(November 5, 2021 at 9:41 am)Ten Wrote: Everything is derivative. WoT isn't like the most epic series ever but I enjoyed it greatly and would recommend it and I'm excited to watch a series based on it.
I personally think that those who can't see past Tolkien are living off of his crumbs, as it were. Then again, I've never read a single word of his and I've read a ton of fantasy books. It's not the first time I've heard that criticism about fantasy as a genre. Maybe there's just something awful about Tolkien that ruins you for other authors. Or maybe those who choose to read him and feel complete enough to stop there just don't have a nuance for story execution and variation. They see orcs and addictive magic tropes and automatically think, "I'VE READ THIS ONE ALREADY!!!"
*Not directed at solely Spongebob but the critics who parrot that elitist opinion.
Understand that I've read tons of fantasy works and after a point it seems like I'm reading the same story over and over again. I agree that most authors derive something from others, but for some reason the fantasy genre seems to be the most cut and paste, maybe with the exception of mystery, which I don't read much. I've also read tons of SF and it, too is largely derivative, but for some reason it still offers a much wider realm of variation. At times it has appeared that writing fantasy has been more of a willingness to participate in a specific club where writing SF is more like charting new territory. I can easily find two SF authors that have near zero similarity in their work, but doing that with fantasy is pretty difficult. One author whom I feel did chart new fantasy territory was Michael Moorecock.
*Note: This opinion, whether it's mine or someone else's doesn't necessarily make it elitist. Why use such a pejorative adjective?
Why is it so?
~Julius Sumner Miller
~Julius Sumner Miller
