The Capetion succession wars of 14th century, as told in The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon.
D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?
- Thread starter GobHag
- Start date
Ruin Explorer
Legend
The problem with this particular objection is that it's very, very often used in active bad faith. Not remotely suggesting you are, let me be very clear on that, but it's extremely common online. People constantly bad-faith-claiming writing is bad or clunky or inept* because it contains what they perceive as "modernistic" dialogue
This was demonstrated very able-ly by Baldur's Gate 3, where the writing and dialogue was very heavily skewered by the usual suspects (i.e. clickbait YouTubers etc.) before it came out, some going as far as to claim it was a "bestiality game for sick furries" and so on. Entire 60+ minute videos were put up about how very bad the dialogue and writing was, how "woke" and dumb it was, how it didn't fit the setting at all, and so on - based on a pretty large section of the game, too (because EA included the whole of Act 1, which is maybe 40% or more of the total "content" in BG3).
And then... the game came out.
And was a gigantic success despite these attempts to smear and condemn and claim the writing was bad/clunk/period-inappropriate/etc.
And guess what?
All this videos condemning the writing, claiming it was a "bestiality game" and so on, they vanished. A bit like tears in the rain, but more like people hastily deleting Tweets which were getting ratio'd real hard. Even though they had a huge chunk of the game to go on, and frankly dialogue and situations only get more modernistic in Act 2/3, suddenly all these people claiming the dialogue was bad and clunky and "forcing LGBT down our throats" and so on had a change of heart!
To be fair, there really are times when integration of elements like that - just like any other message or idea! - can be clunky. But they're wildly outnumbered by the situations where people are just acting in bad faith or having a Princess and the Pea moment. Avowed showed this too - a bunch of people were parroting the opinion that the game "wasted loads of time explaining pronouns". Not only is that not true (because at no point does the game "explain pronouns"), there is literally 1 (one) side-character in 1 (one) optional side-quest who is non-binary, and its just brushed past, like people call them them. I had a guy trying to argue this was hugely disruptive to the entire game, and it's like, literally 2-3 minutes of interaction (over the course of a long quest) with an NPC who is NB is "hugely disruptive" huh? PEBKAC I suspect.
* = And if you find out what writing these people like, it 100% of the time includes a lot of really junky, poorly-written-on-all-levels stuff, so they're obviously not coming at this from a literary angle in a real way.
Also, let us be entirely fair - there's a whole lot of smuttiness in "traditional" sci-fi and fantasy, but it was largely targeted at a male audience. That objections arise when the modes that are targeted at women show up seems like something we ought to think deeply about.
"No, really, I'm only in it for the literary value!" - Piers Anthony, probably never.
"No, really, I'm only in it for the literary value!" - Piers Anthony, probably never.
Well, the Sad Puppies have claimed that for over a decade. Weirdly, though, Larry Correia has had no apparent issues getting published.
RhaezDaevan
Adventurer
Wow, early depictions of Conan were...different. More clothes, less muscle.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
LoL well Coreia was right in that there is a legitimate critique to level but he is also wrong IMO. The sad puppies thing is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when I said there is a narrowing but there is also a backlash that just wants narrowing from the other direction. i am not interested in Correia these days but neither am I very interested in folks on the other side of Correia
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
You could probably get away with mentioning that C S Lewis has Christian messaging!
I would say we can safely talk about these. I mean avoiding anything that might veer into current politics
But, again, the fact that Correia himself keeps getting published says otherwise. Not that either of us have to like his work, but the point is that his viewpoint has not actually been removed.
I would argue that there is no significant narrowing. Instead, there has actually been a broadening - that there are now more points of view available in the sci-fi/fantasy world than ever before.
Unfortunately, folks like Correia fall prey to one of the most common of cognitive biases - when one has been dominant in a space for a long time, the addition of peers in the space will feel like being pushed aside.
In effect, the Sad Puppies felt like they were being unjustly treated, when it is more that the field had become more broad, and they had real competition for a change.
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I think in getting older, we can find our tastes crystallizing, oftentimes towards the stuff of yore. Which, if a person wants to just read old stuff, fine. But I would say that it is a deep mistake when "I like older stuff" slides into "new books are garbage." It's okay to have preferences, but the danger becomes when a person equates their preferences as the sole signifier of quality.
Me, I like modern fantasy and I like old fantasy. I'll happily read Lord Dunsany and N.K. Jemisin. Romantic Fantasy isn't entirely my thing, but I've enjoyed some of it.
Just so. On the one hand, it's cool that the barriers to publishing a book have lessened. On the other hand, it has created its own set of problems.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
Bad faith is why I have the one year rule. I started doing this after the Last Jedi came out because the conversation got so heated on both sides, and both sides seemed to be reacting to the other rather than the film. It was like a proxy battleground. Now I have said in the other thread on star wars, I think it didn't work as the middle movie in a trilogy and it made some bad choices (for example taking the wind out of a great villain like Hux, in order to make a point and get a laugh). But I did enjoy the movie on its own. And I didn't share a lot of the criticisms other people had about it. The reason for that was I waited something like 6 months to a year to watch it. And none of the emotions around the conversation about it were strong in my mind at that time. I loved Rose Tico for example, I thought Kelly Marie Tran was great and, while I understood people not liking the movie and critiquing the film, I didn't like people going after her for simply taking the role she was offered. More recently, I watched the Jodie Whitaker years of Dr. Who (and the 60th Anniversary David Tennant Special). Prior to that I had only seen her first year of the show. I am glad I waited this long because none of the conversation surrounding it was in my head when I watched it. I do think there was some heavy handed, even cringey messaging, and I do think the Chibnall era was very uneven (one criticism I agree with is the timeless child was a bad idea, but the individual episodes were often good that season). The worst of her era was actually the flux episodes. But that had nothing to do with messaging and everything to do with being surreal and confusing. The 60th Anniversary, yes that also had some heavy handed, cringey moments, but I loved seeing Tennant back in the role. I loved seeing Donna again. There were only three episodes. The first one was good, the second one, in in my opinion, was a great chamber piece (probably the best for me that seasons) and the final episode was a little uneven in places but I enjoyed it (especially the portion in the toymaker's shop). I say all this just to explain that I agree bad faith is often an issue. And I think it isn't helpful to evaluate media as a kind of battleground for bigger cultural ideas (a good movie can have ideas I don't like, it can even be heavy handed with those ideas; it can also have ideas I like but handle them poorly).
But we live in the age of bad faith. Also this I was alluding to this sort of thing in my earlier posts. It exists on all sides though. So I do think it is a mistake to think the other side has a monopoly on it. There are lots of reasons for it. Audience capture is often a big part of why this occurs IMO. Sometimes people will emerge on a platform, with an insightful criticism of new media, but that hits a certain number of boxes and suddenly before you know it, they went from being a measured critic, who evaluates each thing objectively, to being on a youtube panel just going down a list of things they never like about movies and how this latest film has exactly all those things. A lot the issue is online there is just an industry built around not liking things, whatever they are. It is very easy to win over the algorithms if you on the attack, or aggressively defending.
On Baulder's gate specifically I can't weigh in as I don't play video games. I will say people blatantly lying about content bothers me. One of the things that I didn't like was hearing from folks that a given show did X and Y and that was why the new season was bad. Then you go watch it, and yes perhaps teh season is bad, but the thing they described was completely innacraute and obviously heard third or fourth hand. I always like to see things first hand myself so I can be the judge
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