[In Defense of Escapism]

I recently came across an essay by Katherine Addison, defending the value of fantasy as a genre and escapism in general, and I think it's relevant to MMORPGs (and RPGs in general) as well:

"The denigration of 'escapism' comes from an implicit belief that it is brave and necessary and heroic to face 'reality,' where 'reality' is grim and dark and nihilistic ('solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,' as that tremendous pessimist Thomas Hobbes puts it), and that if you turn away from that 'reality,' you are a deserter and therefore a coward. 

There are a number of fallacies here. One is the claim to the exclusive right to define 'reality.' Second, if this is an accurate definition of 'reality,' it is a fallacy to believe that it is even possible to desert from the front lines by anything short of suicide. Even if your consumption of fiction takes you away from 'reality' for an hour or two, you’re always going to have to come back. Clearly, if we accept this definition of 'reality,' 'escapism' can only be the most tremendous blessing fiction has to offer."

Read the rest here.

[This is the Deal With Twilight...]

I posted a random one-off question a long time ago asking why the heck these mediocre books are so popular. And I think Cleolinda has hit the nail on the head:

"I started thinking about romance myself, and I think I've figured it out: the key component of romance is tenderness. Because something can be totally sexyhot without tenderness; it's tenderness that creates the "romantic" atmosphere, the one that a lot of guys tend to turn their noses up at--because tenderness requires you to be vulnerable, to open yourself up and say, I want you, I need you, I am incredibly blessed to even be touching you right now. (Maybe that's where the honesty comes in after all.)

So if you buy your girlfriend a dozen roses at the supermarket and toss them at her on Valentine's Day all, "LOOK, here you are, now SHUT UP until next year," you are doing it so very, very wrong, and she probably feels it. It's not about hearts and flowers and chocolates and money spent, and in fact all that ephemera is a convenient way to dodge actual tenderness, because you can feel like you've done something without putting any real feeling into it. And Twilight? Is all about the freakin' tenderness. It's larded with tenderness; feeling drips off the pages and oozes from the film stock and romantics eat it up and then turn around and line up for more. I mean, that slow dance at the end of the first movie, he is crying while they're eyesexing, for God's sake. That's like--the emotional equivalent of--I don't even have an adequate pornographic metaphor for that."

So yeah, the books are failures on a literary level... but it's not the story that the fans love so obsessively. It goes a lot deeper than that. Which actually makes me disappointed that a story that celebrates so many dysfunctional and dangerous relationship aspects has managed to hit this nerve that so many women have.

[The 'Original' Fairy Tales]

BBC's 'In Our Time' podcast has recently done a show talking about The Brothers Grimm and how fairy tales originally were told, before Disney and modern culture sterilized the 'grim' out of them:

"Cinderella does not have a Fairy Godmother, Sleeping Beauty does not have an evil stepmother, Rapunzel is pregnant and Frog Princes do not get kissed but thrown against walls.

This is the world of the Brothers Grimm – two German siblings who in 1812 published a collection of fairy tales including Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel. They may not be the fairy tales as we know them, but without the Brothers Grimm we might not know them at all.

But why did two respectable German linguists go chasing after fairy stories, what do the stories tell us about German culture and nationalism at the time and why do these ever-evolving tales of horror, wonder and fantasy continue to hold us in thrall?"

Check it out. =)

[Culture and Fantasy]

The vast majority of fantasy is Eurocentric, almost universally told through the lens of European culture and mythos, with 'other' cultures used only as 'exotic flavor' or appropriated as foils for the main characters, not as fully fleshed voices of their own. How does this fact affect young fantasy readers from other cultures, and their ability to write their own fantasy stories from their own mythologies? Deepa D. describes her own experiences trying to create a fantasy novels from her own Indian perspective, and how difficult it is for people who try to break out of the Western-dominated fantasy formula:

When I was around thirteen years old, I tried to write a fantasy novel. It was going to be an epic adventure with a cross-dressing princess on the run, a snarky hero, and dragons. I got stuck when I had to figure out what they would do after they left the city. Logically, there would be a tavern.

But there were no taverns in India. Write what you know is a rule that didn’t really need to be told to me; after having spent my entire life reading books in English about people named Peter and Sally, I wanted to write about the place I lived in, even if I didn’t have a whole bookcase of Indian fantasy world-building to steal from. And I couldn’t get past the lack of taverns. Even now, I have spent a number of years trying to figure out how cross-dressing disguise would work in a pre-Islamic India where the women went bare-breasted. When I considered including a dragon at the end of a story, I had to map out their route to the Himalayas, because dragons can be a part of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition—they do not figure in Hindu mythology.

There are far more eloquent writers who have pointed out how difficult it is to growing up reading books (and watching movies) about a culture alien to you, and how pernicious the influences thereof can be. I am lucky in that Indian culture is more widely represented in Western media than other colonised regions—when I talk about Bollywood in the yuletide chat room, there are people who have an idea about what I might be referring to, bastardised ideas of ‘pundit’ and ‘caste system’ and ‘karma’ and ‘reincarnation’ are present in the English vocabulary. Yet still, my ability to connect fannishly with people from different parts of the world is mediated through the coloniser’s language and representation. Enid Blyton, with her hideous caricatures of African tribal boys helping the intrepid British children is read from Johannesburg to Jaipur—Iktomi stories are not.

These imbalances of power are what frustrate me in several discussions regarding issues of representation and diversity in writing that I’ve seen recently.

The rest of the thought-provoking essay is here.

I think the true potential of Fantasy as a genre is rather stunted by the fact that Tolkein's worldbuilding conventions are used almost universally, while there is no similar work for non-European mythologies to use as a foundation. This results in the genre being dominated by only one style of culture, which tends to treat and view anything from outside as 'alien' or 'other', rather than those views ever being used as stories in and of themselves.

[What's the Deal With Twilight?]

  My personal feelings about this series' popularity are summed up in this comic and in the hilarious book reviews by Cleolinda.

  I mean, vampire romances are legion. There are lots of far better written stories out there with characters that are not TSTL (too stupid to live) abusive, shallow, and mary sue-ish. Yet, just like with Eragon, magazines went ga-ga over it (calling it the next Harry Potter? Seriously?!) and it's fans squee over it's mediocrity with frightening intensity.

  Is it just because its fans have never read a good paranormal romance, or are that many people's idea of 'romance' really that screwed up? If Edward wasn't a vampire, would the reactions even be so intense? Because if you remove all the paranormal trappings (and rainbow glitter) the relationships in these books are just plain dysfunctional, and only get worse as the series goes on.

  In an environment where there are so many better paranormal romantic books out there as alternatives, why is Twilight singled out at the one most worthy of all this praise? I just can't understand it.

Extra: A fun podcast about fandom in general, Twilight, relationships, feminism, and a slew of other things. =)

[I'm Colorblind; I See Everyone as White]

This essay on race in Legend of Earthsea is really amazing. Being white myself, I never ever thought about any of those things or how they might affect someone else. It's a real eye-opener.

It also makes the mini-series and anime of the books, where everyone is cast as white, really kind of embarassing.