Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-01-19 03:59 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-01-19 03:59 pm
[ SECRET POST #2574 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2574 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 063 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
Though since we share some favourite authors, I suppose that means your taste is shit tier as well, so we have that in common.
And you probably shouldn't have written "a terrible dearth of creativity" (emphasis added) which is a synonym for "famine."
Do you know what "famine" means? Evidently not. It means an acute lack of, a scarcity of, or a dearth of something, not its utter and absolute non-existence (helpful, perhaps: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dearth). If there were "no" food in a famine, as opposed to a scarcity of food, no one would survive it. And "scarcity" is exactly what I meant. Works of a certain kind are in the majority, so works of a different kind are scarce.
But you don't really need me to explain that to you. You know what I was saying. You also know perfectly well that I'm correct, and what I described is in the majority. Which is why you're not quibbling the majority. Don't add patronizing bullshit to distortion and personal insults when you want to be taken seriously. The one "flying off the handle" with "ridiculous exaggeration and hyperbole" here is you, because you perceived my comments as an attack the genre in which you are a "specialist".
Have a nap and some calming tea, look up Sturgeon's Law, remember that we have the same terrible taste in literature, and have a nice evening.
(EDIT: usually I can rely on f!s, when I profess a distaste for something, to supply me with suggestions I might not have tried to prove me wrong. When I said anime is full of moeshit and I can't stand it anymore, I got help recommendations of non-moe anime. Same with a few genres of tv shows. This is honestly the first time I've had someone fly into a petulant, insult riddled tirade about how I "just don't get it" instead of "you're wrong, I can prove it, have some urban fantasy that isn't about a Special Young Person and the magical masquerade".
So... congratulations? You've given me no recommendations, you haven't changed my mind, and you've come off like an ass. I guess there's a first time for everything.
SON OF EDIT: If you actually do have good recs that don't involve the aforementioned tropes and are bursting with originality - and aren't the most obvious, big name authors whom I've almost certainly already read like Mieville - I would still love to have them. I'm always on the prowl for a good read, and I buy rather than download, so if there's a pet author of yours who fits that description you could make them some money if you'd like to turn this conversation into something even remotely constructive.)
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
"Just... every single work of urban fantasy I've ever read, I've ever heard of, and that's ever been recommended to me."
It's not a distortion when I'm quoting you verbatim. Nor is it a distortion to read it in light of your ridiculous crab metaphor which reasserts that you've never encountered the kind of crab in question.
And "scarcity" is exactly what I meant. Works of a certain kind are in the majority, so works of a different kind are scarce.
So, now you're backpedaling in another direction away from just "majority" back into the hyperbole of "famine/dearth/scarce." This was wrong to begin with, because, as I pointed out, medieval fantasy hasn't been the top-selling sub-genre for over a decade.
It's also not true given the flowering of multicultural and/or feminist work over the last few years providing plenty of reading material and making fantasy more diverse as a genre than it's ever been historically. That the genre is less diverse than the 1990s was an claim you explicitly made.
Which is why you're not quibbling the majority.
Of course not, because you're not really arguing "majority." You're arguing "terrible dearth" and "every single work" and now "acute scarcity." You're playing humpty dumpty with language to say that these phrases which have nothing to do with "majority" actually mean "majority" and bellyaching about "distortion" when your exaggerations are pointed out.
So... congratulations? You've given me no recommendations,...
I suggested six books and eleven authors with perhaps several dozen novels in total. I mentioned at least one additional work as the discussion developed. (Another person to read who I was remiss in failing to mention before is Karen Lord.) I also suggested three additional sources of information for what's getting published in the genre currently.
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
Taking a part of my quote, filing the end off, and using it ("I've never encountered this thing") to mean something else entirely ("this thing doesn't exist") is called "quote mining", friend. It is absolutely intellectually dishonest, and I have no idea how you're saying this with a straight face. Is this a face-saving effort? Because no one is buying it.
Nor is it a distortion to read it in light of your ridiculous crab metaphor which reasserts that you've never encountered the kind of crab in question.
Indeed! Not that the crab in question does not exist, which... means that you did understand, yet misrepresented it anyway, which is what "willful misrepresentation" means. Thank you for confirming it, I suppose. We're both on the same page, at least.
So, now you're backpedaling in another direction away from just "majority" back into the hyperbole of "famine/dearth/scarce."
Correcting your false definition of a word is "backpedaling" in the same way as repeating the same sentiment in with another phrase means "backpedaling" in the interesting alternate universe that "famine" and "dearth" mean "absolute no such thing exists" instead of "such a thing is scarce", I suppose. Or that pointing out that you've intentionally and completely distorted what I said is "bellyaching", I imagine. It must, or else this orders of magnitude more asinine than the original wrong definition.
Of course not, because you're not really arguing "majority." You're arguing "terrible dearth" and "every single work" and now "acute scarcity."
(Addendum: as per my comment below, I belatedly realize actually said "majority" even at the outset, which makes this sentence even more ridiculous than it is already. "You're not really arguing majority!" ...Okay, comrade, when I explicitly said "majority" I didn't mean majority, I meant the other things I said in addition to majority that mean the same thing as being in the opposite of a majority to apply to those things that I said were not in the majority. ...No, wait...)
"Every single work" (that I've read) which implies an "acute scarcity" (of things of the type that I have not read) as the aforementioned type are clearly in the "majority" (which you don't even deny)(oh hey, this is literally what I said in the first place, oh boy we could have saved a lot of time and typing if you read what I wrote and responded to that instead of quote mining to try to win an argument). All of these I made explicitly clear, and you are now distorting, misrepresenting, and quote mining them in some increasingly bizarre effort to... what, exactly, I'm not sure, but it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen on the internet. Lying about the definitions of words to try to defend your position when the dictionary is a click away takes a close second, though.
I suggested six books and eleven authors
You've name dropped a few authors whose works I've largely read in the interest s of telling me I have "shit taste" and "don't understand" their works or the genre. You even admit that you see the same tropes I complained about in many of these works, but you "also don't particularly care about tropes". You've yet to actually recommend a title or author, let alone tell me how it subverts the stale or repetitive tropes of the genre that I started the conversation off by saying drives me away.
But! In the interests of pretending that you have any interest in this conversation (such that it is) or spreading enjoyment of your favourite genre and not just lashing out at someone who doesn't like it with personal attacks, would you care to tell me how, say, Karen Lord's work is different? A book of hers on which to start? I have not read anything by her. What "three additional sources" do you recommend?
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
1. Fantasy is more diverse in theme and setting than it has been since the New Wave. I'd expand that to the entire century but I'm not all that familiar with early fantasy fiction.
2. That diversity is producing a sizable and growing volume of work.
You describe the glass as almost empty (barring a few drops you handwave away as vapor). I describe the glass a bit less than half-full, and getting bigger on a yearly basis.
Just as an example along one dimension, I was stunned this last year at the discovery that LGBT protagonists in SF&F are moving into the mainstream in stories without a hint of fetishization or closet politics in text or subtext. Two stories last month, one a best-selling novel (Kingdom of the Gods) and another in a leading periodical ("The Insect and the Astronomer"). I read more SF anthologies last year, but multiple stories in After and Terra Nova had this. Broken Time Blues was a fantasy anthology from a few years ago, and it had similar representation.
Both the abundance of writing about sexual diversity and the approaches to writing it in mainstream stories are revolutionary. I don't have to go looking specifically for queer representation, I'm finding it in stories I read for other reasons. And that's a big step forward from the 1990s. That's just one area where fantasy along with science fiction is diversifying in theme. I can now recommend novels to people where mental illness isn't evil mastermind crazy as another example. No, we wouldn't have had four award-winning novels with African or Afro-Caribbean settings in one year of the 1990s.
Tropes are tools and materials used to build things. So if you're disappointed at the use of 2x4s, hammers, and nails to build houses, genre fiction likely will be similarly disappointing.
I'd recommend Hopkinson's review of Lord's Best of All Possible Worlds. Unfortunately I can't find it at the moment.
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/beautiful-shape-shifter-karen-lords-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds
The thing is, though, in many other genres it's easy to find the houses that have been built using concrete and rebar, or stone, or even classically fitted wood, or were constructed by avant garde architects using completely new materials no one has used in home construction yet - to steal your metaphor. Your standard built-to-live-in cookie-cutter house will surely use nails and 2x4s, but you can absolutely expect to find better in the world of architecture - expecting the same creativity from other artists is not too high a standard, in my opinion, at all. There's no reason - from a literary perspective - not to have a Special Old Person or Middle Aged Person or to have magic exist openly, it's just that opposite is easier and it's what's been done before. Hell one of the things about Jemisin's upcoming The Fifth Season is that the protagonist is going to be a middle aged woman.
Thank you for this, though. I will check out Lord's work, and try to keep an eye out for more original modern fantasy. (My kingdom for a fantasy novel set in neither the ancient past/middle ages nor the present day, though.)
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
Never mind that the idea of the occult has been baked into the folklore underlying the genre for over a millenium. It'd kinda like complaining about High Fantasy for tapping into heroic sagas like Beowulf. It's not a concept to be abandoned lightly.
Alternatively the masquerade wasn't a big part of urban mythics or new weird. In the former, magic tends to be occult because humans rarely experience it, in the latter the open use of magic is part of the weirdness. I don't think Zoo City falls into either category, but magical occurrences are openly acknowledged and have a social stigma. Again using Mieville's analysis the animal familiars reify certain class stigmas of South African society. (The post-apocalyptic Galveston and Bone Dance deserve mentions here.) Then there's after-life fantasy such as Mystery of Grace or "Homecoming" which doesn't use the masquerade at all. Then there's "The Master Conjurer" where magic is taught in community colleges. Millar keeps his werewolves and elementals covert largely to explain why they are not a national security risk.
Bujold is rather famous for doing middle-aged protagonists. Shevdon's everyman-turned-fairie is introduced as a middle-aged dad. Fat Charlie always struck me as a bit closer to 40 than 20. The principle characters of Little, Big age over multiple generations of family ties.
Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy
Just... every single work of urban fantasy I've ever read, I've ever heard of, and that's ever been recommended to me.
Yeah that sounds legit! They're probably not in the overwhelming majority.
...Means I think "every single work" in the genre is that way, not that my experience implies that they are "probably" in the overwhelming "majority", implying a lack/scarcity/death of other kinds.
...No, wait, that's exactly what it means. To people who can read, anyway.
Seriously, did your dog die today or something?)