And an altogether different take on fantasy

[naz]

Jordan and Goodkind are Tolkien knock-offs?

I mean, if I'd only read The Eye of the World I could get that about Jordan, but otherwise...

... why aren't Eragon and The Sword of Shannara the highest standards of fantasy litterature then?

Well, when you're coming from outside the genre, you tend to look at everything as the same. It's like Star Wars fans nitpicking that they're "better" than Star Trek fans. They're all a bunch of geeks in the end.

That doesn't excuse this dude from presenting a totally uninformed opinion, however. But I've seen this hundreds of times from the literary world outside of fantasy. Some people will always think of it "geek" literature, no matter how many big words they choose to hide their denigration behind.

[Werthead]

Unfortunately, it's also clear that he's a pompous git, a high literature snob, and that he feels that talking about fantasy is slumming it, and also that he's giving us immature people who enjoy fantasy an incredibly valuable gift by deigning to spend some of his time on the genre.

Whilst, ironically, he posts regularly on what's going on in the latest series of Big Brother. Hmm.

That said, the unnecessary verbosity did hide his core argument: Why is so much epic fantasy authoritarian in nature? The clear answer to which is simply that epic fantasies are largely set in medieval time periods which, historically, were authoritarian. ASoIaF, I feel, challenges or highlights some natures of that authoritarianism (whoever wins the War of the Five Kings doesn't matter, as someone will end up on the Iron Throne and really will the life of the common man be any different?) in a manner that Feist, Brooks or Eddings do not. Oddly, the other example he uses, Wheel of Time, has several democratic power groups and thus could be said to also be challenging the authoritarian ideal.

Nevertheless, the idea that A Song of Ice and Fire should actually be about a democratic uprising makes as much sense as demanding to know why the French Revolution didn't happen 400 years earlier. Well, because the type society did not exist for it to happen.

Thinking on it, the Brotherhood Without Banners could be said to be a rejection of the authoritarian ideal as they hold fealty to no king, only to the people, which some people in Westeros clearly feel is a dangerous concept.

[Marcelo Rebelo Firqoralas]

His problem seems to be that he just can't understand that one would read a book for something else than comments on current day politics.

There's a very good reason for not writing books in order to sell your own politics: it makes the books suck! I mean, what would ASoIaF be like if Martin had explicitly showed what behaviour he disapproved of and what he liked? How would it be if he felt it imperative that we REALLY understood that capital punishment was bad or that democracy is generally better than feudalism? I just can't see how that would be any type of improvement.

Pratchett is a very interesting example here. Lately, he really goes out of his way to make political points and I just can't stand it. He is just puts so much effort into convincing people of the most trivial facts. Racism sucks. Gender equality is good. War is bad. Fucking yawn.

That is really writing for people who want their own predjudices confirmed, even if it happens to be nice and cuddly predjudices.

[danro]

Thinking on it, the Brotherhood Without Banners could be said to be a rejection of the authoritarian ideal as they hold fealty to no king, only to the people, which some people in Westeros clearly feel is a dangerous concept.

I see someone (you?) pointed it out to him in the comments.

But I don't think he will care.

I pointed out that the characters he calls "obviously evil" doesn't look quite the same seen through other POVs later in the books.

In reponse to his comment about AGOT:

...

The evil characters are evil by any and every conceivable standard... there are evil incestuous relationships. From the bad guys' perspective Stark is in the way or a threat but there's no real attempt to portray him as actively evil, even from their perspective. He's just the opposition from a realpolitik point of view.

...

I wrote:

I think you really should read the next book or two in A Song Of Ice And Fire.

Some of these "obviously evil" characters don't look quite the same once we get to see them through other points of view later in the series.

GRRM doesn't use an objective narrator. A lot depends on who is telling the story at the moment as we see the story filtered through the eyes of different characters. Many of whom have vastly different takes on a situation, and several of them doesn't get their say in the first book.

Preumably it was intended that our view of the characters would change as the series progresses.

As for the author not making his characters take a stand for liberal democracy and human rights for all. (Up to, but not including apparently, concensual incestous relationships between adults, as they are inherently evil.)

Well, the only thing it really tells me is that the author is not writing didactic fiction about your personal utopia. Not that he or all his fans are necessarily closet facists. Though some may be.

He responded:

Danro - It's possible that the later books are completely different. Frankly I don't care, I'm not talking about those books and I've limited my comments to the one and a bit book that I have read. In that book and a bit I saw authoritarianism and attempts to create morally ambiguous characters hamstrung by their reliance on authoritarian conceptions of how morality works and how medievel societies operate.

So I gave up.

He made his argument, and he's sticking to it. (And enjoying the attention, I bet.)

In fact, if you look beyond the condecending way he says it, his concept of what the genre should be (left-wing progressive Goodkind-clones?) and the bad examples he actually have some good points about epic fantasy in general.

[Lady Blackfish]

I think that whole thing was written in a bout of guilt and shame over his D&D habits.

See, he can think critically, he really can.

[Lady Blackfish]

In fact, if you look beyond the condecending way he says it, his concept of what the genre should be (progressive Goodkind-clones?) and the bad examples he actually have some good points about epic fantasy in general.

Well that's the problem entirely. It's when you get to the "what the genre should be" part that you need to shut up. Critical thinking and observations are great, but you get into real dangerous territory when you establish one single rubric for Why People Should Write.

[AverageGuy]

"even real politics lead to bloodshed and authoritartianism in fantasyland."

Thank god real politics never lead to bloodshed or authoritarianism in the real world.

Does he think SF is any better? I've seen the same problems he brings up in a lot of the sci-fi I've read.

[Werthead]

I could be entirely wrong about this guy (apologies to him if so) but his arguments are ringing bells of familiarity. I'm sure he was one of two bloggers who adopted this, "This is what genre is and anyone who tells us otherwise is an asshole!" attitude on SFFWorld a 3-4 years back and was eventually drop-kicked off the board in annoyance. I think R. Scott Bakker pointed out the fallacy of their argument back then as well.

[MeanMrMustard]

Second, the fictional setting is feudal. That is, politically authoritarian. And the fictional character in question was raised to be an authority figure in said system. Making him an anarchist activist wouldn't exactly have been believable.

Mikhail Bakunin isn't believable. That must be why they don't teach kids about him

it's no accident that the biggest online fantasy discussion sites are those linked to the biggest selling authors.

......

?

!

[Larry.]

I remember that quite well, as I was involved on the periphery in that as well over there You're thinking of Gabe Chouinard, I bet. Around July-August 2004?

[Galactus]

Mikhail Bakunin isn't believable. That must be why they don't teach kids about him

Truth sometimes really IS stranger than fiction.

(There is a trope about it on tvtropes.org, basically about how in order to have something look like a cow you can't use a real cow, you have to dress up a horse)

[Werthead]

I remember that quite well, as I was involved on the periphery in that as well over there You're thinking of Gabe Chouinard, I bet. Around July-August 2004?

There were two who got booted off. Gabe was one of them (kind of easy to tell because he linked his blog in his profile). I think this guy is the other one.

it's no accident that the biggest online fantasy discussion sites are those linked to the biggest selling authors.

The biggest I've come across are:

MuggleNet: 79,126

Chronicles Network: 19,325

SFFWorld: 11,608

Wotmania: c. 10,000 apparently (btw DF, what the hell is up with all the '130K people online at the moment' messages?)

Official Stephen King Forum: 8,233

Westeros: 7,712

Dragonmount: 5,266

Malazanempire: 4,343

So, basically, he's wrong. The only exception is Rowling and, well, I think most people would expect that to be the case.

[williamjm]

I note he initially complains that we GRRM fans are all sheep-like and unthinking, but later complains that we're not all arguing exactly the same thing.

[DanteGabriel]

In what way is ASOIAF a LOTR knock-off? Because it's also long and detailed?

ASOIAF is, in part, about the failure of chivalry. This guy's failure to grasp that as he continues to lay the authoritarian trip on the series is reason enough to discount his bullshit.

[Werthead]

I note he initially complains that we GRRM fans are all sheep-like and unthinking, but later complains that we're not all arguing exactly the same thing.

It's because we're all individuals and we embrace life. Or something

[AverageGuy]

I'm not sure if he's arguing against authoritarianism or the stagnation that comes with writing in a genre. If the latter, I don't know why he's limited his argument to epic fantasy. Who here's responded to him? The only one I'm sure of is Brahm.

ETA:

ASOIAF is, in part, about the failure of chivalry. This guy's failure to grasp that as he continues to lay the authoritarian trip on the series is reason enough to discount his bullshit.

His response would be that a rejection of authoritarianism is still using the old authoritarian standard.

[danro]

Mikhail Bakunin isn't believable. That must be why they don't teach kids about him

Personally I like Kropotkin better, but I get your point.

You have to admit they were both stranger than fiction though.

Although, on second thought, ASOIAF is teeming with anarchists just north of the wall, and they work out all right in the setting.

I yield.

[williamjm]

It's because we're all individuals and we embrace life. Or something

So we're really more goats than sheep?

[Larry.]

There were two who got booted off. Gabe was one of them (kind of easy to tell because he linked his blog in his profile). I think this guy is the other one.

The biggest I've come across are:

MuggleNet: 79,126

Chronicles Network: 19,325

SFFWorld: 11,608

Wotmania: c. 10,000 apparently (btw DF, what the hell is up with all the '130K people online at the moment' messages?)

Official Stephen King Forum: 8,233

Westeros: 7,712

Dragonmount: 5,266

Malazanempire: 4,343

So, basically, he's wrong. The only exception is Rowling and, well, I think most people would expect that to be the case.

Are you thinking of this link, or one related to it later on? And no, I don't think McCalmont is the other, since Shevchyk/Ilya has been a regular at Dead Cities/Frameshift for a while, while McCalmont only had a brief but rather disasterous pairing with Chouinard (Scalpel, that aborted "street criticism" online site).

As for what's the problem with wotmania's counter, it's something to do with a weird patch that the webmaster cannot pinpoint, so for now, we're stuck with it refreshing only 1-2 times a day. But at least you get to know how many page views there are in a 12-24 hour period!

And as for the article itself, this is what I wrote:

I do not quite know how to approach this article, since it seems to shift and veer away from its presumed central thesis (that of "fantasy" being conservative). First, I have to ask: What do you mean by "fantasy"? You seem to have this set definition that flits and flutters around the edges of this article, but it's not quite spelled out. Before I can properly assess all of this, I'd have to know if you are conflating "epic" or "heroic" fantasy with "contemporary" fantasy (whatever that might be in turn), or are you arguing that the tropes typically used in these various types of fantasy are different...what are you trying to get at here? Are you saying all "fantasy" is "conservative" (or later, "authoritarian" as based on your response to Whitfield's article), or just merely a subset of it?

As for the notion of "fantasy" (I'm going out on a limb here and presuming you are thinking of epic/fat fantasy here) being authoritarian in nature...I wonder what you'd make of Angélica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial, considering it was written/published during the days of Argentina's "Dirty War" and the junta that came to power. Or perhaps of Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris stories, considering it's a secondary-world fantasy that isn't exactly six of one and half-dozen of another.

I just don't think you can reduce "fantasy" into such set "flavors," although certainly there have been many market labels used in the past 30+ years for a few styles of it! And I'm still curious as to why you just casually dismiss the ambiguity of realismo mágico with just a passing thought. I think a helluva lot can be written about how such stylings deal with a very complex shading of very real social/political/cultural concerns within a "safer" context than a brutally-accurate mimetic fiction.

While there are some interesting arguments that seem to be on the cusp of being made and developed in this article, I just don't think they've been covered enough for me to be able to tell to which degree I'd agree and to which degree I'd disagree.

I was hoping for a defined point around which his argument could have been presented. Until I know the terms of debate...

[Werthead]

Sheep, goats, lemmings, chickens, who's counting?

DF: Fair enough, and apologies to McCalmont for getting that confused. The only board name I've ever encountered him under is 'Mr. Analytical'.