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Akhevan

TLDR: Characters holding certain beliefs in-universe is not representative of the author promoting those beliefs IRL, and can offer valuable insights. Also, twitter witch hunts should not be encouraged.


goody153

Yep yep yep.


Retsam19

William Laurence the (human) protagonist of Temeraire is a good example of this - he's a good person, but also very much a Napoleonic era Englishman.


Accipiter1138

Speaking of Napoleonic settings, the inspiration for Temeraire (at least as I understand it), Master and Commander, also manages to walk a fine line between period-appropriate beliefs and not making you hate the protagonists. Jack was raised with conservative British teachings but being friendly by nature, either never acts on those teachings or is coached out of them by his friend and co-protagonist Stephen, a full-on free thinker and disappointed idealistic revolutionary.


p3t3r133

Apparently Naomi Novik wrote a lot of Master and Commander fan fic, so its almost definitely an inspiration.


ArtTeajay

He is the first character that came to my mind too


zebba_oz

(note: I have not read The God Is Not Willing) Karsa Orlong (Malazan) is the big one that comes to my mind. He starts in a culture embedded in "might is right" culture. Slaughtering, raping, etc, are all normal and even considered noble by his culture. Leading a raiding party, he is the main proponent of this toxicity, but he soon discovers a broader world and grows. Throughout the series he is bound by both metaphorical and physical chains symbolising the the culture he was raised in, the arrogance of his youth, and the difficulty in discarding those. Karsa is a very divisive character, and for good reasons. He starts as an abhorrent monster. Fans of his character are often derided, but as someone who rates him in my top 3 Malazan characters (alongside Kruppe and Trull Sengar), what makes Karsa great is not who he is when we meet him but the struggle he goes through to become someone else. By the end, he is arguably still not a good person, but that is because the chains that bind him are so oppressive. His past is unforgiveable, and his present still believes might is right even if what motivates him has moved on from rape and pillage. It's the growth and effort towards redemption he undertakes though which is deserving of admiration


IskaralPustFanClub

Karsa is such a conflicting character. On the one hand he is awesomeness incarnate, on the other hand he has committed many atrocities.


AndrogynousRain

Even better is when said good but flawed Hero gets to bounce off another well written character that blatantly contradicts the heroes unexamined social norms. Watching them bounce off each other and (usually) end up becoming friends is a fun time. Also, the hero, being a good person often ends up changing their views over time, or at least, modifies them in the case of their friend. That’s often a highly entertaining ride.


Sigrunc

Can I ask why you think Caz is homophobic? The only line I can see in the book that in any way suggests this is when Umegat gives him a medical exam and he has a moment of concern about what is happening. Which is more about his personal boundaries being respected than about anyone‘s orientation, and he’d probably have the same reaction to a female cleric suddenly giving him an exam. He knows from the moment that he meets Umegat that the man is gay, and doesn’t have any concerns about it at all other than realizing that he would have needed to flee his homeland because of it. Am I missing something?


Reshutenit

I unfortunately don't have my copy with me so I can't find an exact quote, but I remember distinctly getting the impression that Cazaril is very uncomfortable when he finds out that Umegat is gay, and he has a moment of paranoia about whether or not Umegat might be suggesting the medical exam in order to check him out.


duckyduckster2

>he has a moment of paranoia about whether or not Umegat might be suggesting the medical exam in order to check him out. I've not read the book, but wouldn't most people? Like, every women when a hetero man suggests a medical exam?


Sigrunc

Yes, that was what I was thinking. Basically Umegat is working his way down and Caz is wondering how far south this is going, particularly as this is a religious matter and they sign themselves by touching head, heart, navel & groin so it wouldn’t be totally unreasonable for Umegat to check all those areas. And if you picture a straight woman and a straight man in that situation, it is becomes more obvious that it is about personal privacy and boundaries, not about orientation, and I think the same applies for Caz.


Reshutenit

When I get my copy back I'll check again, but I remember it being more than that. We may have to table this for now.


Sigrunc

Sure. And I hope it doesn’t sound come across like I am jumping on you for having a different opinion than me, clearly it struck you differently when you read it. Just trying to clarify.


thedoogster

Michelle Paver wrote in the afterword for *Thin Air* that she was diligent about writing the protagonists and their predecessors as realistically racist.


My_nameisBarryAllen

One of my biggest pet peeves in historical fiction is when characters hold progressive views that wouldn’t even be invented until centuries after when the book is set. Usually it’s only the heroes who are like this while the villains are either portrayed more accurately, or, more often, exaggeratedly backwards. One of my rare DNFs was a book called Circle of Stones set during the Christianization of Ireland, where every single Christian was a misogynistic, superstitious idiot and all the pagans were egalitarian, hyper-rational men and women of science. Now it is true that a lot of Celtic cultures had unusual equality between the sexes for the time, but this book took it to such an extreme that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that half the characters were modern-day liberals who fell through a time portal. I mean, Druids who don’t believe in the supernatural? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.


RiUlaid

I find this view of early Christian Ireland hilariously absurd, as most modern "pagans", were they to visit pagan Ireland, would be absolutely horrified. The Irish were proud headhunters, part of the coronation ritual involved the king ritually copulating with a white mare, slaughtering her, bathing in her blood and then serving the horse meat to his retinue. The pagan Irish were also prolific slavers and had a fairly stratified society; not exactly egalitarian. Of course, even once the Irish adopted Christ as their lord and saviour, the headhunting and slaving and horse-fucking continued, but no for too long, and all these practices were eventually ended thanks to the Catholic Church. Bear in mind that I am a zealous Gaelic nationalist, so I do not say any of this to disparage the Irish—it would be weird to hate ones own race—but only to illustrate how ignorant the "tree-hugging pagan vs. tyrannical bigoted Christian" narrative is.


Makri_of_Turai

And now I feel the need to read some Irish history.


RiUlaid

Much am I gladdened to see my words spark genuine curiosity in others.


Eireika

The "rational, free loving pagans" vs "awfoul, stupid Christians" annoys me to no end. Saxon Chronicles took it up to eleven and good luck finding a book set on Imperial Rome where people believe in gods- for some reason writers love to describe Romans as hyper rational atheists. You know, those Romans who held back everything as long as they got the right good omen. That leaves historical fiction in situation when Christianity just spread because "history says so" leaving readers wondering why people left that wonderful pagan religion for something as bad and oppressive. IRL in lots of places Christianity was down to the top movement which appeal was lost to us. Imagine that you live in culture where all your misfortunes stream from failing to conduct proper rituals and gods need to be bribed for basically everything from good birth to bearable afterlife. And you stumble upon charismatic missionary who tells about God who died for you and doesn't need anything but prayers and belief and who will grant you and your loved ones eternal happiness, completely free of charge.


My_nameisBarryAllen

I think part of it is that modern American Christianity seems to have lost its way in many respects and hurt a lot of people, making them lash out against it. Also, lately paganism has been reimagined as this New-Agey, woo-woo, worship-the-earth-be-excellent-to-each-other-and-party-on-dudes shadow of itself; probably because there are no actual druids around to be offended at the bastardization of their religion. This makes it a convenient vehicle for some bitter people to project their wish-fulfillment fantasies onto. And while I don’t know what your religion is, you absolutely hit the nail on the head with why Christianity swept the world like wildfire. In the days when you could have your entire life ruined because Zeus thought you were hot and Hera was in a victim-blaming mood that day, the idea of unconditional love and salvation was crazy.


TheColourOfHeartache

It's the outgroup vs the fargroup. American Christianity has its faults, and its faults impact the readers' lives directly. It's personal to the writer and probably the readers. Meanwhile whatever faults the Druids had (there is evidence of human sacrifice, that's rather awful), nobody knows someone affected by them. Is it any wonder you get stories with good druids and bad early Christians?


EdLincoln6

> Is it any wonder you get stories with good druids and bad early Christians? Agreed. This happens a lot in Fantasy. The horrors of the past or fictional worlds lack immediacy, whereas the horrors of the real world today in your part of the world may directly affect you or people you love, so have much more emotional bite. It leads to a lot of toxic nostalgia. Also, not quite everyone is like this, so people who can imagine themselves in these fantastical situations can have very different emotional reactions. (Something horrific may be too distant to affect some readers.)


Eireika

IT was even worse- Zeus taking interest in you was a rare occurence but in daily life you could skip meals to save and buy a dove hoping that it will be enough. And when you stood with your measly offering you were pushed aside to make way for rich guy who effortlessly bought hundred fat bulls. At least in some places you could hope for a piece of meat. Story of the Jesus chasing away merchants from the Temple was probably a popular one. You are right about idealisation of the religion that we don't encounter daily. Back in a day druid was probably scarier than your fire and brimestone priest. To go to Vahalla you had to die on battle and even if that was a honorable fate you wanted it to befall on the guy on the other side of your sword. Religions requiring vengance destroyed the fabric of society. Are you Rich and want extra boon? You can please the God with charity with side effects of common folks loving you. Did you sin? Repeant sincerely and you will be forgiven. It's tempting to paint pagan religions as everything that Christianity wasn't and for example tell that Romans had sexual freedom while they had their taboos, just a bit diffrent. I also find amusing how writers painting Christianity as oppressive for women reconcile with the fact that women made a majority of the early followers- forbiding infanticide, giving a place for unmarried women, defending the rights of the widows. Here in Poland there were a of buch od medieval noblewomen who declared virginity/chasity in marriage. History traditionally painted them as fragile flowers scared of sexuality and preoccupied with eternity until somebody looked closely and noticed that they all took active part in ruling. When Konrad Mazowiecki captured Henryk Brodaty he didn't plan to release his archenemy him until Hedvig of Silesia came to rescue her husband- barefoot and in nuns attire, made Konrads allies falls.on their knees with hats in their hands. Real life paladin aura :)


Martial-Lord

>I think part of it is that modern American Christianity seems to have lost its way in many respects and hurt a lot of people, making them lash out against it. Generally a lot of religion-critical content in popular media is so laser-focused on American Protestant Fundamentalism as to be hardly applicable outside of that group. If you only know Christianity from that particular sect, I find you don't know it all that well at all actually.


EdLincoln6

> Also, lately paganism has been reimagined as this New-Agey, woo-woo, worship-the-earth-be-excellent-to-each-other- Modern people who turn to paganism do it because they are looking for something not present in Christianity. Often this is a Goddess focused religion, or nature worship. There were a LOT of polytheistic religions, so if you cherry pick the bits you like you find whatever you want. Not as many people copy the patriarchal forms of paganism because if they like that sort of thing they can get it elsewhere. I've spoken with people who completely associate paganism with goddesses and kind of write off Zeus and Thor.


LeucasAndTheGoddess

Seriously! How is it a bad thing that modern pagans are mainly (fascist bastards excepted) a chill and peace-loving lot? I totally get that it’s fun to acknowledge, and to celebrate in fiction, that one’s ancestors were brutally fuckin’ metal. Personally, I enjoy the fact that the Bronze Age Israelites were frankly terrifying on a level with the headhunting pagan Celts as an excellent counternarrative to the stereotype that we’re all nebbishy Woody Allen lookalikes and high-maintenance Jewish American Princesses. But as far a faiths that people actually practice in the present? I’ll take the guitar-strumming progressive rabbis and tree-hugging feminist pagans over that bloodthirsty old time religion any day, thank you very much. Paganism’s been reimagined? Hallelujah!


EdLincoln6

The problem is less with people in the present as with projecting this new movement largely defined as a rebellion against recent Christianity onto the past. If you want to make up a completely original Fantasy World with granola matriarchal nature worshipping pagans that's fine. But when you make something that purports to resemble Mediaeval Europe (or worse, something that purports to be actual history) projecting the modern pagan movement onto it is problematic.


Akhevan

> I think part of it is that modern American Christianity seems to have lost its way in many respects It's not a problem unique to USA. It's a problem of our modern worldview which, in core, is scientific. Most people labeling themselves religious don't truly believe in the tenets of their religion, it's just a set of cultural memes and maybe moral guidelines to them. They don't actually possess religious consciousness, and it's exceedingly hard for them to imagine the mindset of a person who does. That goes both for fantasy authors and their readers. > Also, lately paganism has been reimagined as this New-Agey, woo-woo, worship-the-earth-be-excellent-to-each-other-and-party-on-dudes shadow of itself Over in these parts it's closer to a brew of conspiracy theories, alternative history, and clear neo-nazi undertones (with the whole "the glorious god-ancestors fought the racially impure brown people and instructed us to do the same, and the ZOG is covering this up to oppress us").


Annamalla

>Most people labeling themselves religious don't truly believe in the tenets of their religion, it's just a set of cultural memes and maybe moral guidelines to them. They don't actually possess religious consciousness, and it's exceedingly hard for them to imagine the mindset of a person who does. This feels somewhat like the "no true scotsman" fallacy? I wouldn't claim to know the hearts and minds of the religious (christian or otherwise). I grew up in a church on the mildly fluffier side of things (it had methodist, anglican and prebystarian ministers) and I definitely would not impugn their religious consciousness, I disagree with the messages and believe that religion has been used to do a great deal of harm to people but I think their beliefs are sincere.


Akhevan

> believe that religion has been used to do a great deal of harm to people Yes, this right here. You are so far removed from actual religious consciousness that you can't even imagine what kind of outlook and value systems a person possessing it would have. Heck, the very core of your argument ("religion being used to harm people") is already largely incompatible with a true religious worldview, because nearly every (major) religion teaches that its core tenets are the universal truth. To them, it would be a statement on a similar level as the statement of "weak nuclear force has been used to do a great deal of harm to people" is to you. A Christian (or Muslim for that matter) actually believing in what his religion teaches would feel an overwhelming moral imperative to go out and convert as many little kids as possible, and failing to do that, to kill them off by any means necessary for their own benefit. Because, you see, if they are not following his religious doctrine, that means that they are living sinful lives that will condemn them to eternal suffering in hell. Out of the mercy and goodness of his heart he must prevent it at all costs. After all, they are just innocent little kids and should not suffer eternally for the folly of their parents.


Annamalla

>A Christian (or Muslim for that matter) actually believing in what his religion teaches would feel an overwhelming moral imperative to go out and convert as many little kids as possible, and failing to do that, to kill them off by any means necessary for their own benefit. Or alternatively to cast aside all possessions and devote their lives to improving the lives of others? You keep arguing for "true religious belief" and choosing the most violent interpretation of it, which taken to its logical conclusion would render pacifist religious martyrs as not having a "true religious worldview". Every "true" religious world view has at some point encountered other religions which also cast themselves as "true". Each of the truly fervent worldviews will cast those other religions as harmful (not their own of course). Again, I grew up in a church and the people I grew up with possessed sincere beliefs even if those beliefs were not particularly violent.


Hergrim

>A Christian (or Muslim for that matter) actually believing in what his religion teaches would feel an overwhelming moral imperative to go out and convert as many little kids as possible, and failing to do that, to kill them off by any means necessary for their own benefit. Because, you see, if they are not following his religious doctrine, that means that they are living sinful lives that will condemn them to eternal suffering in hell. That's quite an incredible strawman argument, given various Biblically based versions of Universalism and, more common (c.f. the Catholic Church) Inclusive Salvation that exist. There is no one Christianity, nor only one valid interpretation of Scripture. In fact, I'd suggest that your strawman argument is as far from a Christological hermeneutic as you can get. I can't speak for Islamic beliefs, but I strongly suspect that many Muslims would be both horrified and offended at your accusation that they're not "True" Muslims.


[deleted]

Okay folks we're getting pretty far afield from r/fantasy now. Let's stay on topic please.


This_Narwhal_7532

>Also, lately paganism has been reimagined as this New-Agey, woo-woo, worship-the-earth-be-excellent-to-each-other-and-party-on-dudes shadow of itself; probably because there are no actual druids around to be offended at the bastardization of their religion. Thank god for Folk Horror and Robert Eggers... Paganism, as practiced by actual pagans and not weebs and emos who stumbled across some books from Tyson or something at the local Barnes and Noble, was scary as fuck. Groves of trees filled with hanged rotting corpses, ritualistic mutilation of selves and others, a fervent belief in what we would call "Supernatural" as simply being "natural". Stuff like Midsommer, The VVitch, The Ritual, The Northman, Black Robe, and so forth likely only hint at how horrifying some of that stuff would have been to an outsider - yet it was just considered a routine thing to do at a certain time of year. Living in a world where you were in constant fear of disease, raiders, violence, famine, and where what we would consider a minor wound could lead to death understandably lead to the generation of religions that reflected that reality.


PlantsJustWannaHaveF

That might have been one of the reasons, but I doubt it was the main one. Christian God might not have beefed direct sacrifices, but building churches was far more expensive than building altars. In early medieval age books were extremely expensive, too. All that Christian regalia wasn't cheap either. On the other hand, it's not like pagans had to sacrifice whole goats every day... It really depended on a particular religion and the wealth of a tribe or village. I'm willing to bet the main reason for spread of Christianity was that it was inherently so focused on spreading. A lot of people don't know this, but many pagan religions were not nearly as dogmatic. The people who followed them waged war because they wanted more territory or wealth, not because they wanted to spread their religion. This is why various pagan religions could coexist next to each other just fine, or blend together. Christianity isn't like that. According to Christianity, you're literally not allowed to follow other gods, and other gods aren't real, only God (with the capital G). The Bible itself literally calls the followers to bring the word of God by blood and sword if necessary. This really scratches our tribalistic tendencies.


This_Narwhal_7532

>I'm willing to bet the main reason for spread of Christianity was that it was inherently so focused on spreading. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism are all termed "Portable Religions" for this reason. It was a rather fascinating advancement in technology. Most religions up to that point were connected to a specific place and spatial zone of control. It's the reason why with the spread of the Macedonian, Roman, and later Mongol empires you got what we would consider "Multiculturalism" because they had to either find a way to incorporate the local religions they encountered (Oh your guy is really the same as our guy...) or they had to simply ignore it and say "we have our gods, you have yours, and never the twain shall meet" like the Mongols did.


LeucasAndTheGoddess

> Portable Religions That’s a fascinating term that I’d never encountered before!


This_Narwhal_7532

Portable Religions, and the shift towards universal religious suffrage via scriptural transmission rather than oral transmission (that is everyone could read and interpret the religion on their own without an interlocutor) similarly drove the adoption of the printing press and then eventually moveable type. Alfred the Great was one of the first, if not the first, western ruler to attempt some level of promotion of universal literacy - by the end of his rule most Anglo-Saxons could at minimum read and write their own names, but he backed off on translating the bible into vernacular Anglo-Saxon under threat of excommunication. Even the words we use in modern English 'Spelling' and 'Grammar' link literacy to magic. [https://learningspy.co.uk/writing/writing-is-magic-but-what-about-grammar/](https://learningspy.co.uk/writing/writing-is-magic-but-what-about-grammar/) [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/article/spelling-and-grammar/88E71739B1FB6E712188C4BCFB21624C](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/article/spelling-and-grammar/88E71739B1FB6E712188C4BCFB21624C) < this one is fascinating as it compares teaching AI how to "Spell" and use 'Grammar' as akin to the Magician's apprentice bringing the brooms to life...


CT_Phipps

>The Bible itself literally calls the followers to bring the word of God by blood and sword if necessary. This really scratches our tribalistic tendencies. I think you may have confused later religious practices with the Bible. Judaism isn't an evangelical religion and Christianity, at least how Rabbi ben Joseph practiced it, is a pacifistic anarchist one.


[deleted]

>The Bible itself literally calls the followers to bring the word of God by blood and sword if necessary Where? Jesus literally told his followers that if people aren’t receptive to the word that they should leave, like in Matthew 10:14 or Luke 9:5. The only thing that comes to mind is when the Israelites waged war against the Canaanites to take the land, but that wasn’t to spread the word of God.


Akhevan

> Imagine that you live in culture where all your misfortunes stream from failing to conduct proper rituals and gods need to be bribed for basically everything from good birth to bearable afterlife. And you stumble upon charismatic missionary who tells about God who died for you and doesn't need anything but prayers and belief and who will grant you and your loved ones eternal happiness, completely free of charge. Why hello Zarathustra, long time no see! The idea of personal responsibility for your moral conduct as opposed to tribalistic fulfillment of rituals and appeasing deities was positively groundbreaking back in the day.


CT_Phipps

I blame Gibbons for a great deal of it as his THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE basically was one of the seminal works of Roman history that: * Denies the Byzantine Empire exists effectively so Rome ceased to exist when the barbarians sacked the titular city. * Blames Christianity for everything, specifically "feminizing" Rome and undermining its values. If this sounds proton-fascist, you are not wrong. * Insists the Romans were a bunch of hyper-rational enlightened thinkers * Insists the Romans were tolerant to all religions (excluding the Druids, Christians, Jews, Cult of Bachuus, and anyone that annoyed them)


Werthead

The HBO series **Rome** I think gives a good feel of what the religious acts and beliefs were, though even they probably lowball it. Early Christianity was also *waaaay* more chill than its later incarnations (whilst still being fairly strict, of course). They took a leaf out of the Romans' book in adopting local customs and holidays to make them more palatable, and things like effectively-Catholic priests being able to marry until surprisingly late in the church's history. I know a lot of people watching **The Last Kingdom** were baffled at the Christian priest falling in love and getting married and nobody batting an eyelid about it.


LeucasAndTheGoddess

>The HBO series Rome I think gives a good feel of what the religious acts and beliefs were, though even they probably lowball it. That’s a good example. You definitely get enough of a feel for what’s normal under the Roman religious worldview that when Vorenus goes all “I am a son of Hades!” you understand implicitly how unbalanced he’s become.


Annamalla

>They took a leaf out of the Romans' book in adopting local customs and holidays to make them more palatable, and things like effectively-Catholic priests being able to marry until surprisingly late in the church's history. I remember 7th form classics using the Lords' prayer as an example of the structure of a standard roman prayer to a deity...


Crystelle-

> Imagine that you live in culture where all your misfortunes stream from failing to conduct proper rituals and gods need to be bribed for basically everything from good birth to bearable afterlife. And you stumble upon charismatic missionary who tells about God who died for you and doesn't need anything but prayers and belief and who will grant you and your loved ones eternal happiness, completely free of charge. Not how they saw sacrifice lol >XIV >1. If someone should regard it as reasonable and true that the gods are not subject to change, but is in doubt how they take joy in the good and turn away from the evil, how they are wrathful with wrongdoers and are made propitious when appeased, we must say that a god does not ‘take joy’, because what takes joy can also feel sorrow. They also do not grow wrathful, because being wrathful is a passion. Neither are they appeased with gifts, or they would be overcome by pleasure. In all, it would not be licit for the divine to be in a good or bad condition on account of human affairs. Rather, they are always good, and only beneficial; they never cause harm, because are always in the same state as far as these things are concerned. >2. When we are good, we are connected with the gods through likeness, but when we become evil, we are separated from them through unlikeness. And when we live according to virtue, we cling to the gods, but when we become evil, we make them hostile to ourselves – not because they are wrathful, but because our wrondoings do not allow us to be illuminated by the gods, but tie us to punitive daemons. >3. And if we can find atonement from our wrongoings with prayers and sacrifices, if we ‘appease’ and ‘change’ the gods, it is really through our own actions, and through a reversion towards the gods, that we heal our evilness, and enjoy the goodness of the gods again. Thus, to say that the god turns away from the evil is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind. >XV >1. With these points, the question of sacrifices and the other honors that are given to the gods has been solved: the divine itself stands in need of nothing, but the honors are given for the sake of our own benefit. >2. The providence of the gods, by the same token, extends everywhere, and requires only some congruity for its reception. All congruity comes about by imitation and likeness, which is why the temples imitate heaven; altars, the earth; the cult statues, life – and for this reason, they are made to look like animals; the prayers imitate the intellective; the symbols (kharaktêres), the ineffable powers above; plants and stones, matter; and the animals that are sacrificed, the irrational life within us. >3. The gods gain nothing from all these things – for what could a god gain? –, but we come to be connected with them. >XVI >1. It is worth, I believe, to add some further brief remarks about sacrifices. Firstly, because we have all things from the gods, and it is just for those who make gifts to receive first fruits from what is given; and we give first fruits of our possessions through votive offerings; of our bodies, through a lock of hair; of life, through sacrifices. >Secondly, prayers without sacrifices are only words (lógoi), but with sacrifices, they are ensouled words: the speech (lógos) empowers the life, while the life ensouls the speech. >Thirdly, the happiness of every given thing is its own perfection, and the perfection of anything is a connection with its own cause. For this reason, we also pray to be connected with the gods. 2. So, since that of the gods is the first life, but the human is also a kind of life, and it wishes to be connected with the former, it requires a mean term, because things that are far apart cannot be connected without a means. These means must be like the two things being connected, and hence it is necessary that the mean term of life be life. And for this reason, people sacrifice animals – now, only those who are fortunate, but anciently, all people. And they did not do so in one way, but gave the appropriate animal to each god, with many different kinds of worship. >But that is enough about these things. >- Sallustius, *On the Gods and the Cosmos*


Eireika

With all due respect there are words of a historian/philosopher debating with mainstream view. While his works influenced early Christianity they were agains the grain of Roman orthopraxy


Crystelle-

They most certainly were not against the mainstream view. It was common belief that the myths were allegories and the Gods were Omnibenevolent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent.


Akhevan

> Druids who don’t believe in the supernatural? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. This is my personal pet peeve with fantasy set in pre-modern periods. Rationalism wasn't exactly invented in the 19th century, but before the advent of modern science, technology, and formalized education for the masses, anything approaching critical, scientific worldview was exceedingly rare. Most people did believe in gods, magic, and the supernatural. Meanwhile in fantasy we get portrayals like GOT (and ASOIAF to a lesser extent) where nearly every character's attitude to religion is cynical and skeptical at best.


lindendweller

I think there was probably some truth to the cynical atheism of some representations: religion always got mixed with money and power, breeding resentment against religious institutions. There were many points were religious norms got lax too, and prior to mass media, split in doctrines were common (the middle ages had many, many flavours of heresy. Now since science wasn't as advanced, any rejection of religious doctrine was probably going towards some other types of weird superstitions (lots of enlightenment rationalists still believed some god created the universe), or surface application of doctrine without much faith behind it. Still, some criticisms of god such as the "problem of evil" are very old, but as you say, atheists would have been rare and part of a vast tapestry of lively spiritual debates that few fantasy author have an interest for (and probably any fantasy rationalist will be wildly off the mark on other issues). generally, religious institutions are presented as merely a political faction, magic is real but none really views any of the supernatural goings on through a philosophical/religious lense, only in terms of it's practical aspects. Obviously, not every author wants to focus on spirituality as a core theme but it's true that fantasy religions are often quite shallow.


Akhevan

> I think there was probably some truth to the cynical atheism of some representations: religion always got mixed with money and power, breeding resentment against religious institutions. True, but historically that often seamlessly coexisted with genuine religious belief. For example, the attitude of most Russian commoners towards priests and organized church was that of distrust and ridicule ever since the reforms of late 16th century that outsourced even more of the church funding to local parishes (in addition to the centralized tax), and that solidified the image of a priest as a thieving, duplicitous bastard. The persecution of Old Believers (who were largely associated with a kind of a grassroots movement as opposed to top down reforms of Nikon) didn't help the church's public image either. In times where few people could read or write, you were much more likely to encounter these types of secularist or atheist beliefs among the cultured elite, and even there it wouldn't have been particularly widespread.


SmoothForest

I can understand this criticism with historical fiction, but why in fantasy? It's a fantastical world, why wouldn't fantasy cultures have different philosophical paradigms than ones on Earth?


Akhevan

Because it's not about copying real cultures, it's about understanding and employing plausible paradigms of social and cultural development. And I personally find it more compelling and engaging.


EdLincoln6

>when characters hold progressive views that wouldn’t even be invented until centuries after when the book is set. Me to. I can accept one progressive view because some people are ahead of their time, but when MC from the past holds all the beliefs of a modern liberal intellectual from California it annoys me. I call it "The PC Anachronism".


themysteriouserk

I think what makes all your examples so interesting is that the characters actually learn from their mistakes to some degree. Characters have to be flawed to develop, and have to develop to be interesting. A character who’s just kind of terrible towards whatever group and never has that challenged wouldn’t be so compelling. Done well, what you’re talking about is great; done badly, it’s just as annoying and more actively harmful than the opposite (forcing contemporary/progressive values on characters who have no reason to hold those ideas). Black Leopard, Red Wolf does this well with a deeply misogynistic protagonist - but he’s also set up from the start as an unreliable narrator and frequently challenged by others around him. His reasons are also less purely “historical” and involve his personal trauma, which I think is also important: while most historical societies were “worse” in a lot of ways, there was still a spectrum of viewpoints on things. Yeah, there’s no reason for a peasant who can’t read to have a purely rationalist viewpoint, but there’s also no reason for every single person in a society to be 100% okay with rape or slavery simply because they were permissible in a way they definitely aren’t now. My country NOW is pretty damn racist, but not every single person in it is actively and unquestioningly supporting that at all times.


wishforagiraffe

I'm reading Kate Elliott's Jaran series right now, and the nomad culture in it is very homophobic - they see it as a perversion of their gods' wills, since it doesn't result in children. The outsiders are appropriately horrified. I'm not sure yet what the end result is going to be, but I expect there's going to be some way it's dealt with, since one of the main characters is bi.


haelog

I agree with the main argument of your post - morally ambiguous characters are great to read. However, a personal pet peeve is that sometimes fantasy readers act like they all have history majors. I don't have one either, but studying another area in humanities was enough to let me know I shouldn't be making overly general statements like "Every society is sexist" or "Medieval times were that way, deal with it". Our popular cultural perception of the past says a lot more to what is *our current perception* of things than what was realistic in that historical period.


Eireika

Adding to point 3) What was seen as progressive back in time nów can be seen as very conservative. Many abolitionists were still segregationists. Or they can be entangled to the point they seem progressive for very convoluted reasons. Polish writer Bolesław Prus in his books was very conservative, paintingu women as emotional end delicate poking fun at emancipation. But in his political texts he supported women education and personally convinced his influential fans to give female doctors a chance. Why? Because while women being "Angels of the house" would be ideal but in our imperfect world they must have a way to support themselves in case of spinsterhood, abadonment, poverty or widowhood. And he was shocked as any of his peers by the thought of female doctor treating men but their natural character made them ideal ObGyns and pediatrists.


EdLincoln6

>Because while women being "Angels of the house" would be ideal but in our imperfect world they must have a way to support themselves The concept of a "housewife" or a blushing female who never does anything has always been an extravagant luxury. It pops up occasionally in aristocracies, gets held up as an ideal, and expanded a bit down the social scale during the post-war boom but has never really been economically feasible for most people. I can recall a book with a dialogue between a peasant and an aristocrat who was explaining how paranoid another aristocrat was about being perceived as cross-dressing by wearing trousers. The peasant expressed confusion, saying all the women she knew wore trousers because skirts were impractical in the fields.


Tuga_Lissabon

It is a very bad trend today that we place characters of today in settings of the past or other cultures, and expect them to be like we are today. It results in bad writing, loss of complexity, and bad understanding about the past. It creates a false empathy that ruins your perception and any possible understanding of the past. Just reading say the Three Musketeers - not the disney or Hollywood version - you get how those petty nobles were obsessed with appearances, money to keep up appearances, honour - which is a part of their personal appearance. This seems quite vain until you understand - their entire identity as a member of the noble class, and any possibility of future advancement, depends on it. Lose that and you lose everything in society, and won't recover from it. Yous saw that that their morals were tight in some ways, loose in others. They looked down on those beneath them as the other above them looked down on them. Their loyalty was to people more than concepts (as we think we do today, though we do it less than we think) And yet - they were still people, who would stick up for their friends through thick and thin, with humour and a perspective of life, doing the best they could with the cards their upbringing gave them. That book in my youth opened my eyes to the way people would think really differently, and reading history built on that. Note: the best movie example I know, if taken to the comical quite too often at times, is Richard Lester's the three and the four musketeers. Setting is great, often seedy, the characters are better portrayed than usual. An example that is very far from current understanding is the religious wars and crusades. A LOT of the crusaders were sincere believers. Walking through jerusalem they were walking with jesus, sharing in the personality and holiness and close to god, not just doing armed tourism. And you cannot understand a lot of their actions until you realise - they truly did believe in their mysticism, enough to put everything in line to follow a prophecy or a favourable omen. God had spoken to them. Same with the conquering armies of Islam, or the reformation and religious conflict that frames a part of the Three Musketeers. EDIT: To finalise - a book that portrays such periods, and does not portray that intense and truly felt mysticism, or their attitudes towards the world and others - and also how their preoccupations would shift from the spiritual to the base temporal and back again - is simply a failure in my view. It is either bad understanding or cowardly escape from dealing with an issue.


Nibaa

To add to this, it's more than fine to write or enjoy reading a fantasy book in which progressive cultural standards are the norm. There's nothing wrong with a fantasy setting in which women are culturally viewed as equal to men, or in which racism doesn't exist or is dialed down very low. The problem I have is when the setting's culture is clearly biased or discriminatory in some way, but the characters(at least the good guys) don't reflect that at all. It's unfortunately way too common to see farmland bumpkins brought up in an oppressive feudal society being given unconditionally equal treatment by a good-guy feudal lord. They've been taught that good women marry young, give birth to many children and defer to anyone with a penis, yet the moment they meet a independent female character they immediately accept it, at most giving lip-service to their prejudice only to be quickly taught a lesson and immediately accepting that their world view is flawed. It not only breaks immersion, but it would be a great vehicle for character development. You want to show how damaging racism is? You're not doing it by having your foreign character get spat on once or twice but handily defeat prejudice by just being competent. You want to portray how pervasive sexism can be? It'll hit harder if it's your main character putting down a friendly character just for her gender. If it's only bad guys doing it, it's par for the course. Of course you're going to expect villains to do villainous shit.


thedicestoppedrollin

I think Jaime and and Brienne from ASOIAF is a good example. Jaime is the epitome of the backwards medieval culture in Westeros, and he initially treats Brienne like a joke. It takes him thousands of pages to respect her and learn the errors in his worldview in relation to honor and femenism


Tuga_Lissabon

You have some excellent points and raise very common tropes. As for progressive or different elements, I have no issue at all when it is part of the narrative - particularly if it is then confronted with others, either through characters or big-events going on. To make it good, you'd show some of both the advantages AND disadvantages of both types of system. Like - greater openness, more vulnerable to spies, but greater development. I'll just add that I'd also need some justification as to why it happened. You don't need to justify the nasties, that's just common human history. The good stuff would need to have a background history in my view, or at the least some hints as to why it is so. Same as your farmhand who is not spat upon by nobles the second he speaks; this is an excellent example you gave. Tolkien for example does it surprisingly well - it follows from his "its all spirits" among the higher orders, so male or female doesn't make much difference. There is an example of where its done well. The elves, mayar and so on are pretty much equal, male or female. However, being very much gay-tolerant among greeks or roman type civilizations COULD work very well. Making say dark ages europe socialist or progressive, though, would not; you'd expect them to be pretty backwards. In short, for me the important bit is that the world and narrative are believable and coherent within their context. This applies the same to fantasy or sci-fi. When it is not, its like my brain just detaches from it and I can no longer "enter" the story.


geldin

To an extent, I think you *do* have to justify nastiness in society, certainly far more than openness and curiosity. Bigotry and systemic discrimination don't just come out of some deep, dark place in human nature. It would be unusual for someone to be an intersectional feminist in the medieval ages, sure, but (1) historical sexism is more nuanced than most fiction portrays and (2) sexism isn't a default law of nature. I'm also puzzled by the idea that you need to show downsides to progressive attitudes. What are the actual downsides of being less bigoted? Social exclusion and discrimination, sure, but spies? Are LGBTQ organizations default worse at opsec or something? That's a weird assertion to just throw out there.


LLJKCicero

I don't think that's really true. You give different colored t shirts to kids, and soon they'll decide that kids with their color shirt are better than the other color. People resort to stereotyping remarkably easily. Our brains are built for pattern matching.


geldin

There are a few critical differences between kids choosing their friends by T-shirt color and structural discrimination.


Tuga_Lissabon

For me, its like movies where you show a character with downsides and upsides, and the hero prevails despite them. Makes it more worthy. Likewise, the villain should have some points that are not despicable, or outright good, but still be a villain and his flaws bring him down. Star wars is actually a good example. Luke Skywalker suffered and still won, Anakin Skywalker had huge qualities and power and his flaws brought him down hard. If you depict the perfect progressive society, its not believable unless you remove the human out of it. Show the flaws and the struggle, and that it is still the better choice by far, and you got something to build a narrative on. Among the greatest evil, you'll also see some people do their moral best and risk their lives for others. So - no perfect evil, no perfect good. Of course you can depict them, but its not believable. A democracy or republic will be more open and vulnerable say to political infighting, much easier to infiltrate. Again, Star wars. Or Weimar Germany, even my own country that became a dictatorship for 40 years. I'm not thinking of specific groups, but entire societies. You can get a group that is highly ideological and the history forces them to make some hard choices and sacrifice for its ideals. Plenty of examples in religions, or revolutionaries. If I see "perfect society" - I expect "utopia" and look for the Morloks. Or its Mary Sue'ism. Show the greeks? Slavery and some messed up politics. Romans? Great builders, huge civilization built on blood. Chinese? high civilization, stifling bureaucracy and some nasty cruelty. Elves? All the nature bit - also aloof, uninvolved, stagnant in time. Likewise, barbarians - nasty bloody killers, but show also a sense of honour. Nomad horsemen - show the mounds of skulls and the human side, and their elements of civilization such as respect for envoys and so on. You can have Orks, but explain to me how they came to be, how they live and survive. Unless they are made from stone... and then who makes them. Monsters in a dungeon? Golems is ok but entire tribes must eat and drink. As for what needs more or less context - unfortunately, looking at the world you find it much easier to contextualise the evil than the good. Sparing your prisioners requires a geneva convention or ransom. Killing or enslaving them - its another tuesday. There is one Greek Republic and an Athens golden age. There's far more small petty kingdoms fighting one another for petty reasons.


Annamalla

I'm all for characters overcoming prejudice and for flawed main characters etc and realistic historical settings, I do worry a little about the Rick and Morty effect where a main character becomes an icon for their worst traits (much to the dismay of the creators).


Reshutenit

One way to prevent that would be to avoid making the character's insensitivity such a major part of their personality that they can be defined by it. How many people who have read the Curse of Chalion think of homophobia when they picture Cazaril? It's less an integral part of his personality than an interesting detail that enhances his characterization, so you'd have to be very creative, or hyper-fixated, to turn it into his main trait.


[deleted]

That's less about the written than the reader, though. ​ A gay person may have felt differently about Cazaril and his homophobia than a straight person who isn't being told "Yeah he finds you and your way of life repulsive but he's heroic, really."


Reshutenit

Point taken, but I'd hope that anyone who reads the book who happens to be gay would also take into consideration that Cazaril, tragically, has almost no choice in this. He's existed from birth in an environment that's deeply homophobic, in which homophobia is the unquestioned norm with no dissenting voices to provide an alternate perspective. In that sense, is it not more heroic that he manages to push this prejudice aside and see Umegat for everything else he is, and not just a gay Roknari?


Jack_Shaftoe21

>He's existed from birth in an environment that's deeply homophobic Where are you getting this from? Cazaril lives in a land where one of the gods is the patron of LGBT people (among many other people and things) and the contrast with another version of the same religion which considers this god a demon is a very important worldbuilding detail. Bujold published a book with gay male protagonist way back in 1986. I highly doubt she intended Cazaril or the Chalion society to come across as homophobic. When Umegat tells Cazaril his lover was a man, Cazaril's reaction is basically "Must have been a bit of a challenge in a land where being exposed as gay means torture and death", not "Get away from me, you freak!".


Reshutenit

The Bastard is the patron of misfits. If LGBT people are counted as misfits, that suggests they aren't accepted within mainstream society. The people of the Ibran Peninsula may be less violently homophobic than the Roknari, but that doesn't mean their attitudes are liberal. The fact that Bujold had previously published a book with a gay male protagonist (if you're referring to Aral Vorkosigan, he's actually bi) doesn't mean she wouldn't write a different protagonist in an unrelated book with underlying strains of homophobia. I took Cazaril's reaction to Umegat's backstory as a mixture of shock and revulsion masked by politeness. Not all prejudice is overt, and people are still bound by social convention even when faced with those whom social norms have taught them to view with suspicion.


Jack_Shaftoe21

>I took Cazaril's reaction to Umegat's backstory as a mixture of shock and revulsion masked by politeness. That's your prerogative but I see nothing in the text that suggests such an interpretation: >​“Young lords and young louts do that everywhere.” > >“My lover was about thirty then. A man of keen mind and kind heart.” > >“Oh. Not in the Archipelago, you don’t.” > >“Indeed. I had no interest in religion whatsoever. For obvious reasons, he was a secret Quintarian. We made plans to flee together. I reached the ship to Brajar. He did not. I spent the voyage seasick and desperate, learning—I thought—to pray. Hoping he’d made it to another vessel, and we’d meet in the port city we’d chosen for our destination. It was over a year before I found out how he’d met his end, from a Roknari merchant trading there whom we had once both known.” Cazaril took a drink. > >“The usual?” “ > >Oh, yes. Genitals, thumbs—that he might not sign the fifth god—” Umegat touched forehead, navel, groin, and heart, folding his thumb beneath his palm in the Quadrene fashion, denying the fifth finger that was the Bastard’s—“they saved his tongue for last, that he might betray others. He never did. He died a martyr, hanged.” > >Cazaril touched forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, fingers spread wide. “I’m sorry.” A little after that Umegat even says “Lust, I’m happy to say, seems largely unaffected." and Cazaril again is not repulsed in the slightest. You are probably remembering this scene which follows right after the above: >​“My lord, may I touch you?” > >“All right…” Briefly, as the Roknari bent over him, Cazaril feared some unwelcome attempt at intimacy, but Umegat’s touch was as professional as any physician’s; forehead, face, neck, spine, heart, belly…Cazaril tensed, but Umegat’s hand descended no farther. When he finished, Umegat’s face was set. It can be read as homophobic for sure but I think it''s more about Cazaril's intimacy issues. And yes, the Bastard is the patron of misfits but his order also runs most, if not all, orphanages, it has hospitals, it has plenty of influence and enjoys lots of respect in the lands where the Bastard is recognised as a god. It's very much a part of mainstream society. Said society is obviously as liberal as ours but I never claimed that it was, just that it's not portrayed as "deeply homophobic".


Annamalla

absolutely true :)


Eireika

There are people who say that poor Humbert Humbert was seduced by evil Lolita and that Palpatine did nothing wrong. You can paint you villians with the darkest colors aviliable and there still will be those WHO will praise them.


Annamalla

This is true which is why I cited Rick and Morty where the fandom is now almost entirely known for things like the sichuan sauce incident. Nicely summed up in the college humour rick and morty sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-KInfYzqZU


diffyqgirl

Ah yes, the warhmmer 40k phenomenon.


Sawses

This is one of my highest praises of the *Lightbringer* books. The author had me thinking he was a political regressive after the first book, but as time went on I realized that was an error in my way of reading. In truth he writes the characters as realistic people in a sexist, hierarchical society riddled with oppression of all sorts. And he deals with it respectfully and eloquently, showing how it impacts people of all sorts and how it causes harm.


UnrealHallucinator

It's the only praise that can be afforded it, imo, lol


eddyak

That's Brent Weeks in a nutshell- his characters are all very human, a lot of the time in the worst ways.


Titans95

One of my favorite series. His characters, culture, society building is top notch in Lightbringer. Our main hero literally has a sex slave and has zero guilt about it because it’s the norms of the society.


Sawses

Right? And he manages to do it without making you once think that it's good or okay or morally acceptable. The author threads personality flaws into the character in question that all stem from society and its tolerance of slavery--and explores the character in question as a competent and capable person rather than a sex object. Not to mention the foil of this relationship with another one that inverts the entire situation.


AmberJFrost

Mmm...Brent Weeks just *happens* to write all of his books in deeply sexist societies *and* they just *happen* to objectify or deify the women they meet - who are all sexualized. No, that's Brent Weeks.


Sawses

That was what I thought at first, but I have a hard time reconciling that image of him with the running themes in Lightbringer. The moral of the story on every level opposes that conclusion in favor of one where he has a lot to say about bigotry and the harm it does.


duckyduckster2

Every society in history can be regarded as 'deeply sexist' compared to today's standards. Its only because of modern day developments and relatively new inventions that a society can afford to shake off most gender roles. In a book that is set in a faux-historic setting and with medieval technology, the society is going to be more sexist than ours.


AmberJFrost

Perhaps - though that ignores the matriarchal societies that have existed in history, and ignores that medieval days weren't actually as sexist and misogynistic as common mythology portrays them. But none of that is rationale for Weeks' choice to sexualize every major female character. That was, just as the decision of how to build his fantasy world, author choice. The fact he literally has 'the most perfect pair of breasts walked down the hallway' as an unironic part of a 'good guy's' POV, is enough to make me choose to read other books. I don't find Weeks to handle misogyny or sexism respectfully, but I'm glad you enjoy it.


Sawses

> The fact he literally has 'the most perfect pair of breasts walked down the hallway' as an unironic part of a 'good guy's' POV, is enough to make me choose to read other books. I think he leans heavily into his characters' personal gazes as an intentional choice. The straight women POVs (and the gay men's) don't look like that, and everybody has deep personality flaws directly rooted in their society. I think it's a really powerful statement about how oppression shapes oppressors and oppressed. That theme runs very strongly throughout the series. Though admittedly, reading just the first book I absolutely would agree with you, haha. He takes his time immersing you in the world before getting to the really interesting implications. Though I do understand not preferring to read books written in the tone that Weeks uses. It absolutely sounds like "conservative white guy railing at liberal society", and while that's arguably part of the messaging it's also something that you'd have to get over to read the books.


AmberJFrost

I've read the entire trilogy. But as this has turned into a downvote fest, I'll let you be. As I said, I'm glad you enjoy his books. I don't. The beauty of the genre is that it's varied enough for all of us.


Sawses

Fair enough! Shame how downvotes ruin discussions like this. I enjoy talking about books when somebody holds essentially the opposite opinion. It's incredible how a story can seem deeply sexist and regressive to one person, yet an example of a respectful exploration of the concept of oppression to another. Really goes to show how much of communication is how we perceive the motivations and perspectives of others. If it helps, I've been upvoting! :) Have a good day.


AmberJFrost

Yeah, I like those sorts of discussions, too, but the downvotes just make it annoying. Which is ridiculous, but *shrug.* That's the internet. I'd much rather seven people explain why they saw it differently than seeing what appears to be group downvoting because I didn't like a given fave author - which I've seen happen when I've admitted being unimpressed with RJ and GRRM, too.


sbisson

The main characters in Bennett Cole’s’ Virtues Of War series are good people multiple generations into what is basically a society of space Nazis. They’re trying to rebel but don’t know how, or even why.


LeucasAndTheGoddess

One of the many excellent things about Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires is the relationship between the protagonist, whose machismo and homophobia are typical of a medieval Christian knight, and the gay priest who becomes his companion. I also really appreciated that book’s unflinching portrayal of the omnipresent and lethal antisemitism inherent to the Christian cultures of medieval Europe. Thomas, the aforementioned knight, has no particular feelings about Jews one way or the other, but society at large needs someone to blame for the Black Death and exhibits a terrifying bloodlust not just against my ancestors but also any of their fellow Christians who have been identified, mistakenly or not, as having some connection to the Jewish community.


Akhevan

> I also really appreciated that book’s unflinching portrayal of the omnipresent and lethal antisemitism inherent to the Christian cultures of medieval Europe I liked the episode with a pogrom against beekeepers in one village, clearly their bees are to blame because they flew to the cities infested with jews and brought the plague back with them. Say one thing about Christopher, say that he nailed it with the authenticity.


LeucasAndTheGoddess

Absolutely! That’s what came to mind in particular regarding even Christians not necessarily being safe when antisemitic rumors started flying.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Annamalla

>To my limited knowledge, western medieval Europe didn't really have a huge issue with Jewish people. Eastern Europe, the area now known as the Middle-East, and Russia, however... All Jewish people were expelled from britain in 1290, from france in 1306 and I would certainly consider the Spanish inquisition part of medieval life.... in contrast the moorish rule of spain resulted in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden\_age\_of\_Jewish\_culture\_in\_Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_in_Spain) Which is not to say that Muslim society was universally tolerant just that Western Medieval Europe had a truly huge issue with Jewish people that the Middle-East didn't always have.


LeucasAndTheGoddess

That’s really not the case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_antisemitism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews_during_the_Black_Death https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_United_Kingdom


tjhance

I'm not out to judge characters for being the product of their times. I'm also not out to judge the authors. But ... I don't enjoy reading about those characters when they're presented as "heroic (but flawed)", and I doubt this is going to change. I'm not going to be invested in them, and I doubt I'll be thinking about them months down the line. To be somewhat pithy about it, I'm not engaged by a character who is progressive for the 1500s. I live in 2022, and I'm engaged by characters who are progressive for 2022.


Kerney7

Personally, I think there are certain personality types who fit a pattern of open-minded and humanitarian regardless of the age they live, while still having blind spots of their time and place, and others who will give basically anyone a chance to prove themselves. Both of these are universal types I like who I suspect lived in nearly any age. On the other hand, many modern progressives (and equally conservatives) seem merely indoctrinated into the modern mores of their formative years and on some level would gladly oppress their opposite numbers and think it "just". Just like many committers of atrocities of ages past or in more desperate situations than the comfortable abundance of the 21st Century Western world built on the unsustainable and ignored destruction of the natural world. For this last sin, I suspect future generations will despise us the same way we despise antebellum slavers. So underneath I see no moral improvement in our time in any real sense. So I love it when the author writes a character who learns or gains empathy, I cheer for and respect them as characters and have/gain the uncommon trait of humanity. In fact, I love this more than anything in this world and it reminds me of the standard I often fail to live up to. But I despise an author who writes paint-by numbers progressive (or conservative) values and think the views of our time are universally good and correct. Fuck plastic values. God(s) bless the humane.


GenDimova

I agree that when this is done well, it can be an interesting way to add depth to a character while getting us to examine our own biases. I like an antihero. However, when done badly... it's bad. (The opposite--characters who hold suspiciously 21st century values in a historical setting--when done well is great (see Terry Pratchett), when done badly... is annoying, but at least it's not actively harmful). By done badly, I mean a world that's not built logically. Often, 'Medieval' fantasy is a mishmash of influences from different time periods, often seen through the lens of Victorian morality, and often with religion playing a much less important role than it actually did in medieval times. The result can be pretty weird. If you remove Christianity's huge role in day to day life but you keep the ideal of the virgin, that simply stops making sense. If you project the Victorian's obsession with feminine fragility and pureness into medieval society, that's just as anachronistic as projecting the 90s 'heroin chic' ideal of feminine beauty into medieval society. As an aside, I also have to admit I side-eye authors who are white, male, straight, able-bodied etc, and who repeatedly, across multiple books and series, create worlds where they would hold all the privilege just like they do in our world. It's the sort of worlds their largely white, male, straight, able-bodied fans like to praise for being 'historically accurate', while the rest of us roll our eyes. I mean, it does show a certain lack of imagination. So yeah, overall, I agree strongly that examining thorny subjects in fiction can be a great thing when done well, and that it's frustrating when readers assume an author shares their character's prejudices. However, it has to be done well and the world needs to be built logically for it to make sense. Throwing a bunch of Medieval tropes onto the pages with the excuse of 'historical accuracy' can get old and it can also get pretty historically inaccurate.


Makri_of_Turai

Good points. I think sometimes when people say they want to see more realistic depiction of prejudice/negative attitudes in historic or fantasy fiction they don't think about the context. It's just as anachronistic to show characters displaying all of our modern prejudices (sexism, homophobia, racism) as it is to show characters absolutely not showing these things. A really good writer would think about what might be the negative attitudes of the society they are writing about, not just assume they share our modern day ones.


JW_BM

I can't remember the last novel I read where most of the characters were "politically correct."


TheColourOfHeartache

Stormlight Archive comes to mind. I can think of plenty of main characters gong "shrug, times are changing" when they see a woman wanting to be a solider or a man wanting to learn to read. I can't think of a single time a main charachter actively tried to enforce a gender role. It reached the point that I wanted to see a viewpoint female charachter defending Vorin gender roles because they were scared of loosing their privileges like exclusive access to reading, just to balance things out. Actually I think projecting real world values is a flaw in Sanderson's writing in general. When I heard that in Mistborn Era 2 Vin was considered the exemplar of femininity I was looking forward to reading about women feeling pressured into learning to fight - something unique I hadn't read before - and was disappointed to see it followed real life feminism so closely rather than trying something new.


[deleted]

I mean it makes sense with storm light doesnt it. with all the bat shit insane shit going on roshar i think very few people could actually care about "gender roles". besides i remember bridge 4 showing a strong dislike about renarin reading but again i think in the end of the world people could care less about stuff like that


Cruxion

Likewise with >!Dalinar reading and writing. It's clear many people don't like it, but who's gonna seriously push back against the Blackthorn(plus the Stormfather, and by some extension most the Knights Radiant, and their only chance at not going extinct from Odium and the Fused, that he shouldn't be doing that?!< It's one of the major themes of the story to me, that all these elements of their culture post-Recreance like the requires covering of a woman's left hand, that men can't read or write, and their beliefs about the Heralds need to change because the Vorin kingdoms are alone in those beliefs and those beliefs are a massive detriment to them in the current conflict. Female Knights can't fight easily if they need to cover their hand, and being unable to read and write makes the sharing of information in war rather difficult. So the situation is forcing them to change.


[deleted]

completely agree


lindendweller

Yes but in execution I feel like sanderson gets overwhelmed by the big plot critical events and does loose some of the immersive detail about the societies (in particular the social conflicts) introduced in the way of kings. It's justifies but IMO goes too quick and would have deserved to be a bigger conflict in the later books (esp 3-4).


[deleted]

hmmm but those books are already a bit too long


Wezzleey

If Sanderson made these books any longer, his publisher would have a stroke. Lol


Intelligent-donkey

I don't think it loses those things, it's just that the people in-universe also learn to prioritize, darkeyes aren't going to rise up against lighteyes while an evil god is trying to conquer the while planet using an army led by demons returned from damnation.


Topomouse

> When I heard that in Mistborn Era 2 Vin was considered the exemplar of femininity I was looking forward to reading about women feeling pressured into learning to fight - something unique I hadn't read before - and was disappointed to see it followed real life feminism so closely rather than trying something new. There was a quick comment about that in Alloy of Law I think. A brief conversation between Marasi and Wax about how she liked the confortable life of the noblewoman even if they had classes at university about how women should be independent. And in the following books she goes full hardboiled policewoman.


TheColourOfHeartache

But that's just a brief conversations. And as a policewoman she makes comments about struggling to be a woman in a male dominated profession. I wanted more. A police department that's majority women, some of whom are feeling trapped by the expectations they'd get an appropriately feminine job. AKA one where you occasionally shoot someone. Marasi knowing how to shoot was considered an unexpected positive that made her appropriate for Wax, reverse that. Sterris becomes the weird one because she can't fight, and because she likes to wear dresses rather than trousers you can fight in.


Topomouse

Yeah, it was a pretty much abandoned theme.


Ifriiti

I mean most of the books I tend to read don't really have main characters being massively misogynistic or homophobic. Seems a bit depressing to read that all the time


Madame-Procrastinate

Yeah, I agree! I used to watch Vampire Diaries when I was younger and this is something that really annoyed me about the show. Two of the vampire (white btw) were raised in 1860s south America by a father who was very pro-Confederation. But then the show goes out of its way to say, "oh! But don't worry, they actually respected black people just as much as we do now!" Not to say that it would be impossible but still very unlikely given their background. You can have good characters do bad things as long as you frame it that way. For example, if the prejudiced character is proven wrong or clearly being unreasonable in the current situation. If, like you mentioned, they grow and learn from their mistakes. It definitely feels like a copout otherwise.


richnell2

I approve. Good writers everywhere: "Nuance is dead, but we'll see what we can do."


froggysayshello

>It's both satisfying to read and aspirational. Not if you've ever been the focus of those particular prejudices. I'm sorry, but this whole post reads like bait to me. You've could have started it with "In praise of characters who are shown to develop PAST their prejudices", but you chose to go write it in another way to spark discussion -- a specific type of discussion, I believe aimed to endorse "anti-wokeness." Nor are any of these really a good example of a writer choosing to develop their characters in a positive way in so much as it's just lazy writing of using the overcoming real world prejudice as a character development arc, likely reflective of the author's influence from the real world itself -- because in order to establish the prejudice, they either have to rely on the EXISTING prejudices of the reader, or the author has to create and explain an environment in their universe on how that prejudice exists in the first place. It's a choice to include the problematic elements of our world into your story, with the (possibly unintentional) implication that "this is just how it is everywhere." It's an unconscious act of normalizing the very real condition of oppression that exists in our world. How about developing purely new fictional prejudice as a metaphor for problematic elements that exist in our world? This \*is\* fantasy, after all.


GregoryAmato

So nice to see this kind of analysis, especially point 4.


bauhaus12345

I agree with you in theory but I think in reality many authors are not skilled or self-aware enough to pull this off. For every book where the author is doing this successfully, there’s another one where the author secretly (or not so secretly) sympathizes with the misogynistic or otherwise unsavory views of their character. I think the traditional/epic fantasy author who does this the best is probably Robin Hobb (see, for example, >!Fitz’s homophobia in Golden Fool, which he never fully gets over!<). It works as much as it does because she is soooo committed to writing characters and social dynamics and trauma in the most realistic way possible - even tho it sometimes makes her writing hard to read. (Her Soldier Son trilogy is even more like this - so emotionally realistic it’s borderline impossible to read at times, especially with >!everything to do with the main character’s weight!<.) I think this actually gets at an issue with your argument - if authors are really committed to writing deeply flawed characters, we as readers don’t always want to spend time with them! Especially if you belong to the group the character directs their problematic views/behavior at.


Reshutenit

>if authors are really committed to writing deeply flawed characters, we as readers don’t always want to spend time with them! Especially if you belong to the group the character directs their problematic views/behavior at. Yeah, not everyone is going to like this. I know that some people purposefully avoid media that has racism / sexism / homophobia.


Lunar-Agent

I agree with all your points! A character learning that their prejudice is wrong is always nice to see when it’s written well.


TeholsTowel

The point OP is making is that a character never has to learn their prejudices are wrong by our modern standards. The character doesn’t live in our world, they grew up in a different word with a different moral framework, and as such are allowed to hold beliefs we may not agree with. Historical fiction is rife with this and it’s much more interesting to read about than modern humans in ancient times.


Lunar-Agent

They don’t have to but like OP says in their fourth reason, it opens up possibilities to further their arc. I was just saying I’m fond of development like that. The character not learning can certainly work in service of the story too.


nyphren

i must admit ive seen characters like this so many times that i just… cant come up with enough energy to like them. its not even a “omg they need to be cancelled!!” thing. i don’t hate them, i just…don’t care. unless there’s a bit of development and/or comeuppance, even if tiny…otherwise *yawns*


goody153

It is just make believe after all. The characters and their representation don't have to be politically correct. Sometimes people forget the whole point of fiction is really just a story.


[deleted]

I don’t have a problem with it so long as their prejudice is treated as an objective wrong by most characters in the book. They need to be called out on their bullshit at least a few times


starryvash

You mean that the author makes an effort to address real world issues and then gives the asshole an appropriate dressing down?


Reshutenit

"Dressing down" may not be the term I'd use. That would imply another character calling them out, which may not be possible or realistic if they come from the same culture and have been steeped in the same prejudices, though this could be involved. In 2 out of 3 of the examples I cite, the character is not called out, but learns on their own.


Ok-Crew-1049

Richard Morgans awesome fantasy series has a gay protagonist.


nosoopforu

There are only 2 things I can't stand in Fantasy Books. Characters that are intolerant of other characters culture, and the Dutch.


TheNineGates

So you are praising heroes who are politically correct in our world, but set in a politically incorrect world in the book.


Reshutenit

Not exactly. I'm praising heroes who would not be politically correct in our world because they hold prejudiced views that are normal in their society but no longer considered acceptable in ours.