Why is fantasy literature taken less seriously then other genres?
I never understood this.
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Why is fantasy literature taken less seriously then other genres? I never understood this.
Why is fantasy literature taken less seriously then other genres?
I never understood this.
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It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
I honestly have no idea
Dragons are cringe.
NO!
Oui
FRICK YOU
They could be better.
i don't think they are bad themselves but rather that they're overused to a point that if the genre is a fantasy then there's always a dragon, and the overusing is what makes them uninteresting
Somebody post the anon's fiction of fricking dragons.
it has the largest overlap with children's books
but all genre fiction isn't taken seriously at a certain level
>think it’s the genre with the most creative freedom where the author lets his imagination fly and create unique worlds and explore concepts
>actually it’s the most generic an de formulaic genre that overused stale tropes
It wasn't always this way. Did Tolkein really kill fantasy?
No, fantasy writers and readers did 🙂
Don’t think that’s only the case with fantasy, anything you can plaster ‘YA’ over will creatively suffer for sales.
I don't know the term for it but there's basically a cultural ideology where adulthood/maturity = being dead inside/no fun. People take fiction overall less seriously and I think it has to do with imagination and people not taking recreation or play as a serious part of adult life. I feel that it's heavily weaved into that fabric, like the concept that being an adult is clothes with no color, an unfeeling all knowing authority figure, with a life purpose of work and productivity. Whatever that all is called seems to be tied to this distain for fantasy and ultimately fiction vs nonfiction.
It has nothing to do with fun. You can have fun without drinking sewage, and most fantasy fiction isn't even fun, it's very tired and formulaic like
said. As for fiction vs nonfiction, that's the eternal american being tricked into thinking that consuming non-fiction = productivity, which obviously isn't true because self enrichment has nothing to with "productivity" (which is just a secularized form of protestantism) and the greatest works of fiction are more enriching than most non-fiction books.
>which obviously isn't true because self enrichment has nothing to with "productivity" (which is just a secularized form of protestantism) and the greatest works of fiction are more enriching than most non-fiction books.
Gene Wolfe had the classic response for that
And it was…
Fantasy is usually empty and serves no purpose beyond entertainment. SF has consistently at least tried to comment on philosophical or scientific ideas, even if it does have its fair sure of shallow trope filled entries.
Pseuds.
You gays have been asking this question for a hundred years, with coping and seething from types like Gene Wolfe, and yet you still are not taken even slightly more seriously. Pathetic really.
Tolkien deserves to be taken seriously.
That's mainly it.
takaisinmallinnus
Degar
I couldn't give less of a shit if people take fantasy or anything else I enjoy seriously.
Cuz we're not evaluation the abstract possibilities of the genre, we're evaluating what it is. Most fantasy is dumb shit for fedora tippers with, at best, functional prose.
At least with scifi, the writers are exploring interesting ideas instead of "world building".
there's a theory that people like stories because stories carry information that can give you an edge.
like grandpa telling the story about how they killed the cave bear. or how he fooled an attacking tribe
so, the closer your story is to the real world, the more useful the information will be
knowing how to kill a vampire isn't very useful in the real world. knowing how to deal with a schoolyard bully can be helpful
Sounds like an extremely moronic theory.
In short, liberal Academics.
Because some people want to pretend they are intelligent and better than others, so they trash fantasy because it is not a one to one recreation of the modern world.
The entirety of Fantasy itself isn't trashed.
The thing is, Fantasy has a very high ceiling to the point that if you don't meet that ceiling, then it's a failure.
But on the other hand, once you do meet or even exceed that ceiling, you'll be vastly rewarded, to be immortalized among human history.
Fantasy has the capability to be timeless. The writer's job is to fulfill that capability, to exercise it.
Done correctly, and Fantasy can literally form and shape cultures (most notable: The Bible) – stories are the only art form that can do that.
Tolkien explains why fantasy should be taken seriously in his essays. He also explains that fantasy requires great effort (elvish craft he says). So it's expected that most of it will be trash because no one puts in as much effort like Tolkien did.
>Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
>For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.
>Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief.
>Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. Of all faces those of our familiares are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. This triteness is really the penalty of “appropriation”: the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/12/05/j-r-r-tolkien-on-fairy-stories/
Tolkien's work is extremely derivative and boring to read.
The best book explore the human condition. There is no reason to add pages and pages of autistic descriptions of magic systems to achieve that. Most fantasy elements just distract from what high literature should be.
>High literature
You're a homosexual.
projection
ANON STOP I WILL CRY
In other words, the “best” books lecture you about social issues and liberals nitpick over them.
Books about how people engage with the world as individuals don't need to be connected with social issues, even acclaimed fantasy like Gormenghast has incredibly shallow characters and boring style compared with any "classics" from any period, because all the stupid bullshit gets in the way
I think to some extent you’re right but I also that’s also why non-fantasy lit is so crappy today. Meanwhile, fantasy is more popular than ever and contains hidden gems.
Because of the target audience, duh.
what was Mr. Tumnus' rape policy?
>Why is fantasy literature taken less seriously then other genres?
Because outside of Tolkien, no one ever wrote something of worth.
Probably as some sort of cope from academia.
At their core they are just roided up fairly tales.
Sure there are exceptions, but most of fantasy stories don’t really dabble in philosophy like SF does, they are more for conveying a message than exploring it.
That isn’t inherently wrong, I personally really love fantasy novels for that since I’ve got the taste of a sea pickle.
The same reason romance is taken less seriously than other genres. Most of it is rather formulaic and treads down known paths for an audience that never demands anything more than that. That audience itself doesn't exactly have a reputation of a club of brainiacs, either. Come to think of it, Twilight was literally fantasy and romance overlapping. Fantasy is a lot like military science fiction and similar guilty pleasure aspects of that genre. Except with fantasy, that's pretty much the entire genre.
Let's be honest, there are only two kinds of book genres (in regards to non serious reading), which are worth reading:
>scientific textbooks (on a university level)
>Epic/High Fantasy (which can have science-fiction in it, but the core should still be about epic/high fantasy)
It's that simple. If you say that you "don't care about fantasy", then just read scientific textbooks. That's the whole point of fantasy, to show you a world which doesn't require a ten thousand page justification of logic. In fact fantasy is exactly what you need in your life, because why even live if your whole life is literally just experiencing logic? In the end we all die anyway and while religion is a way to cope with life, religion is still a statement that is considered true. Fantasy on the other hand straight up says "yes, everything is a lie or at least not true, BUT you will see something which you would never be able to see with logic and religion".
The best part about epic fantasy is that it allows an insane amount of freedom. You want a love story? A political story? An economical story? A combination of logic, magic, and other interesting stuff?
That's why high fantasy is so awesome. It allows to show you something impossible without the need of establishing it as possible.
For example if you read a romance novel, you are restricted to the real world logic. On the other hand romance in a fantasy world is only restricted by your imagination.
The biggest problem with fantasy is simply that you know it's not true. A lot of people, especially modern zoomers, don't understand the nuances of communication. For those people fantasy is nearly impossible to enjoy, because they just say "why bother? It's not real anyway."
The last problem is simply that most epic fantasy is still very weak. For example TLotR feels more like a real world story where humans and locations were slightly changes and rebranded as new races. Most fantasy books feel more like fiction with little imagination and rather just a cheap repainting of our world.
>(in regards to non serious reading)
Your opinion has been successfully disregarded.