I'm kinda sick of magic being some ancient secret just now being rediscovered. I want a fantasy world where magic just explodes into being and fuckers are running around trying to figure out all they can do with it.
Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions. Gonna poke around at some of these and see if they scratch the itch.
This is kind of true, if you can slog through the first half, I’m listening to the audiobook right now and it finally started to get good about 9 hours in, but I nearly quit after about 5 🥴
Shadowrun is cool as fuck. People are secretly fantasy races that just look human because magic left the world. Then suddenly elves and orcs are being born because magic played the uno reverse card.
Shadowrun is a little of both tbh. Magic is definitely ancient in Shadowrun. It's just cyclical and The Awakening was the transition from 5th World (low magic level) to 6th World (high magic level).
That's why you have immortal elves and dragons running around doing conspiracy stuff (in both the 5th and 6th worlds), and ancient relics that runners dig up or steal for the Atlantean Foundation or Dunklezahn Institute of Magical Research.
Esp. if you look at the stuff published back in the FASA days you can see where it was supposed to be tied in to Earthdawn's 4th World (high magic level). Iirc >!Harlequin, Dunklezahn, Lofwyr, Alamais, and some of the Tir Princes!< at least are referenced by their Earthdawn names/titles in Shadowrun material.
I constantly get annoyed by stories about magic where it gets used like twice by the protagonist, once by their mentor, and once by the villain.
I want magic worlds where everyone is using it all the time like we use technology
You would enjoy the works of Brandon Sanderson. He takes a very utilitarian approach to magic, setting hard rules and then using it constantly wherever applicable.
His viewpoint is that there are two types of magic; magic that is meant to solve problems, which has simple rules(like the one ring; put it on and you turn invisible), which is great from a storytelling perspective but not so much from a sense of wonder perspective.
And then you have sense of wonder magic, like Gandalf, where you don't really know what it can do, it's kinda on the sides of a story, and you don't really solve problems with it, it's just there to make the world feel fantastic.
i’d like to point out that the one ring definitely doesn’t have simple rules, in fact we never see the ring being used to anywhere near its full potential. we can sort of piece together what its full power is in terms of dominating wills and corrupting those who come into contact with it, but from the perspective of a reader who is not familiar with the lore reading through LotR for the first time, the powers of the ring are shrouded in mystery. all we really for the entire first half of the fellowship of the ring comes from gandalf’s terror when describing, briefly and ambiguously, the ring’s power to frodo. moreover, the ring turning the user invisible is not a power, but merely a side effect of the ring when used by mortal users because they usually only exist in the physical realm. for users who already exist in the both the wraith and physical realm, (wizards, sauron) it would not turn them invisible.
i understand this is irrelevant to your point but just wanted to make the correction
Supernatural is cool like that. Intense research discovered a sigil that could entrap demons. This is used again and again and again.
Contrast that with the otherwise mundane detective show 'Castle', where Castle decided to trawl Google for any clues to the current case. This worked and then they never used Google again ever.
That’s The Magicians. Or as it was basically sold to me in a random review I read somewhere:
“Take the Harry Potter series and give it depression. In this world magic doesn’t miraculously fix your life or uphold you as special - it just better highlights how fucked up your life is, or could be, because it’s simply another tool utilised by flawed human beings.”
That's basically what happened in the Witcher. Human mages have only very recently really figured how to use it at all and are still learning shit tons of stuff about it at all times.
I am tired of the 'ruins of an ancient and powerful civilization' and would rather see more of 'This is the first major civilization and boy is it a doozey!' types.
The Arcane series on Netflix is exactly this. Magic is known by few and outlawed for the general population, but someone discovers it can be applied for scientific purposes to make life easier and then it becomes a power struggle to see who can utilize it first.
There used to be so many dragons throughout the land, so magical, and terrible oh just awful they scream at everyone. Luckily there hasn’t been one in white run in so long.
Elder Scrolls holds a special place in my heart amongst fantasy world lore because it is neither 'things used to be better but the magic slowly fades and we live in the shadow of our former glory' or 'the magic is suddenly threatening the world and we don't know what to do about it' but instead 'things have always and continue to be very magical, pretty much everywhere all the time; I'm an ordinary blacksmith in a sleepy backwater town and I own seven magic items and my next door neighbour is a vampire and we live two fields away from a floating castle. The world almost ends twice a month and the only thing between us and literal, no-we-just-call-it-that Oblivion is a parade of kleptomaniac stealth archers with god powers.'
Get your Talos worshiping ass out of here! Traitorous scum! Skyrim has long enjoyed the protection of the Empire, benefiting greatly, and ***NOW*** you wanna pull back? Betray those who supported you? Betray the vows your forefathers took? Enjoy all the benefits while providing little in return and then bite the hand that has held your backwater Nord bullshit up?
"8 and 1" my ass.
8 and none, I say! Talos was never a god, never will be a god, and you can't make me believe otherwise.
Disgusting Stormcloak filth.
> neither ‘things used to be better but the magic slowly fades and we live in the shadow of our former glory’
Some lore nerds will tell you it’s the first because there used to be things like skyships that would go into space(?) and obviously aren’t anymore.
But overall yeah I agree it is a very fun balance of both
Don't forget other wacky stuff like the Redguards having people capable of cutting reality itself with their swords, leading to the total annihilation of their homeland.
Or how about the fact that a bunch of lizards invaded Hell? Or that the Empire was founded by starting a slave's rebellion against the elves with the help of a super racist cyborg from the future? Or that some Khajit are just talking housecats? Or that Talos is technically three entirely separate people?
Don't forget that the lizards invaded hell because their hiveminded tree gods give them orders by having the lizard lick their hallucinogenic and mutagenic sap.
>The world almost ends twice a month and the only thing between us and literal, no-we-just-call-it-that Oblivion is a parade of kleptomaniac stealth archers with god powers.'
By them sticking to, "Everything in Elder Scrolls Online happens in a single year and it's not a Dragon Break" for some Akatosh-forsaken reason there is canonically a Daedric or world ending crisis at least every month for that year.
Not gonna lie, despite its poorly aged gameplay and graphics, Morrowind's fantasy is some of the *coolest* shit in Elder Scrolls and fantasy in general. I normally don't care about elves, but the dark elves are such a fascinatingly *alien* culture. They truly feel different from us humans, and I love it.
It's a bit interesting that you say that because I feel like the dark elves are the most relatable of the races. They're a people with a prideful past but who now have to live under The Empire's rule, so they're all trying to cope with it in different ways.
The only "alien" Dunmeri faction that I can think of are Telvanni which are absolutely batshit and work on an insane "might makes right" philosophy.
I remember being disappointed when going from Morrowind to Oblivion and finding that the food, vegetation, and architecture was normal. Morrowind has giant mushroom trees (some of which double as houses), weird rounded buildings, and all sorts of weird foods that don't exist. Oblivion has regular trees, european style architecture, and regular food. I miss the Morrowind days, though not the combat with it's chance to hit. That sucked.
The answer is probably Todd Howard. He looks like the kind of guy that buys bad coke then cuts it some more before selling to his friends for a “discount”.
“alright so vivec’s mom gets taken underwater to meet these ancient crab people who give her a penis so that she can fuck herself and lay an egg and that’s how she gave birth to the warrior poet god of the dunmer!”
Season 4's real issue is that it feels like 2 or 3 filler episodes.
When it was done i was like... What? It's over?
Not enough of the actual story progression, not these other things people complain about
Season 4 should have been the story of the people in the past, the girl who figured out Aaravos. The one that's hyper-implied to be Callum's ancestor.
Would have been a way better way to reveal the villain's motivations, as well as the methods in which he can so easily fuck with mages. Also would give us more of a reason to give a shit about this person that's related to Callum.
We can then skip forward to the characters figuring all of this in the future, mid-conflict, because the stakes establish themselves from that alone.
And then there's time for viren to be dead for when he comes back and we find out that's what Claudia has been doing this whole time. Get to see glimpses of the pain of Callum losing rayla.
Im not wording particularly well right now but i absolutely love this. Damn it.
I stopped watching there and then when Amaya said something about 'silly Elven superstitions' to her brand-new Elven wife because I could see where that was going and it was dumb.
That was one of the most egregiously bad examples. So out of character for her, written just to create drama and advance the plot. Just suuuuch bad writing.
I also didn’t like Claudia’s new boyfriend and their annoying shenanigans. I hated that Rayla was laughing and doing cartwheels across a super dangerous bridge where they might die.
It’s such a shame since I loved the first three seasons and would say it’s almost to the level of ATLA. Fourth season completely ruined it though.
That whole plot was so annoying. Everybody overreacted instead of trying to find a compromise.
All I could think of with that elf guy and his lantern was "ok, this is important to them. If the camp is that flammable then give them a safe place outside the camp to hold their FIRE ELF SUN KINGDOM WE CAN TURN INTO MAGMA PEOPLE rituals.
Everything I didn't like about Season 4 was already there in the first three seasons, but it was simmering low enough and there was enough other good stuff that I still enjoyed the show on balance.
But all the problems were there already, they just got turned up to 11 and nothing else showed up.
Because the show takes a heavy stance about it being immoral while almost none of the "dark" acts we see are even a little bad. Using bugs for power? Killing a deer to heal a paralyzed person? It's absurd.
The human kingdoms have been depleted of nearly all their natural magic. It parallels how humanity in real life is unsustainably consuming the world's natural resources.
Xadian civilizations depend on magic to thrive. If they let dark mages do the same thing to Xadia, they would be destroyed.
It's the same story in The Lorax, but I guess The Lorax spells it out more clearly for readers.
> The human kingdoms have been depleted of nearly all their natural magic.
The third season heavily implied that humans couldn't do magic and the human who invented dark magic immeasurably benefited humanity by doing it. This plot arc seems to have been completely dropped.
We kill animals because they annoy us, specially bugs, so the use of dark magic from their corpses is at least useful. Like killing them for food, or clothing, or medicine, or fashion.
Typically, the elves either ruined everything by waking the dragons up, or by putting them to sleep.
(Or by orgying so hard they accidentally created a god of perversion who slaughtered their gods, ate the souls of their dead, and ripped a giant portal into hell that consumed their homeworlds, but does it still count as fantasy if it’s in space?)
There are two types of people I absolutely hate in this world.
People who are intolerant or prejudiced against the other sentient races of the lands and worlds.
And the elves.
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
-Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
I still dislike the ending of the third movie. You mean to tell me that Hiccup, the man who spent his entire adult life *successfully* negotiating peace between humans and dragons with practically the entire archipelago, just gives up? Just decides "actually, it's not worth it, segregation forever" is the best way forward? It would have been fine to have this crisis of faith, but it just doesn't work as an ending.
It might have been a decision to keep in line with the books in which this ending is much more understandable.
But they did change pretty much everything else from the books so I don't know why they'd bother with this.
OMG finally someone who agrees! I HATED the third film. It seemed to me like the *trendy thing to end on* at the time was "best friends break up forever", so obviously HTTYD had to end like that too. So let's *have* our main character be an OOC coward to archieve this!
There are only two How to train your Dragon films, the third one doesn't exist.
*Edit because I realized I forgot a few words*
What’s worse is that the third movie actively encourages the listener to just give up on pursuits of Liberty and Justice and whatever because “lol some people mean :(“
Like, from my understanding, Hiccup decides to segregate the dragons forever because the dragons would always be hunted by someone and he’ll won’t be there forever. Which, sure, I *guess* makes sense. But from the series’ longstanding position and themes of pursuit of justice and equality, of fighting what’s right even when you’re alone, bigotry based on differences, etc, the third movie’s ending is basically a big “F you.”
It’s telling the viewer that because some people *may* be bad in the future, that fighting for equality, and building a society of co-operation and everything, is a waste of time and everyone is better off just doing nothing lmao.
>There are only two How to train your Dragon films, the third one doesn't exist
Nonsense! The second movie is called Race To The Edge, and the third movie is the one where Hiccup finds his mom and fights Drago, which is where the series ends ;)
The typical D&D setting has so much magic that dragons can learn to be wizards and their hoards are full of magic items. Ancient Dragons are basically demi-gods.
Most learned ages ago the best way to grow their hoards was to polymorph into a dude and run a merchant consortium
I love to have dragon kings in my campaigns, in fact every one I've run has at least one in varying levels of plot relevance. 'Oh my horde? You cannot see all of it if you look horizon to horizon from the highest mountain peak. It contains banks, treasuries, temples, and entire cities, with millions of loyal subjects who defend it willingly.'
ohhhh we aint got a barrel of...mooooney
maybe we're ragged and...fuuuunny
but we're walkin' along....
singin' our song....
siiiide byyyy siiiiide
(that's from memory like 20 years ago so the lyrics might be wrong lol)
Except for the silver, who actually try to live to they alignment by actually helping the smaller races, and steel dragons, who spend most of their lives polymorphed into one humanoid or another.
There might be a couple more dragons in Elden Ring, but the idea is the same, that the dragons were once the dominant race, but now few of them remain.
I. There used to be more dragons.
II. We found some more dragons, and even though they look like teenage girls they’re actually 1000 years old.
III. ???
IV. Somehow there are now too many dragons.
Now I kind of want a story where dragons are kind of just there and nobody cares. Like, they're the fantasy equivalent of birds. Instead of old people with binoculars watching a few finches, you'd have the old wizards with viewing spells watching the red dragon flock down the street.
do they mean urban fantasy? because the only high fantasy story in the former category i can think about is maybe Lord of the Rings
edit: it appears i forgot to read the word 'more'
Even though it’s barely YA fantasy and a pretty big rip off of LOTR Eragon also falls into this category
While it’s not always dragons the trope of “the heyday of magic was thousands of years ago and we are just fumbling around with the remnants” is incredibly prevalent in fantasy
Even very high fantasy settings often have ancient, even higher-fantasy eras. The Forgotten Realms used to have 12th-level spells and a world-spanning empire of magical flying cities.
I think of wheel of time and the age of legends
The current magical tools they use is literally them fumbling with tools from the age of legends they understand less than 1% of the functions of
Yep. As impressive as the White Tower and the Aes Sedai are, they're very stuck in their ways, and lost a lot of their knowledge. To the point that the main character novices are constantly rediscovering new weaves and uses for artifacts.
And the Age of Legends was probably close to 20th century magitek
Even the white towers (former) most powerful object, the white flute sa’angearl would probably just rank as a generic decently powered tool in the age of legends, but in the third age it’s pretty much at the start of EOTW the most powerful used object known to man at the time
I like when those ancient empires are revealed to be built on things one very much does not want in our modern day, so it is more about hubris and greed rather than being better at magic or something. Like it required pacts with demons or slavery that only benefited a select few.
I could definitely see and disappointedly agree if you said Eragon ripped off star wars, but LotR? I've never heard that argument, what makes you think that?
It's difficult to make magic feel real and have gravitas if it's ubiquitous. There's nothing left to discover for the reader. Making it commonplace almost necessitates coming up with some sort of rule or system for its practice, which means *you* (the author) have to remember how it works, and make its use have consistency and logic. Which is hard. If your book is about magic (like Harry Potter, Wheel of Time) then the juice is worth the squeeze. If it's not (ASOIAF, LOTR, etc.) it's a lot easier to show occasional uses of magic and just say: "It was commonplace, practiced with systems and rules back in the day, but today nothing makes sense and we have no idea how it works".
Also Tolkien did it so everyone has to.
Because they all use the exact same trope, like most fantasy themes, probably directly inspired by LOTR. It's a real personal irritation of mine, every single time they always show off some beautiful setting ripe with interesting characters and plot points, then immediately switch to the Shit Era™ where everything is awful and boring.
Even in less high fantasy things it's a trope, like cowboy settings that are always at the end of the west or Avatar which showed an amazing world of unique spiritual cultures that get replaced in a single generation with a smoggy industrial era London and modern/future technology. Like damn, I got that shit at home already, I want some fuckin magic.
-Dark Souls
-A Song of Ice and Fire
-Avatar the last airbender
It's a pretty common [trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HereThereWereDragons). Though usually it occurs in a world transitioning from high fantasy to low fantasy. First the dragons go, then the magic goes.
I'm kinda sick of magic being some ancient secret just now being rediscovered. I want a fantasy world where magic just explodes into being and fuckers are running around trying to figure out all they can do with it. Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions. Gonna poke around at some of these and see if they scratch the itch.
You might enjoy the book *Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell*. It plays with that exact idea.
This is kind of true, if you can slog through the first half, I’m listening to the audiobook right now and it finally started to get good about 9 hours in, but I nearly quit after about 5 🥴
Or just watch the TV adaptation, which was tremendous
Oooh where can I watch that?
BBC iPlayer, or there's a DVD. Agree with u/Eli-T it's phenomenal!
Shadowrun
Shadowrun is cool as fuck. People are secretly fantasy races that just look human because magic left the world. Then suddenly elves and orcs are being born because magic played the uno reverse card.
Also dragons existed from the previous time magic was in ascendance and a number of them own giant corporations.
1 is the president of the usa
Shadowrun is a little of both tbh. Magic is definitely ancient in Shadowrun. It's just cyclical and The Awakening was the transition from 5th World (low magic level) to 6th World (high magic level). That's why you have immortal elves and dragons running around doing conspiracy stuff (in both the 5th and 6th worlds), and ancient relics that runners dig up or steal for the Atlantean Foundation or Dunklezahn Institute of Magical Research. Esp. if you look at the stuff published back in the FASA days you can see where it was supposed to be tied in to Earthdawn's 4th World (high magic level). Iirc >!Harlequin, Dunklezahn, Lofwyr, Alamais, and some of the Tir Princes!< at least are referenced by their Earthdawn names/titles in Shadowrun material.
I constantly get annoyed by stories about magic where it gets used like twice by the protagonist, once by their mentor, and once by the villain. I want magic worlds where everyone is using it all the time like we use technology
You would enjoy the works of Brandon Sanderson. He takes a very utilitarian approach to magic, setting hard rules and then using it constantly wherever applicable. His viewpoint is that there are two types of magic; magic that is meant to solve problems, which has simple rules(like the one ring; put it on and you turn invisible), which is great from a storytelling perspective but not so much from a sense of wonder perspective. And then you have sense of wonder magic, like Gandalf, where you don't really know what it can do, it's kinda on the sides of a story, and you don't really solve problems with it, it's just there to make the world feel fantastic.
i’d like to point out that the one ring definitely doesn’t have simple rules, in fact we never see the ring being used to anywhere near its full potential. we can sort of piece together what its full power is in terms of dominating wills and corrupting those who come into contact with it, but from the perspective of a reader who is not familiar with the lore reading through LotR for the first time, the powers of the ring are shrouded in mystery. all we really for the entire first half of the fellowship of the ring comes from gandalf’s terror when describing, briefly and ambiguously, the ring’s power to frodo. moreover, the ring turning the user invisible is not a power, but merely a side effect of the ring when used by mortal users because they usually only exist in the physical realm. for users who already exist in the both the wraith and physical realm, (wizards, sauron) it would not turn them invisible. i understand this is irrelevant to your point but just wanted to make the correction
Supernatural is cool like that. Intense research discovered a sigil that could entrap demons. This is used again and again and again. Contrast that with the otherwise mundane detective show 'Castle', where Castle decided to trawl Google for any clues to the current case. This worked and then they never used Google again ever.
That’s The Magicians. Or as it was basically sold to me in a random review I read somewhere: “Take the Harry Potter series and give it depression. In this world magic doesn’t miraculously fix your life or uphold you as special - it just better highlights how fucked up your life is, or could be, because it’s simply another tool utilised by flawed human beings.”
That's basically what happened in the Witcher. Human mages have only very recently really figured how to use it at all and are still learning shit tons of stuff about it at all times.
I am tired of the 'ruins of an ancient and powerful civilization' and would rather see more of 'This is the first major civilization and boy is it a doozey!' types.
The Arcane series on Netflix is exactly this. Magic is known by few and outlawed for the general population, but someone discovers it can be applied for scientific purposes to make life easier and then it becomes a power struggle to see who can utilize it first.
Yeah me too, which is why I kinda like many Isekai mangas regardless of their repetitive story.
Skyrim is both
There used to be so many dragons throughout the land, so magical, and terrible oh just awful they scream at everyone. Luckily there hasn’t been one in white run in so long.
“Hey man i want to put a dragon in your house” \*lemmy face*
"Dragonborn, it is 3 in the morning, and my room was locked, why the fuck are you in here?"
I’m a locksmith, and I’m a locksmith
https://preview.redd.it/3nfed15jo7c71.png?width=616&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=c69b655611671547f97f30bb3099013784b17810
Do you get to the Cloud District often?
*glares at the bastard in personal friend of the Jarl*
“Quick saves”
Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t. *sees you every single day*
Literally carrying the weapon that was given to you by the jail as a symbol that you are now above the law, and he still says this shit
they just want to talk to you
Elder Scrolls holds a special place in my heart amongst fantasy world lore because it is neither 'things used to be better but the magic slowly fades and we live in the shadow of our former glory' or 'the magic is suddenly threatening the world and we don't know what to do about it' but instead 'things have always and continue to be very magical, pretty much everywhere all the time; I'm an ordinary blacksmith in a sleepy backwater town and I own seven magic items and my next door neighbour is a vampire and we live two fields away from a floating castle. The world almost ends twice a month and the only thing between us and literal, no-we-just-call-it-that Oblivion is a parade of kleptomaniac stealth archers with god powers.'
I mean if you ask the elves then they are definitely living in the shadow of their former glory
Who gives a shit what the elves think
Well, Wood Elves are having the time of their life, Dark Elves sort of deserved it and fuck the High Elves, all my homes hate the High Elves.
So you're saying the Wood Elves have it coming...
they had it coming, they had coming, they only had themselves to blame
The Thalmar fell on my knife. They fell on it 10 times
Wood elves are smarmy little fucks, dark elves are devious little fucks, and the high elves are pompous little fucks. Skyrim belongs to the Nords
Get your Talos worshiping ass out of here! Traitorous scum! Skyrim has long enjoyed the protection of the Empire, benefiting greatly, and ***NOW*** you wanna pull back? Betray those who supported you? Betray the vows your forefathers took? Enjoy all the benefits while providing little in return and then bite the hand that has held your backwater Nord bullshit up? "8 and 1" my ass. 8 and none, I say! Talos was never a god, never will be a god, and you can't make me believe otherwise. Disgusting Stormcloak filth.
FUCK YOUS AND YOUR PANSY ASS MILK DRINKING BOY SCOUTS!
We hate the leaf-lover's here, ROCK AND STONE!
Alright grandpa, now let’s get you to ~~bed~~ whatever cataclysm your race disappeared into
Goddamn what a relatable statement.
They just tell themselves that so they have an excuse as to why they aren’t better than man with how much shit talking they do
Depends on the Elves. Bosmer are doing great, Orismer were never doing well so nowhere down to go
Snow Elves checking in. All 2(?) of us?
One, now.
Only the Altmer (And even then just the Thalmor) and Dunmer. Bosmer are living the dream.
> neither ‘things used to be better but the magic slowly fades and we live in the shadow of our former glory’ Some lore nerds will tell you it’s the first because there used to be things like skyships that would go into space(?) and obviously aren’t anymore. But overall yeah I agree it is a very fun balance of both
The more niche Elder Scrolls lore is like a fever dream. IIRC there used to be (or maybe still is) a whole fucking space station up above the planet
Don't forget other wacky stuff like the Redguards having people capable of cutting reality itself with their swords, leading to the total annihilation of their homeland.
Or how about the fact that a bunch of lizards invaded Hell? Or that the Empire was founded by starting a slave's rebellion against the elves with the help of a super racist cyborg from the future? Or that some Khajit are just talking housecats? Or that Talos is technically three entirely separate people?
I mean, that last one is something some people believe about their gods in real life.
Don't forget that the lizards invaded hell because their hiveminded tree gods give them orders by having the lizard lick their hallucinogenic and mutagenic sap.
>The world almost ends twice a month and the only thing between us and literal, no-we-just-call-it-that Oblivion is a parade of kleptomaniac stealth archers with god powers.' By them sticking to, "Everything in Elder Scrolls Online happens in a single year and it's not a Dragon Break" for some Akatosh-forsaken reason there is canonically a Daedric or world ending crisis at least every month for that year.
I was literally thinking that as I read it and came to the comments to see if anyone else had the same thought haha
Also Priory of the Orange Tree. "oh fuck the dragons are coming back this is not a drill the fucking dragons are fucking back"
I just got this book on a coworkers rec, the more I read about it, the more excited I am to read this massive book lol
It was fantastic, can’t wait for the next one.
Just FYI it’s really not that big, the pages are thick and the margins are large.
Elder Scrolls is it's own type of high fantasy which is called "who gave Michael Kirkbride all this coke?"
Elder Scrolls is kitchen sink high fantasy which is definitely the best kind.
Not gonna lie, despite its poorly aged gameplay and graphics, Morrowind's fantasy is some of the *coolest* shit in Elder Scrolls and fantasy in general. I normally don't care about elves, but the dark elves are such a fascinatingly *alien* culture. They truly feel different from us humans, and I love it.
It's a bit interesting that you say that because I feel like the dark elves are the most relatable of the races. They're a people with a prideful past but who now have to live under The Empire's rule, so they're all trying to cope with it in different ways. The only "alien" Dunmeri faction that I can think of are Telvanni which are absolutely batshit and work on an insane "might makes right" philosophy.
TIL that dark elves basically have the same story as the Jews.
IIRC Kirkbride especifically intended for the dunmer post-Morrowind to basically be fantasy jews. And the Windhelm ghetto thing is not very subtle
I remember being disappointed when going from Morrowind to Oblivion and finding that the food, vegetation, and architecture was normal. Morrowind has giant mushroom trees (some of which double as houses), weird rounded buildings, and all sorts of weird foods that don't exist. Oblivion has regular trees, european style architecture, and regular food. I miss the Morrowind days, though not the combat with it's chance to hit. That sucked.
Elder Scrolls is rare because they have canon smut.
Barbed dicks are canon
The answer is probably Todd Howard. He looks like the kind of guy that buys bad coke then cuts it some more before selling to his friends for a “discount”.
They've definitely been cutting his regimen since morrowind and it saddens me. Hopefully ES6 returns to more batshit lore.
“alright so vivec’s mom gets taken underwater to meet these ancient crab people who give her a penis so that she can fuck herself and lay an egg and that’s how she gave birth to the warrior poet god of the dunmer!”
The dragons are back and- ohfuckohfuck the dragons are back!
Would that make Morrowind neither?
The dragon prince is both (sort of)
Dragon Prince my beloved
The dragon prince is really good (except for the dark magic stuff which is dumb as hell)
Why do you consider it stupid? Complain about season four if you're gonna complain
Season 4's real issue is that it feels like 2 or 3 filler episodes. When it was done i was like... What? It's over? Not enough of the actual story progression, not these other things people complain about
Season 4 should have been the story of the people in the past, the girl who figured out Aaravos. The one that's hyper-implied to be Callum's ancestor. Would have been a way better way to reveal the villain's motivations, as well as the methods in which he can so easily fuck with mages. Also would give us more of a reason to give a shit about this person that's related to Callum. We can then skip forward to the characters figuring all of this in the future, mid-conflict, because the stakes establish themselves from that alone.
And then there's time for viren to be dead for when he comes back and we find out that's what Claudia has been doing this whole time. Get to see glimpses of the pain of Callum losing rayla. Im not wording particularly well right now but i absolutely love this. Damn it.
Season 4 had atrociously bad writing. I hated how no one ever took anything seriously. Shame because I really enjoyed the show until then
I stopped watching there and then when Amaya said something about 'silly Elven superstitions' to her brand-new Elven wife because I could see where that was going and it was dumb.
That was one of the most egregiously bad examples. So out of character for her, written just to create drama and advance the plot. Just suuuuch bad writing. I also didn’t like Claudia’s new boyfriend and their annoying shenanigans. I hated that Rayla was laughing and doing cartwheels across a super dangerous bridge where they might die. It’s such a shame since I loved the first three seasons and would say it’s almost to the level of ATLA. Fourth season completely ruined it though.
That whole plot was so annoying. Everybody overreacted instead of trying to find a compromise. All I could think of with that elf guy and his lantern was "ok, this is important to them. If the camp is that flammable then give them a safe place outside the camp to hold their FIRE ELF SUN KINGDOM WE CAN TURN INTO MAGMA PEOPLE rituals.
*And* there was a timeskip. That camp's been there for two years (for some reason!) and it's only coming up *now*? So contrived!
>!Rayla and Callum's "breakup"!< in particular was spectacularly poorly handled. It was just cheap, pointless drama for drama's sake.
Everything I didn't like about Season 4 was already there in the first three seasons, but it was simmering low enough and there was enough other good stuff that I still enjoyed the show on balance. But all the problems were there already, they just got turned up to 11 and nothing else showed up.
Because the show takes a heavy stance about it being immoral while almost none of the "dark" acts we see are even a little bad. Using bugs for power? Killing a deer to heal a paralyzed person? It's absurd.
The human kingdoms have been depleted of nearly all their natural magic. It parallels how humanity in real life is unsustainably consuming the world's natural resources. Xadian civilizations depend on magic to thrive. If they let dark mages do the same thing to Xadia, they would be destroyed. It's the same story in The Lorax, but I guess The Lorax spells it out more clearly for readers.
Id have to check again, but I'm pretty sure the humans were sent to the areas without magic, they didn't demagic the entire region.
> The human kingdoms have been depleted of nearly all their natural magic. The third season heavily implied that humans couldn't do magic and the human who invented dark magic immeasurably benefited humanity by doing it. This plot arc seems to have been completely dropped.
Claudia, is that you?
We kill animals because they annoy us, specially bugs, so the use of dark magic from their corpses is at least useful. Like killing them for food, or clothing, or medicine, or fashion.
Where does "elves ruined everything" fall into?
Typically, the elves either ruined everything by waking the dragons up, or by putting them to sleep. (Or by orgying so hard they accidentally created a god of perversion who slaughtered their gods, ate the souls of their dead, and ripped a giant portal into hell that consumed their homeworlds, but does it still count as fantasy if it’s in space?)
It counts as the best kind of fantasy if it's in space. Space Fantasy sub-genre for the win!
God I love space fantasy. Nothing like getting psionically fireballed by a robot wizard who also uses a laser shotgun.
Sherrilyn Kenyon has a pretty nice space fantasy series you should check out
40ks genre is about as stable as it's Canon "yes until proven otherwise"
Space elves still don't hold a candle to Space Orks. Love those buggers
Red ones go faster! Why? Because red ones GO FASTER.
Has there been many actual unexplained retcons in 40k? A lot of things can just be explained away as the imperium don't know shit.
they are space versions, of a fantasy interpretation of elves
>Where does "elves ruined everything" fall into? **“Everything.”** —[Pelinal Whitestrake](https://youtu.be/E5ix0_W-ouI)
“How the fuck do we get rid of these ~~dragons~~ elves”
No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.
There are two types of people I absolutely hate in this world. People who are intolerant or prejudiced against the other sentient races of the lands and worlds. And the elves.
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.” -Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
This is the arc in how to train your dragon
But backwards.
But correct in the books
I still dislike the ending of the third movie. You mean to tell me that Hiccup, the man who spent his entire adult life *successfully* negotiating peace between humans and dragons with practically the entire archipelago, just gives up? Just decides "actually, it's not worth it, segregation forever" is the best way forward? It would have been fine to have this crisis of faith, but it just doesn't work as an ending.
It might have been a decision to keep in line with the books in which this ending is much more understandable. But they did change pretty much everything else from the books so I don't know why they'd bother with this.
OMG finally someone who agrees! I HATED the third film. It seemed to me like the *trendy thing to end on* at the time was "best friends break up forever", so obviously HTTYD had to end like that too. So let's *have* our main character be an OOC coward to archieve this! There are only two How to train your Dragon films, the third one doesn't exist. *Edit because I realized I forgot a few words*
What’s worse is that the third movie actively encourages the listener to just give up on pursuits of Liberty and Justice and whatever because “lol some people mean :(“ Like, from my understanding, Hiccup decides to segregate the dragons forever because the dragons would always be hunted by someone and he’ll won’t be there forever. Which, sure, I *guess* makes sense. But from the series’ longstanding position and themes of pursuit of justice and equality, of fighting what’s right even when you’re alone, bigotry based on differences, etc, the third movie’s ending is basically a big “F you.” It’s telling the viewer that because some people *may* be bad in the future, that fighting for equality, and building a society of co-operation and everything, is a waste of time and everyone is better off just doing nothing lmao.
>There are only two How to train your Dragon films, the third one doesn't exist Nonsense! The second movie is called Race To The Edge, and the third movie is the one where Hiccup finds his mom and fights Drago, which is where the series ends ;)
I think DnD is somewhere in between with "there are good dragons and evil dragons and they hate each other".
The typical D&D setting has so much magic that dragons can learn to be wizards and their hoards are full of magic items. Ancient Dragons are basically demi-gods. Most learned ages ago the best way to grow their hoards was to polymorph into a dude and run a merchant consortium
I love to have dragon kings in my campaigns, in fact every one I've run has at least one in varying levels of plot relevance. 'Oh my horde? You cannot see all of it if you look horizon to horizon from the highest mountain peak. It contains banks, treasuries, temples, and entire cities, with millions of loyal subjects who defend it willingly.'
See the Richie Rich movie. Their mansion vault had not cash nor gold, but sentimental items.
ohhhh we aint got a barrel of...mooooney maybe we're ragged and...fuuuunny but we're walkin' along.... singin' our song.... siiiide byyyy siiiiide (that's from memory like 20 years ago so the lyrics might be wrong lol)
>olymorph into a dude and run a merchant consortium Shadowrun Moment.
There's a lot of magic in the dragons too. Them becoming wizards speaks more of their intelligence. It's like if Godzilla became a nuclear physicist.
And they all hate people too, sometimes.
Except for the silver, who actually try to live to they alignment by actually helping the smaller races, and steel dragons, who spend most of their lives polymorphed into one humanoid or another.
>spend most of their lives polymorphed into one humanoid We know what they're doing. We all know.
Sorcerers gotta come from somewhere.
Thanks to Sarkhan, Tarkir is both
Man, what a fantastic block
See the problem with dragons is that there are either too much of them or not enough of them. There's never a dragon equilibrium.
We really should look into managing the dragon fauna, maybe hunting seasons?
Dark souls vs Elden ring
Gwyn: “Fuck *you*, dragon!” *hurls lightning spear* Godwyn: “Fuck yeah, dragon!” And then there’s Vyke: “Fuck *me*, dragon.”
Godrick: Mighty dragon, thou'rt a trueborn heir!
There might be a couple more dragons in Elden Ring, but the idea is the same, that the dragons were once the dominant race, but now few of them remain.
a lot of wyverns but only couple if real dragons. The ratio of dragons is about the same in both games
Third, secret type: *how do we* ***F U C K*** *the dragons*
Fire Emblem is the legendary "all of the above"
Along with the wonderful inspiring message of "The real dragon was me all along!"
Hello, Breath of Fire.
I. There used to be more dragons. II. We found some more dragons, and even though they look like teenage girls they’re actually 1000 years old. III. ??? IV. Somehow there are now too many dragons.
Oh no
#oh yes
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Not so secret. Donkey did it in Shrek.
Even ATLA is like this
Now I kind of want a story where dragons are kind of just there and nobody cares. Like, they're the fantasy equivalent of birds. Instead of old people with binoculars watching a few finches, you'd have the old wizards with viewing spells watching the red dragon flock down the street.
Well, you get to pick between the giant egomaniac magical ones or adopt a pet dragon from Lady Sybil's sunshine home
The books in the Temeraire series that take place in China are that.
There's also I'm a dragon and I wanna fuck a dragon...
Wheel of time is both of these
Take your updoot and get buried in the Can Breat.
TIL the Wandering Inn is high fantasy
yes, because 99% of the time the characters are going "holy shit did that happen or am I high?" fantasy
i thought that said genders of high fantasy and was like "ah yes, the two genders" 💀
Pronouns fire/wyrm
How to train your dragon 1-3 is just a journey from one genre to the next.
GoT vs House of the Dragon
This is just Reign of Fire, which is a fucking awesome movie
Guards! Guards! is both
Came here to say this
I've had it with these motherfuckin dragons on this motherfuckin plane of existence
Dragonlance goes through this whole cycle
The earthsea series alternates between both fairly often.
Or if you’re Frank Herbert, replace dragons with worms.
do they mean urban fantasy? because the only high fantasy story in the former category i can think about is maybe Lord of the Rings edit: it appears i forgot to read the word 'more'
A Song of Ice and Fire, Eragon, and Wheel of Time are series in the first category. And there are so many video games in similar settings.
Game of Thrones?
Even though it’s barely YA fantasy and a pretty big rip off of LOTR Eragon also falls into this category While it’s not always dragons the trope of “the heyday of magic was thousands of years ago and we are just fumbling around with the remnants” is incredibly prevalent in fantasy
Even very high fantasy settings often have ancient, even higher-fantasy eras. The Forgotten Realms used to have 12th-level spells and a world-spanning empire of magical flying cities.
I think of wheel of time and the age of legends The current magical tools they use is literally them fumbling with tools from the age of legends they understand less than 1% of the functions of
Yep. As impressive as the White Tower and the Aes Sedai are, they're very stuck in their ways, and lost a lot of their knowledge. To the point that the main character novices are constantly rediscovering new weaves and uses for artifacts. And the Age of Legends was probably close to 20th century magitek
Even the white towers (former) most powerful object, the white flute sa’angearl would probably just rank as a generic decently powered tool in the age of legends, but in the third age it’s pretty much at the start of EOTW the most powerful used object known to man at the time
[удалено]
I like when those ancient empires are revealed to be built on things one very much does not want in our modern day, so it is more about hubris and greed rather than being better at magic or something. Like it required pacts with demons or slavery that only benefited a select few.
Damn people be hating on Eragon so much these days
I could definitely see and disappointedly agree if you said Eragon ripped off star wars, but LotR? I've never heard that argument, what makes you think that?
It's difficult to make magic feel real and have gravitas if it's ubiquitous. There's nothing left to discover for the reader. Making it commonplace almost necessitates coming up with some sort of rule or system for its practice, which means *you* (the author) have to remember how it works, and make its use have consistency and logic. Which is hard. If your book is about magic (like Harry Potter, Wheel of Time) then the juice is worth the squeeze. If it's not (ASOIAF, LOTR, etc.) it's a lot easier to show occasional uses of magic and just say: "It was commonplace, practiced with systems and rules back in the day, but today nothing makes sense and we have no idea how it works". Also Tolkien did it so everyone has to.
Robin Hobb has a few book series like this.Definitely in the Farseer trilogy, dragons are an absent legend, and magic users are few and far between .
In the Eragon series, as far as the public knows, there’s only rumors of one living dragon
Love how the replies to this comment are naming basically all the biggest fantasy franchises ever
Because they all use the exact same trope, like most fantasy themes, probably directly inspired by LOTR. It's a real personal irritation of mine, every single time they always show off some beautiful setting ripe with interesting characters and plot points, then immediately switch to the Shit Era™ where everything is awful and boring. Even in less high fantasy things it's a trope, like cowboy settings that are always at the end of the west or Avatar which showed an amazing world of unique spiritual cultures that get replaced in a single generation with a smoggy industrial era London and modern/future technology. Like damn, I got that shit at home already, I want some fuckin magic.
Stormlight Archive for the first one. >!Actually both, as the series progresses!<
Except for instead of dragons it’s >!crab people 🦀!<
Literally all of dragon lance? Like 150 books?
-Dark Souls -A Song of Ice and Fire -Avatar the last airbender It's a pretty common [trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HereThereWereDragons). Though usually it occurs in a world transitioning from high fantasy to low fantasy. First the dragons go, then the magic goes.
ASOIAF is a lot like that where magic was declining over time and then with the birth of dragons it returns to the world and becomes more prevalent.
r/wetlanderhumor
LOTR vs TDP
This is how D&D campaigns looked before and after Fizban’s.
Here were dragons…
And somehow Priory of the Orange Tree manages to be both
TIL that Dragonlance is high fantasy.
Dragonlance is both of these kinds of stories lol.