Things that influnce my writing: 1 · 3:38pm Dec 6th, 2016
Was talking with a friend the other day, and a book (or rather series) I'd kinda forgotten about came up. The Sleeping Dragon (Guardians of the Flame #1)
It's a fun, nerdy story. I powered through the first 7 books in the series back around 2001. Now that I think back on them, I realize that how I approach HiE is based on those books. My Canerlot is defiantly inspired by Pandathaway (by way of Charles Dickens). Ellegon's voice has crept into a few of my characters too.
Guardians is much like a HiE, in that we have a group of friends from the modern time, thrown into a high-fantasy world. We get to see 20th century morals clashing against slavery and feudalism; the power of magic and the power of technology. Which, I think Joel Rosenberg dose a good job of not demonizing either technology or magic; they are presented simply as different powers.
HiE for me, is a tool of contrast. It allows you to say, "this is cool," or "that is strange," to things that otherwise would be hard to show the reader. In pony world, we can have a human uncomfortable with nudity, a pony confused by the idea of religion, or allow the two to share what "living a good life" means. It's awkward for human A to look at human B and say, "Isn't it strange that we (completely normal human culture), but introduce a talking pony, and now we open up all sorts of options.
