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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yes, I am aware. It's an allegory for the stone tablets of the ten commandments, the old covenant overturned and broken by Christ's new covenant. =( I mean, good for you if it works for you but for me I find Lewis painfully formulaic. Jesus is the Answer to every puzzle.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:12
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Well sometimes the truth is as plain as that.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's an allegory for the stone tablets of the ten commandments, the old covenant overturned and broken by Christ's new covenant. =( There is a difference between narratively formulaic and formulaic reality
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Oct 2, 2017 18:17
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Mel Mudkiper posted:There is a difference between narratively formulaic and formulaic reality Ok, just to be clear, is this argument premised on the thesis that Christian theology is in any way congruent with reality, or are you just arguing that Lewis was writing from that viewpoint, or . . . ? Regardless, I'd argue that Tolkien did a far better job of "hiding the ball." Gandalf's resurrection is no less christian than Aslan's, but it is much more miraculous; there's no Christian Physics, he's just "sent back."
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Oct 2, 2017 18:23
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LotR isn't Christian, it's pagan.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, just to be clear, is this argument premised on the thesis that Christian theology is in any way congruent with reality, or are you just arguing that Lewis was writing from that viewpoint, or . . . ? No my point is that Christian mythology is the definition of a fantastical construction of reality because it isn't consistent and things happen just because God wants them to. There is no consistent rules or reality god must follow, he just does whatever because he is not defined by cause and effect or quantification.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:27
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Read Lord Dunsany's Carcassonne for something fantastical that does magic very well (the Bard in particular) in my opinion. Note though that there are neither rules set up nor broken in the way you are talking about. Though maybe you'd call it more mythical than magical and perhaps this is part of the distinction we are trying to formulate here? I am curious whether his longer The King of Elfland's Daughter retains this quality but haven't had the time to read it yet. Edited for the link. Also yeah, Idle Days on the Yann is neat as well. true.spoon fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 18:29
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Perhaps I could interest you in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, where dragons hatch from stone eggs and people rise from the dead repeatedly for no discernible reason.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:35
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:LotR isn't Christian, it's pagan. Ehh, sortof. Tolkien writes in his letters that he deliberately wrote everything that happens in LotR to be "consistent with" christian theology; the elves are a conceptualization of humanity that did not Fall, etc. LotR is deeply Christian, though you could definitely analyze it as an attempt to reconcile nordic and christian mythology. Mel Mudkiper posted:No my point is that Christian mythology is the definition of a fantastical construction of reality because it isn't consistent and things happen just because God wants them to. There is no consistent rules or reality god must follow, he just does whatever because he is not defined by cause and effect or quantification. I've gotten in big arguments with catholics over that; last time I made that point, after getting particularly irritated by a persistent catholic who insisted on eliciting my opinion as to a religious debate I was deliberately avoiding, I said "Religion and logic are not compatible, an omnipotent diety is definitionally extra-logical, this entire discussion is pointless, God made the world with dinosaur bones already in it", and in response I got told I had a "fundamentally protestant perspective", which that particular Catholic meant as an insult. If you're an Anglican of Lewis' bent --i.e. a professional writing theologian, not just someone who goes to church or even a member of the clergy, but a professional philosophical theologian, Christian theology is amazingly convoluted, but it isn't inconsistent -- literally everything follows rules, and the rules are consistent with each other, they're just absurdly complicated and overwrought to the point that to an outsider it looks like gibberish and absurdity. It's like a Ptolemaic astronomer describing the path of the sun around the earth via epicycles. With enough math you can make it all fit, even if you're writing nonsense. I made the mistake in my youth of reading a lot of Lewis' theological writing, and the more of that stuff you read, the more the wonder and absurdity of the Narnia books evaporates, because it really is all just math for him; even the bizarre and brilliant parts like the lamp-post get turned into math in the later books. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 18:43
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true.spoon posted:Read Lord Dunsany's Carcassonne for something fantastical that does magic very well (the Bard in particular) in my opinion. Note though that there are neither rules set up nor broken in the way you are talking about. Though maybe you'd call it more mythical than magical and perhaps this is part of the distinction we are trying to formulate here? I am curious whether his longer The King of Elfland's Daughter retains this quality but haven't had the time to read it yet. Yeah, Idle Days on the Yann might be a better example for discussion since it avoids the christianity issue we're hitting with Lewis. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/swld/swld09.htm
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Oct 2, 2017 18:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:you're an Anglican of Lewis' bent --i.e. a professional writing theologian, not just someone who goes to church or even a member of the clergy, but a professional philosophical theologian, Christian theology is amazingly convoluted, but it isn't inconsistent -- literally everything follows rules, and the rules are consistent with each other, they're just absurdly complicated and overwrought to the point that to an outsider it looks like gibberish and absurdity. It's like a Ptolemaic astronomer describing the path of the sun around the earth via epicycles. With enough math you can make it all fit, even if you're writing nonsense. Granted I have not read every Narnia book but even if he is using an Anglican framework for his world he at least has the decency to not explain how many angels can dance on the head of a pin in Narnia, you know ?
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Oct 2, 2017 18:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ehh, sortof. Zizek says it the best: quote:In today’s proliferation of new forms of spirituality, it is often difficult to recognize the authentic traces of a Christianity which remains faithful to its own theologico-political core. A hint was provided by G.K. Chesterton, who turned around the standard (mis)perception according to which the ancient pagan attitude is one of the joyful assertion of life, while Christianity imposes a somber order of guilt and renunciation. It is, on the contrary, the pagan stance which is deeply melancholic: even if it preaches a pleasurable life, it is in the mode of “enjoy it while it lasts, because, in the end, there is always death and decay.” The message of Christianity is, on the contrary, one of an infinite joy beneath the deceptive surface of guilt and renunciation: “The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom.” [Orthodoxy, p.164]
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Oct 2, 2017 18:59
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Zizek says it the best: I'll have to read that, thanks. Mel Mudkiper posted:Granted I have not read every Narnia book but even if he is using an Anglican framework for his world he at least has the decency to not explain how many angels can dance on the head of a pin in Narnia, you know ? Yeah, I don't want to come down too hard on Lewis because there are moments of true brilliance in his work; even the late stuff, like Magician's Nephew, has passages I find myself returning to over and over again: quote:Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket. He watched them very hard of course; but he wasn’t really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him. Like the Witch, he was dreadfully practical. He simply didn’t notice that Aslan was choosing one pair out of every kind of beasts. All he saw, or thought he saw, was a lot of dangerous wild animals walking vaguely about. And he kept on wondering why the other animals didn’t run away from the big Lion. I think it's just a raw nerve for me personally because he was so much more wonderful an author before I understood him.
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Oct 2, 2017 19:12
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So even Lewis fell into the "over explaining poo poo" trap.
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Oct 2, 2017 19:24
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Lame and I am glad I never read magicians nephew because I am with HA that poo poo like a random 19th century lamp post and a talking beaver just being things that happen randomly is most of the story's charm
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Oct 2, 2017 19:28
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The really sad thing is that if you buy them now they're boxed in story chronological order not publication order so it tells you to start with Magician's Nephew first and it just isn't the same Dunsany was good though read him
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Oct 2, 2017 19:32
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like I think in terms of pure creativity, CS Lewis was among the best fantasy writers because he at least understood the inherent nature of the fantastical
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Oct 2, 2017 19:34
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Nakar posted:Determining how the rings and pools work is a major plot point in The Magician's Nephew. Admittedly the pools themselves and the multiverse are never explained, but still, sometimes the fantastical does follow rules. Things like curses and boons and prophecies are similar. Cú Chulainn is defeated by rules lawyering, Orestes has to go to an actual trial so Athena can determine whether he should be punished for violating one of two conflicting duties, etc. Arguing Greek Mythology follows rules is absurd
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Oct 2, 2017 19:38
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Lame and I am glad I never read magicians nephew because I am with HA that poo poo like a random 19th century lamp post What do you have against me.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:36
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Sanderson winds me up because he puts so much effort into a magic system and as far as I can tell it's X-Men. Some people can eat metals, some can store magic in metal, its an extensively categorised set of powers that seems just arbitrarily scattered across the characters. It is, as BotL would say, loving banal.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:44
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Speaking of X-Men, I have to get around to reviewing Fifth Season at some point. And I have to agree with what someone in a webcomic thread said when we were discussing asinine monsters-as-minorities comics: X-Men has ruined a generation by convincing people that being a superpowered weirdo is a great metaphor for the minority experience.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:49
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Honestly one of the unspoken tropes of fantasy that I have always found to be particularly nefarious was the equivocation of stereotype into culture and culture into race. Its a vestige of a dark way of thinking from the early 20th century that for some reason never got upgraded.
Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 21:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Can you give me an example of a story that used "magic" well? I'm not speaking for Mel Mudkiper, but I would like to put forward an example of a genre fantasy that I thought used magic quite well: Moorcock's Elric of Melniborne series. Elric is a sorcerer who has access to a wide variety of magic. Occasionally he does cast spells in the modern Dungeons and Dragons sense, but far more commonly it involves calling upon various spiritual courts his ancestors had made pacts with. The way those pacts come into play in the story tends to follow a predictable pattern. Elric and his allies will come under some danger that seems likely to overwhelm them, Elric recalls some pact his predecessors made with a particular spirit or spirit court and calls upon them for help, they appear and rescue him. Typically, they afterwards inform Elric that the pact is now void, and that from that point onward that particular spirit will no longer help him. This is almost invariably used as a kind of "get out of trouble" free card, often kills the tension (although there might be some pathos if a companion isn't similarly saved), and the fact that that particular spirit won't rescue Elric a second time doesn't mean much when the author can continuously invent more helpful spirits that just so happen to owe some debt to Elric's bloodline. This happens once a twice a book, for most of the six books. Despite how cheap and unsatisfying this may sound, it still works because of the story Moorcock is telling. Elric starts the series as prince of an ancient magical Empire, with a beautiful lover, undreamt of wealth, and by the end of the first book, his only major rival beaten. But his love of excitement and his fear of the gods lead him on more and more reckless adventures. As a result, his empire crumbles, his lover dies, and his wealth is pillaged. And every so often he gets himself into a situation that should by all rights kill him, only for a magical spirit to bale him out. That magic is one of his final inheritances, and every time he calls on it, it wanes just a bit further. For a story to use magic well is for the magic to serve the story being told. In this case, the stories are about a fantastically powerful and wealthy individual, fearful of the whims of the gods, ironically becoming personally responsible for losing everything. In the story, Elric's magic is just one more thing for him to lose.
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Oct 2, 2017 21:35
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Magic can be as comprehensible as it wants to be when it's screwing over the protagonist, which is generally how things turn out for Elric. Also one can argue Elric, being structured as essentially a tragedy (at least in its overall arc), allows some wiggle room with getting out of scrapes through magical contrivances for a couple of reasons. For one, Elric's ultimate fate was known relatively early, so one knows he's headed for a worse spot than anything he tends to get into. For another, tragedy is all about doing stupid things and blowing your opportunities or refusing to listen when people tell you to treat your advantages with care. Nakar fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 21:46
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Zizek says it the best: I actually have a theory now: BravestOfTheLamps is the account Zizek posts on when he wants to unwind in a relatively non-bizarre way.
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Oct 2, 2017 22:52
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i'm fat (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 2, 2017 23:06
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in my opinion the culture must be destroyed.
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Oct 3, 2017 02:03
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All this talk about magic versus future tech got me thinking of The Quantum Thief and its sequels. For a book set in a post-singularity-ish solar society the technology and descriptions therein all have the wording and descriptions of what is basically magic yet we know its technological. There are no in depth explanations of how the tech works or what invented scientist created the "X effect" that allows for all those things and everything is presented as is and you have to just accept the crazy explanations and take it in the context of the story and characters. For all the books I've read where the authors love expounding on their magical systems in detail and explain all the tech advancements with fancy invented words a book that doesn't bother explaining the impossible and just treats it as a normal in universe thing is far more engaging with more depth because you get the sense that internal logic exists as defined by the writer but they feel no need for page long info dumps.
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Oct 3, 2017 20:05
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And makes sense, it's not like most people today could tell you how exactly a car works, let alone a computer. I recall something that was basically 'What if fiction set in the modern day was written like science fiction' which had tons of unneccessary infodumps on exactly that kind of thing. Then again, it's not like literary authors don't do exactly that kind of thing with something they think is remotely obscure and want to sound smart.
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Oct 4, 2017 03:18
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:
I'll admit that I ended up zoning out (and quitting halfway through the series) a lot of these books and remember little except the Magically Undetectable By Evil Aliens orbital bombardment system that blows up anything that's too technological except when it doesn't. Like you can run around with robots and nanofabbers and crap, but we're supposed to be worried about gunpowder? Or was there a whole section on starting with base metallurgy before titanium I missed? ShinsoBEAM! posted:What are you talking about? They worked hard to interrupt the scriptures in a different manner and actually used the scripture to argue that they were right and the church was wrong, the only book they disagreed with heavily was the book of Shueler or however you spelled it. It's been a while since I read these but I remember Kayleb arguing or thinking that Shan-wei was truly worthy of worship and that the Church was fully of poo poo. Merlin certainly thinks it's bullshit, you have a pile of datacores and technology you can probably pass off as miracles, and the Gbaba are still out there. WE know as readers a Gbaba death fleet isn't going to drop in on a humanity still in the age of sail, but the characters have no reason to think this. Yes, there's that weird orbital bombardment system that is simultaneously more advanced than anything on the planet but randomly undetectable by aliens (why they can't use this tech on the rest of their hi-tech systems is beyond me). ShinsoBEAM! posted:No, because just killing the church leaders would of been seen as a plot against the church by evil and would of strengthened the unity of the church and belief in it. They needed to make the church the Villian in the eyes of the people. Heinlein does this a lot better when he has his characters hijack the church's spreading superstition. Merlin could have probably shown up with his tech and made some bullshit miracles. Hell, throw a hologram of Schuyler denouncing the corruption in His church, sort it out later. As is you have enough rulers interested in secularism and the Charisians basically go "gently caress it" at the first opportunity. Hell, if Weber was a bolder author he'd have his protagonists actually gently caress up doing something like this and it would add actual tension to the story. ShinsoBEAM! posted:I don't think the book was symbolism for religion vs science, closer to protestant reformation. The Gbaba is a long term threat for the future and part of the premise of the story, what exactly did you want Weber to do here? Have the Gbaba show up right when they beat the church at the end? Have the characters constantly worrying about a threat they can currently do NOTHING about? The Gbaba have this weird thing mentioned in the prologue where the characters speculate they're running on doctrine they don't question, which is supposed to be a parallel to the Church. All of the main characters seem to lose/abandon an actual faith in God on a supposedly theocratic planet - you don't get (gently caress it) Caleb or Charlene trying to reconcile a faith with God with the provable falseness of their doctrine. The problem with the Safehold series is that you could have quite a few possibilities for actual conflict and dramatic tension, but tossed it away so we can have a power fantasy about Good Spaceship Lego Mans vs Bad Sword Lego Mans. What if Merlin had to unite the planet on their own without the help of sympathetic kings? What if the Charisian royals realized Merlin was basically using them to finish a private vendetta? What if there were more factions than the Weberian Wise Monarch and the Cartoonishly Evil Bad Guys? You could do a lot with the premise, and it's wasted here. On an unrelated note, you guys crapping on Sanderson's magic systems are missing that it's a direct response to the magic-as-narcissism. The big thing with magic is that it's moved more to something the protagonists can use and a lot of the bottom of the barrel authors use it to justify why their heroic god-king self-insert should be able to do whatever whenever. This isn't lashing out at mysterious magic, it's Sanderson's way of trying to keep his characters out of the narcissism hole. The fact that the magic basically becomes technology is kind of an intended side effect.
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Oct 4, 2017 05:13
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Inescapable Duck posted:I recall something that was basically 'What if fiction set in the modern day was written like science fiction' which had tons of unneccessary infodumps on exactly that kind of thing. Then again, it's not like literary authors don't do exactly that kind of thing with something they think is remotely obscure and want to sound smart. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=635193?
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Oct 4, 2017 05:14
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There we go. I like to think that's what historical fiction looks like in those kind of books.
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Oct 4, 2017 09:47
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those drat literary authors can't fool me with their attempts to sound smart!!!!
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Oct 4, 2017 13:10
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Inescapable Duck posted:Then again, it's not like literary authors don't do exactly that kind of thing with something they think is remotely obscure and want to sound smart. example
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Oct 4, 2017 13:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:example Dan Brown.
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Oct 4, 2017 17:39
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Inescapable Duck posted:Dan Brown. I pray to Christ that's a troll
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Oct 4, 2017 17:41
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My god, I'm reading Demon Princes and Jack Vance is predicting "If All Stories Were Written Like Science Fiction Stories" with his futuristic Amsterdam. Truly a remarkable writer.
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Oct 4, 2017 21:42
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All but maybe one of the Demon Princes were nakedly petulant nerds desperate to sooth their egos, it was great.
Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Oct 4, 2017 |
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Oct 4, 2017 22:07
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I really dislike Webber, his baby the Honor Harrington series is just as terrible.
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Oct 4, 2017 22:32
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Jack2142 posted:I really dislike Webber, his baby the Honor Harrington series is just as terrible. I feel like the Honor Harrington series basically started at a time when hard-ish future military sci fi with ship battles in great detail was in short supply so it gained a large fanbase, but by book 20 you look back and realize that Webber is not a good writer and everything he writes is to fuel his jerk-off fantasies of Space UK dunking on everyone including Space Republic France, Space USA, and Space Illuminati.
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Oct 4, 2017 23:17
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