13 Comments
User's avatar
Jim Melvin's avatar

As a fellow writer of fantasy, I approve this post. 😀

Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Merci I recommend looking at Therese’s most Godly and beautiful post, she’s really done a great job hammering out her ideas for her subgenre. I wanted to just raise awareness but also offer encouragement towards sagas and trilogies and epics.

Expand full comment
Noah's avatar

Excellent post brothers. I'll admit you have reminded me of my childhood desire to write an epic for Gen Z. Not sure what that would look like but I want to write it. It could be the Arthurian stories but I think I have another epic in me somewhere on top of that.

Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Merci in that case go all the way buddy! Do both!

Expand full comment
Noah's avatar

Thanks for the endorsement.

Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Anytime

Expand full comment
Erik Waag's avatar

A well done piece! It's been disheartening to see the malaise that storytelling has fallen into. Just as culture seems to have frozen somewhere around 2005, stories have become skinsuits for artificial ideas. That's nothing new, but it seems to be accepted by so many. We see a corporate (false) feminism for women, corporate heroism for men, and a range of corporate sponsored copes and platitudes for those who see themselves as victims. All a greedy kind of empowerment and enabling. All of it promotes sadness, loneliness, and sickness.

In heroic epics, the hero returns with the elixir to heal his community. What I've seen from Hollywood is that the hero returns with their narcissism justified and celebrated. Conan, cocky and self-serving as he is, always ends up doing the right thing. He's dangerous, as you say. A dangerous man with a good heart is the stuff of nightmares for creepy tyrants lurking about in the shadows of our current West. The new "heroes" they bring don't heal communities, they atomize them. They split men and woman apart, they make enemies of family, and they promote all kinds of division between friends and sympathy for devils.

I'm ranting! I'll have to look over Thérèse's article after work.

Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Her article basically repeats much of what you just said. The key I think is to tear apart feminism and to promote those stories that are more like the original Conan and original Tolkien ones. Those stories that Howard & Tolkien loved like the Iliad and so on. They are beautiful stuff (I'm reading Roland & the Iliade right now, love 'em).

I bloody hate hollywood and the rest of the corpos that took over the culture the past 100 or so years also so you're good I get it. I hate the division also. I also hate that they've made finding a decent mate and raising a family so bloody hard for someone like me.

Expand full comment
The Black Knight's avatar

Yes, and I think I have a few of them already :D

Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Ah ok

Expand full comment
Jay Logan's avatar

Unfortunately, I am doing it backward. I have a 320K epic fantasy (complete draft) with no standalone novels.

Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Then in that case lean in all the way Jay Logan, I somewhat did something similar.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
2d
Expand full comment
The Brothers Krynn's avatar

What are you talking about? As to Tolkien I'd say he was as great if not greater than Wagner. But no matter, I don't care for your opinion. So blocked and goodbye. This isn't about DnD, dunno where you got that idea. It is about national epics and how much it inspires people to change and better their societies.

As to Wagner he was indeed brilliant and the age he was part is currently dying idiot and the brilliance of his age will surge again someday okay bot?

Expand full comment