Comments | athelind: "Laddie, don't you think you should... rephrase that?"

athelind

"Laddie, don't you think you should... rephrase that?"

Jun 02, 2007 18:22

Nobody quite answered the question I thought I'd asked in my last post. They answered the part about why Fantasy fans keep doing the same thing over and over, but not the part that really interested me.

So let me ask the same question, differently:

If the appeal of Fantasy over Science Fiction is really the comfort of the familiar, why do so many ( Read more... )

cliches, literary theory, rpg

Comments 20

morchades June 3 2007, 01:23:53 UTC

Cognitive Dissonance? Projection? Stupidity?

doc_mystery June 3 2007, 02:14:31 UTC

Magic.

::B::

athelind June 3 2007, 02:25:16 UTC

I've seen few if any applications of magic in a fantasy story that approach the imaginative excesses of, say, Charles Stross in his post-Singularity SF.

doc_mystery June 3 2007, 05:14:38 UTC

It's not the application of magic in a fantasy story that their fans and devotees admire. It's the *potential* that magic (or something very much like it) can break or unlock all the rigid hidden rules and constraints imposed by Reality ( ... )

dewhitton June 3 2007, 02:23:45 UTC

I don't know why, and it annoys me when people insist Fantasy is more imaginative than SF

Fantasy fans talk about world building, and how the author has to build entire civilizations to get the story to work within that framework. What I see more often is a world of our world, eg Feist's "Magician" was just North America, and Middle Earth is just Europe of the 1300s. More imaginative more of the same.

cpxbrex June 3 2007, 02:33:15 UTC

If the appeal of Fantasy over Science Fiction is really the comfort of the familiar, why do so many Fantasy fans insist that it's "more imaginative" and "less restrictive" than Science Fiction?Because they are deluded. All fiction, and certainly all genre fiction, is virtually predicated on the idea of doing the same thing over. Heck, if you go and look at what fantasy editors and agents tell you (and I have), they're actually quite honest about it. They very clearly say that the best chances a person has of getting published is to write like an established writer. They are honest in saying that fantasy audiences want to read more things like what they already like ( ... )

cpxbrex June 3 2007, 02:42:52 UTC

Note. I am slightly drunk. My thoughts in the above were not elegant, but nevertheless I think they are largely true.

(The comment has been removed)

athelind June 3 2007, 02:56:13 UTC

*Bzzzzt!*

I'm sorry, that was the question being answered in the LAST post!

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