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Comments
Fantasy creatures work better, I think, because they can be adversaries and/or elements of the environments at large. While having fantasy races often domesticates arcane concepts and prevents them from being interesting, fantasy creatures are under no obligation to be personable or understandable. In fact, if you want to look at the dichotomy between "creature" and "race", compare Bram Stoker's Dracula with Twilight.
One of the biggest draws of fantasy is that it's an entry into a different world, so it really appeals to players who value discovery -- pretty much one of the primary forces that drives horror, although horror is more based on the promise of discover and then (usually, if it's good) doesn't make good on that promise. If you throw a race of elves or dwarves at an audience, there's no sense of discovery because they know the score. And many will also see these archetypes for what they are, and apply them to races that aren't literally presented as elves or dwarves.
But what if your story has only one elf? And what if said elf has an inhuman (but not necessarily immoral) attitude towards ethics? What if your magic is less like a cruise missile and more like the Force? And, finally, what if these things only show up in very conservative bites? In many fantasy settings, the actual fantasy often gets boring quickly because it becomes mundane and normal rather than being an exception. We need to a baseline of acceptable reality to work with before all that magic fantastic stuff happens or the audience will fail to be wowed. Look at The Lord of the Rings films -- we get a bit of an arcane intro, but the story quickly moves to a domestic, rural setting full of mundane short people who wouldn't know which end of a spear to use. The first element of fantasy is Gandalf, but his initial "tricks" aren't known to be magic or technology. We know shit is getting properly real when the Ringwraiths show up, though, but even then, they're not impressive in a thunderbolts-and-lightning sense -- they have this breath effect like a ravenous, high-pitched version of Darth Vader and we can't see their faces. But they ride large black horses, carry swords and always seem to have armour on under their robes.
So we haven't seen anything overtly magical yet, perhaps apart from Gandalf's dragon firework, but the atmosphere that comes with the Ringwraiths is so oppressive that we just know something's up, even without Gandalf's explanation. These things don't appear to be able to do anything a human can't, but they're still a threatening presence.
In fact, it should be noted that for a series of books and films that are together considered, largely, to be the best fantasy works of our modern era, have a distinct lack of fireballs and lightning bolts tossed around. Tolkien certainly implies that this can be done, but we never witness it first-hand, and many magical "tricks" are implied to be factors of technology or simple, elegant skills being parsed as magic through the perspective of the active character.
I would point you towards Harry Potter. There, the magic is designed to give the reader a sense of wonder; holy shit there's a castle and ghosts and a giant squid and a flying sport that is like basketball and soccer and holy shit there's like potions and wands and plants that eat you and what the fuck magic
What really works for the series, though, is how it's never explained. Things just kind of... happen, and that's what makes it wonderful. Who cares how it works? It just does and that's cool.
Pretty fascinating to see such an archaic process be heavily improved by modern technology.
Then again, it's stop motion. As wonderful as it looks, it takes a lot of time.
I'm not even particularly interested in that movie, and now I want to go see it just to see how it all came together.
Did the survey for which of my college's activities I'm interested in yesterday. I found eight (which I guess shouldn't surprise me, with this being a liberal arts college), including student writing magazines to be worked on. And that was without them even listing their M:tG club. Speaking of M:tG, Juan, let me know when that game is, and I'll see what I can do.
okay, i am now finding myself reading through anti-brony sites. I want to stop, but then i find shit like this and it makes me read more to wonder how terrible it can get
^I can't see the link, what is it?
as i don't wish to cause anyone any further psychological scarring due to exposure to bronies, I will link you to it via PM
^^ it is not the worst thing i have seen tonight
not by a long shot
Uhh... wow.
I'm not sure what to think of this, not being a brony and all. Is this really how deep in the rabbit hole these people are?
all i know is, "and you want restraint" is the funniest line i have read in ever
The vast, vast majority of people in the fandom are not. It's no different than any other fandom. There's always going to be a few crazy people who take everything way too far.
Most people just like to watch the show, and talk about it with other people who like the show, and maybe listen to some fanmusic or something.
yes
It's why I mentally separate 'brony' and 'pony fan' in my head. Very different things as far as I'm concerned; pony fans are people like ninjaclown and forzare, while bronies are people like... that.
Then again, I'm part of the Touhou fandom which has its' creepy fucks and all, so I have no right to judge members of any other fandom. Except belly bros. I reserve the right to mock them now and forever.
From the way you wrote the post where you put that link, I was confused as to whether or not that was a brony or a brony hater. They're pretty silly, either way, but of course, fandoms and hatedoms both have their crazies.
For context on "Belly Bros.", apparently The Hub wants to copy MLP's success with older demographics with... Care Bears.
Let that sink in for a while.
it was a brony who wrote that thing
a brony hater who made me aware of the thing
the brony hater is also annoying, but i wish to learn about how bad some bronies get, today
it's no weirder than trying to get MLP to appeal to older fans, except that MLP wasn't designed with that in mind
i mean, MLP and Care Bears are both cutesy, kidsy stuff with cartoons that were primarily aimed at younger children and had themes like love and friendship and rainbows
but specifically aiming it to emulate MLP's success is stupid, that's not the sort of thing you can just decide to do.
Apparently, the show looks like this.
Uhh... yeah, good luck with that, Hub.
the bears are alright
but that girl
why
it's the eyes man
the eyyyes
i would say it is a lot of things
like the proportions of the chest to the arms
and how the eyes are so sunken
and how she looks like a fucking doll
halp
and what the hell is that brown bear doing
the blue one looks like he's getting ready to hurl the bowl at someone
but that girl
why"
that girl's eyes
wtf
I might use that as an avatar just to creep you all out.
Well, one of my goals with the setting is to make that not the case. That's why mine aren't even humanoid.
A lot of how the terrestrial races (octopuses, of course, are kinda segregated from the rest, so a story focusing on them might feature the terrestrial races very little, if at all) integrate into one society has to do with their physical differences and capabilities.