Disagreeing with the author

Add me to the list of people who dislike Humans Are Bastards. The idea that we have our problems, but are still capable of doing good, makes far more sense to me than "life sucks, the world sucks, you suck, end of story."

I'm in the middle of the fence on that one, but I don't think there's a trope for Many Humans Are Bastards But Many Others Are Flawed.

Yeah, my belief is that Humans Are Flawed, but 90% are Raised by Bastards and become.... Bastards. We're capable of being a lot better than that, but most don't. However, I read fiction for escapism from the real world, and I want to read about worlds where there's some hope to do something about this.

Anyway, authors I disagreed with? Well in general religious or political preaching can bother me a lot. I don't mind reading books with a worldview different from mine, as long as it's done respectfully to those who disagree, and isn't beating me over the head with it. The early Narnia books are really enjoyable. The Silver Chair is preachy and I hate the first couple chapters, but most of it is fine. The Magician's Nephew is more preachy, but I can still read most of it. Then The Last Battle came along and WTF!! Muslims are the same as Satanists? I can never reread that book.

Another is J. R. R. Tolkien. He's my favorite author, and I don't find the religious aspect of his books a problem at all*. But I disagree with his focus on royal blood and "nature" totally dominating over "nurture," so that sometimes the results bug me. However, I just have to laugh when in Morgoth's Ring he agonizes over having made Orks Always Chaotic Evil. He couldn't accept a theology in which any person is born evil, but couldn't figure out any other explanation for their universal corruption. It's just bizarre to me that the simplest explanation seemingly never occurred to him: Orks are born about as flawed as humans, and are totally messed up simply because they're raised by Orks. Plus, the ones who don't get with the program are killed by those who did.

And of course there's the Values Dissonance that results when reading very old stories, such as Classical Mythology. That's another favorite source of fiction for me, but I just have to ignore the misogyny, pro-war nonsense, depiction of the divine, and racism.

I have a hard time remembering authors I disagreed with and also dislike overall. Generally I stop reading those books and forget about them. Or read reviews and avoid picking them up in the first place.

• Forgot about Original Sin. That bugs me.

edited 30th Dec '12 7:23:50 PM by ArcadesSabboth

and

the we are three.

Not sure if the first two examples fit here because I love Orson Scott Cards work and what I've read of John C. Whright, it's the crap they spout on their blogs I despise. Well and Empire and it's sequel by OSC which purported to criticize both left and right but somehow forgot to criticize the right. Also while, like Card I think both left and right get some things wrong, my opinion of what each gets wrong is the reverse of his.

John Ringo's solo stuff I can overlook it's when he teams with Tom Frakkin' Kratman that I think he really goes over the Cliffs of Insanity.

edited 22nd Dec '12 11:03:27 AM by tricksterson

^ The thing with Ringo + [other author] is that it's not actually a collaboration in the traditional sense. For the most part, it's Ringo that writes the outline, and then the other author fleshes it out into an actual story. (IIRC the Prince Roger books were the reverse, Ringo writing from Weber's outlines.)

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!

My beef with Tolkien is that he could never figure out how death worked in his universe, especially human death. They way he Handwaved it as one big mystery always bothered me more than the origin of orcs did.

edited 23rd Dec '12 2:16:40 PM by shiro_okami

I've always assumed that in Ea human death and afterlives worked exactly as in [mainstream] Catholicism, and JRRT just felt it was in bad taste to spell it all out in detail in his stories, especially since nobody in-universe knows anything about it, except Manwe and Namo Mandos.

It wasn't the unexplained afterlife that bothered me, but that Tolkien never explained why elves got to be The Ageless but humans didn't, especially considering that Middle-Earth humans react to death in much the same way Real Life humans do and the elves are just as flawed as humans are.

Basically because God willed it and that was that.

Also, elves are free of Original Sin...for some reason.

edited 30th Dec '12 5:31:19 PM by CrimsonZephyr

Being ageless wasn't depicted as really being any more pleasant than being mortal. Each kind envies the other. Death started out as something good, before the Original Sin thing happened

(Original Sin is something I can't agree with JRRT about — I think there's no way to depict that concept that won't bother me on a fundamental level. I can't sit with saying "You were born bad because your great-great-great-umpteenth-grandparents messed up" or "You deserve to be punished because your great-great-great-umpteenth-grandparents did something bad." That's fundamentally unjust.)

As for why God wanted to make two species/races/subspecies that were identical in every other way except making one mortal and one not, that really wasn't explained in-universe.

edited 30th Dec '12 7:26:46 PM by ArcadesSabboth

There are so many ways the Hunger Games could have been good. By this point it's practically a hobby of mine to think of different changes that could have been made to improve them. As is, I dislike the series, but I see it as so close to being good that it's a sort of anti-miracle that it turned out as mediocre as it did.

This discussion has made me wonder just how much I'll like or dislike His Dark Materials. It's on my list of things to read eventually, but if it gets too preachy or intolerant or offensive I may have difficulty enjoying it. I have a problem with stories that declare any entire religion to be just inherently evil.

edited 30th Dec '12 7:25:59 PM by ArcadesSabboth

I don't know, I had no problem reading His Dark Materials despite being religious (and Catholic, which seems to be the main sect to be offended). Probably because when I first read them, I didn't really... get most of the religion bashing. For me, as a 12 year old, the fact that the villains in this book were a church with superficial similarities to ours meant very little. I saw the whole thing as a fantasy novel with minimal reference to our world.

edited 31st Dec '12 6:47:44 PM by LoniJay

didn't the opposite also happen to lots of folks with the narnia books? the pro-religious stuff wasn't clear until much older readings.

Actually, I don't remember Tolkien ever including Original Sin in his universe. Morgoth is mentioned to have somehow altered the first humans, but it's never explained exactly what he did, and humans were mortal before this anyways. If anything, human death in Tolkien's universe is actually the opposite of Original Sin and death in The Bible. Not to mention that some of the elves don't really seem to be "perfect beings devoid of sin" anyway, and if they were, it would mean that any bad action on the result of an elf would be the result of sociopathy.

My point exactly.

@AHR: Yeah, that happened to me. When I saw the movie they made of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the latest one - yes, it's kind of embarrassing how late I figured it out), I turned to my friend in the theatre after it was over, and said "Hey, you know what... Aslan is like, Narnia-Jesus!".

Illuvatar intended death to be a gift to Men, allowing them to be freed upon dying to go where even the Valar knew not. They have the chance to shape their own fate. Morgoth made them fear death (the Original Sin mentioned?), but death remained a gift, and not every Man feared it.

I believe the gift to Elves was that they would be his fairest children (or something like that; I haven't read the Silmarillion in ages). Why? I don't know; Eru seems to have been a git at times*

edited 1st Jan '13 5:22:29 AM by Yuanchosaan

My impression of that was Tolkien was trying to adapt the "Fall of Man" Adam and Eve Plot to his own universe and failed epically.

But humans had a fear of death and wanted to be The Ageless even before Numenor. And the kings eventually started hating the Ban of the Valar even before Sauron showed up, although those before Ar-Pharazon were smart enough not to challenge it. It's not really a good idea to dangle something that you know someone really, really wants right in front of their eyes and then tell them you can't have it.

edited 1st Jan '13 3:25:49 PM by shiro_okami

As I recall, the placement of Numenor wasn't a serious problem until human fear of death and the influence of Sauron convinced the Numenoreans to launch their ill-advised assault. While the former might have been predictable, it wasn't necessary: I could see a society by-and-large viewing their proximity to Valinor as I seem to recall it being intended, I believe: a reward, getting to be closer to the Valar than any others of humanity.

As to Numenor being a parallel for the Fall of Man, I'm not sure about that: hadn't humans already been subject to corruption by Melkor well before that? A parallel for the Fall should surely have humanity pure.

If anything, I'd call it simply the story of Atlantis - I think that I even recall reading somewhat that Tolkien had recurring dreams of a great wave crashing over an island until he sat down and wrote the Downfall.

This is probably an existing trope that I don't know the name of (or a variant of Most Writers Are Human), but a recurring problem in literature is that almost by definition, no fictional character can really be smarter, wiser, or more moral than his creator/author. The author can assert that it's so, and help us suspend our disbelief and assume that it's so, but no character's actual, explicit thoughts and words can be cleverer or wiser than the author's own capacities can make them (except, of course, unintendedly).

So although the "One" of Middle Earth is infinitely wise in theory, His portrayed actions can't really be any wiser than what the man Tolkien could come up with. It's why so many gods, supernatural beings, and immortals in fantasy literature speak in lame platitudes when they finally have to make themselves clear.

edited 4th Jan '13 12:04:46 PM by Jhimmibhob

As far as morality goes, that's usually remedied by having the standards of the setting be completely morally bankrupt, so that someone with largely normal moral fortitude comes off as being a paragon of virtue.

I think it's sort of addressed in Stylistic Suck, but I don't think we have that one specifically.

Something to bear in mind is that the only Middle-Earth books JRR Tolkien published were The Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings, and The Adventures Of Tom Bombadil. While he had plans to publish another book of Middle-Earth stories, he died before completing it.

The Silmarillion and all the books that came after are the result of Christopher Tolkien compiling his dad's notes together into books. So if stuff about Tolkien's mythology seems inconsistent, illogical, or poorly explained, it's probably because you're reading a work in-progress that the author never finished to his satisfaction.

edited 4th Jan '13 11:20:32 PM by RavenWilder

Morality isn't such a problem as the others. Most people fail to live up to their own ideals and consider other ideals impractical. Even wisdom can be balanced out as the author can look at the situation in hindsight and from any POV. Inteligence is the one that can't truly be faked.