High Fantasy

[truepenny]

misia is asking people to explain why they like High Fantasy. papersky has answered beautifully (and I still say that Papersky gets more out of computer games than any other ten people combined). I answered part of what Misia's asking here and here, but the big question still remains.

I have a fairly confrontational and highly critical relationship with High Fantasy (there's a very good reason my recommendations for reading were extremely limited, and I am biting my tongue very hard to keep from posting my opinions of other people's recommendations). What in the name of God's garters am I doing writing it?


Long answer: As a writer, you have to work with what you get. And what I get are fantasy ideas. Horror ideas for short stories. The occasional sf idea (although one has to apply the term "science fiction" very loosely). But mostly the stories that show up in my head involve magic or elves. No dragons yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they show up eventually.

But that begs the question of why I get those ideas. The short answer is still Fucked if I know, but it is something I've given some thought to, and I have, if not answers, then at least some suggestions and theories as to why that might be the case.

First off, my earliest exposure to stories was to fantasy. A lot of children's lit is fantasy, and some of my earliest memories are of my father reading The Wizard of Oz books to me. I was given The Hobbit for my sixth birthday and The Lord of the Rings for my ninth. I read children's and YA fantasy by the metric ton. In other words, in my formative years, my tender child-brain was saturated in the stuff.

The first crush I ever had was on Raistlin from the Dragonlance books. You can maybe imagine how embarrassing it is to admit that.

When I started writing myself, at the age of eleven, the first things I wrote were imitations, very bad ones, of David Eddings and Ursula K. Le Guin. It never occurred to me even to try and write anything other than sf/f/h until I was in grad school, when I sat down and wrote two "mainstream" stories, just to prove to myself that I could. I've never so much as shown them to anyone else, and don't really intend to. They're finished, but lifeless, because my brain insists on magic before it will engage.

I write it, and I like to read it when it's well-written (which is painfully rarely), partly I think because of the sense it provides of being in a place that is completely other. SF doesn't do that (except for the SF that's starting to swing towards fantasy itself), because SF is the future. In theory, we might get there from here. But fantasy takes place Somewhere Else. In writing, I like the freedom this gives me to invent history and play with words (I'm no Tolkien, but I understand--or perhaps, crawl within eyeshot of--where he was coming from). My fondness for it as a reader also has to do somehow with a sense of freedom--I think freedom from the constraints of realism. Realism is a very small box to cram narrative into, and I love narratives that think outside that particular box.

That's a start of an answer, anyway.

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

The first crush I ever had was on Raistlin from the Dragonlance books. You can maybe imagine how embarrassing it is to admit that.

I don't know if he was my *first* crush, but ... yes.

[libskrat]

Ewwwww! That's just... ew. Raistlin?

*scrubs brain thoroughly*

But I do remember with considerable fondness the summer-camp experience of passing the early Dragonlance novels around like candy.

[astolat]

*raises hand, joins club*

[libskrat]

And words, yes. Words are lovely things, aren't they? Somewhere in Tolkien's letters he remarks how he built Middle-Earth so as to have a place where people would talk like that. I absolutely, positively understand that right down to my toes, even though I don't manage Quenya or Sindarin myself -- because it's as true of the heroic register as it is of art-languages. (And some of misia's commenters have already remarked on that, as has papersky.)

I mean, the other day I had occasion for one of my role-playing-game characters to look someone dead level in the eye and say "Sow me the teeth of the dragon..." and there on at some length about fighters springing up from fields. You kinda had to be there, because part of the scene concerned the other person's contempt for farmers and farming clashing head-on with my character's country-girl background... but damn, slice it how you will, I don't get to talk like that in real life, and it's great!

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

A post I very heartily agree with, especially: because my brain insists on magic before it will engage. I wrote exactly one 'mainstream' short story and then realized that I really have no calling for that.

Although my first book-crush was Sparhawk.

On Limitations

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

I've written only a few pieces but almost exclusively s/m sex. Its what my imagination seems to need to get productive. I DO think of other thingsbut i can't seem to get a writing jones on for them. Deep Sigh.
On FantaSY for me its part of the ROMANSE THING which I may write sometrhing one day. An expression of the value of Life as a whole Wonderful & Dreadful

[larryhammer]

my brain insists on magic before it will engage

Until recently, I would have said the same thing — somewhat to my dismay, for with degrees in physics, you'd think I'd write a lot of science fiction. But then I wrote a YA romance novel this summer. Apparently, my brain will accept sex as a substitute for fantasy.

---L.