The Influence of a Halfling

Many people will argue that the wizarding world of Harry Potter is the best fantasy world, or that Game of Thrones has the best fantasy world, and likely most will argue that Lord of the Rings is the best fantasy world. As part of a younger generation, I don’t know much about Game of Thrones, and I think that is a mark against it right from the beginning, simply because it is not appropriate for a younger audience. While Harry Potter has got that in its favor, JK Rowling has failed on multiple points. Her goblins are based on a Jewish stereotype, there are no canonically black characters, and her one Asian character has an extremely stereotypical name, Cho Chang. And that’s just what’s wrong with her characters. I could continue on about why I think Harry Potter needs to be taken down multiple rungs on the popularity ladder, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about here. The world of Lord of the Rings is by far the best fantasy setting ever created.

Let’s begin with the creatures. While sci-fi and fantasy did exist before Tolkien, it was arguably minimal. Elves were already part of many many folktales, but not in the way Tolkien wrote them. He made them ancient, kind, and wise, but also fearful of humans, which were created by the same gods that made them. These creatures were replicated by a lesser deity in the form of a shorter and beefier humanoid we know as dwarves, who were taught all the ways of masonry and metalsmithing by their creator. Tolkien also created hobbits and fleshed out the ideas of goblins, hobgoblins, trolls, orcs, and many more creatures. The lore of Middle Earth is just so rich, and you can tell that Tolkien really put his heart and soul into creating this world. Some things many people don’t know, as these facts are in supplementary lore books. For example, Sauron was nothing more than a servant of darkness, he was the general of Morgoth, the darkness himself. And even then, Morgoth was once a deity much like those who created the rest of Middle Earth, but what turned him into darkness was that he had unique ideas, and that was not welcome in the undying lands. Additionally, the Balrog and Gandalf are the same type of creature, just different forms. They are a form of angel, and while the Balrog chose to be a demon of fire, the wizards choose to appear old and wise and human for the purpose of advising kings.

Another story that followed Lord of the Rings was a series called the Earthsea Cycle by Ursula LeGuin. You can tell she takes a lot of inspiration from Tolkien, especially with the names of locations, but she leaned more toward the wizardry aspect of Middle Earth, focusing her stories on the mages of Earthsea. It actually seems to me that LeGuin read the part of the Hobbit where Gandalf was off dealing with a necromancer, and thought to herself, "where's the story about that?" and she then wrote it. This story seems to have inspired Harry Potter, because the first book features a boy who grew up with his aunt, going off to wizard school and releasing a shadow of himself that would wreak havoc in its wake.

Lord of the Rings was also entirely groundbreaking in the world of fantasy. It inspired Gary Gygax to write the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the number one fantasy role-playing game. It is obvious throughout the monster manuals that most creatures are taken from Tolkien’s work, Lovecraft’s work (I will not say any more about Lovecraft. The idea of Cthulu is cool, but Lovecraft was just an awful person.), and folklore from all around the world. Dungeons and Dragons also incorporated the storytelling of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit through including travel, dungeons, and creature interactions in gameplay. Gary Gygax’s game, as well as his own world he created, Greyhawk, went on to inspire thousands to millions of other people to also create their own worlds in turn.

One of these inspired worlds that is very well known right now is Exandria, written by Matthew Mercer for the show Critical Role. The world of Exandria includes many aspects of Middle Earth that even Greyhawk missed, and even more that honestly just makes more sense than the actual Dungeons and Dragons official lore. For example, the grey elves/dark elves. In the Silmarillion, a prequel to the Hobbit, grey elves are described as just like all the other elves but grey-skinned and sensitive to sunlight. Because of this, they live in thick, dark forests, and caves. The infight with other species of elf, but so do the wood elves (which Legolas is a part of). The official Dungeons and Dragons lore made the grey elves darker-skinned and also made them corrupted, and worshippers of the evil Spider Queen, Lolth, and they live in underground colonies known as the Underdark. This begs the question of was it racism that led to this decision because one would think that a grey elf would actually be much lighter-skinned due to the lack of sunlight? Likely so. The world of Exandria however, has completely ignored the official dark elf lore, and I feel that it’s so much better for it. The dark elves are a skilled society that lives within a bubble of magical darkness, and yet worships a deity of light and reincarnation.

My point is, Tolkien’s Middle Earth was just so incredibly influential and led to the creation of Dungeons and Dragons, which is nearly as influential, that it is deserving of being called the best fantasy world ever created.