Oh, the direct implications do vary quite a bit. But modern fantasy is so dominated by a particular cluster of conventions—Tolkein’s too narrow, but you wouldn’t be too far wrong if you called it the set of plots encompassed by Tolkein, Lewis, Perrault, and the Arthurian folktales—that even when it doesn’t crib from their ethics, it’s still about their ethics.
Recently, for example, I read Glen Cook’s Black Company books, one of the first settings to use people from the “evil” side of a Tolkeinesque grand conflict as viewpoint characters. The ethics explicitly endorsed by their characters are utterly pragmatic; those suggested by the plot are a bit more idealistic, but still well short of Tolkein’s. Yet without Tolkein’s ethics in the background, that part of the story wouldn’t work; they’re simply being used as the negative space in the illustration rather than the positive. That limits things considerably.
Oh, the direct implications do vary quite a bit. But modern fantasy is so dominated by a particular cluster of conventions—Tolkein’s too narrow, but you wouldn’t be too far wrong if you called it the set of plots encompassed by Tolkein, Lewis, Perrault, and the Arthurian folktales—that even when it doesn’t crib from their ethics, it’s still about their ethics.
Recently, for example, I read Glen Cook’s Black Company books, one of the first settings to use people from the “evil” side of a Tolkeinesque grand conflict as viewpoint characters. The ethics explicitly endorsed by their characters are utterly pragmatic; those suggested by the plot are a bit more idealistic, but still well short of Tolkein’s. Yet without Tolkein’s ethics in the background, that part of the story wouldn’t work; they’re simply being used as the negative space in the illustration rather than the positive. That limits things considerably.