Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2293109" data-attributes="member: 19675">Sound familiar?I did this to ask explicitly what I've been puzzling at for some time in this thread: If a storyteller takes a plotline from one genre into another, does that story remain irrevocably part of the original genre regardless of the storyteller's alteration?I ask this because there seems to be a line of thought in this thread that would say yes. (Various persons who feel that because they see an archetypal fantasy storyline in Star Wars, Star Wars must be fantasy, and as must be obvious by now, I beg to differ! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )It is, I feel, an important question, considering how many writers retell the stories of others.  Niven retells Beowulf in Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf's Children while Crighton does it in 13th Warrior, Rodenberry retells Moby Dick in Wrath of Kahn and retraces Pinnochio in the character Data, Disney's Lion King retells Hamlet.  (Shakespeare, as has been pointed out before, is a common target for retelling...)So: Once a story has been told in a particular genre, can it ever be transformed into anything else?Please- show me another literary form outside of fantasy or its forbears in epic poetry, mythology and theology where GOD/S alter the way the universe works in order to save their followers and lay low the faithfull's attackers.I would argue that Ged/Sparrowhawk from LeGuin's Earthsea series does just that.  The character who becomes the Archmage starts as utter novice.  He learns magery, first tutored by a local mage, then at the great school of Roke Island.  Along his path of increasing power, you see him alter from impatience, impetuousness and brash behavior (such as when he tries to go beyond the wall of death and summon a spirit from beyond because of a dare) to a wise and powerful man who understands that restraint is as much a part of life as action.  Eventually, he surrenders all of his power to become a farmer.Not only does the man change, but the way he shapes power evolves as well.  His early uses of power are direct, cause-and-effect type spells.  Later, he uses magic without even seeming to.  Rather than using a bludgeon of raw power, he instead wields magic like a scalpel.  Rather than trading arcane blows with an ancient dragon, he converses with it as an equal...or a brother.  Where most storytellers would have an immense battle, LeGuin's Ged defuses the conflict.In a crude sense, this guy goes from being "Tim" to being "Gandalf."</blockquote>

Verification