In the Shadow of the Status Quo--Fantasy literature and conservativism

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Could you list some works of "Socialist Realism".  I don't believe I have ever read any.

Since we're on the subject, the Eastern bloc were much more keen on science-fiction (generally of the optimistic rationalist variety) than fantasy (considered a throwback to superstition and a vehicle for reactionary messages). The Lord of the Rings was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, mostly because of The Scouring of The Shire.

[Darth Richard II]

11 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with writing a fantasy society which honours the natural diversity of humanity (I've sort of done that myself - though I suspect no-one's going to want to move to the Viiminian Empire any time soon). My point is that if you are going to write that sort of society, you should probably steer clear of Faux Medievalism and go for something where the social psychology fits better. 

I think the real problem is when authors make things way worse than it actually was because they either don't know shit about history or, well, are dicks themselves. (I am weirdly not talking about Bakker for once). Or you get things like the Runelords which is pretty much hooray for slavery.  It's a slippery slope, I guess.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 minute ago, Darth Richard II said:

I think the real problem is when authors make things way worse than it actually was because they either don't know shit about history or, well, are dicks themselves. (I am weirdly not talking about Bakker for once). Or you get things like the Runelords which is pretty much hooray for slavery.  It's a slippery slope, I guess.

Oh dear god, The Runelords. Awesome and original concept, run into the ground with abysmal writing, and with all sorts of creepy connotations added.

[Darth Richard II]

1 minute ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Oh dear god, The Runelords. Awesome and original concept, run into the ground with abysmal writing, and with all sorts of creepy connotations added.

Right, I read...3? Waiting for them to be like hey were sucking the souls out of people so the prince has a bigger dick? thats bad! And its just ignored and never mentioned. (Man, i am rtambling on this weekend).

[Darth Richard II]

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Absolutely, hence my Dragon-Ball Z fight in a serious low magic political fantasy.  It doesn't work there.

You're talking about The NIght Angel Trilogy, right?

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

 

Also, keep in mind that such advocacy tends to restrict the work to a specific time and a specific place. A lot of people think that their values are the pinnacle of human understanding and that history will move in their direction, but given that the world has always held multiple radically different cultural groups, it's not at all obvious which one of them (if any!) will prevail. For example, most socialist realism works look pretty silly now and they always looked silly to people from outside of the Communist bloc. A story written without trying to be propaganda is much more likely to carry over to a different culture without grating.

That.  In the UK, what was considered "progressive" ten years ago was the kind of viewpoint espoused by Tony Blair, internationalist, pro-free trade, pro-diversity, and in favour of mass migration.  That all looks pretty dated now.

[The Marquis de Leech]

15 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That.  In the UK, what was considered "progressive" ten years ago was the kind of viewpoint espoused by Tony Blair, internationalist, pro-free trade, pro-diversity, and in favour of mass migration.  That all looks pretty dated now.

Yep. Grand Narratives of any description tend to look rather silly in hindsight (*cough* Fukuyama *cough*). It's also what bugs me about people who try to analyse the likes of Robert E. Howard according to 2016 values - rampant Whiggery.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, lokisnow said:

We'll you're saying right here that a world that is not your exclusive preferred state has to prove that having women or gays needs to meet a separate and unequal standard of "need to be integral" for you to accept it as valid.

So we are saying why should ANYONE have to prove that the existence of gay characters or women in a story meet the standard of "need to be integral". Saying an author can only include gay characters or women characters if they proactively meet your integral standard is absurd.

No.  Not what I mean at all.  

Goodkind sucks largely because he writes fantasy to pimp his objectivist beliefs and molds his world to fit his agenda.  It is a gigantic strawman argument.  I'm saying that if someone wants to write a fantasy that does place emphasis on progressive values just make sure the story is entertaining and that it doesn't come off like Goodkind.  

Integrate the message into the story is my point.  That is true for any work that seeks to project a political message beyond the story itself.  Writting a good story that does this without properly integrating the message into the story is fairly difficult in my opinion.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah that's why i find The Traitor to be such a gods awful book. The progressive values are beaten over your head like a rock and make zero sense in the context of the story. I'm all for more diverse and inclusive fantasy and what not, but I don't want it to suck.

 

What book is this, by whom?

[Jo498]

A writer will usually not be able to transcend his own culture an values completely. There might be some exception with really crazy experimental/provocative ideas but they are also rooted in the present culture. I do not remember the source but a nice bonmot had it that few things age more quickly than a societies ideas about the future (cue flying cars, hoverboards and the like). So I am willing to cut them some slack. Still, I will point out what I dislike as incoherent mixes of contemporary ideas and tropes in pseudohistorical settings. I do not think that this is unfair criticism in general although I might be unfair in certain cases, probably more often that I would overlook some things because I am sufficiently entranced by the whole.

And I am also a sufficiently nerdy nitpicker to stumble on minor things that can add up. E.g "armor is useless", everyone wearing (frequently changed and laundered) buttoned shirts (even barbarians), incredibly high literacy rates etc. I often have the impression (and probably Pratchett even owned that) that a lot of fantasy settings are culturally closer to early Victorian settings (cities, shops, amenities, literacy, conscription) sans gunpowder (roughly the Shire, just not so obviously jarring that it makes the anachronism almost purposeful) than to a medieval/renaissance setting. And as for eternal feudalism - there are enough sources to base settings on Empires like China, Persia, Rome, Byzantium or Egypt, on "theocratic" caliphates, on city states like classical Athens or medieval/renaissance Venice etc. Or fusions of such. So a lack of variety is really laziness of the authors, I'd say.

[SeanF]

25 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

8 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  Not what I mean at all.  

Goodkind sucks largely because he writes fantasy to pimp his objectivist beliefs and molds his world to fit his agenda.  It is a gigantic strawman argument.  I'm saying that if someone wants to write a fantasy that does place emphasis on progressive values just make sure the story is entertaining and that it doesn't come off like Goodkind.  

Integrate the message into the story is my point.  That is true for any work that seeks to project a political message beyond the story itself.  Writting a good story that does this without properly integrating the message into the story is fairly difficult in my opinion.

Yep. Grand Narratives of any description tend to look rather silly in hindsight (*cough* Fukuyama *cough*). It's also what bugs me about people who try to analyse the likes of Robert E. Howard according to 2016 values - rampant Whiggery.

IMHO, it's mostly plot and characterisation that make a novel worth reading (or worth throwing away), not its political or religious message.  If Goodkind wrote good stories with interesting characters, it wouldn't matter much that he was writing from an objectivist viewpoint.  His political preaching is simply another aspect of his bad writing.

[The Marquis de Leech]

10 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

I often have the impression (and probably Pratchett even owned that) that a lot of fantasy settings are culturally closer to early Victorian settings (cities, shops, amenities, literacy, conscription) sans gunpowder (roughly the Shire, just not so obviously jarring that it makes the anachronism almost purposeful) than to a medieval/renaissance setting.

George R.R. Martin has said he doesn't try to replicate an actual medieval mindset in his characters, because the result would be too alien for modern readers to cope with.

[Jo498]

Sure, one does not need to try to copy such mindsets, if it was even possible. In the quoted passage I actually meant more "paraphernalia" than mindsets.

But I also think it is most boring to find mainly contemporary values and mores (and preposterous to demand from speculative fiction that it should further the latest fads), and as a contrast only the most cartoonish distortion of historical conditions with the implication that only idiots/religious fanatics/really evil guys could have come up with, endorsed and perpetuated such conditions. Completely neglecting that some of these conditions were fairly appropriate/decent within those historical conditions and that's why they prevailed for centuries. I mean, if most of the populace have to work the land to feed themselves and those doing something else, if reading involves deciphering handwritten pages that are very costly to produce, usually in a non-native language etc. things will be different for very good reasons...

And often it is just too obvious how favored characters are endowed with modern values and also with abilities we take for granted, e.g. reading and writing fluently. Wouldn't it be sometimes more interesting to encounter more characters for whom reading/writing was almost a kind of magic only mastered by experts?

[SeanF]

On ‎9‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 2:07 AM, C.T. Phipps said:

Eh, the thing is I was hoping for something like that from the Sparrows. The government forced to make concessions to the clergy who, historically, while often co-opted by the nobility did serve as an intermediary of sorts between classes in the Medieval era.

The Rise of Protestantism is very linked with the rise of democratic and economic reform.

Obviously, that's probably not going to happen in Westeros as the Red God and Sparrows aren't being portrayed as remotely sympathetic.

I'm always interested in discussions about the Sparrows, which tend to diverge between those who see them as somewhat of a good thing (by trying to hold the nobility to account) and those who view religion as an unmitigated evil.

[Lyanna Stark]

On 2016-09-05 at 7:01 PM, C.T. Phipps said:

http://www.themarysue.com/cersei-lannister-feminist-character/

http://www.bustle.com/articles/101697-7-reasons-game-of-thrones-cersei-lannister-is-a-feminist-hero-despite-her-many-many-flaws

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/06/25/why-women-rule-westeros-6-reasons-game-of-thrones-is-a-triumph-f/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/30/the-abused-wives-of-westeros-a-song-of-feminism-in-game-of-thrones.html

http://www.bustle.com/articles/101697-7-reasons-game-of-thrones-cersei-lannister-is-a-feminist-hero-despite-her-many-many-flaws

And this is just with one causal google search.

People have writen their Masters on it.

Ugh, ugh ugh ugh. TV show discussion in a book forum. However, I would be interesting to know who wrote their Master's thesis on how Cersei is a feminist icon [in the books].  She isn't a feminist icon in any way, shape or form, and no she does not challenge the male hegemony (which male hegemony and in which context btw?). Further, conflating book!Cersei with TV!Cersei is unhelpful as they are extremely different characters.

If we stick to book!Cersei, who is a more interesting character, I threw together this very short piece ages ago, which basically lays out that Cersei is a very good example of internalised sexism at work, while also being a mouthpiece for pretty scathing feminist critique.

But well done to one of the journalist for having skimmed Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" and not understood much at all, I guess? the mish-mash of book!Cersei with show!Cersei in these articles are also pretty frightening. As is the poorly thought out understanding of what a "feminist" character is, as opposed to how a character can be used as a feminist critique. Two totally different things, but conflated endlessly. Cersei, the character, is not a feminist. She never was, she never will be.

Sorry for getting this tangent in here and for not being more coherent (short on time). I'll get back to the excellent first essay when I have more time.

[C.T. Phipps]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

I'm always interested in discussions about the Sparrows, which tend to diverge between those who see them as somewhat of a good thing (by trying to hold the nobility to account) and those who view religion as an unmitigated evil.

Another good example where readers always take their own biases into matters. One of my few issues with Martin being Westeros is almost completely alien from any real Medieval setting because the church is utterly cowed from all matters of justice or society but exists, essentially to do weddings and stamp documents.

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Another good example where readers always take their own biases into matters. One of my few issues with Martin being Westeros is almost completely alien from any real Medieval setting because the church is utterly cowed from all matters of justice or society but exists, essentially to do weddings and stamp documents.

 

1 minute ago, C.T. Phipps said:

 

Presumably, the Faith must be a major landowner in Westeros, and must offer a good career path for younger sons and daughters, if it's like its medieval counterpart, but we never encounter powerful clerics in the story, until the advent of the High Sparrow.

[TrackerNeil]

4 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

If we stick to book!Cersei, who is a more interesting character, I threw together this very short piece ages ago, which basically lays out that Cersei is a very good example of internalised sexism at work, while also being a mouthpiece for pretty scathing feminist critique.

Hey, that's great! How did I miss it the first time?

[The Grey Wolf]

5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

George R.R. Martin has said he doesn't try to replicate an actual medieval mindset in his characters, because the result would be too alien for modern readers to cope with.

Has anyone ever even tried to do that? And how would they be too alien for modern readers to cope with?

1 hour ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Another good example where readers always take their own biases into matters. One of my few issues with Martin being Westeros is almost completely alien from any real Medieval setting because the church is utterly cowed from all matters of justice or society but exists, essentially to do weddings and stamp documents.

This is a problem I have with fantasy in general. Religion doesn't exist, is one-dimensional, or just an obvious rip-off of real-life religions, if not both of the later.

Even ASOIAF to me fails in that regard. Westeros for example is a continent the size of South America and yet in its thousands of years of history we get no religious schisms, practically no known religious wars, intermarriage between different religions is fine as well as worshiping two religions simultaneously (except with the Ironborn occasionally), and the smallfolk are taught the Seven are gods whereas some highborn are taught they are like the Trinity yet no one in the Faith's hierarchy seems to have a problem with this disparity. Yeah. Not medieval at all. Even today most people wouldn't believe in the Old Gods AND the New.

[C.T. Phipps]

I'm fairly sure the Starks believing in both is a personal compromise which followers of both would view poorly. Then again, amusingly, I sometimes feel like the depiction of Westeros is more the Biblical Age than Medieval with its absolute rulers, causal changing of gods by decree, and absolute rulership.