show which has an entry, I can tell you that reading the wiki entry is definately not the fucking same as watching a shitton of old anime. The latter is a much more enjoyable and organic experience which cannot be reduced to a mere list of tropes.
>>47805007
Reconstruction is realizing that even though becoming a cyborg ninja means you're no longer really human and can never really be human again, you have finally fulfilled your childhood dream of becoming a cyborg ninja, which is completely fucking awesome.
>>47805084
Adding to this: TV Tropes should be AT BEST something which help you further enjoy a show if you are into all this pattern stuff. Yet it is more and more used as a medium unto itself, where people converse solely in and about story patterns without actually enjoying the material itself. Even worse, sometimes it lead to a shitty form of self-referential writing which only rely on self-reference.
Its like reading only books about India without ever taking a trip to see India for yourself.
>>47804649
A deconstruction does not have to be the first of its kind, I believe. Watership down probably isn't the first one to do what it did either.
>>47801240
That's absolutely fucking retarded.
If I were one of the players, I'd feel extremely cheated.
>>47805084
Additionally, reading a lot is, apart from writing a lot, the only way to make yourself a good writer. You have to learn to understand what makes stories tick, and the only way to do that is to read that shit - even the ones that are boring, thick and hard.
I might sound like I'm coming from /lit/, but trust me, most of the classics are classics for a reason - they did something new or better than their predecessors, and because you can't imitate inspiration, many have not been surpassed.
>>47805233
>You have to learn to understand what makes stories tick
Exactly, which is not something you can learn off the 'Troper' mentality. They see only bare components and what they are not what they do.
>>47805031
This post gave me cancer.
>>47804905
Seconding >>47805143 - if you want to be a good writer, I don't think something like TVTropes is going to help you one bit. It's more like a "spot element x" -catalogue & bingo for fans.
Just read shitloads of books. Write down the elements and things that you think made you enjoy them so that you're consciously forced to think about it. Think of how you would possibly modify these elements. When you read even more and see someone else doing what you wanted to do, you can analyze whether or not it was satisfying afterall.
Actually, just kidding.
The only way to become a good writer is to write a lot, even when you don't feel like writing, publish it somewhere and get rekt. You have to ignore the "kill urself faget" -feedback and concentrate on the people who actually point out things. The best feedback is kind of mean and makes you a bit embarrassed on the things you yourself deep down know you did like shit. Having that warm flush of embarrassment and shame will keep you from doing the same mistakes again.
You could also possibly try to read amateur fiction threads in /lit/ if you can stomach the board.
>>47805233
>boring, thick and hard
>not long, thick and hard
You had one job, anon.
But seriously, this. You don't learn how stories work until you expose yourself to stories, and you can't just expose yourself to the stories you like. You should be able to learn something from every work you consume, good or bad, even if all you learn is what mistakes you should avoid.
>>47800804
Hey that picture made me think of a cool fantasy setting.
Probably been done alrdy but oh well.
World dominated by giants where humanoids don't have castles and fancy shit like civilization because the giants manipulate and dictate so much of the environment. Instead humans are more nomad orientated and parasitic towards the giants. Maybe they use the giants as home/transport. Magic will come from the gia... you know what dis sounds pretty gud I'm gonna write it down.
>>47801544
Because some people have fun that way
I personally hate most deconstructions but it doesn't bother me that others like them
>>47805402
In the shadow of the friendly colossus?
>>47803706
>Even if the war isn't over and the real fight has only just started, our end goal hasn't changed.
That depends on what the framing device is.
A lot depends on the framing device.
External threat(barbarian horde, deep ones, solar system aliens) is a fantasy where war the heroes will end the first significant milestone of winning the war. Without the insanely powerful figurehead, the movement loses all its momentum until the next warlord manages to get strong enough to try.
Against a bigger threat(summoner invasion, extradimensional/galactic aliens, demonic invasion) the end is when the leader is dead, and the structures allowing the invasion is gone.
The war is OVER. The end.
One of the most important things about a deconstructions about fantasy will be wars. One thing is the loss of human life, the other is how insanely powerful the frontline survivors will be. They will go from being level 1-2 warriors to being level 5-8 demigods. Going by how weak you get maimed n D&D, war survivors will in every single way be superior to who they was.
Going by the fact healing is actually a thing, and so is divine intervention, the post war might end with the stronger survivors going on a crusade on gods will, to heal their maimed friends and their own injuries.
The true deconstruction might be that nobody want the war to end, because it will end with the new warlords restructuring the power landscape.
>>47800804
I've always preferred Reconstructions, honestly.
I mean, I get it. There's a lot of shitty High Fantasy out there. But it seems like a better idea to just make a better, more consistent High Fantasy setting than to shit all over it and call it """"realistic"""".
pic semi related
>>47805777
>that filename
It's okay, anon. That is honestly the best, most descriptive image on that entire site.
>>47805850
Didn't they take it from Cracked. You know, back when it wasn't Gawker 2.0?
>>47805349
>The only way to become a good writer is to write a lot, even when you don't feel like writing, publish it somewhere and get rekt.
Yeah.
Speaking as a starting writer, here is the thing about reading a lot. Of course, without a fucking doubt, reading a lot - reading things outside your comfort zone, reading "classic" literature (even if you don't intend to write classic fiction), reading across genres and eras - is absolute necessity to write well. But there is a hitch in that:
For most starting creative people - whenever it's writing, illustration, anything like that - your own taste and your own knowledge of the medium will also ironically become your possible greatest enemy. The reality is: you are not going to write things nearly as good as all the great things you have read and developed your taste on. DEFINITELY not at first. Quite possibly never. And if you are well read (or versed in the medium), you WILL be aware of that. Painfully aware of that. The gap between what you have learned to be "the good stuff" of the medium and your work will be incredibly depressing and demoralizing. Because, in reality, theoretical and passive understanding of medium does not translate into creative process NEARLY as easily as most people assume.
And having read enough to be able to appreciate good literature, you will struggle terribly at first because no matter if you want or not, you will be comparing yourself to mature works of often some of the most accomplished authors in the world.
It's almost a cliché at this point, but the reality is that while reading a lot is a necessity to be a good writer, it's by no means sufficient condition: it's actually WRITING, keeping on writing, and writing some more that is the real and only way to become a good writer. That, and learning to face your own failures, accepting that failing is an absolutely necessary part of the process.
>>47805777
I don't think deconstruction is all about making it shitty. Hell, just bringing up the idea of orcs or goblins having a society beyond being rampaging murderhobos can be a deconstruction. That could go in various directions, and you could even make a more optimistic deconstruction.
>>47801234
By reconstructing fantasy tropes.
>>47805973
> The reality is: you are not going to write things nearly as good as all the great things you have read and developed your taste on. DEFINITELY not at first. Quite possibly never. And if you are well read (or versed in the medium), you WILL be aware of that.
Never seen this put so well. It is true, this is very depressing. I'm not even a writer, but this happens with everything related to arts and crafts.
Kind of similar to that other feeling, where you may be the smartest kid in your class or the best in football or whatnot. Then, when you get older and your world gets larger, you're going to notice that compared to people who are actually good, you suck.
Just have to be humble.
Actually, I wonder how today's children deal with this. In our youth there was no internet - if you were really good in something, you could keep it going and be the best for a while in grade school before you ran into people who wiped the floor with you.
Nowadays kids have internet, they can't have that illusion even for a second. I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Point out The fact that adventurers are just murder hobo jerks and the world hates them....
Shops charge them more then peasants, inns have "no Adventurers allowed" signs, and most intelligent monsters attack on sight because a family member was mudered by an adventurer.
>>47805973
This is why I mentioned the writing part as obvious earlier. It is also necessary because you have to build speed for writing and speed for thinking about writing.
If you are not quick, you never have the time to fail enough to be good.
PS: I've written a lot, but not in the most recent fifteen years. I was never good, not one bit, but I recall a time when I still had a routine and could pump out a short story a week.
>>47805479
It's not the fact that people enjoy it, it's the fact that they feel the need to circlejerk about how great their subversions are when they're, ironically, even more creatively bankrupt than the original tropes.
>>47805973
I can add onto this as a fellow starting writer. As a writer, you're going to be sharing your work with other people, mostly because that's kind of the goal but also because your own limited perspective can hinder you. You need to see other possibilities and have other people help you see how well you translate what's in your head to the page. If possible, have more than one group of people read your work. Every audience is different and what works for one audience will completely fall flat on another. A lot of really good work never gets published not because it's bad (in fact, it might actually be really good), but because it never finds its way to the right reader.
To that end, while listening to criticism is important, so is knowing when to stick to your guns and stand your ground. You can't just let other people make all the creative decisions for you, especially if a change in one of those decisions will adversely affect how much you enjoy something you're writing. One of the best compliments I've ever gotten on a piece was that it communicated a sense of the passion I had for the subjects and themes I was using, and that passion is what brings a work to life. If you don't care about what you're writing about, you're writing is probably going to suck no matter what. A good reader knows when they're reading someone who cares about what they're writing. A good reader can also spot a fraud a mile away.
If you're sufficiently well-read, well-educated and have some experience writing for a perceptive audience, you're probably already better than you think you are. It doesn't take too long to get from the "I am a genius and everything I write is awesome" stage to the "I'm a hack and everything I write is crap" stage, but it can take a really long time to reach the "You know, I'm actually pretty fucking good at this" stage. Have confidence. You know what good is. You're just probably not used to having that good come from you.
I don't know if it would be a deconstruction, but what if you allowed the typical High Fantasy society to move past the medieval stage? Would it just follow the pattern of our world into industrialization, or something different?
>>47804622
Thanks anon.
>>47806375
Eberron did this and it's absolute shit.
Of course one could try to do it better.
>>47806653
>Eberron did this and it's absolute shit.
>>47806299
That wouldn't even approach deconstruction.
Deconstruction is when you make a difference between a adventure party, or a group questing, AND contrasted them to the rare murderhobo groups.
You don't deconstruction something by turning it around, you deconstruction something by taking a closer look at it.
I.E One of EVA's very few twists compared to standard mecha shows, is that it attempts to spend a lot of time examination the power source of the mechs.
It do actual justification on why there is mechs instead of a army just nuking everything with suppressing fire.
The fact that it has a bleak tone over that, is not a given.
>>47806097
No see, that's fine. Having a culture outside of rampaging is just consistent worldbuilding.
The problem is when they see the inconsistency and instead of fixing it, use that as the central thing.
For example, Goblins and Orcs have a culture outside of raiding? Clearly that means the Knights and such fighting against these raids are 100% evil xenophobes and all the Humans are bad for ignoring such a noble culture.
Sort of a pic related thing, I guess.
>>47806375
SCIENCE FANTASY
IT'S THE BEST
>>47801019
We actually played campaign like that and it was pretty cool. I played wizard and undead skeleton dragon was best familiar ever.
I also later resurected alchemist of our group. She was troubling little goblin pest, so while i left her usually free, i always left some magic on reserve, to control her if she would try to do something stupid.
(Which was to be expected, since goblin slaves exploited human attack on our land to uprise and try to free themselv. )
>>47806991
This, bro. Eberron is fucking rad.
>>47806375
>Would it just follow the pattern of our world into industrialization
No. It would most likely don't go past city states, for the simple reason that all tech do is to augment the stupidly powerful levelled characters.
From feudalism to modern was in Europa a stage of almost 5 steps:
1. PERMANENT warfare, and it didn't stop until modern times
2. Nation states become powerful enough to absorb city states
3. The idea of Western Science actually managed to spring root, and actually got a hold enough to allow sharing of SCIENCE
4. Important states was actually far enough apart to wage proxy wars, allowing for actual economic development
5. The actual revolution wasn't confined, meaning it was allowed to spread, which also allowed colonization of THE WORLD. As oppose to a shitty "yeah this is good, but we never shared anything ,so the good stuff died with us"
Once you actually go High Fantasy enters psuedo Modern period, things will change. Elves would for instance realize the value of hoarding knowledge. Or trying to develop new weapons.
The "dominant races" would be the ones who entered Industrialization and managed to go trough it. And they will literally take over the world. Having demigods leading those people would help a lot.
>>47807194
That probably has to be the most inaccurate and misleading explanation of the actually incredibly complex social and philosophical transformation that happened across western nations I've ever read.
I get that you are trying to explain the process in a way that could be fitted the format of this board, but this is really terrible.
>>47807638
>has to be the most inaccurate and misleading explanation
There exists far far far worse out there anon.
So take a sandwich
>>47807821
Not really, at least not around here. Sure, there are people with even worse grasp of the subject matter than this one, but that does not actually justify posting that tripe.
>>47807934
>>47807040
>Sort of a pic related thing, I guess.
Oh yes, that's always bullshit.
I kind of like the idea where the common image of the Orc or Goblin that most humans have is a bit inaccurate, kind of like wartime propaganda which displays the enemy as bestial savages, but they're still the enemy and not poor victimized innocents. They're much too proud to make any such claim and take full responsibility their actions. If anything, they're more likely to be the oppressive Knights leading crusades to purify the world for their gods.
They aren't all evil or anything. Some of them are reasonable, and trade isn't from impossible, but the problem is that they often see other races as suborcs. When they're the enemy, they're the enemy and must be taken seriously as such.
>>47806653
While I agree that Eberron is a clusterfuck special snowflake setting, science fantasy can be done well. The trick is to ignore real world tech progression and instead try to extrapolate how stuff like magic would affect future research and development.
>>47800804
First define high fantasy.
You're probably wrong.
>>47808932
Ok, you define it then so we can stop being wrong.
>>47806375
I have a pilot script for a sitcom sent in a fantasy version of modern New York, so I've thought about this.
In my opinion, the study of magic would eventually get folded into scientific study in general, so magitech becomes the name of the game. This means that technological development can happen faster, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Unfortunately, the development of magitech is normally going to happen faster around longer-lived creatures, so you eventually get dragons and elves ruling almost everything with an iron fist. This most likely subsides after magitech develops far enough that their longevity ceases to be that much of an advantage, but it might take a while. In my particular setting the greatest wizard who ever lived decided to strip them of their long lives and magical power after they tried to tax his booze, so I didn't think about it that much.
>>47802079
Why answer a confused person's question about something you have no understanding of yourself?
>>47801122
>It needs to be magical to be fun
Fuck right off.
>>47802932
You're really mad for absolutely no reason.
>deconstruction is post modern
Are you high? The term deconstruction is relatively new, but the concept isn't, Beowulf revolves around the deconstruction of the mythical and horribly fantastic through a character who triumphs over his foes because of his courage and physical might.
I like TVTropes for giving some of these patterns simple and consistent names that we mostly recognize. I primarily visit the site for that, and because they of the media lists. I can just go on and look for "that shit I like" and usually find an example from a series I've never seen before. I basically use it to make my backlog bigger and that's it.
I looked at the community once. Once.
>>47800804
Everything is secretly jews.
Even the good guys.
Reminder for the thread:
Skellie-jackass is a dimestore virt knockoff, best ignored.
Just don't reply, and he'll leave in a huff.
>>47810942
Reminder for the thread:
Faggot anon got butthurt about being a wand jockey and getting called out for being so.
Just don't reply, and he'll leave in a huff.
>>47810523
>tripfag telling others to fuck off
That's rich
![franticsboot[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Hk8IMfb.jpg "franticsboot[1].jpg")
>>47810942
21:12:45
>>47810970
21:14:27
If you're going to samefag, be less obvious about it.
And less butthurt.
>>47800804
Its really simple anon.
You go back to the source material like Tolkien did , deconstruct the fundamentals of historical fiction and how over time those stories topologically decayed and iterated into myth and fantasy. But instead of the distant pass, apply the same principles to the modern world analogies.
For example try and interpret the Gulf War or the war on terrorism in terms of fantasy or high fantasy anon.
Reconstruction of high fantasy
How would yo do it?
>>47811122
The game doesnt stop until 50 years after the PCs defeat the BBEG and save the world
Tropes can be
Played straight
Justified
Inverted
Deconstructed
Enforced
Lampshaded
Invoked
Exaggerated
Subverted
Parodied
Reconstructed
Played for laughs
Discussed
Exploited
Downplayed
Double subverted
Averted
Zig zagged
Played for drama
Conversed
Defied
>>47805031
What an awful demonstration
>>47811122
Maoyuu Maou Yuusha.
Both the Hero and the Demon Queen want to end the human/demon war. It's immediately addressed that the Hero killing the Demon Queen won't end the war and will just cause the military government to install a new leader to continue the war. Both the demon tribes and the human nations are heavily invested in continuing the war, so Hero and Demon Queen work to undermine the war economy by influencing trade to create new opportunities for both lands to profit, thus making the war a poor long-term investment for both parties.
The series answers the question of "Well, if both the Hero and the Demon Lord want to stop the war, then who's the bad guy?" with "The people who benefit the most from the war never ending." The heroes end up having to wage war against a rebel alliance of a couple demon tribes and one or two human nations, as those few human kingdoms have next to nothing to export except war and the leader of the demon tribe in charge wants to kill Demon Queen and take the throne for himself. Even so, the war doesn't end just because the last bad guy is defeated. Things still had to progress to the point where the demon tribes had to be strong-armed into the trade alliance and the rebel human kingdom had to be subsumed into another nation. Just as well, given that the peasantry barely notices when the throne changes hands.
>>47800875
This thread was over so quickly and nobody even noticed.
>>47800804
Shadow of the Colossus 2 when?
>>47800804
I'd recommend reading Pratchett. Failing that, pic related is a decent example (though I'm not a book critic so maybe take this with a grain of salt).
Standard adventuring party told from the point of view of the 'evil' party with occasional glimpses at the old 'good' party. Book doesn't shy away from keeping their orcs savage and overzealously killy, but they do a good job of making most of the characters more than 'maim kill burn.' There's also neat subplot with the BBEG and his wife and a neat scene where the main characters come to blows with the Good party.
>>47800804
Well, there are enough deconstructions out there that you could deconstruct the deconstructions. I think I'd just start working out what things are supposed to be and figuring out how I want to put that in, rather than just throwing it in because everyone does it. I'd probably be pretty lazy with a lot of the basic concepts too.
I might actually want to deconstruct the dark fantasy human nation by inserting them into the setting as Orcs. The sort that are angry about elves, have the urge to purge, or whatever else. Just paint a God Emperor black and call him Sauron, and it works pretty well from an external perspective. Whatever good reasons they have for being how they are, they aren't too to share them with the lesser races.
They also have different symbols than humans. They're sensitive to bright light, so darkness is seen as more comforting. To them, a dark armor-clad figure wreathed in shadows and mounted atop some unearthly creature is every bit as noble a sight as a human might find a knight in shining armor riding upon a celestial steed to be. In short, they're also the race with the most of the zealous and smite-happy Paladins, though other races have a hard time recognizing them for what they are.
To humans who don't understand them or their motives, the Orcs are ruthless tyrants and conquerors. To those who understand them, the Orcs are still ruthless tyrants and conquerors. It's just that they aren't doing it to be bastards or anything, even if plenty of them are bastards. They're aware of certain threats and believe they must be the ones to rule the world for its own good, and hopefully kill all the elves in the process. They have reasons for that last bit, though the current validity is questionable at times. They just don't like taking chances.
>>47813124
Elves come in two basic categories. "High" and "low". High Elves are the true elves, and they're immortal otherworldly beings that could be compared to demigods. Or perhaps just as something more like demons, as the Orcs would see it. They aren't just humans but better, they simply aren't a mortal race. They have a supernatural charm, and the world bends to serve at their presence. Flora and fauna around their residences are altered in various ways to suit them, forming the enchanted forest you expect to find elves and their woodland allies within.
Unfortunately, people are not immune to this effect either and those who spend too much time around High Elves or their enchanted domain will often become enamored with them, and their appearance and attitude alters itself to better suit the Elven taste and become part of this new ecosystem. These are the "Low Elves". To live among the Elves isn't exactly unpleasant, as it's typically a long and joyful life, but it comes at the cost of your former self. Those who are separated from the lands of the High Elves may partially recover, but the process is unpleasant and they're still never quite the same afterward.
Those who don't live around Elves usually don't know anything about this, and those who do view it in different ways depending on their culture. As can be guessed, Orcs come from formerly Elf infested lands and view them as abominations, and it took a lot of hard work to burn most of them out and drive them away. Orcs see becoming a Low Elf as akin to losing one's soul and view all Elves as carrying the otherworldly taint, though they themselves are partly from Low Elf stock, and so will often seek to eradicate even the freed Low Elves.
For their part, the High Elves just want to make the world perfect and enjoy life to the fullest, though the Orcs managed to leave a strong negative impression.
>>47801122
>You could go in another direction: with no magic.
You don't make a deconstruction of a genre by removing the key elements of the genre, you little shit.
>>47802150
Actually it's evil necromancers that are the post-modern reconstruction. Necromancy, resurrection, and controlling the dead are all very old religious symbols and practices. Evil necromancy is just saying that religion is evil. Even the Bible has good necromancers.
>>47803315
You don't seem to know what any of the terms you're so mad at actually mean.
>>47804764
Sorry you have such a rage-on for the medical establishment, anon. You might want to take a good, hard look at your own rejection of reality there. Dualist cheesegoblin.
>>47809337
High fantasy is anything not sit in Earth. That's it. That's the whole definition. Low fantasy happens on Earth and parallels to Earth. High Fantasy happens its own place. There's nothing about the amount of magic featured, nothing about foreign physical laws or the interaction between god(s) and man. Low fantasy can be wizards shitting in the eye of YHWH among slave vassals and fire-spitting lords if it's done on Mount Everest.
>>47804620
I'm not sure Mr. Rage is spineless, except around women.
>>47805031
I don't have anything specifically against tvtropes but this is just dumb.
>>47800804
>Deconstruction of high fantasy
A setting where the shining light beings of purity are actually violent fanatics that wish to purge the world of sin, and the corrupt shadows are beings of freedom and kindness which wish to preserve life, regardless of how its beauty is judged?
The most obvious aspect to deconstruct is the traditional association of light and purity with good or dark and corruption with evil. Genocidal wars of purity, and good things spread virally (ideas, freedom as a concept) could be key themes of the setting.
>>47806214
Speaking as a substitute mechanics teacher, kids don't want to be better now, they want to be in the center of attention. Usually by trolling or playing the victim. A lot of them actively hate work, because their phone told them effort and pain were bad and entitlement was good. And why would a phone lie to a person?
There's kids who are humble, and who enjoy improving their skills, but those are exceptions rather than a rule. It takes a lot of parenting to undo all the influences from media and peer pressure.
TLDR The internet makes you stupid.
>>47804873
given the whole fucking ending is someone owning the devil by wishing to stop all the bad shit their getting wishes causes, then coming back as an angel to comfort their family i am pretty sure there is love conquering something somewhere
>>47816186
That's more of a teenage problem.
I'm not a teacher, yet, but I have so far worked enough in schools and around children to have observed that it isn't exactly like this with pre-teens, even though they too have easy access to internet and use it actively.
Internet doesn't make you stupid. Being un-selfaware makes you stupid because you don't know how to evaluate anything in yourself and do not understand the importance of reflecting on past actions.
If a teenager turns out as what you described the problem's in the parents, and by some extension the school system as well, not in the media because you can teach a person to think critically and not be influenced by everything they see on the internet.
>>47806375
I've been trying to do something like this and encountered some problems
>magic, unless very strictly and arbitrarily defined makes the need for technological advancement much less important. For example why modernize your agriculture when a wizard can make all the food you need? Why develop firearms when you have fireballs?
>How do you characterize fantasy races in a modern setting without straying too far from the norm (assuming of course that's something you want). How does elven longevity play into a setting where the technology starts picking up and go faster? Do they adapt or become reactionary?
>how would states develop with all the dangerous wildlife in the standard fantasy realm? Is most of the fantastical wildlife eradicated when the setting reaches the end of the industrial revolution?
>How does geopolitics work? Do we have the different races banding together in nationalistic factions in the same way as panslavinism in real life?
Its a interesting subject
>>47806653
>>47806991
>>47806375
Iron Kingdoms does it pretty well, too.
>>47806375
>Would it just follow the pattern of our world into industrialization, or something different?
It would following anything you want (unless you are writing hard fantasy), this because fantasy is writer fiat
>>47800804
Many, many, MANY spheres of annihilation
>>47815783
>source: myself
>>47817150
>The meaning of a word cannot change.
>>47817234
>>The meaning of a word cannot change
Not because some anonymous person on 4chan comes up with their own take on it, it cannot.
>>47809560
>This most likely subsides after magitech develops far enough that their longevity ceases to be that much of an advantage, but it might take a while
Well anon, we are 150 years into modern times.
We have only extended lifespan from 50-70 range to 70-90 range.
That means we are on our 15th generation of men, while the super magic users are on their 1st.
The advantage is a gigantic boulder.
>>47815783
>High fantasy is anything not sit in Earth. That's it.
It's more complex than that.
Low fantasy is any setting which is Earth-like, and is largely based on reality. A key element of low fantasy is that magic is usually treated as unnatural and distrustful... it's either the irrational element of a rational world, or a technological breakthrough. Such settings include Witcher, as well as Sorcerer and arguably Game of Thrones (Martin designed the setting specifically to fuck with genre distinctions).
High fantasy creates in a setting where magic is a natural part of the world, and one that plays a crucial part in some fight between objective good and evil. These are the primary elements of high fantasy, and because of it many high fantasy settings can be set on Earth, but it must be an Earth that works decidedly different from our own, or has a hidden "secondary world" within. Nobilis, Harry Potter, Stardust, Narnia and Lord of the Rings fit in this category.
One big debate is the primary/secondary world debate on high/low fantasy. Older categorizations stipulate that fantasy taking place in the real (primary) world are low fantasy, other (secondary) worlds is high fantasy. However, Tolkien distinctly argued that Lord of the Rings took place on ancient Earth, and it has always been considered part of the high fantasy genre.
>>47818479
>Such settings include Witcher
Witcher is a very fun one, because its parallel earths vary from Sci Fi to Super High Fantasy(Wild Hunt)
>>47818479
Tolkien was a troll that hated the genre distinctions and bullshitted just to fuck with them
>>47818479
>magic is usually treated as unnatural and distrustful... it's either the irrational element of a rational world, or a technological breakthrough.
Neither of those things apply to the witcher though. The world is inherently irrational and magic is not new or isolated
>>47818844
Magic, abnormality and everyhting preternatural and such is treated with distrust in Witcher depending on the culture and area as well as the current political climate.
But you are right on the regard that Witcher is high fantasy rather than it is low.
It looks like low because it was built upon a couple of self-importantly edgy 90's gritty post-modern fantasy novellas and the books and the games don't have a classic hero's journey.
>>47809560
>modern fantasy Seinfeld
>>47820446
It's centered around a group of friends who work together, so it's not quite Seinfeld.
But yeah, that was the basic idea.
>>47800866
Done well, it means subverting classical genre expectations by applying that something "extra" into the equation.
Whether it's adding a dose of reality or grimdark somewhere. Like in Drakengard, where the director said he made the protagonist under the idea of "what kind of person would slaughter his way through hundreds of people in a matter of minutes? A total psychopath of course."
>>47822933
And also deconstruction can be novel, but we're just saturated by common themes in stories, even subverting them is to be expected, especially if you consume that media a lot.
