Jul 24
fantastic video essay that takes a grinder to the idea of "different types of fantasy" and comes to the conclusion that "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" are bullshit terms made up by people desperately trying to categorize the big soup of human imagination, and are wholly unusable.
its also a GREAT advertisement for dozens of fantasy stories from yesterday to decades past.
#maskedmanta#“low fantasy”#“high fantasy”#both terms mean NOTHING#its all arbitrary definitions by listicles that slap conan the barbarian in “either” category based on what the writer's gut bacteria feel#especially with the two frequently given “primary” examples of each#ASoIaF has more magic spells and supernatural creatures per book than the entire lord of the rings does in its three#there are 10+ magic systems with unique origins and histories and use cases in ASoIaF#and the only magic “system” in lord of the rings is “god did it and his angels help sometimes”#i think people only think lotr is high fantasy because the costuming in PJ's films is fancy and too intricate. but so is GoT's costuming.#fantasy is fantasy#it kinda lingers on some tangents towards the very end of the video but ill forgive him because hes kinda cute#also i find it funny that he talks with sympathy about bad “sword and sorcery” tainting the critical well of early 20th C fantasy#and uses a lot of the same words those original critics used as he talks about isekai as a whole#i agree with him that isekai is trash and I hate it but there are one or two gold nuggets in the garbage dump that SOA started#like he doesn't think old WASP wish fulfillment cringe should poison the well but hes willing to let new japanese wish fulfillment cringe#poison that whole “another world” well. there are at least a few cups of wholesome water in there c'mon#but thats like 2:30 of a video the size of feature length film with uncommon researching so whatever
