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The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski's disdain of games

AwesomeButton

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99% of fantasy fiction is shit anyway. Doesn't surprise me that he isn't an exception.
99%? Can you point that 1% I missed?
If you have read the full 100% you should be long past the point where you were able to distinguish.

99% of fantasy fiction is shit anyway. Doesn't surprise me that he isn't an exception.
99%? Can you point that 1% I missed?
Gene Wolfe
Not Polish.
He was probably speaking of Zwachyzlyw Dzukaj Zwarywrctrlowski, with his magisterial "Orbatja Mzjportrtrd Njakramaja Svjtja" saga.
Don't try to gauge my nationality, it's bad form.
 

Konjad

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Fantasy, by definition, is for kids, women, and manchildren, as it is made on the foundations of bullshit.
 

AwesomeButton

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I could write a story about a tough dwarven detective investigating the disappearance of an elven bar singer and uncovering a conspiracy by the feudal lord to sell his soul to a demon in return for magical powers. The detective reaches the lord just in time before he is killed by the disappeared elven bar singer. He helps her cover up the murder scene and they get out.

That story would not be fantasy.
 

odrzut

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I could write a story about a tough dwarven detective investigating the disappearance of an elven bar singer and uncovering a conspiracy by the feudal lord to sell his soul to a demon in return for magical powers. The detective reaches the lord just in time before he is killed by the disappeared elven bar singer. He helps her cover up the murder scene and they get out.

That story would not be fantasy.

Fantasy is a genre and a setting. Your example is fantasy setting, but not genre. But you can have the opposite as well.
 

Beastro

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Defining fantasy reminds me of "What is an RPG?"

I think somehow the two are related due to the way RPGs have emerged out of fantasy as RPGs predominant setting now that I think about it...
 

odrzut

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It's a fiction that focuses on the supernatural.

Same as with criminal - if the murder is the focus it's a criminal, if the hero murders 10 000 people it's action movie.
 

Beastro

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It's a fiction that focuses on the supernatural.

That's a pretty retroactive definition if I've ever seen one, and I'm sure people will be presenting examples that don't meet that criteria.

The problem I think comes from the pre-scientific roots of fantasy and the way it's developed that stand as alien to the modern mentality obsessed with definition and categorization.
 

AwesomeButton

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Ok, so I'm correct and "fantasy" is not a genre.

Tolkein wrote a novel in a setting he constructed, based on Germanic folklore. This inspired other writers of variable skill levels to write their own novels.
 

odrzut

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What's wrong about retroactive definitions? You don't invent a genre and then write some books to fit the definition, you always make a genre for already existing books, when there's enough similar ones.

And of course there are counterexamples, as with any classification, so what?

A novel is a genre, right?

https://www.google.pl/search?q=novel+definition

novel - a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism

"typically" in definition means there are counterexamples. So if you want to be strict:

a novel - a fictious prose narrative of a book length.

That makes Bible a novel.

TL;DR: don't be anal about classifications, except for math they are always fuzzy.

Oh, and also: https://www.google.pl/search?q=fantasy+definition
a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.
 
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Lacrymas

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ALL genres are retrospectively derived, they are a combination of the same traits that are repeated throughout a span of time, at least those that are used by more than 1 author. Erik Satie arbitrarily named a few of his compositions as if they were a new genre he invented (the ogives, the gnossiennes, the gymnopedies, etc.), but that's not the same. Saying "but that's retroactive" is redundant, ALL of them are. The "obsession" with definition and categorization isn't a modern thing, Aristotle literally has a work called "Categories".
 

AwesomeButton

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