EUOLogy #17

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Probably because they never go into stuff like that on TV shows. But, there is the magic lasso.

[Entsuropi]

Just on a note, that fusion is fairly common still - Star Trek TOS, Warhammer 40k (literally, a fantasy game injected with guns) etc.

[Oldie Black Witch]

Tolkien was trying to create a genre when he wrote LotR, but what evolved from it wasn't quite what he expected. Tolkien says that his intention in writing LotR was to create a mythology like the kinds of stories he found in Old English writings such as Beowulf and the mythologies of the Vikings. Tolkien's other reason for writing LotR was to create a story where he could use the languages he'd invented.

He saw that people weren't as familiar with mythology and had ceased to see the value in it, and wanted to reacquaint people with the whole idea of a world where men are free to explore the basics of being in both a storytelling sense and a symbolic sense. The fantasy genre is much older than Tolkien. He didn't invent it; he just reanimated it. But by doing so, I think he saved the mythology/fantasy genre, not destroyed it.