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mask131 · 11 months ago

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About the "Tolkienesque renaissance"

The term "Tolkienesque renaissance" is of my own invention and creation, but it is a name I use to designate a very specific wave of fantasy fiction, or rather a specific phenomenon in the evolution of fantasy in the English-speaking literature.

As we all know, Tolkien's shadow cannot be escaped when doing fantasy. Tolkien's works being published began the modern fantasy genre as we know it today. D&D, the other big "influencer" of fantasy, would not have existed without Tolkien. The Peter Jackson trilogy began the fantasy renewal of the 21st century. Epic fantasy is a sub-genre explicitely designed after Tolkien's work.

And the massive influence of Tolkien over fantasy is the most felt in the second half of the 20th century, in English-speaking literature, through something I would call the "Tolkien cold-war". When you take a look at the fantasy books of the second half of the 20th century, you notice a fundamental clash and divide splitting it all in some sort of silent feud or discreet conflict. On one side, you have the "Tolkien followers" - as in, the authors who walk in Tolkien's footsteps ; on the other side, you have the "counter-Tolkien" offering what is essentially a counter-culture in a Tolkien-dominated fantasy.

We all know that Tolkien's success was huge in the early second half of the 20th century. The success of "The Lord of the Rings" and the "Hobbit" and the "Silmarillion" was especially important during the 60s and 70s - Gandalf for president and all that... People loved Tolkien's fantasy, people WANTED Tolkien's fantasy, and so publishers and others were happy to oblige. This began the "Tolkien followers" movement - but this beginning was a very unfortunate one, because it was one that relied on not just homage, imitation or pastiche... But in pure copy-cat and sometimes complete rip-off. Since people wanted some Tolkien, people were given LITERAL Tolkienesque fantasy. The most famous (or unfamous example of this would be the 1977 's "The Sword of Shannara" novel. This novel was designed to literaly be a simplified "The Lord of the Rings" with only a few details changed here and there. In fact, this is most of what people recall about this book - how blatant of a Tolkien rip-off it is. And yet, this book was a BEST-SELLER of the 70s fantasy, and it was a huge success, and everybody loved it, precisely because it did the same thing Tolkien did, and so you got to enjoy your favorite series all other again. Afterward, Terry Brooks, the author of the novel, expanded it into a complete series moving into much more original and personal directions, as he admitted himself that doing a Tolkien copy-paste was more of a publishing and editorial decision to make sure he would sell and settle himself in the literary landscape rather than an actual artistic project or personal desire. "The Sword of Shannara" got its own sequels, and became its own thing (though VERY reflective of what the 80s American fantasy was in terms of style, tone and content), but nowadays everybody remembers it for being the "Tolkien rip-off" in its first novel.

And yet being a Tolkien rip-off can sell well, and if the "Shannara" series hadn't proved it, "Dungeons and Dragons" did, since its first edition in the late 70s went as far as to just take Tolkien's inventions such as orcs, Balrogs and hobbits, and include it in its game. The same way the Shannara series then found its own tone and content, through the successive editions Dungeons and Dragons then began to build a world of its own... But it confirms what I said: it was the era of the Tolkien rip-offs.

In front of these "Tolkien followers", which were back then "Tolkien imitators", there was another movement that drove fantasy forward - and it was the "counter-Tolkien movement" so to speak. Works of fantasy that willingly chose to depart from Tolkien's formulas and archetypes and tropes, to do their own thing. Sometimes they did it out of an actual dislike of Tolkien's books: for example the "Elric Saga" was created because Moorcock hated the paternalist, moralist tone of The Lord of the Rings, and so he countered Tolkien's world with a protagonist serving the Lords of Chaos, using a soul-sucking evil sword, last remnant of an empire of cruel, decadent and demonic elves, in a tragic world doomed to endless falls and oblivions... (Though, ironically, Moorcock would end up initiating a genre of dark fantasy that Tolkien himself had explored in his unpublished texts...). Others did it not because they disliked Tolkien but wanted to prove you could do something else: for example Ursula Le Guin admired and appreciated Tolkien's works, but she was fed up with all the imitators and pastiches, and so she created her "Earthsea" world. No European setting dominated by white people, but an archepilago of islands with dark-skinned characters. No big war or political manipulations, the stories being about about the life, journeys and evolution of individual people. No sword-wielding hero or horse-riding paladin, but wizards and priestesses as the protagonists. No big prophecy about the end of the world, flashy magical sword or evil overlord ready to destroy the universe (well... almost), but rather philosophical and existential battles doubling as a fight against oneself and one's very existence...

This counter-Tolkien genre definitively peaked with the other big name of "dark fantasy" and what would annonce the "grimdark fantasy" a la Game of Thrones: Glen Cook's The Black Company.

But what about the titular "Tolkienesque renaissance" I speak of?

Well, if the "Tolkien followers" had only done bad rip-offs, it would have never lasted, ad the "counter-Tolkien" movement would have won. In fact in the 80s, it almost did! Tolkienesque fantasy was thought of as cliched and stereotyped and overdone and dead. People had enough of these blatant-rip offs, as the hype of the 60s and 70s had died out, and the 80s folks turned to other forms of fantasy - such as The Black Company (Dark Fantasy), or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (Sword and Sorcery), or various parodies and humoristic fantasies, but all far from the "epic fantasy". And yet, something happened... The "Tolkien imitators" became "Tolkien followers" or rather "Tolkien reinventors", and began the "Tolkienesque renaissance".

The Tolkienesque renaissance is this group of fantasy authors, most predominant in the 90s though they began their work by the late 80s, that decided they would make the Tolkienesque fantasy live on. Not just by copying it as their predecessors did, a la Shannara, no. But by reinventing it, freshening up the old ways for a modern audience and new times. They took back all the key ingredients, and the famed archetypes and the usual tropes of the epic fantasy a la Tolkien, and they reused them without shame... But in new ways, with twists and turns, playing on the codes of the genre, while carefully avoiding the cliches and stereotypes of the time. Giving what people liked about epic fantasy, while also producing new works that felt fresh and went into opposite directions - taking lessons from the counter-Tolkien movement.

It is commonly agreed that the series that began this renaissance was David Eddings' The Belgariad, published between 1982 and 1984. Just a look at the Wikipedia article mentions this best-selling, very influential fantasy series was the "last gasp of traditional fantasy, and the founding megasaga of modern fantasy"... Now, I actually have to disagree with Wikipedia's words. I do not consider it a "last gasp of traditional fantasy" since it already began the Tolkienesque renaissance and thus a new generation of fantasy ; and the other qualificative is ridiculous since modern fantasy already began with Tolkien, and the Belgariad is not a mega-saga, but just five average-sized books. But the idea of it being a link between an older and a newer generation of fantasy books is very true.

While The Belgariad has to be put first, second comes Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which probably is the most famous of the Tolkienesque renaissance works of the 90s and became this behemoth of fantasy literature. And to make a trilogy of iconic works, I will add another 90s success: Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn". Another iconic work of the Tolkienesque renaissance, though lesser known today than the Belgariad or The Wheel of Time - which is a shame, because Williams' work as a huge and heavy influence on a famous fantasy story of today... "A Song of Ice and Fire", which takes a LOT from "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" (I even call this trilogy the "missing link" between LotR and ASoIaF).

The thing with these Tolkienesque renaissance series is that today, to an audience that was nourished by Tolkien and D&D and Pratchett and other things of the sort, a superficial glance might make them seem like "yet other rip-offs, yet other stereotyped, yet other clichéed" fantasy series. You just have to see the reception of the first season of "The Wheel of Time" tv series - here there was a clash between two generatons of fantasy.

And what these people who take a superficial glance will miss is how inventive and fresh and interesting these series felt back then because they played with or subverted the tropes and the codes of the traditional fantasy. They all played by the usual archetypes - you have an everyman young chosen one, a magical mentor who must "die" at one point, an evil overlord in an ominous half-disembodied state, evil black-clad horsemen going after the hero, elves and dwarves and trolls... And yet, these series twisted these same ingredients they used to bring new flavors.

Let us take the Belgariad briefly, to see how the whole Tolkienesque formula was subverted. Like in Tolkien you've got an order of wizards appeared as elderly, bearded men - but here, they are definitively human beings unlike the otherwordly Istari, and their appearance is explained by them being the disciples of a god that likes to take the appearance of a bearded old man, and who by divine influence made them look like him. You've got a dangerous, all-powerful item the big bad is seeking to destroy the world - but here it is no evil, or corrupting thing. It is rather an item dangerous because of the sheer scope and range of its power, and the temptation isn't becaue it is "evil" power, but just because it is a power so massive it can break the world. You've got a missing king with a stewart/regent holding the throne for him until the lost heir returns - but when said heir returns, the stewart/regent is no evil vizir or scheming usurper, and gladly offers back the throne to its legitimate owner. Belgarath, your Gandalf-stand-in, is far from being the dignified guide and noble mentor of Tolkien, as he is a half-werewolf drunkard that hates any kind of official ceremony or garb and prefers running through the woods or rolling under a table in taverns. And while everything is designed as a Tolkienesque setting, you've got no elves or dwarves or orcs - but humans. And that's a big change compared to more traditional 80s fantasy (like D&D or the Krondor series or Shannara). You have your Nazgûl stand-ins, but they're humans. You've got your Istari, but they're humans. You've got your dwarves equivalent, but they're humans. You've got your orcs equivalents, but human too. And it is shown that it is all a human vs human combat, despite being a world of magic and gods, placing some relativism into it all. (Though the fact they decided to subvert the Tolkienesque good vs evil wordlbuilding by having humans on both sides did cause other aspects of the series to age badly but that's another topic).

I can go on and on but I think you see my point - and this same subversion can be found in the other two series I talked about.

The Wheel of Time begins with the chosen one going on a quest... But which chosen one? That's the problem - there are multiple candidates, and so we begin with a guessing game. And the Aes Sedai are clearly an answer to Tolkien's Istari - but all women instead of all men, and much more numerous and pro-active. As for "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" we have benevolent trolls that are actually more akin to Tolkien's dwarves and have some Inuit-influence, while the Tolkienesque-elves turn out to either be the big bads of the series and the evil guys ; or to be sheltered, useless side-characters that are not helping anyone and cause more problems than anything (I'm exaggerating a bit here, but you get the subversion). Spoilers - but the Galadriel equivalent literaly gets murdered during her second actual appearance, to make it very clear what kind of subversion we are into.

Because this was the game of these books - and the reason they were such huge successes. It wasn't about avoiding or setting themselves free from the tropes and code and archetypes of the genre. Rather it was about reappropiating them, reusing them, twisting them and modernizing them in order to get rid of the stale cliches and frozen stereotypes. It was all a game of imitation yes, but also of derailing - a subtle, discreet, derailing so that everybody got on board of the same type of train, but said train took different tracks to another landscape and worked on a different fuel. (If it makes sense?). It is a game of subtle twists - but unfortunately it is often this subtlety that makes these series overlooked, as people just focus too much on what is identical/similar and not much on what is different... Despite the differences being key here in this effort of renewing what was a dying style. Placing back these books in their context highlights even more how "fresh" they felt back then.

I have one specific point that illustrates this, but I'll need to write a whole post for it...

#fantasy books #fantasy literature #tolkienesque renaissance #tolkien #the belgariad #the wheel of time #memory sorrow and thorn #fantasy series #the elric saga #earthsea #the black company #lord of the rings #lotr #tolkienesque fantasy #dark fantasy #epic fantasy #fantasy cliches #fantasy tropes #the evoluton of fantasy

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fogwitchoftheevermore · 1 year ago

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no one asked but i want you all to hear about it, so.

basically, this au is is a fic that i have plotted out but will probably never write. it's half roadtrip fic and half "oh god, the horror inherent in the watchers and listeners." mild cw for mindbreak, it's discussed like, extremely briefly, but it's there.

this is going under the cut cause christ it got long. get ready to read 2.5k words of my insanity.

post "listeners helping martyn escape the void into rats at the end of double life" and post "winning limited life and having a fragment protected and getting to new life", memories that martyn had lose due to meddling by the watchers start to come back to him. most importantly- memories of evos, which he previously could not remember at all.

as these memories start to resurface, martyn remembers one very important person- netty- and the fact that he doesn't know where she is. this leads to him kicking down scott's door on new life and being like "hey, you can travel between worlds, right? i need your help."

the answer is yes, he can, though not without some difficulty- universe hopping is weird. for the purposes of this fic scott is some sort of powerful entity himself, but he doesn't actually know what. martyn explains the situation- "i have a wife who i'm only just starting to remember, and i need your help to find her now. also once we find her can she stay here?"

scott agrees to help (and to let netty stay), but all martyn can remember that would actually be helpful on this quest is her name, he can't remember her face. they spend a while hopping through some worlds that scott has easy access to (he doesn't know how to get to evos, and even if he did, martyn is pretty sure it's gone now.) and talking to the people there (mostly mcc participants) but no one knows where netty might be, and most of them aren't even sure if they know her, plays is a very common last name, martyn!

this fruitless exploring also involves a lot of martyn explaining evos and the watchers and listeners to scott, who is like "ah, that's what those guys are. they don't like me much, and i don't like them." eventually, they've hit a dead end, and scott suggests that they talk to other evolutionists about the situation. they start with pearl and jimmy, since they're on new life already.

jimmy and pearl are in a similar spot to martyn- jimmy is missing massive chunks of evos, and pearl is missing a lot less by virtue of having won a season, but they all find they cannot remember what happened to netty or what she looked like. jimmy and pearl also can't remember how they got out of evos and into empires and hermitcraft, but something is telling them that these things are connected. the two of them are now joining on this roadtrip, and they all decide the next stop should be hermitcraft to talk to grian, since he's the only other evolutionist they know the immediate location of.

getting into hermitcraft proves to be a little bit of a hassle, because x is a very good admin who has some strong protections up around the server, and he's very busy these days, but eventually joe just goes "ugh they're only gonna be here for like an hour and we know they're cool, i'm using my admin powers to just let them in." this moment isn't important for the plot, but it is important to me.

grian is hesitant to talk about what he knows about the situation, but martyn is desperate, so he's talked into it. he's mostly hesitant because it involves admitting to everyone that he kinda sorta defected from the watchers. (martyn had guessed this, as his memory of conversations with the watchers post life series had come back to him. pearl had been assuming he had to have, seeing as he was on hermitcraft and not wherever the watchers hang out. the only people who didn't know this were scott and jimmy who don't care and don't really get why that matters.)

grian explains his side of this- shortly after his life on hermitcraft started, he lost all contact with the other evolutionists. he thought it was weird and concerning, but he also kind of expected it. he runs into some of them or hears of them through mcc sometimes, so it's not like they're? dead? probably? though when he does see them, they seem a little... off. he tests out an early version of the life series on hermitcraft- demise- and the watchers like his work enough that they let him pick the cast for third life. he picks a ton of hermits, and then sneaks his way in because he made up the damn game, he should get to play! when he wakes up, he sees everyone he expects, and also martyn, jimmy, and bigb. what the fuck. the three evolutionists on the server have a very patchy memory of grian's existence, they know they're friends, but not one of them can seem to remember where or how they met. this is even more wildly concerning than the entire point of this game, which grian now knows is to feed on his friend's pain.

post third life, grian defects from the watchers, and starts trying to figure out where the hell the other evolutionists are, when one day in between seasons 7 and 8, a listener shows up on his doorstep. he doesn't actually know what listeners are- martyn has to interupt the story to explain- but he has this distinct feeling he should trust what it tells him. what it tells him is that two of his fellow evolutionists, jimmy and pearl, are currently trapped in 1.12 minecraft, still on evos.

grian pulls some strings of his own, talking x and the other admins into letting pearl into hermitcraft, and getting lizzie and joel to talk to fwhip about getting jimmy on to empires (when sausage hears about the situation through someone he single-handedly convinces fwhip to let pearl in too- he hasn't seen her since she first went to evos years ago). he breaks his way into evos, gets the two of them out, and goes home. not long after, last life happens, and suddenly neither jimmy or pearl (being effected by both the things that are really in charge of empires and watcher shit) remember that entire situation, but grian just lets it happen. the less he has to talk about it, the better.

jimmy and pearl jump in at this point- yes, yes, now they remember. for martyn, evos was over when the listeners opened up that portal, but for jimmy and pearl, they were thrown into 1.12 without the rest of the evolutionists, and shortly thereafter, abandoned by the watchers and listeners, and stuck in a stagnating world where neither of them could leave or speak to anyone. and then one day, after about a year of this, jimmy gets a message- from scott. he's asking if he wants to play in mcc- what the fuck is mcc?- and neither of them know how he's reached them, but it's a chance for jimmy to go somewhere else for a while and hopefully find someone to help them.

while in mcc, he does just that, looks for other people. and other people are there! martyn, lizzie, joel, and shit, someone else too, it's on the tip of jimmy's tongue but he can't think of it. however, while he's there, jimmy can't seem to tell anyone about what's happened to him and pearl, even other evolutionists. whenever he tries, the words just die on his tongue. when he comes back, jimmy finds he cannot contact scott again- they can only talk when scott reaches out, and they can only talk about mcc. this keeps happening whenever one of them gets picked up for mcc, but they keep going because it's a respite. one day after literal years of this, jimmy dissapears for a few days, and upon return, has a lot to tell pearl about a death game he played with some other evolutionists and joel and scott and also he scott got married but that's not the biggest part of this, tbh, and then shortly thereafter, grian shows up. they didn't know how he'd found them but that doesn't matter because they're FUCKING OUT. they're both gonna have to deal with how much they've had taken from them that they're only now getting returned to them as they talk to grian but that's not what they're going to talk about because scott has something to add now too.

"hey, jimmy, pearl, did you two say that when i was inviting you to mcc i was inviting you from evos?"

"yes, why?"

"martyn, does netty happen to have brown hair and grey squirrel ears and a tail?"

"i- yes, she does! how do you know that?"

"when i invite people to mcc, i need to know where they are so i can get them to mcc. when i brought jimmy into mcc 1, from what i now know is evos, i also brought someone else with me. someone else who was on your team, martyn."

"oh shit."

so, yeah. scott hadn't put together that they were talking about that netty, and also he just has, like, a normal memory, (like fr, the watchers can only really fuck with him in terms of the life series because he's weird) and mcc 1 was years ago at this point, he kind forgot what the cast looked like until this conversation.

so now jimmy and pearl know why they were so sure the way they got out of evos and netty were connected- she was there with them. by the time grian came for them, though, she was gone, so where the hell is she now?

martyn pops in here and tells them all about the void the watchers had been keeping him in between seasons of the life series. he didn't have a home world to return to, which would supersede whatever they wanted from him, so they could do whatever they wanted to him. grian is a little confused- he has a distinct memory of inviting martyn to every season after third life- but martyn tells him that while the invitation to limited life was real, the other two weren't. watcher memory fucking, baby! if that's where they were holding martyn, wouldn't it also make sense if they were holding the other evolutionists without home worlds there? wait hold on- no one knows where bigb's home world is- is he-?

we've almost reached the solution to his whole thing, so the four escaped evolutionists plus their weird friend are now metaphorically breaking into the void to free the rest of the evolutionists. i don't know how, but they do manage to free bigb and one other evolutionist- i haven't decided who- but not the rest of them, and netty is nowhere to be found among them. bigb is deeply grateful to be out, and confirms everything martyn had been telling them about the in between void, as well as the fact that the watchers had been running small test seasons on the evolutionists to get their fill in between seasons and to test out new mechanics. bigb and martyn had been the only ones the watchers had found interesting enough to keep in the real games, and that brief stability and normalcy (as stable and normal as the life series can get) had been what had saved them both from being feasted upon by the watchers. the other evolutionists had not been so lucky. whoever they did manage to save (who can be whoever makes you the most sad) is a shell of who they used to be- the way that cc!martyn describes it when the watchers feast on every part of a person instead of in moderation. it's bad enough that they all kind of agree that unless they can figure out how to help someone recover from this, it may be more merciful to leave the rest of the evolutionists where they are, even though they all fucking hate this.

but they've once again hit a dead end in the quest for netty. no one knows what to do or where to go, when bigb proposes something. if scott had even a little bit of access to evos that allowed him to bring netty, pearl, and jimmy out of it for a while, might he still have that access? they hadn't bothered to check, since they'd all been assuming the world went away when pearl and jimmy left it vacant, but he's right. it's vacant, as far as they know, but it still exists, and it's worth a shot, right?

and worth a shot indeed. because it is vacant- of players. when the group arrives, there is one person waiting for them- the listener who had helped grian find jimmy and pearl. it, she, has some explaining to do.

the listeners explains to the group that yes, netty had been with jimmy and pearl after the 1.12 jump. she cannot give an explanation for why those three were left in the world alone, or why the listeners and watchers abandoned them. these decisions were made by people far above her, and she cannot speak to these choices.

these tastes of freedom made netty long for proper freedom, and to be able to find the other evolutionists, but more than that, they made her angry. she desperately wanted to escape, and to bring jimmy and pearl out with her, but she couldn't do anything. eventually, after jimmy returned from third life, her anger snapped. she would do anything if it meant she and her friends could get out of here.

netty begins attempting to reach every deity and entity she knows- the watchers and listeners, yes, but a million other things too. noxcrew, mianite, anything. the first thing that responds is a listener, and she cuts a deal.

in exchange for jimmy and pearl's freedom, she will become a listener and let her memory be removed from the minds of the other evolutionists, in order to make her work against the watchers most effective.

the listener telling this story, knows, distantly, that she used to be netty. sometimes, she thinks she remembers it, but she know she has not been netty for a long time, and some part of her tells her she never was, that she was always a listener. she apologizes that she cannot give the group what they were looking for, but no one can. not anymore.

this ending the main reason i'm never going to write this- i don't quite know how we get there. no one likes this situation, but there truly is nothing to be done about it. they all trickle back to their home worlds- taking bigb with them to new life until he has the chance to establish his own world- and just sort of have to live with everything they've learned. and hopefully they can figure out how to help the other evolutionists, hopefully something good can come of this, but none of them are particularly hopeful.

ok people have been liking this au on other my other social medias soooo… does anyone want to hear about my listener!netty au

#space rambles #the worst road trip the worlds have ever seen #evoluton smp #traffic smp #im so normal about this au. so normal.

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