Scale creep

Well first, let's talk about Twitter. I got sick of forums a long, long time ago. I burned out on Facebook twice in the time since I first signed up for it. But man, I love Twitter. It's a constant news source, and it's a place of inspiration both for book ideas and for blog topics.

Which brings me to today's topic, inspired by a Twitter talk: scale creep in fantasy. No, not scale creep like the phenomena in wargaming where a 25mm product slowly grows to become 28-30mm just because the artist is trying to make his statues "more epic." But this is a similar problem, in that lots of fantasy writers these days don't know how to tell a little fantasy. They all need to make every story "just a little more epic." At this point epic is losing meaning because every story is supposedly epic. But many of them just look desperate for attention.

The inspiration moment for this came when some of us got in a conversation about an article where a male writer was saying "Fantasy sure has made a lot of social progress lately! We'll even let woman and colored folk share the spotlight with us now!" Setting aside the fact that even this opinion is debatable, we started talking on Twitter and pointing out how fantasy has made very slight progress, but that it continues to be mostly about white male heroes saving the world. A friend of mine complained, "I'd like to see a woman of color save the world!"

And it hit me that I don't want to see anyone save the world. This is a deluded fantasy cliché whose time has come and gone. It may still be popular with the mass market, but it's peddling a garbage ideal that isn't possible, even in a fantasy setting. To accomplish such a feat, a writer has to create the biggest plot holes to let his people escape through, or develop the worst plot devices to keep their train wrecks running. I cannot stress this enough: a small army of misfits cannot save the world, not even with magic powers.

I'm going to say something even more offensive: I think writers who peddle this shit only do it to earn a paycheck. They can claim otherwise and pretend they're really doing something artistic. But when your epic fantasy looks like every other epic fantasy, maybe you should admit that you're an "artist" in the same sense that the guy who sells his paint by numbers prints is an artist.

I'm sick of the mainstream and the moral majority dictating the direction of our artistic development. I'm even more sick of the idea that a minority of hypermoral people can save the world and not somehow end up becoming the next oppressive evil. After all, that's how life works in our world. Some general of a rebel army fights hard enough to build an army, and eventually he gets the backing of the enemy of his enemy. Then when he wins and overthrows the old dictator, he oppresses his people and becomes a dictator within 6 months. And even if you turn a blind eye to his bad behavior to narrate the story of his uprising, he is still only "saving" one country. So, do you see how saving the world MIGHT be a li'l unrealistic? Maybe?

And you never see the heroes turns into the dicks in fantasy. The new boss isn't the same as the old boss in fantasy. Even though the heroes brutal behavior clearly speaks to a future dictatorship. How can it not when everyone in the allied group believes that might makes right?

The other problem is, with so many stories focusing only on the big picture of saving the world, we never have time to read or think on the little problems. Aside from the main character, everyone else is a toss off in plot or character development. People show up as needed, and then they give little reasons to validate their quest. ("Evil dude killed my mother, ate my dog, AND dated my big sister!") Just, can you try a little harder to earn your paycheck? Please?

I've written exactly one traditional fantasy story, and it was about a black "teen" (Elf adolescence lasts longer than their actual teen years) trying to adjust to life in an alien "green" culture against the backdrop of a werekin hunt. At no point does the world become threatened by a great evil. Oh, there IS a great evil in the story. And there is a conflict to resolve. I didn't get ultra radical trying to tell the story. I just backed down the scale and tried to write something besides "white guy saves the world."

BUT, I am a transsexual bisexual. Of course being a minority writer, I'm going to excel at writing something from a minority perspective. What would be even better is if a white male fantasy author wrote a story that didn't read like a white male writer's work. Because to me, that would show that the writer had made the effort to do some research and educate themselves before they started writing.

But the problem is, many of the white male fantasy writers are so busy patting themselves on the backs for being open-minded, they can't hear comments about their closed eyes. Despite this, I still hold out hope that one day I'll find an epic four-book fantasy quadrilogy that doesn't end with "one white man will save the WORLD." Again.