Let us begin with contextualization. I watched Atlantis late Saturday night with a roommate who had never seen it before. This needed to be rectified. As we were finding it on Netflix, I commented that most people I know have never seen it, or only saw it once a long time ago. And, as we watched, we realized that it is one of the best geek movies of our time.
So, with no further ado, the reasons:
1. Joss Whedon worked on the story. That would be Joss Whedon, of Buffy, Firefly, and Avengers fame. He worked on the story. Which may be why the film kind of resembles an animated, underground Firefly. All the Whedon trademarks are there:the brilliant writing, the fantastic ensemble cast, the thrilling heroics...and the somewhat convoluted plot, though this one isn't as bad, probably because it's really a kid's movie.
Also, this:
The Shepherd's Journal from Atlantis
Shepherd Book from Firefly
Get it? Shepherd book?
(I am far too amused by this)
2. The movie is a overflowing fountain of nerd joy. Yes, beyond the Whedon connection. The linguist who developed the Atlantean language in the movie also invented Klingon and Vulcan. Leonard Nimoy is the voice of the king of Atlantis. Although I personally have not seen this movie, I have been told Atlantis shares some plot points with Stargate. I'll leave that to my readers to verify.
3. It, along with Disney's Treasure Planet, is steampunk. Well-done steampunk, with all the awesome that comes with it. Great big machines, subterranean landscapes with monsters and enormous sculptures, adventure, exploration, a culture with a language and customs at the center of the earth...everything Jules Verne-approved for maximum wish fulfillment. The story's style mimics the popular stories of the time the movie is set in (1914), which is kind of awesome, if you think about it.
4. For a Disney movie, it gets dark. It deals with some serious matter, like loss of culture and genocide (you know, for kids!). This adds matter to the story, which causes real thought and real feelings about the story and characters. This movie also is not afraid to kill characters off (see reason #1, above).
5. My favorite reason: Milo Thatch is basically, as my roommate put it, "skinny Steve" from Captain America. Let me explain. The moment in Captain America where Steve Rogers jumps on the dummy grenade as every other soldier runs for cover is the moment when you see that the reason Rogers is a hero has nothing to do with physical strength and combat ability. Here's the scene, below:
What's impressive about Milo in Atlantis is that he, too, is a hero for reasons beyond the physical. Atlantis goes further than Captain America, though, as Milo never gets good at fighting. Even at the end, Milo succeeds by dodging a lot and by being clever. I love this, because it breaks tradition and doesn't break character.
Milo gets to go on this awesome adventure because of his intellectual skills, but I want to make something clear: in the climax and the build-up, Milo is most heroic when standing for what is right. He goes after the villain because "it's the right thing" after convincing the other members of the team that what they're doing is wrong. He has a moral code and he never wavers from it. Ever. And that's super admirable for any character in any movie. It's his integrity that wins him friends to help him and gives him the grit to go into mortal danger to save the girl and the day, not really his intelligence and certainly not his physical skills.
So there. Awesome writer, awesome setting and plot, geekness all over the place, and a hero that is impressive not for amazing skills but for an unyielding belief in doing the right thing.So go watch it. Atlantis is waiting.
This is a short post. I got shown this video on YA novels, and I had to share it. So that's all today, just this video. Will be back next week with a new rant or review, but this week I'm working on a novel and wondering if it's sane to fangirl over one's own characters.
Yes, this is Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb. Yes, he apparently has his own web series. And yes, it is addicting. Don't judge me.
Right off the bat, I want to disclaim: I am NOT AGAINST strong female characters. After last week's post, you might not believe that. I do like weak characters, particularly when they have to get strong through the story. It seems real to me; I don't buy it when a teenager from our modern world falls into Medieval England and suddenly knows all the social customs as well as how to fight with every weapon. NO. People have to grow, and I prefer to see that. I want to read stories about people, male and female, who seem real.
Which brings me to the problem I have with strong female characters. Stop calling them "strong female characters."
Seriously. Stop it.
We don't call strong male characters "strong male characters." We call them "male characters." And I think that is a heck of a lot more freeing to a writer than feeling the need to write a strong character. It's kind of crippling to sit down and feel like you have to write a STRONG character, because there's so much baggage that comes along with that word, especially when attached to a female character. Especially nowadays, when there's so much political discussion about gender roles in books.
I think that's why all the "strong female characters" in stories now look the same: a headstrong girl caught in some kind of love trouble and somewhat gifted at physical combat. Like this one:
And this one:
And this one:
And her:
And, hey, how about one more:
Lot of bows, I've just noticed. This is Katniss, Tris, Clary, Merida, and Tauriel, in case you were wondering. Honestly, it didn't take me long to come up with this list. I could have found more. Personally, I think this profile works sometimes (Katniss and Merida), but it also fails (In my opinion, Clary is basically Bella Swan with a stele. I don't buy that she can legitimately fight better than a trained warrior because I've read the first 3 books and I've never seen her do it). When I picture Tris and Clary, I never see them fighting. I see them standing too close to a dangerous, overprotective boy.
The problem, to me, is that there is a profile. And if any character fits that profile, she's automatically considered a strong female character. Because when we say "strong," apparently what we mean is a headstrong warrior princess with men falling over themselves for her.
I dislike this because I think it discounts other kinds of strength and can cripple a character. We don't think a male character is strong if he's stubborn, capable of fighting, and chased by women. There's much more diversity, and I wish that on the female characters.
To me, a strong character, male or female, is one who understands what must be done and does it. He or she might have to sacrifice for it, but it must be done and the hero will do it. Because he/she is the hero. Everything else is characterization to make a character come alive, feel like a real person and not a gingerbread cookie.
I want to see women who are stay-at-home moms. I want to see nuns and traveling saleswomen and chefs and computer programmers who have never touched a butter knife. I want women who can't fight worth a bent arrow but will defend their loved ones to the end through words and persuasion. I want women who put aside immediate wants because they know what needs to be done. I want sensible, clever women who know when not to use their power (I've been reading a lot of Terry Prachett lately). I want men who do these things too. I want varied characters, real characters, who resonate through their humanness.
Which is why I like characters who fail. They are so much stronger for failing, accepting the consequences, and coming back to try again. Calling a character "strong" right away makes it harder to let them fail. Or even make mistakes. I don't want a formula anymore; that all I see when I go to the YA section of Barnes and Noble. Let's do something new and write characters who are strong, but maybe only after you got to know them a little.
Gosh, getting back into a rhythm is harder than I thought. Like the alliterated title for this post? You wouldn't believe how long it took me to come up with it. (Sigh) It's been a long day.
Anyway, this post is kind of a response-but-not-really to an article I read regarding the Disney movie Frozen. You know, this one:
With all the snow and stuff and the song that everyone keeps making covers of. I guess the world can't really let it go. Yes, I do think I'm clever. If I didn't I wouldn't have a blog.
The article I read was titled "The Problem With Fake Feminism (Or Why Frozen Left Me Cold)" by Dani Coleman. I didn't agree with everything she said, though I thought the logic was good and the tone wasn't abrasive, as an article on this topic could have been. May also be my personal feeling, here; she certainly didn't sound detached and objective, but I liked how many examples she used. It was thought out.
But I did agree that Frozen wasn't that feminist a movie, for the reasons Coleman listed. But I didn't care. In fact, what I liked most about the film was that Elsa and Anna aren't examples of feminism. I was excited they were majorly flawed.
I've been thinking about strong female characters a lot (and getting annoyed; stay tuned for another post on why this is) and I was glad that the case can be made that Frozen doesn't have any. Now, I call myself a feminist because I believe men and women deserve equal rights, but I don't go to a movie and look for the feminist messages. Or the Marxist. Or any political message at all. That's fine for other people, especially those who study such things for their life's work. My life's work is writing good, solid stories, so that's what I want. Granted, Frozen's story was not the strongest; the ending was a bit abrupt for me. I thought Wreck-It Ralph and Tangled had more solid plot lines.
But I liked the characters, and I liked their flaws. I like characters who have problems that dig them into holes that hurt, and they have to climb out somehow. In Frozen, Anna's impulsiveness, while not a strong trait, hurts her. It's not an outside force; it's her own dang fault. She hastily gets engaged to a man she just met, she runs off into the snowstorm in the middle of the night, she trusts her sister with dangerous consequences. And Anna suffers the consequences of her foolishness. She lives happily ever after, but there is a cost for her actions. Elsa is the same way, running from her power and living in fear, and accidentally unleashing a storm on her kingdom. Elsa's irresponsible and fearful actions cause her to harm her sister, and she does pay for that.
All the while I'm cheering Disney on. Yes, the characters are doing reactive, stupid things, but they're acting. And they're paying for their mistakes. I liked that. A lot. It's realistic; you do something foolish, you are going to face the consequences. I think Disney could have done it better, yes. I think the plot could have been smoother and this idea of choices and consequences could have been stronger. But I'm glad that Disney has characters who aren't always strong and who do foolish, impulsive things. I'm glad that the consequences come and the characters pay for what they do and yet survive them. Not all stories have to be about strong heroes. Some stories need to be told about the people who begin weak and foolish and learn their lessons, becoming stronger in the end. It makes me wonder what a Frozen 2 would be like, and then I shudder because I wouldn't advocate a sequel unless it's done well.
Also, Frozen was fun. The animation, the music...spectacular. I'd see the Broadway show.
Okay, I had to start with this. I've been away from my blog for so long, you probably wondered if I ever was coming back. Well, I'm back. And I've watched Sherlock season 3 and Doctor Who Christmas Special and many other nerdy things. Have you seen The Lego Movie? You should. And I might blog about that later.
I have a lot of ideas for future blog posts. They've been accumulating behind the dam of my procrastination and frazzled panic. Yes, part of this hiatus was purely laziness. I just couldn't get myself moving to blog again. At first it was a lack of subject matter and then it was too much. I didn't know what to talk about.
The other part was a workload known only to graduate students in their last semester, staring down the barrel of the Thesis Defense. I had a novel to complete, drafts to polish, paperwork to fill out, people to track down for signatures, readings to study, and a corner to crawl into and rock, fetal-position, as I realized I could count the hours until my defense on my fingers and toes.
(Kidding - I actually spent that time knitting and denying that anything was about to happen. I'm making a shawl with green yarn. It has leaf patterns. Next up is either Hermione's beaded bag or a 221B Backer Street wallpaper pillow. Yes, I'm a geek. Look above for further proof.)
Long story short, I passed the defense. Yay! I'm a master of fine arts, if not officially, then technically. I can finally stop feeling like an impostor in this program. So what I do to celebrate? I went to a writing conference in Seattle, where I ate oysters and didn't sleep much. Oh yeah, and learned about writing.
A few weeks ago I went to the Life, The Universe, and Everything conference in Provo, where I learned about writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror and how to make a living writing. And then I went to AWP in Seattle, where people stepped around the subject of genre or defended it and talked about how to make a living with a day job while writing your art. I don't know what to believe anymore.
I liked both. I learned a lot from both and made a lot of contacts that will be valuable to me as I continue my writing career. I actually ran into the same publisher at both places, which felt a little fate-y to me. We'll see what happens with that. I don't have the time or the mental capacity to share everything that happened at these conferences, so I'll say this: if you haven't gone to writer's conferences, go. I've learned a lot over the years by attending these conferences, and even when I don't learn anything new, the sessions tend to spark new ideas in me and polish the ideas I already have. Thinking about writing is never a bad thing, and if you can do that while learning more about your craft from smart, accomplished writers (I saw Brandon Sanderson and Orson Scott Card at LTUE, and Ursula K. LeGuin and Sherman Alexie at AWP), it's worth the registration fee. There are other ways to get in without paying a lot, but that's a subject for another day.
Now, I'm back and done with the thesis. I'm conferenced-out and want nothing more than to rest and read the books I want to read. I have lots of story ideas, and now I have the time to work on them. And the names of weird literary journals (I mean weird in the best possible way) to send them to. Of course, I also have time to write on this blog again.
I bet, after my manifesto last week, you didn't expect me to review a book that I, at least, would call YA literary fiction. Well, I that's what I'm doing. I read literary fiction. I read anything: historical, romance, fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, adventure, biographies, cookbooks...I've actually followed people because I hadn't finished reading their shirts.
I like stories about the highs and lows of human life, wherever that is. I don't like this weird postmodern push in literary fiction to write a story without a "threshold," a moment where the protagonist either chooses something or is in a situation he/she can't come back from, or an epiphany, where this moment in a protagonist's life matters for some reason. Some stories now are trying to be boring - their word, actually, not mine. They're trying to present, in beautiful language, a slice of a character's life where nothing happens. The person does and thinks what he/she always does or thinks. No change. No reason for this part of the character's life to be immortalized in fiction. I want to read things and feel like there's a point to it, not that I just spent the last hour of my life reading a piece that gave me nothing, as a reader, and felt more like the writer showing off how well he/she can write. The worst, for me, is when it's clear the writer doesn't care what the reader wants in a story. Two people create a work of fiction: the writer and the reader. I think writers have a responsibility to honor the reader with their work.
John Green, I think, does this. His writing is beautiful. Really, A+ on lovely language. The voice of his main character in The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel, is very interesting to read and sounds like a defined, real person. If nothing else, read this book to learn how to use language like a pro. Descriptions are elegantly written without exhausting words and Green manages to handle talking about kids with cancer beautifully.
That was another thing I liked about this book. It doesn't feel too cliche. I think one of the reasons I list to sci-fi/fantasy writing is because a writer can easily write about death and dying and other really weighty issues without sounding sappy or angry. The story can be about the characters more than the issue without feeling like it needs to pay homage to some overruling message. (I like messages, and I think they should be there, but I think they should be second to the story and characters.) Green, in this novel, writes a story about teens dying of cancer without making them sound like saints, like some do, and he also doesn't swing too far to the other side, describing death in the most graphic terms possible to deliberately avoid the sappy, saintly cancer story. Green does a good job showing the situation from the perspective of people who are trying to come to terms with dying young and potentially unremembered.
The book is charming because the characters feel real and their reactions to death feel real, not overly emotional or fictionalized. However, I don't think this book is perfect. The characters Hazel and Augustus don't feel like teenagers. They feel too intelligent, to philosophical, too mature to be teenagers. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I kept seeing them as young adults in my mind and didn't exactly feel the urgency of teens sick with cancer, and I didn't sense the importance of the kind of things that would be important to teens. On the other hand, I enjoyed reading the characters and thought they were interesting. I can buy two very smart teens, though it may be pushing it that these two very smart teens found each other so easily. And the romance was so smooth. It felt forced, just a little.
The thing I didn't like about the book (really, the only thing) was that I felt like a message was getting pushed on me. I've already said I don't like it when a story is all about the message, and I don't think Green is writing a philosophy on dying and remembering the dead disguised as a YA novel. However, I could take a pen and circle on the page places where I can see Green's ideas coming out. It felt in some ways like Green was using his characters, his very smart teenaged characters, to say what he wanted to say, not necessarily what they would say in the situation. It's usually gracefully done, but the story isn't as "first place" as I would have liked it to be. I think the message would come out even if these characters weren't sitting around, playing video games and talking about very deep things all the time.
I know. The characters are concerned with death and dying. They are more likely to think about matters like this than the average teen. But still. Something feels a little false in this, a little too authorial. Just a little. Green is a master composer, crafting language into music that can carry you away to the place he wants to take you. There's a lot to be said, good things, about this book. I just don't like feeling preached to by my literature.
And now I'm going to get roasted for saying something negative about this book. I know a lot of people love it, and there's a lot to love. Read it. It's good. But I don't give books Brownie Points because they are sad. Some books are terrible but end in a death that is so dripping with emotion the readers sob and think that means the novel was well-written. I don't. In fact, I've never cried reading a book. Could be a cold heart, or maybe an analytic mind. Green's book is well-written, but it didn't give me what I was looking for, not everything. So I wrote for you my honest opinion. Take it as you will. But read the book. It's good writing.
Maybe read it over Thanksgiving. Or read whatever you like. Just have a happy holiday, and eat way more than you should. It's the American way.
Recently, I've been reading The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer. Awesome book, by the way. Nancy Farmer is a spectacular writer. It's the sequel to her novel The House of the Scorpion, a science fiction set in a future time when clones are created to provide spare parts for aging drug lords. The protagonist, a clone named Matt, encounters a lot of hatred because in this world, "filthy clones" are unnatural and therefore considered worse than cockroaches. Even though he is intelligent and capable, he is considered lesser, much lesser, than human.
I'm not going to review the book now, though it is awesome and you should read it. I'm saying this because I feel like genre fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is the "filthy clone" of the literary world. It doesn't seem to matter how well-crafted, how poetic, how inspiring and full of meaning a genre text is; the common belief seems to be that the best genre fiction is worse than the average literary fiction.
This debate is not new. It has been scratching at the soft part of my neck for a long time. It just sliced deeper, though, this week, when this NYT article came out, talking about why Mormons can't seem to write good literature. And then this response, which makes some good points but still annoyed me. Why? Because both articles automatically assume that anything genre is not good literature. (I would like to point out that if you look up a list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, a significant number are genre. Depending on your list, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is there. Card is a Mormon, and a genre fiction writer.)
Some definitions: genre is any kind of fiction that has clear conventions. We're talking science fiction, fantasy, romance, action/adventure, mystery, horror, thriller, historical fiction...wow, there's not much left over for the literary genre. Literary is a genre. It has conventions too. These tend to be dense and poetic writing, a focus on character over plot, lots of character interiority, subtext and ambiguity. Personally, the literary fiction I've read also seem to include a lot of pessimism about the human condition, and nothing ever seems to get done.
As a Mormon and a genre fiction writer, I would like to make my defense. I can't speak for all Mormons, but I can speak for myself. First, I think deciding one genre is better than another is arrogance of the worst kind. It's like saying swimming is inherently better than running or cake is just always better than pie. Different skills, different requirements. Genre writing, especially speculative genres like sci-fi and fantasy, require worldbuilding far beyond the level required in literary. Literary has its own necessary skills. Do not discount genres just because they aren't what you like.
That's what it comes down to. What we like. I have been called a sell-out for writing fantasy. I've been told I'm wasting (even prostituting) my talents. No. Just no. I write fantasy because I read fantasy. It's what I like. I read literary as well, but it doesn't rock my world. I have found more meaning in fantasy than in literary and that's fine. It's my style. Others may feel differently and that's also fine. But it would be selling out if I gave up what excites me and makes me want to become a better writer for the approval of a few intellectuals. I'm not doing this for money or fame. I'm doing this for me.
That said, I think all writers have the dream of their art lasting through the ages. I think we want fame and money and eternity. Or at the very least, I think we want to get read. And the truth is, genre fiction lasts. Mythology? Genre. Fairy tales? Genre. The Odyssey and Robin Hood and King Arthur and most of Shakespeare? All genre, and they've lasted for a long time. The human condition seems to crave enchantment and adventure, and while postmodern literary is in vogue right now (it hasn't always been), genre seems to be eternal.
As a Mormon, I believe there are stories that matter more than others. I think there is truth we don't remember but can recognize when it is shown to us. The Hero's Cycle, so popular in fantasy, is one. It resembles closely, to me, the LDS Plan of Salvation. I believe we existed before we were born, and what's more, we chose to come, even knowing that life would be hard, which it is. In terms of fantasy, we were offered a quest, and we took it. To me, that means we are all, every last human, so much more than we think we are. We are brave, we are heroes. We just forgot it. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, "We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense
and rationality and practicality and positivism
only
means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that
we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy
only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget." That moment may be awful, but it is also glorious.
I refuse to write mundane matters for people who are not mundane. I won't write about people who are passive and acted upon for people who are capable of acting and changing their circumstances. I refuse to write pessimism and nihilism and stories where characters strive but nothing they do matter, and they have an epiphany that they are not important. Invoking the popular genre character the Doctor, I'd say, "I have never met anyone who wasn't important." Life is too hard to spread anything but hope.
Does my desire to write hope mean that I am sticking my fingers in my ears and singing to myself when evil and pain tries to get my attention? No. I recognize the darkness. I use it. My characters go through so much pain before they succeed in the end. I've put my characters through heartbreak, loss, rage, guilt, sorrow, physical pain, self-doubt, conflict with loved ones, etc. I make them stare into the darkness around them and inside them. Everything they might do in a literary work. I can take it to extremes because fantasy buffers the suffering, it seems. It's not real. Neither is any other kind of fiction, but still.
The difference is I don't spend much time in my characters' heads regarding their struggles. I try to show the struggle externally. A character makes a mistake that costs the life of a person he cares about. So instead of thinking about for twenty pages, he mourns for a little and then picks up a sword and goes to war. Filled with guilt, he does what he can to fix the problem he created and try, as best he can, to make up for what he'd done. His actions tell more about him than his thoughts would. My characters are ragged and weary when they finish their adventure. They don't always get what they want, but they succeed. Because that's life.
As for the belief that anyone with a happy childhood and life can't write great fiction, I say no one has had a happy childhood. Some are worse than others, yes, some much worse. But take a moment and consider what it was like to grow up. The first time you encountered death, the first time you saw your parents cry or fight or get really angry. A moment you got left somewhere or lost and thought you were abandoned. Everything is new and therefore dire to a child. Even if the home is happy, growing up is hard. Elementary school is hard, trying to learn things you're no good at. Middle school, with its cliques and bullying, is hard. High school, finding one's identity, is hard. Flannery O'Connor said, "Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." It's true. The situations may be different, but the feelings are there, and they are real. Writers can draw on the pain of being left for ten minutes at the mall just as well as they can draw on being abandoned by a parent. Pain is real for everyone regardless of circumstance. Life is hard, but we can do it. We were not set up to fail.
Yes, maybe I'm overly optimistic like my Mormon brothers and sisters in deciding to use my writing to spread hope. But if books are meant to be read, then they carry messages. And what better message than hope? Without it, what are we good for? A couple years ago, I lost my hope. The future I thought was right for me was slipping away, leaving a landscape of darkness in front of me. The possibility of having to work at Wal-Mart in a job I hated and having to live in my parents' house became real and terrifying to me. I doubted everything, my talents, my plans, my worthiness. I felt like the heavens were toying with me, and I grabbed onto my faith like driftwood in a flood.
But there is a God, and he did care. That semester I was taking a class on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and reading The Lord of the Rings. Genre fiction. But that fantasy touched me more than a realistic literary piece could. It spoke of hope. I read about Frodo and Sam walking into Mordor, literally the Dark Land, with no combat experience or hope of returning. Yet they kept going. This speech from The Two Towers film spoke directly to me:
If the story had been about a real or realistic person encountering nasty ordeals, I would have felt guilty about how much despair I felt about my own circumstances. They were not dire to anyone but me; no one would use them in fiction of any kind. But because LOTR is fantasy and I would never, could never, have to carry the One Ring to Mordor and destroy it, I felt no pressure to compare my situation to it. I just adopted the story as my own. If they could do what they did, I could also step into the darkness, hold on, and keep going in my smaller problems. So I did, and my hope came back.
Why do I write fantasy? Because it arms people. "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist.
Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the
dragons can be killed," says G.K. Chesterton.
Stories have power, and I think craft and good writing is important in helping those stories shine out. It doesn't matter what they are. I can write in the literary style, and I intend to. But my stories will have magic. And even though I will drag my characters through dirt laced with sharp rocks, even though I will smash everything they care about and make them pick up the pieces, they will triumph. Because through their pain, they will become what I want them to be.
Craft and good writing is important in any genre, and I think it is arrogance to say that one genre doesn't have it because of what it is. As a writer, I prefer writing fantasy. I intend to use all my skills in writing it, even the ones necessary for fantasy specifically. Worldbuilding, for one. Because I can do anything, I have to set rules and stick to them. If my character is about to die and I'd have to change the rules of the world to save him/her, I can't. I have to revise a lot or let the character go. It takes a lot of self-discipline and understanding what makes a good story to write good fantasy. I might not want the character to die, but it might be what the story needs.
People are going to continue to read fantasy and I feel no guilt in supplying it. It's what I want to write. I am not going to stop doing what I love just because people look down their noses at me, though I'd wish they'd stop. They'll go cross-eyed. But people deserve to have good fantasy. Well-written, with lovely language and strong craft. Characters who feel real and readers can relate to. Plots that make sense and follow their own logic. I'm getting an MFA to learn how to do this well in anything I write.
If I can, I'd like to write layers. Subtext. The best fantasies I've read are excellent stories for those looking for a good story, but they, like onions and ogres, have layers. Think Holes. Think The Lord of the Rings. Think A Wrinkle in Time. They are all good stories, but if you think that's all they are, I'd have to respectfully say you're wrong. A good fantasy allows deeper diving. Symbols. Meaning. Subtext. It doesn't have to be clear enough to articulate, but it can be clear enough to feel. That's why I think the best fantasy lasts, because it, like Shakespeare's plays, speak to many different people about many different things. It's clear enough to understand. I don't think that's a bad thing.
Sometimes confusing and obscure is just confusing and obscure. What good is something if no one can read it? It's showing off, and is good for the writer but no one else. Popular could mean bad, but I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don't try to figure out what about fantasy (and other genres) so appeals to people. It might tell us something about what it means to be human, and isn't that the goal of every kind of fiction?
This has been a long post. I'm just so sick of being told that, essentially, no matter how much I hone my craft, I will never be as good as the literary fiction writers. No. Stop it. Write your stories and let me write mine. Appreciate beauty in all its forms. And stop trying to name who of today's writers will and won't be considered great. Give it 300 years, and then let's talk.
