Wild Unicorn Herd

N. K. Jemisin looks at a fellow fantasy author’s rather Extruded Fantasy Product™ definition of epic fantasy (comprising a series of books; a quest story; a sympathetic hero with a  supporting cast of buddies; a Big Baddie; and a lot of walking around great journey), briefly discusses her favourite unconventional epic fantasies, and offers up an alternate set of criteria:

a) Scale. Needs to cover The Fate Of A Nation at minimum. (Better if it’s The Fate Of All Existence.) I’m not even sure a single nation is enough; I’d much prefer to see it be the fate of at least a couple of nations, if not an economic bloc. I also think this should include several groups of people banding together, note — not necessarily multiple races, though that does illustrate the scale nicely; it can just be city folks and country folks of the same nation, though, or the closely-related-peoples of neighboring nations. They may not all be directly involved in the story, but they’ll all be affected if things go pear-shaped.

b) Epic is as epic does, or did. Basically, I think a modern epic fantasy needs to show some respect to the epics of myth and lore. This can be a journey or quest, as Johnson suggests — but it can also be a series of deeds, a la the Twelve Labors of Hercules or Coyote’s many trials and triumphs; or a series of buddy stories a la Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Doesn’t have to be directly related to myth, but it should have the feel of a myth; I, the reader, should be able to imagine future generations of this world reading about or listening breathlessly while a storyteller relates the saga.

c) Must involve a massive challenge, Nigh Impossible even, which if completed will change the world in some way. That challenge can take the form of a villain, Dark Lord, whatever — but it can also be the difficulty of the task itself. Quests work, but they’re not the only sort of difficult task I had in mind. Since I’ve got a book to shill too, I’ll say here that I think the central challenge of the Inheritance Trilogy is… huh. Spoiler patch needed (highlight to view). …repairing the rift between the Three, which triggered the apocalyptic Gods’ War two thousand years before the series started. This is a uniquely personal task — basically requiring epic marriage counseling — but it’s still a task that’s nearly Herculean in its difficulty. The people who take it on, over the course of the trilogy, have definitely got their work cut out for them. And I almost feel like there has to be a moment when the protagonists contemplate the difficulty of their task and are wigged out by it, at least briefly. The “one does not simply walk into Mordor!” moment.

d) Span. In addition to a vast physical scale, I think the story, or the story’s roots, need to cover a long span of time. The old epics had this because they were usually part of an ongoing narrative about the gods, the creation of the world, etc. While the immediate tale might not cover that long of a time — Lord of the Rings was what, a few months altogether? — the story’s origins should derive from waybackwhen. The One Ring didn’t just become a problem when Gandalf threw it into the fire; it was a problem from the time Sauron forged it thousands of years before.

e) A showdown. The climax must involve the protagonist(s) facing down their challenge in some singular scene — the kind of scene where, in a movie, you’d be hearing the swelling crescendo of music that means “Aww, yeah! This is it!” Or boss battle music, in a video game. Doesn’t actually have to involve a fight, IMO; confrontations can take many forms. (e.g. Frodo’s struggle against himself at Mount Doom.) But it needs to be a moment when the protagonist shows his or her mettle, and genuinely might fail.

Guestblogger David Brothers tackles cultural appropriation, cultural fusion, and the crossover between black and Japanese pop culture.

Most of the traditionally nerd stuff I’m into, stuff that gets pushed on so-called “geek” blogs, wasn’t nerdy when I was growing up. Comic books and video games? Everybody read those, and everybody practiced so that they could jump the bridge in Contra or figured out money plays in Tecmo Football so they could show off. Normal black people, not nerds or geeks, were the ones who put me onto comics, video games, and, yes, even anime. I’ve spoken to a gang of black people my age who got put onto anime early, whether it was Akira, Fist of the North Star, Speed Racer, or Ninja Scroll. It’s normal.

You can look at the Wu-Tang Clan and see this at work. They’ve blended Hong Kong cinema and black culture and created something that feels natural and interesting. It’s not an attempt to steal the culture, though the Wu have definitely used that mythology and made it their own. It’s more of an appreciation and a natural evolution.

abbyjean:

Scarcely mentioned, however, is the effect that “Twilight” has had on the tiny Quileute Nation, situated on a postage stamp of a reservation, just one square mile, in remote La Push, Wash.

To millions of “Twilight” fans, the Quileute are Indians whose (fictional) ancient treaty transforms young males of the tribe into vampire-fighting wolves. To the nearly 700 remaining Quileute Indians, “Twilight” is the reason they are suddenly drawing extraordinary attention from the outside — while they themselves remain largely excluded from the vampire series’ vast commercial empire.

Just last month, MSN.com issued an apology to the Quileute for intruding on its territory while videotaping a “Twilight” virtual tour in September. MSN.com sought permission from the Chamber of Commerce in nearby Forks, Wash., but didn’t pay the same courtesy to the Quileute. The video team trespassed onto a reservation cemetery and taped Quileute graves, including those of esteemed tribal leaders. These images were then set to macabre music and, in November, posted on MSN.com. The tribe quickly persuaded MSN.com to remove the Quileute images. The Quileute’s Web site tells visitors about the tribal laws that govern Quileute territory. One of these laws specifies that burial grounds and religious ceremonies are “sacred and not to be entered.” Had MSN acknowledged the tribe as a sovereign government, it might not have broken that rule. The Quileute believe that respect for Indian tribal sovereignty could likewise bridge cultural gaps between other Indian communities and outsiders.

Yet the tribe has received no payment for this commercial activity. Meanwhile, half of Quileute families still live in poverty. It’s important to point out that the outside uses of the Quileute name, from the “Twilight” books to the tattoo jewelry, are quite likely legal. American intellectual property laws, except in very specific circumstances, do not protect indigenous peoples’ collective cultural property.

Undoubtedly, the Quileute, whose remote reservation leaves them with few options for economic development, would also welcome “Twilight”-based profit-sharing arrangements or other opportunities to capitalize on the phenomenon. They struggle to maintain adequate tribal housing and to support their tribal school, Elder Center and tribal court, all of which are integral to ensuring that their culture continues for future generations.

This is the first time I have “reblogged” something. Eeek! Am I doing it right?

If there’s one RaceFail ‘09 post I should link here (because that all went down a while ago and produced a torrent of amazing, angry, thoughtful, incisive writing that is all hugely relevant and I don’t even know where to start) it’d be Deepa D.’s “I Didn’t Dream of Dragons”, on being an Indian reader in a world of white, Western writing.

When I was around thirteen years old, I tried to write a fantasy novel. It was going to be an epic adventure with a cross-dressing princess on the run, a snarky hero, and dragons. I got stuck when I had to figure out what they would do after they left the city. Logically, there would be a tavern.

But there were no taverns in India. Write what you know is a rule that didn’t really need to be told to me; after having spent my entire life reading books in English about people named Peter and Sally, I wanted to write about the place I lived in, even if I didn’t have a whole bookcase of Indian fantasy world-building to steal from. And I couldn’t get past the lack of taverns. Even now, I have spent a number of years trying to figure out how cross-dressing disguise would work in a pre-Islamic India where the women went bare-breasted. When I considered including a dragon at the end of a story, I had to map out their route to the Himalayas, because dragons can be a part of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition—they do not figure in Hindu mythology.

There are far more eloquent writers who have pointed out how difficult it is to growing up reading books (and watching movies) about a culture alien to you, and how pernicious the influences thereof can be. […]

But then how do nerds of color like me fit in, and how do we deal with fellow nerds who don’t want to talk about things like race and class in comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies? I’ll be the first to admit, I got into all of that stuff for the escapism it allowed. It was invaluable to me, as a refugee from a war growing up in an economically poor urban area, to fantasize that I was someone else, somewhere else. I’d rather be a paladin with a war horse riding to battle a chimera than be the Vietnamese ghetto refugee nerd running from the dudes on my block who tried to jump me on my way to and from CUHCC clinic to get my teeth cleaned.

However, there was a discomfort about some of my own internalized issues. I always chose to ignore the weird feeling I got when I realized that, in my dreams, I was always, literally, a white knight. When I dreamt I was a superhero, I was a white dude with superpowers and the Mary Jane to my Peter Parker was always white. Even though I had a nagging feeling about it, I thought I was justified in my dreams because, hey, none of King Arthur’s knights were Asian and therefore my dreams wouldn’t be real if I dreamt otherwise. And I never really cared for the Oriental Adventures rule book for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. […]

None of this was easy for me personally, because I had to confront my own internalized racism. There was a part of me that said, no, don’t ask these questions. It’d be easier to just go with the flow. Don’t rock the boat. No one cares about this stuff. Do you really want to challenge yourself about how you want to be white? You’re a man of color from Phillips – are you really ready to out yourself as a self-hating nerd?

And you’d think that fellow nerds, regardless of race and gender, would understand given that our status as freaks and geeks and outcasts would give us some humility and common ground to stand on. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. Try bringing up issues of race, class, gender, and homophobia on a video game message board and see the vitriolic response you get, no matter how diplomatic you try to be.

Bao Phi discusses some really central subjects here: nerd of colour awakening; pushback from the wider, whiter nerd community; and dealing with liking problematic media. Read the whole thing.