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

[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.