Today's links

[hawkwing_lb]

Rod Rees' The Shadow Wars (The Demi-Monde: Spring in the UK) arrived in ARC form a little while ago. Well, I started reading it for review, and tweeted a few egregiously awful quotes, and the (in)famous Requires Hate got in on the act...

The Storify of the Untethered Breasts:

"Odette gave a wiggle and was pleased to see that her untethered breast jiggled in a quite charming fashion."

Someone passed on a link to the cover of the latest Kindle magazine: Rape In Wonderland.


WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

Ronan Wills discusses Hounded by Kevin Hearne, and his view on the banality of urban fantasy.

Nerds of A Feather discusses grim/dark iterations in fantasy:

[W]hat's the purpose of all the violence and cruelty in the art we consume, and specifically in fantasy fiction? When is it acceptable and when is it not?

A certain author turns up in the comments to defend his precious, as is becoming tediously de rigueur in his case, and diametrically opposed to the response of Joe Abercrombie to criticism as quoted in the post. (I have Important Thoughts, natch, on violence and fantasy, but they'll keep.)

(No, really, they'll have to keep. I've reached my procrastination limit for today.)


And! If you've made it this far, you deserve some reward. Stylist Turns Ancient Hair Debate On Its Head:

By day, Janet Stephens is a hairdresser at a Baltimore salon, trimming bobs and wispy bangs. By night she dwells in a different world. At home in her basement, with a mannequin head, she meticulously re-creates the hairstyles of ancient Rome and Greece.

Ms. Stephens is a hairdo archaeologist.

Her amateur scholarship is sticking a pin in the long-held assumptions among historians about the complicated, gravity-defying styles of ancient times. Basically, she has set out to prove that the ancients probably weren't wearing wigs after all.

And a Dutch television show enlists two men to undergo simulated labour contractions.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The more I see of Joe Abercrombie on the internet, the more impressed I am; he comes across as a smart writer with specific things in mind that are worth doing, that appear to be very much not to my taste. And it's nice to see Use of Weapons cited as something using violence and grimness to a purpose, as that is a book I admire. I've not read Richard Morgan's fantasy, having already read enough of his science fiction to find the global grimdark there samey and ultimately boring; am I missing anything ?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I think Morgan's fantasy, both of them together, is perhaps one of the most interesting deconstructions of epic narrative qua epic narrative that I've ever read. It is at times incredibly problematic, but the deconstruction - unusually for this kind of work - works on a structural level.

I'd have to reread to go into deeper specifics. It may or may not be to your tastes - I'd call the odds on 50-50, perhaps 60-40 in favour, so I wouldn't be entirely comfortable recommending it as something you would like - but I think he's doing interesting deconstruction, myself, particularly the second book.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

One thing that the grim/dark fantasy article kind of glosses over (though you don't in response to rysmiel) is the degree to which the grimdark trend of the last decade or so is a deconstructive response to the more straightforward (and often problematic) epic fantasies of the '80s and '90s and before. Whether this is true on an individual author level is basically irrelevant, because even if the likes of Mr. Lawrence haven't read any of prior art in their subgenre, one can be certain that at least some of the agents, editors, and other publishing professionals involved in acquiring and selling their book are aware of it.

(There's also the argument that a fair number of the authors producing work in said sub-category grew up reading the likes of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns or the wave of imitators that followed them, in much the same way that the popularity of Vampire: the Masquerade, LARPing, and other World of Darkness stuff in the '90s probably played a role in the rise of Urban Fantasy. Even people who insist vocally that they are totally original dammit tend to absorb influences from the zeitgeist in one way or another.)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I am all for deconstruction. The problem I find, personally, with most of the darker end of the epic, is that the actual deconstruction gets lost in the gore and torture and doom and disposable women. While it may deconstruct the Hero's Journey, it upholds - and occasionally doubles down on - elements in fantasy I find more personally repellent.

Morgan, at least, whatever the extremes he takes his darkness too, is constructing his narrative in such a way that what he's in dialogue with (and deconstructing) is not only visible, but prominent. And so far, at least, he hasn't gone in for disposable women, one squicky off-screen-gangrape-of-a-villain aside.

Editors and publishers are have to be aware of prior art. But I agree with you that even people who insist on their special unique snowflakeness are most likely influenced in ways they can't or don't want to recognise by other art.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

hmmm

It seems to be that this may be big issue with all these special, original snowflakes. That, by not being properly aware of their influences, the deconstruction they are engaging in is shallow and aimless. Which leads to even more problematic books. Whereas the writers who are doing this purposely have more interesting things to say, and are more willing to listen to criticism and improve.

And I think it's related to the urban fantasy (and YA) issue we were talking about yesterday - prompted by the other link. A lot of what is going on in urban fantasy, especially sex wise, reminds me of the same thing that romance went through in the late 70's and '80s. The romance books of that time often included a very specific type of rape scene that essentially served to give women who had mixed feelings about sex and sexual freedom permission to enjoy light erotica. But while this is clearly why they were so popular, it wasn't exactly deliberate - so the scenes and overall story lines were extremely problematic.

I've always seen Laurell K Hamilton's work as an extension of this - only with regards to kink and multiple partners, rather that just sex in general. Same with Twilight, which has always felt to me as much of a reaction to the impossible demands we place on teen girls, with regards to sex and love, in addition to perpetuating them.

Which is why crits of these books and genres that aren't nuanced annoy me. It's not that these books don't deserve a smack down. But the underlying problem of why these books are popular includes the fact the conversation about these topics is not nuanced enough. So cursory criticism is only going to create more impossible and conflicting demands on the women who are fans of them, rather than highlight that tension as the central problem and working to eliminate it.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

That, by not being properly aware of their influences, the deconstruction they are engaging in is shallow and aimless. Which leads to even more problematic books. Whereas the writers who are doing this purposely have more interesting things to say, and are more willing to listen to criticism and improve.

That thing precisely, is my feeling.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I am all for deconstruction. The problem I find, personally, with most of the darker end of the epic, is that the actual deconstruction gets lost in the gore and torture and doom and disposable women. While it may deconstruct the Hero's Journey, it upholds - and occasionally doubles down on - elements in fantasy I find more personally repellent.

Oh, absolutely. I'm not arguing that the more extreme examples are good art or deconstruction, just that the backlash against grimdark often tends to ignore what motivated the move in this direction in the first place - e.g. simplistic fantasy conventions where good is good (however problematic the decisions it makes) and evil is evil (and is often color-coded for your convenience, in both armor and skin).

That said, as jennygadget notes, authors who aren't aware of their influences and predecessors are necessarily going to produce less effective deconstruction, and are prone to latching onto the aesthetic trappings of a deconstructive strategy (Moar darkness! Moar horrible grimness!) and replicate them without maintaining the critique which motivated their use in the first place.

(Personally, as I think I've said to you before, I find the constant foregrounding of rape in the darker end of the fantasy genre repellent. And though I make a point of reading in the grimdark subgenre for competitive analysis purposes, I have exactly zero interest in reading Prince of Thorns, as Last Argument of Kings was almost too much for me.)

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

hawkwing_lb have been chatting about this further eleswheres and I think one of the most relevant bits from our chat with regards to grimdark has to do with the tone of the backlash against the backlash against grimdark :p

Part of what grimdark (or, at least, it's fans) seems to do is pretend it's the only way of critiquing all this. So people responding to, for example, Tiger Beatdown's criticism of Game of Thrones keep trying to tell her that she just doesn't understand what Martin is doing, that she just doesn't understand criticism or deconstruction. When really, what she is arguing is that she doesn't think he is doing it well.

While one can certainly disagree with Tiger Beatdown (just as one can disagree with Martin's defenders), this attitude that people who think Martin's work is sexist think so because they are ignorant is just...bah!. Aside from being insulting, one of the things it does is cut grimdark off from other conversations about the flaws of epic fantasy. Which again, leads to more repetition rather than more interesting things being said.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And the "you just don't understand" line is both condescending and a manifestation of asymmetric insight bias (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/), one of the many charming ways in which our brains convince themselves that we're right to believe what we believe and that other people are wrong and foolish and don't get it.

I feel like there are certain ways in which taking a darker tone to fantasy is vital to undermining the Manichean narrative that typifies certain forms of triumphalist fantasy... assuming you want to play with a similar toolset but follow through on (some of) the consequences of violent action. That said, there are many other dimensions of fantasy that deserve to be critiqued too, and need to be addressed in different ways, many of which are in tension with the grimdark enterprise.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Naturally, I agree with you. Particularly about the aesthetic trappings.

This is me rambling, but I think a lot of the problems I find with "grimdark" as a deconstruction of the epic fantasy have to do with the fact that these deconstructions imbibe (narrowly) a philosophical view of human potential that owes entirely to much to Nietzche: the will-to-power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_Power), the dialectic of the master-slave morality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-Slave_Morality) (but one that valorises "master" morality), and a marriage of perspectivism to nihilism. Power is, if not the only virtue and only truth, the greatest one. (And individual power, at that: there are no functional communities within the grimdark subgenre, or where they are, they're deluded, or corrupt, or doomed to betrayal and destruction.)

I'm not claiming they're deliberately using Nietzche's philosophy - but the world that's portrayed in the grimdark pool does often seem to uncritically accept certain Nietzchean truths as self-evident. Which would be more interested if taken critically. *g*

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Taken critically, or examined more closely, yes.

I feel like the epic fantasy genre's central concern, historically, has been one of morals/ethics - what separates your protagonists from your antagonists, other than labels and color-coding? - and it's one thing for characters to engage in expedients and casuistry, and another for the text to act as if everything the protagonist does is okay because they're righteous/badass/sympathetic/dreamy/what have you.

Put another way, it's not healthy for a sub-genre that was (at least partly) built on challenging and undermining the ways in which previous works whitewashed the ugly realities of conflict and glossed over bad behavior to turn around and start endorsing or excusing bad behavior. One's characters might imagine that violence and treachery can solve anything, but the author (and the text!) should know better.