caba111's art

I don't think Tolkien is a good fantasy writer because he scored the highest at some objective Best Fantasy Book Test that every fantasy writer has to take, I think he's a good fantasy writer because he created a world based on things that he was interested in. I feel like a lot of fantasy writers think that they need to create a whole language for their world because Tolkien did and obviously his books are the best so they have to emulate him, but Tolkien did that because he was a linguistics nerd. I think the lesson to be learned from him is not that you have to include elves and deep history and new languages, but that you have to write endlessly about the things you are a huge nerd about and use those things to create your fantasy world

the key to avoiding symbolismslop is sincere, thoughtful intent btw

it's fine to create art that has deer skull god (she/her) (queering it) pomegranate sun/moon symbolism in it but you need to ask yourself, why a deer skull and not another animal? what does queering it add to the text's portrayal of religion? why a pomegranate specifically? are the sun and moon the most appropriate celestial bodies to represent the meaning i'm trying to convey to my audience? what am i trying to say here?

"it looks cool" and "everyone else is doing it so i guess i should as well" are the creativity killers. inspiration requires introspection otherwise it's just imitation!!!