SeanF Posted December 29, 2015 Share Posted December 29, 2015 There was a Prussian military officer who categorised people as:- Clever and hard-working.- Clever and lazy.- Stupid and hard-working.- Stupid and lazy.The officer claimed that clever and hard-working people are ideal General Staff, clever and lazy people are ideal Commanders (they know how to delegate), and that stupid and lazy people are good for the rank and file. The truly dangerous ones are the stupid and hard-working ones - they do damage without realising it.There's truth in that as well - so long as the clever and lazy pick the clever and hardworking to put their plans into effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanF Posted December 29, 2015 Share Posted December 29, 2015 There's truth in that as well - so long as the clever and lazy pick the clever and hardworking to put their plans into effect.Gniesenau is an example of the clever and hardworking head of the general staff. Paullus was the stupid and hardworking officer who led the sixth army to disaster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted December 29, 2015 Share Posted December 29, 2015 I think that in real life the number of genuinely good, kind, decent people who make it to the top in politics, or business, is limited, since the nature of politics and business works against it. I think the number of complete bastards operating at that level is greater, but by no means a majority. But, I think most business and political leaders fall somewhere on a spectrum in between. I always liked one summary, given by an HR specialist, of people in positions of leadership. Owl, Fox, Donkey, and Sheep. Owls are clever and ethical (eg Hermione Grainger); foxes are clever and unethical (eg Littlefinger); donkeys are unintelligent and unethical (eg Wormtail); sheep are unintelligent and ethical (eg Ser Edmure Tully).Sure, but in Abercrombie's books we basically have only Foxes (Bayaz, Yarvi, Glokta, Khalul etc) while the rest are pretty much donkeys. And there are some very lucky donkeys (Monza, Cosma) there.I mean, West might be the only genuinely nice person written by Abercrombie, and he is far from a saint. The rest for most part are either brainless sociopaths, lucky brainless sociopaths or smart sociopaths.Which is fine for me, still like his books a lot and I find them more funny than any other fantasy books. But surely, the characters there aren't very realistic.I think that I have said a few times that while fantasy started as good vs evil (LotR and its derivatives like WoT), became gray with GGK, Cook and Martin, with Abercrombie it is basically evil vs evil. Although, looking back this evil vs evil might have already started with Cook, but Abercrombie specialized at it.Btw, I don't like much to divide people into evil or good, because it is a very bad generalization and it doesn't work in practice. Just was trying to illustrate my point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted December 29, 2015 Share Posted December 29, 2015 There was a Prussian military officer who categorised people as:- Clever and hard-working.- Clever and lazy.- Stupid and hard-working.- Stupid and lazy.The officer claimed that clever and hard-working people are ideal General Staff, clever and lazy people are ideal Commanders (they know how to delegate), and that stupid and lazy people are good for the rank and file. The truly dangerous ones are the stupid and hard-working ones - they do damage without realising it.And i'm sure every enlisted man in the army just loved being considered stupid and lazy. Whats funny is that on the other side of, you can pretty much flip that list around in the eyes of the 'rank and file'. They consider mostly every officer either stupid and lazy or clever (political) and lazy. Any army is ran by the 'rank and file' doing hard work and trying to minimize the damage officers are trying to cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 Which comes back to the point, "Is realism better storytelling in grimdark or is cynicism?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanF Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Which comes back to the point, "Is realism better storytelling in grimdark or is cynicism?"Again, I don't think it has to either/or. Using my example, a world in which a powerful individual can go virtually overnight from enjoying his or her life in a palace to being drowned in the Tiber, or strangled by the Borgias' executioner, is both realistic and cynical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 Again, I don't think it has to either/or. Using my example, a world in which a powerful individual can go virtually overnight from enjoying his or her life in a palace to being drowned in the Tiber, or strangled by the Borgias' executioner, is both realistic and cynical.Yes, but that's a choice for realism. If you choose to have realism in your grimdark and cynicism, so be it but there is a deliberate option to choose a world where it is not realistic and very much deliberately so for the purposes of storytelling. A world of Abercrombie, so to speak, chinless idiots and horrifyingly evil humans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Speaking of fantastical realism, I've run across some interesting articles:https://www.blackgate.com/2011/02/03/why-realism-does-not-equate-to-adult-or-even-good-fantasy/https://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/adult-fantasy/#more-846 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Which comes back to the point, "Is realism better storytelling in grimdark or is cynicism?"Well, it is basically Martin vs Abercrombie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Which comes back to the point, "Is realism better storytelling in grimdark or is cynicism?"Neither. Realism does not make something automatically good to read, nor does cynicism. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, it's how it's carried off by the author that matters Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Well, it is basically Martin vs Abercrombie.Neither author is an exponent of realism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Neither author is an exponent of realism.Yeah, this. Except that like Martin isn't fantasy man! It's all real and stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Neither author is an exponent of realism.Martin's characters are as realist as you can expect to be in a world where there is magic, dragons and ice zombies.Abercrombie characters start from Hitler-level and then become more evil.But I agree with Phipps and Helena that the answer is neither. It depends on a lot of other things, and I think that the most important thing is to stay consistent in it. In Abercrombie's world, everyone is a prick, so if suddenly we'll start seeing selfless nice people, that would be a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanF Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Speaking of fantastical realism, I've run across some interesting articles:https://www.blackgate.com/2011/02/03/why-realism-does-not-equate-to-adult-or-even-good-fantasy/https://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/adult-fantasy/#more-846 That's an excellent article by Michal Wojik.I don't find a completely amoral world to be realistic. Cruelty, lust, selfishness, vindictiveness, hunger for power, egotism, greed are all part of human nature (and Elvish and dwarven nature, for that matter), but so are love, kindness, mercy, idealism, and heroism. So to me, "realistic" fantasy should combine both.I love the fact that the War of the Ring was won 80 years before it started, by one single act of mercy on Bilbo's part, rather than by a campaign of genocide, or by using the Ring and setting up a tyrant as bad as Sauron. To my mind, that's a far more interesting twist than the more cynical alternatives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 Martin's characters are as realist as you can expect to be in a world where there is magic, dragons and ice zombies.Abercrombie characters start from Hitler-level and then become more evil.If we're just referring to characters, then calling them realist (or realistic) is a poor choice of term. You mean characters are rounded, vivid, and dynamic - after all, what is realistic about Daenerys? Everything about her is fantastical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 If we're just referring to characters, then calling them realist (or realistic) is a poor choice of term. You mean characters are rounded, vivid, and dynamic - after all, what is realistic about Daenerys? Everything about her is fantastical.Yep, you're right. What I meant is that in that world (where there is magic, prophecies, dragons, ice zombies) the characters are as you said rounded, vivid and dynamic. They evolve with time, some are loyal, some are traitors, some are kind, some are mean with most being in between and well, resembling for most part how real people behave.Which I don't find the same in most fantasy books. Tolkien and co had either very good characters are completely evil ones. Abercrombie and Lawrence have pricks and bigger pricks (especially the first one). Sure, I have laughed with Joe's books more than with any other books in the genre, but still, the characters feels like being transported from South Park, they are quite cartoon-ish. At times, it feels more like a satire of fantasy books, rather than a fantasy book.I rate Tigana of GGK mostly for that reason. The characters feel real. The good ones aren't perfect, neither completely good people, and you sympathize with the main antagonist (similarly to The Thrawn trilogy in Star Wars when I was sympathizing with the antagonist). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 An interesting issue about Star Wars, Tolkien, cyclical universes, and cynicismThis is an article I think you're all enjoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Lawrence Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 No Such Thing As Grimdark...http://suvudu.com/2015/12/beyond-redemption-author-michael-r-fletcher-no-such-thing-as-grimdark.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 But...but it has its own cheesy e-zine! It must be real!! I agree with the mockery of itself. If people can't see that, then they are taking themselves a little too seriously, and if they set out to write a 'grim dark' novel chances are it won't turn out all that well. Also, ML contributed. /thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 Well if an author says there's no such thing as grimdark then it must be true! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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