Post

God yes. The number of people who seem to confuse LotR for the Belgariad when criticizing it. Tolkien has many flaws as an author, but LotR is not remotely a by the numbers example of the genre it spawned except on the very very, very surface.

Revan@revan.eurosky.social

25. Many of the popular critiques of Tolkien are actually critiques of his imitators

23/10/26, 10:50 pm2 reposts29 likes

Nafnlaus 🇮🇸🇪🇺🇺🇦

@nafnlaus.bsky.social

A friend of mine pointed out the curse of Tolkien's legacy: that so many people have imitated all of his tropes so extensively that now Tolkien *himself* feels derivative, through no fault of his own.

Orual

@nonbinary.computer

I actually disagree with this to an extent. Like a lot of the overdone narrative tropes of fantasy are actually Edgar Rice Burroughs plus Dungeons & Dragons, and much less Tolkien. Like elves, dwarves, and orcs in the modern sense originate with him, but the versions people imitate are mostly Gygax.

Orual

@nonbinary.computer

Tolkien does a bunch of stuff which every single highly derivative work (e.g. Shannara) basically just ignores, most notably his making the primary protagonist Frodo and not Aragorn.

Orual

@nonbinary.computer

Or they're following in the footsteps of Warhammer and its influences, which obviously include Tolkien in terms of elves and orcs, but narratively differ quite a lot as well.

Virginicus

@virginicus.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

@nonbinary.computer @lore.house I have even seen people denigrate Tolkien for not being enough like his imitators.

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