What's the difference between High Fantasy and Low/other Fantasy?

What's the difference between High Fantasy and Low/other Fantasy?

Saying it's 'not on earth or on earth' is not a good enough answer. No bullshit please.

Amount of magic and other supernatural features involved. There is no hard boundary.

>The answer is not a good enough answer

user, if you didn't want to know, why the hell did you ask the question?

High: everything is covered in shit golems
Low: everything is covered in plain old shit

I've seen a few different answers, but the one that works best for me is the level of magical integration in the normal person's life.

If magic is spoken about in hushed whispers and rumours around a fireplace, but the only person who claims to have seen it is the crazy old man in the corner of the inn who no one believes? Low fantasy.

If it's not uncommon for villagers to have someone who makes a living selling magical potions that actually work? High fantasy.

If the King has a court wizard who can teleport the King away in the event of danger? High fantasy.

If being a member of a clergy means you've got a reasonably high chance of being able to perform minor miracles (like healing people)? High fantasy.

Whether a setting is low or high fantasy can, somewhat ironically, be determined more accurately by the average civilian's quality of life than by the level of magic.

Indoor plumbing means high fantasy.

A lack of independent townspeople and cities in favor of indentured serfs and fiefdoms is more likely to mean low fantasy.

The difference between Game of Thrones and Lord of the rings. The higher the fantasy the more 'weird' things get. The lower the fantasy the more normal it is. Though Game of Thrones, GoT, has dragons and magic it is very little and almost unheard of as the world is pretty much entirely made up of normal humans. Lord of The Rings, LOTR, has a fairly high fantasy as there is a diverse amount of 'weirdness' as elves, dwarves, and other magical/different creatures/beings that are well-known throughout the human realms.

Magic also plays a big part within the level of Fantasy and I'd say both franchises hold a similar look on how magic should be used. Harry Potter uses magic as an everyday deal and has a medium-ish level of fantasy.

>Harry Potter is less high fantasy then lord of the rings

>Saying it's 'not on earth or on earth' is not a good enough answer.
That's literally the textbook definition.

Literally.

It's not about how powerful, common or secret is the magic. It's about how much screentime it gets and how it's presented.

So even in the same setting you can sometimes see both high fantasy and low fantasy stories. It's just that they're also often designed mainly for one of the two (which one depends on the original works).

Harry Potter is the most fantastious of the three, since the books are not about the muggles who ignore how the setting is fuller of weird shit than LOTR and Narnia put together. Harry Potter is the highest degree of fantasy, it just doesn't take itself as seriously as other fantasy works.

>How common are the fantastical elements of the setting
>How much influence do the fantastic elements have on the daily life of the average person
>How important are the fantastic elements to the central narrative being presented

There's your three qualifiers.

>What's 2+2?
>Saying '4' is not a good enough answer. No bullshit please.

>Saying it's 'not on earth or on earth' is not a good enough answer.

So basically, you don't want the correct answer, you want the answer that confirms whatever idea you have?

What was even the point of this thread if you're going to reject the actual definition?

>2+2=4
It seems you have forgotten your lessons in doublethink citizen, report back to room 101 immediately.

Where does the Harry Potter setting fall? It seems to be that it is high fantasy turned low, where weirdness is no longer weird and has become a modern convenience.

Te problem with your question is that not only is the difference nebulous, there's two schools of definition; Appearance or Thematics.

Fantasy by Appearance classifies fantasy as High or Low depending on how magical it "looks". The presence and prominence of magic users, non-human races, exotic creatures, terrain features, all of these defines whether a fantasy setting is low or high by this school's measures.

Fantasy by Thematics, on the other hand, looks at the kinds of stories being told there. Are you dealing with world-shaking plots, or mundanities? Magical calamities or just people being dicks?

Really, High Fantasy and Low Fantasy is kind of a four-point graph comprised of these two schools, and that's part of the reason why it's so hard to define the difference.

For example, Game of Thrones on TV? Middle-High Fantasy by Appearance (elves, body-jackers, dragons, giants, armies of the undead), Low Fantasy by Thematics (mundane struggles for political power).

What the hell kind of textbook would try defining it at all?

The problem with most of these answers are that they don't hold up. Especially with relation to the level of magic.

LotR is high fantasy, but it doesn't have that much magic. At least it's pretty subdued compared to most other popular settings. So it's like high fantasy, low magic.

Now The Silmarilion and D&D are both high fantasy that oozes magic all over the place. The Hobbit is kinda weird, is high fantasy or low fantasy? Seems like it could be either.

Typical Sword & Sorcery stuff like Conan are usually low fantasy with very little magic, similar to LotR level, but then some of them like the Elric stories and Fafrd and Gray Mouser stories tend to up the level of weird crazy magic that happens.

SoIaF is all over the place. Early books are clearly low fantasy with almost no magic. Then the magic and supernatural elements start slowly increasing to high levels.

Lode bearing Dark Lords, mainly.

The primary source of ore in the setting being from mining the Dark Lords makes a big difference.

Holy Shit Look at These Nerds 217

Lord of the Rings is high fantasy and doesn't really have any of that.

It have plenty of factors:

- Magic: is it almost secret or every city have a magic item Shop?
- Creatures: mainly human? Elves and dwarves? Dragonborn?
- Beasts: is Medusa a legend, an unique monster or a race?
- Gods: more akin to RL? Or they are true and grant powers to followers?

So an anime full of shonen bullshit as long as it's settled on Earth is low fantasy?

Yes, if Naruto were to happen in our Earth it would be considered low fantasy

>People firing nukes at will, teleporting, flying, reading minds and mind controlling, summoning monsters the size of godzilla, with talking animals, gods and shit everywhere
>low fantasy

Lord of the Rings is kind of a dusty High Fantasy though. Magic isn't really that present in the every day lives of people though it's certainly there and most importantly WAS there. LotR is all about magic dying, it's almost like a transition between a high fantasy world to a low fantasy one (all the old magical creatures dying or leaving the place, the old mythical families slowly losing their powers, the last dragon is a weakling that is finally killed, etc.).

Silmarillion was obviously High Fantasy.

If it happened in our Earth, yeah.

There's the low vs high fantasy of literary works , which is all about how close or how fantastical it is to our world.

Then there's the low and high fantasy of roleplaying games which is how much fantastical shit it is in the world and not how much of our world is part of it

So the setting of Mount and Blade is High Fantasy despite having no fantasy elements at all?

>LotR is high fantasy, but it doesn't have that much magic
>The Hobbit is kinda weird, is high fantasy or low fantasy?
It's all about The One Ring and it's magical as fuck

Not to mention it, but in low fantasy casual dragon hunting is not a really common thing

The Black Company is a prime example of low fantasy.

Yes, there is magic, but it's incredibly rare. It just so happens croaker ends up around those rare people a lot later in the novels.

Yes.

It is when an entire army can live off of butter alone.

> no fantasy elements at all?
Please point me to the Kingdom of Swadia, Rhodak, and he Khergit Khanate along with the entire continent of Calradia in a history book. I apparently missed the chapters on them.

Yes.

Whether something is high or low fantasy has absolutely fuck all to do with how much magic is around.

10/10 response

High fantasy adheres to a a very strong set of ideals or characteristics. They appear "magical" to us because our existence is more neutral. Low fantasy is more of a mix of different things and much less distilled.

Stronger ideals naturally leads to stronger manifestations of magic or pseudo-magic, so the two coincide.

problem is, while your definition is TECHNICALLY correct, it is obsolete, autistic, and absolutely useless.
And since it is not the ONLY definition, you can take this useless shit, stick it in your ass and go fuck yourself sir.

Gee, I wonder, what can we tell about high fantasy from the work of the guy everyone's referring to for original definition.

Like how he based everything on Welsh mythology, culture and geography, how it dealt with good vs evil, had epic scope and everything.

Or maybe you know, anyone actually read the original essay? I didn't find it but how about pic related?

Except it's not useless or obsolete, it's just not the definition you want.

Answer this question:
How much gonzo can you take?
Very little: low fantasy
A lot: high fantasy.

>the answer is not the correct answer
wat

>ITT: People that thinks a 50 years-old definition is still as true today as it was then

thats not what gonzo means.