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Notes -
I want to discuss the Pathfinder fanfic "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die". I'm going to start by copy-pasting the submission statement I gave it on /r/rational and then I will dive deeper into the culture war aspects of the work:
Now, as I said, Iomedae is from medieval fantasyland, and her writer does a good job portraying her someone who has different values and ideas from a modern American. I particularly liked the way she reacted to the modern concept of rape:
I found this extremely refreshing. The central example of rape is "woman was minding her own business when someone broke into her house and forced her". It is incredible how little of what gets called "rape" actually fits that category, and can be better described as "woman cruising for a dicking regrets the dicking come next morning". It is the worst argument in the world, enshrined into our legal code.
Or consider how she deals with the stifling secularism of progressive society:
I imagine more than one red triber has felt something similar upon going to college. But it goes further than that; Iomedae really believes in hell, the way she believes in the grocery store around the corner, and that is obviously going to have a huge effect on the way she lives her life.
And just so I don't get accused of only liking this story because it confirms all my biases, Iomedae also has words for modern immigration enforcement:
So, overall, I highly recommend this fic. It will make you think, and it will give you a great outside look at the assumptions we take for granted living in modernity. If you have never played Pathfinder, don't worry; neither have I. As long as you know about paladins and wizards from reading The Order of the Stick or similar you know everything you need to know to enjoy the narrative. Iomedae may have ascended to godhood in canon, but in this story that is just her awesome destiny.
I haven't nor do I intend to read this fanfiction, nor have I played Pathfinder, and I don't know some of the terminology used here beyond a google search ("Isekai"). That said, I have problems. Someone from the Pathfinder universe (especially with spell training like a Paladin) would probably be familiar with food preservation magic since it exists, I also find it very personally offputting to shoehorn into a story about a child (admittedly one who considers herself an adult) about how actually most of the time when people get raped, they didn't actually get raped since nobody had a knife to threaten them. There are probably a dozen examples like this where her being from Pathfinder doesn't actually mesh with the story very well. Again, haven't read it, other than the excerpts here, but if there is nothing interesting between the comparison of her Medieval-ish world or her oath as a Paladin and our modern world, and it's just a generic medieval fish out of water tale, why is she a Paladin at all? Is it an in-joke between the Pathfinder player author? Does it mean anything?
I don't really think The Motte is the place for literary criticism, since it's a largely non-rational practice. But god, the writing here is just bad. Maybe if you're a direct person who likes it when characters spew forth punctuated idea after punctuated idea it's the right pace for you, but these paragraphs are a hard read. If you want worlds-colliding or a reflection of modernity fantasy fiction, there is lots of stuff you can find with enjoyable prose. Try /r/fantasy. I don't get the giddy appeal of having the author stand-in character give a "glorious" "refreshing" look at our modern age. I've seen dozens of posts here with better rundowns of how things operate and the problems and virtues with society. This strikes me as midwit-tier.
Disagree with this. I would like to see more literary criticism. Though not necessarily of Pathfinder fanfics.
I am not putting my modhat on for this, but it's borderline. You can say you don't like a post and you'd rather not see posts like this, but it's generally pretty poor form. Not every thread has to appeal to you, and this is pretty close to saying "This is stupid, why did you post this?" Which is not what we (the mods) want to see. Criticize the post, criticize the story, criticize the OP's analysis, that's all fine. Don't complain because he posted something you aren't interested in reading.
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