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Comments
I did not expect a detective story.
but that's what sci-fi is about is it not
I remember reading this book, The Machine by James Smythe, that was a sci-fi book. The premise was that after WWIII the atmosphere had been destroyed (as usual) and in some rural seaside town the wife of a soldier who had gotten all super PTSD-ed tries to recover his memories after they're wiped out by a fancy brain-fixing machine that screwed up and gave him what was essentially dementia instead.
Aside from the main character's fever dreams, I liked that the whole thing could essentially be boiled down to "she misses him super bad and also rural life after WWIII sucks". Initially though I was quite mad at it because of the simplicity, and essentially her 'simple' quest was vaguely demeaning in a way that I related to more than I'd like to admit.
Right now I'm trying to get through a novel called Black Chalk but the OCD shut-in protagonist who is more pathetic than even the most intentionally pathetic anime main characters is really making it difficult (that and the prose in every chapter being split into multiple bits and then put through a randomizer).
I do actually like it, but it's just very draining to read more than 2-3 chapters of at a time (I'll usually read a book in like five semi-consecutive hours). Plus it pulled that trick where it has a normal-ish page count (350ish) but the text inside is hyper-tiny.
We look in on character X, who is rich (or Rachel). Character X has this irrelevant problem or this particular backstory not actually relevant to the main story happened to them, or they are in this place that is super fancy and rich. Descriptions of wealth and or backstory go on for 3/4ths of the chapter. Then, finally, something kind of happens. Time to switch POV!
There was a chapter with Astrid that, and I am not even kidding, I genuinely wanted to run through the Mary Sue test that Naas showed me yesterday. Just that one chapter was full of enough "Astrid is so perfect even though all she's doing is the opposite of trying" to get her to break 100 points maybe.
Of course I'll point out how despite the ridiculous circumstances where characters died over and over in a faux-timeloop, nobody actually died in the end.
I mean, in this specific volume the circumstances managed to carry weight because they were just the driving force of the main antagonist's (cleverly named 'O') plan. He tricked the girl that the main character had a crush on into believing that she was about to die, thus convincing her to take the Rejecting Classroom Box and force everyone she knew into this nightmare. He also hijacked one of her friend's bodies and planted the idea of killing said friend into her by repeating "Why don't you just kill me?" as a joke over thousands and thousands of loops.
It's just weird because LNs, for me at least, tend to go the darker route a lot and kill off everybody, and a bunch of the characters who make it to the end aren't exactly necessary (to the point that they're just "somewhere else" during the climax of the story). Maybe they'll be important in the later stories, who knows.
If anything, this was a brilliant argument for using your sci-fi elements to the max because it was quite the ride.
Like Calliope who has about 20% of the whole text only interacts with the other characters once (Avery) in a super-vague conversation and is completely irrelevant to the plot which is like... at first her parts make me want to be annoyed because she's breaking the flow of the plot but eventually she'll become part of the main plot right? Nope. Never happens. She's just having her own plot in a book that has nothing to do with her.
And Rylin's drug dealer boyfriend just conveniently leaves for somewhere and it turns out Cord helped him go there but she thinks Cord tricked him into going but it turns out Hiral asked Cord for help so she falls back in love with Cord... forgetting how completely vapid Cord is and how he couldn't even defend her against his friends.
Also; the ending is that Avery and Atlas' secret onii-chan romance is found out and her parents are understandably like "You guys!?!?!?!?!" and Avery's parents ship Atlas off elsewhere so Avery decides to do the smart thing and confesses to the manslaughter Leda committed, and the boat-assisted murder Watt's head-computer Nadia committed (which is like a whole other super dumb thing), burns her house down and gets Watt to fake her death.
Then leaves because her parent's love, affection and general concern for her wellbeing were totally harshing her flow and she wants to be HERSELF because her parents ruined her life by making her so genetically perfect and also somehow Leda just 100% deserves to get away with the stuff she did for the first 1.5 books?
Oh yeah the computer inside Watt's head killed Mariel because apparently it determined Mariel would maybe kill Watt or something (though she was mad at Leda?) so decided to get a jump on things and then decided to keep Watt out of jail by getting Leda to think she did it by sending her drug dealer instructions on upping her dose but she was also super cool with Avery taking the fall.
Basically it was all really, really dumb.
Current reading: a series of short stories by a Polish fantasy author. I saw favourable opinions, the series seems to have gathered a fanbase, and last but not least I was getting hungry for old-school fantasy, so I decided to give it a try. I'm calling it old-school because, while it's not campy, it's not trying to be weird or edgy. After having read three of the stories, it makes me think of the Black Company series, as the focus so far is likewise on a military organization seen through the lenses of one of its officers, but there is no moral ambiguity or amorality involved. These are stories about simple matters, like personal integrity or soldier's honour. Also, what is refreshing and rare in Polish SF&F, so far I haven't spotted any hints of IRL politics. Overally, I've only scratched the surface, but it looks like it's gonna be plain good reading.
(minor grammar ed.)
Yesterday I was talking to Naas about how fantasy had basically died in the public consciousness between the LOTR movies and GoT TV show. I'm probably wrong to some extent, but I think it shows where "old-school" ends and "new and cool and edgy" starts.
Sounds fun.
That is, until Game of Thrones came about and made such a large impact on everything. It's been the highest rated TV series of literally whenever it's on for years. In fact, it's influenced quite a number of fantasy TV series in modern times. Even SyFy's stab at doing a DC TV show was just some caste-system fantasy thing with plastered on black generitech suits.
And if Amazon has anything to say about it we'll see a bunch more fantasy TV series coming that way. Netflix doesn't seem as interested in them, though I'm probably missing at least one.
Lately I've been very annoyed at YA. It's very... woke, right now, but it's still YA, which anybody outside the target demographic reads entirely for it's ill-advised storylines and generally nonsensical characters. The overt signalling is painfully embarrassing, and it really isn't helping any causes.
I'd say a book like Love, Simon (feat. gay protagonist) worked because it was really just about a kid who dealt with his issues in a very YA way. He was uncomfortable with Chic-Fil-A because of how it had been portrayed in the news re: the charities it's supports, but didn't immediately get incensed about it or even really care outside of when it was presented to him.
He was confronted with his own expectations when it turned out blue was a black guy and he hadn't initially expected that, but they still immediately made out because they were danged teenage boys.
I guess I should say I believe in blind inclusion, leaving the policy stuff to the real world. You don't really get that when six out of seven YA books with a black protagonist feature somebody (or the protagonist, even) getting shot by the police. Nobody needs that in YA, where 70% of the book will be spent deciding if the love triangle should be resolved now or not yet because the first novel might be optioned for a further series.
Somehow this is what I can't stop thinking after finishing the book.
(Middle image is just something from pixiv)
I've finished the second set of the stories from that book. The first half was north-themed, so the rest was logically south-themed. You can probably see where this would be going. Rich merchants, caravans, and some sort of Arab expies or Fremen expies. Which, in the latter case, makes it expies of Arab expies. You know the stuff. Whenever a fantasy story is set somewhere in hot and dry climate, you're bound to see vaguely Semitic, creepily devoted to their principles, tribal, xenophobic badasses of the desert. But, let's get to the plot. At this point I found myself willing to acknowledge the popularity of the writer - I could see the guy's better than the average fantasy drivel level. The northern stories were rather standalone and straightforward, the southern were following a sequence and were both more and less personal. As in, they were about emotions, internal conflict, stuff like that - one story was almost wholly made of two characters having a discussion, with some action only in retrospect - but towards the end the previously hinted-at metaplot came to the fore, so from person or family-level affairs they suddenly jump to what seems like the beginning of an epic fantasy plot.
I've only read the first 100 pages of 1984 and I lost my copy over two years ago.
Why write something digestible when you can write 100,000 pages nobody will totally remember in a few years.
I was watching an episode of How to Get Away With Murder yesterday and I realized that both black male characters had now murdered somebody. Trying to make sure this wasn't a case of accidental racism, I tried to remember which other main cast members had killed someone and I couldn't because it's been 70 episodes over 5 years.
Heck, I can't even remember who shot Simon last year and that was one of my favorite episodes of this show of all time.
My personal opinion: I'm all for it. Would be quite interested in reading it. But, I feel vaguely like I'm signing myself up with some sort of "I'm not racist, only racial separatist" crowd, because I'm saying that while not agreeing with him on the topic of hobbits in the Shire. See, what would the story gain if Peter Jackson engaged a statictically-supported racial quota of non-white actors? It's a bit of the same discussion as was in the context of The Witcher 3 and the upcoming Netflix series, with the catch that literature does not, strictly speaking, show the skin color of the characters. So, I'm all for black guys writing Africa-themed fantasy stories. I'm all for anyone writing Africa-themed fantasy stories, actually. I'll be the first in the book shop if you told be there's a fantasy retelling of the Epic of Sundiata. But I'm not gonna ever complain there's too few white folks in it. While I acknowledge that black kids watching The Lord of the Rings will be unhappy they don't see anyone that looks like them, for me this much more of a challenge to broaden the range of the inspiration beyond Merrie Olde Englande & Yon Vikings than a reason to stuff some token blacks in the story.
You know, I have a feeling that if I posted it somewhere else folks would tell me to check my privilege, so I'll say that it would be a relatively specific kind of "privileged". As in, global culture isn't just white, it's Anglo-Saxon with heavy bias towards the USA, so it's not like I get all the representation a WASP might get.
----
Also, I have finished the third part of that short story cycle, the East-themed. As you can expect, steppes. I'm inclined to say that these stories show a different historical experience to what you might be used to. Think less Mongols (though ersatz Mongols are inevitable), more Wild West. You know - limitless freedom, frontier communities, a place for every misfit, and so on. So, freedom is the theme, but not just personal, as a big part of the overarching plot is a desire of an ethnic community of refugees to return in force to the lands they had to flee, freedom in the political and national sense, if you will. If I had to name a theme for North stories it would be honor and loyalty, for South - family and remembrance. (The last part, the West-themed stories, seem to be set in a port city, so there'll be lots of pirates and thieves' guilds and that sort of streetwise stuff, but I won't yet guess what kind of theme it might have.) Also, the metaplot hinted at in the North and showing up in the South strikes again - the characters from all three parts so far appear at the end of the final story. I bet the Western stories will end up with some massive cliffhanger.
Not only would it provide jobs to lots of actors (especially considering New Zealand where the series is filmed is full of like... Maori and Asian people), but it would genuinely provide that dumb feeling of seeing yourself in a thing. In an overall cultural context, (oh gosh what am I doing) every Hollywood movie I can think of premiering last year not Black Panther or Aquaman stars a white person.
Taking that to the extreme by eliminating every non-white person in a fantasy setting is really weird. In-universe, it's also really weird how all the human-ish races of the series are all also just full of white people. I mean, it's fantasy for goodness sakes, would it be really be hard to imagine sometimes all the Hobbits aren't white?
I, personally, would feel really weird if a series about a black hobbit was a monoracial thing, and this is the sort of thing that bothers other people too. Maybe it's because this has personally affected me a lot (black, gay) but I also have a lot of empathy. I'd hate to see this sort of setting get made and honestly I'd probably avoid whatever series that was, no matter what praise it got from people who deem themselves more 'progressive' than I am.
To be entirely clear, I'm not trying to call you out or even change your mind, but it personally disturbs me just a little bit every time I see a movie where everybody is white and straight. It's not much, but that type of stuff builds up and eventually it's a real, actual thing that kind of hurts. It's a tiny voice telling you "You're not meant to be here, you're not meant to like this. For you, life and imagination's paths are limited." It's important to consider that the opposite of inclusive is like... not.
It's especially prominent with the type of media I like to consume, if I don't watch anime on that day I can come to the end of it without seeing a single character who isn't straight (I mean, this is also true of anime, but there's more prominent same-sex tomfoolery, and even just as a joke it's better than nothing). Nowadays it's less likely, but when I was a child it was just like this every day.
This doesn't really work in a fantasy setting. If we're talking about a modern setting we (hopefully) eliminate the problem of race altogether, but if we talk about fantasy your setting is specifically stepping away from US or even Anglo-Saxon culture. The author is trying to create their own culture, and if that's just two steps above sitting for afternoon tea then they probably suck at it.
I don't know if this is putting the carrot before the stick, but Hollywood is really daft when it comes to changing ideas. I mean, Black Panther got made, but it was based on a Marvel-backed property. Starz might one day make an Anansi Boys series but that'll be because American Gods is a hit for them. We're more likely to get racial diversity waaaaaaaaaay before Hollywood sets another blockbuster in Africa (that doesn't star white people as Egyptian Gods).
Regardless of that, I agree, it's odd finding these worlds with all sorts of weird inhabitants and mystical cultures but everyone is either humans who share their phenotype, or not human. Especially if the work does not adhere too hard to preexisting conceptions about fantasy settings anyways.
As an aside, I've been curious about fantasy not-medieval-Europe (or Japanese I guess) settings in games. So far MtG is the only one I know to take the idea and run away with it.
So, I'm not going to stick to my guns too much, I have had this opinion I've expressed but I see your points too. So I'm a bit troubled over this matter, since I don't really know if I can honestly say I'm not trying to put a pretty package over a personal preference. Which has more to do with just having gotten used to something, than with an actual aesthetic preference.
The usual argument is that fantasy tends to emulate a specific time or place, which involved little racial mixing. Tricky stuff, this one. I'd say it depends on what the author is aiming for. It's a little different if you go for "it's like medieval England" versus "it's like medieval England except there's a racial mix and attitudes are enlightened" versus "it's completely made up and I want to impress you with its uniqueness". Sort of like that, I guess.
Representation is a whole different matter. I've seen an opinion that it's all arbitrary anyway, like in theatre (and in ancient Greek theatre even women were played by men). And on one or another level I do feel for you guys, around here we're starved for appreciation. It's always big news when there's a Polish character somewhere or a Polish actor plays in something, and ski jumping was launched from nothing whatsoever to a nationwide sensation just because we've had a guy who was consistently good at it.
Fun fact: if I met Jason Momoa on the street, it would never occur to me he's anything but white. So that's another thing that might inhibit me getting certain issues.
I imagined Aragorn as blonde (if he was described somewhere in the text it slipped my attention), and reading the Earthsea cycle I didn't feel less involved by discovering Ged is dark-skinned. So now I have some, ehem, mixed feelings about, say, TLotR. Whether the looks of the characters are important to get in the mood of the story. You know, that Germanic saga-meets-Christianity stuff. Certainly I grew up having a set aesthetic in mind, but that doesn't mean it would hurt me if my view was wrong. Le Guin definitely gained by going against the expectations.
Also, George R. R. Martin is pretty woke even though the obvious work of his is pretty much 85% fantasy retelling of the War of the Roses. Slavery bad, misogyny bad, be nice to each other, it doesn't matter somebody is browner than you.
For what it's worth, I had heard Sapkowski is all fine with non-white actors playing his characters in Netflix's upcoming Witcher TV series.
If you are curious, I was very much fine with how it was pulled off in the Pillars of Eternity video games. There are blacks, whites and sorta Asian-Mesoamerican, all come from their own parts of the world where they're the default, but by now they mix relatively freely and nobody is bothered much by that.
I had this weird inkling that the upsurge in period pieces around the 2010s was sort of to ignore racially inclusive casting but nowadays no matter what time period a thing is set in they tend to just ignore stuff. See also; Shonda Rhime's Star-Crossed (which was terrible but that's besides the point).
To be completely honest, when I saw
DCW's Medieval ArrowRobin Hood 2018's casting (and trailers and everything) I was really weirded out by the casting at first and then that whole movie had so many issues that it ended up being moot.Yeah I mean I think one big mistake people make is Implying They Know Everything. Like, I didn't even know Bonnie from Kim Possible was Asian until they cast Erika Tham to play her in the movie. I'd always assumed she was mixed-race (black/white).
Speaking of A Song of Ice and Fire, I heard George R.R. Martin recently release a 1,400 page world history thing instead of like... the next book.
As for fantasy examples, I know nothing about MtG but whenever I do try to look into the cards I'm surprised how diverse the characters are.
I guess we're failing to understand that every single difference of opinion on the internet is a fight to the death for the fate of the planet.
The protagonists will be in college and not High School, Ava Jalali will probably be half-Iranian/half-what Sofia Carson is, as opposed to half-Irish, and at least a few of the main girls have been replaced with a gay couple. I don't mind because oh my gosh Mackenzie's plot is still as painful and dull as it was the first time around and not even the cupcake store setting can save it*.
As you can probably tell I ended up reading about 80 pages, even though I've already read this book.
Say what you will about the quality of Sara Shepard's writing but the lady well and truly speaks to me.
*After I said this I finally went to check the changes properly and it turns out MacKenzie's terrible plot was transplanted into one of said gay guys so yaaaaaaaaaaay. A really weird change is that MacKenzie's best friend, Claire, has been transformed into Nolan's mother, which is like woah.
Also a British actor will be playing Nolan which means I'll spend all 150 episodes of this show trying to catch him out on his accent.
*It turns out even I have limits on what I find believable. Like, a fantasy universe with black people is a-okay but I'm suddenly supposed to just be okay with shuffling out the actual marginalized community of said era (aforementioned Muslims) because you want a black protagonist?
But, as dumb as this all sounds, that's all it is for goodness sakes. It's a YA book, it's not a history textbook or non-fiction opinion piece that will sway public opinion in any way. I am 100% good with ignoring it whilst it gets published... though actually I totally want to read it because it sounds ridiculously dumb.
Another book featuring slaves of every race was slammed because it features the timeless "black kid sacrifices themselves for a white person's growth" thing which is like, if these twitter people were around when The Hunger Games got published, we would literally not have that series at all.
This is an actual nightmare because fiction, by it's very nature, is irresponsible. One author's view will never ever make everybody happy, no matter how woke they are (the first book was written by a guy who literally worked in a place making sure books were woke enough before being published). I can be (a little, really) mad that some new fantasy book features people with paper-white skin and green-skinned goblins and nothing else, but I don't think I should literally be able to get the publisher to pull it from shelves by getting mad on twitter?
Also fuck Merlin.
I don't know why, perhaps it's my inner autistic raging at the "wrong" spelling and stuff.
Funnily enough none of these books seem to cross-over with YA's undying trend of fantasy settings, and only one verges into becoming a murder mystery.
I mean, at least one has the wonderful lesson of totally falling in love with the guy who violently stabbed as long as you both eventually discover you're bisexual, so that's very YA.
Fuuuuuuck.
It's, like, you know - it's as if you stood by the dean's office waiting until he's free and you can finally get him to sign some papers you need to have signed and some older, wizened professor shows up, and starts talking about some completely unrelated shit, and frankly, what he's saying is genuinely fascinating, but he talks and talks and you kinda wish he finally got to the point of his story, because it's nowhere in sight.
So that's kinda my impression. The whole story, the mindsets, conditions of life, the changes of that era, it's all there, but it's presented in what totally feels to be entirely too many words. And too erudite, by the way. A classical or poetic reference once in a while may spice up a dull text and I wouldn't mind it otherwise, but for this particular text dullness wasn't exactly the problem to begin with.
Overally: I certainly got the knowledge I came for, but I can't shake off the feeling I could have gained it through much less teeth grinding.
There are quite a few fiction titles that I think are like this, usually books set somewhere around group of people living a lavish livestyle. I have read about way too many Spanish Style Villas with what seem like unending fancy corridors.
Either that or this means Sherlock Holmes stories all kept getting cancelled.