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Favorite inspiring fantasy books
Utianima
Norway and Austria
What are your favorite fantasy books, that you have (or repeatedly do) read which also inspired or influenced your character and/or Achaean experience?
Maybe it made you create a new character, reshape your characters, try a new class or faction, help define a new roleplaying experience, get a specific type of customized mount... or simply made you change focus.
For clarification: I put this thread in North of Thera because the focus not only to be in roleplay, but also on literary inspiration for simple things such as the fascination for a class, theme, customisations, choices, etc.
(Edit: Added reshape and roleplaying as areas of inspiration.)
Maybe it made you create a new character, reshape your characters, try a new class or faction, help define a new roleplaying experience, get a specific type of customized mount... or simply made you change focus.
For clarification: I put this thread in North of Thera because the focus not only to be in roleplay, but also on literary inspiration for simple things such as the fascination for a class, theme, customisations, choices, etc.
(Edit: Added reshape and roleplaying as areas of inspiration.)
2
Comments
This is entirely based off of my admittedly limited experience with fantasy books, they are just generally not my cup of tea. I like my imaginary playland to be sufficiently dystopian and flawed, which is something sci fi is great at without turning it into the Hunger Games.
As far as specific elements, I originally based my character on being essentially a tundra troll version of Dune's fremen, withAtreides-inspired loyalty. the dune series has been veru influential on my writing and on Aodfionn's development.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruenor_Battlehammer
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Thibbledorf_Pwent
"The King's Wit was not a silly court fool such as one might find in other kingdoms. He was a sword, a tool maintained by the king. Insulting others was beneath the dignity [of] the king, so just as one used gloves when forced to handle something vile, the king retained a Wit so he didn't have to debase himself to the level of rudeness or offensiveness."
And maybe the Gentlemen Bastard series since I love Sabetha so damn much. :chuffed:
Seeing female characters that arent protagonist but still influence the main character so much, those are the women I love to read about. ^.~
Hoid is great.
Hrm. I'm honestly not sure where any/all my inspirations for Sarathai come from, though it may have informed my choice for Druid way back when. But it was so long ago that I'm not entirely sure where I got the idea from. Would definitely have to think about it a bit.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
I chose it because I knew Athelas would have to be some kind of healer, due to the motivation behind creating him. Back then though, I had every intention of playing a priest of some kind. But, as the gods of RP dictated, his first and last class choice turned out to be Druid.
No Regrets!
Other than that, Athelas is a character in and of himself. I let his experiences and basic motivation dictate how he is portrayed.
He has his ups and downs, likes and dislikes. He also seems to be some form of loving wise sage, with quite a bit of hurt in his past.
So, no. I can't say I'm influenced by any fantasy books.
However, Athelas's existance is the direct result of RP in a custom world of my own creation. As a result, his motivation and backround is deep and quite rich, so I guess one can say I wrote the "book" that inspired his creation.
But yeah, the Forgotten Realms books (specifically the Drizzt series and the Last Mythal trilogy) are really good.
As well, the Sword of Truth series is absolutely mind-blowingly good.
LOTR - dwarves and elves and wizards and orcs and giant spiders
Usborne puzzle adventure books, Enid Blyton, Cairo Jim - ok now I'm a 9 year old who thinks haunted castles and pirates and swamps and ancient temples and cursed idols and smugglers and Egyptian relics and jungles are awesome, and will go on to be a sad nerd introvert forever, well-establishing me to obsessively play a text adventure game
His Dark Materials - I want a pet
Snow Crash - I want an ironically meta protagonist character (ok this is sci-fi)
The Secret of Monkey Island - I want to be a pirate and have witty insult-duels (ok this is a video game)
Lovecraft - I want to dance on the crumbling shore abreast the sea of madness and dally with ineffable creatures of the abyss, the full scope of whose almighty alien agendas defy comprehension, let's be an Occultist
Discworld - I want to ground fantasy tropes in the necessary mundaneness of reality
Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Hugo's House of Horrors - (also video games)
Carol Berg's 'The Bridge of D'Arnath' series influenced me when Ruth shifted to Hashan and decided to following the concept of Suffering. The second book, 'Guardians of the Keep' was my favourite out of the lot, because the world of Zhev'Na reminded me of Mhaldor, and the lords of Zhev'Na reminded me a little of how I viewed the little Council of Mhaldor.
Someone else mentioned the Sword of Truth books - this was a great later day influence. A lot of particulars struck interesting cords with me that came out the more I wrote. In more recent times, the Outlander series has been a really favorite influence, mostly in particular characters and their interesting quirks and flaws, but also the two main characters' love story is a huge, continued inspiration.
While a movie and not a book, when I saw Brave I was absolutely floored at how the mother and daughter portrayed two different sides (and timelines, really) of Melodie. If you ever want an easy reference of character, there you go. It was kind of scary for a while and I began to wonder if Disney had pried into my head. Some of the lore and story there has gotten my mind working more than once.
Edit: Thinking about it now, I think a lot of the Scottish lore and legend, not to mention the personalities, is just a big general inspiration for me.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
The first book is rather good, about a mute, disformed slave that gets kidnapped from servitude by sky-pirates but then one of the pirates finds out she is a girl and kidnaps her from the pirates to save her from rapings and then they have adventures looking for treasure together and she meets this guy who is all rangery swoony and looks past her ugliness but she is all ugly and mute so can't tell him her feelings and they part ways.
Then they go and fuck it up in the first chapters of the second book by curing her than she starts farting around castles as a princess and everyone falls in love with her all the time. Seems like the author didn't quite know which mary-sue archetype she wanted to be so there is a series of name swaps and location swaps so she can cover all of them as she crams herself into the books.
I use the last two books as guide how not to act.
Guardians of the Keep excerpt:
http://pastebin.com/Lfz0DrQA
I read this as ships were announced and I loved it so much I wish sailing was crafted like it. Families basically bankrupting themselves to have ships made of wizardwood which they have to negotiate with strange races to have built for them. Once the ritual is done (three generations dying on the deck) the figureheads become alive and sail faster and better than normal ships. The pirate king who makes a young ship fall in love with him and abandons her family, the cursed ship who went mad and killed all his crew, the tragic truth behind the ships and the amnesiac dragons.
Such a good read.
Since then, his character has been a lot more influenced by other characters I've admired in the game than by any books, but there are a few that are at least clear enough parallels that there's probably some subconscious influence lurking in the shadows.
Kvothe from Rothfuss's books is a nice example. For a very long time, I've played Tael as multitalented and I suspect that Kvothe made me more comfortable with doing that without feeling like too much of a Mary Sue (and Tael certainly has his faults and mistakes and failures). Admittedly, my initial justification was a little different - Tael is several centuries old and has lived all over the place doing all sorts of things and I've always liked the idea of actually roleplaying that rather than roleplaying as though previous class changes never happened as is I think a little more common. But it definitely made me feel more comfortable.
Lovecraft definitely influenced my perspective on post-Eris Chaos, but probably more so on Darkness (the mood more than the actual theology), since the concept of Chaos is actually relatively systematised in the relevant orgs in a way that doesn't gel quite as well with cosmic horror. There's a certain existential horror in something like the heat death of the universe, and it's a really neat thing for a fantasy game to leverage, but I don't think it's the same thing as Lovecraftian horror. There's a reason why the Cthulhu mythos isn't told from the perspective of a scholar of the Elder Gods who's actually categorised them and formed theories about them and all that (to say nothing of dominating them). I tend to think of the Occultists as less Lovecraft and more Crowley.
Mike Carey's Lucifer has definitely had an impact on how I think about characters that are ambiguous between being "bad guys" and antiheroes.
More concretely, Catherynne Valente's writing has definitely had an impact on my prose over the years.
Finally, if I'm allowed to bring in sci-fi, Transmetropolitan is actually a pretty huge influence now that I think about it (and Thompson's own writing too, to venture even further from fantasy). In a way, one of Tael's primary occupations has been something like the Achaean version of gonzo journalism for the past few real-life years. There are definitely some nontrivial personality similarities between Tael and Spider Jerusalem too.
Made about an hour ago.
WHOEVER YOU ARE. YOU BETTER DO MY SABETHA JUSTICE.
LOTR & Hobbit (J.R. Tolkien): A classic that pretty much made the modern genre
Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson [Last 2 Books]: Strong classic, I'm currently re-reading it actually currently ^_^.
Midkemia Series (Raymond E. Feist): While I've never gotten into the IRE mud, I loved the serious. If I could I would totally make a character named Ashen-Shugar.
Assassin; Tawny Man series (Robin Hood): Gotta love the Fitz and the Fool!
Magic of Recluse; Imager; Corean (L.E. Modesitt, Jr): A solid author with multiple series. His books are pretty philosophical but easy to get into.
Mistborn; Stormlight; (Brandon Sanderson): Loved the ending of the Mistborn Trilogy and I really can't wait for the 3rd installment of Stormlight
Sword of Shanara; Kingdom of Landover; (Terry Brooks): Related Titles; While I've read the Hobbit, Sword of Shanara probably got me started reading fantasy more.
Discworld (Terry Prachett): Gives the same feeling as Futurama in that it was a satire of modern day and poked fun at many aspects of our current culture and past history. RIP Sir T. Pratchett T_T
Dresden Files (Jim Butcher): Gotta love the trench-coat badass wizard
Plus a scattering of other fantasy novels that I can't remember but were great books, including some classical stuff like the Frankenstein.
Honourable mentions to the sci-fi series, for being really good series that temporarily drew me away from magic and into sci-fi.
Ender Series (Oscar Scott Card): Remember, the enemy's gate is down!
iRobot; Caves of Steel; Foundation (Issac Asimov): R. Daneel Olivaw is simply the best, even if bound by the 3 laws of Robotics
Dune (Frank Herbert): While not as inspired by it as some other Achaeans (looking at you, @Aodfionn) it was still a good read and taught me what a Jihad was before...ya know, the real jihad (lets not get into politics, shall we?)
Yea, that one!
I would definitely make her an Alchemist, it makes sense since she's a scientist of sorts. I'd have to put her in Hashan or Ashtan since she's definitely Chaotic-evil on the spectrum... no to mention doing experiments on children. And of course ether could just be a type of dust..
Oooooo, oooo, ooo, now I have to go and re-read the series and plan a character out around her!
WTF Sanderson? Give me an ending and then tempt me with a fourth installment? Mistborn Quadigy.