Supplement Four said:
PrinceYyrkoon said:
Im not 5 years old. Sometimes we read/watch tv/see a flim/surf the net for entertainment. Nothing worng with that. Howards stuff fits into that..
You lost me when you spoke of how "intelligent" the Moorcock stuff is. I haven't read Elric since I was a kid, but about 8 mos. ago, I picked up the first book and read. I remember liking it in high school, when I was first introduced to D&D. Today, as an adult, though...geez, man. You call that intelligent?
It's basically super-fantasy. It's like reading a comic book. There's not a lot of depth there at all.
The room that was like an internal organ at the end--really. C'mon, man. You think that's not fluff?
I know what youre saying. I also said that I didnt think Moorcock a genius. I said as well, somewhere, that Elric was human (oops!), but he is really, for all intents and purposes. Moorcock did churn Elric stories out like potboilers, and he resurrected him from the dead when it became his most popular series, so I know Moorcock had an eye on his bank balance. Thats ok though, we all gotta live.
Moorcock likes Freudian metaphor. When Moorcock mentions a sword, he is usually thinking about a phallus. Elric came to the womblike chamber via a tunnel and forest, you dont have to be Freud to know what he is going on about. Stormbringer is Elrics 'thing', by that I mean, we all have something we depend upon, lean on, dislike, yet love. Cigarettes, beer, whiskey, cocaine, someone else, etc., etc.. Its going to kill you if you rely upon something too much. Theres a lot of stuff in there about fate and free will, questions about being a slave to your nature, morality, etc.. Sometimes, though, these things are a bit too much for Moorcocks writing ability.
People are right when they say that there would be no Elric without Conan. Conan was a barbarian, who hated magic in all its forms, who rose to fame, took the girl and won a kingdom. Moorcock turned that around when he wrote Elric. Elric was a decadent, hyper-civilized sorceror-emperor, who killed his wife and ruined his kingdom and destroyed the world. Like in Scandanavian myth, actually.
Theres things going on in Moorcocks stories. When Howard mentions a sword, you know he's talking about a sword. You know where you are with him. In Moorcocks stuff, theres a rudimentary kind of symbolism going on. Chocolate and vanilla, it depends on what you want, is all I meant.