D&D General Are You There D&D? It's Me, J.R.R. Tol-KEEEEN!

[payn]

Somebody say mild?

 

[dbolack]

When you study literature it’s more useful to look for connections and common themes, not silo things and pretend they exist in glorious isolation.

I don't disagree with that at all. I find it odd to define chronologically backward rather than forward. I don't know that I think it's fully wrong-headed or anything of that sort, but it feels weird.

 

[dbolack]

I usually require either their first-born child or their soul.

But I will also take the equivalent value in sacrificial bards.

This begs the question of the bard to first-born exchange rate. How are they evaluated quality (or lack of)? chronology? Pure quantity? The mind wobbles!

 

[Mannahnin]

I don't disagree with that at all. I find it odd to define chronologically backward rather than forward. I don't know that I think it's fully wrong-headed or anything of that sort, but it feels weird.

I think it's some combination of younger folks a) understanding the older thing by relating it to the newer thing with which they are already familiar (isekai) and b) not knowing the older, existing term for the thing (portal fantasy).

 

[MGibster]

There is a (weird to me) trend to reverse define things in that fashion.

We do it all the time. Nobody in 1450 suddenly said, "And there's the end of the Middle Ages, we are now starting the Early Modern period!" The term Industrial Revolution was created in the 1880s to describe what had happened in Great Britain from the 1760s through the 1830s. This is just how we interpret the past.

 

[Azzy]

The name is far better than a lot of the music it represents.

I can't ague that.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

The mind wobbles!

But does it fall down?

 

[Azzy]

I think it's some combination of younger folks a) understanding the older thing by relating it to the newer thing with which they are already familiar (isekai) and b) not knowing the older, existing term for the thing (portal fantasy).

To be fair, I'm 50 and never heard of the term "portal fantasy" before this thread.

 

[Mannahnin]

To be fair, I'm 50 and never heard of the term "portal fantasy" before this thread.

Ten Thousand

xkcd.com

Fantasy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Clint_L]

To be fair, I'm 50 and never heard of the term "portal fantasy" before this thread.

I teach literature and am a giant nerd and if I heard it before this discussion, I'd forgotten it! It's a useful term, though.