05-20-2011, 03:07 PM
I like it. As we discussed in the thread about The Walking Dead, it's often less to do with the monsters and more to do with the humans. The monsters are just a tool for the story.
It also helps if you want a story that's more focused on the main "good guy" characters. You don't have to spend a lot of time developing the character of, say, Sauron, turning him into a complicated individual with wants and needs. You just paint him as Fucking Evil and get on with your main plot. LOTR is not about Sauron. It's about a group of, essentially, people, who are trying to overcome various obstacles, both internal and external.
You could also say that most fantasy characters are really just taking particular facets of humanity and exaggerating them. Dwarves tend to be humans with exaggerated confidence and grumpiness. Elves tend to be humans with exaggerated confidence and arrogance. Both tend to be portrayed as lacking the mental flexibility of humans, usually to their detriment. It's kind of like an argument for a mental "Goldilocks zone" -- humans are not too hot and not too cold. We are just right for long term survival. Dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, etc, are almost always portrayed as having a basic sort of humanity, but with features that take them outside of the Goldilocks zone, generally turning them into a "dying race" for one reason or another.
I've also always liked the G.K. Chesterson quote: "Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman have both echoed and expanded on this sentiment as well. Pratchett in particular explained that every child grows up knowing that monsters are real. It's fairy tales that teach them that monsters can be beaten, with "monsters" basically being a metaphor for all sorts of challenges and problems.
It also helps if you want a story that's more focused on the main "good guy" characters. You don't have to spend a lot of time developing the character of, say, Sauron, turning him into a complicated individual with wants and needs. You just paint him as Fucking Evil and get on with your main plot. LOTR is not about Sauron. It's about a group of, essentially, people, who are trying to overcome various obstacles, both internal and external.
You could also say that most fantasy characters are really just taking particular facets of humanity and exaggerating them. Dwarves tend to be humans with exaggerated confidence and grumpiness. Elves tend to be humans with exaggerated confidence and arrogance. Both tend to be portrayed as lacking the mental flexibility of humans, usually to their detriment. It's kind of like an argument for a mental "Goldilocks zone" -- humans are not too hot and not too cold. We are just right for long term survival. Dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, etc, are almost always portrayed as having a basic sort of humanity, but with features that take them outside of the Goldilocks zone, generally turning them into a "dying race" for one reason or another.
I've also always liked the G.K. Chesterson quote: "Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman have both echoed and expanded on this sentiment as well. Pratchett in particular explained that every child grows up knowing that monsters are real. It's fairy tales that teach them that monsters can be beaten, with "monsters" basically being a metaphor for all sorts of challenges and problems.