A platoniformic incarnation of the demiautonomous transesoteric lore engine.

Shameless retcon or not, it still sounds badass coming from Heimskr's mouth.

I hope you're not implying Tolkien is one-dimensional. Them's fightin words.

Anyway, I often think Michael Kirkbride's influence on the development of the lore is a bit overstated because of his activeness in the fan community. He wrote a lot of the in-game books, true, but I can't help but think of this contribution as more or less flavoring then actual lore.

Yip. The lore is developed by many great people. But as you said, he is active (more or less) here at forums, so he is (for many fans) the face of lore. The Water-Face of lore, actually.
Maybe other devs should be more active, too? I love them all.

A misstep. One of my favorite authors. I was suggesting that among the offshoots of Tolkien's style of fantasy (read: TES and every other fantasy universe in the world), many have the tendency to be lackluster or slightly-less-original than the Elder Scrolls' particular mythology.

Tolkien is multi-dimensional. Unfortunately, too much fantasy is a one-dimensional rip-off of Tolkien. Few fantasy writers are philologists or historians or ex-military officers or even people who intelligently observe the world they live in. You gotta bring something to the table.

On that note, I'd love to see MK do a take on what happened to the Bardic College. How and when did the bards fall from proud rime-bearded warrior creators of sagas and eddas and satires for kings to an Altmer "headmaster" and a Breton "dean of history" churning out incompetents who sing tuneless songs in bars? Time was, kings begged for bards to visit their courts and vied to pay them in priceless jewels. Now drunks pay them to shut up.

That's what I was trying to say. Only lots smarter.

Tolkien did his job so well, that he doomed all future fantasy writers to either shy away from the elves and magic fantasy or be so original that they transcend the cliches and stereotypes.

Also it seems like the existence of the Bard's College goes against the Nordic skald tradition. You can't really teach the stuff the way you would a school subject. It has to be learned either with experience or painstakingly memorized by listening to the elder skalds. Or both. The Skyrim Bards College reeks of Bretony.

Same here I wouldn't be surprised either.

I wouldn't even say that it is a ripoff of Tolkien, but rather an amalgam of tropes and D&D, which are certainly inspired and informed by Tolkiens writing, but don't take enough of him to really be considered a proper ripoff. Its like people are ripping off the idea of Tolkien, rather than the actual work.

I'd say we're getting better... or maybe I'm just reading the right stuff

Oh, I wasn't discussing ES in particular. Although I was embarrassed for their writers continually during Skyrim, particularly as concerns the Bardic College and the Sheogorath quest. Apparently at the end of Shivering Isles, Sheogorath was replaced by that boring guy who laughed too much at his own jokes you used to try to avoid in college.

To be fair, making [censored] up as you go along is entirely within the bardic tradition.

At least you could properly avoid him. Try having that guy as your roommate.

Sigh.

Heh, me neither. Just the general state of the genre.

Nothing? I'd probably just walk away and go about my own business. No idea who "MK" is to be perfectly honest...

Epic post.

I just had to look up the video for the song after reading this. Lo and behold, most of the videos' comments have scattered references to TES.

Oh man, I'd go craz- waitaminute.

Then atleast set him free, for us.

Hahaha, Youtube. "dike VAN DYKE IS THE GODHEAD"

Don't be silly. dike Van Dyke is Shezarr, Julie Andrews is Aka, and David Tomlinson is Magnus.