Gary Gygax - Tumblr Posts
okay this episode of code switch podcast on race in dungeons and dragons (and fantasy as a genre more broadly) is mostly all stuff i talk about here all the time but the specifics surrounding gary gygax the history of d&d/rpgs was new to me and really made it clear how it’s just like. oh you really don’t have to connect any dots you don’t have to extrapolate or read between the lines it’s just right there huh
also sidenote i know this is something i never shut up about but honestly the amount of harm jrr tolkien did to fantasy as a genre (and obviously, you know, real life people of color) by constructing the modern conception of orcs as, in his own words, “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types” … truly immeasurable. literally imagine what we could have if the foundations of this entire fucking genre hadn’t been built on white imperial fantasies about good and evil and wanting to be able to guilt-free dream up scenarios where they could massacre hordes of some inherently evil subhuman species to save the world
"then are pursued by a vicious creature with the head of a dugong and the body of a sea elephant,"
🤨
This script sounds absolutely wild (and is not convincing me that most of the interesting stuff from OG D&D wasn't from Dave Arneson...).
Also, very much feels like the whole 'modern people being isekai'd into a fantasy world' concept was pipped by Gordon R. Dickson's 1976 novel 'The Dragon and the George' (rather good, if you ever get the chance to read it) - which was adapted into the Rankin Bass animated film 'The Flight of Dragons' (which we can only surmise Gygax was also not a fan of... :p)
Also, going back to Conan for a moment, if we're completely honest Thulsa Doom is totally a cooler name for a villain than Thoth-Amon...
Gary Gygax panned Conan the Barbarian and The Sword & the Sorcerer, slightly preferring the latter (Dragon magazine #63, July 1982). He noted that Conan had very little of Howard's Conan in it*, but couldn't resist some petty nerd rage about hair color.
Fantasy films as a genre had earned a poor reputation in the late 1970s and early 80s, compared to some of the classics of sci-fi and pulp adventure being released at the same time. Gygax promised they were carefully taking their time making their Dungeons & Dragons movie planned for 1984 or 85, aiming for the high standards of Star Wars and Raiders.
That film never was made, but judging from the script that eventually resurfaced in Brian Blume's collection it could have been worse than the 2000 effort and its sequels. Jon Peterson wrote about that 1980s script in 2015, summarizing a story of ordinary people from our world being pulled into a fantasy realm -- an idea left over from Andre Norton's 1979 novel Quag Keep, which was recycled into the 1983-85 Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. There are tired themes of a Chosen One and a capital "C" Child destined to inherit great power, main characters who accomplish little by themselves and repeatedly need saving by more powerful NPCs, and almost all of the monsters are new creations, showing no attempt to represent familiar creatures and spells from the game. We would have to wait 40 years for a movie that dodged those pitfalls.
(*Slight edit here, as while I was one of many viewers baffled by Conan facing the wrong villain, who had the wrong appearance for that name, I enjoyed the movie more than GG did and thought the character and world felt enough like Conan for me.)
That feeling when The Barbie Movie wrote a better matriarchy than Gary Gygax ever did.