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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1990 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 25, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Characters have no consistent values. Sex is post-Sexual Revolution casual but look out oh no there's the medieval patriarchy, but also characters don't actually do anything interesting when confronted with it they just kind of shrivel. The women are too open and powerful and feminist, but supposedly acknowledged to be exceptional but we don't see any other women so... He wants to create complex characters that do bad things sometimes but also have heroic qualities, but misses the mark, the sins don't have much weight and the struggles feel fake as a result. The best books that use grimdark settings present us with likeable characters that we identify with, that act according to their own internal sense of right and wrong with a consistent moral compass, then deliver a result that is so brutal and discordant that it creates psychic discomfort in the reader and makes you think.

How do you feel about Scott Bakker's work? Because I think he makes a real effort at this (he explicitly said he refused to make certain characters female because it'd under the patriarchy in the worldbuilding) and has subsequently been vastly more criticized than Abercrombie (the bleakness at best turns people off, at worst annoys them) and vastly less successful.

I did not enjoy The Prince of Nothing. Pretty much every female character in the first half of the first book gets raped and exists to be a sex slave or prostitute. I don't think all men are that shitty. And one of the men is a huge Marty Stu.

I personally think the series is worth it and better than the bleakness on its face, but this is a common reaction (the gender bleakness, not the Marty Stu, not sure which character you mean there), which is why I asked how he felt about Bakker. He's...less uneven on how bad the gender politics are, and way too much for many.

I'm unfamiliar with it, would you recommend him? I'm on kind of a fantasy kick, I want literary junk food, but the quality of some of this just drives me off.

I'm not against strong female characters, even in a patriarchal setting, I think that female agency exists and is often underestimated in patriarchal settings! I even think you can do ye olde feminist trope well with the right context created.

What bugs me about Abercrombie is the unevenness: there's casual sex, and casually strong women, but then there's also "oh this can't be you're a commoner and I'm a noble!"

For all GRRM's flaws, and I think the setting gets sweaty after too many pages, I'm looking for more ASOIAF, but maybe with a more contained storyline and less bloat. Given that ASOIAF has to be one of the most bloated fantasy stories ever told, that ought not to be hard to find.

Oh, Bakker is up on Mount Rushmore for me as far as epic fantasy goes. Nothing quite scratches the same itch. If the idea of the First Crusade filtered through Tolkien, Herbert and Nietzsche appeals you'll likely find something in there for you.

And I think he treats religion - and the excruciating choices it puts us to - with far more seriousness than most of the genre can manage.

If anything the criticism is that he is too even and unrelentingly negative when it comes to patriarchy.

For all GRRM's flaws, and I think the setting gets sweaty after too many pages, I'm looking for more ASOIAF, but maybe with a more contained storyline and less bloat. Given that ASOIAF has to be one of the most bloated fantasy stories ever told, that ought not to be hard to find.

The first series - Prince of Nothing - I think is pretty focused for epic fantasy. There is some bloat in the sequel series though (4 more books, one more than expected).

Great! I'll give that a try, might scratch the itch for me.

And I think he treats religion - and the excruciating choices it puts us to - with far more seriousness than most of the genre can manage.

Religion is so touchy. Tolkien got it perfect, everyone else tends to either make religion too immanent and just another magical mechanic, or they go full Reddit atheism like the Eragon series which is just eye-roll inducing for me: you have magic but no supernatural?

which is just eye-roll inducing for me: you have magic but no supernatural?

This was deeply annoying about the Odyssey. "In a time of apparent magic" and then we see people get turned into pigs. Not in any sort of ambiguous way either. Odysseus even says she gets her power from the Gods!

And if you're going to show that in a pseudo-objective fashion, why do we also need to play coy with Athena?

Of course, if you have actual gods instead of just Bronze Age Zatanna , the whole therapeutic journey of self-discovery where the most important thing is how the protagonist feels about things needs to be rejiggered somewhere.

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