Disagreeing with the author

Crimson Zephyr, your comment made my day. That would explain a lot about Classical Mythology. But would that approach be Stylistic Suck, or Crapsack World?

But yeah, Numenor was deliberately the Atlantis-legend, not the Fall. JRRT didn't want to be very explicit about the Fall of Man to avoid what he felt would be a "parody of Christianity." Word of God is that humans had an Original Sin, but nobody talks about it in character. There're only a few vague, un-attributed suggestions about prehistoric Satan/Morgoth-worship. It's just something you're supposed to assume after growing up in a Judeo-Christian culture... or something...

edited 17th Jan '13 10:26:03 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

Well, I think that man Pratchett (or rather, Sir Pterry) and Neil Gaiman put it best in Good Omens, "You can't go messing with people's lives and then blame them when they act like people!" People aren't good or bad: they have potential to be either (or both!). As a Christian I had no problem with Philip Pullman's first two Northern Lights books but hated the last, not because the message was bad/evil, but because it was a huge anticlimax ("The Authority" dies from being pushed into a hole - admitedly a hole in the world or something!?). David Weber might be (by his own admission) a bit of a fascist, but he can write some exciting space battles.

Provided the author realises that not everyone agrees with them, I'm prepared to try just about anything. Everyone brings their own biases to what they write. Except me, of course. I'm perfect.

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series irritates me. First, I don't think he's a very good writer. It's his rampant objectivism that takes everything up a notch of suckiness. Slaughtering peace protesters because of their "hate for moral clarity" is the height of heroism. The funny part is his snotty attitude toward his critics. But at least he's the catalyst for the Lemmings of Discord.

In regards to crapsack worlds, I find them entertaining when done well and not devoid of humor. That's why I love Joe Abercrombie. The end of his first trilogy is a gut punch, but satisfying because it feels very true to his story. It's cynical, but not quite "All Humans Suck" because most of his characters have moments of goodness...and he is brilliant with gallows humor.

Any Dirty Communist work. I have the urge to exit the theater when Ghost Protocol came up about that part. Seriously. Communism is an ideology,not some evil dragon. A person with Communism beliefs don't stab people with knives for the lulz. A person born under a Communist country does not automatically make that person a devil. However. I have made exceptions if the government in the work is obviously totalitarian. THG is like an extreme variant of the Communist government.

Black and white characterization. Those tend to become very unrealistic. Most of the time the author never told us enough reason that villain was evil or that hero was absolute good. But I do read them for guilty pleasure

Works that tried to pull a "we pay the bails and then successfully get released" because any human with normal common sense would kill the hostage after the bails are paid or have some other plans. Characters that fell for this is tremendously stupid too. Exceptions are made if the ones paying the bail are extremely powerful. With reasons.

Private vs government space exploration. My nostalgia side says "government!" while my "benefit for all" side says "private!", so I read them all to get a better view. The problem is, people on government's side make their accomplishment too grand to the point of unrealistic while people on private industries' side tend to rain anvils. Can't we all co-exist? It's too late in real life, but not in fiction. Isn't there a better way to present this debate than "Jupiter landing by one of these two parties"?

The Northen Lights books are pretty much the counterpart of the Narnia books. Kids should read both, I think.

Am I a good man or a bad man?

This was basically my experience. I was really interested in The Multiverse aspect and the setting was intriguing, but partway through book two the author tracts that had previously been at a tolerable level started overtaking everything I'd been enjoying about it. ("Look, I've developed a vehicle that makes me omnipotent with science! Now let's go kill God, because the being everyone thinks is all-loving and all-powerful is actually evil and pretty pathetic, with the help of the Dust, which is all-loving and all-powerful.")

...which, actually, is why I don't think they're comparable to Narnia. The allegory in Narnia gets heavy-handed at times, but I don't think it ever broke the story in order to do it.

(To be honest, it kind of put me off of reading Good Omens or Small Gods any time in the near future, even though I trust Pratchett and Gaiman to handle these kinds of topics sensibly. <_< )

edited 28th Apr '13 5:38:55 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Private vs. government space travel. I'm on the side of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts. ~w~

That's absolutely the right spirit.

^^Good Omens doesn't deal with religion as a theme in the same way. It's certainly about the trappings, but other than stressing the ineffability of God in a delightful way, it doesn't seriously look at the issue.

Small Gods (and Nation, both of which I recommend) does look deeply at religion as a theme, but its criticisms are directedly largely at the corruption of religious institutions, and it's handled very sensitively.

"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - Bocaj

That is enheartening. (And I know Good Omens is dedicated to GK Chesterton, which cannot be a bad sign under any light!) And again, I'm pretty confident in Pratchett's abilities; it's not that I have a rational concern that it will be terrible so much as that the previous experiences of feeling very frustrated by one book dampens my motivation to seek out superficially-similar works. :P

...incidentally, I can use Chesterton to re-rail this discussion, because the only thing of his that I've read that I've disliked - or at least had difficulties liking - is The Flying Inn, wherein the plot meanders about in an entertaining but haphazard fashion, until in the climax the villain of the piece gives a seminar on what his motivations are, and carefully explains that he's come to see himself as a fatalistic transhumanist beyond good and evil and it's all thanks to the Muslims.

It was... very bizarre.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I really like Small Gods and don't find it to be insulting to religious belief.

I haven't read it yet, but I noticed on the page for Unseen Academicals that Pratchett gives this line to Lord Vetinari:

"One day I was a young boy... when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. Even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued... As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and the pink roes spilled out much to the delight of the baby otters. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

I'm not sure whether I should take this as Vetinari being an Author Avatar, and the character has some history of making Straw Nihilist pronouncements, but I kind of suspect this is a statement of Pratchett's viewpoint on concept of a benevolent supreme being.

Speaking of Pratchett, I've always been rubbed the wrong way by this weird view of violence that he seems to have- often celebrating the injures inflicted by a Combat Pragmatist character (often but not always Vimes) and this seemingly related idea of viewing traditional/thoughtlessly done violence/evil as superior to rational evil/evil done by a Well-Intentioned Extremist.

One weird example related to both of these is that while Pratchett opposes torture done by a Torture Technician, the books also present in a fairly positive light Police Brutality and beating up enemy prisoners of war in revenge for the deaths of fellow soldiers.

Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki

Do you know, I've never thought about that... but it's true. That is odd.

To be fair, most of the 'thoughtless violence' that's being celebrated comes in the form of a joke.

Be not afraid...

True. I'm also thinking though of the Old Count in Carpe Jugulum versus the younger Magpyres, Wolfgang's ancestors as compared with him in The First Elephant, and to an extent Granny versus Lilly Weatherwax (with the difference there that Granny was forced to become good). Also, although not quite the same thing, Guards Guards has a dragon which eats people because of its nature disapproving of people who bring it sacrifices as part of their scheming.

I don't necessarily have a "unified theory of Pratchett", but there seems to be this general pattern where a "traditional evil" is treated as morally superior to a "modernized evil".

I don't know necessarily if there is a direct link with the treatment of combat pragmatism, but I thought their might be (one more direct instance of this is how Vimes, a huge proponent of fighting dirty, disapproves of Inigo Skinner carrying concealed weapons).

Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki

That last one is simply an extension of his very British attitude towards gun control (and concealed carry laws) I think, which comes across very clearly in Men At Arms. Fighting dirty with hand weapons on the other hand is a beloved English tradition (see: Millwall Brick).

edited 29th Apr '13 10:05:20 PM by MrShine

Small Gods was a good read, but I honestly prefer the way religion is handled in Carpe Jugulum. All too often Pratchett settles for having his religious characters be pompous twits — so much so that I sometimes wondered if the man had never met any good religious people — but the way Mightily Oats is handled is much better than usual.

I was not fond of a bit in I Shall Wear Midnight where Tiffany is portrayed as being justly suspicious of a (innocent) Omnian pastor simply because he's a pastor. It was altogether too much like people being suspicious of Tiffany simply because she's a witch, yet one was good and the other was bad.

Constable Visit is a pretty nice guy.

Yeah, Mightily Oats really resonated with me. He was pretty cool.

Be not afraid...

Doesn't that make sense, though? It isn't witches who burn pastors, after all.

And it isn't pastors who eat children or make wolves think they're human. That was my problem. The book tries to present any suspicion against witches as unreasonable and petty. "Everybody knows" that witches curse people and eat children, that's what allows the Cunning Man to succeed.

But it's okay to harbor suspicion against a pastor, because "everyone knows" pastors burn witches.

It wouldn't be quite so jarring if we hadn't seen bad witches in previous books. People have a good reason to fear witches (and wizards!), just as Tiffany has good reasons to be afraid of pastors. But Tiffany's suspicion/prejudice is alright — or at least not condemned — while the ordinary folks' suspicion/prejudice is bad and stupid.

It doesn't break the story — it's not nearly big enough for that — but it was a bit out of place in a book that was otherwise largely about the evils of prejudice and paranoia.