Rather, fantasy—along with several related subgenres not usually categorized as such—is tied to its internal ethics in a way that most other fiction is not, and the more I learn and think about the way those ethics are built up, the less comfortable I am with them. It’s not so bad while I’m actually reading—it’s easy to submerge yourself in the consequential universe of a work, unless you’re actively trying not to. But once I’ve come up from that and started working out the implications, there’s usually some quite unpleasant cognitive dissonance for me to deal with, unless the author’s good enough to have worked some of this out in the text (rare) or is deliberately subverting genre expectations (common, but lazier).
Well, working this out properly would probably take a top-level post.
To oversimplify, though, most of the common fantasy plot devices are, or at some point were, intended to be understood not only as entertainment but as statements about ethics: you can’t make your protagonist a Chosen One, for example, without implying that there’s someone or something doing the choosing, and that this is in some sense how things are supposed to work. Because of the history of the genre or plot needs or romantic attitudes toward fantasy settings, these implications can end up being rather odd.
This isn’t a new complaint, of course; every time you hear someone complaining about how (for example) orcs in Lord of the Rings can plausibly be read as stand-ins for Zulu hordes out of the British colonial zeitgeist, you’re hearing a variation on it. But readings like that are really the least of my worries. I’m more concerned with what fantasy says about agency: what interests you can ethically pursue, and how and under what circumstances you can ethically pursue them. Suffice it to say that your options within your average fantasy universe are very limited.
It’s hard to get away from this problem within the conventions of modern fantasy, although some modern writers have started playing with it in various ways. Older fantasy doesn’t always work the same way, though; Fritz Leiber’s books, for example, seem to inherit more from picaresque than fairytale conventions.
Care to elaborate on that?
Well, working this out properly would probably take a top-level post.
To oversimplify, though, most of the common fantasy plot devices are, or at some point were, intended to be understood not only as entertainment but as statements about ethics: you can’t make your protagonist a Chosen One, for example, without implying that there’s someone or something doing the choosing, and that this is in some sense how things are supposed to work. Because of the history of the genre or plot needs or romantic attitudes toward fantasy settings, these implications can end up being rather odd.
This isn’t a new complaint, of course; every time you hear someone complaining about how (for example) orcs in Lord of the Rings can plausibly be read as stand-ins for Zulu hordes out of the British colonial zeitgeist, you’re hearing a variation on it. But readings like that are really the least of my worries. I’m more concerned with what fantasy says about agency: what interests you can ethically pursue, and how and under what circumstances you can ethically pursue them. Suffice it to say that your options within your average fantasy universe are very limited.
It’s hard to get away from this problem within the conventions of modern fantasy, although some modern writers have started playing with it in various ways. Older fantasy doesn’t always work the same way, though; Fritz Leiber’s books, for example, seem to inherit more from picaresque than fairytale conventions.