Geek Confessional Thread 2024

[Mind of tempest]

I know its cool to hate on Tolkien, consider his influence overstated, blah blah blah....but you know what?

My wife and I have watched the first 2 movies in the last week, and people who think that are dead wrong.

I dislike that he is a great sky-dominating lone mountain in fantasy I would prefer chains myself

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I know its cool to hate on Tolkien, consider his influence overstated, blah blah blah....but you know what?

My wife and I have watched the first 2 movies in the last week, and people who think that are dead wrong.

As someone who has been both a Tolkien-hater and also kind of Tolkien-fan over his lifetime, who has been fascinated by both his influence and lack thereof I think, that, boring as it is to say, people tend to go to extremes on this, and that's what leads them to being wrong. People also confuse direct and indirect influence, and mistake one for the other constantly.

In the 1990s, and even a bit in the '00s even after the LotR movies, it was actually more common in fantasy TT RPG and fantasy fiction circles to excessively downplay Tolkien's influence. However, since then, the situation has flipped, and become more extreme than it ever was. It's much more common now, in 2024, and has been for a few years, for people to assert that literally all fantasy fiction is derivative from Tolkien at this point (mostly untrue, but with a major exception, which I'll outline), that all fantasy games are influenced by his work (this is actually a lot closer to true but still confuses direct and indirect influence, which leads to people not understanding the evolution of certain tropes/concepts).

I think it's worth separating Tolkein's influence into two areas:

1) Influence on fantasy fiction (primarily books still).

2) Influence on fantasy games (board, TT RPG, video, etc.). - I won't discuss this in detail at this time because we'd be here for months.

Tolkien's influence on fantasy fiction can itself be broken down into two major areas as well:

1a) Influence on how fantasy fiction is written/conceived.

1b) Influence on the subjects and nature of fantasy fiction.

Tolkien's influence on how fantasy fiction is written/conceived is absolutely huge, and hasn't got significantly smaller over time, in part because it has proven quite popular with audiences to write this way and thus profitable for publishers. You're going to hate me but Tolkien's influence on how fantasy fiction is written/conceived can also also be broken down into two major areas:

1a-i) Length and structure of stories told.

1a-ii) Worldbuilding.

Length and structure of stories told.

Prior to Tolkien, most fantasy writing is either short stories, relatively short novels, or "myth cycle"-type deals. Tolkein kind of wanted to write the latter and took some shots at it (later leading to the Silmarillion etc.), but he ended up creating essentially a new form, which was a sequence of extremely-long novels, written not in the language of myth, but largely in language accessible to a reasonably well-educated (but not elite) British reader from the 1940s, yet with a setting that wasn't a secret world or the like, but a true fantasy one (perhaps in the past, but Tolkien went back and forth on that).

The impact of this wasn't immediate and Tolkien wasn't the only author who evolved a multi-book format for fantasy around this time - C.S. Lewis and Mervyn Peake also did, and Peake particularly was hugely influential but tends to get completely overlooked by people blind to his work - but that's a separate discussion for the most part. By the 1980s, though, this multi-book structure was becoming increasingly "how fantasy fiction is written" and that remains true to this day (even as fewer authors are restrained to just a trilogy). Because Tolkien wasn't the only one doing this, I think the bigger direct impact he had here is demonstrating the success of "doorstoppers" - Frank Herbert did likewise.

So this is the lesser impact of these two 1a ones if we look at how much Tolkien directly did.

Worldbuilding

This is the big one for fantasy fiction. Prior to Tolkien, worldbuilding tended to be done either on the fly, as the story demanded (i.e. what would be cool/tonally appropriate), or to exist largely in the head of the author. That's not to say people hadn't done worldbuilding before, but Tolkien's approach is what made worldbuilding into this massive thing it is today, and foundational to most fantasy fiction, utilized by most fantasy authors, and so on.

Tolkein took this approach of building the world and its history, myths, stories and so on before writing the books, and allowing that to inform the books. This is not the approach C.S. Lewis used, it doesn't seem to be the one Peake used (Le Guin did to a large extent IIRC but she is later and was influenced/inspired by and reacting to/against Tolkein, as she has discussed), nor is it the approach REH or others used.

Not all fantasy now uses this - some of the best fantasy authors of the 1980s through 2000s did not, for example, like Gene Wolfe and China Miéville, among others. But it is pretty much the default approach now, and the vast majority of fantasy writers use it - it also informs a lot of scriptwriting/screenwriting, videogame writing, etc. Everyone from George R. R. Martin to N.K. Jemisin to Joe Abercrombie to Brandon Sanderson has used it, and often talked about it with reference to Tolkein.

If you want to point to one massive thing and say "Tolkien did this", this is it.

Influence on the subjects and nature of fantasy fiction

Now this is where Tolkien's influence gets vastly overstated, usually by people who don't actually read much fantasy fiction.

I've frequently seen people - including people on these boards, claim that basically all or the vast majority of fantasy fiction is about elves/dwarves/halflings/orcs etc. This is not true. The reverse is true. The vast majority of fantasy fiction does not feature those. In most cases it doesn't even have close analogs. Dragons are extremely common but hardly invented or popularized by Tolkien, and elves or elf-like beings are somewhat common, but again, they're rarely much like the elegiac ultra-long-lived breeding-with-humans ubermensch that Tolkien's elves were, instead tending to be more alien.

Nor is the whole kind of epic-journey, small band of heroes approach actually even close to dominant in fantasy fiction. It's not uncommon, but it's nowhere near the dominant form, nor even represents a plurality of fantasy fiction written in the last 30-40 years (nor further back). Bildungsroman and war stories (which LotR isn't, really, in this sense) are both certainly more common, as is fantasy that is sort of "a story", without the direction and focus LotR had.

Tolkien's writing style and choice of elements to focus on has proven distinctly unpopular, too - we just don't get landscape descriptions like that, nor extensive discussions of lineage or the like.

Nor are the themes of LotR much-pursued. Particularly that ultimately, LotR is about things getting worse, the world getting dimmer and sadder (but being saved from a huge horror), and how industrialization is real bad, maaaan.

Influence on fantasy games (board, TT RPG, video, etc.).

Not going to discuss this in detail, indeed, I'll just break it down - Tolkien's indirect influence is huge, but it's very indirect. Primarily it flows through three routes:

1) Tolkien's influence on D&D - I think most people here know this is limited and far less than some people imagine, but absolutely D&D's races, and probably the entire notion that there are a bunch of fully non-human fully sentient races around is basically derived from Tolkien (i.e. not just "there are humans and there are elf-y people", but rather there are humans, elves, dwarves, orcs/goblins, ents, etc. etc.). When I say fully non-human I mean they're not altered humans, mutants, degenerated, etc. etc. who were common in Conan etc. This is particularly the case with very human-looking, human-acting races. This influence then flows through D&D, profoundly and permanently altered, to other sources. This leads to:

1a) D&D's general influence on a huge proportion of fantasy games.

2) D&D and Tolkien's influence on Warhammer Fantasy. Both D&D and Tolkien more directly influenced a lot of ideas in Warhammer Fantasy, which went on to be very significantly influential on certain video games, particularly Warcraft (which itself was influenced once more directly by D&D as well as Warhammer).

3) D&D's and Wizardry's influence on Japanese videogames, particularly via Final Fantasy initially. Wizardry was obviously itself influenced directly by D&D, but both D&D itself and Wizardry had a huge influence on a lot of Japanese videogames, where Tolkien himself did not, so we have this sort of indirect double-D&D-influenced path, which profoundly changed Japanese (and later Korean and to some extent Chinese videogames).

TLDR: The real issue right now with Tolkien though is that people want to say "It's all Tolkien lol!" re: fantasy and think they're smart, and it's simply not true. Tolkien's biggest impact on fantasy fiction and perhaps SF too was how he approached worldbuilding, not what was in his world/stories. But with games, both some of the content of his stories - generally indirectly via D&D - and the concept of worldbuilding became hugely important. But the huge impact of other authors on fantasy fiction and particularly on D&D (which is massively more primarily influential than Tolkien, love it or hate, at this point) is increasingly being forgotten/overwritten by young Millennials and Gen Z people who, for example, have never read any Moorcock. Moorcock was a massive influence on both D&D and Warhammer, I would argue bigger than than Tolkien, but his (and others, like Peake) influence being underestimated is insanely more common than Tolkien's influence being downplayed excessively now. We're genuinely at a point where Moorcock has almost entirely been written out fantasy history, simply because basically no-one under 45 has read his stuff, and some of the few that do don't understand the chronology involved. We used to be able to rely on good old internet oneupsmanship and gotchas to accidentally educate a lot of people on this, but now there are so many people don't think any author except Tolkien has had any meaningful impact on fantasy that they just drown out or in some cases, literally downvote people who give out more accurate information about this because the now-majority would need to admit they were wrong/oversimplifying.

EDIT - LOL sorry this is the SUPER SHORT ULTRA CUT DOWN CONDENSED version of this - to write it properly would likely take days, weeks if I cited properly. Maybe I should do a graduate degree or something.

 

[Mind of tempest]

As someone who has been both a Tolkien-hater and also kind of Tolkien-fan over his lifetime, who has been fascinated by both his influence and lack thereof I think, that, boring as it is to say, people tend to go to extremes on this, and that's what leads them to being wrong. People also confuse direct and indirect influence, and mistake one for the other constantly.

In the 1990s, and even a bit in the '00s even after the LotR movies, it was actually more common in fantasy TT RPG and fantasy fiction circles to excessively downplay Tolkien's influence. However, since then, the situation has flipped, and become more extreme than it ever was. It's much more common now, in 2024, and has been for a few years, for people to assert that literally all fantasy fiction is derivative from Tolkien at this point (mostly untrue, but with a major exception, which I'll outline), that all fantasy games are influenced by his work (this is actually a lot closer to true but still confuses direct and indirect influence, which leads to people not understanding the evolution of certain tropes/concepts).

I think it's worth separating Tolkein's influence into two areas:

1) Influence on fantasy fiction (primarily books still).

2) Influence on fantasy games (board, TT RPG, video, etc.). - I won't discuss this in detail at this time because we'd be here for months.

Tolkien's influence on fantasy fiction can itself be broken down into two major areas as well:

1a) Influence on how fantasy fiction is written/conceived.

1b) Influence on the subjects and nature of fantasy fiction.

Tolkien's influence on how fantasy fiction is written/conceived is absolutely huge, and hasn't got significantly smaller over time, in part because it has proven quite popular with audiences to write this way and thus profitable for publishers. You're going to hate me but Tolkien's influence on how fantasy fiction is written/conceived can also also be broken down into two major areas:

1a-i) Length and structure of stories told.

1a-ii) Worldbuilding.

Length and structure of stories told.

Prior to Tolkien, most fantasy writing is either short stories, relatively short novels, or "myth cycle"-type deals. Tolkein kind of wanted to write the latter and took some shots at it (later leading to the Silmarillion etc.), but he ended up creating essentially a new form, which was a sequence of extremely-long novels, written not in the language of myth, but largely in language accessible to a reasonably well-educated (but not elite) British reader from the 1940s, yet with a setting that wasn't a secret world or the like, but a true fantasy one (perhaps in the past, but Tolkien went back and forth on that).

The impact of this wasn't immediate and Tolkien wasn't the only author who evolved a multi-book format for fantasy around this time - C.S. Lewis and Mervyn Peake also did, and Peake particularly was hugely influential but tends to get completely overlooked by people blind to his work - but that's a separate discussion for the most part. By the 1980s, though, this multi-book structure was becoming increasingly "how fantasy fiction is written" and that remains true to this day (even as fewer authors are restrained to just a trilogy). Because Tolkien wasn't the only one doing this, I think the bigger direct impact he had here is demonstrating the success of "doorstoppers" - Frank Herbert did likewise.

So this is the lesser impact of these two 1a ones if we look at how much Tolkien directly did.

Worldbuilding

This is the big one for fantasy fiction. Prior to Tolkien, worldbuilding tended to be done either on the fly, as the story demanded (i.e. what would be cool/tonally appropriate), or to exist largely in the head of the author. That's not to say people hadn't done worldbuilding before, but Tolkien's approach is what made worldbuilding into this massive thing it is today, and foundational to most fantasy fiction, utilized by most fantasy authors, and so on.

Tolkein took this approach of building the world and its history, myths, stories and so on before writing the books, and allowing that to inform the books. This is not the approach C.S. Lewis used, it doesn't seem to be the one Peake used (Le Guin did to a large extent IIRC but she is later and was influenced/inspired by and reacting to/against Tolkein, as she has discussed), nor is it the approach REH or others used.

Not all fantasy now uses this - some of the best fantasy authors of the 1980s through 2000s did not, for example, like Gene Wolfe and China Miéville, among others. But it is pretty much the default approach now, and the vast majority of fantasy writers use it - it also informs a lot of scriptwriting/screenwriting, videogame writing, etc. Everyone from George R. R. Martin to N.K. Jemisin to Joe Abercrombie to Brandon Sanderson has used it, and often talked about it with reference to Tolkein.

If you want to point to one massive thing and say "Tolkien did this", this is it.

Influence on the subjects and nature of fantasy fiction

Now this is where Tolkien's influence gets vastly overstated, usually by people who don't actually read much fantasy fiction.

I've frequently seen people - including people on these boards, claim that basically all or the vast majority of fantasy fiction is about elves/dwarves/halflings/orcs etc. This is not true. The reverse is true. The vast majority of fantasy fiction does not feature those. In most cases it doesn't even have close analogs. Dragons are extremely common but hardly invented or popularized by Tolkien, and elves or elf-like beings are somewhat common, but again, they're rarely much like the elegiac ultra-long-lived breeding-with-humans ubermensch that Tolkien's elves were, instead tending to be more alien.

Nor is the whole kind of epic-journey, small band of heroes approach actually even close to dominant in fantasy fiction. It's not uncommon, but it's nowhere near the dominant form, nor even represents a plurality of fantasy fiction written in the last 30-40 years (nor further back). Bildungsroman and war stories (which LotR isn't, really, in this sense) are both certainly more common, as is fantasy that is sort of "a story", without the direction and focus LotR had.

Tolkien's writing style and choice of elements to focus on has proven distinctly unpopular, too - we just don't get landscape descriptions like that, nor extensive discussions of lineage or the like.

Nor are the themes of LotR much-pursued. Particularly that ultimately, LotR is about things getting worse, the world getting dimmer and sadder (but being saved from a huge horror), and how industrialization is real bad, maaaan.

Influence on fantasy games (board, TT RPG, video, etc.).

Not going to discuss this in detail, indeed, I'll just break it down - Tolkien's indirect influence is huge, but it's very indirect. Primarily it flows through three routes:

1) Tolkien's influence on D&D - I think most people here know this is limited and far less than some people imagine, but absolutely D&D's races, and probably the entire notion that there are a bunch of fully non-human fully sentient races around is basically derived from Tolkien (i.e. not just "there are humans and there are elf-y people", but rather there are humans, elves, dwarves, orcs/goblins, ents, etc. etc.). When I say fully non-human I mean they're not altered humans, mutants, degenerated, etc. etc. who were common in Conan etc. This is particularly the case with very human-looking, human-acting races. This influence then flows through D&D, profoundly and permanently altered, to other sources. This leads to:

1a) D&D's general influence on a huge proportion of fantasy games.

2) D&D and Tolkien's influence on Warhammer Fantasy. Both D&D and Tolkien more directly influenced a lot of ideas in Warhammer Fantasy, which went on to be very significantly influential on certain video games, particularly Warcraft (which itself was influenced once more directly by D&D as well as Warhammer).

3) D&D's and Wizardry's influence on Japanese videogames, particularly via Final Fantasy initially. Wizardry was obviously itself influenced directly by D&D, but both D&D itself and Wizardry had a huge influence on a lot of Japanese videogames, where Tolkien himself did not, so we have this sort of indirect double-D&D-influenced path, which profoundly changed Japanese (and later Korean and to some extent Chinese videogames).

TLDR: The real issue right now with Tolkien though is that people want to say "It's all Tolkien lol!" re: fantasy and think they're smart, and it's simply not true. Tolkien's biggest impact on fantasy fiction and perhaps SF too was how he approached worldbuilding, not what was in his world/stories. But with games, both some of the content of his stories - generally indirectly via D&D - and the concept of worldbuilding became hugely important. But the huge impact of other authors on fantasy fiction and particularly on D&D (which is massively more primarily influential than Tolkien, love it or hate, at this point) is increasingly being forgotten/overwritten by young Millennials and Gen Z people who, for example, have never read any Moorcock. Moorcock was a massive influence on both D&D and Warhammer, I would argue bigger than than Tolkien, but his (and others, like Peake) influence being underestimated is insanely more common than Tolkien's influence being downplayed excessively now. We're genuinely at a point where Moorcock has almost entirely been written out fantasy history, simply because basically no-one under 45 has read his stuff, and some of the few that do don't understand the chronology involved. We used to be able to rely on good old internet oneupsmanship and gotchas to accidentally educate a lot of people on this, but now there are so many people don't think any author except Tolkien has had any meaningful impact on fantasy that they just drown out or in some cases, literally downvote people who give out more accurate information about this because the now-majority would need to admit they were wrong/oversimplifying.

EDIT - LOL sorry this is the SUPER SHORT ULTRA CUT DOWN CONDENSED version of this - to write it properly would likely take days, weeks if I cited properly. Maybe I should do a graduate degree or something.

we need a video explaining this to the modern reader I know who moorcock is as the chaos guy and where Warhammer stole from but nothing else.

a grand explanation of fantasy cannon would be useful devided in eras

 

[Ruin Explorer]

we need a video explaining this to the modern reader I know who moorcock is as the chaos guy and where Warhammer stole from but nothing else.

a grand explanation of fantasy cannon would be useful devided in eras

Yeah that's a good point - it would really need to be a video or series of TikToks or something.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Yeah that's a good point - it would really need to be a video or series of TikToks or something.

TikTok is too short form, but youtube has sufficient video size to do it properly.

 

[Mannahnin]

Great post. I agree with nearly every word of it.

But the huge impact of other authors on fantasy fiction and particularly on D&D (which is massively more primarily influential than Tolkien, love it or hate, at this point) is increasingly being forgotten/overwritten by young Millennials and Gen Z people who, for example, have never read any Moorcock. Moorcock was a massive influence on both D&D and Warhammer, I would argue bigger than than Tolkien, but his (and others, like Peake) influence being underestimated is insanely more common than Tolkien's influence being downplayed excessively now. We're genuinely at a point where Moorcock has almost entirely been written out fantasy history, simply because basically no-one under 45 has read his stuff, and some of the few that do don't understand the chronology involved.

It doesn't help that (IMO) the later Elric books (but many of them earlier in in-world chronology) just aren't as good/fun/accessible. So it's too easy for folks to try to start them in in-world chronological order and bounce off, because Moorcock was writing more for himself and for folks who had already fallen in love with the character by the time he wrote those. I always advise people to read him in publication order.

 

[Scribe]

EDIT - LOL sorry this is the SUPER SHORT ULTRA CUT DOWN CONDENSED version of this - to write it properly would likely take days, weeks if I cited properly. Maybe I should do a graduate degree or something.

A great post I dont have time to engage with fully but I agree with a lot of it. Re: Moorcock, I really want this stuff to be remembered, its formative.

 

[Mind of tempest]

should we make these video/videos?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Starship Troopers isn't nearly as clever as fans of the movie want it to be.

(And Heinlein, for all of his flashes of brilliance, climbed fully up his own butt in the 1960s and never came out.)

 

[CleverNickName]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.