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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32174 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Not OP (and neither as quick or as sure), but I had a similar reaction from reading his work. It's mostly just a feeling, and "Mormon fiction" forms its own particular sub-sub-genre. It I had to guess what tipped me off, I'd say:

  • PG13-esque writing: Violence is mostly constrained to battles, unprovoked assault is rare and shocking, and torture/abuse only exists offscreen. Sex is only between married couples, and barely even implied.

  • Noble nobility: The nobles (or equivalent) are better in some way, and they have the genuine desire to help the people they rule over. See Dalinar, Wax, Elend, both the prince and the priest from Elantris, and one guy from Warbreaker.

  • When the previous principles are broken (which is fairly often), it's only by bad people doing bad things.

Sex is only between married couples, and barely even implied.

That's a massive tell right there. Some SciFi authors have a habit of writing very stilted sex scenes or sexual dialogue, but the Mormon ones manage to avoid this issue by keep sexual content very abstract as far as it's role in the novel.

Larry Correia is Mormon (but lowkey about it) and has no problem depicting brutal, gory action, casual profanity, drinking (rarely to excess) and gross-out humor galore, and while we get that sexual activity does go on between characters, he only ever writes some 'heavy flirting' at worst on the page.

Which I don't mind, it's just a bit funny to have bloody shootouts with hideous monsters and guts spilling out across the page in one chapter, then the main character awkwardly flirting and the prose dancing around the implication of sex in another.

Weirdly, wouldnt that also be (devout Catholic) Tolkien?

Yes, the parts I've listed are more generically devout Christian than specifically Mormon. The rest is just vibes.

Yes, and catholic fiction has similar tendencies, albeit with slightly different Hangups(and typically more recognizably Catholic supernaturalism- eg relics, intercession, angels- while also being shorter because these people have to work day jobs).

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