With respect, have you looked at fantasy media of the last half-century? The reception of Tolkein’s work became one of the greatest magnifications of the problems in “genre writing” in the entire history of the concept, with endless, endless imitation that has so over-saturated the genre that it is legitimately difficult to imagine “fantasy” that doesn’t use recycled Tolkein-esque tropes. Ironically, you can even see some of those issues in GoT, though it mainly has the issue of being directionless, misogynistic smut.
I strongly encourage you to read literally any pre-Tolkein fantasy to see what a difference it has.
how did LotR damage fantasy media?
With respect, have you looked at fantasy media of the last half-century? The reception of Tolkein’s work became one of the greatest magnifications of the problems in “genre writing” in the entire history of the concept, with endless, endless imitation that has so over-saturated the genre that it is legitimately difficult to imagine “fantasy” that doesn’t use recycled Tolkein-esque tropes. Ironically, you can even see some of those issues in GoT, though it mainly has the issue of being directionless, misogynistic smut.
I strongly encourage you to read literally any pre-Tolkein fantasy to see what a difference it has.
Pre-tolkien fantasy is like, wizard of Oz and stuff