Bonfire of the Genres: Critical Looks Sci-Fi and Fantasy

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Bonfire of the Genres: Critical Looks Sci-Fi and Fantasy

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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.

The idea of studying novels by using a cartoon wikipedia like tv tropes to find crisscrossing points of reference is pretty cute to me tbf

e: also what is this bizarre thread about

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 18:00

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 18:03

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.

Fantasy requires you to know about feudalism

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 23:29

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.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

"Succubus of joy"? Succubi are demons from hell who tempt men into damning themselves by committing sexual sins. How, exactly, is this a concept that has anything to do with joy?

Well this is truly damning criticism

# ¿ Jan 5, 2019 19:10

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.

It means that it's snowing. That's what that line means

# ¿ Jan 8, 2019 15:36

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.

Are Irish soccer hooligans even a thing

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 14:17

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 guess that's supposed to compensate for the team being loving wank

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 14:40

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.

Thranguy posted:

proto-genre Authors like Cervantes

Interesting way to put it

hackbunny posted:

I still can't wrap my mind around the power publishing has over some art forms, like writing (music, too). It's like the actual medium is not writing, but publishing, so (say) 50 pages can't be a perfect length for your book simply because at that length there won't be a book. E-books (and music downloads) don't seem to have made a dent in this model, either

I'm not one to claim that the market works perfectly, but the idea that the music industry is in some significant way constraining people's abilities to produce the art they want was probably last relevant in the 90s

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 13:17

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.

She's saying that the internal coherence and logic of a fantasy world are irrelevant to the human condition in the most rapidly changing societies known to history, and while they may be an escapist selling point, they're an artistic problem (I don't necessarily agree with this view fwiw)

e: well this post turned out to be redudant but nevertheless

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 14:23

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 just meant that I don't have any particular opinion on that right now

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 14:25

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.

Thranguy posted:

Cervantes was the forefather of everything.

And what's the alternative theory here, exactly? That genre came out of some new special creation, that Tolkein and Peake and Shelley and Wells and Verne were rooms full of monkeys hammering at anachronistic typewriters?

For the purposes of this weird thread isn't Don Quixote much more relevant as a parody of a genre (which is what it is), rather than as an inspiration for wholy different genres (which is at beast arguable). Like you know for the fact that it's read 1000x times more often today than anything it takes the piss out of

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 15:41

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 don't get how Don Quixote is particularly or specifically relevant to a scifi & fantasy adjacent canon if not by its relationship to the romance genre, which doesn't seem to be the argument. And I presume the Novelas ejemplares aren't whats being discussed

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 15:55

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.

What does that have to do with my post

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 16:07

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.

Jack B Nimble posted:

That most people read it at school because they have to, and also have to read chivalric tales in the same class. Or is that not the particular thing Cervantes is parodying? Am I confusing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Lais of Marie de France with some other body of spanish knightly...scholck?

No yeah sure but afaik its main inspirations & targets are specific works from the 16th century of which probably only Orlando Furioso enjoy significant esteem nowadays. Who has read Amadis de Gaula except Cervantes scholars

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 16:26

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.

The_White_Crane posted:

I find it genuinely difficult to credit that you actually hold the position you're putting forward.
Your entire argument boils down to a complaint that people are using the word "fantasy" to refer to books that don't meet your incredibly specific and exclusionary criterion, which is one that -- being generous -- is used by almost nobody else.

What he's saying is not controversial at all. I mean hell people have to use the word fantastique for continental literary trends because modern fantasy literature is so well defined and bound to anglo-saxon literary history. Trying to draw something like Journey to the West into the mix is basically stupid

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 17:27

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.

The_White_Crane posted:

You say modern fantasy literature is so well defined, but he's literally arguing that most of what we call fantasy literature isn't fantasy because it doesn't meet his specific criterion of "not following cause and effect".

Yes well that's characteristically stupid and awkward Mel pedantry

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 17:35

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.

lost in postation posted:

The conversation has moved on a fair bit but I don't think that's true for much of European and Asian folklore (I don't know enough about other places to talk about them). Folk magic and superstition in a lot of places are nothing but rules to interact with elements of the world that are scary and unknowable like disease and death and natural catastrophes.

The problem with fantasy seems to me that it describes "magic systems" with the unambiguity and po-facedness of modern experimental science rather than the premodern sense of a negociation with powers vastly superior to man and fundamentally impossible to fully understand.

On that note the way that understanding of science has narrowed the space for magic is probably relevant in how its construed in modern western mass literature (and in a way explains Mel's point)

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 17:40

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.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Yeah, its not an accident that the founding text of modern fantasy LotR, is explicitly anti-modern and romanticizes agrarianism.

Not that the holier the characters, the more in tune with nature they are.

Elves are the highest and also the most in tune with the natural world
Hobbits are also virtuous and also explicitly agrarian
Men and Dwarves tone the line of "darkness" because of their use of industry
Orcs are literally made in factories and dug up from the earth as a resource

The fact that fantasy all follows from that thematic point without exploring the significance of it is one of the weaknesses. Fantasy uses medieval feudalism because its what Tolkein did without recognizing the thematic significance of the choice.

Well yes, but that wasn't what I meant, but that while for many 19th century common men folk magic was still a valid way of influencing the world around them (magic defined as ascribing to objects & actions powers that can rationally only be seen as symbolic, like voodoo dolls or curses), by the latter 20th century it had decidedly ceased to be so in the west. So that cannot but change the way supernatural forces are seen in popular culture/consciousness, although I don't know whether that means magic as an idea has become more "magical" and arbitrary (as you think it should be), or that it has become more systemised (as you argue it shouldn't be)

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 18:13

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.

Sampatrick posted:

The people who practiced folk magic legitimately believed that it worked, they didn't believe that it was a crapshoot. If the magic didn't work, it was a problem with them not because of unreliability in the magic.

It's neither 100% this nor 100% what Mel said - because there's no formulated theory behind any kind of folk magic, the modifiers are practically infinite. Has the object you're using been compromised in some way, does some aspect of it make it less magically powerful than you believe, has the magic been performed incorrectly, or is the action simply not magically valid? Because obviously, depending on how ambitious the things you're trying to do, magic fails most of the time, and naturally magic practices will come and go depending on their supposed efficacy and not just cultural tradition

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 18:28

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.

My posting in this thread is mostly based on comparing Calvino with NetHack, the only fantasy novel I've read recently enough to remember anything about is LotR which I read 17 years ago

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 18:33

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.

Surrealism happened at a certain point in time and its ethos reflects the time and milieu an sich. its "liberation" is an illusion at best

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 10:37

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 fsaw am interesting looking boll about Uzbekistan or maybe Kazakhstan the other day but then I googled the author and saw that he's written the screenplays(?) for Gears of War or some poo poo and "often includes references to video games and Lord of the Rings in his writing" and reeled in terror

e I meant recoiled
ee and book. not boll

Ras Het fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Feb 2, 2019

# ¿ Feb 2, 2019 12:30

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.

Maybe you should read some good books and not that fantasy junk you're always posting about

# ¿ Feb 3, 2019 11:54

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.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Then again mormons do have a proud legacy of fantasy

Real hot take bruv

# ¿ Feb 5, 2019 14:36

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.

Torrannor posted:

Because escapism can be fun? If you want to look at a science fiction book that gives context to reality, you can take 1984. It's a very relevant book, and it was very engaging to read it. Genuine fun. But I wouldn't want to read heavy stuff like this all the time. If you want to argue that good literature needs this contextualization to really be good, that's your prerogative. I can see the argument. But we do a lot of things because we enjoy them, and not because it's right to do it? Many eat junk food that serves little purpose beyond giving you calories, perhaps too many calories to maintain your body weight. But even serious bodybuilders very rarely enjoy some ice cream or chips in spite of being bad for them. What's the deal with playing Tetris? What purpose does that serve?

People shouldn't use drugs to escape the harsh reality of their dying small town in rural America, yet a lot of people do so. If they could get their fix of escapism from schlock literature instead, would you denounce that? Escapism has a value in it's own for a lot of people. Of course this can go too far, when people lose themselves in these fantasy worlds. But that's a small minority of readers, and they likely would get their "fix" in mindless TV or the internet instead.

Things that are art and things that aren't art are constantly moving towards each other under pressure from society - football defies its art nature by its sport nature, yet is undeniably art; the books you like defy their entertainment nature by their text nature, yet you seek to actively deny their artistic value. I don't know if there's a synthesis

# ¿ Feb 6, 2019 15:16

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.

Itali Calvini

# ¿ Feb 6, 2019 16:06

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 don't want to commit myself to any opinion on this issue, but it's interesting how the idea that there is a thing like "spirit" that can be nourished by art, culture and sensible living has become marginal, and nowadays if people defend the value of high art they're more typically forced to retort to self help like platitudes and rationalisations. Is this commodification

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 11:12

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.

porfiria posted:

People who are really into literature are, in my experience, slightly worse than people who aren't.

Are you American

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 11:21

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.

lost in postation posted:

To be fair a bunch of the people who contributed in the past ~200 years to the decline of the idea that art is or should aspire to be in some way edifying were the artists themselves (and that's probably a good thing on balance imo)

Sure, but I think the idea lingers stronger in certain types of art. Like I think architects are much happier to go into quasi-religious psychobabble about their work than writers. Or maybe that's just the Twitter accounts I happen to follow

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 11:47

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.

The escapism argument is perfectly valid for Harry Potter, since afaict they're books that are meant to cheer up depressed tweens. It's a less obvious argument for Gritty Adult Fantasy where people get raped constantly

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 13:07

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.

Please don't use my posts in non-vegan analogies, particularly if you're going to badmouth raw high fiber vegetables

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 13:56

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 don't think the canon of western literature has gone anywhere. Even the arguments that it should go away are basically polemics that hang on trivialities

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 14:52

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.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

It never went anywhere because it never was

That's dumb

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 14:57

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.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

the idea of a canon is fundamentally an ethereal and wholly transitory collection of cultural assumptions that exists more as an expression of cultural hegemony than an analysis of cultural value

Yeah duh. I don't understand what your issue is

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 15:06

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.

Wasn't the point that people also laugh at things that are supposed to make them laugh

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 15:24

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.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

why are we talking about clowns

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&userid=183592

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 15:27

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.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I guess it can be about how clowns are actually racial untouchables instead of how "Bonzo" can't sit down without squashing a pie, if your axe really needs a good grinding.

His point is probably valid even if it's probably not in the right place tbf

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 15:29

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.

poisonpill posted:

The idea that there is �no� Western canon is factually untrue, which is obvious on its face. There literally was a collection of books published expressly to be read as part of the canon. The decision to publish is based on the inclusion or exclusion of the work from the canon. The Harvard Classics, or the standard high school English lit curriculum, or even the excepts in every textbook, is the canon.

The argument that canon doesn�t exist is another tired postmodern concept about literature that is pointless, fruitless, and not worth engaging with

Mel has a penchant for saying that things that clearly exist don't exist because they shouldn't exist. It's his trope

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 15:50

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.

There's a reasonably clear canon of classical literature, and probably of European literature up to like the 1700s. It doesn't matter whether you include three or twenty five Shakespeare plays in it, because the canon as an actual list of hundreds of specific works is not massively useful, while an idea of what is canonical is

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 16:16

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.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

So you literally agree with me

That's good, I've got work to do

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 16:24

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 18:03

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.

Thranguy posted:

A little digging around finds quite a few well-remembered books from that half decade, mostly published originally outside the US. (Perhaps rampant book piracy is to blame for their absence, or some other factor is at work)

The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Turn of the Screw, The War of the Worlds, Zola's Rome and Paris, and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (that last likely off the list because it was a kids book)

And lesser/more obscure works by still-remembered authors like Conrad,Twain, Hardy, and Stevenson.

What are you even saying here? He was pointing out that most of the US bestsellers of the decade are totally forgotten, so this list of books that weren't US bestsellers and aren't forgotten (although does anyone read the Zola city books) explains... what?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 20:54

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