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

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

Lightning Lord posted:

BotL can you eventually review some fantasy you like? Maybe Jack Vance or something. Just so the people who think you HATE FUN will shut up

Or take the time to explain why what you're saying is bad, is actually bad. Or explain what you think good literature is or accomplishes. Right now you're just using pejoratives and begging the question.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2017 16:15

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 14:28

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Nowadays I'm liable to call it just gimmicky, but my next review is ready soon and is about a good fantasy novel! The best fantasy novel!

You seem to either have not read the review, or simply decided that nothing in it counted as criticism. The mention of how striving for psychologically realistic and complex bildungsroman that includes characters that could have walked out of Pilgrim's Progress is a colossal mismatch, for example, does not count for some reason.

I could also point out that Assassin's Apprentice is so loving mawkish that the protagonist has two beloved dogs die on him.

You're confusing being critical with literary criticism. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting the point of this thread.

For example, "striving for psychologically realistic and complex bildungsroman that includes characters that could have walked out of Pilgrim's Progress is a colossal mismatch" is not self-evidently true, but you don't do much to support the claim. You certainly don't allow that there might be creatively fertile ground there, or that the author is creating a deliberate juxtaposition. You simply take the least generous interpretation (ie. bad writing) and treat it as evidence of a foregone conclusion.

To take another example: with the character names, you haven't crafted much of an argument for why it's necessarily bad writing that explains why the nobility is successful in inculcating certain character traits through their naming scheme (and presumably through subsequent education and childrearing). You don't ask what that might mean within the novel, or what the author might be attempting. Rather, you handwave it away -- not even as a poorly executed conceit -- but as idiocy. And that's taking it completely at face value that your assertion of literalism is correct.

You wear your prejudices are on your sleeve, of course. "Hobb�s 'world-building' is as insipid as all such efforts," (emphasis mine) doesn't leave much room for debate, and your specific arguments for why the world building is "insipid" amount to arguments of personal taste. For example, "Fitz, Verity, Molly Chandler, Buckkeep, the Fool, Farrow, the Mountain Kingdom, and so on � hint at fairy-tale simplicity completely unlike Hobb�s plaintive pseudo-realism" -- Why? How so? Have you never seen a map of England (or read its history, for that matter)? Have you never seen the ludicrous naming conventions of early New England? Why is her use of "Capitalized Nouns" a bad thing? Furthermore, why are all worldbuilding efforts insipid?

And I still don't think you actually understand what "the medium is the message" means, because it doesn't mean "[n]on-fantastical prose does not produce fantastical literature."

Your critique is at its strongest when you contrast the world of the novel with the realities of a feudal society and begin to suggest that the book fails as a critique of feudal power structures. There's probably an interesting essay in there about what our fantastical interpretations of feudal society says about - I don't know - how we are conditioned to view those in power. But you're so busy maligning the book and the author as failures that you don't really explore your actually interesting ideas. You're asserting the novel is bad (and that this thread is about "why your favourite sci-fi and fantasy is bad,") without explaining why your definition of "bad" is accurate or relevant or interesting, without explaining what your definition of "bad" actually is, and without explaining what a "good" novel is or does differently. You proceed as though we're all already in agreement about what constitutes "bad" and "good" literature, and thereby give lie to the idea that you are examining things through a "literary" or scholarly lens. Without any kind of framework against which to judge the soundness of your arguments, it's more accurate to call the thread "BravestOfTheLamps shits on genre fiction" and dispense with idea that anything about this thread, other than word choice (and even then), is sophisticated.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2017 20:41

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

I notice that you don't make any appeals to the qualities of the actual novel.

I haven't read the novel and so I can't make appeals to its qualities. It's irrelevant, however, because I'm discussing your critical approach and not the novel.

quote:

The closest you do is an appeal to how the fictional world works as if it was documentary evidence - "this is how children are raised in the Six Duchies". I'm on the other hand speaking of literary purposes - the morality play names are used for very literal characterisation. Shrewd is intellligent, Verity is true and honest, and Regal wants the throne. This is literalism. This is not juxtaposed against the psychological realism of Fitz, it's simply presented as a given, much like how Prince Regal is really as cartoonishly evil as he appears to be.

I'm not treating the novel like a documentary and you're not speaking about literary purpose. I know you're not speaking about literary purpose because you don't bother thinking or talking about what the naming convention might signify beyond the author's failure as a writer and storyteller. That's why I pointed out that " [y]ou don't ask what that might mean within the novel, or what the author might be attempting." You simply chalk it up as more evidence of bad writing and your analysis ends there.

Regarding the juxtaposition of psychological realism with morality play characters, you're missing that they are juxtaposed, whether you like it or not. The interesting critique is whether or not that juxtaposition was intentional, and if it was intentional, to what extent it succeeds in creating meaning or in creating interesting commentary. If it was unintentional, then you could think on what it tells us about the author and their storytelling goals, and from there you could potentially conclude that they're simply bad at writing. It's unfalsifiable and boring but it at least follows in a way "there's no juxtaposition but also its evidence of bad writing" doesn't.

quote:

what literary significance is there in that Assassin's Apprentice might be following the naming conventions of historical New England?

My point isn't that the names were selected as a conscious allusion to e.g. historical New England, my point is that your particular objection to the place and character names is baseless, and yet you still universalize it as evidence for why the novel is undeniably bad.

quote:

Instead of trying to prove that Assassin's Apprentice isn't idiotic, you're trying argue whether or not someone can accurately call a novel idiotic. This is a path that leads only to failure.

I'm arguing that, if you're going to call a novel and its author idiotic, and in fact make that your core idea, then you need to establish what you mean by "idiotic" and not just assume we all already know and agree with your definition. Absent an agreed-upon definition, I don't think you can accurately call a novel idiotic. It's a semantic argument but it's an important one because it provides the framework for everything else.

I can't stress this enough: you don't actually explain why anything that you label as "bad", is bad.

At least your argument for why world building is insipid has some meat to it.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2017 23:21

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

Maybe the problem is interpreting world building as a failure to achieve something else rather than as an end unto itself.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 05:35

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

I was going to say that I'm sure it's only a matter of time before fantasy encyclopedias (e.g. World of Ice and Fire) are published as their own genre and then I realized that was basically what campaign settings are.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 06:22

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

Atlas Hugged posted:

This is literally the argument I've had ad nauseam in Trad Games over whether or not we can be critical of a game people think is "fun" to play. As far as I can tell, people decide they like a thing for whatever reason, be it social pressure or personal taste, and once they've decided they like it they don't want to consider the possibility that it fails at doing what it sets out to do well.

Unless the author has explicitly stated what they set out to do then you can't know whether it succeeded or failed. That's why it's better to take the book on its own terms rather than worry about whether it signifies authorial success or failure.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 17:19

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

What the gently caress is this even supposed to mean

It means that you should read and interpret the text without writing your own fanfiction about what the text or its author set out to "do" or accomplish, which is generally unknowable, and is unnecessary to understanding or making meaning from the text.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 17:36

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

ShinsoBEAM! posted:

Basically every author I know is pretty up front about what they planned to do or accomplish from writing their work.

I'd love to read some examples because I'm guessing the success criteria are sufficiently ill-defined that a critic could make a plausible case in any direction depending on what they're trying to prove.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 17:45

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

You can pretty easily tell what authors try to do with texts by the fact that they wrote them. Robin Hobb quite explicitly set out to write a bildungsroman in an imaginary medieval world, because the fact that she wrote one means that at one point she set out to do it.

Assassin's Apprentice is a bildungsroman in an imaginary medieval world. We don't know what Hobb set out to write, or what she decided she set out to write after the fact. And if we do explicitly, perfectly know that she wanted to write a bildungsroman in an imaginary medieval world, then congratulations to her for her remarkable success.

And even if we do know what she wanted to write, and we know that she failed, then it's still not self-evident why that would matter. What bearing does the author's personal failure have on the text? Is the text itself somehow invalidated by her shortcomings?

More to the point -- why do you think a tabloid interest in the author is an interesting focus of criticism or an effective way of proving "why your favourite sci-fi and fantasy is bad"?

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 18:31

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

You seem to have imagined some instance of me expressing "tabloid interest" in the author.

You snarkily interjected in a discussion about the role of the author's intent in criticism to feign ignorance about what I meant when I said that you should evaluate the text on its own merits rather than hypothesizing about whether or not the author personally succeeded or failed. Apologies for misinterpreting that.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 19:02

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

serves you right for buying books instead of just reading the wikipedia summaries

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 19:06

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

Calling a text "good" or "bad" is normative. Regardless of your intent, I don't think you can do that without saying something about how you ought to feel about the text, and by extension, about those who feel wrongly.

What do you imagine the goal of passing a moral judgment on a text ("it's bad!") is supposed to be, otherwise?

e. \/
Fair enough, but then again, you're still saying a certain class of people are fans of poorly written texts. Why aren't they fans of well-written texts? Are they not discriminating enough? Educated enough? Why not? Etc.

I'm not saying it's bad or good, I'm just not sure if you can disentangle criticism of a text from criticizing its fans and detractors.

just another fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Sep 12, 2017

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 22:54

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

It's a fundamental difference. The former is begging you to erect strawmen while the latter is asking you to focus on the text itself.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 23:22

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

I'm reminded of this Freddie deBoer post:

quote:

This morning I was browsing The Atlantic and I was struck by the degree to which I just expect all of our cultural criticism to function as a checklist for socially liberal politics � knowing when I sit down to read a piece on a movie or book or music, particularly when addressing some sort of controversy, that such a piece will undertake an obligatory exploration of the degree to which the art in question satisfies contemporary progressive political expectations. More, art and artists who are seen as symbolically satisfying the dictates of progressive social politics will be celebrated, and their supposed lack of critical respect will be complained about even if they are among the most celebrated artists on earth; conversely, art and artists who are seen as deficient in this regard will be denigrated, and their supposed abundance of critical respect will be complained about even if they are ritualistically criticized by every prominent publication on the internet.

These predictions are almost never wrong, and it can now be expanded far beyond the usual suspects like Salon to general interest publications of all stripes. Indeed: the only places where I now expect to encounter artistic criticism that does not stem from an explicitly socially progressive standpoint is in explicitly conservative media � which tends to mean more explicitly political artistic criticism, just coming from another direction, which doesn�t solve any of the potential problems.

Now: despite what many people will assume, I am not here to say that this is all bad, that it stems from insincerity or signaling, that the people who do this are bad people, or that we should stop producing this kind of work. I am trying to follow Curtis�s lead in saying: this has happened, and we should probably talk about why, and about what happens because of it, and what comes next, and how it will affect what comes next. I can see people who find this all a natural, healthy, and benevolent evolution, but I cannot imagine an honest person disputing that it�s happened.
. . .

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 02:20

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

uberkeyzer posted:

Sorry that you can't ignore real problems in society like you used to be able to. How does it feel being like everyone else?

Please don't ascribe the worst motives to me, thanks.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 03:05

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

HIJK posted:

He cited Rothfuss as one of the reasons he was breaking up with me. I haven't lost any sleep over him.

did you tell him you could tell he was wroth but didn't know what all the fuss was about

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 06:39

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

Atlas Hugged posted:

But when those people go into a thread dedicated to criticism, one set up specifically for the purpose of keeping the criticism in its own place, and then declare that such criticism isn't possible or is irrelevant, that tells me two things. 1) They absolutely do care, and almost certainly for the reasons I've outlined (social pressure, identity, regional popularity). 2) They're acting in bad faith

Nobody here is getting too lovely with each other or angry or anything like that. There are disagreements, sure, but not all arguments are conducted in bad faith.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 16:29

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 14:28

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

Nevermind that "literature" nonsense, do a Drizzt novel. :unsmigghh:

# ¿ Sep 15, 2017 17:19

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