"History is written by the winners" taken to extremes

[huinare]

It's pretty typical that I'm not-exactly-intentionally running into "The Last Ringbearer," which was actually published in Russia and is apparently available as a free English translation somewhere on the interwebs, when I'm supposed to be cracking open a textbook.  (If anyone's read it, I'd love your opinions, positive or negative.)

Now this is one

Comments

[altariel]

My thoughts here:
http://altariel.livejournal.com/508963.html

[huinare]

Thanks! I appreciated the more thorough blog entry you linked to also (ETA for total lack of clarity--"Eastern European Fantasy Post-Tolkien".) And I had to laugh at your remark about Faramir.

[altariel]

Good article, isn't it? Ultimately, Last Ringbearer is a sexist so-soish thriller and, it seems, at least as much an exercise in nostalgia as the original. I won't reread, but I'd always go back to Dwim's Lie Down in the Darkness, even though it cuts your heart out to hand it back to you and do it all over again. You might also enjoy my more modest Withered Tree or even The Age of Men.

[huinare]

Thanks for the recs. Lie Down in Darkness has been on my radar for a bit. I popped over to The Age of Men; that's an interesting speculative idea, and since a monarchy is often more about "the man" than "men" the title works really well to indicate a governmental shift.

[pandemonium_213]

To be blunt, I. Was. Not. Impressed. For one, the overt transformation of bad guys to good guys and good guys to bad is a cop-out, and not in the least nuanced.

I prefer to think anyone, subjected to their own set of circumstantial and historical variables, has potential to be both "good" and "bad."

As Obelix would say, Zigackly! I'm always incredulous when I hear writers commenting that it's "easy to write villains." Uh, no. Not if one wishes to infuse humanity (as you aptly describe) into them.

The dialog can be snappy at times, overblown in others. The ornate sentence structure is very nice in parts, virtually unreadable in others, and characterization? *shrugs* I found that I didn't actually give a good goddamn about his original characters, so my attention span wandered away whistling.

[huinare]

For one, the overt transformation of bad guys to good guys and good guys to bad is a cop-out, and not in the least nuanced.

Yeah, the snippets I read would seem to bear that out.

I'm always incredulous when I hear writers commenting that it's "easy to write villains." Uh, no. Not if one wishes to infuse humanity (as you aptly describe) into them.

THIS.

I mean, it's "easy" for me in the sense that those are the characters I'm most inclined to delve into, but that's a whole different ball of wax. =D

[pandemonium_213]

OK. I read Yeskov's apologetics (the linked translation)...good god. Yes, I know it's a translation, so I'll offer some leeway here, but overall, the structure of that essay is horrid. Where the hell is the essay's thesis? Oh, wait, maybe if I dig around in 10 paragraphs I might find it. Nope...no luck. Instead, I read the writing of someone who is so in love with his own words that he has little to no regard for the reader, and worse, someone who gets bogged down in scientific pedantry, which in turn, derails the points he's trying to make in his essay.

I own the fact that I am more than capable of writing painfully self-important twaddle, but for Bauglir's sake, take me out to the back forty and shoot me if I ever indulge in an essay like that.

[huinare]

Tell me how you really feel about the essay. Don't hold back now. ;)

But yeah, it is guilty of the above accusations. When I said "interesting," I suppose I never meant to imply "coherent" or "containing a defensible thesis. I liked the discussion of plate tectonics and Ennor; am sometimes pretty easy to please.

"Where's Thesis?"--the academic's version of "Where's Waldo?" Think of it as a game and it'll hurt less..

[bunn]

Fanfic: so much of it in the eye of the beholder. There seem to be journalists whose contact with fanfic is minimal, and whose definition of fanfic is so narrow that they cannot see any work of quality or originality as bearing that label

[huinare]

I just find it interesting that, if it gets published, "is it fanfiction?" becomes a question. There definitely are a lot of grey areas as you've pointed out, but there's nothing about this book that I can see to distinguish it from the common understanding of fanfic (that is, derivative works stemming from contemporary media).

I'm no biblical scholar, but I'm given to understand that a lot of it was based on existing stories, so, yeah, one might see it as fanfic of its own time. XD I especially like the idea of people complaining that the book of Luke is essentially a fanfic ripoff of the book of Mark (or whichever came earlier...I actually used to know a bit about the history of the gospels, but I forget now).

I seem to recall reading about your Eomer quandary, and I can see why you made the decision you did.

And the term "fanfic" does have fairly negative connotations. I don't mind it within actual circles of writers, but outside of that I would just feel kinda awkward evoking that term..