The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

«‹›61 »

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Mrenda posted:

I think the "Bad Sex Awards" have a lot to answer for. Sure, it's literally bad sex that's happening, but often (although not always) the narrators are supposed to be douchebags. It's another example of people thinking that the author and the words in the book are the same thing. That there could never be an arsehole describing his sex like an arsehole. They'll make arguments about it not being a positive influence, but that fails readers. Readers who are perfectly capable of saying the narrator is wrong, as is evidenced by the immediate recognition of the bad sex awards.

Writing a book about a pyromaniac isn't endorsing setting fire to things, writing a book about theft isn't endorsing stealing your lunchbox, writing bad sex from the perspective of someone bad at sex isn't endorsing bad sex.

I respect what you're saying here, but I think you're giving a lot of authors way more credit as to the intended assholery or unreliability of their sex narrators. A lot of these sex scenes are a problem because they're nakedly prurient towards the author's interests in a way that's unpleasant for anyone whose interests are otherwise to read.

EDIT: Also, Lolita and its popular reputation/reception are basically a master class in "readers will go along with a narrator re: sex stuff even if that narrator is openly abhorrent and the author deliberately presents them as such and presents no prurient material to endorse the narrator's view of reality."

Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Feb 19, 2020

# ? Feb 19, 2020 13:26

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 22, 2024 12:58

Safety Biscuits: Oct 21, 2010

sethimothy posted:

So it's... kind of a pivot from what's being discussed here, but not completely off topic. A lot of space opera and high fantasy have sex, complete with hyper focusing on those breasticles and how they're shaped like eggplants or whatever. And I get that, for mainstream audiences, sex in a novel is a detractor and not a main factor. That said, are there any novels any readers here feel stand out as handling their sexual content particularly well? Whenever I see a Twitter thread or a Facebook post about someone complaining about how, say, a woman is being described to look like a hour glass with mammaries, my thoughts are never "yeah we need less sex in books" and more "OK, well how would you like to see this scene played out then?" And I'm wondering, if there are some notable nods in that direction for stories that handle mature scenes "better."

It's the internet; people condemn more than they praise. The well written sex I think of is mostly allusive rather than explicit.

Mrenda posted:

I think the "Bad Sex Awards" have a lot to answer for. Sure, it's literally bad sex that's happening, but often (although not always) the narrators are supposed to be douchebags. It's another example of people thinking that the author and the words in the book are the same thing. That there could never be an arsehole describing his sex like an arsehole. They'll make arguments about it not being a positive influence, but that fails readers. Readers who are perfectly capable of saying the narrator is wrong, as is evidenced by the immediate recognition of the bad sex awards.

Bad writing, bad people, and bad sex are different.

# ? Feb 19, 2020 15:08

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

I obviously never read any of the books they have in the bad sex awards, but usually the bits give me the impression that the text is intentionally comic, but it's framed as unintentionally comic

# ? Feb 19, 2020 15:17

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

I think the most blatant example of that was Black Swan Green's nomination for a 13-year-old's observations on a couple in a field.

# ? Feb 19, 2020 16:00

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

the bad sex awards are dumb and bad but authors getting salty over winning them will always rule

# ? Feb 19, 2020 16:15

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

sethimothy posted:

So it's... kind of a pivot from what's being discussed here, but not completely off topic. A lot of space opera and high fantasy have sex, complete with hyper focusing on those breasticles and how they're shaped like eggplants or whatever. And I get that, for mainstream audiences, sex in a novel is a detractor and not a main factor. That said, are there any novels any readers here feel stand out as handling their sexual content particularly well? Whenever I see a Twitter thread or a Facebook post about someone complaining about how, say, a woman is being described to look like a hour glass with mammaries, my thoughts are never "yeah we need less sex in books" and more "OK, well how would you like to see this scene played out then?" And I'm wondering, if there are some notable nods in that direction for stories that handle mature scenes "better."

stephen king's deft one-handed orchestration of the Loser's Club's final union stands out as a masterwork in the field

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:05

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

the actual answer is that sex scenes almost always cringingly bad and unnecessary in novels and are absolutely always cringingly bad and unnecessary in genre novels

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

The problem with sex scenes is that eroticism is built on suggestion and most sex scenes end up being either clinical or hyperbolic

Probably the best sex scene I ever read is the anal sex scene in A Personal Matter because instead of describing the sex its the narrator talking about how good it feels to gently caress another person and know that their pleasure is irrelevant

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:15

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

The other issue with sex scenes is that no one ever has ok sex

Like, writers always try to make the sexual act as a paragon of erotic bliss when most of the time its just some pedestrian loving. Like, he's a bad writer but I remember laughing at a sex scene in a Franzen novel because he fucks this lady and talks about how "he has never felt a vagina that wet before" and its like gently caress off dude

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:22

Drone Jett: Feb 21, 2017; by Fluffdaddy; College Slice

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The other issue with sex scenes is that no one ever has ok sex

Like, writers always try to make the sexual act as a paragon of erotic bliss when most of the time its just some pedestrian loving. Like, he's a bad writer but I remember laughing at a sex scene in a Franzen novel because he fucks this lady and talks about how "he has never felt a vagina that wet before" and its like gently caress off dude

Iain Banks threw in a disappointing incestuous quickie in Song of Stone. Also the secret window one in Walking on Glass.

The Morse code sex in The Crow Road was supposed to be part of characterization, I suppose.

Drone Jett fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Feb 19, 2020

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:29

Take the plunge! Okay!: Feb 24, 2007

I really liked Sexual Life of Catherine M, or whatever it was named in English. And that one spanking scene in The Savage Detectives is really good

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:33

Crespolini: Mar 9, 2014

I guess often I feel a bad sex scene is one that feels like it's only there because the authors getting of on it, and if they'd jerked of before sitting down to work they'd have written something different

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:35

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Patriotism by Yukio Mishima has a great extended sex scene if we are being honest with ourselves

# ? Feb 19, 2020 19:36

ulvir: Jan 2, 2005

sex scenes are always extremely uninteresting and writers should stop doing them

# ? Feb 19, 2020 22:14

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

the london review of books has my favorite review of american dirt so far

# ? Feb 21, 2020 18:49

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Always nice when paywalled content is complete in the page source. :toot:

# ? Feb 21, 2020 19:30

Dirt Road Junglist: Oct 8, 2010; We will be cruel
And through our cruelty
They will know who we are

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Always nice when paywalled content is complete in the page source.

One of my favorite self-owns by a lovely former boss was when he posted his lovely self-published fiction novel for sale on his blog, except all you had to do was view source and copy the URL for the PDF out of it.

Also, the title of the book was Anonymous Vengeance, but the file was named anonymouse_vengeance.pdf. One of our codes at work to dunk on him while he was in the room was to talk about, "That book, you know, with the mouse revenge?"

(It's not as bad as you think. It's way worse than that.)

# ? Feb 21, 2020 19:41

Heath: Apr 30, 2008; 🍂🎃🏞️💦

Gonna crosspost this thing I wrote in the child thread since this is the thread the discussion originally took place in

Heath posted:

There's been a lot of talk about the idea of consuming literature written by a fascist in the buddy genre thread, specifically as it pertains to Yukio Mishima. I hadn't actually read any of his work up until yesterday when I picked up my copy of Runaway Horses that I'd been putting off reading since it's the 2nd book in The Sea of Fertility tetralogy and I thought I should read them in order, but this one at least seems to stand independently.

I'm merely 100 pages in and it's already obvious that the things that inform Mishima's "fascism" aren't directly analogous to the fascism of a modern American right-winger except in the very broad "reactionary" sense. While I'm not a particularly informed political theorist, I've always understood the term "reactionary" to have a requisite thing which it is reacting to, and Mishima is essentially reacting to a historical Western imperialism that devastated Japan's neighbors in Asia and led to the effective destruction of the samurai class that had been the dominant cultural force in Japan for many centuries and was already long-gone by the time Mishima was writing. I say this with the caveat that in spite of being a bit of a weeb I only have a cloudy notion of the timeline of these things. There's a lengthy section within those first 100 pages of Runaway Horses that is a transliteration of a pamphlet that main character Honda receives that outlines an attempted rebellion by the League of the Divine Wind, a group of Shinto fundamentalists, which appears to be a slightly fictionalized version of a real event that happened in the late 1800s. Although I'm not able to articulate to what degree fantasy and reality meet, Mishima makes it very clear who he (and the character who gave Honda the pamphlet) favors, since he takes great care to describe the Westernized Japanese army soldiers as unskilled cowards at every opportunity even though they eventually get the upper hand and suppress the rebellion.

Reading it does put one in a bit of an awkward position, since there seems to me to be a clear through-line between the erosion of the dominant culture of a sovereign nation due to the influence of a Western imperialism, but at the same time that dominant culture was an oppressive feudalism that, through Mishima's lens, appears to idolize strict hierarchy and death, warlike and superstitious theocracy, inasmuch as that word can be used to describe Shinto. It explicitly states that the erosion of government and worship as a unified guiding principle is what motivates these men to slaughter dozens of their own countrymen in the name of restoring the nation. It need not be evaluated in terms of modern politics, because it can't be, and it's not particularly profitable to do so, in my mind.

I intend to write more about the prose once I've read more of the actual story, since the pamphlet portion is written more straightforwardly and actually composes more of what I've read so far than the plot-driven portion of the book. Even still, there is a particular character to the writing that I have to believe Mishima is consciously cultivating, where the woven threads of a Zen tradition make themselves clear in the abundant nature metaphor and the particular details that Mishima chooses to highlight, and especially in the reverent descriptions of the natural landscapes surrounding the mountain temple to which Honda ascends after the kendo tournament early on in the book.

# ? Feb 22, 2020 00:59

Dirt Road Junglist: Oct 8, 2010; We will be cruel
And through our cruelty
They will know who we are

I love people who use the term reactionary and have no idea what it means.

# ? Feb 22, 2020 01:02

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I will give you a more thorough response but right now I would caution you on two things.

A. I think instead of reactionary the term you are looking for palingenesis. It is the idea that a return to a idealized past state that was "purer" will cure a society of it's current ills and is a fundamental element of the chemistry of all fascism.

B. Additionally, I would caution against too strongly casting the West as antagonist in the historical state of Japan. There were just as many endogenic forces as exogenic forces that shaped 20th century Japan, and it's a bit too reductive to cast Japan as an island traumatised by Western Imperialism

Edit: the humiliation of Japan for Mishima wasnt that Japan was colonized, but that it had abdicated its destiny of being the dominant military and cultural power of Asia.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 22, 2020

# ? Feb 22, 2020 02:07

Heath: Apr 30, 2008; 🍂🎃🏞️💦

In the pamphlet within the book, the men he writes about seem to be largely reacting specifically to foreign intrusion, going so far as to take circuitous routes around town to avoid passing under telegraph lines or, if they can't, to physically shield themselves with a fan while walking underneath of them. Or carrying salt in their pockets to purify areas defiled by foreign interference, even the presence of Buddhist priests, who are obviously not Western. I may be attributing too much of this to Mishima himself rather than the men he's writing about, but I'm definitely feeling that he isn't unsympathetic to this action. Like I said, my direct knowledge of Mishima's ouvre is currently limited to just Runaway Horses, so I definitely have an incomplete picture of it. I have had the earlier discussions in this thread in the back of my mind while reading the book, which is definitely coloring my perception. Even still, the depth of the discussion is already apparent to be well beyond the author merely being an "rear end in a top hat" as one poster put it earlier. There's a boatload of context around it all that adds a lot to what can be learned from this man's particular mindscape, and it's a shame to reject his art on the basis that someone called him a fascist and that that's enough to write him off entirely.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

A. I think instead of reactionary the term you are looking for palingenesis. It is the idea that a return to a idealized past state that was "purer" will cure a society of it's current ills and is a fundamental element of the chemistry of all fascism.

That's a term I didn't know (or that there was even a word for it) but that sounds like what I'm getting at. I'm mostly talking in terms of the earlier discussion where the underlying question is "why would I read a right-wing/reactionary/fascist author?" A big part of the issue is that those words have modern connotations that only broadly apply to an author of a particular era, especially when that author's eye seems to cast backwards.

quote:

B. Additionally, I would caution against too strongly casting the West as antagonist in the historical state of Japan. There were just as many endogenic forces as exogenic forces that shaped 20th century Japan, and it's a bit too reductive to cast Japan as an island traumatised by Western Imperialism

Edit: the humiliation of Japan for Mishima wasnt that Japan was colonized, but that it had abdicated its destiny of being the dominant military and cultural power of Asia.

That's something I'll keep in mind as I read through it and will become more apparent as I consume more of his work. In this particular book (at least so far) he seems to frame the humiliation in terms of the cultural invasion/Westernization, and especially the rapidity with which it took place. I should probably have read more before commenting but this has been in the back my mind for like two weeks.

Edit: Here's a paragraph that I think captures what I'm seeing, in particular the romanticizing of the sword as metaphor for Japan's individual spirit and rejection of the West:

Heath fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Feb 22, 2020

# ? Feb 22, 2020 02:37

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Keep in mind what America and Westernization mean to Mishima.

His perspective wasnt "its terrible that this culture has come in and taken over"

His perspective was "WE are supposed to be the ones ruling other cultures".

Kenzaburo Oe had a short non fiction piece about how the Japanese surrender in WWII was a deeply traumatic moment in the Japanese psyche. It proved the ur-narrative on which Japanese cultural identity was built to be a myth.

# ? Feb 22, 2020 04:07

Heath: Apr 30, 2008; 🍂🎃🏞️💦

That's definitely a thing I lose sight of while reading since the book takes place prior to WW2, but is being written after it, and one of its main characters is heavily influenced by a romanticized picture of an event that happened well before that.

# ? Feb 22, 2020 04:21

Lex Neville: Apr 15, 2009

Dirt Road Junglist posted:

I love people who use the term reactionary and have no idea what it means.

go on

# ? Feb 22, 2020 13:18

Catfishenfuego: Oct 21, 2008; Moist With Indignation

My friend found a vintage erotica novel they bought me for my birthday and the opening line is "Jorge's ejaculation of sperm lacked enthusiasm." So I'm going to nominate that as the best sex line and also best opening line ever written.

# ? Mar 12, 2020 13:47

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

Catfishenfuego posted:

My friend found a vintage erotica novel they bought me for my birthday and the opening line is "Jorge's ejaculation of sperm lacked enthusiasm." So I'm going to nominate that as the best sex line and also best opening line ever written.

The Borges erotic novel wasn't very successful for some reason

# ? Mar 13, 2020 10:20

The_White_Crane: May 10, 2008

Catfishenfuego posted:

My friend found a vintage erotica novel they bought me for my birthday and the opening line is "Jorge's ejaculation of sperm lacked enthusiasm." So I'm going to nominate that as the best sex line and also best opening line ever written.

I like that they felt the need to add "of sperm" just to make sure you didn't think he was making a sudden exclamation.

# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:17

Strom Cuzewon: Jul 1, 2010

The_White_Crane posted:

I like that they felt the need to add "of sperm" just to make sure you didn't think he was making a sudden exclamation.

Unless "ejaculation" is a collective noun, and it's the sperm that lack enthusiasm.

# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:37

Famethrowa: Oct 5, 2012

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro has been a pretty satisfying, and subtle, counterpoint to Mishima's lost-cause nationalism. Especially with Mishima's sainthood of late among the alt-right community.

Just a sad, in denial, unreliable narrator, feeling totally emasculated by his daughters and the changing society. I highly recommend it if you are enjoying Mishima.

edit: lol i didn't read the past 10 pages. I hope I dont become a japanese nationalist by reading an unreliable japanese nationalist narrator!!!

Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Mar 20, 2020

# ? Mar 20, 2020 07:09

pseudanonymous: Aug 30, 2008; When you make the second entry and the debits and credits balance, and you blow them to hell.

Famethrowa posted:

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro has been a pretty satisfying, and subtle, counterpoint to Mishima's lost-cause nationalism. Especially with Mishima's sainthood of late among the alt-right community.

Just a sad, in denial, unreliable narrator, feeling totally emasculated by his daughters and the changing society. I highly recommend it if you are enjoying Mishima.

edit: lol i didn't read the past 10 pages. I hope I dont become a japanese nationalist by reading an unreliable japanese nationalist narrator!!!

Obviously you'll become an unreliable Japanese nationalist.

# ? Mar 20, 2020 13:00

Flesnolk: Apr 11, 2012

So what good authors aren't fascists, if I want to read more Actual Literature but don't want to give human garbage my time of day? Because it sure seems sometimes like the only people who can create good art are monsters of some stripe or another.

# ? Mar 26, 2020 23:33

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Flesnolk posted:

So what good authors aren't fascists, if I want to read more Actual Literature but don't want to give human garbage my time of day? Because it sure seems sometimes like the only people who can create good art are monsters of some stripe or another.

have you heard of j. k. rowling, op

# ? Mar 27, 2020 00:26

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

I'm doing a Let's Read of The Expanse novels and I think it'd be neat if some of you lot came and joined the discussion. Whoever did Leviathan Wakes in here a while back was pretty interesting.

# ? Mar 27, 2020 01:00

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

Lol all humans are garbage though. Just relax bro

# ? Mar 27, 2020 01:31

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Flesnolk posted:

So what good authors aren't fascists, if I want to read more Actual Literature but don't want to give human garbage my time of day? Because it sure seems sometimes like the only people who can create good art are monsters of some stripe or another.

David Vann was almost a school shooter but decided to not be a school shooter which makes him a good person imho

# ? Mar 27, 2020 01:53

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

Mel Mudkiper posted:

David Vann was almost a school shooter but decided to not be a school shooter which makes him a good person imho

He should have been a school shooter because that might have spared the world his tedious books

# ? Mar 27, 2020 02:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I know you don't mean that and I forgive you

# ? Mar 27, 2020 02:14

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

David Vann was almost a school shooter but decided to not be a school shooter which makes him a good person imho

i cant believe he would contemplate something so cold-blooded

# ? Mar 27, 2020 02:48

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Flesnolk posted:

So what good authors aren't fascists, if I want to read more Actual Literature but don't want to give human garbage my time of day? Because it sure seems sometimes like the only people who can create good art are monsters of some stripe or another.

I'm pretty sure there's far more leftist than fascist authors in the modern canon and you've just read far too much into people's banter. Start with, idk, Saramago. Pamuk, Calvino, Garcia Marquez. Bola�o, Marias. Primo Levi, Carlo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg. How far back do you want to go? Emile Zola had kids with his maid but believed in the revolution

# ? Mar 27, 2020 10:09

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 22, 2024 12:58

Take the plunge! Okay!: Feb 24, 2007

Maxim Gorky owns, so does Daniil Harms. Don�t forget that Umberto Eco, Sartre, Camus were all leftists. Really, a ton of good writing on the left. Maybe tell us what you�re looking for and we can be more precise - do you want short/long works, straightforward narratives or meandering ones...

# ? Mar 27, 2020 10:21

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

«‹›61 »