Fantasy is dead, how women killed it | Maintaining Frame 182

Join us on the show as we react to and give our thoughts on the "This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings" video made by the Second Story. Does she have a point? Is she missing something?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Just jumping right into it. Hello, everybody, and welcome to
Honeybadger Radio. What hy oh? Are you trying to step
away already?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
No? No, no, all right, I'm back. I'm here already.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yes, Hello, we're live. Welcome, this is live hence the Shenanigans.
Welcome Tony Badger Radio. My name is Brian here Allison,
and this is maintaining frame number one eighty two. Actually
I could have made this a cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, probably, probably.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
We haven't done because we are talking about media. But
Paul Fantasy is dead. How women killed it? And we're
gonna be reacting to another video by the second Story
YouTuber that talks about writing because she is a writer
and so.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
From a very normy perspective.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean, honestly, yeah, she's she's not like, well no,
I think she just really cares about the craft of writing.
So yeah, you know, it's it's it is definitely no perspective,
but yeah, it's it's nice to be that ignorant that
you can just No, I don't mean it as an insult.
I mean, you know, like I missed the days of

(02:00):
when I was ignorant your.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Way, you know, but then but then you would be
asking yourself, why is this happening?

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, yeah, why is everything going to crap? And and
you wouldn't have a working theory, nor would you have
been braced like myself I was. I was like I
was praying for the world in twenty nineteen, you know,
like I hope everybody gets through this because it ain't
gonna be fun. And then everything blew up in twenty twenty. So,

(02:28):
you know, I think that the benefit of our do
you want do do? We say its cynicism.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
I'm not cynical. I'm just saying, insight, it's a tremendous
it's a tremendous burden. It is is a tremendous burden.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yes, our burdens are tremendous, heavy, substantial, dense, They're very
they evolve a lot of gravity. But at the very least,
you know it does you know, nothing surprises us anymore.
We got the spoilers. We downloaded the script before even
the series was made, So there you go. Okay, So

(03:07):
the title of this is a bit of a misnomer,
and I will explain that forthwith. Yes, Well, I I
analyzed it like I went through I got the summary,
I read the transcript most of the transcripts, so she
specifically talks about ye olden days when fiction was formulaic

(03:28):
and uh, fantasy basically epic fantasy was basically a young
man defeats evil, right, and and you know that that's
sold very well. But she's saying that the reason why
we haven't had another Lord of the Rings is because
of the rise of this formulaic kind of fantasy. And

(03:50):
she points the finger at Delray Delray, was it del Yeah,
Delray Okay, tour gets a pass with this and and
and she says that that's why we haven't had another.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Well, there's a few, Yeah, there's a few people if
she talks about, Yeah, Lester Delray and his wife that
started the Delray publishing and they and Lester Delray was
primarily interested in pasting after the sort of mania that
Tolkien made with his Lord of the Rings movie or books, sorry,

(04:25):
his Lord of the Rings books, and they wanted that,
so he saw opportunities and so they started publishing. I
think we're sort of like saying her video for her
though we should, we should get into it, let her
speak for herself and then add our thoughts after. But
we're gonna be looking at this video. It's called this

(04:48):
is Why we Never got another Lord of the Rings.
It's talking about writing from the craft perspective with a
little bit of history, and she gives her thoughts on
on that, and we'll give ours as well. And yeah,
before we get into that, I guess you should do
the things.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Okay, So, if you would like to send us a
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(05:31):
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(05:53):
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(06:16):
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left with you know, a few hours left on the clock.

(06:39):
It's unusual that it comes to the wire like this.
But you know, it's also been a difficult month for
funding because we did our meetup, which I think was
very successful. You see this, This is the meetup graphic
perhaps you can see it. And I thought it was
very successful. People said it was a little intense, but
fun and you know, you got to talk to other
people who are life minded. Monique specifically said it was

(07:02):
a relief to talk to people who are who are
who are like minded to just get that pressure off.
She is the director of Parental Alienation Canada. I believe,
and also, you know, shout out to Monique. She's may
be able to do testimony at the National Coalition of

(07:23):
Women or National Organization of Women in Canada because they
are actually opposing the latest shared custody initiative as always,
because you know, they assert that there is bias against
women in family law. That's why we shouldn't erase the
bias by having a presumption of shared custody. Go figure, huh. Anyway,

(07:46):
so they're opposing that, Monique is trying to fight for it,
and she's going to be doing some testimony at the
committee about it, which is headed by the National Organization
for Women in Canada actually leading I think it's the
National Women's Lawyers Association of Canada. If you can believe it.
If you can believe it, like that's like two conflicts

(08:07):
of interest, people who directly feed off of divorce lawyers
and women who are currently enjoying bias for them in
divorce proceedings. So there you go, please support her. I
believe they have a website. It's a little bit confusing,
the stuff she sends me sometimes. So just take a look.

(08:28):
Parental alienation Canada, I believe is what it is. And yeah,
I'll give you more information if you're in the discord.
The information should be in the Actions Opportunities channel. Uh so, wow,
what a tangent. I did want to bring attention to that.
So but yeah, okay, just just cut it off. Cut
it off before I go anything.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Let's get into the video. I'm gonna let it play
a little bit of the intro. I do have some
time codes, so you know, don't worry. We're not going
to go through the whole thing. But uh, okay, here
we go.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
If you've been following me for any length of time,
then by now you should know how I feel about formulas.
Not to overstate things, but formulas in terms of their
overall impact on literature, the book industry, and storytelling as
a craft and an art destroy everything. But in this video,
what I want to focus on in particular is the
fantasy genre. I don't know if you know this, but

(09:27):
fantasy as a literary genre, with its section in the bookstore,
it's actually pretty new. There are some of you who
probably even remember a time before the fantasy genre. Not
that fantasy literature and storytelling didn't exist before. It certainly did.
And I'm not just talking about mythological tales and fairy stories,
but fantastical, inventive, groundbreaking, epic fantasy. But what I'm saying

(09:48):
is that fantasy as a type of story that people
tell has always existed.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Fantasy.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I'm just pausing it there. Yeah, so sort of setting
it up. We're not talking about comics, although she does,
uh have an understanding that the that the problems with
storytelling is not limited to fantasy. It's not limited to books.
She knows that it's a problem in film, television, games, yes,

(10:15):
even video games, comics, all of that. So you know,
she's pretty fair.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
What where did it come from? Well, where did the
wholesale destruction and smoking craters left behind?

Speaker 5 (10:29):
What?

Speaker 2 (10:29):
What are the what are the footprints? What's the foot
what's the monsters? You see these craters, gigantic monster footprints.
I wonder what left those?

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah? Yeah, that that's uh, that's something that she's not
touching on. I don't know if it's because she doesn't
know it or because she refuses to see it that way.
I know that a lot of people have blinders. But yes,
it's true. So like there's this guy or she's gonna
get into and to jump ahead, we.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Do have a message from Zarenx. Member.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Is it a super chat? What is it?

Speaker 6 (11:05):
It's it's like it's just in the chat.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I think it's like a member.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Oh, it's a member. It's a member message. Yeah, because
sometimes those things, those are weird because they don't show up. Yeah,
we said they haven't taken me out yet. As long
as I can breathe, I can think. As long as
I can think, I can create as poorly or nearly
I can. All right, thank you for that. Okay, So yeah,

(11:31):
she's gonna be talking about Lester del Rey, the publisher
that was sort of like on the coattails of Tolkien
to like make a buck basically, and and it gets
kind of this is the thing that it always bothers
me when I see it where something is just like,
oh there was greed, suddenly greed and that changes everything.

(11:51):
I just think it's a little bit of an oversimplification
because if somebody was simply greedy, they would just do
the thing that would make the most money that would
also attract the most people. So if you took greed
and mixed it with like, say, laziness, then yeah, maybe
you have a problem, but that probably has more to
do with the laziness than the greed.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
And the greed well, I mean, you can even look
at it this way. Capitalism gives people what they want. Yeah,
late stage capitalism, I guess tells people what they want,
but that usually requires some government interference.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Actually, yeah, whatever they mean by capitalism. Property rights basically,
which even my dog understands property rights.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Oh yeah, my dog understands property rights too. What's his
is his? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:41):
And fairness. You know, if you if you you offer
a treat and then snap it in half, he's like,
what what's that? I'm sorry that that's not that's not
fair exchange. You know, if you if you give him
a full treat for a trick, and then the next
time you give him half a treat, He's like, no, no, no, no,
that's not equipal in exchange. There, I deserve a full treat.

(13:03):
They know, they understand stuff like that, So they have
the basics of a property system, a private property system.
Most animals do, because it's something that's deeply instinctive. Fairness
and ownership are somethings that are fundamental to a lot,

(13:24):
like I think most mammals. Okay, so shall we continue?

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, let's jump ahead.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
So let's start. We're all discussions of the fantasy genre. Start.
Lord of the Rings just the father of all modern fantasy.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
We are Tolkien essentially created modern fantasy.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
Wrong.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Tolkien didn't create anything but a world and some stories
that took place in it. The fantasy genre was not
only not created by Tolkien, it had nothing at all
to do with Tolkien. While the modern fantasy genre as
we know it was being created, Tolkien was hanging out
with his buddy C. S. Lewis in England, teaching classes,
raising his kids, painting, and you know, doing Tolkien things

(14:05):
like talking to trees or whatever. But Martin's opinion here
is indicative of what is generally accepted to be true.
That fantasy as we know it today is the product
of J. R. R. Tolkien, But it's not. Have you
ever stopped to wonder why we've never had another Tolkien,
another Lord of the Rings, another universally captivating fantasy master work.

(14:26):
It's been almost one hundred years since The Lord of
the Rings was initially published in England and since that time,
the fantasy genre has, for one thing, come into existence,
but also has blossomed into a massive phenomenon all its own.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
All right, So, uh no, I don't look, don't she's
not insulting Tolkien. No, be saying that because this is
the thing. She gets into it a little bit later.
What she's saying is that Tolkien didn't create the modern

(14:59):
thing fantasy genre. He was just making fantasy without the
intention of altering the future. It's the people who stood
on his shoulders later that built what people call the
modern fantasy genre. And they say that Tolkien did it.
It was almost like the state of modern fantasy is

(15:20):
the fault of Tolkien, is how it's usually put. But
Tolkien didn't do that because what he did could not
be replaced, or at least hasn't been yet. And that's
what she's saying, Like, has there been anything? Have we
had a Lord of the Ring since Lord of the Rings?
And some people will say it's like, you know, what
is it the Game of Thrones books. I don't know

(15:41):
what the book series is called, but that's not it either.
That will be forgotten. It's not going to have the
lasting power of Lord of the rings, it's already losing
kind of like you know, it's luster, and it's not
just because of the TV adaptations. It's because it doesn't well,
I don't want to get into it now, but yeah,
that's I'm just saying, like, let's I'm being I'm trying

(16:04):
to explain her position so that we're not uncharitable, because
she's not shitting on Tolkien. She's not, but she is.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
She is contextualizing him, and she's right like the there
there were other fantasy writers before Tolkien, and there were
establishing tropes, so he he codified in a way, and
of course had a tremendous amount of original inspiration.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
And although fairy tales are basically old fantasy stories.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, and and there were other writers who were who
were writing like fantasy in the form of like fairy tales,
like Lewis Carrol. I think that's Alison. Yeah, and there
were others. I've read them. I forget the names. I'm
really bad at names. But there were others who were
doing these kinds of fantasy fairy tale adventure stories. And

(16:56):
he kind of codified this epic fantasy trope while inventing
a lot of stuff. But there was other there were
the tropes that he pulled out from already existed, and
you could argue that things like uh, the Nibelung, I
don't know how to pronounce that, but or the opera Wagner,
I believe the ring. Let me just okay, just give

(17:22):
me a second. I will codify all of this and
get all of the names correct.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah. I mean, when Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings,
I don't think he was If you asked him, I
don't think he would have said it's a fantasy. He
was trying to create an Anglo centric myth.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Poet, poet, poet, Well, he was trying to create an
Anglo centric a myth for the UK, and he was
drawing from Norse, Germanic and Anglo Saxon mythologies and uh,
and a lot of the stuff he was drawing from
was like Norse mythology specifically. You'll even a lot of

(18:02):
the names are comes directly from like the poet Eda,
also Beowulf, and yeah, and uh, let's see the Battle
of Meldon. Okay, so old English literay, epic literature. And
then okay, so where is the okay? There was there

(18:27):
was works with a Nourse background or nurse uh drawn
from Norse nourse mythology because there was some stuff that
he took from opera.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, he was taking from all over and he was
bringing it together as one thing. And he but like that.
Well again, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. But
Norwegian in the chat says Norwegian Black Templar said, Gandolf
means staff elf in Old Norse. So yeah, I mean
you can see. I mean, and he was like a

(19:09):
he was a wasn't he like a language professor? And
that was like he used that to like write create
his own languages because that's how detailed his worlds were.
Anybody else, I mean, maybe there are. I'm not saying
I'm not throwing shade at any other writers, but I'm
not sure that anyone else put as much dense detail

(19:30):
into their world building as Tolkien did. Yeah. I read
Silmarillion and I basically walked away holding on to very
like it's too much, too much to keep track of.
You know, you did make a corkboard with a bunch
of threads. I know who's what's what, but it didn't work, so.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Okay. So Wagner was another one. I think that specifically
Opera the wing of the Nibelung. And I think that
was another one that I mean, if you look at
fantasy is sort of like a direct parallel of fairy
tales and mythology, then those things were setting the foundation

(20:19):
for it. But I think ultimately her point is that
there were other authors working in this genre establishing a
lot of the tropes Tolkien made his world, and it
really was just sort of like the I think the
best story. I mean, it wasn't just the world building,
because I'm sure a lot of other people were doing
a lot of world building, or maybe they weren't doing

(20:39):
it in the same way. Maybe they were drawing it
much more directly from what preceded it, the fairy tales
and the mythology, and they weren't really thinking about making
this a living breathe or something that felt like a living,
breathing world at war. And Tolkien did that. And then
also the story that he set in this world was
you know, sort of unmatched. But I think her overall

(21:03):
point is that he is part of a continuity too. Yeah,
and you know, and because of that, Okay, well, let let's.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Get her, let's let her, let's never some more kind
of like lay it out, But I'm just saying she's
not condemning or attacking Tolkien. She's basically like adding context
to this claim that Martin is making, or and other
contemporaries have made all.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
The fantasy works and megaworks that get published every year,
Why has there never been one that was so unique,
so genuine, so pure in terms of creativity that it
became an overnight defining work of an entire civilization.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
I know, but also it wasn't overnight one of them.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
She says, Game of Thrones does not count, But go ahead, Allison.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
I will sort of agree with her with that Tolkien
wasn't an overnight success. It took time, like I can,
I can, uh, It took time for him to achieve
the success that he did for things to permeate, and
the people that he initially appealed to was part of
that success because I'm pretty sure he initially appealed to

(22:11):
basically students' college students. We can continue. I mean, I'm
just yeah, I'm just aggressive typing because I'm right.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
The first biggest issues I would like to point out
is that as wonderful and I mean wonderful as Tolkien is,
he didn't do anything that unusual. His books are absolutely magical.
His world building is god teer. But at a certain
point you have to take a step back and look
at it. At that point you realize that Tolkien's work,

(22:49):
while special and beloved and perfectly crafted, is not as
special as I think we've come to understand, in the
sense that it was never really intended to be one
of a kind. The main thing that kind of tricks
us into thinking his work is so one of a
kind is that there has never been anything like him since.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
My question is why is that?

Speaker 1 (23:11):
But that's okay.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
I have a few things to say. His success was
not immediate. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that there
was a strong suggestion that it was. His initial run
of The Hobbits of fifteen hundred books did sell out,
and it became a steady seller for the next couple decades.

(23:35):
His Lord of the Rings sold modestly in the UK,
about fifteen hundred sets by twenty nineteen sixty. And apparently
the breakthrough, like I was saying, was when there was
an unauthorized paperback edition created and the books became cheap
enough to be purchased more widely, and it got into

(24:00):
the college scene and the counter cultural scene, and then
these people were the ones that really drove the phenomenon
that is Tolkien.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yes, and he mentions that it blew up on college
campuses to the point where it was like the thing
to read, which you know, it creates parallels to Harry
Potter in that sense. I don't know if Harry Potter
is going whoop to see if it like continues to
remain like a massive phenomenon. But that's probably like the
second biggest or like another example of something that could

(24:36):
have the same kind of like you know, impact. But
I think with Lord of the Rings though, there's a
timing to it too. And this is something that when
she says, because I was talking about this with Lindsay today,
when she says, why hasn't there been one since? And
you know, I mean, I'm inclined to agree, and I
think the reason is because honestly, we the modern today

(25:00):
live in such comfort, or at least the ones that
are like out here publishing books, right, they it's hard
for them to draw from personal experience to write. And
what I mean is like Tolkien was in World War
One and was he was in the Psalm, which was
like the most brutal part of World War One as

(25:21):
far as I know, and he got out of there,
and so like, there's no way. And then you add
on top of that that he was like a devout
Christian Anglican, and that he was involved with language, and
he had his own family and his children, all of
those factors, and there's no way that someone that's been
through as much as he did couldn't write something amazing,

(25:44):
even if when he was asked by like journalists and interviewers,
they'd be like, oh, is this an allegory for something?
You're trying to say something and he would be like, no,
it's not allegorical. But like, there's no way that his
personal experiences in the war and you know, with everything
else and his faith and everything did not in any
way play a role, especially because he did come home

(26:07):
after all of that. And I think that like people
who have these experiences, when they apply them in their writing,
and they don't have to like do a self insert,
but like they're applying what they saw in their writing
and they're good with language, you're going to get like
something one of a kind, right, one in a lifetime thing.

(26:30):
And I think with JK. Rowling, there's some there are
some parallels too, because if I remember correctly, and maybe
I'm wrong, but wasn't JK. Rowling like homeless at some point?
She had like a really hard life and then she
wrote those books. So like, I think that's the thing.
There's like something authentic that comes out of your writing

(26:50):
based on your own life experience and the timing of
all of that with what Tolkien to put out there,
plus what was happening in the world even after World
War One, you know, and we got World War Two,
and then we got like, you know, all these all
this other sort of like the Bolshevik re revolution, et cetera.
And the books feel timely because of everything that was happening,

(27:13):
which is why I think it resonated with college campuses,
like those kids were you know, there was like all
of these sixties like revolution things were going on, the
Cold War was going on, and so it all felt
really relevant. It was almost like being creative and making
fiction around that time period was it was almost like

(27:33):
the perfect moment to have something come out, right. I
think that was That's why I think that's one of
the reasons why Tolkien's book it was not to say
that it's a complete like that he's lucky that everything
like he happened to be right in a story at
that time. But what I'm saying is is that all
of these factors probably came together to make it just
the right time for a story like that to come along.

(27:55):
And I'm you know, it's why I think the Marvel
comics took off too, because again it was the timing.
It was like they were taking the furniture out of
the studio and Stanley was about to lose everything, and
his wife said, just make whatever you want, and he
decided to write something that was like of the time
he made The Fantastic Four, and it blew up, and
in particular, it blew up on college campuses amongst the counterculture,

(28:18):
and so it became a really big thing for that.
And then like in the seventies, just last example, you know,
when we were at a time of economic disparities and
everything was really bad, like it was after Vietnam and
the American economy was in the toilet and everybody was poor,
and Sylvester Salone releases Rocky, which is exactly what the

(28:42):
story that people needed at that moment. And around the
same time, we got the Superman movie, so like, when
you look at the stuff that succeeded, it was always
like at the right time, done by the right people
because it's what we needed. And I think that's that's
also true with this anyway. That's all.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Sorry, So I'm actually talking to Mike. We had a
potential recording disaster, but I think that it's been resolved.
We actually went through The King of the Hill for
its woke elements, and then we looked at the ick
list and it was like a two hour project and
I was like, oh shit, I don't see it in

(29:21):
descript But then I just I like, look through the
and I finally found it. So I just told Mike
because Mike is like, where is it? Where is it? Woman?
And I'm like, no, I got it. I got it.
I didn't. I didn't. I didn't screw up. So sorry,
that was what I was dealing with. Most likely. I
agreed with everything you said.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Brian, No problem, no problem. I was just saying, I
think it's just like like that. I think that's what
it is. But this is why I think that Martin's
books are well, we're going to get into that, because
she does talk about Martin but let's go back a
teeny bit.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
Here we go certain things that are different than what
I would do.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
I don't know about you, but I find all this
incredibly teap Let's.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Look at these headlines because she this. You didn't read
this because you look at the transcript. But this is
like what the issue is. So you have like a
bunch of like more modern authors, or at least post
Tolkien authors, and they're all kind of like comparing themselves
to Tolkien. Now this again, I don't think this is
Tolkien's doing. I think this is like the industry reacting

(30:29):
to Tolkien's work, and then you have other authors reacting
to the industry through Tolkien, like, oh, I'm not like him,
I'm doing something different. Right, So Pratchett, Terry Pratchett takes
swipe at Tolkien as he wins his first award. Okay, again,
if you like Discworld, I get it, Like they're clever books.
But this is just like the dynamic that's at play here. Okay, yes,

(30:53):
this is Philip Pullman. I don't know what he wrote,
but I guess he's an author. Tolkien is thin stuff.
I'm going to be the ant Michael moore Cock. I
think he's the guy who wrote el Rick. Yeah, I
think Tolkien was a crypto fascist. Just what we needed
to hear, Michael.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
A massive self insert. Yeah, I think that your Champion,
Eternal Champion is like just a series of self inserts. Okay, wow, sorry, no,
it's okay.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I never read Elrick, but I remember. I remember my
kind of like edgy high school friends were like really
into him, and I was like, looks a little try
hard to me. I don't know, but if you guys
have read el Rick or any of those books, let
me know what you know. Am I completely off the
mark or what? So Pullman wrote the Golden Compass? I see, Yes,

(31:53):
Tolkien was a war veteran. I know that. I think
that means something, you know, like Tom Clancy wasn't he
also like a veteran too, or in the Secret Service
or something. And that's why his books are really popular. Like,
I guess he brings something authentic to the storytelling because
he has personal experience. So Kirkster not says and lost
respect for more cock. Yeah, okay, I got a super chow.

(32:16):
I know. As soon as you start saying so and
so is a crypto fascist, that's like, uh, I'm checked out.
Zarring says for five it could be comfort dulling us.
That's made it so, there's no other author on Tolkien's level.
It could be the Prussian school system destroys childhood creativity.
There's also walls put up with the idea of protracting children,

(32:37):
therefore prolonging adolescence. See how so many come up with
ideas to gate various things because the mind fully forms
around twenty five years old through though college graduate students
read essays written by fifteen year olds. The last bit
comes from former New York City teacher John Taylor, Gotto,
we reduce the world around children, create isolation, and somehow

(33:00):
we're surprised with what's currently happening. Weird. Weird. Yes, that's
that's what I'm saying when I said, I think it's
because we have it. It's too safe. Our world is
too safe. It's weird as that sounds. I know people
are thinking we're still kind of in a PSD stamp
TSD state from the last probably like seven years, but

(33:23):
I think that's true. So all right, anyway, do you
want me to play some more? Do you have something
at well?

Speaker 3 (33:29):
I think I.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Triggered someone in the In the special chat, Hayden's like,
this is a bad take, probably referring to the title
fantasy is Dead, how women killed it? Because I can
name a dozen high quality authors making male focused fantasy
without trying. Nobody is gatekeeping Maslin or Red Rising or
Sun Eater. You know, they also didn't start in the

(33:51):
last five years. They're massive and talked about NonStop for
the very reasons you were saying are dead. Okay, you
don't like that, do you that I said that fantasy
is dead and I'm blaming women for it. You don't
like that? You don't like it? Okay, let's keep going.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
All right, Let's keep going.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
And then oh, I'm going to be the ant the grim.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Dark genre and why I hate it? So the grip
the grim dark? Okay, r Martin Hope punk. This is
something I saw this term hope punk. Did you guys hear?
It's a new genre of writing conceived of as the
opposite of grim dark. Works in the hope punk subgenre
have characters fighting for positive change, radical kindness, and communal

(34:42):
responses to challenges. So they're good guys. So this is
like the way we've been telling stories forever and it's back.
It's Hope Punk. I like how they're always rebranding things.
Is something new that's obviously not new? Wait wait, I

(35:02):
got this great idea. We're going to have heroes that
are good and they're going to fight for what's right,
and they're going to work hard through all kinds of
tribulations no matter what, but they're going to come out
on top in the end. What do you think, Oh
my god, I've never heard of this before, Hope Punk.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
It's so silly, guys, Maybe you could just write your
damn story. The main thing to look at here is
that Martin, like most or all modern fantasy writers, has
defined himself in part by how different he is from
what he sees as the legacy of J. R. R.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Tolkien.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
That right there is a pretty decent encapsulation of the
current fantasy publishing industry. It is a bottomless salad of
tropes and formulas and then some verted tropes and counter formulas,
with nothing unique or original or even just purely the
creation of its author.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
But how did we get here?

Speaker 3 (35:53):
How did we arrive in a world where people proudly
refer to Game of Thrones as the American Lord of
the rings something that's seriously concerns me in a way.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
However, yeah, no way. I never liked Game of Thrones.
I tried to watch the first episode. I had to
watch the first season, and I was just not interested.
I just didn't like anyone in it. And I was like, yeah,
I can't I don't have any better root for I'm
not watching this. And people were like, oh man, it's
so different though, so yeah, that's probably why it's bad.

(36:24):
So I don't know, But what were we gonna say.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I originally watched like an episode in I think the
first season with my father, and I was like, this
is the most boring stuff I've ever watched, and then
I never watched anything now. But then I ended up,
for the sake of integrity, watching all the seasons, all
of them, and I can definitively say that it is

(36:52):
not my cup of tea. That I enjoyed very little
of it. However, I can recognize that Martin is good
at subversion. He's good at creating very memorable characters with
interesting dialogue that nevertheless are quite nasty, and he had

(37:13):
there was a few moments where there was like a
few few subplots that I thought were entertaining. Unlike most people,
I couldn't stand Ned Stark. I think that's one of
the big things that makes me different than the detractors
and the reason why I'm like, I'm totally one hundred
percent in in the Robert. I am a Robert stan

(37:36):
I think Robert was misunderstood. He knew what was up,
he knew what to focus on. He was totally fucked
by being married to brother screwer and generally unpleasant human being. Seriously,
and uh, I my, my real the big tragedy of
their first season wasn't Ned's death, It was Robert, Like again,

(38:03):
what really aggravated me about it? It was Robert was
one right about Denarius. She had to be neutralized. She
was basically a nuclear threat walking around and Ned was like, ah,
as well, oh girl, I'm like what what what do
you think she's She's raising an army, even moron, and

(38:23):
Robert correctly identified that that was a huge threat and
it needed to be neutralized. And what did everybody do, Oh,
Robert's the bad guy, Niel's the good guy, or Ned's
the good guy. Ned was a damn hypocrite and he
didn't know what the hell he was doing. There's a
difference between being good and being stupid, all right, I know,

(38:45):
and a lot of people like Ned, so.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
That's fine.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
But yeah, even the people who don't like the show
liked Ned so and they ended the show because Ned
died and I was like, no, this is I always
got the feeling that Ned was a pretense or sort
of like a construction, as if, oh, well, this is
going to be a subversion, like the good guy's supposed

(39:10):
to win and make it no, no, no, And I
always never trusted Ned because of that. Maybe it's just
not necessarily on the level of the character Ned, just
the written quality Ned. But anyway, there's my game.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Is trying to be subversive, but you can make predictions
based on your understanding of what, like you're able to
predict the subversive nature. Does it fail at being subversive then?
Because I said when I watched the first season and
people were like talking about how, oh my god, anybody

(39:44):
could die at anytime, you just don't know. And I said,
you know, who I think is gonna live to the
end and they were like who, And I was like,
the dwarf is going to look at the end And
they were like, well, how do you know. It's like,
because I can tell that Martin likes this character because
he has all the best lines, and he was like
an immediate favorite because he always knew what to say.

(40:05):
And he's also the least likely to survive, just based
on the fact that he's this little tiny, like not
even like a magical dwarf, just like a short person,
you know. And he did. He lived to the end.
And I was like, I told you, like, it's always like,
well what oh, and who they make King the crippled
guy that the kid that got crippled in the beginning
of the show, he was the one who ends up.

(40:27):
I don't know if that's the way the book is
supposed to end, but probably you know. And John snow
was was not going to become even though like he
was completely set up to, like, you know, become like
the guy. And I was like, no, it's not going
to be him. They want us to think that, but
we know that he's being subversive. So because we know
that he's being subversive, then this is impossible. So like
what I'm saying is is that this becomes and that's

(40:48):
what she's saying too. So you don't like a formula
of storytelling, like and we're in this case talking about
fantasy storytelling, right, which because it comes out of or
is inspired by Tolkien set up, and they create a
formula of fantasy storytelling. And there are things that that
are that you know, these publishers del rey the book.

(41:10):
The book publishers are expecting everyone has to follow because
they want the same success that Lord of the Rings had.
And then you get like people who are like, well,
I'm gonna do the opposite of that, and so they
do is they invert everything and they do the reverse.
But that just becomes its own formula. So you can
just predict things because now you know they're working with
the in opposite world and bizarre world, and you can

(41:31):
just make predictions based on that. And then it's almost like, well,
then what's the purpose of subversion if you can predict it?
You know? Yeah, I mean I don't know. I'm not
saying you can't use it. I just think that it's
not it's it's it's not done well a lot of
the time. So anyway, watch some more.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
I mean I was gonna say that I don't think
that Sun Rising Sun Eater is comparable to Lord of
the Rings in this manner.

Speaker 5 (42:05):
But.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
I guess it did pretty well. Okay, let's keep going.
It was published in nineteen eight or sorry, twenty eighteen.
The other sun Eater, Yeah, the other suggestions in that
list were either were published in nineteen ninety nine was
started and Maslin was started in nineteen ninety line, and

(42:27):
the other one was started in twenty fourteen, which had
very different publishing environments than today. So if it would
even argue that twenty eighteen was a very different published environment,
but let's continue.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
I almost can't even blame Martin. After all, he is
the inheritor of a genre that was killed in the crib.
Fantasy as a literary genre never had a chance. The
road that Tolkien opened up for writers and publishers with
the megapopularity of The Lord of the Rings was then
paved by writers and publishers eager to explore this new
literary concept, but by an opportunistic salesman who looked at

(43:06):
the Lord of the Rings growing popularity and saw only
dollar signs. I'm talking about Lester del Rey. This is
the man who made fantasy into a serious and marketable
literary genre, and who also killed fantasy before it ever
even had a chance to come into its own Let's
back up a little bit to nineteen fifty bold words.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Huh yeah, I think she makes a good case though. Okay,
so we're gonna talk about the paperbacks of You mentioned
the paperbacks that blew up Lord of the Rings and
made it into a gigantic phenomenon, probably because it was
affordable to young people. So yeah, let's keep going.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Volume of Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the
Ring was published in hardcover.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
In America, quickly by the Rest trilogy.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
I don't know if you know this, but when this happened,
it was a massive cultural phenomenon. Newspapers were compared the
fanatical popularity of Tolkien's masterpiece to Beatlemania, especially on campuses,
where the book had become the novel of choice for
youth in general, supplanting even the Catcher in the rye.
America was experiencing major cultural unrest that would change Western

(44:16):
civilization forever. JFK had just been assassinated, America was entering
the war in Vietnam. Rock music was gaining ground, and
evolving racial issues were consuming the news. Morals were shifting,
The sexual revolution was shifting into high gear. The cultural
landscape of America was changing seismically. Now throw into that

(44:36):
mess this deceptively simple and incredible book, a story that
resonated with almost everyone across almost all demographics. Even if
you weren't there, you can still imagine how this cosmically
perfect timing resulted in something that hadn't ever happened, at
least not in America and not recently. The Lord of
the Rings affected everything culturally, And by culturally I.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
Mean mainly the arts.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Elves and orcs and dark lords were suddenly everywhere. That
was in the earliest days of this phenomenon due exclusively
to the immense popularity of Tolkien's Lord of the Ranks.
Just to give you an idea of how huge this
book was, imagine Harry Potter and Game of Thrones rolled
into one and dominating like two entire decades. This that is,
the mid nineteen sixties was also the time when publishing

(45:23):
in America was drastically changing. Publishing houses had previously been
companies owned by their founders or their founders heirs.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
I'm gonna just jump ahead a little bit because she
just talks about how there was bookstores and stuff like that,
and then she goes into the Delrays. I don't know
if that's super important. Essentially, she's saying that the Delrays.
That that would be I'm sorry, I gotta find his
name again, that would be Lesser Delray and his wife,

(45:56):
Judy Lynne del Rey, started their you know what is
it a publishing house, del Ray Books, and the husband
focused on fantasy and the why focused on science fiction,
and they were kind of gatekeepers as well. So they
were kind of like saying that this is how your

(46:16):
books have to be, you know, like organized, because the
claim is that they wanted to get that same success
that Lord of the Rings had and so they were
trying to copy the the sort of like elements or
like the They were trying to like sort of reverse
engineer Tolkien's books and say, oh, here's what he had

(46:36):
in his books, and we're going to put these elements
in our books. And it was kind of like the
you could say the I don't want to call it
the mono Myth because it wasn't quite the Hero's Journey,
but they were just looking at the steps, you know,
because the Monomoth is older and that goes way back
to like, you know, nights fighting dragons medieval's stories of

(47:00):
heroism and stuff. But it's something like that. So I
want to get to let's see the maybe it's Ray
here or they talk about the Delrays.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Locked into Frodo lives Fever. Random House under the control
of RCA acquired Ballentine Books.

Speaker 4 (47:17):
At that time.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
The senior editor at Ballentine Books was this woman, Judy
Lynn del Rey, the fourth wife of Lester del Rey.
Now in the future, after the establishment of the del
Rey imprint and the establishment of the Delray's control over
speculative fiction in America, Judy Lynne del Rey would mainly
be seen as the science fiction side of things, while
her husband, Lester was fantasy.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
It's worth noticing they were editors. That's what they were.
They were editors. So and Slay credits him as the
man who hadvanted fantasy. I mean in a way because
they basically created the category. But obviously, like when Lord
of the Rings came out, people didn't call it a
fantasy book. They just call it Lord of the Rings.
So the genre that with the way we see at

(48:01):
the Umbrella called fantasy, I think it was created by
this guy. He was basically mass producing, cranking out edited books.
That followed that formula. That's that's what she means. Why
when she says that, you know, this guy killed fantasy,
but then the other woman killed science fiction. And by
the way, I talked about science fiction with oh I

(48:25):
can't remember is say Jay Ishiro It was on my
channel and kat Rocha and they wrote a book called
Booz of Steel. But I also talked to them about
the printing, and they were talking about how they were
I think it was like four science fiction authors that
were essentially gatekeeping all of science fiction and basically making
it to where all books had to follow a certain

(48:45):
formula like they were. I guess yeah, they were engaging
in kind of gatekeeping Isaac Asimov and a couple of
other guys. So that was also a problem in science
fiction as well. It was almost like there was control
over the way stories have to be told and limiting
their potential. It doesn't mean that there weren't any good books, obviously,
but they had to work within a certain certain boundaries.

(49:09):
So all right.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Anyway, however, that both were equally important in the destruction
of American speculative fiction. Something that has always bothered me
about the del Reys and their undeniable impact on genre
publishing in America is that this is almost always presented
as a good thing. Judy Lynn is said to have
revolutionized the fantasy genre, and Lester is even sometimes called

(49:33):
the creator of the fantasy genre. In a sense, all
of that is true, but none of it is good.
Just about the only good thing Judy Lynn might have
done for genre fiction was to acquire the rights for
Star Wars novels before Star Wars had even been released. Nevertheless,
even this good deed comes with a caveat. Having established
Star Wars as the money printing machine at Ballentine, she

(49:53):
ensured that the science fiction genre going forward was modeled
on that formula, just like Lester and Low the Rings.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Prior to
the Judy Lynn era at Ballentine, Betty Ballentine had attempted
to capitalize on the popularity of Lord of the Rings.
As you probably know, when Lord of the Rings was
published in America, it was Ballentine who had secured the

(50:14):
rights to do so so already they were.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Ninety cents for that book. Is that crazy? Ninety five
cents for that that Lord of the Rings paperback printing money?

Speaker 3 (50:26):
But Hoping to turn a single book into an industry,
Betty and her husband started the adult fantasy line at
Ballentine and hired Lynn Carter to be the editor. Over
the next several years, they attempted to reproduce the tol
King Mightning Strike by bringing other older fantasy works of
possibly equal quality into the public's view, works such as
Urvin Peaks, Gorman Gas Trilogy, GK. Chesterton is The Man

(50:49):
Who Was Thursday.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
All right, I don't know if you've read any of those,
but they are at the show offs.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah. I've read some of Gorman Gasts. I actually enjoyed it,
but I just sort of wandered away from it because
I was doing other things at the time. Yeah, it's
definitely different. It's much more insular, lots of interesting character studies. Uh,
it's it's a little more eccentric. Shall we say this.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
The Man who was thirty No?

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Uh, Gorman Guest Oh, okay, yep, and.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
Lord Dunstany is the King of Elflin's daughter. These efforts
were largely unsuccessful. In fact, the Ballentine Adult Fantasy imprint
had been more or less abandoned by the time Judy
Lynn took.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
Over but who were these Delrays.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Lester del Rey, who often liked to claim that this
was his full name, was born Leonard Knapp in Minnesota
in nineteen fifteen. He had written prolifically in sci fi
pulp magazines with a teenage target audience. In the forties,
he became an editor and continued in that work for
almost thirty years. Judy Lynn had also been an editor,
also for science fiction magazines, and had gradually worked her

(51:58):
way up the ladder until Betty Ballentine named her as
her successor. Thus, in the early nineteen seventies, when America
was still in the heat of Tolkien fever, Judy Linne
del Rey became the senior editor for Valentine Books, and
while she worked to revitalize the publisher's science fiction line,
she brought in her husband, Lester to address the neglected
husk that was the fantasy line. It was nineteen seventy

(52:20):
four and things were about to change forever. That year,
a manuscript made it to Judy Lynn's desk, but seeing
as it was fantasy and not her usual science fiction,
she gave it to her husband, Lester. This manuscript, Terry
Brooks The Sword of Shannara, Have I ever.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Read The Sword of Shannara?

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah, I think I did.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
I now, okay, let's keep going.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
Anyone who's even.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Loosely familiar with this book knows that it's pretty much
a straight imitation of Tolkien. Most publishers decried such as
shamelessly derivative work, but not Lester. When he read The
Sword of Shanara, he recognized it for what it really was,
minor details aside, a relatively well told Tolkien ripoff, and
unlike his more traditional minded competitors in the industry, he

(53:08):
didn't see a shameless knockoff. He saw dollar science. The
manuscript needed a lot of work, and among the many things,
Lester insisted that brooks Altar was any hint at the
possibility of a science fiction element, as the story was
meant to take place in the distant future of Earth
after a nuclear apocalypse had decimated and then altered civilization, which,
by the way, probably would have made the Sort of

(53:28):
Shannara more of its own unique original work and less
of an imitation.

Speaker 4 (53:32):
But no, no, said Lester.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Science fiction and fantasy must never mix.

Speaker 4 (53:38):
Never the Dell.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Race don't cross the streams. Where does the doff between
whatever should the two ever meet. But yeah, anyway, they
had rules, but go ahead.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
They lost Okay, So eventually they lost their gay caping
status and now we have this is it better? Like
really it lost the what their gatekeeping, their role as gatekeepers,
and now we have well.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
They don't care. They made their money, so yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
I guess you're right. But also they wouldn't have made
money if there wasn't a market for it, Like you
can't expect there to people to only publish Tolkien, right,
and people who have the same kind of innovative approach

(54:27):
as Tolkien them, we're going to be seeing a book
once every fifty years, right, And he established this genre,
and other people wanted more adventures in that genre.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Maybe I think that I think that what I think
they did was they saw that Lord of the Rings
was popular. They presumed that no one could ever make
anything else that was different from that and still be
as popular. So they decided that what they would do
is demand that everyone who wants to get work in,

(55:04):
you know, writing fiction. Because they were the editors, and
I think that made them into gatekeepers. They were saying, well,
you what you have to do is you have to
try to make something like Lord of the Rings, and
I think that she gets into this a little bit
later to establish like what the formula is. It's in
the next time code that they all had to follow,
and I think, what what the del Reys were doing?

(55:27):
But lesser Delray in this case, But I think that
the the other Delray had her own formula approach was
they were okay with oversaturating the market with similar stories,
making a buck and then just leaving the husk that
remains because they didn't care about the culture itself. They
just wanted, you know, to essentially oversaturate the market with that.

(55:49):
It reminds me of what happened with does bear with me? Okay?
In gaming? All right? I think it's Activision. They bought
the rights to Guitar Hero, which was a massive success
and it was very creative and very popular when it

(56:10):
first came out, and it was put up by Harmonics
and then Activision. I think it was Activision. I'm pretty
sure it was. They bought the rights to Guitar Hero
and then they released Guitar Hero games every six months,
and they did it because they just wanted to, like
they knew the They basically was like, this is a
fad it's gonna die off. We're gonna make as much
money as we can. And they just oversaturated the market

(56:30):
with guitar hero games, made people pay full price for
each installment or at least close to it, and then
when it actually did end up dying, they just like
ignored it. They abandoned it after that. And I think
this is like that, but it's like a much larger
scale because it's like involving like everyone else's work, but
it's a similar thing, right, Like they know, oh, this

(56:53):
stuff's just a fad, we're gonna take advantage of it,
and we're just gonna like run it through the ground.
And unfortunately they did this without a care for the
creative process, is what I That's what I think.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Uh yeah, so oh certainly, And maybe that's a that's
a like that's a general problem with the industry or
industry's period.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
I mean some people would say that it's just giving
people what they want. But the thing is, though, you
have to remember that at one point in time, there
wasn't a Lord of the Rings, and so like you
couldn't say that people wanted Lord of the Rings when
there wasn't a Lord of the Rings until there was
one and then they were like, oh, I love this,
I want more of this, and.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
So not even it wasn't it didn't even start when
it when it first started.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
It did, it took a while to get going yet going.
So that's what I and I think the same. Like
a lot of people say, you know, like Hollywood, right now,
everything is sequels and reboots and remakes and remasters or whatever,
and they and they say it's because the consumers are
dumb and they just want more of the same. But
I don't think that's true. I think that the creativity

(58:01):
is just not there. And it doesn't mean that there
aren't people willing to do something, because I think that
there's a lot of people who are very hungry that
to create stories, but they're just not they're not able
to because these like you know, gigantic studios that have
all kinds of money to burn, and they're just spending
on stuff that they find safe because they think like,

(58:23):
if I'm gonna you know, let's just do another alien series,
let's do another thing based on Predator, let's do another
thing based on Terminator whatever. And the thing is that
they forget is that at one point in history there
wasn't a Terminator movie. There wasn't an alien movie. Somebody
had to make that and then it and you know,
sometimes it doesn't take our right away, but and then

(58:45):
it makes a cultural impact and then we care about
it for a while. But that doesn't mean that someone
couldn't come up with something new. I know people could, right,
It's just that we don't have those people creating things.
So I think this same you know, like you, because
if you start believing that there will never be another

(59:06):
Lord of the Rings, then we're basically cooked creatively. That
means that we can't do it. And I just don't
think that's true. I think there are plenty of people
who are ready to make something and they have ideas
and we just need to nurture that in them.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
I think I'm just defending her with this flirt pole thing.
What well, you know, the cat's supposed to like play
with it, and she's just like letting it fall into
her face and then looking at me like, well she's
playing with it a little bit, yes, get her to
just chill out perhaps some Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
I mean that's a That's another thing somebody pointed out, like,
look what happened to happen to Star Wars. She mentioned
Star Wars. It's it's nothing but a poor, subversive copy
of of of its old self. And that's simply because
the people who are now the stewards of that intellectual property,
because that's the thing, like you don't it doesn't belong

(01:00:01):
to you, but you are responsible for it. And if
you are going to be responsible for something like this,
then you have to love what it was. They're not
able to, so instead they just turn it into this
subversive trash where they self insert or they put their
own personal beliefs into it or their own value system
into it, without any regard for what it was actually about,

(01:00:23):
without understanding where it came from. And that's that doesn't work.
I mean, yes, there are some culture junkies that will
watch anything you put in front of them, but that
they're starting to die off, like even they're waking up
to this, so yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Anyway, tended to use this book and the subsequent franchise
as the launching point for both their imprint del Rey
books and their entire philosophy. Colleagues of the del Reys
stated that Brooks's is Shanara book was like their baby
and Lester knew exactly what he was doing, capitalizing on
the overt Tolkien imitation. Instead of advising Brooks to tone

(01:01:02):
it down, Lester decided to lean into it. He even
went as far as hiring the brothers Hildebrandt, who had
done numerous iconic illustrations for The Lord of the Rings,
to do the cover art for The Sort of Shanara,
and the del Ray's investment paid off. The Sort of
Shanara was a major commercial success. It is generally regarded
as the book that ushered in the modern age of

(01:01:23):
commercially lucrative fantasy fiction.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
But so it wasn't Lord of the Rings. It was
Sort of Shannara. But even then, even then it was like, so,
I don't think the original authors of The Sort of
Shannara intended that to be the case.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Is del Rey the only publishing house.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
For he was. They were editors, but no, there was
Random House and stuff like that. But they were kind
of like the I guess they were like the leaders
in fantasy and science fiction.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
So because the other thing is I wanted to point
out and this is this speaks to the title of
our video. Right, Okay, there's a this is something that
is across the board. Creativity has declined since like the fifties,
I think the I mean there it's I think it's
the fifties, but definitely the seventies. The entire world that

(01:02:25):
we exist within now is predicated on the theoretic the
theoretical foundation of one man. Right, and what if the
reason we don't have a toll Kien is the same
reason why since let me just give me a question.

(01:02:49):
I'm going to get his name.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
Are you talking about right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
On digit communications?

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
So I just need to get his name, all right,
because for as soon as I get in front of
a camera, my brain turns off. I'm sorry, guys, Cloud
East Shannon, right, And he wrote that it's another thing
that really didn't gain traction. He wrote it in I
believe the twenties of the thirties, No, the thirties. Uh yeah.

(01:03:24):
He wrote digital circuit Design, which formed the foundation of
the digital revolution, and he also wrote a paper on
digital communication, and his work is we exist within it basically,
just like the entire fantasy genre. The almost all of
the fantasy genre exists within the tropes that Tolkien created.

(01:03:47):
We exist within the concepts of Cloud Shannon. So all
of our prosperity, all of our innovation, all of our
technology comes back to the foundation he built. Now, what
if we're not seeing a radical although I am hearing
an echo and I don't know why. What if we're
not seeing that kind of a radically innovative mind for

(01:04:12):
the same reason, Like the same reason we're not seeing
it in fantasy or in science fiction is the same
reason we're not seeing it now in technology. Now I
mean completely radical. In other words, Cloud Shannon is the
foundation of not just one type of technology, but an
entire industry, multiple industries of technology. Tolkien didn't just write

(01:04:36):
a singular fantasy world. He wrote tropes that activated so
many additional and further fantasy worlds there were based on
the framework that he created. Maybe what's happening? Is there
some kind of current that's causing both both types of
men and both types of endeavor to disappear? And I

(01:05:00):
before I spoke at length about how Cloud Shannon, the
reason why we might not have had another Cloud Shannon
is because is there a reason why we're getting an echo?
It's really bucking the hell out of me. Yeah, I'm
hearing myself. Why am I hearing myself.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
I don't know anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
My thesis for why we don't have another cloud Shannon
and why creativity overall is declining because she's talking about this,
and this isn't just about writing, This isn't just about fantasy,
it's not just about science fiction. Creativity is declining overall
in every single field that you can identify. We are

(01:05:41):
becoming less creative. We are not questioning these foundational ideas.
We're not developing entirely new modes of thought or new genres.
We're not doing that anymore. We're not as creative as
we once were. And it's across the board. Now she's
focusing on one element of it, but when you step

(01:06:03):
back and you see that this is something that's going everywhere,
where is it coming from? And to be honest, it's
far as I can tell, it's mainly men who create
these foundational shifts and how we approach things. So where
are they? Where did they go? Well? My going theory
is we decided to basically attack masculinity, which is where

(01:06:28):
a lot of this kind of risk taking and thinking
comes from. And we decided to attack masculinity because we
didn't like the idea that girls didn't weren't able to
we didn't have access to everything. This is what I've seen.
People don't want to identify anything unique, any unique value
that men have as a result of masculinity or masculinity,

(01:06:50):
because that unique value might exclude women and girls from something,
and they don't want to do that because just we
just know right that means we're basically stealing the last
crust of bread from a starving girl's mouth if we
do that. But that has led to overt attacks on
masculinity in all the school at every level, from preschool

(01:07:15):
to college. I mean in the nineties. Christina Hoff Summers,
who wrote The War on Boys, details how boys or
feminists started to influence the curriculum to teach boys or
presented this conjecture that the reason that boys behave in

(01:07:35):
the way they do and the kind of risk taking,
the kind of pushing boundaries that result in people who
can result in great works like Shannon Cloud's thesis and
papers on the digital circuit design and communication, or Tolkien's

(01:07:57):
innovative approach to storytelling and were building, that we are
punishing the qualities that caused these things to emerge, which
we're basically stomping on the garden and punishing boys for
the risk taking, the boundary breaking and all of that
other And I don't mean sexual boundary breaking. I mean

(01:08:17):
like jumping the fence and going off into the woods
to explore boundary breaking. We're punishing boys for that, and
because of that, we're seeing an overt decline in creativity
in our society across the board. Now, this is just
one segment that she's talking about. So maybe the reason
why we don't have haven't had another Tolkien has nothing

(01:08:40):
to do with the Delrays, because I'm sure they would
be happy to for if another Tolkien emerged from the
grass roots, which is where Tolkien emerged. Didn't emerge because
a del Rays, a prototypical Delray picked him up and said,
oh hey, you are going to be our new wonder kid.
He emerged from grassroots in interest from word of mouth. Right,

(01:09:03):
maybe we don't have another Tolkien because we don't have
another Tolkien, just like we don't have another Cloud Shannon,
because we have actively gone to war against the impulses
and behaviors and the type of mind that creates that
kind of large scale risk taking aka masculinity. Right there

(01:09:25):
you go, that's my thesis. I'm tying it back to
the title, and we can continue to listen to what
she has to say. But consider, consider that the reason
why we haven't had another Tolkien is because we haven't
had another Tolkien. And had we had another Tolkien of
another kind, the Delrays would have been happy to exploit

(01:09:48):
the storytelling, the world building, and whatever else this guy
created for them to exploit. So maybe they're not to blame.
Maybe something else, and maybe that's something else is to
blame for a lot more than just the lack of
truly innovative epic fantasy storytelling. Okay, I shall get off

(01:10:09):
my podium, all.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
Right, Uh send us some super childs. Guys, if you
want to say anything to this, someone has super child
I read.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Oh okay, well let me poke the roles. But we
do have a thank you to give. All right, Guys,
are not I don't know you guys aren't entertained today.
I mean it's it's it's pretty I mean it's it's
not as quiet as it was on Monday. Monday was
like depressingly quiet. But let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Good, Well, we are talking about something that I think
has people. Uh do you animated.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
Or you don't have to disagree, But do you have
thoughts on what I just said?

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Oh, I I totally understand what you're saying. But again,
like it's sort of like works in Tan And what
I was saying is that uh, Tolkien was able to
tell the stories because he didn't have See. The thing
is is that we have prioritized safetyism and security to
such an extent that no one is having experiences that

(01:11:12):
can influence their like creative process that like add to that,
and so they're they're they're the people who are writing
are just writing sort of like raw desire or it's
derivative because they've been influenced by other people's writings and
or things that they've experienced, like but that's all like

(01:11:33):
through what they watch on their phone or their TV
or whatever. Right, So I think that it's because we're
not having like actual adventures in real life, that we're
not writing adventures at at home or at least as well.
So it's an excess of comfort and safetyism, which is

(01:11:54):
like you know, where masculinity thrives basically on the on
the the perimeter. And I think that that doesn't mean
that we're not going to get anything, because I'm sure
there are people who are out there that are going
to have something to say, but it's we're not going
to see it as sort of normal or like as
often as we used to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Okay, so yeah, I want to thank Dark World Moon
for putting in two hundred and fifty dollars. Thank you,
Dark Dark and yeah, so now we are at let
me just double check, we are at uh thirteen hundred, no, No, twelve, no,

(01:12:41):
twelve hundred and ninety five left to go, so very
much appreciated. If you put something in, please do it
gets a little bit hairy. I want to make sure
that we're able to continue to do the meetups because
if we can't make our monthly fundraiser goal and do
the meetups, then you know one or the other and
it can't be the the continuing to do the show.

(01:13:01):
So please please please go to feed the Badger dot
com slash just the tip no, feed the Badger dot
com slash support. That's Feed the Badger dot Com slash
support five dollars, ten dollars. Every bit helps. I hope
that I clearly explain the connection between the title and
what we're talking about, at least the way I see it, okay,

(01:13:22):
so and I would honestly say that it's not all women.
It's the women who seek moral dominance. It is a
situation where women's sexuality isn't kept under the same raps
as men, so entire genres can end up being devoted
to fetish content for women, and nobody bats an eye

(01:13:45):
or says this is this is not actually artistic, this
is not literature. But you know, and but you could
also see it as the same dynamic. The delrays exploited
people's desire for tolkienesque literature. They created derivatives that didn't
supposedly didn't have much of their own merit or weren't
very innovative. And now we're doing the same thing. Because
people want to make money, they're going to the lowest

(01:14:07):
common denominator. And people who are just interested in the
porn contact of content of literature don't care about grammar,
they don't care about editing, they don't care about continuity,
they don't care about character. They just want what, you know,
their trigger points to arousal. I guess so they don't
actually like to appeal to this crowd. The literature The

(01:14:29):
publishing industry doesn't actually have to do much effort. They
don't have to edit it. People are not gonna do
you think they're really gonna care about proper grammar when
this is just smut to get off to do people
care about it? Do people care about characterization in porn
movies now? So it's like they can completely remove entire
branches of quality control and thus having to pay for

(01:14:53):
this content, and they get content that's got vast appeal
for many, many, many women, and they'll they'll spend money
for it. Like it's it's basically the same kind of thing,
except I would argue that whatever the del Rays were
putting out it probably had more merit than Morning Glory
Milking Farm or Dangerous crow Boy Sparkling Plastic Eater, which

(01:15:18):
is the newest thing. Like it's just this is this
is porn categories in in written form, while they're porn
categories are always in written form, porn categories with extra steps.
That's it, that's all that modern This modern literature really
has become porn categories with extra steps. So it's like

(01:15:38):
and it again, it could be the same thing driving
it just money and a collusion between money and the
fact that we don't tell women no when it comes
to their sexuality, like, no, you don't get to have
this in public libraries. No, you don't get to have
this on book bookshelves at Walmart. No, you don't get
to take over entire genres with your porn categories. Ladies. No, No,

(01:16:00):
but he sells women know except.

Speaker 6 (01:16:01):
Here on this channel and maybe increasingly other places.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
But anyway, feed the badgert 't com slash support if
you want to support telling women no, which is very ironic,
I realize.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):
Say no by saying yes, Okay, let's get.

Speaker 6 (01:16:24):
Back to it cognitive distance by listening to this lady.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
Let's jump into the formula. Well, that's right here, So
I jumped ahead to it already.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
There was a savvy businessman. He couldn't just sit back
and hope that a whole host of new writers would
just deliver countless manuscripts to him that would meet the
same exacting parameters established and tested by Terry Brooks, the
sort of Ghenara. So he decided to be proactive. It
was then that Lester Delray put together his own formula.
This was the mandatory shape all fantasy books submitted to

(01:16:54):
del Rey must take. The books would be original novels
set in invented worlds in which magic works. Each would
have a male central character who triumphed over the forces
of evil, usually associated with technical knowledge of some variety
by innate virtue and with the help of a tutor
or tutelary spirit. Other sources include added parameters, such as

(01:17:15):
the detail that the male lead character must always get
the girl. But I had trouble verifying those sources completely.
I've always wondered if this was what Lester Delray really
believed was the core of Tolkien's work and therefore the
reason for its success, this two sentenced, hyper specific formula,
or if he simply pared down the simplest and most
recognizable elements of Lord of the Rings and derived a
straightforward formula within which he would still have a bit

(01:17:38):
of room for variety.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
So if if he was boiling down Lord of the
Rings to that, I think it was more so looking
at the Sword of Shannara though, right so, I don't know.
I don't know if the sort of Shannara had this.
But in Lord of the Rings, who who's the main character?
Is it Frodo, is it Aragorn? Is it Sam? I mean,

(01:18:09):
if you look at it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Huh is the main character, like Proto.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Should be the main Yeah, I mean I think we're
we're supposed to think's the main character. But he doesn't
get the girl. He ends up No, he ends up
being wounded in such a way that it changes him forever,
and he goes to the West. Aragorn gets the girl,
but he was kind of always gonna get the girl,
so that wasn't really in question.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Sam does get Rosie Cotton at the end, but there's
no like it's one of those things where he sees
her in the beginning and then he doesn't see her
for any of the movies and then at the end
they're just married. I'm sure, like coming back from you know,
saving Middle Earth is gonna get you in good with
Rosie Cotton, so he'd be like, yeah, save the world,

(01:18:59):
but could you move your at what.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
In your face? Your mic is covering your face? Yeah,
just yeah, there you go. I'm sorry, I'm really spurgy
about things like that. Uh, okay, you're right, they looked
at There are significant differences in sort of Genara versus Tolkien.
Lord of the Rings is much more difficult in terms

(01:19:29):
of a read and in terms of like I don't
want to mean, I don't mean like it's a more
fraud look at human nature. I think like it because
it's basic and everybody's like, oh, it's got this black
and white morality. No, it says that everybody is corruptible
if they lose the ability to doubt themselves. You know,

(01:19:53):
if they start to believe that they have all the
all of everything that needs to be understood and everything
that they have, they have the truth right and they
are able to they don't doubt themselves, so that they
never question what they're doing or why. And that's the
kind of corruption of the ring is that you know,

(01:20:15):
a good person gets the ring and they think they
can use it to make the world better. But what
ends up happening is the power corrupts them because they
cease to doubt that what they're doing is actually making
the world better. And so the presentation is that anybody
can be corrupted. And so we're following this character.

Speaker 6 (01:20:33):
And he is trying to prevent himself from being corrupted,
and he eventually loses and he ends up being corrupted.
And this is like this message that the world is
stronger than you. I mean, it's almost a depressing message.
That's why I say it's a more difficult book.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
Even though Froto in the end was celebrated for having
withstood the ring for as long as he did and
getting it to the precipice of mortor m h and
it's it's yeah, that's it still tainted him.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
It even it was even calling out to Sam a
couple of times. But you know, Sam wasn't He didn't
have it in his possession as long. And you know
what one thing that I was thinking about too. I
don't know if people know this, but like why they
say the Hobbits were highly resistant, do you guys know
why do you know why the Hobbits were resistant? I
have a theory. I mean you could like there's probably something.

(01:21:32):
It's because of their innocence, Like I think that they're
like they were probably the most innocent race or whatever
in the setting, So it would take a lot for
them to become corrupted. That would be my guess. You know,
they they live the most simple life. They didn't need

(01:21:53):
or want for a lot, so there wasn't like the
temptation just wasn't there as much. But eventually it gets
to them too. That would be my thing because Sam
was even more innocent than Proto was, so he was
probably more resistant.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
I mean my guess, so, yeah, but overall, that's a
much more difficult storyline for people. It's it's it's uh,
it makes you question things and you have to and
it's it really speaks to the corruption of war and
something about like, if you go to war, you will

(01:22:26):
do things that are horrifying. Period, You'll see horrifying things
and then you'll be you'll you'll have to do horrifying things.
So there's no getting out of that corruption. And I
think he was I think Tolkien was talking.

Speaker 6 (01:22:41):
About that and then how it impacts you forever and
there's no there's no going back, there's no actual happy ending,
there's no going back from something like this.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
But Proto had to do it because it was for
the best of everyone. He's a true hero.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
Well, he kind of got conscripted, so that's what I'm
meaning by some of the stuff. There's definitely some allusions
to Tolkien's actual experience. Frodo didn't want to have anything
to do with the Ring, but he got conscripted into,
you know, into this quest and it was like against
as well. And Sam was conscripted along with him, you know,

(01:23:20):
by Gandalf. So they were doing something they didn't really
want to do, and they and they ended up having
to see it through all the way to the end.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
So yes, but that's heroic and it's knowing that whatever
you do in the end, you're never going to be
able to come back to what you were and it's
not going to be just oh, you got these new powers,
you got the girl you have like a dragon familiar
and you're awesome and cool. Frodo was destroyed by the
task that he took on.

Speaker 6 (01:23:50):
You couldn't even live in Middle East Earth anymore, it'll
leave because of the wound he received, all right, So
and he didn't even finish the task. That is really
that is quite the message to give people. And yet
it's still hopeful, you know, and in particular it's hopeful

(01:24:12):
because of Sam and what Sam did.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
The hope is in the fraternity between men seeking good.

Speaker 6 (01:24:23):
That's where the hope lies, you know, it's not even
in a single person. And of course that is definitely
a soldier's message.

Speaker 1 (01:24:36):
The other book, it takes I don't know what it does.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Okay, it takes the trappings of of Lord of the Rings,
and it removes all of the moral like the moral fraughtness,
the difficulty, like contending, like sort of a short of scenario.
I doubt would ever find a real fan base in.

Speaker 6 (01:25:02):
Among the counterculture or the college students, because it's not
challenging in that way.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
They probably liked it because it was challenging.

Speaker 6 (01:25:11):
And back then, you know, liberal weirdos actually could create
interesting art or even appreciate interesting art.

Speaker 4 (01:25:19):
But they liked it because.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
It was challenging.

Speaker 6 (01:25:23):
But that's what is gone in sort of Shanara. As
far as I can tell, as far as I can remember,
it's just a rollicking good adventure. It actually probably takes
more from Lewis Lemore's The Walking Drum or something like
just a boy's adventure, except with a bit of sexuality,
a lot of sexuality in terms of Walking Drum, you know,

(01:25:43):
just and things simple, black and white and good good triumphs.
Did good really triumph and doord to the Rings?

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (01:25:54):
No, well good good triumphed maybe or evil just fuck
screwed it basically like good I.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Mean Gollum, I mean it was gollum and proto eventually
like where the reason why the Ring was destroyed, but
like I mean, yeah, I would say good definitely triumphed.
It was just it was like every moment in that
story when things get their bleakest, there's like a tiny
glimmer of something positive, but it's like enough to you know,

(01:26:24):
move the needle, enough to like move it towards its
ultimate goal, like and all, And if you watch the movies,
it does this all throughout where you'll see like you know,
it'll be super dark, they can't see anything, and then
Sam will like, look, there's a star. You'll see one
star in the sky and then it like disappears or
like they're like moving through the forest and there's like,
you know, a shattered statue and it's covered in like

(01:26:47):
you know, vines and stuff, and it looks all like
decrepit and ruined. And then the sun shines through and
you see that he's got like a crown of flowers
on his head and Sand points it out. It's like
that like that's kind of on the nose symbolism of
like keep going, keep going right, and and that's kind
of what that was. Like. The the message through it

(01:27:07):
all is that, yeah, it gets it's always darkest before
the dawn kind of a thing, and then they do
that all throughout, like there's all like oh, it's over,
it's over. Everything looks extremely bad, and then like suddenly
there's you know, a clutch moment and and everything turns around,
or at least they survive for a little bit longer.
But that's kind of like the full I mean, that's

(01:27:28):
kind of like the that's what the theme is, I guess,
or one of the themes.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
What I was trying to say is that good doesn't
triumph in like this grand battle.

Speaker 1 (01:27:40):
It doesn't come out unscathed harm.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
Or even in being able to fulfill its task. Good
triumphs by continuing to stand up and keep going. It
basically outlasts evil and wins, not because it directly defeats evil,
but because it gets to the point where you defeats itself.
But if good hadn't kept going, evil wouldn't It wouldn't

(01:28:05):
have driven evil to the point where it defeats itself.
And again, evil is not something outside of yourself in Tolkien, see,
evil is something within everyone that can be succumbed to.
So there's no black and white. If anything told, there's
only gray and resist. There's only black and resisting the
black or dark gray and resisting it right. And there's

(01:28:28):
only behavior you can That message has to come through.
If the central character ended up being tainted, you know,
or ended up succumbing to the evil, and yet he
survived long enough, and he through the support of his friend,
kept going long enough that he got it to the
point where evil destroyed itself, Like evil screwed itself over.

(01:28:51):
I think that was the ultimate message. And yes, it
is about seeing the hope even in the most dire
of circumstances, which I imagine that Tolkien had experience quite
a bit of, and seeing the hope in the camaraderie
and the support of your fellow soldiers. You know, that's
definitely there. But I think you can't deny that in

(01:29:14):
Lord of the Rings, good never triumphed through some heroic effort.
It triumphed through endurance until the point at which evil
destroyed itself. That's that's not the same message as I think,
although somebody think yeah, and it is.

Speaker 1 (01:29:33):
A Christian message too, is that, like, you know, the
the world is evil, Like there is evil in the world,
and you can't you can't ever really be rid of it.
You have to constantly it's a it's a lifetime fight basically, Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:29:49):
And Slytherin Peanut says, the main issue with a lot
of Shannaro books, but especially Sword, is the main character
is a passive observer. Shia Almsford is the farm example,
He's protected and shielded by others until something. I don't know,
I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
See the rest characters. Let me see if no this
is but yeah, that doesn't sound. But again, this is
the because that book did well, and maybe there were
people that just wanted more fantasy and they're willing to
take whatever. I'm not that I think those those books
are probably fine, you know, they're just probably fine.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
But I think that I think there's a misinterpretation of
what the Delrays are doing here. I think that sort
of Shanara again, yes, it has has superficial Tolkien trappings,
but I think it removes removes the stuff that makes
Tolkien the difficult, like a difficult So it's much more

(01:30:51):
clear good and evil, much more clear triumph of good
through heroic action and that kind of thing. And so
basically Delray looked at Tolkien and looked at start in Shannara,
and they saw how retaining some things and then shaping
it out around a more of a boy's adventure kind

(01:31:13):
of plot or characterization would make something very popular. And
I honestly like, I I don't agree with her. I
think it's perfectly fine to have boys adventure. That's basically
what it sounds like. Sort of Shanara became it became
Tolkien trappings boys adventure type plot, characterization and themes. You

(01:31:38):
know that that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
Means that well, she kind of was, like, she said
it was a pretty good book, but she did say
it was basically a copy of Lord of the Rings.
I don't know. I think I haven't read those books.
It's probably not true, but not.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
If it didn't, like, if it doesn't copy like the
essential heart of the story, then it's not a copy,
all right. It's just baking basically taking Lord of the
Rings and making it a boy's adventure. That's different. That
is not Lord of the Rings, because Lord of the
Rings isn't just you know, elves and swords and mythic adventures.
Because if you're gonna say that there were writers writing

(01:32:18):
those things before Tolkien that Tolkien took from, right, you
can look at Okay, let's look at previous writers, all right, so.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
Let's see if I can find that before Tolkien.

Speaker 2 (01:32:34):
Before Tolkien. Okay, just a second, all right, So first one,
these are some all right? Uh oops swoopsoops, Okay, where
where did we go?

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
Lewis Carroll, Lewis Carroll.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
Yes, Lewis Carroll was prior to Lord of the Rings.
I'm trying to find my little thing that I got
an analysis of Okay. The King of Elfland's Daughter by
Lord Dunsei nineteen twenty four a nameless fantasy realm where

(01:33:11):
the mortal land of Earl borders the magical Elfland. A shimmering,
timeless world of fairy ruled by the King of Elfland.
It's steeped in dreamlike mythic qualities and enchanted forest unicorns
and sifting realities. The men of Earl, craving marvels, send Alvrich,
son of their lord, to marry Lizerel, the King of
Elfland's daughter, ceasing some parallels. Armed with a magic sword,

(01:33:34):
Alfred woos her, but their marriage falters as Lizarel stras
with mortal life. Their son Ryan grows up coop between worlds,
hunting and go. Okay, so Dunzil's lyrical prose and archetypal
world influenced Tolkien's depiction of ethereal realms like lotherin Lynn.
All right, So the worm Ora Boris is another one
by E. R. Edison to nineteen twenty two. Mercury a

(01:33:56):
fantastical planet, not the real one, hosting the kingdoms of
demon Land, which Land, God, and others. It's a baroque,
pseudo melanieval world of towering mountains, enchanted citadels, and heroic warfare,
populated by human like races with mythic undertones. Summary. The
lords of Demonland, just Gory Got Goldry, Buzz Buzz Go

(01:34:17):
and Brandock Daha battle King Gorris of Witchland after he
demands their submission. The conflict spirals into epiquest, including Gorley's
kidnapping to a magic mountain, rescues via a hippogriffe, and
sorcery driven to betrayals. The narrative loops like the titular
Serpent as the heroes victorious wish for eternal conflict. It

(01:34:39):
blends North Sagastyle heroism with Renaissance flare okay significance. Edison's
richly detailed world heroic tone and invented nomenclature peer figure
prefigure Tolkien's epic scope. Uh tolkienmir the Sky is the Style,
although he critiqued its amorality. Okay. The Wood on the

(01:35:00):
World by William Morris a medieval inspired fantasy land with
enchanted forests, mythical cities, mystical cities, and realms like the
bear Folks Savage Hills. The world feels proto Middle Earth,
with a blend of chivalric romance and fairy tale magic,
including a mysterious maiden and a malevolent queen. Golden Walter,
a young merchant, flees a troubled marriage and sales to

(01:35:22):
the strange land. He encounters a beautiful maiden enslaved by
a sorceress queen and her consort, the king's son. Walter
and the maiden navigate treachery, magic and wilderness to escape,
ultimately finding love and a new kingdom. The story is
a quest driving romance with lush, archaic prose. M Okay
and Then The Well at World's End by Women's Mora

(01:35:42):
William Morris. Ralph, youngest son of the King of Upmeads,
seeks adventure and the fabled Well of the World's End,
rumored to grant i immortality. He encounters Lady Ursula, faces trials, bandits, tyrants,
and a seductive queen, and navigates a war torn land.
Their quest for the well blends ro man's heroism exploration,
ending in personal fulfillment overpower. Fantasies by George MacDonald and

(01:36:08):
Oros and Dos A young ann Odos, a young man,
enters fantasy Fairyland on his twenty first birthday. His journey
is a surreal odyssey through enchanted landscapes. Ooh, this is
Isachai facing danger, Yskai, facing dangers, pursuing an elusive marble lady,
and grappling with his own flaws. The narrative, rich and symbolism,

(01:36:31):
explores spiritual growth and redemption, ending with Annodos's return to
the mortal world.

Speaker 6 (01:36:37):
Significance McDonald's dreamlike world influenced Holkeene's portrayal of mystical places.
For example, mark word.

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
Okay so C. S. Lewis cited Fantasies as a key inspiration.
The Princess and the Goblin Princess Irene, aged eight, discovers
a magical thread from her great grandmother, who leads her
to rescue Curtel, a miner's son Curtie, a minor son
from Goblin's plotting to flood the castle, courteous bravery, and
Irene's faithwart the Goblin King and Queen. The story blends

(01:37:08):
adventure with moral lessons set in the proto fantasy world.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
Actually, I think the Princess and the Goblin was animated
at one point back in the day. That's really earlier
to me. The Princess and the Yes probably was.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
But when you read all of this, these tropes pre
exist Tolkien, right sort of. Shannara draws as much from
this as Tolkien, and I would argue the thing that
Tolkien makes or creates that's different is again that heart,
that moral heart of his story, which is this this

(01:37:42):
kind of depiction of evil as being able to seduce anyone,
and that I mean, it's just fraud. It's just something
that gives you shivers.

Speaker 6 (01:37:50):
The entire story of frodo you know, and how little
he got from the burdens he bore, how much sacrifice
for them, and the fact.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
That he ultimately didn't win. I mean, this is a story.
This is like something that's just really like it kicks
you in the gut. And that is what I think
that Tolkien truly did differently. So sort of Shanara, isn't
that it sounds like again, it sounds like some of
these trappings wrapped around a boy's adventure, and a lot

(01:38:20):
of those trappings, Yeah, they may look like they come
from Tolkien, but they equally could have come from these
pre existing fantasy stories.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Well, Tolkien didn't create the blueprint, but I don't think that.
I think this woman would agree with you, though, because
what she's saying is that today, if you ask people
like George R. Martin, The's are big writers, or Michael
Moorcock about the fantasy genre, they will credit Tolkien as

(01:38:50):
having created it. And she's saying that's not true. But
then she goes into del Rey's, who basically created the
because the del Reys believed that sort of Shanara was
a ripoff of Tolkien. What she agrees with, I guess
in terms of like having all the trappings of the
surface level things. But I don't think that she thinks

(01:39:13):
that there was nothing before Tolkien. I think that I
think that the del Rays were acting as business people
on the popularity of Lord of the Rings and then
the subsequent popularity of the sort of Shanara for being
similar to Lord of the Rings, at least on the surface.
And I think that the del rays from what I
can tell because I looked into their background a bit,

(01:39:33):
they are they don't they're not Christians, they are probably atheists,
and so they don't see the deeper themes like running
through it, or they didn't at the time. They just
saw like the surface level things like magic and dwarves
and men and you know, probably orcs or whatever, dragons,
and they were like, oh, this is the same thing

(01:39:55):
without like looking deeper. And I don't know that if
the person who wrote sort ofrom shar also had you know,
maybe like similar religious views or or they were sympathetic
to that or whatever, but it sort of doesn't matter.
I think that without that element in it, you're gonna
miss what Tolkien was saying. Also, the Del race probably

(01:40:16):
never been to war, so there's like, you know, there's
a lot of stuff that they didn't see at all,
because remember they emerged in the nineteen sixties, so this
was like well after that, and they probably didn't fight
in any wars. I don't know for sure, but I
looked into it, and from what I can tell, there
isn't a lot of information out there, so but.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Okay, Slitherin Peanut, I've just put the list in ask
Allison in our discord, so I hope you're in the discord.
I don't know how else to get it to you
because it's gonna be way too big to put in
a comment.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
You can get into the discord for free by going
to be the Bachelor dot com. What is it? Badgination
don online?

Speaker 2 (01:40:53):
Badgination done online? The slytherin Peanut says, this woman would
not agree. She already assumed that Shanara was a direct Yeah,
I like what I'm basically arguing. Yes, she says that
there's stuff before Tolkien, and I'm arguing that Shannara may
have been inspired by that stuff, or even maybe it
did take Tolkien's trappings directly. But what makes what makes

(01:41:17):
Tolkien's work Lord of the Rings separate from that category
is the central story of a man with a problem,
which is Frodo and you know it's the world's problem,
but he takes on that problem and tries to fix it.
That central story is what Tolkien added, and it's what

(01:41:38):
makes it so powerful. Other people have done the world building,
the Elves, the dwarfs, everything else. Right, that's a lot
of Norse mythology, you know. Yeah, But Tolkien created that
emotional that that conflict that resonated with so many people.
And so I'm saying is, even if this guy took
the trappings, this isn't a Tolkien rip off because he's

(01:42:01):
leaving the story. He's leaving that essential man with the
conflict and the type of conflict content. He's focusing on
Aragorn or in the other one. What was the first
one that was mentioned, which was no, no, no, He's
not focusing like short of Shanara, isn't focusing on Frodo.

(01:42:24):
He's choosing Aragorn, which is the same as Alvaric in
the King Elfland's Daughter or similar to that character. It
seems like the story seems to be similar, or even
Ulverarick's son Orion, who is part elf and that is
from the King of Elfland's Daughter, right, So I mean

(01:42:45):
he's choosing that to focus on. He's completely shifted the
protagonist because that protagonist is easier to cast in a
boy's adventure. And ultimately, if you're gonna have a problem
with that, you're gonna have a problem with an entire
genre built for boys to enjoy or young men to enjoy.

(01:43:06):
And you know, I know that Tolkien had these really
deep themes which made him so unique and deep emotional story,
but I can't say that, you know, they took some
of the stuff, turned it into a boy's adventure and
then sold a hell of a lot to boys and
young men because they enjoyed it so much. I can't

(01:43:26):
have a problem with that. And also, I don't think
that stopped another Tolkien from emerging, Because Tolkien didn't emerge
because a bunch of delray said hey, oh yeah, this
is the next big thing. He emerged grassroots by appealing
to people who really wanted to read a story about

(01:43:46):
morality framed in that way. Okay, So I mean and
I think that pretty much is me disagreeing with the
entirety of her thesis. I think she needs to look
bigger and consider that they're there's a lot more areas
in which we don't have a Tolkien or a Cloud Shannon, like,

(01:44:07):
we we're missing these creatives, and uh, think about think this,
look at bigger dynamics for this to explain this is
what I'm getting at sure. And also I don't think
capitalism is to blame.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
No, I don't think so either.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
All right, So I mean you can you can agree
if you want, like that's uh with her, if you
want is this that's my opinion on what she said.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
No, I don't do Yeah, I agree. Uh, let's get so.
You know she lays at the formula we should cause
I got a patron show. I gotta do.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:39):
So here's the counter formula, which is basically the reaction
to the formula.

Speaker 3 (01:44:44):
Well Ray formula. This, then, a literary world saturated with
Delray's factory produced Tolkien knockoffs and those paperbacks mass produced
by del Ray's imitators, was the world in which the
second actor in our drama opened his eyes. Enter Michael Morecock,
I want to There were a lot of writers who
came to react negatively to the proliferation of the del
Reys philosophy. The main reason I've singled out Michael Morcock

(01:45:07):
is because he's often styled the anti Tolkien, and he
was particularly viciferous about his dislike of what he deemed
tolkien ask speculative fiction. He was also very influential. Many
other writers took their accused from him. Now this video
is not concerned with Morcock's work as a writer, but
rather with his more influential role as an editor and

(01:45:27):
generally a taste maker in the world of speculative fiction.
In nineteen sixty four, Morecock became the editor of New Worlds,
where he would remain besides a brief five year absence
from seventy one to seventy six until nineteen ninety six.
It was here within the pages of New Worlds that
Morocock would champion what he deemed at counter culture revolution

(01:45:48):
against this world that had been by and large created
by the del Res. His very first essay for New
world Why did the nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
Why does Morcock take aim at Tolkien? Yeah, here's the
problem with this, and this is what's really annoying. Tolkien's
work is not sort of Shanara. He didn't focus on
the same things that sort of shannaras short of Shanara
is tolkien trappings or trappings of this kind of Norse

(01:46:19):
based epic fantasy which existed before Tolkien placed in a
kind of a boy's adventure type tone. Okay, and yes
I agree with her on one level. I find almost
all epic fantasy to be boring as hell, I'm not
the target audience. Okay, But then Michael Morkawk, instead of

(01:46:41):
taking aim at this literary creation based on sort of
shan Shanara, which is again this kind of epic Norse
based mythological trappings with a boy's adventure on top, you know,
or stretched over a boy's adventure skeleton, he takes aim
of that and says, I am defying Tolkien. Well, Tolkien

(01:47:04):
never wrote that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:06):
Well, the truth is, Alison, it's not even the fault
of sort of Shanara the writers of that book. It's
it because sort of Shannara was a big hit, and
there there's a claim that that was inspired by Tolkien,
but that doesn't really matter because all of the fantasy
that followed that. So basically it's like two levels removed

(01:47:26):
from Tolkien. You have Tolkien, you have sort of Scenara,
then you have all of the slop that came that
the Delrays printed. And that's what Michael Moorcock and the
counter the counter formula people are rebelling against, and they're
calling it Tolkien, but it's not. It's it's this stuff
that's two, you know, say, two steps away from Tolkien,

(01:47:47):
not even the sort of Shannara books. It's beyond that.
It's like a copy of those so and they're making
the counter formula to that. And I mean that's I
guess that that's why those books, I guess are are
not going to be at the level of Tolkien, because
they're not even at the level of sort of Channa. So,
you know. But anyway, or when he.

Speaker 3 (01:48:09):
Took over, heavily suggested that he intended to bring a
new flavor to science fiction. Interesting is that maybe it
doesn't really have anything to do with our topic. It
wasn't until Morcock published his essay Epic Pooh that he
really made clear his thoughts on the publishing industry of
his time. Now, there are a lot of people out
there who have thoroughly addressed just how wildly nonsensical Morocock's

(01:48:32):
poorly written takedown of Tolkien really is. So much so,
in my opinion, that I found myself wondering if the
man had actually read Tolkien. But what struck me as
particularly notable was that Morcock, like George R. R. Martin,
like so many other critics of fantasy literature at that time,
assumed that this which he loathed with every fiber of
his being was due solely to the influence of Lord

(01:48:55):
of the Rings, as if Tolkien had personally with his
own hands formed nineteen sixties and seventies fantasy literature, and
as I think I've made abundantly clear, Tolkien actually had
nothing to do with it.

Speaker 4 (01:49:06):
The world of.

Speaker 3 (01:49:07):
Western fantasy against which Morcock railed so violently was not
ruled by the influence of Tolkien, but by the influence
of Lester del Rey. Now, defending Tolkien's honor isn't really
the purpose of this video, but I think it is
worth mentioning that among many of them.

Speaker 2 (01:49:22):
What well, she pointed out exactly what I said.

Speaker 1 (01:49:26):
Yeah, that's why I told you.

Speaker 2 (01:49:27):
Yeah, okay, all right, sorry, no, it's okay, sorry, redheadedly.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
Let me go to I'm gonna jump ahead. I think
we get the point of that.

Speaker 3 (01:49:37):
Even now, many are becoming fatigued by this new game hope.

Speaker 1 (01:49:41):
Punk, the generational cycles of grim Dark versus Noble Bright.
Please stop making words up. I'm sorry. Grimdark only applies
to Warhammer forty thousand, that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:49:53):
The Thrones era of Bleak Ultra grim Fantasy, and they
are responding with a new cycle of subversion and contreriy,
as is the case with Catherine Addison in her.

Speaker 4 (01:50:03):
Horrible, Horrible Thegoblin Emperor.

Speaker 3 (01:50:05):
Which she herself admits was at least in part a
counter response to Game of Thrones.

Speaker 5 (01:50:11):
It is a book that was quite deliberately trying to
do several things that fantasy right now has not been doing,
because so much of fantasy right now has been so
influenced by George R.

Speaker 2 (01:50:22):
Martin.

Speaker 5 (01:50:23):
But it does mean that things have been very grim
and bleak and pessimistic and cynical. So it is deliberately
It's not a utopia, but it is utopianist in that
it is arguing that doing the right thing will win,

(01:50:45):
that if you try your best to be ethical and compassionate,
you will come out on top.

Speaker 3 (01:50:51):
So as the established fantasy genre evolved, one formula begat
a predictable counter formula, which begat a predictable counter formula,
and so on forever, eating us now in current year
to peruse the shelves of our local barns and noble
and think, golly, this syear is pretty far removed from
that must be new and unique?

Speaker 1 (01:51:09):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (01:51:09):
Though?

Speaker 3 (01:51:09):
Is Game of Thrones progressive and intelligent? Just because it's
so different from the sort of genera. Does that really
make one good and one bad?

Speaker 4 (01:51:16):
For that matter? How far removed really is this from this?

Speaker 1 (01:51:21):
I don't know these books, but from Blood and Ash
by Jennifer l Arment Trout and Dracula in Love, which
just based on the title, I don't know. I'm kind
of curious about that. That sounds like I mean, this
looks like an old book, so it's probably not like
Anne Rice type shit.

Speaker 2 (01:51:39):
But okay, anyway, you're a summary of that, you get
a summary of that. We'll take a look.

Speaker 1 (01:51:45):
Yeah, go ahead, but.

Speaker 2 (01:51:47):
Uh yeah, okay, So I'm sorry, but most of most
stuff is going to be schlock, except now now it's
gotten even worse. She wasn't happy with the publishing industry then,
and she's not happy with the publishing industry now. It

(01:52:07):
actually invites the question what would make her happy like
this individual, because I know I've actually gone over how
she's not happy with the current like nobody. I don't
think anybody is happy with the current. Well, the publishing
industry is poor now, this is what it is. And
it's because that's the lowest common denominator and it requires

(01:52:29):
the least amount of effort quality or quality control, and
it doesn't cost anything and people have an endless appetite
for it. What a surprise, And they even have more
of an appetite the more our relationships go to crap.
But like, what what would make this individual happy?

Speaker 6 (01:52:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):
Like people will write different stories of different quality and
they're kind of going, yeah, well, I mean, this is
feels like she's railing against just the cycles of creativity.
People are gonna gonna go this way and that way,
and you know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:09):
She's saying that. No, I think what she's saying is
that she's talking about, first of all, the so called
cultural leaders, so not like anybody who's trying to write something,
but the people that are considered to be like the
leaders in you know, book writing, the Georgia R. Martin's
and Michael Moorcox of the world, like these people who
are doing I mean, she doesn't mention jk Rowling at all.

(01:53:31):
I don't know if that's on purpose or what so,
but it's it's maybe she is maybe jk Rowling is
the exception, and that doesn't that doesn't really get to
the heart of what she's trying to say. But what's
happened is she's basically saying that we we took something
that was like, you know, great and stand out, which

(01:53:52):
is Tolkien's books, and because other people wanted to like
get close to that, like they saw it as aspirational
and they were like, oh, I want to make a
work like that, and so you got sort of Shannara,
which I don't think was people being lazy or whatever.
Maybe they were inspired by that. Maybe they read Lord
of the Rings and they were inspired by it and
it just kind of like came out in their work like, well,

(01:54:13):
I guess it looks a little bit a lot like
that or whatever. But what happened was you got sort
of cynical you know, business people and salespeople that were like,
we're gonna we're gonna take this and we're gonna turn
into a money making machine. And they did and that
became like everything. And then you got counter culture people

(01:54:33):
that were also part of this establishment, you know of
fantasy writing, and they're like, we're gonna do that, but
we're gonna do the opposite of that, and then they
started following a formula that they thought was original, but
it was just an inverted version of the other formula,
and then you got like people saying, well, this is
also grim dark, and I'm I'm you know, it's nihilistic

(01:54:54):
and I want to do something different, and so they
like go back to what, well, the way we used
to tell stories, but there's they think it's new because
they've been steeped in this darkness for so long. And
she's saying that we should stop looking at this as
a series of things to react to where you're like, oh,
I don't like, you know, Lord of the Rings, I'm
gonna do the opposite Lord of the Rings. Or I

(01:55:15):
don't like Game of Thrones, I'm gonna do the opposite
of Game of Thrones or whatever, because you're not allowing
yourself the space to like actually do something different or
like at least something that you think is authentic, which
is the most important thing. And I that's what she says, like,
you know, you should make something that is authentic and
stop worrying about like whether or not it's doing you're

(01:55:35):
doing this right, because that's the problem is that there
were these you know, rules, like they were like, well,
fantasy has to have these things, and they're like, well,
why does that, like why is that true? And you know,
it ended up limiting it, right, And she's saying that
it's just become a derivative of a derivative of a derivative,
even if it's inverting the the characteristics, and it's it's

(01:56:00):
actually become stagnant and stale. And she's saying that we
need to like break out of that cycle basically of
you know, move, countermove, countermove right, because that's where it is,
right now. That's that's what I think she's saying.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
Okay, fair enough, I'm sure, but it's really not like
the thing is that they're just do it like.

Speaker 1 (01:56:23):
That's what she says at the end. But but like
we again we are looking at the state of things now,
which she mentions here I'm going to play this bit is.

Speaker 3 (01:56:30):
Mass produced food makes people unhealthy. The same goes for
mass produced entertainment. We've entered an era when all Western
entertainment is corporate formula slop, yes, all of it. So
if even our fantasy literature can only be more mass
produced entertainment for the sake of entertainment, at some point,

(01:56:51):
we're going to reach a kind of twinkie entertainment. Critical
mass as a civilization if we haven't already now. Don't
get me wrong, I think stories apps must be entertaining.
I think it is a storyteller's obligation to entertain their audience. However,
if entertainment is the publisher's only aim, then I think
they've missed the point by a country mile. Also, I

(01:57:11):
think allowing a bunch of corporate overlords to decide how
it is that we are entertained is.

Speaker 4 (01:57:18):
Troubling. Additionally, there is.

Speaker 3 (01:57:20):
A difference between following popular trends and adhering to an
industry formula. One is organic and follows its own natural
path and life cycle. The other is corporate and profit driven.
And the thing is, because that machine and that business
model exists as the foundation of Western publishing, it's basically
impossible for anything other than twinkies to ever be published,

(01:57:42):
and in the rare case that such a book is published,
it's an absolutely herculean task. Is it possible to save
western fantasy publishing.

Speaker 4 (01:57:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:57:52):
Listen, nothing is stopping you from writing a great fantasy novel.
Nothing is stopping you from ignoring what is or isn't
part of the formula and just writing what you want
to write, Whether or not you'll be able to publish
it is another matter. But the fantasy publishing world, such
as it is, is the world that Lester del Rey built,
and it's the one we live in. Maybe we can

(01:58:12):
find all and it's a formula engine. Maybe we can't.
Maybe knowledge like this will lead some writers to despair
and put down their pens forever. Maybe this knowledge is
driving force enough to make that one person out there
right the masterpiece that ends up on the shelf next
to Lord of the Rings, who knows it's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:58:32):
I think that's where I agree and disagree. First of all,
I hope she's not really putting her guns against entertainment,
because that's not why everything is awful now because people
are like, oh, let's entertain the audience. It's awful because
the writers, these these individuals are buying into a moral landscape.

(01:58:52):
I call it the intersectional Zigarot, and they that turns
their work not into entertaining an audience, but dominating the
audience morally and trying to get the audience to conform
to the static categories in the intersectional ziggurat. So you're

(01:59:15):
on this level, these are the people below you. These
are the people love you you stay there and it's
not it's like didactic and it's it's it's not about entertainment,
it's about education, and that is actually made it absolutely
appallingly awful. Well, first of all, I don't believe in
a static moral system with casts, with a cast structure,

(01:59:39):
so automatically I'm like, yeah, no, I don't believe in
the intersectional ziggurat. But also the aim has made it
so every bit of craft, which is what makes things entertaining,
is gone because it's not compatible with the mentality of
the intersectional zigguratte the internet sexual ziggurat does not recognize

(02:00:03):
meant people's moral evolution because people exist in static moral
categories of oppressor and oppressed. Right, it doesn't recognize the
necessity of being entertaining over being didactic and showing people
where they lie in the intersectional stack. Right. So that's

(02:00:24):
what's ruining storytelling, and it's being pushed by yes, corporations,
but not corporations who want things to be entertaining for
the audience. Corporations who want things to reflect virtues like
diversity and oppression, oppressed theory, you know, stuff like that.

(02:00:44):
This is what's being pushed and they flood the marketplace
with their funding that has nothing to do with consumer dollars.
Who the hell knows where it comes from. It probably
comes from eventually the government, but it floods the market
with funding these projects that are basically didactic teaching us
all our moral place on the on the U, on

(02:01:07):
the intersectional zigguratte That's why it's crap today. Like the
del Rey's seeking money is almost quaint. It's like, oh,
we want to make a book by entertaining the audience. Okay,
I'm not gonna get upset over that. I'm not gonna
get upset over the fact that they took Tolkien trappings

(02:01:27):
and pulled it over the skeleton as a skin over
the skeleton of a boy's adventure story. I'm not gonna
get upset over that people were entertained. And that is
categorically different than what's happening now. It's either didactic moralizing,
and it's a set of morals that is incompatible with
character arcs, with humor, with people learning things from each other,

(02:01:54):
unless you're you're an oppressor learning checking your privilege and
you're the oppressed learning how much has been taken from you?
Or their crap like that like there's then that's why
the plots seem to be divorced from the actual character evolution,
because they can't write character evolution. The intersectional ziggurad is
like a freaking endless dumbing down of people's understanding of

(02:02:18):
each other into the most simplistic dichotomy. And you can't write.
You can't write complex character interactions. You can't write complex
character evolution or even simple character evolution, because it all
is subsumed into the intersectional ziggurad. I should draw this
stuff out someday and like do it stand alone to

(02:02:40):
explain it. But anyway, you can't do it like this.
Their morality is incompatible with the craft necessary to make
good stories. That's probably another reason why I told you,
oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:02:51):
I mean yes. I think they need something a little
bit higher to aim for than the intersectional religion and
uh and like apply apply something more, let's say, transcendent
in their thinking. This might be the reason why Tolkien
was successful where so many others failed, and C. S.

(02:03:12):
Lewis for that matter, because the Chronicles on Arnia is
still a big deal. The other thing I would say
about the Delrays is that there the problem was not
that they were greedy or seek profit above all else.
The problem was that they were risk averse and that
and so like because of that, they wanted to play
it safe, and they were concerned with safety, which stifles creativity.

(02:03:35):
So you know, that's pretty simple the way I see it.

Speaker 2 (02:03:39):
Yeah, exactly, And in terms of in terms of what
I'm saying, it's incompatible with character arcs because in order
to write character arcs, you have to, like as a writer,
you have to be willing to understand people who disagree
with you or who are genuinely different than you, and

(02:04:02):
not in a check your privilege way, but extend yourself
to understand how people think who are not you. And
if you know anything about intersectionality, you know everybody who
disagrees with you is actually in a moral demon who
deserves to be politically executed, like this is they they don't,

(02:04:24):
I said, like, you know, they don't regard people who
disagree with them as legitimate, so they have no they
have no tools to really model someone else. I mean,
in fact that they did, they probably be socially ostracized
by their fellow travelers. So it's like it's it's an endless,

(02:04:44):
stupefying stultifying, and You're right, it's risk adverse and it's
also very dumb and it does not lend itself to
good craft. And I don't like, Like I said, I
think the del Rays are the least of it, point
the least of it, and I don't think you can
blame them for not having another.

Speaker 1 (02:05:05):
Total I could have. Their whole framework could have been
abandoned a long time ago, but instead everyone operating within it.
So that's why we're in We're in the place where
in now because people are still referencing it through that
paradigm and all they got to do is escape the paradigm,
just walk away. Yeah, they could like write things again,
so but I got to published. Yeah, okay thet show.

(02:05:28):
This has gone longer than I expected. But I will
ask this though, because I was talking to maybe I'll
do this in the Patron show talk about this. I'm
I was talking thinking about like what books could have
could also really make for good film or TV adaptations
that are fantasy that you know like just like don't

(02:05:48):
say anything now, but I want you guys to think
about it, Like what's a fantasy book that you're like
and look not with current year Hollywood. I mean like
when they you know, because we got like all kinds
of new people, like young hungry people that want to
make movies, they want to make shows, they want to
make video games, whatever, and they're looking they need material,
and I think that there's a lot of old material

(02:06:09):
that's very rich and you know, could could create a
brand new sort of interest in these things. What are
some that you thought about. I would like to see
the Ice wind Dale trilogy or the dragon Lance books adapted,
for example. I think that could be really cool. But
just let me know what you guys think in the comments.
So do you have any more thank you?

Speaker 2 (02:06:30):
Oh yeah, we do are. Richard Beer put in five
hundred bucks, So.

Speaker 1 (02:06:34):
Thank you, Thank you Richard.

Speaker 2 (02:06:36):
That means we are at yeah, actually this is this
is a very heavy month, so thank you for doing
a lot of the heavy lifting everybody who did. Big
thanks for Richard, and big thanks to OKFS for two
fifty and I think we are.

Speaker 5 (02:06:53):
Well.

Speaker 2 (02:06:53):
That was before the show Dark World Moon. Thank you
for Dark World Moon for two fifty and I believe
that would put us at about eight hundred and ninety five.
I think about there eight hundred and ninety five left
to go. Hopefully we make it. It's got a little
bit of time left on the clock. If anybody wants

(02:07:14):
to put in some more on, you know, in at
the last moment, that would be great, and feed Thebadger
dot com slash support to do so. And again, maybe
I will just do a standalone that just explains the
intersectional ziggurat and how it destroys creativity and writing. That
might be interesting for people, because I think they're the

(02:07:34):
people who are there, like the people in the writing
sphere that aren't wrapped around l Woke so tightly that
they're sucking their own whatevers. I think they're noticing that
something is really wrong, really wrong, but they haven't quite
got to the point to realize what it is where

(02:07:55):
the stink is coming from. So maybe I'll do at
some point in the future feed the Badger dot com
slash support to help us continue to create this content.
And I think feed the Badger dot com slash just
the tip if you want to actually send us a
message with a tip, and Badger Nation dot online if
you want to join us in the Badger discord. I'll

(02:08:16):
do one last check and then I'm gonna hand it
back to you. Brian to take us out one last
poke of the roles. I don't see anything, so back
to you, Brian.

Speaker 1 (02:08:29):
Okay, Well, if you guys like this video, please hit
like subscribe. If you don't already subscribe, hit the BELF notification,
leave us a comment, let us know what you guys
think about what we talked about on the show today,
and please please please share this video because sharing is caring.
Thank you guys so much for coming on today's episode
of Maintaining Frame. I should have been Red Pill Cinema,
and we'll talk to you guys in the next one.

Speaker 7 (02:08:49):
Men's rite activists are machines, dude. Okay, they are literal machines.
They are talking point machines. They are impossible to fucking
deal with, especially if you have especially if you like
have good memory. On top of that too, holy shit,
you're fucked