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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ciaran00" data-source="post: 1366653" data-attributes="member: 12493">From my reading/writing experience, two things:1) The (more or less) unchallenged superiority of classical myth (of whatever culture), partially because the classics had less pressure to excel and partially because they had the luxury of having their ideas first.a) As far as the "less pressure" issue goes, this is evident in every creative field. I can name the great physicists of past decades, but the current ones really do elude me. The same goes for authors (Homer comes more easily than... say... Brett Easton Ellis). We exist, in many ways, in an age of mediocrity, where we are expected to fail. No wonder so many of us give up. Homer had less (or no) Homers to live up to.b) A giant with a single eye idea is now gone as far as inventing a new idea goes. We can't really call a shadowy figure with a caul and scythe original, even if it were conceived in a vacuum. Are there limits to human creativity? Maybe not, but there is certainly a MASSIVE effect of diminishing returns.2) People are stupid and uncreative.a) Guys like Tolkein and Jordan don't have the energy to create an utterly unique concept (the point at which authors fall apart varies, but most often-- unfortunately and tragically-- it shows up). What's worse, unlike the classics, they have no culture to draw from (the one they live in is vastly different from what they're trying to write about). Nonetheless, whereas I think that in entertainment prospects like D&D co-opting of popular myth is fine, the Dante-style plagaristic critique/nonsense is intolerable in literature. That reworking of Arthurian myth concept is flawed because something better (originality) exists and is achievable.ciaran</blockquote>

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