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Mel Mudkiper posted:Certainly. But even then the escapism is rarely purely done to escape. Hell, read Colson Whithead or Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about fantasy and comics helping them cope with their experiences as black men in a racist country. Do you think people don't have reasons for wanting to escape?
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Feb 6, 2019 15:59
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Sham bam bamina! posted:A very good starting point for reading Italo Calvino (a man, by the way) is Invisible Cities. Weird flex on the use of the singular form of "they", which is totally acceptable in this situation, but go off
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Feb 6, 2019 16:00
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Sampatrick posted:Do you think people don't have reasons for wanting to escape? What does that have to do with anything I just said
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Feb 6, 2019 16:00
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Mel Mudkiper posted:that is how they are describing themselves though I think that if you take the percentage of the population that suffers from MDD and the percentage of the population that suffers from genre schlock, you'll get quite a lot of overlap
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Feb 6, 2019 16:02
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Conrad_Birdie posted:Weird flex on the use of the singular form of "they", which is totally acceptable in this situation, but go off
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Feb 6, 2019 16:02
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I played Pillars of Eternity Now, if you wanted to talk about a story where "worldbuilding" got in the way of the story itself and became an active detriment...
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Feb 6, 2019 16:03
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how was that a flex lol
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Feb 6, 2019 16:03
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I genuinely want them to reflect on the priority world building takes in terms of the narrative and whether the excessive level of detail meant to create a more thorough "world" ultimately ends up sacrificing the integrity of the narrative itself 
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Feb 6, 2019 16:03
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Mel Mudkiper posted:because history, culture, philosophy and religion have no correlation to art lol Art can be a vehicle for these things or a consequence of them. You've provided no reason to think that's all art can or should be. What's so pure and unimpeachable in art, according to your reckoning, that can't be obtained by engaging in those things directly? Or, to bring us back to the context of this thread, why should fiction be subordinated exclusively to those purposes? If finding meaning and preserving legacy are your only worthwhile goals, wouldn't they be better served by non-fiction?
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Feb 6, 2019 16:04
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I am sorry that your use of the word was indistinguishable from that of someone who genuinely didn't know. Singular they is where it's at, welcome to 2019.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:05
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Conrad_Birdie posted:Singular they is where it's at, welcome to 2019.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:06
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Itali Calvini
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Feb 6, 2019 16:06
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Conrad_Birdie posted:Singular they is where it's at, welcome to 2019.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Anyways, I think you have hit one of my major issues with a lot of genre and fantasy fiction in general, which is this idea of escapism. Any time I see the merits of a work described as including its ability to create an "escape" from reality it creates a very real anxiety for me. Art, in all its forms, should act as a contextualization of reality, not an escape from it. In as far as it can say that art should have a "purpose", its purpose is to give the reader an opportunity to better understand or contextualize the world around them. This is why I always harp on reader/text interaction. Either you believe that most of the people who read a book for escapism lack a motivation for that escapism or you're being dishonest at some point in your argument. It cannot both be true that escapism is invalid in art and also escape from something is valid in art. If it is admissible that a piece of art be able to help you escape from a particular circumstance, then it must also be admissible to comment on that fact in a review.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:07
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What is that thing anyways, I always see it and never for good reasons
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Feb 6, 2019 16:07
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I seriously doubt that "they" was Calvino's preferred pronoun. It's all good, this is a stupid argument. Thanks for the rec.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:07
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Sampatrick posted:Either you believe that most of the people who read a book for escapism lack a motivation for that escapism or you're being dishonest at some point in your argument. It cannot both be true that escapism is invalid in art and also escape from something is valid in art. If it is admissible that a piece of art be able to help you escape from a particular circumstance, then it must also be admissible to comment on that fact in a review. I genuinely think you are not getting my point because I honestly dont know how to reply to you and I dont get how you are getting your points from what I said.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:What is that thing anyways, I always see it and never for good reasons Home stuck. Similar to the Malazan diagram I posted, the creator made a magic system and plot so tortuously arcane and convoluted that you'd have to be some kind of maniac to get it to make sense. The fans tried anyway.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:09
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anilEhilated posted:Speaking of fantasy trying to be literature, anyone willing to patiently explain why I should stop liking Viriconium? Viriconium kicks rear end A Storm of Wings is a dense confusing story about a very fat man leading humanity to merge with wasps and it owns
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Feb 6, 2019 16:23
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Now, if you wanted to talk about a story where "worldbuilding" got in the way of the story itself and became an active detriment... I found with Pillars, or any other lore heavy game, that the secret is to ignore all codexs and books and only pay attention to what is revealed organically in the dialogue
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Feb 6, 2019 16:24
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Home stuck. Similar to the Malazan diagram I posted, the creator made a magic system and plot so tortuously arcane and convoluted that you'd have to be some kind of maniac to get it to make sense. If by "the creator made a magic system and plot so tortuously arcane and convoluted that you'd have to be some kind of maniac to get it to make sense" you mean "pulling poo poo from his rear end that seemed funny to him at the time and then was stuck later trying to make it all make sense" then sure. But it is also a metafiction that is worth at least one read, if at least to say you have read "this generation's Ulysses" Two late appearing characters were supposed to have been the fandom, Caliborn and Caliope. Caliope is passive and boring but Caliborn, now he was totes into the world building thing (which is where I got the text for the above edit) and is portrayed as a simpleminded bore that godmodes his way through the narrative (literally). I edited that text onto the character above, Arenea, who is the actual boring loving exposition machine that does a lot of the world building for the author in the time previous to the meta discussion of why its worthless. (I also posted it to tempt BotL to Clevin it)
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Feb 6, 2019 16:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I found with Pillars, or any other lore heavy game, that the secret is to ignore all codexs and books and only pay attention to what is revealed organically in the dialogue Yes, but you can't even do that in Pillars 1! Everyone you meet in Pillars 1 must vomit their life story at you, like you are in any way invested in hearing it yet, replete with bizarre worldbuilding terms. Pillars 2 and Tyranny are better about it, mainly because of that keyword hyperlink hovertext system, but Pillars 1 was a slog from the caravan intro sequence.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:31
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(Sorry that some of this is late; I've been typing it off and on while trying to keep up with the thread.) The thing about stories is that they inherently relate to the wider world. A writer articulates something within themselves in order to bring it out into the world; people read stories because the substance of the writer's expression hopefully relates to them as well through their shared human nature and experiences. This is what Mel means by "contextualization of reality". Ultimately, all fiction takes place in an imaginary world, one where the story took place instead of not taking place. The world of a story differs from our own in so far as it made the story What distinguishes these two obviously distinct things, then? Fantasy is different for the sake of being different. (Science fiction also does this often, but its differences frequently do have the end of communicating something about the real world through their contrast.) Its universe is more different from ours than realism's is, but that universe also surrounds storytelling that was specifically conceived to increase this difference. Far be it from me to begrudge an author a way to show off all the cool different things they can think of, let alone thinking of them in the first place. But Christ, I don't think it's much to ask that they actually be cool. As BravestOfTheLamps has said many times in this thread, the problem with fantasy isn't that it's fantastic but that it isn't fantastic enough. Reading through pages of people discussing and working out the finer points of surgebinding and shardblades and spren and gemhearts and all that technobabble makes me wonder how it's any more of an escape than learning C++. I think that there's value in escapism. I think that Roger Dean paintings, for example, are beautiful precisely because they are so serenely otherworldly. One of my favorite things about electronic music is that it can sound like it comes from a world of its own, one where nothing exists but pure, lovely sounds without source. That I can guarantee that I will be transported farther by a friggin' Yes album cover than by a thousand pages of just about any given fantasy author is extremely damning of the genre. What irks me about the fantasy genre isn't that it's all make-believe or that it doesn't elevate the human condition by subordinating its make-believe to some soul-plumbing narrative; it's that it pretends to an ocean of transcendence while being almost insultingly parochial in its little tide pool of elves and wizards and dark lords (substitute barely readable terminology of your choice as you see fit) running around to rules that would be equally at home in a monster manual or a technical manual. It's all such a joke. If people want to escape, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that they should at least escape to a place worth visiting. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 6, 2019 16:35
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The abusive daddy of modern fantasy literature, Lord of the Rings, is utterly unfantastical, so it's no wonder its readers grow up to become RPG fans, neo-fascists, and SA moderators.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:40
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Sham bam bamina! posted:
Well said
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Feb 6, 2019 16:43
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The abusive daddy of modern fantasy literature, Lord of the Rings, is utterly unfantastical, so it's no wonder its readers grow up to become RPG fans, neo-fascists, and SA moderators. but you repeat yourself
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Feb 6, 2019 16:46
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what I'm getting from all this is Mel == Heidegger == Nazi == Fascist
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Feb 6, 2019 16:50
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How do you ghoulishly celebrate the death of children to teach their parents "a lesson"?
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Feb 6, 2019 16:52
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Sham bam bamina! posted:How do you ghoulishly celebrate the death of children to teach their parents "a lesson"? Uh sure this is the right thread?
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Feb 6, 2019 16:53
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I just thought the red text was funny.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:54
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Oh, was phone posting so I am only see avs not text
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Feb 6, 2019 16:55
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Reading through pages of people discussing and working out the finer points of surgebinding and shardblades and spren and gemhearts and all that technobabble makes me wonder how it's any more of an escape than learning C++. Not only that, but by virtue of being fictional the world is finite. It is possible to memorize the wiki and know literally everything there is to know. That in itself is a form of escapism; having that kind of absolute knowledge about how Everything Works is a power fantasy.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:55
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I'm not even sure what escapism is. Is it to just stop thinking about what's going on in your life? In the world? Running away to anywhere, with no concern for where that anywhere is, because, literally, anywhere is better than here? I can see the merit in that, to a degree, but I'd still like the place I'm running to to be better than where I am now. Not to be suspended in a void for a few moments, but to find myself escaping to a more permanent place where I have more understanding, where things have more meaning, where the purpose of the place I am in has provided me with a more permanent escape. I'm not saying reading should be based on self-help books, but I am. If a book gives me the tools to escape, however minor they may be, however personal they may be, even if it's just in a way of looking at the world, then that's got to be better and more satisfying than, as the analogy was going, being anaesthetised for a while.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:57
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wizzardstaff posted:I think that comparison has an insight into what might make the escapism of highly detailed fantasy worlds appealing to some people. Deciphering the technobabble is a skill; it can be practiced and mastered. If you're good at it, you can take things apart and see how they tick, and maybe gain an appreciation for them that you didn't have before.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:58
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Sham bam bamina! posted:OK, but you can do all that stuff better and actually cast cool computer spells if you learn a real programming language. AbracaJAVA
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Feb 6, 2019 16:59
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I just thought the red text was funny. Eric Bolling's son ODed and I enjoyed the Schadenfreude
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Feb 6, 2019 17:06
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I'm sorry that I asked.
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Feb 6, 2019 17:08
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Maybe he should have escaped via sanderson instead of heroin
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Feb 6, 2019 17:13
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:Maybe he should have escaped via sanderson instead of heroin The heroin was a kinder fate
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Feb 6, 2019 17:20
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Why is the creation of a world valuable if there's nothing in it? Because the act of creating it brings pleasure to the creator? Unless you're going to argue that happiness qua happiness isn't valuable except if you're also creating some kind of tangible value, in which case I don't like your philosophy. I dunno, I'm seeing a lot of arguments here which look to me like "books are serious business and writing for pure entertainment is defiling the Sacred Mount of True Art". Books which have deeper meanings and attempt to effect change in the world by their effect on the reader are good and valuable (depending on their goal I guess) but I don't think it therefore follows that people should be censured for writing or reading simply for pleasure. 
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Feb 6, 2019 18:35
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