I didn't even get to the queer stuff yesterday, did I? I probably won't get to it today either.
I'm going to talk about food.
I am also going to cheat on my five-chapter limit, but it's for good reason.
Here is Martin's description of a feast:
"The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and fresh-baked bread. Its grey stone walls were draped with banners. White, gold, crimson: the direwolf of Stark, Baratheon's crowned stag, the lion of Lannister. A singer was playing the high harp and reciting a ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice could scarcely be heard above the roar of the fire, the clangor of pewter plates and cups, and the low mutter of a hundred drunken conversations."
Here is Anthony's description of a feast:
"The great hall of Calavere had been decorated to resemble a winter forest. Boughs of evergreen and holly hung from soot-blackened beams high above, and more had been heaped along the base of the walls. Their icy scent mingled with the smoke of torches. Leafless saplings stood in the corners of the hall, to suggest the edges of a sylvan glade, and even the tapestries on the walls added to the illusion with their scenes of stag hunts and forest revels, woven in colors made dim and rich with time."
What I'm getting from this is: If you are going to write epic fantasy, and you have to describe a feast, you must always start with "The great hall of X..."
But seriously. Where would you rather be? Winterfell or Calavere? My take on Martin - and one of the reasons I don't like him - is that his fantasyland is very generic. Who is the singer and how did he get there? What is he singing about? Who cares? It's a medieval feast, and they have bards and shit there, don't they?
It looks like I am going to get to queer stuff today after all.
One of the reasons Anthony is much more detailed in his description of castle life is because he has quite a few female characters. The king's ward practically runs the castle - including preparations for feasts. Who put together the Winterfell feast? The wife, whatsername, Catelyn? She doesn't seem to have much imagination. Or maybe it was planned out by a man. That would explain a lot.
Martin's female characters are annoying me five chapters (and one episode of the show) in. We have the supportive wife, the victimized child-bride, and the tomboy princess (though I have heard that the child-bride takes a level in badass later, so I promise I'll read a few more chapters after this rant). So - we have one woman whose strength is being married to a strong man and making him stronger, we have one woman who is completely dominated by the heteropatriarchy, and we have one who takes on a male role in order to gain power.
Anthony's world is also quite male-dominated, but he uses the patriarchy to ask questions about power and gender relations. He has not one but two queens, neither of which rule over a matriarchy. He has no crossdressers. And yes, the Witches are a big equalizing factor in his world, but it is not so much a matter of giving women power as giving women space. Martin has yet to pass the Bechdel test. Okay, so Anthony takes until chapter 9, and then it's a cryptic warning and not really a conversation, but once you get more than one female character, he really takes off.
So the reason I like Anthony and not Martin is that Anthony's writing is queer. I'm not talking about his order of gay knights, or his gay protagonist, or his representation of every letter in the LGBTQetc. acronym. Anthony is queer because he gives attention to issues of power and privilege, so that his almost stereotypical quest arc becomes fresh and exciting because it is seen through a different lens.
Now it's time for five more chapters of Martin. Maybe I'll have another rant by then.
Showing posts with label Literary Analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literary Analysis. Show all posts
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
Queering Epic Fantasy: A critical comparison between "Game of Thrones" and "Beyond the Pale." Part One.
If you're read any of my other posts on this blog, you know that I am obsessed with this obscure fantasy series by a guy named Mark Anthony (not the singer) called "The Last Rune." I am not unbiased.
But I can't stand Game of Thrones.
I don't know why. Sure, he has a massive cast, and I can't seem to care about any of them, and everyone in the prologue dies, and it's very hetero-European-centric. And it doesn't have a Dark Lord, while Anthony does, and there are certain storytelling conventions that make me think that Anthony was in some ways influenced by Martin (it's plausible - Thrones came out in 1996 and Pale was published in 1998). And we certainly cannot disregard the effect of nostalgia goggles.
So what is so different about the two books?
I have only read the first five chapters of Thrones, so I will limit my text citations of Anthony to the first five chapters of Beyond the Pale.
Let's start with the first line of the prologue.
Thrones: "We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are dead."
Pale: The derelict school bus blew into town with the last midnight gale of October.
What can we deduce from this? Well, Thrones tells us immediately that there are going to be weird names of pseudo-European fantasyland tradition. Seriously, have you noticed that nearly every fantasy novel has a character named "Gareth"? "Gared" tells me that he is going to do a lot of re-spelling, which is possibly even more annoying than scrabble-bag names.
What else? Starting the story at dusk gives a sense of darkness and foreboding and spooky things; like the start of a horror movie. But WTF is a wildling? That's not explained until the next chapter; instead, the author spends a great deal of time describing the characters' clothes.
Now in Pale, we see we are in the real world with school buses and Octobers. We can see the scene, instead of trying to imagine some dude named Gared in some kind of wood with some other people. The question that keeps you reading, then, is not "What is going on?" but "Why is the school bus blowing into town at midnight?" Obviously, Martin does not have that luxury, but half the time I feel like he does not explain things enough, and the other half I am frustrated by him giving too much detail and name-dropping.
The rest of the prologues are as follows: In Thrones, the viewpoint is actually held by Will, but they all get killed by spooky zombie-things so it doesn't really matter; you never really get a sense of the characters, so you don't really care that they're dead. In Pale, a creepy preacher-like figure oversees a troupe of faerie-like beings raise a tent (for some reason my mental image always looks like that one scene in Dumbo) to host "Brother Cy's Travelling Salvation Show." You can tell no one here is a real viewpoint character; they are kept distant, mysterious, not someone you connect to but someone you wonder at. The prologue is quite different from the rest of the chapters; which is why it is a prologue and not a first chapter where everyone dies. Also, the preacher reappears in chapter two, so he isn't completely forgotten. He's relevant, just not a viewpoint character.
Now for the first line of Chapter One.
Thrones: The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.
Pale: Sometimes the wind blowing down from the mountains made Travis Wilder feel like anything could happen.
There's no contest here - a description of the weather, or an introduction into the main character's soul. Ugh, okay, I'll try for less bias. Autumn signifies dying things, and adds to the foreboding of the prologue. The chapter also details a seven year old boy witnessing his first execution, and so it can also signify and end to childhood innocence. But that's a cheap metaphor. Wind as a vehicle for infinite possibilities is not something you see every day.
Now, in the first five chapters of Thrones, there are five different viewpoint characters; I believe there are a total of seven in the book. In the first five of Pale, there is one, with a total of two main ones and a few glimpses of others in the climax toward the end.
On page one of Thrones, we are introduced to six characters: Bran, Robb, Mance Rayder, Old Nan, Jon, the man that gets killed. On page two we get Eddard Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Jory Cassel, and Robert. Also, I can't find anywhere that explicitly says that Robb is Bran's brother. Yes, there is a character list in the back, but I'm trying to get into the story, and I'm trying to focus on Bran, and there are all these names distracting me.
Pale does not introduce anyone besides Travis until three pages in, for a total of three: Travis, Moira Larsen, who is not important, and Max, who is. Moira Larsen is introduced as Travis, a saloonkeeper, is worried about being late for work and having to face irate patrons. Max is his one employee. I'm still fuzzy on who half the names in Thrones are.
I think the fundamental difference in the structure of the two books is that Martin takes a broad sweep of his story, introducing the setting and the people, and telling the story after the stage has been set. Anthony introduces Travis, and pulls him into the story once we know him.
Anthony is also quicker on the action. By the end of chapter five, we have already had our first incident, complete with fire and danger and strange beings. Prologue of Thrones does not count as an incident because it doesn't connect to a recurring character. Five chapters in, it looks like some kind of fantasyland family drama. It's a soap opera. The characters are shallow enough.
I have so much more to say on these books. So much that I think I'm going to break it up into multiple posts. Tomorrow: Feasts and castles! After that, I might actually get to the queer theory component.
But I can't stand Game of Thrones.
I don't know why. Sure, he has a massive cast, and I can't seem to care about any of them, and everyone in the prologue dies, and it's very hetero-European-centric. And it doesn't have a Dark Lord, while Anthony does, and there are certain storytelling conventions that make me think that Anthony was in some ways influenced by Martin (it's plausible - Thrones came out in 1996 and Pale was published in 1998). And we certainly cannot disregard the effect of nostalgia goggles.
So what is so different about the two books?
I have only read the first five chapters of Thrones, so I will limit my text citations of Anthony to the first five chapters of Beyond the Pale.
Let's start with the first line of the prologue.
Thrones: "We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are dead."
Pale: The derelict school bus blew into town with the last midnight gale of October.
What can we deduce from this? Well, Thrones tells us immediately that there are going to be weird names of pseudo-European fantasyland tradition. Seriously, have you noticed that nearly every fantasy novel has a character named "Gareth"? "Gared" tells me that he is going to do a lot of re-spelling, which is possibly even more annoying than scrabble-bag names.
What else? Starting the story at dusk gives a sense of darkness and foreboding and spooky things; like the start of a horror movie. But WTF is a wildling? That's not explained until the next chapter; instead, the author spends a great deal of time describing the characters' clothes.
Now in Pale, we see we are in the real world with school buses and Octobers. We can see the scene, instead of trying to imagine some dude named Gared in some kind of wood with some other people. The question that keeps you reading, then, is not "What is going on?" but "Why is the school bus blowing into town at midnight?" Obviously, Martin does not have that luxury, but half the time I feel like he does not explain things enough, and the other half I am frustrated by him giving too much detail and name-dropping.
The rest of the prologues are as follows: In Thrones, the viewpoint is actually held by Will, but they all get killed by spooky zombie-things so it doesn't really matter; you never really get a sense of the characters, so you don't really care that they're dead. In Pale, a creepy preacher-like figure oversees a troupe of faerie-like beings raise a tent (for some reason my mental image always looks like that one scene in Dumbo) to host "Brother Cy's Travelling Salvation Show." You can tell no one here is a real viewpoint character; they are kept distant, mysterious, not someone you connect to but someone you wonder at. The prologue is quite different from the rest of the chapters; which is why it is a prologue and not a first chapter where everyone dies. Also, the preacher reappears in chapter two, so he isn't completely forgotten. He's relevant, just not a viewpoint character.
Now for the first line of Chapter One.
Thrones: The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.
Pale: Sometimes the wind blowing down from the mountains made Travis Wilder feel like anything could happen.
There's no contest here - a description of the weather, or an introduction into the main character's soul. Ugh, okay, I'll try for less bias. Autumn signifies dying things, and adds to the foreboding of the prologue. The chapter also details a seven year old boy witnessing his first execution, and so it can also signify and end to childhood innocence. But that's a cheap metaphor. Wind as a vehicle for infinite possibilities is not something you see every day.
Now, in the first five chapters of Thrones, there are five different viewpoint characters; I believe there are a total of seven in the book. In the first five of Pale, there is one, with a total of two main ones and a few glimpses of others in the climax toward the end.
On page one of Thrones, we are introduced to six characters: Bran, Robb, Mance Rayder, Old Nan, Jon, the man that gets killed. On page two we get Eddard Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Jory Cassel, and Robert. Also, I can't find anywhere that explicitly says that Robb is Bran's brother. Yes, there is a character list in the back, but I'm trying to get into the story, and I'm trying to focus on Bran, and there are all these names distracting me.
Pale does not introduce anyone besides Travis until three pages in, for a total of three: Travis, Moira Larsen, who is not important, and Max, who is. Moira Larsen is introduced as Travis, a saloonkeeper, is worried about being late for work and having to face irate patrons. Max is his one employee. I'm still fuzzy on who half the names in Thrones are.
I think the fundamental difference in the structure of the two books is that Martin takes a broad sweep of his story, introducing the setting and the people, and telling the story after the stage has been set. Anthony introduces Travis, and pulls him into the story once we know him.
Anthony is also quicker on the action. By the end of chapter five, we have already had our first incident, complete with fire and danger and strange beings. Prologue of Thrones does not count as an incident because it doesn't connect to a recurring character. Five chapters in, it looks like some kind of fantasyland family drama. It's a soap opera. The characters are shallow enough.
I have so much more to say on these books. So much that I think I'm going to break it up into multiple posts. Tomorrow: Feasts and castles! After that, I might actually get to the queer theory component.
Monday, August 6, 2012
History Project - 1979: Tales of Neveryon
I need to come up for a more concise name for what I'm doing that "Queer Fantasy History Project."
"Tales of Neveryon" is a book by Samuel R. Delany that consists of five tales and an appendix (it's one of those books where the appendix is part of the story). The tales all take place in the same fictional kingdom of Neveryon, a proto-civilization, pseudo-Mesopotamian sword-and-soceryland. The tales share a few characters and in the last tale pulls all the plots together in complicated and interesting ways.
The story behind the story: Neveryon was on my list for vintage queer fantasy I needed to read, and I finally tracked it down at a used bookstore. On that same trip I bought "Nocturne," partly because I have been trying to finish the Indigo books, and partly because I did not want to buy only that book with that cover.
I. The Tale of Gorgik
Gorgik is a slave, who finds favor with a noblewoman (yes, I do mean sex) and ends up not only freed but becomes very successful in the military. Right away you can tell this is not your typical post-Tolkien sword-and-sorcery. There is a lot of class commentary and power relations. Oh, and Delany is African-American. Matters of race and slavery come up a lot in his books. Just saying.
He's also gay, and I heard that there is quite a bit of queer content in the Neveryon books (which is why I tracked it down for the history project). All that I could find from Gorgik was mention of male prostitutes in the scenery, implication that the eunuch servant has sex with men, and implication that Gorgik has sex with a guy, or at least that a guy approached him for sexual favors.
II. The Tale of Old Venn
This is the tale which blew my mind a little. I mean, to all appearances (namely, the scantily clad people on the cover) it's a tpyical 70's sword-and-sorcery book. Then it starts to ask quesions about gender roles and the origin of prejudice and Freudian theory and the effect money has on society. Somehow, it does not come off as didactic, even though the format is mostly an old woman giving lessons to a group of children.
This story is not queer in the sense of homosexuality, but Old Venn does have some stories of her time as a wife in a not-your-typical-polygamist-society. Instead of the women being property of the men, the man is the property of the women; until that sociey was introduced to money, which skewed things into a patriarchy, by ways that really do make sense but are a bit complicated for a blog post.
III. The Tale of Small Sarg
Now it gets gay. Sarg is a barbarian prince, "which meant that his mother's brother wore women's jewelry and was consulted about animals and sickness." Sarg himself also has the opportunity to assume such an office (the barbarians seem to be some sort of matriarchy), but prefers not to.
Then Sarg is captured and sold as a slave to Gorgik. After the sale, Sarg says to his new master "You should have take [sic] the woman. You get her work in the day, her body at night." To which Gorgik replies "You think I'll get any less from you?"
Yep.
Apparently the reason Gorgik bought a slave is because he physically cannot have sex unless one partner is wearing a slave collar. This toes the line between implying that gay sex is really messed up, and bringing up issues of the psychology of power relations.
That's all I have to say on that, except that people who claim that speculative fiction is more homophobic than other genres obviously are not reading the right books. This was not a bromance, or homoerotic undertones. There was very unambiguously sex.
IV. The Tale of Dragons and Potters
I have to bring up an interesting coincidence on this for people who have read The Wheel of Time. There is a character named Bayle who has "an inch of yellow beard, mostly beneath his chin - no real mustache." Granted, he's eighteen. No he does not have a funny accent. Still.
There is also a character named Raven who is...you know your friend whose a rabid man-hating feminist? That's her. She's from an oppressive matriarchy, and at one point tells her people's creation story, which parallels Christianity in odd ways, except that Adam and Eve are both women, and Adam's punishment for original sin is to be turned into " 'man, which means broken woman."
Interestingly, not only are the male characters uncomfortable with this story, but the female as well. A sign of feminism gone too far? Or internalized oppression? Though this is the girl (now grown-up) who listened to Old Venn's stories.
This is also the story where it is revealed that there is no birth-control herb (Tamora Pierce won't be part of the scene for a while).
V. The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers
Most of these issues are brought up in Sarg, but there's not too much to say about this one, so I'm going to talk about the dragons. Dragons in Neveryon are vicious, impractical creatures, tamed only because some lord way back when decided they were pretty. Their riders (yes, they have riders, this is post-McCaffery) are girls - young girls - because they are smaller and therefor lighter. It is also a very high-risk and undesireable job, so the riders are also the delinquent "bad girls" who don't have a choice.
The last tale has Gorgik and Sarg on a violent campaign to end slavery. There is an interesting debate between Sarg and a slave, who explains that their methods are actually counterproductive. Sarg kills him. The slave had a point. But Sarg's rage, his desire to make a change now - that also is understandable.
Also, upon their meeting with Norema and Raven, Gorgik introduces himself and Sarg as lovers. No one really bats an eye at the gender relations.
Appendix: Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus, Part Three
The title of this scared me too. In fact, it details the discovery of an ancient text telling the oldest story known to mankind, and the difficulties in translating this. I'm pretty sure it's all made up, but it's very plausible sounding. But when you google "Culhar text," the only links that show up are related to Delany.
Essentially, the point of the appendix is that Delany took inspiration from this story for Neveryon. Or that someone did; I think it might be a story-within-a-story, and that the appendix relates to one of his other books. It's so brilliant, though, because some of the passages from the alleged text have translations that run thus:
Either
1) "the love of the small barbarian slave for the tall man from Culhare."
Or
2) "the love of the tall slave from Culhare for the small barbarian."
Or even
3) "the small love of the barbarian and the tall man for slavery."
Or...all three at once.
So by this point I am quite determined to become a Delany fangirl, because that man is brilliant. He asks so many questions, and doesn't answer a single one, instead forcing you to think about it. In a 1970's sword-and-sorcery novel. This is pre-Brooks/Eddings fantasy at its finest, before the Star-Wars-with-dragons plot became standard and everyone had to invent their own world, and the world you invented explored possibilities and questions that could not be explored in our own world.
"Tales of Neveryon" is a book by Samuel R. Delany that consists of five tales and an appendix (it's one of those books where the appendix is part of the story). The tales all take place in the same fictional kingdom of Neveryon, a proto-civilization, pseudo-Mesopotamian sword-and-soceryland. The tales share a few characters and in the last tale pulls all the plots together in complicated and interesting ways.
The story behind the story: Neveryon was on my list for vintage queer fantasy I needed to read, and I finally tracked it down at a used bookstore. On that same trip I bought "Nocturne," partly because I have been trying to finish the Indigo books, and partly because I did not want to buy only that book with that cover.
I. The Tale of Gorgik
Gorgik is a slave, who finds favor with a noblewoman (yes, I do mean sex) and ends up not only freed but becomes very successful in the military. Right away you can tell this is not your typical post-Tolkien sword-and-sorcery. There is a lot of class commentary and power relations. Oh, and Delany is African-American. Matters of race and slavery come up a lot in his books. Just saying.
He's also gay, and I heard that there is quite a bit of queer content in the Neveryon books (which is why I tracked it down for the history project). All that I could find from Gorgik was mention of male prostitutes in the scenery, implication that the eunuch servant has sex with men, and implication that Gorgik has sex with a guy, or at least that a guy approached him for sexual favors.
II. The Tale of Old Venn
This is the tale which blew my mind a little. I mean, to all appearances (namely, the scantily clad people on the cover) it's a tpyical 70's sword-and-sorcery book. Then it starts to ask quesions about gender roles and the origin of prejudice and Freudian theory and the effect money has on society. Somehow, it does not come off as didactic, even though the format is mostly an old woman giving lessons to a group of children.
This story is not queer in the sense of homosexuality, but Old Venn does have some stories of her time as a wife in a not-your-typical-polygamist-society. Instead of the women being property of the men, the man is the property of the women; until that sociey was introduced to money, which skewed things into a patriarchy, by ways that really do make sense but are a bit complicated for a blog post.
III. The Tale of Small Sarg
Now it gets gay. Sarg is a barbarian prince, "which meant that his mother's brother wore women's jewelry and was consulted about animals and sickness." Sarg himself also has the opportunity to assume such an office (the barbarians seem to be some sort of matriarchy), but prefers not to.
Then Sarg is captured and sold as a slave to Gorgik. After the sale, Sarg says to his new master "You should have take [sic] the woman. You get her work in the day, her body at night." To which Gorgik replies "You think I'll get any less from you?"
Yep.
Apparently the reason Gorgik bought a slave is because he physically cannot have sex unless one partner is wearing a slave collar. This toes the line between implying that gay sex is really messed up, and bringing up issues of the psychology of power relations.
That's all I have to say on that, except that people who claim that speculative fiction is more homophobic than other genres obviously are not reading the right books. This was not a bromance, or homoerotic undertones. There was very unambiguously sex.
IV. The Tale of Dragons and Potters
I have to bring up an interesting coincidence on this for people who have read The Wheel of Time. There is a character named Bayle who has "an inch of yellow beard, mostly beneath his chin - no real mustache." Granted, he's eighteen. No he does not have a funny accent. Still.
There is also a character named Raven who is...you know your friend whose a rabid man-hating feminist? That's her. She's from an oppressive matriarchy, and at one point tells her people's creation story, which parallels Christianity in odd ways, except that Adam and Eve are both women, and Adam's punishment for original sin is to be turned into " 'man, which means broken woman."
Interestingly, not only are the male characters uncomfortable with this story, but the female as well. A sign of feminism gone too far? Or internalized oppression? Though this is the girl (now grown-up) who listened to Old Venn's stories.
This is also the story where it is revealed that there is no birth-control herb (Tamora Pierce won't be part of the scene for a while).
V. The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers
Most of these issues are brought up in Sarg, but there's not too much to say about this one, so I'm going to talk about the dragons. Dragons in Neveryon are vicious, impractical creatures, tamed only because some lord way back when decided they were pretty. Their riders (yes, they have riders, this is post-McCaffery) are girls - young girls - because they are smaller and therefor lighter. It is also a very high-risk and undesireable job, so the riders are also the delinquent "bad girls" who don't have a choice.
The last tale has Gorgik and Sarg on a violent campaign to end slavery. There is an interesting debate between Sarg and a slave, who explains that their methods are actually counterproductive. Sarg kills him. The slave had a point. But Sarg's rage, his desire to make a change now - that also is understandable.
Also, upon their meeting with Norema and Raven, Gorgik introduces himself and Sarg as lovers. No one really bats an eye at the gender relations.
Appendix: Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus, Part Three
The title of this scared me too. In fact, it details the discovery of an ancient text telling the oldest story known to mankind, and the difficulties in translating this. I'm pretty sure it's all made up, but it's very plausible sounding. But when you google "Culhar text," the only links that show up are related to Delany.
Essentially, the point of the appendix is that Delany took inspiration from this story for Neveryon. Or that someone did; I think it might be a story-within-a-story, and that the appendix relates to one of his other books. It's so brilliant, though, because some of the passages from the alleged text have translations that run thus:
Either
1) "the love of the small barbarian slave for the tall man from Culhare."
Or
2) "the love of the tall slave from Culhare for the small barbarian."
Or even
3) "the small love of the barbarian and the tall man for slavery."
Or...all three at once.
So by this point I am quite determined to become a Delany fangirl, because that man is brilliant. He asks so many questions, and doesn't answer a single one, instead forcing you to think about it. In a 1970's sword-and-sorcery novel. This is pre-Brooks/Eddings fantasy at its finest, before the Star-Wars-with-dragons plot became standard and everyone had to invent their own world, and the world you invented explored possibilities and questions that could not be explored in our own world.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Feminist Fantasy: Alanna vs. Indigo
The other day I was in a used bookstore and I ran into Nocturne: Book Four of Indigo, by Louise Cooper (1990). Now, I've been spending the past several years off and on perusing secondhand bookstores for the Indigo series - I've only been able to get book 3 at a library. I picked the first one up on a whim at a used book store, and took about a year to get around to reading it. It was kind of like what happened a couple weeks ago when I woke up in the middle of the night needing to read some trashy B-fantasy. And I had Indigo on hand. And about a chapter in, I realized my mistake. This was not trashy at all.
The story starts with a princess who pulls a Pandora ("What's in this box that no one's ever, ever supposed to open?") and releases seven demons into the world, and condemns her boyfriend to eternal torment (or until the demons are destroyed) in the process. She is given one chance to redeem herself - the goddess grants her immortality, so she has all the time in the world to destroy the demons.
What I really love about the series is that it flips the traditional fairy-tale narrative on its head - the princess goes out and has adventures while the prince just sits in his tower. It's one of the few books I know of that has a strong female protagonist who is not involved in a love triangle. And the mutant wolf. Gotta love the mutant wolf.
There is more than one kind of feminist literature, however. When most people think of feminist fantasy, they think of Tamora Pierce (Actually, they probably think Katniss or Hermione, but for now we're going to pretend I'm right, 'kay?). Pierce's characters are always defying the patriarchy and breaking gender roles and confusing misogynists and saving the world blah blah blah.
I was big into Tamora Pierce back in middle school/high school, having started with the Circle of Magic quartet in elementary school from the book orders, moving on to The Immortals because the first book had ponies on the cover (Yeah. So?) and deciding to round out my repertoire with the author's first work, the Alanna books (Song of the Lioness, whatever).
Alanna is a princess (well, the daughter of a duke or a lord or something) who decides to switch places with her twin brother, disguising herself as a boy to go to knight school while he goes to magic school and becomes evil and gay.
Contrasting approaches to feminism in the abovementioned works:
1. The Strong Female Protagonist
Crossdressing. Girl dressing as boy still gives power to masculinity. Granted, she "comes out" as a woman in later books, and Pierce has a later series of an openly female knight, but crossdressing princesses still sends the message of "How does a woman get power in society? Become a man!"
Second point on the crossdressing note...it's just too damn convenient that she has a twin brother that she can switch places with. Too-convenient things in novels just bug me. And attributing it to divine intervention is cheating.
Indigo is a woman and it's not a big deal. It's fantasy, after all, so the pseudo-medieval world does not have to be a rabid patriarchy if you don't want it to be. Her gender is very rarely brought up. She becomes a strong female character by being strong and female, rather than strong despite being female. And yes, this route completely ignore relevant questions of gender roles, but it is still refreshing to have a woman character who is not defined by her woman-ness.
2. Relationship with men
Tamora Pierce may have invented magical birth control. The purpose of this was so that her characters could experience the sexual liberation that America was having by the 80's. The books make a big fuss over Alanna's sex life and the double standard regarding women and sexuality. And there's the love triangle with the prince and the rogue and blah blah blah.
Indigo has a boyfriend in hell. And she's a bit gloomy over missing him, and the fact that he's suffering - who wouldn't be? - but she spends remarkably little time brooding on it. And she doesn't get tempted into a love triangle with another man (and the fact that she's immortal would make temptation awkward, I imagine). There's a guy in book 3 who has a thing for her, but she's like "Uhh...no. It's complicated." Her love life is so much less important than slaying the demons.
3. Relationship with gods.
Okay, done with the hard-core feministy stuff. Moving on to the fantasy stuff.
Pierce's pantheon are all just so meddlesome. With Indigo, the god's function is to say "You fucked up. Go be immortal and fix it." And that's it. She's done her part, and stays out of it. With Alanna, the gods are constantly "Oh hey, go do this." "Why?" "I'm a god, don't argue. Here's a thing to help you." "What's this do?" "This gets you out of a situation later that the writer can't think of a proper resolution for."
4. Animal companions
Alanna has a stupid cat that does what now? It's basically just a mouthpiece for the gods; it's like that owl in the Legend of Zelda games, that shows up and tells you "Don't go to Kakariko village yet. You have to go to the castle first," even if you know perfectly well you can't move on in the game until you go the castle and get the ocarina, but maybe you just feel like completing the cucco quest to get a bottle first and you don't need a stupid owl telling you not to. Indigo has a freaking mutant telepathic wolf who has her own tragic backstory, and even though she falls a little flat as a character because she's just the supportive sidekick, she still has more motivation and personality than the stupid kitten who bullies the protagonist with plot advice.
So which do you prefer? Female protagonists that actively subvert the patriarchy? Or strong protagonists that just happen to be female?
I apologize if any of the information I gave on any of the books here is inaccurate. I haven't read Alanna or the early Indigo books in a few years.
I will say I honestly like the later Pierce books a lot more than the early ones. Maybe I'll do a post on that so you don't think I hate her. I really don't.
The story starts with a princess who pulls a Pandora ("What's in this box that no one's ever, ever supposed to open?") and releases seven demons into the world, and condemns her boyfriend to eternal torment (or until the demons are destroyed) in the process. She is given one chance to redeem herself - the goddess grants her immortality, so she has all the time in the world to destroy the demons.
What I really love about the series is that it flips the traditional fairy-tale narrative on its head - the princess goes out and has adventures while the prince just sits in his tower. It's one of the few books I know of that has a strong female protagonist who is not involved in a love triangle. And the mutant wolf. Gotta love the mutant wolf.
There is more than one kind of feminist literature, however. When most people think of feminist fantasy, they think of Tamora Pierce (Actually, they probably think Katniss or Hermione, but for now we're going to pretend I'm right, 'kay?). Pierce's characters are always defying the patriarchy and breaking gender roles and confusing misogynists and saving the world blah blah blah.
I was big into Tamora Pierce back in middle school/high school, having started with the Circle of Magic quartet in elementary school from the book orders, moving on to The Immortals because the first book had ponies on the cover (Yeah. So?) and deciding to round out my repertoire with the author's first work, the Alanna books (Song of the Lioness, whatever).
Alanna is a princess (well, the daughter of a duke or a lord or something) who decides to switch places with her twin brother, disguising herself as a boy to go to knight school while he goes to magic school and becomes evil and gay.
Contrasting approaches to feminism in the abovementioned works:
1. The Strong Female Protagonist
Crossdressing. Girl dressing as boy still gives power to masculinity. Granted, she "comes out" as a woman in later books, and Pierce has a later series of an openly female knight, but crossdressing princesses still sends the message of "How does a woman get power in society? Become a man!"
Second point on the crossdressing note...it's just too damn convenient that she has a twin brother that she can switch places with. Too-convenient things in novels just bug me. And attributing it to divine intervention is cheating.
Indigo is a woman and it's not a big deal. It's fantasy, after all, so the pseudo-medieval world does not have to be a rabid patriarchy if you don't want it to be. Her gender is very rarely brought up. She becomes a strong female character by being strong and female, rather than strong despite being female. And yes, this route completely ignore relevant questions of gender roles, but it is still refreshing to have a woman character who is not defined by her woman-ness.
2. Relationship with men
Tamora Pierce may have invented magical birth control. The purpose of this was so that her characters could experience the sexual liberation that America was having by the 80's. The books make a big fuss over Alanna's sex life and the double standard regarding women and sexuality. And there's the love triangle with the prince and the rogue and blah blah blah.
Indigo has a boyfriend in hell. And she's a bit gloomy over missing him, and the fact that he's suffering - who wouldn't be? - but she spends remarkably little time brooding on it. And she doesn't get tempted into a love triangle with another man (and the fact that she's immortal would make temptation awkward, I imagine). There's a guy in book 3 who has a thing for her, but she's like "Uhh...no. It's complicated." Her love life is so much less important than slaying the demons.
3. Relationship with gods.
Okay, done with the hard-core feministy stuff. Moving on to the fantasy stuff.
Pierce's pantheon are all just so meddlesome. With Indigo, the god's function is to say "You fucked up. Go be immortal and fix it." And that's it. She's done her part, and stays out of it. With Alanna, the gods are constantly "Oh hey, go do this." "Why?" "I'm a god, don't argue. Here's a thing to help you." "What's this do?" "This gets you out of a situation later that the writer can't think of a proper resolution for."
4. Animal companions
Alanna has a stupid cat that does what now? It's basically just a mouthpiece for the gods; it's like that owl in the Legend of Zelda games, that shows up and tells you "Don't go to Kakariko village yet. You have to go to the castle first," even if you know perfectly well you can't move on in the game until you go the castle and get the ocarina, but maybe you just feel like completing the cucco quest to get a bottle first and you don't need a stupid owl telling you not to. Indigo has a freaking mutant telepathic wolf who has her own tragic backstory, and even though she falls a little flat as a character because she's just the supportive sidekick, she still has more motivation and personality than the stupid kitten who bullies the protagonist with plot advice.
So which do you prefer? Female protagonists that actively subvert the patriarchy? Or strong protagonists that just happen to be female?
I apologize if any of the information I gave on any of the books here is inaccurate. I haven't read Alanna or the early Indigo books in a few years.
I will say I honestly like the later Pierce books a lot more than the early ones. Maybe I'll do a post on that so you don't think I hate her. I really don't.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
B-Novels of the Eighties
So for some reason last night I was really craving some shoddy B-Fantasy, to the point where I would have been willing to do embarrassing things to get my hands on a Mercedes Lackey...
What's that? B-Fantasy? Oh, it's the same concept as B-movies - formulaic, low production value, flat characters - just with fantasy literature. Basically, what normal people think of when they think of fantasy, with the teenage protagonist who has to save the world from the Dark Lord and runs all over the countryside learning magic and eating stew. Etc.
Anyway, since all I brought with me to my apartment was some beautiful magic realism and some weird children's genre-benders, I was stuck. See, books are like food. Sometimes you want to go out to a fancy restaurant for steak and shrimp alfredo, or whatever you order (that actually sounds really good right now...) and sometimes you just want to heat up some Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave, because that's what you grew up on, and even if as an adult it disgusts you intellectually, and you can't bear to read the list of ingredients, it just tastes so bad, but so good.
But since I didn't have any to read, I started listing and categorizing and researching to try and pin down what makes B-Fantasy B-Fantasy. Because apparently when I want mindless entertainment, I have to analyze it.
I started doing a little research, and here are my findings thus far. Mostly is it some half-assed hypotheses and some Wikipedia trawling, but I intend to reasearch the matter further, I really do.
B-Fantasy was inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (1954), and augmented by LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy (1968). From LOTR we get the epic quest, magical macguffin, underdog hero, and Dark Lord. After Earthsea, the protagonist is allowed to use magic, and magic becomes institutionalized. However, many other aspects of Eathsea, such as the protagonist aging, did not catch on. The first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published in 1974, which codified the Fantasyland setting and rules for the narrative. This I need to look into further, but currently I blame D&D for making every fantasyland need 3races+2 - elf/dwarf/human, and two of the author's own creation; usually one of the extras is evil, and the other is unimportant to the plot. No one besides Tolkien wrote about the elves until D&D! (needs fact-checking)
1977 saw The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, and also the Star Wars movie. I try not to mix fantasy and scifi, but Star Wars has the traditional epic narrative wth the whiny hero that all B-Fantasy uses, and is a potential forerunner. Shannara had 3races+2, and all the trappings of LOTR, except instead of quiet little middle-aged hobbit protagonist, it had a dopey teenage male protagonist, likely in reflection of the anticipated audience. It is also serialized; while Tolkien stopped with a trilogy, a prequel, and a manual, if Brooks isn't dead then he's still writing to this day.
Now we come to the 80's, which is the birth of B-Fantasy proper. David Eddings, I kid you not, saw the emerging market and decided to jump on it for the money - literally, created a formula and cranked out books for profit. He ditched the races (though they still remained prevalent elsewhere), instead creating a multiracial and paradoxically racially uniform world of humans (everyone of every race is the same as each other member of the race), and added meddlesome deities. Also, the hero is allowed, in fact required, to use magic. There is also the annoying crossdressing spunky princess love-interest. Like Leia but less badass. Oh, and she hooks up with the teenage protagonist.
1983 - Tamora Pierce sees the spunky crossdressing redhead princess and decides that she needs her own story, thus bringing about the start of feminist fantasy that tries too hard. Also the practice of making fantasyland be America with a medieval veneer, though Eddings hinted at that with Sendaria and I can't believe I remember the name of that country. Hero's homeland, go figure. Also has institutionalized magic (school of magecraft and blah blah), rather than random wizards who just float around organically to make plot things happen. Wizards become working-class.
1984, ten years after the first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published, the Dragonlance series is born. It was based off of a D&D campaign. No, honestly, it was. We have races, we have quests, we have institutionalized magic and meddlesome deities. For the most part, they do ditch the dopey farmboy, replacing him with the naive warrior, who is supposed to be all troubled and dark, but is really just naive and angsty. Also, the focus is more on the quest group than any one hero. It still has very black-and-white morality.
In 1987 Mercedes Lackey published her first book. So here we have feminist fantasy, and clique fantasy. I have to backtrack a little for that. In 1967, Anne McCaffery started the Dragonriders of Pern series. So we have a special clique of people with special powers whose job is basically to be heroes. This solves the problem of how to keep having the same person solve all the problems; it's their job, because they are telepathically linked to a magical critter. Because that totally makes sense.
Now we come to the 90's, which may be the Golden Age of B-Fantasy. Most of these series started in the 80's, but gained momentum throughout the decade and eventually came to dominate the 90's. There was still some very original stuff in the 80's - Kushner's Swordspoint, Diana Wynne Jones's everything, Suzette Hardin Elgin's Ozark Trilogy about a planet that was colonized by the South and people who ride flying Mules (it's good stuff). In 1990, however, Robert Jordan published the first book in The Wheel of Time.
What did WoT do that other books didn't? It's basically the same setup as Eddings' Belgariad. Teenage farmboy whisked away from his home by a wizard, told it is his destiny by birth to save the world from the newly reawakened Dark Lord, oh yeah and he has magic powers. All I can say is that Jordan made it bigger (800 pages per volume, minimum), he made it better (the world at least makes slightly more sense and is more memorable than Eddings'), and he made it with love. He kept writing even when he was dying, because he loved those books so damn much. And I can tell you a hundred things that make the books awful (don't call me on that, please), but I can at least understand why they are so loved.
Lately, however, there has been a mainstream movement away from B-Fantasy. Conflicts have become less idealistic, between the innocent and the Evil, and more political, between the jaded older warriors and the forces of society - kind of like the teenage hero grew up. I won't be able to say much about George R. R. Martin, because I haven't been able to get through more than three chapters, but I think he is the key to this movement. The current generation of writers grew up on B-Fantasy, and are too jaded with it in today's society.
Other books like David Anthony Durham's Acacia (2007) have similar political orientations - I can't talk much about this one either because I ran into the same problem as Martin, though in Durham's case the last straw was not "I don't know which of these characters I'm supposed to care about" (though there was an element of that) and more "That is the stupidest fencing lesson I have ever read." Then there are more direct criticisms such as E.E. Knight's Age of Fire series (2002), which is basically what Wicked did to Oz, only to Dragonlance. Sure, there are still throwbacks like Eragon (2002), but the mainstream voice of fantasy is shifting from a teenage coming-of-age quest to multiperspective stories of human conflict. Though in fact this sort of storytelling started in the 80's as well, with the Mannerpunk movement started by Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint. It did not gain momentum until just recenty, though.
And of course there are all the little splinter genres like Feminist Fantasy, which I touched on a little, and Queer Fantasy (people say that fantasy is really homophobic, but I think that the fantasyland setting actually makes it easier to include gay characters without stigma; again I point to Swordspoint), and I've already ranted about Dragonrider Fantasy, which is actually a subcategory of Animal Companion Fantasy or perhaps as a genre rather than a device, it would fit better under Heroic Clique Fantasy - you have this world where there is this institution of heroes, be they dragonriders or Jedi or what have you, and every book/trilogy is about a different one whose turn it is to save the kingdom/world/continent. Then there's the Supernatural Ensemble, which I'm not sure belongs in fantasy proper - technically its roots are in horror.
But right now, I still just want to read a magic pony story.
What's that? B-Fantasy? Oh, it's the same concept as B-movies - formulaic, low production value, flat characters - just with fantasy literature. Basically, what normal people think of when they think of fantasy, with the teenage protagonist who has to save the world from the Dark Lord and runs all over the countryside learning magic and eating stew. Etc.
Anyway, since all I brought with me to my apartment was some beautiful magic realism and some weird children's genre-benders, I was stuck. See, books are like food. Sometimes you want to go out to a fancy restaurant for steak and shrimp alfredo, or whatever you order (that actually sounds really good right now...) and sometimes you just want to heat up some Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave, because that's what you grew up on, and even if as an adult it disgusts you intellectually, and you can't bear to read the list of ingredients, it just tastes so bad, but so good.
But since I didn't have any to read, I started listing and categorizing and researching to try and pin down what makes B-Fantasy B-Fantasy. Because apparently when I want mindless entertainment, I have to analyze it.
I started doing a little research, and here are my findings thus far. Mostly is it some half-assed hypotheses and some Wikipedia trawling, but I intend to reasearch the matter further, I really do.
B-Fantasy was inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (1954), and augmented by LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy (1968). From LOTR we get the epic quest, magical macguffin, underdog hero, and Dark Lord. After Earthsea, the protagonist is allowed to use magic, and magic becomes institutionalized. However, many other aspects of Eathsea, such as the protagonist aging, did not catch on. The first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published in 1974, which codified the Fantasyland setting and rules for the narrative. This I need to look into further, but currently I blame D&D for making every fantasyland need 3races+2 - elf/dwarf/human, and two of the author's own creation; usually one of the extras is evil, and the other is unimportant to the plot. No one besides Tolkien wrote about the elves until D&D! (needs fact-checking)
1977 saw The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, and also the Star Wars movie. I try not to mix fantasy and scifi, but Star Wars has the traditional epic narrative wth the whiny hero that all B-Fantasy uses, and is a potential forerunner. Shannara had 3races+2, and all the trappings of LOTR, except instead of quiet little middle-aged hobbit protagonist, it had a dopey teenage male protagonist, likely in reflection of the anticipated audience. It is also serialized; while Tolkien stopped with a trilogy, a prequel, and a manual, if Brooks isn't dead then he's still writing to this day.
Now we come to the 80's, which is the birth of B-Fantasy proper. David Eddings, I kid you not, saw the emerging market and decided to jump on it for the money - literally, created a formula and cranked out books for profit. He ditched the races (though they still remained prevalent elsewhere), instead creating a multiracial and paradoxically racially uniform world of humans (everyone of every race is the same as each other member of the race), and added meddlesome deities. Also, the hero is allowed, in fact required, to use magic. There is also the annoying crossdressing spunky princess love-interest. Like Leia but less badass. Oh, and she hooks up with the teenage protagonist.
1983 - Tamora Pierce sees the spunky crossdressing redhead princess and decides that she needs her own story, thus bringing about the start of feminist fantasy that tries too hard. Also the practice of making fantasyland be America with a medieval veneer, though Eddings hinted at that with Sendaria and I can't believe I remember the name of that country. Hero's homeland, go figure. Also has institutionalized magic (school of magecraft and blah blah), rather than random wizards who just float around organically to make plot things happen. Wizards become working-class.
1984, ten years after the first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published, the Dragonlance series is born. It was based off of a D&D campaign. No, honestly, it was. We have races, we have quests, we have institutionalized magic and meddlesome deities. For the most part, they do ditch the dopey farmboy, replacing him with the naive warrior, who is supposed to be all troubled and dark, but is really just naive and angsty. Also, the focus is more on the quest group than any one hero. It still has very black-and-white morality.
In 1987 Mercedes Lackey published her first book. So here we have feminist fantasy, and clique fantasy. I have to backtrack a little for that. In 1967, Anne McCaffery started the Dragonriders of Pern series. So we have a special clique of people with special powers whose job is basically to be heroes. This solves the problem of how to keep having the same person solve all the problems; it's their job, because they are telepathically linked to a magical critter. Because that totally makes sense.
Now we come to the 90's, which may be the Golden Age of B-Fantasy. Most of these series started in the 80's, but gained momentum throughout the decade and eventually came to dominate the 90's. There was still some very original stuff in the 80's - Kushner's Swordspoint, Diana Wynne Jones's everything, Suzette Hardin Elgin's Ozark Trilogy about a planet that was colonized by the South and people who ride flying Mules (it's good stuff). In 1990, however, Robert Jordan published the first book in The Wheel of Time.
What did WoT do that other books didn't? It's basically the same setup as Eddings' Belgariad. Teenage farmboy whisked away from his home by a wizard, told it is his destiny by birth to save the world from the newly reawakened Dark Lord, oh yeah and he has magic powers. All I can say is that Jordan made it bigger (800 pages per volume, minimum), he made it better (the world at least makes slightly more sense and is more memorable than Eddings'), and he made it with love. He kept writing even when he was dying, because he loved those books so damn much. And I can tell you a hundred things that make the books awful (don't call me on that, please), but I can at least understand why they are so loved.
Lately, however, there has been a mainstream movement away from B-Fantasy. Conflicts have become less idealistic, between the innocent and the Evil, and more political, between the jaded older warriors and the forces of society - kind of like the teenage hero grew up. I won't be able to say much about George R. R. Martin, because I haven't been able to get through more than three chapters, but I think he is the key to this movement. The current generation of writers grew up on B-Fantasy, and are too jaded with it in today's society.
Other books like David Anthony Durham's Acacia (2007) have similar political orientations - I can't talk much about this one either because I ran into the same problem as Martin, though in Durham's case the last straw was not "I don't know which of these characters I'm supposed to care about" (though there was an element of that) and more "That is the stupidest fencing lesson I have ever read." Then there are more direct criticisms such as E.E. Knight's Age of Fire series (2002), which is basically what Wicked did to Oz, only to Dragonlance. Sure, there are still throwbacks like Eragon (2002), but the mainstream voice of fantasy is shifting from a teenage coming-of-age quest to multiperspective stories of human conflict. Though in fact this sort of storytelling started in the 80's as well, with the Mannerpunk movement started by Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint. It did not gain momentum until just recenty, though.
And of course there are all the little splinter genres like Feminist Fantasy, which I touched on a little, and Queer Fantasy (people say that fantasy is really homophobic, but I think that the fantasyland setting actually makes it easier to include gay characters without stigma; again I point to Swordspoint), and I've already ranted about Dragonrider Fantasy, which is actually a subcategory of Animal Companion Fantasy or perhaps as a genre rather than a device, it would fit better under Heroic Clique Fantasy - you have this world where there is this institution of heroes, be they dragonriders or Jedi or what have you, and every book/trilogy is about a different one whose turn it is to save the kingdom/world/continent. Then there's the Supernatural Ensemble, which I'm not sure belongs in fantasy proper - technically its roots are in horror.
But right now, I still just want to read a magic pony story.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Slytherin Syndrome
Slytherin Syndrome: 1. The process of overtly villfying a group of people without explicitly saying they're all evil; we just know they are because there is no evidence to the contrary. 2. Claiming the moral high ground on arbitrary personality characteristics while villifying others.
This is not a jab at Harry Potter. Disney is also to blame. All the hyenas are evil, after all.
But first let's look at Harry Potter. Slytherins are evil. All of them. Name me one good one. Snape. Okay, name me two. In any case, we spend the first six books thinking he is evil, and his revelation does not really call into question previous assumptions about other Slytherins.
But what is a Slytherin? That is easier to answer than what is a Hufflepuff. Slytherins are ambitious. Ergo, they are all cowardly cruel bullies. Because that's what ambition means, right?
What an impressionable child understands of this dynamic is that being brave is good, and being ambitious is bad. Being intelligent or diligent (I think that's what Hufflepuff is; we're just going to go with that) is not bad, but it is not particularly good either. Nothing to be proud of.
Let's look at ambition first. Ambition to take over the world and make all Muggles your slaves, bad. Ambition to find a magical cure for cancer, good. Ambition to invent a flying machine/win the Olympics/bring peace to a war-torn nation: you get put on a motivational poster.
So really, there is nothing wrong with being ambitious. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to greatness. And they wonder why kids these days aren't performing up to par academically, why they don't aspire the way they used to, what happened to the enterpreneurial spirit of America, why they're all so damn apathetic. Well, who wants to be ambitious? Be brave (and reckless), be smart (and arrogant), or be diligent (and humorless). Just don't be ambitious.
It's not just a Harry Potter problem. In children's books or shitty fantasy with a teenage protagonist, the hero always whines about "Why do I get stuck with the magic powers? Why do I have to be king? Why can't I just live on the farm and have people tell me what to do?" Not that the hero isn't constantly being told what to do by helpful wizards and deities that all secretly wish the Chosen One wasn't such a whiny bitch. Frodo did not whine. Frodo volunteered. Did we forget that after Eddings? I think we did.
In contrast, the villain is the one who is trying to get magic powers or become king. In fact, the villain is the only one that shows any gumption. See, it's more morally right to have life give you power than to seek it, which is why we have a democracy where people run for office instead of a monarchy where they are born into it. The reason villains are always more interesting is because villains have plans and goals, and don't just go where the plot takes them. Which makes them bad people.
They have ambition.
Look at Disney. Scar saw what he wanted and took action to get it. Simba dodges responsibility until he gives into peer pressure. Ursula was a shrewd businesswoman. Ariel was just...Ariel. Why shouldn't Jafar be sultan? Jasmine's father is kind of a dope - and is that really who you want leading the nation? Didn't we try that in America? How did that go?
Harry just wants to goof off with his buddies. BORING! Voldemort wants to change the world.
What really set me off on this, though, was realizing that I am a lot more interested in analyzing literature than writing it. I'm a critic. The bitchcritic. Which, if you have seen Ratatouille, makes me the bad guy. But really, is not the highest honor a rat could receive the approval of the bitchcritic? It's not that he hates everything, he just has high standards, and doesn't it make you proud to know that you are awesome enough to meet those standards?
You know, this only happens because all our creative writers and filmmakers see themselves as intrepid inventors that the world cannot do without, and anyone who criticizes them as evil.
So I'm evil. Fine. Actually, no not fine. I'm not okay with being evil. They tell the hero that they can be whatever they want, be it chef, warrior, prince, princess, human, king. But no one tells that to the villain.
Because we're ambitious.
I am the bitchcritic and proud. And to everyone out there who has an ambition (and just how different is that from a dream, Ms. Disney Princess?) - go for it. As long as you have the intelligence to come up with a plan, the diligence to follow through, and the courage to risk it.
This is not a jab at Harry Potter. Disney is also to blame. All the hyenas are evil, after all.
But first let's look at Harry Potter. Slytherins are evil. All of them. Name me one good one. Snape. Okay, name me two. In any case, we spend the first six books thinking he is evil, and his revelation does not really call into question previous assumptions about other Slytherins.
But what is a Slytherin? That is easier to answer than what is a Hufflepuff. Slytherins are ambitious. Ergo, they are all cowardly cruel bullies. Because that's what ambition means, right?
What an impressionable child understands of this dynamic is that being brave is good, and being ambitious is bad. Being intelligent or diligent (I think that's what Hufflepuff is; we're just going to go with that) is not bad, but it is not particularly good either. Nothing to be proud of.
Let's look at ambition first. Ambition to take over the world and make all Muggles your slaves, bad. Ambition to find a magical cure for cancer, good. Ambition to invent a flying machine/win the Olympics/bring peace to a war-torn nation: you get put on a motivational poster.
So really, there is nothing wrong with being ambitious. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to greatness. And they wonder why kids these days aren't performing up to par academically, why they don't aspire the way they used to, what happened to the enterpreneurial spirit of America, why they're all so damn apathetic. Well, who wants to be ambitious? Be brave (and reckless), be smart (and arrogant), or be diligent (and humorless). Just don't be ambitious.
It's not just a Harry Potter problem. In children's books or shitty fantasy with a teenage protagonist, the hero always whines about "Why do I get stuck with the magic powers? Why do I have to be king? Why can't I just live on the farm and have people tell me what to do?" Not that the hero isn't constantly being told what to do by helpful wizards and deities that all secretly wish the Chosen One wasn't such a whiny bitch. Frodo did not whine. Frodo volunteered. Did we forget that after Eddings? I think we did.
In contrast, the villain is the one who is trying to get magic powers or become king. In fact, the villain is the only one that shows any gumption. See, it's more morally right to have life give you power than to seek it, which is why we have a democracy where people run for office instead of a monarchy where they are born into it. The reason villains are always more interesting is because villains have plans and goals, and don't just go where the plot takes them. Which makes them bad people.
They have ambition.
Look at Disney. Scar saw what he wanted and took action to get it. Simba dodges responsibility until he gives into peer pressure. Ursula was a shrewd businesswoman. Ariel was just...Ariel. Why shouldn't Jafar be sultan? Jasmine's father is kind of a dope - and is that really who you want leading the nation? Didn't we try that in America? How did that go?
Harry just wants to goof off with his buddies. BORING! Voldemort wants to change the world.
What really set me off on this, though, was realizing that I am a lot more interested in analyzing literature than writing it. I'm a critic. The bitchcritic. Which, if you have seen Ratatouille, makes me the bad guy. But really, is not the highest honor a rat could receive the approval of the bitchcritic? It's not that he hates everything, he just has high standards, and doesn't it make you proud to know that you are awesome enough to meet those standards?
You know, this only happens because all our creative writers and filmmakers see themselves as intrepid inventors that the world cannot do without, and anyone who criticizes them as evil.
So I'm evil. Fine. Actually, no not fine. I'm not okay with being evil. They tell the hero that they can be whatever they want, be it chef, warrior, prince, princess, human, king. But no one tells that to the villain.
Because we're ambitious.
I am the bitchcritic and proud. And to everyone out there who has an ambition (and just how different is that from a dream, Ms. Disney Princess?) - go for it. As long as you have the intelligence to come up with a plan, the diligence to follow through, and the courage to risk it.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
In Defense of the Fantastic
Here's the thing: My Creative Writing professor assigned us a short story to write. It can be "about anything you want. Except elves." I had mised thoughts on that. On one hand, I was thinking "I know, right? I f***ing hate elves." And on the other: "Sure, elves are stupid, but they don't have to be. You could write an elf detective story if you wanted to."
Hmm. I'll have to get back to you on that.
The point is, fantasy is what you make it. That is what it used to mean to "fantasize" - to come up with something completely new. Not to blindly follow the Tolkien-Eddings paradigm. Tolkien knew what he was doing when he wrote and epic quest, drawing on all sorts of mythology stuff. That is why the only thing resembling epic fantasy I can read anymore is The Last Rune series by Mark Anthony; because he, like Tolkien, pays attention to the epic myth, so that even though he tropes up the wazoo, he still manages to convey a sense of awesome.
That and I have two-inch thick nostalgia goggles.
So what if you don't like myths? They're silly, outdated, nonsensical, boring. Guess what? You can still write fantasy. Set it in modern day? Urban fantasy! Set it in a world with technology analogous to our own but they have MAGIC? Go right ahead! That is the whole point of fantasy. You can do whatever the heck you want.
Take Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. Sure, it has its fair share of traipsing across the countryside, but there are saints and churches and random French and factories - and that's just background details she throws in to mess with your head. Monette also throws out your expectations. You think the wizard is the hero, but he goes insane and has to be dragged across the countryside by his half-brother, and once he gets better you think they're going to be all buddy-buddy, but the wizard is a complete douchebag in the second book, and the one character who is pure evil does not have any dastardly plots to take over the world. There are no epic battles. Felix and Mildmay have enough on their hands just trying to save themselves, without saving the world.
In the same vein Sarah Micklem's Firethorn has nothing whatsoever to do with traditional fantasy. She does all her own worldbuilding, the characters are mostly jerks, and even the ones that are a bit nicer are very not okay by modern standards - but it works in-universe. The magic is so subtly done you sometimes forget it is there - about all there is is that the main character can see in the dark - and the religion is so intricate I need to start a new sentence. There are two main types of religion in fantasy. The pantheon that doesn't do anything, and the annoyingly meddlesome pantheon. Firethorn has both. Seriously. The characters attribute events to divine intervention appropriately, but the reader can still shake her head and say "You silly pagan," if so desired.
And now for the counterexample.
Havemercy.
It is essentially Doctrine of Labyrinths fanfic. Sure, they made their own world, but they wanted to do esactly what Sarah Monette did. There's the gay wizard, but he doesn't go insane, and his love affair reads like a slash. There are the long-lost brothers, who have nothing at stake in their relationship. All the authors really made up was mechanical dragons, and that is not enough to support the overlarge cast of underdeveloped characters.
Now, what did they do wrong? They did not write fantasy. They wrote paradigm, only instead of Tolkien-Eddings, they just used Sarah Monette. But they completely missed the point. In copying the elements, they neglected to copy the style. Tolkien wrote travelogues, so he knew how to write traipsing across the country (your milage may vary). Monette knows everything there is about the Elizabethan era, and she reads nonfiction everything for fun. Micklem read army survival handbooks and memoirs - her whole first book is an army waiting for a war. Not one to save the world. And the war does not even start until the next book. The problem with Havemercy is that the authors did not know what they were writing; they just blindly followed what they though they should be writing. Take the gay character. Did any of your gay friends hook up because they were thrown into awkward physical situations by the writer? It sounds like an oxymoron, but fantasy needs to be realistic.
Sure, you make up a few rules, but humanity remains the same, and that is the strength of fantasy. Fiction deals mostly in the realm of what is. Yes, there is a certain amount of imagination in coming up with it, and you do actually face many of the same issues with worldbuilding, but in fantasy, you don't have to match the real world. It is more than just laziness; you can escape the usual explanations and arrive at deeper truths. Anything is possible. Anything.
Take advantage of it.
Hmm. I'll have to get back to you on that.
The point is, fantasy is what you make it. That is what it used to mean to "fantasize" - to come up with something completely new. Not to blindly follow the Tolkien-Eddings paradigm. Tolkien knew what he was doing when he wrote and epic quest, drawing on all sorts of mythology stuff. That is why the only thing resembling epic fantasy I can read anymore is The Last Rune series by Mark Anthony; because he, like Tolkien, pays attention to the epic myth, so that even though he tropes up the wazoo, he still manages to convey a sense of awesome.
That and I have two-inch thick nostalgia goggles.
So what if you don't like myths? They're silly, outdated, nonsensical, boring. Guess what? You can still write fantasy. Set it in modern day? Urban fantasy! Set it in a world with technology analogous to our own but they have MAGIC? Go right ahead! That is the whole point of fantasy. You can do whatever the heck you want.
Take Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. Sure, it has its fair share of traipsing across the countryside, but there are saints and churches and random French and factories - and that's just background details she throws in to mess with your head. Monette also throws out your expectations. You think the wizard is the hero, but he goes insane and has to be dragged across the countryside by his half-brother, and once he gets better you think they're going to be all buddy-buddy, but the wizard is a complete douchebag in the second book, and the one character who is pure evil does not have any dastardly plots to take over the world. There are no epic battles. Felix and Mildmay have enough on their hands just trying to save themselves, without saving the world.
In the same vein Sarah Micklem's Firethorn has nothing whatsoever to do with traditional fantasy. She does all her own worldbuilding, the characters are mostly jerks, and even the ones that are a bit nicer are very not okay by modern standards - but it works in-universe. The magic is so subtly done you sometimes forget it is there - about all there is is that the main character can see in the dark - and the religion is so intricate I need to start a new sentence. There are two main types of religion in fantasy. The pantheon that doesn't do anything, and the annoyingly meddlesome pantheon. Firethorn has both. Seriously. The characters attribute events to divine intervention appropriately, but the reader can still shake her head and say "You silly pagan," if so desired.
And now for the counterexample.
Havemercy.
It is essentially Doctrine of Labyrinths fanfic. Sure, they made their own world, but they wanted to do esactly what Sarah Monette did. There's the gay wizard, but he doesn't go insane, and his love affair reads like a slash. There are the long-lost brothers, who have nothing at stake in their relationship. All the authors really made up was mechanical dragons, and that is not enough to support the overlarge cast of underdeveloped characters.
Now, what did they do wrong? They did not write fantasy. They wrote paradigm, only instead of Tolkien-Eddings, they just used Sarah Monette. But they completely missed the point. In copying the elements, they neglected to copy the style. Tolkien wrote travelogues, so he knew how to write traipsing across the country (your milage may vary). Monette knows everything there is about the Elizabethan era, and she reads nonfiction everything for fun. Micklem read army survival handbooks and memoirs - her whole first book is an army waiting for a war. Not one to save the world. And the war does not even start until the next book. The problem with Havemercy is that the authors did not know what they were writing; they just blindly followed what they though they should be writing. Take the gay character. Did any of your gay friends hook up because they were thrown into awkward physical situations by the writer? It sounds like an oxymoron, but fantasy needs to be realistic.
Sure, you make up a few rules, but humanity remains the same, and that is the strength of fantasy. Fiction deals mostly in the realm of what is. Yes, there is a certain amount of imagination in coming up with it, and you do actually face many of the same issues with worldbuilding, but in fantasy, you don't have to match the real world. It is more than just laziness; you can escape the usual explanations and arrive at deeper truths. Anything is possible. Anything.
Take advantage of it.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Mourn The Living, For They Are The Walking Dead
Claire Frick died today.
You probably don't know who she is. I never even knew her, even. I vaguely knew her brother from German class* in high school, but that's about it.
Cancer's a funny thing. It's a go-to illness for TV shows that want to add drama (Desperate Housewives, Buffy, probably a bunch I don't watch), so that you would think we would almost be desensitized to it, but it is fact in fiction that so many people get cancer that everyone knows someone who has had it. There are cancer memoirs and Relay for Life, and people born in July like me always feel awkward when talking about our horoscope. There is even Seth Rogan's cancer comedy, "50/50," which was an okay movie even though the main character was supposed to be some kind of everyman and thus had no personality, and the movie did a poor job of communicating how ill he was and therefore there was no real sense that he could possibly die. Though I seem to be the only one of my friends unmoved by that movie.
Why should the death of a stranger affect me more than that of a fictional character? Neither exist in my life as more than stories. Yet if I read Claire's story right (the pictures alone will do that), she was not that insipid smiling sick child that the movies are so fond of (The Day After Tomorrow comes to mind). She had her art, and she had her family, and she was determined to live life even while she was sick, and eventually dying. I'm sure she had her pissed off and depressed moments that didn't make it into the article, but she got over it. She was a real person, both in a literal sense and in a storied sense - her story becomes real to the audience, who can then imagine themselves in her place, paradoxically, more easily than with the everyman.
What would I do if I was diagnosed with a fatal cancer?
I would probably write about it. And make myself some cool hats.
Death's a funny thing. People react in so many different ways. I do a literary analysis of it. And compulsively listen to Frank Turner's "Long Live The Queen" (You'll live to dance another day/You'll just have to dance for the two of us. Fuck, that song's even about cancer too, isn't it?).
We don't think about death. Which is funny because in my Psychology of Religion class, I learned that there are some theories (Terror Management Theory) that claim that all human actions are motivated by the awareness of our own death.
We are going to die ->
Luckily, there is an afterlife ->
Except someone else has a different view of said afterlife, creating a paradox - they can't both be right -> so, in order to assert our view as the "right" one, we kill everyone else who believes differently.
Or:
We are going to die ->
We create babies or art or contribute to society in some way so that some influence of ourselves remains after we die, as a sort of spiritual immortality.
But short of going out and killing people, how do we live with mortality salience (awareness of our own death)? It's better than dying. But then what's the point of living if you know it's going to kill you? Is art really enough?
I think it's time to move on to "One Foot Before The Other." Not that it helps. Except it does.
We're here right now and I guess that has to be enough.
I've taken up rock climbing, and usually can't make it to the top. It's more than the fact that I feel like my wrists are about to give out; I don't have the mental discipline, the sheer willpower to keep myself going. I made it to the top today (not for the first time, though that would have made it more dramatic). Just a few feet from the top, and I almost gave up because it was too hard. But harder than fighting cancer? She pushed herself through that. I can push myself through this.
Cheesy, I know, but that's what I got.
---
*You have to understand that German is not like other subjects. Maybe it is just the fact that we were the same group of 20 people for four years (and I went to a big school, so that didn't happen anywhere else), but there was a pretty strong group bond - almost like a family. So when I say her brother was in my German class, I mean that I wasn't exactly friends with him, but he was more than just some random kid who went to my same school.
You probably don't know who she is. I never even knew her, even. I vaguely knew her brother from German class* in high school, but that's about it.
Cancer's a funny thing. It's a go-to illness for TV shows that want to add drama (Desperate Housewives, Buffy, probably a bunch I don't watch), so that you would think we would almost be desensitized to it, but it is fact in fiction that so many people get cancer that everyone knows someone who has had it. There are cancer memoirs and Relay for Life, and people born in July like me always feel awkward when talking about our horoscope. There is even Seth Rogan's cancer comedy, "50/50," which was an okay movie even though the main character was supposed to be some kind of everyman and thus had no personality, and the movie did a poor job of communicating how ill he was and therefore there was no real sense that he could possibly die. Though I seem to be the only one of my friends unmoved by that movie.
Why should the death of a stranger affect me more than that of a fictional character? Neither exist in my life as more than stories. Yet if I read Claire's story right (the pictures alone will do that), she was not that insipid smiling sick child that the movies are so fond of (The Day After Tomorrow comes to mind). She had her art, and she had her family, and she was determined to live life even while she was sick, and eventually dying. I'm sure she had her pissed off and depressed moments that didn't make it into the article, but she got over it. She was a real person, both in a literal sense and in a storied sense - her story becomes real to the audience, who can then imagine themselves in her place, paradoxically, more easily than with the everyman.
What would I do if I was diagnosed with a fatal cancer?
I would probably write about it. And make myself some cool hats.
Death's a funny thing. People react in so many different ways. I do a literary analysis of it. And compulsively listen to Frank Turner's "Long Live The Queen" (You'll live to dance another day/You'll just have to dance for the two of us. Fuck, that song's even about cancer too, isn't it?).
We don't think about death. Which is funny because in my Psychology of Religion class, I learned that there are some theories (Terror Management Theory) that claim that all human actions are motivated by the awareness of our own death.
We are going to die ->
Luckily, there is an afterlife ->
Except someone else has a different view of said afterlife, creating a paradox - they can't both be right -> so, in order to assert our view as the "right" one, we kill everyone else who believes differently.
Or:
We are going to die ->
We create babies or art or contribute to society in some way so that some influence of ourselves remains after we die, as a sort of spiritual immortality.
But short of going out and killing people, how do we live with mortality salience (awareness of our own death)? It's better than dying. But then what's the point of living if you know it's going to kill you? Is art really enough?
I think it's time to move on to "One Foot Before The Other." Not that it helps. Except it does.
We're here right now and I guess that has to be enough.
I've taken up rock climbing, and usually can't make it to the top. It's more than the fact that I feel like my wrists are about to give out; I don't have the mental discipline, the sheer willpower to keep myself going. I made it to the top today (not for the first time, though that would have made it more dramatic). Just a few feet from the top, and I almost gave up because it was too hard. But harder than fighting cancer? She pushed herself through that. I can push myself through this.
Cheesy, I know, but that's what I got.
---
*You have to understand that German is not like other subjects. Maybe it is just the fact that we were the same group of 20 people for four years (and I went to a big school, so that didn't happen anywhere else), but there was a pretty strong group bond - almost like a family. So when I say her brother was in my German class, I mean that I wasn't exactly friends with him, but he was more than just some random kid who went to my same school.
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