#(western europeans just irk me so often)

[alpaca-clouds]

Urban Fantasy Worldbuilding and the USA

You know what? I am talking a bit about Urban Fantasy. Because, you know, I originally mostly wrote Urban Fantasy stuff and did write in my old blog about it. And there is just something about the genre that tends to bug me a lot. Specifically about the world building.

Most of the time Urban Fantasy is very US-centric, or at least western-centric. Of course, there is Urban Fantasy fiction existing in other cultures and those are at times (though the US is still overrepresented) set in the country where they are written.

But... Let me talk about why the US-centric or western-centric worldbuilding irks me so much: It kinda ignores the rest of the world EXISTING. With maybe the one exception of putting some creatures from exotic mythologies in there, a lot of writers tend to ignore that other countries have different ways of organizing things.

This starts bugging me in different ways, depending of the kind of worldbuilding. In Urban Fantasy worlds, where magic is secret, the reason for magic being secret is often bound very much to western history. In Urban Fantasy worlds where magic is no longer secret, it just shows with assuming that both world organisation - and the way people interact with magic.

Let me talk about the "secret" magic first. Yes, in some Urban Fantasy worlds magic is secret by default. This is stuff like the Mist in the Rick Riordan stuff. Where humans can somehow not or not always perceive magic. That is... fine. But often enough it goes more like: "Oh, yes, we keep magic secret because of the witch hunts." In which case I will go and ask: "Okay, sure, fine for North America and Europe, but... what about the rest of the world?" Like, sure, there were some witch hunts in other colonial areas - but in general... witch hunts were very much a western thing. So I have to wonder: Why would people in the rest of the world align with the entire idea of "keeping magic secret"?

Even in worlds where the reason for the secrecy is bound to a fictional event... It often is something that has happened in the west that often ignores the relationship that other cultures might have with magic.

In worlds where the magic is out in the open the problems are still similar. For the most part, we only get to know what the magic creatures are doing in the USA (or whatever European country the story takes place). Any big organisations for the magical world - even international ones - are in western countries. And generally speaking any characters from a not western background tend to be token.

And... You know... That is just horrible worldbuilding? Like, if you do Urban Fantasy, I am sorry, but you gotta learn a bit about how the real world works and how people of different cultures interact with the idea of magic.

It is one of the big things that stops me from enjoying a lot of Urban Fantasy.

[earths-roots-grow-up]

Headcanons on Russia’s and Prussia’s relationship with France.

Russia:

I think that in the XVIII century a large chunk of Europe had a crush on France. French culture was widespread among European courts and the language was being used to communicate in a similar manner English is used today. Frenchness was just very IN at that time.

Those countries included Russia. At that time Peter the Great was westernizing his country, and injecting French-ness into Russian lives was a part of this process - Versailles and the French court impressed Peter immensely when he went to visit France and when he came back home, he began emulating many things he observed in the western country. Language, customs, widespread mirrors everywhere, architecture, gardens. You name it.

High-born Russians would talk to each other in French and give themselves French names. Lets note that French wasn’t the only foreign language that was widespread in Russia, so were others, like German and Latin [mostly used by the academia.

“(...) of  all  the  languages  which  began  to  have  currency  in  eighteenth-century Russia, it was French that acquired the greatest social, cultural, and political significance,even if it was not always so widely spoken as German“.

The two next generations of Russians grew up within this Francophile culture and viewed it as something natural, from their perspective it was no longer an exotic fashion, just the way thing always were. Therefore, this was something more than just a fleeting fascination that lasted as long as Peter ruled - and had lingering influence on Russian culture.

“The most important stimulus for the development of French-speaking in Russia, though, was the use of French as a court language from around the middle of the reign of Peter’s daughter Elizabeth (1741–61), who had learnt it in childhood from a French lady at her father’s court.“

And so it went on from there: “At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Russian nobility still preferred French to Russian for everyday use, and were familiar with French authors such as Jean de la Fontaine, George Sand (etc.). The influence of France was equally strong in the area of social and political ideas. Catherine II's interest in the writings of the (french) philosophers of the Enlightenment (...) contributed to the spread of their ideas in Russia during the eighteenth century.” and “ During the nineteenth century, travel in France was considered a form of cultural and intellectual apprenticeship. “.

(source) So the interest in French ideas and culture was strong in the second half of the XVIII century and in the XIX century.

So in other words, Russia had a crush on France - it was a total puppy love mostly based on superficial things, like aesthetic, nice smells and pretty, elegant European opulence but most of all: France was the ideal of what Russia was trying to become, the epicenter of European-ness, the “civilization” and Ivan was in the middle of this lowkey cultural revolution in which he was trying to re-invent himself as a modern, “European” country. So I think this crush was very much one of those "I wanna BE YOU" types of crushes, he was head over heels for what France represented - that’s why this hit so hard.

There was some more personal stuff there too, like France's eloquence, his literature and philosophy. Enter a lot of perfumed love letters! Even when the crush slowly withered away Russia still felt - and feels - strong admiration for France and honestly enjoys his culture a lot.

France himself enjoyed the crush but wasn't really that interested in  reciprocating - as mentioned above, large chunk of Europe was also crushing on him due to his culture just being in fashion, so it's not like Russia himself was standing out. But they did become friends and still have good personal relations with each other. They have a lot of passions in common, such as ballet, art, music, opera, Romanticism etc, so they still enjoy talking about this stuff together. It’s not a Deep friendship where they trust each other, don’t be fooled, they don’t trust one another at all! But they do like hanging out.

I also HC that the way both French and German were important in XVIII century Russia (as cited above: French with greater cultural significance and German more widespread) is representative of him catching feelings for both France and Prussia at this time, tho one of those wasn't just a crush.

Prussia:

My non-canon-approved hot take here is that I don't think him and France were ever friends. The exact opposite of that even.

It's true that Frederick the Great also had this hard-on for the French, and in effect Prussia speaks and writes excellent French. But after Frederick William II took over the throne, he took back all those Francophile preferences and began promoting German literature and language instead - something the educated classes of Prussia were thankful for. So because Russia shared his ruler's fascination with France his interest outlasted Peter the Great and became a more prevalent part of Russian culture for a long time, while Prussia never shared Fredrick’s fascination and therefore it got overturned as soon as the new king sat on the throne.

And that makes sense, bc in general Germans and French weren't very friendly with each other during their history. German- French enmity, also called the hereditary enmity, is an idea introduced in the XIX century, and it states that those two forces are natural enemies due to their inherently different goals and incompatible interests. Due tho this they keep bumping against each other throughout the ages. You can see echos of this sentiment it in the Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War, WW1, the Treaty of Versailles, WW2 etc. France was also the country that stood in the strongest opposition to the German Empire being created, so a big issue for Prussia.

It’s important to mention that this German-French enmity was often used as a  propaganda tool for wars and simplified the complex relations between those two groups. Of course it did, even Austrian/Prussian relations weren’t ALWAYS bad, even tho they were called ‘the biggest enemies’ by historians.

It is believed that the enmity ended after WW2 and no longer is a thing. To me that is a pretty great example of Germany taking over the reign and replacing Prussia. Prussian/France relations were bad, but German/France relations are pretty darn good. And it makes sense, because Prussia had different goals than Germany has, and they are very different individuals. I see France and Germany as friends due to their shared work in UE, tho I’m not sure if they would be something more than just work friends.

Anyway, this is Hetalia and not a historical-political deep dive - to me what counts in Hedcanon context is the general feel throughout history: were they generally allies or enemies? Were their interests clashing with one another or were they compatible, most of the time at least? The whole idea behind this “inherited” enmity is that French and German interests were incompatible, so it had to end with a conflict. And they did, many times over. I feel like the importance of the Napoleonic wars especially is often undervalued here - it was a HUGE conflict that would have a lasting impact on their relations, way bigger than the Wars for Austrian Succession, which are often cited as proof of their friendship. But they were an outlier in general Prussian/French relations.

That’s why I think Prussia and France are not, nor ever were friends, they view each other as enemies and dislike each other. Tho during the reign of Old Fritz their relationship was warmer and more amicable than during other periods, considering they actually had similar goals and fought together for a change - mostly because that was convenient for then, not due to some preexisting friendship. But I do like the idea that during this time they had some kind of difficult comradery going for a brief while and there was this fleeting “maybe in another reality we could be friends” vibe.

Due to the bad history, Prussia's dislikes of France can be seen in many small things that irritate him, like he just detests Francis' need to show opulence, his over-the-top rococo aesthetic and cuture-esque fashion sense, hight emotionality drives him bonkers and even the pastel flowery color palettes he often wears irk him. And don’t even get his started on the Revolutions! He’ll talk your ear off.

Tl’Dr: So Prussia and France don't like each other and are generally bitchy and passive-aggressive with one another. Russia and France are friendly and good acquaintances, while not exactly close. Russia just likes him - he still admires a lot of things about French culture, enjoys the language, cuisine, architecture, fashion etc, and used to have a crush on him.

Rusprus take:

Prussia in a confident, self-assured person, but when it comes to France, he can be surprisingly self-conscious. He still remembers that crush Russia used to have on him and WHY he had it -  because of many characteristics that France possesses, but Prussia doesn't. Like being romantic and sentimental, sensitive, emotionaly open, appreciative of beauty, artsy etc. Sometimes Russia finds that cute and endearing, bc it makes him feel wanted, but sometimes it's just... ridiculous.

APH Prussia: What do you wanna watch tonight, Vanka?

APH Russia: Hm... maybe that movie, Marie Antoinette?

APH Prussia: Ugh OF COURSE you wanna ogle HIM!

APH Russia: W... what.

APH Prussia: France! You wanna ogle that cheese-smelling frog-eater!

APH Russia: What... no! Gilya, Gilyushka, Gilynechka! That's absurd, I just want to watch a pretty period drama!

APH Prussia: Don’t you “Gilynechka“ me! And as if that's not enough...

APH Prussia: She was AUSTRIAN

APH Russia: Omg. Kill me now. When you have almost 1000 years of history together then even picking a Netflix show can be a minefield!

Anyway, they end up watching the movie but Prussia roasts everything in frame :D

[captawesomesauce]

I was tagged by the awesome @tequilatuesdays4all 1. What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Hmmm it's a tie between these two things:

- Something I absolutely hate, despise, detest, loathe and abhor is when people flirt/hit on/send messages about how big of a crush they have on people who are explicitly in monogamous relationships.

Just something so wrong about trying to ‘woo’ someone away from someone else.

Now if the person is polyamorous, fine, go for it, but otherwise you’re literally just trying to destroy one relationship for your own selfish benefit and that is just :|

---- and ----

- I’m not naming any names, cause this could be a bunch of you, but someone said that they were feeling super needy but didn’t want to be annoying …

and you know what… FEW things in life irk me more than that!!!!

Because FUCK THAT NOISE!!

If you need something: hugs, attention, affection, someone to just lay back against while you read a damn book, GO AND GET THAT!

If that annoys someone, well then that someone is WRONG for you and you shouldn’t waste your time with them. If you crave it, long for it, physically need it and want it and wish for it, then the person you are with should fulfill that!

Why torture yourself? Why hold back? Why deny yourself the things that will make you happy? Has society slammed you so off kilter that you think attention and affection is “annoying???” What’s next, drinking water is bad, and you should be ashamed for having to poop???

FUCK that noise! Be needy, be affectionate, be loving, be YOU and FILL your needs!

2. What’s at the top of your bucket list?

See Scotland, spend a week on Catalina Island, find true love again, learn to perform telekinesis because Queenofthefatbabes told me to.

3. Favourite movie?

Hmmm, I don't know if I have a real favorite, but I do have a favorite genre! Late 70s/early 80s comedy! I'm talking Mel Brooks History of the World and Blazing Saddles, as well as all of the classics like Caddyshack and Stripes and Animal House and the original Blues Brothers!

4. What are you really passionate about?

SOOOOOOOOO many fucking things, I seem to run at 100 fucking percent lol. Right this second it's music. I'm just laying here listening to a ton of random stuff and letting the music just flow from one band to another, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes ... not so much. lol

I'm also really passionate about history, especially european imperialism and lesser known wars.

I should be more passionate about environmentalism, but fuck it, we're doomed.. y'all having kids... man... just... sorry dudes, this planet is gonna be an EPIC mess by the time they hit college. We've fucked it over soo badly.

I dunno, lol, go through my archives... I'm passionate about so much :D

5. Can you cook?

I can! What I can't do is bake lol. My mother taught me everything from classic jewish cooking (Matzo ball soup, roast chicken, matzo brie) to ribs and pork chops, great steaks, and so much more.

She and I are both kinda picky eaters, ok, she's SUPER picky, so the rule was, if you don't want it... cook your own shit! So... from a very early age I learned how to cook what I liked! She'd always be willing to help teach me and experiment, but why should she have to cook two meals??? She shouldn't and I never expected her too.

She could have her lamb chops (blech), and I'd often make a pork cutlet (milanese) with a garlic rice and seasoned broccoli.

She didnt want what I was having, i didnt want what she was having, we made do :)

6. What job would you be really terrible at?

Anything involving drawing/art/creativity... also sales according to all of the job tests. I'm not a salesman, I don't have the ability to lie, tell stories, shmooze, or convince people to buy shit.

7. Have you ever been abroad? I've seen the entire world for the most part! There's very few places I haven't been, except for western europe and much of south america.

8. Something you will NEVER do again? I don't know to be honest... I keep thinking about this question, it's taken me DAYS to answer this because I can't think of an answer to this one question. I honestly don't know!!! I'm kind of an idiot and never learn my lessons lol

9. Would you rather give up social media or your favourite food?

So... this is a thing that is kind of personal to me. WhenI was a teen I had a pretty bad reaction to bacteria in water down on the mexican border in Texas and had full gastro-intestinal failure. I ended up on a hospital flight home, and since then I was on a very limited diet. I used to LOVE veggies and fruits, salads were my shit!! Broccoli and brussel sprouts were my favorite snacks! Celery was always nearby.... but... ever since then... nope. A lot of that stuff, even cooked still hurts so bad, so I had to give that up.

A few months ago, as a reaction to the meds I'm on for my auto-immune bullshit, I had to give up carbs and basically go on a full on diabetic diet... which is SUCH bullshit!

So now I can't eat fruits, veggies, OR carbs and starches, and that's like. FUCK THIS SHIT... all that's really left are soups and meat :|

BUT... through everything I always had computer friends. As a kid on COMPUSERV, as a teen on BBS's, and then mIRC (EFnet and DALnet), and then later what we call social media - myspace, facebook, tumblr.

So... the answer is, I've given up food, but y'all are still here with me :D

10. A song you HATE?

So many fucking country songs it's impossible to pick just one. I'm a super dooper fcking hater when it comes to country. Sorry y'all, I just can't STAND it.

11. A condiment you can’t live without? I'm a huge salt fan which is funny because my sodium is always really low. Also McCormick's Grill Mates Roasted Garlic and Herb is my FAVE!!! I love that stuff so much!

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Age of the Five: Matters of Faith

by Dan H

Thursday, 17 April 2008

Dan continues his discussion of Trudi Canavan's Age of the Five trilogy, with digressions about Religion in Fantasy.~As you should already know, I've just finished reading Trudi Canavan's Age of the Five trilogy. I generally found it to be an enjoyable piece of High Fantasy with some fun ideas and some likeable characters. A couple of things irked me about it, though, and a big problem I had was its treatment of religion. Since the main character is a priestess, and most of the supporting characters are other varieties of priest, cultist, or holy person this is something of an issue.

In the interview which ships as a special feature with the last volume of the series, Trudi explains that the reason her first trilogy (the Black Magician Trilogy) presented an essentially atheistic setting was that since she is not herself religious, she wasn't sure she could do religion properly, with the Age of the Five, however, she felt that: "writing about a pantheon of gods was much easier because the scenario was so different to most of the religions practised today."

Except that, of course, it kind of isn't, and that's kind of the problem. Canavan's invented religion, consciously or otherwise, carries over a huge quantity of cultural assumptions which are pretty much directly inherited from Christianity. Of course this isn't by any means a unique problem, it's pretty much par for the course with Fantasy religions (it's what

TV Tropes

refers to as a "Crystal Dragon Jesus"). The simple fact is that the modern, western idea of what a "religion" looks like is so intimately bound up with Christianity that it's almost impossible to tell where the Catholic Church ends and Religion In General begins.

So really I'm just treating the Age of the Five as a case study here. It just happens to be the most recent thing I've read, and the most recent example of the phenomenon.

The main character in the Age of the Five series is Auraya of the White, a priestess in the Circlan faith. Let's start simple. The Circlan faith has an organised priesthood with a central authority, being a priest is a full time job, and the basic "benefit" the religion grants its followers is life after death. Judging by what we see of Circlan society and culture, the moral and cultural teachings of the Circlan Faith seem pretty Judeo-Christian-slash-secular-liberal as well. In short, there seems to be very little connection between the Circlan Gods, the Circlan religion, and the supposedly theocratic Circlan society. Canavan, like a great many fantasy writers, fails to make the connection between "what the Gods are like" (kind of a cross between the Greco-Roman pantheon and the Vorlons) "what people think the Gods are like" (kind of like the Christian god, only there's five of them) and "what society is like" (kind of like twentieth century Australia, only with less advanced technology).

I think the thing that Fantasy authors don't get is that, in a sense, religious people are crazy. Okay, I'm going to get letters about that one, and obviously I don't mean it literally, but being religious (frequently) means believing that things exist which other people do not believe exist and (usually) means modifying your behaviour as a result. Combine this with a world in which Gods are verifiably and objectively real and you have to wonder why Fantasy societies aren't more messed up than they are. If you really, genuinely believe that the only way to stop a volcano erupting and destroying your village is to sacrifice innocent girls to an angry god, you're going to be quite likely to do it. In a Fantasy world, you might also actually be right (and I suppose the religious pluralist in me should suggest that you might even be right in this one - damn I'm such a wet liberal sometimes).

Canavan's Five Gods are revealed - in the last volume - to be powerful immortal sorcerers who have transcended their physical bodies to become beings of pure magic. They're also mostly assholes who enjoy watching people slaughter each other for their amusement. The thing is I can think of no reason whatsoever for such individuals to pretend to be anything else. It's implied in the books that they're playing nice in order to get people to worship them and do their bidding, and while on one level I find this idea charmingly naive, on another I find it ... well ... naive. I mean really, if you're a powerful, immortal sorcerer who has just become a God, why not just turn around to your apprentice or nearest analogue and say "okay kid, I've just obtained unlimited power, now you and me are going to team up and take over the motherfucking world". A cursory glance at the history of real world religion shows that people are perfectly happy to worship gods who don't pretend to be nice cuddly bunnies. The Greco-Roman Gods were complete assholes but they were also pretty popular back in the day, I doubt that many Romans woke up in the night having a crisis of faith over the seduction of Leda. The big reveal at the end of Age of the Five is that the brutal, destructive war which had torn the world apart for the past three books was something the Gods had orchestrated for their amusement. At which point any self respecting citizen of ancient Greece would presumably say "well, duh". As flies to wanton boys, and all that.

Of course the real reason that the Five had to pretend to be nice guys was the demands of the plot. The main character had to be a Priestess, which meant she had to like the Gods, but she also had to be sympathetic, and that meant that she had to believe in an effectively New Testament version of the Gods who were all about hugging kittens and being nice to old ladies. If she'd started the books as knowing, willing servant of the Gods as they actually were she would have been far less sympathetic. Except actually it might have actually made for more interesting character development if, instead of discovering that the Gods were evil because they'd lied about their natures, she'd always known what the Gods were like, but had been forced to re-evaluate her opinions about them as she grew and developed.

By having Auraya's opinion of the Gods depend entirely on how closely their behaviour matches her personal moral code, Canavan prevents her from being convincingly "religious" in any sense I can understand. Or, to put it another way, she's religious in the same way that a lot of not-terribly-religious-actually people are religious. Her supposed "love" of the Gods is actually just an extension of her being a nice person, since the teachings she seems to love the Gods for are the ones which mesh with her essentially twenty-first century moral outlook.

Again, I wonder if this all results from the staggeringly vast influence of Christianity on European thought. A large amount of what we take for granted as self-evidently moral is in fact strongly influenced by Christianity. Every so often a politician will stand up and say something like "every religion teaches us to care for each other" when actually they don't (indeed arguably Buddhism teaches the exact opposite - you're not supposed to be attached to anything in the material world). We assume that being "religious" basically means holding the same beliefs as everybody else, but deciding that it all comes from the Gods instead of from yourself.

Auraya's first big crisis of faith comes when the Goddess Huan (the evil goddess) tells her to kill Mirar (her lover, mentor and friend who also happens to be the immortal founder of a heathen cult). The crisis comes about because her Gods, who she loves, have asked her to do something which is against her conscience. This is all very well as far as it goes, but the problem is the way the conflict is expressed. She never, for one moment, considers the possibility that she might be wrong and the Gods might be right, she just feels disappointed that the Gods have become, in her eyes, fallible. It's not that she had previously supported the right of the Gods to demand the death of people who crossed them, but was forced to reconsider when it was somebody she cared about, rather she simply never expected the Gods to demand the execution of their sworn enemy. At no point is she asked to question her religious beliefs, because she effectively doesn't have any. At no point does she ask herself "is it right for me to kill a man, if the Gods tell me to," only "will the Gods ever ask me to do something which I know is wrong, like killing a man."

It's all the more problematic because apparently Auraya's twenty-first century beliefs are apparently supported by the Circlan faith (she complains that the Gods are asking her to "break the rules they themselves laid down") but again this raises the question of why the Gods set things up like that in the first place. She insists that Mirar doesn't deserve death because he has committed no crime, but she lives in a goddamned theocracy, surely "being the immortal leader of a heathen cult which leads people away from the Gods and therefore causes the destruction of their souls" is, in fact, a crime whichever way you cut it. Of course, when Auraya says "he has committed no crime" she means "he has committed no act which would be considered a crime to a twenty-first century, atheist fantasy reader." In fact he encourages people not to worship the Gods, which from the perspective of somebody who does worship the Gods, and who believes that worshipping the Gods is the key to saving your soul from destruction, should be a very bad thing. A crime, in fact. In Dante's Inferno, Heretics wind up in the sixth circle of hell, along with murderers and suicides. Heresy - the propagation of false doctrine (like "It's okay not to worship the Gods") - is, from a religious perspective, an act of violence equivalent to murder. It destroys souls. It is not okay from any genuinely religious perspective.

The problem is that modern audiences (and by extension modern writers, who after all come from the same stock) just don't see it that way. "Heresy" is just a word, for most people one that conjures up images of sinister black-robed priests tying innocent villagers to stakes and cackling. The idea that religion might genuinely be something worth fighting over is something we understandably find uncomfortable. Religion has caused a great many bloody wars in the past few millennia, and nobody's keen on that, and I somehow doubt that the Pope is going to call any more crusades any time soon.

I do wonder, though, whether we haven't gone a little too far in our rejection of religious conflict. We've finally (more or less) reached the conclusion that slaughtering each other might not be the best way to resolve our religious differences, but since we place such a high value on the act of slaughtering each other, this seems to have led to our rejecting the value of religion entirely. Since we no longer see it as worth having wars over, we no longer see it as worth paying attention to at all, and this unfortunate state of affairs bleeds over into fantasy worlds whose fictional Gods hand down divine laws they don't actually believe in to followers who are just going to do whatever they want anyway.

I can't help but think it's a bit of a shame.Themes:

Books

,

Trudi Canavan

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

empink

at 20:04 on 2008-04-17The idea that religion might genuinely be something worth fighting over is something we understandably find uncomfortable.

I think this is because, like you said later on, religion isn't as valuable to people in the West anymore. Stability, separation of church and state, and more widespread religious freedom mean that you can pretty much follow any belief system you want, so long as you're not breaking the law. Religion affecting your life through discrimmination or inconvenience or whatnot is more likely to be grounds for a lawsuit in the West nowadays, instead of just the way things are in a certain country or area, and that has diminished some of its everyday value to most people. Political ideology matters way more now, because it has a more direct effect on people's lives than most religious action does. In most cases, who's on the school board, or is city mayor, or is state governor, or is the President, is far, far more pertinent to whether your economic circumstances will change than who is bishop or caliphate, and so people act and live accordingly.

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 20:05 on 2008-05-06Of course, there's nothing inherently implausible or even logically incoherent in someone believing in a god (or gods) and simultaneously judging that god (or those gods) according to an independent moral standard. Many ancient Greeks and Romans took a very dim view of their gods' exploits as described by their poets. What they concluded from that depended on their assumptions about the nature of the gods. Some believed that the gods wouldn't do anything unworthy of their great power (which is not quite the same as saying that being a god necessarily means being good, but has a similar effect) and therefore the stories must be false. Others, believing the gods were psychologically similar to humans, had no trouble with the obvious conclusion that sometimes the gods behaved immorally. Both of those approaches involves judging the gods by one's own moral standards, but that wasn't a problem because the gods weren't regarded as the source of correct moral standards.

The behaviour of the gods you believe in requires you to question your own moral standards only if you believe either (1) that the gods are incapable of immorality or (2) that the gods are both (2a) the source of correct moral standards and (2b) incapable of hypocrisy or moral weakness. There's even some wiggle-room in (2), in fact, if one's prepared to say that the gods are the source of moral standards for humans but have different and ineffable moral standards for themselves (though here one has to answer the question where, if human moral standards come from the gods, do the gods' moral standards come from, to which the answer is probably also ineffable).

So that brings us back to your earlier point, Dan, that the religion in this case is essentially Judaeo-Christian but with the single god swapped for a Graeco-Roman style pantheon. Which means that it does make either assumption (1) or assumption (2) or possibly both, because the author is so steeped in the remains of Judaeo-Christian culture that she's forgotten that it's possible to have a religion without either of those assumptions. And the problems you've identified stem from the fact that assumptions (1) and (2) are incompatible with a Graeco-Roman style pantheon, since that requires the gods to have vaguely human personalities and to interact with one another in a vaguely human way, which they can't do if they're all equally omniscient, omnipotent, and incapable of evil.

So what I suppose I'm saying is that if modern readers really can't be expected to connect with a fictional world in which religion occupies the same place as it did in medieval European society, there may be some mileage in a fictional world in which religion works like it did in the classical world (or in ancient China, or in medieval Japan, or in pre-Islamic India, or in parts of pre-colonial Africa). Then again, perhaps asking fantasy writers to look beyond medieval Europe really would be heresy...

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 14:41 on 2008-05-07

Which means that it does make either assumption (1) or assumption (2) or possibly both, because the author is so steeped in the remains of Judaeo-Christian culture that she's forgotten that it's possible to have a religion without either of those assumptions.

I think that's pretty much my diagnosis.

[antiracist-tolkien]

Thanks for your response. You make some good points about the imperialism within the text, and I understand where you are coming from on the rest of your points. But I also feel that you have misinterpreted my post and there are a number of things that I disagree with.

.

1

To start with your point that items exist within the context of their culture, I agree. But that was the point. I wasn’t suggesting that these things be thrown in randomly, I was suggesting that they could be used to show the culture of a character of colour. I definitely don’t think that anyone should mix and match customs or portray white Arwen with a ribbon skirt!

Yes, items and customs are steeped in culture and history. So is the system of European monarchy. Heraldry/coats of arms, the roles of Kings and Lords, the systems of land ownership, these all evolved in our world in specific ways for specific reasons. But they are present throughout Arda without explanation and are rarely challenged, because Western European cultural norms do not need to be explained.

Why are saris considered an unacceptable importation to Valinor where we have to justify the history and reasons that they evolved, but the entire feudal system and pseudo-medieval Western European clothes are just accepted? Everything has a cultural context and history, but some are accepted while others are challenged. Because Western European is the default.

The important point that I think is missing in your analysis is that we as PoC are also steeped in our cultural context. We relate to it in different ways and not all PoC still identify with or even know much about our ancestral cultures, but our history is still there in our blood and our generational inheritance. We as PoC are often imported into Middle Earth without our context and culture.

And like I said I don’t think this is a bad thing. We need those stories and they have value in their own right. There is power in the concept of the cultures of Arda having every kind of skin colour and feature, and that being a completely unremarkable fact of the world . But sometimes I want us to have our context, culture and pride. I want to feel like more than an imported token. That is my perspective and that is what I was trying to communicate. So that is why I don't feel that it is accurate to interpret it as a suggestion that items should be imported without their context. They are adding context to dark skinned characters. If done correctly, of course.

There are some things that are never appropriate to use in that way, which was why I made my brief point at the end about checking whether something is a closed practice or has a deep significance. But I think it’s wrong to suggest that everyday aspects of our cultures can’t be used in fanworks because it’s somehow inappropriate.

.

2

I am indigenous and I don't need a definition of my identity. I'm sorry if I come across snappish here, but this one irked me. No, it is absolutely not the same thing as endemic, not when you're talking about humans. Not every culture is indigenous to where it formed. The myth that ‘everyone is indigenous to somewhere' is used to put down and oppress actual indigenous people, and misunderstands what it actually means to be indigenous.

I do think that it's a bit strange to compare the term Silvan to the term Native American. If I recall correctly, Silvan is an endonym. ‘Native American’ originated as an exonym imposed by imperialist colonisers and even though many claim it today, it has a complicated history.

But if we engage with that comparison, both Silvan and Native American have merit as terms in their own right. I agree that generalising native people as one homogenous group is bad. There's great diversity within native cultures. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a place for the broad term Native American. It’s not a ‘dumb’ term. (Except for the fact that the word America is a coloniser word imposed on the indigenous people, but that’s a different topic.) Some things are a unique and universal/near universal experience for Native Americans, and it's important to have a term for when you’re describing a common experience. 

I have seen people describe all Silvans as a whole, across the different groups, as indigenous, so I use Silvans as a general term in the post above because that is what I mean. I'm talking about all of them, not just one group.

When I say that I’ve seen people describe Silvans as indigenous, what I mean is that some indigenous people relate to the Silvans and some don’t. People don’t always see things the same way and the legendarium is made murky by things like immortality. So I specified if you see the Silvans as indigenous. Not everyone does, and it’s not a big deal.

.

3

I have two points of disagreement about the practicality of saris in Tirion. Firstly, saris aren't just for hot climates, they work in a wide variety of climates across south Asia. People wear saris in the Himalayas.

A good quality sari functions like insulation to keep the body warm on cool days and cool on hot days, with this effect being magnified by the way that you fold it or whether you layer it with other clothes. There are traditional forms of woolen saris in areas of north India and southern Nepal.

Secondly, I don't understand what you mean about the climate in Tirion? I may be missing something here as I freely admit that I have not read all of HoME yet and I haven't picked up NoME. As far as I know, there's no information in canon at all about the climate of Tirion. One thing we are told is that every species that ever existed lives in Valinor, which suggests that there's a large range of climates and ecosystems. 

If we look at the map that Tolkien drew of Arda, Tirion appears to be right on the equator.

It's hard to see because of the quality of the image, but Tirion is on the left hand side in the middle of the gap in the Pelori and has a symbol like a sun. I'm aware that this map is Arda before the world became round and so the rules around the equator don't apply. But a) we know that as you head north through Araman it gets progressively colder until you reach the Helcaraxe is the icy far north, supporting the idea that the gradient of climate zones in Arda isn't too different from ours and b) if there was a dramatic change in climate when the world became round, the ecological devastation would have been massive and far-reaching.

If people have different thoughts and headcanons that’s fine, I don’t think any interpretation is wrong. But I don’t think it’s correct to say that Tirion is definitively a cool climate.

.

4

You make good points about areas where people could explore the colonialism and cultures within the text, there’s a lot of examples. I have reblogged many analyses of them. It just wasn’t the point of this particular post.

It’s not mutually exclusive with diversifying other areas of the text. It’s not one or another. There's room for us to imagine ourselves wherever we like and many ambiguous areas where it wouldn’t actually be non-canonical to read the text as diverse. For example, Fingon’s skin colour is never mentioned and he’s described to have braided hair. There’s no textual reason that he couldn’t be black. At the same time, we don’t need to have a canonical basis or justification for ‘race-bending’.

Anthropological linguistics is a fascinating field. However, not everyone has the tools or background to do this and it can be very hard if you don’t have a head for linguistics and you don’t know what you’re looking for. It’s never going to be the primary method that fandom uses to explore culture and diversity.

.

5

And yet also, I feel strongly that we don't need to justify it if someone wants to draw native Arwen in a ribbon skirt. I feel that we don't need to defend our right to portray ourselves in the characters that we love.

I just don’t understand your seeming insistence that cultural representation can only occur among the racially coded groups of the legendarium. You can so clearly come up with reasons for ribbon skirts existing among the Druedain, but don’t extrapolate that out to the fact that people might also be able to come up with stories for Arwen to have one?

This may not be a universal opinion. Like I said above, different PoC have different perspectives and what one person loves might make another person uncomfortable. Ribbon skirts are by far the most culturally significant of the items that I listed, and if a Native American person feels that my suggestion was inappropriate then I sincerely apologise.

But can I ask: are you a person of colour? Because if not, this comes across quite differently. My post was about my experience and my perspective. I understand that you are an anthropology major and speaking from that perspective and expertise, but I also studied anthropology. I majored in sociology and minored in anthro. I can tell you that it means nothing compared to the lived experience of being a minority culture. I appreciate you acknowledging the fact that our clothes, items and customs all come from our context and history going back to time immemorial. But you are missing the context of our experiences as PoC and our desire for representation. There are many people of colour in the notes who are very capable of giving their own opinions without someone else stepping in to speak for us, especially when some of your information is incorrect. It is possible that eventually, someone will see this and disagree about a topic related to their culture and experiences. But that is their own right.

Ideally PoC would be the ones to write about our own cultures and experiences but this is an overwhelmingly white fandom and it’s just not fair to put that burden on us. We should be able to enjoy fandom like anyone else without feeling like we have to be representatives and advocates.

I hope that this all makes sense and that you don’t perceive it as an attack on you. The reason that I wrote this is that you raised some important points, but I feel that your intentions were good but misguided.

I love fanworks of Tolkien characters where they have dark skin and it doesn't change anything, but I wish there were more works where a character’s blackness or brownness was more than their appearance.

[writingonesdreams]

I live in a form of capitalism and I have all the right in the world to say I prefer it to the system that was in my country before and that my country and me personally benefit from living in it more than we don't (of course in some way we don't. We get exploited too. But I still think the benefits outweigh negatives in the east European countries, and I can say it whether it applies to your specific situation or not and whether you see it that way or not).

My post addresses the infantile arguments and behaviour on Tumblr that bashes against capitalism, often for nothing more than to complain you have to work for a living. Which is an argument and a problem esp for artists and for pre-adults/ young adults, who don't know what they want to do in life to make them happy

I have read the arguments against capitalism. I agree with some points. I disagree with others. For one, EU doesn't live in pure capitalism anyway and we have social support system and laws that protect people from the "profit over people" thing

If you have truly constructive suggestions to what would make capitalism better or what would be a better system, let's hear it. Yes, we live in a work based society and I would totally be up to discuss if that's good at all in the first place. But live in a work based one. Not a hunter or collector one. So what's better than capitalism? Give me specific suggestions instead of simple hate. Otherwise, your post is just preachy and trying to reduce the point and intent of my original post (not to mention calling my education and knowledge in question. Who do you think you are talking with?).

Saying stuff like "you can find explanations for this everywhere" just shows what a one-sided bubble you live in. Yes, on Tumblr your opinion definitely dominates. That doesn't make it more true in reality or reflect how people look at it everywhere.

The whole point of my post was to call you out on this surity of yours. If you have read my other posts on this topic you might have seen more politely and carefully worded arguments. But you reacted to the short, ironic, provocative post. That's tells me something about you as well.

So anyway. I don't need your arguments "spoon-fed to me on Tumblr". Tumblr is an enviroment with truly strong anti-capitalistic mindset. I would be really interested to know why that is. New American generation? New generation of westerns in general who have lived such privileged lives and who depended on capitalism so naturally and for so long, they have nothing better to do but to criticize it, when people from a country like mine have fought to have it and it finally gives them opportunities to get rewarded in proportion to the work we put in? That's my impression of how my generation acts about it (as a Eastern European studying in West Europe and as s Slavic person on writeblr), and it irks me. So I decided to speak up a bit, cause you obviously need to see there are other situations, conditions and opinions out there, instead of treating it like it's a self-explanatory obvious thing.

Not to mention, I can say whatever I want on my blog, and you have all the right in the world to disagree and unfollow. You can also disagree and just tolerate my different opinion. Just because I know your arguments and maybe (which I don't really with you specifically) understand your point of view, doesn't mean I will change mine. It's a fascinating tendency on Tumblr, how people here are always so eager to "educate" someone, being condescending to different opinions, just cause they are different/ in a minority here!

The resolution of debates really doesn't have to be one person surrendering to the other. If that's your whole goal, don't bother replying, cause you are not going to change my mind (I don't expect you to change yours). I just want people to know a different opinion, based on different life experience, is out there. Ofc it isn't universal. But I can be tolerant to others, so I wish people could show more tolerance, respect and open-mindedness as well.

You know that EVIL thing capitalism does to you?

It demands you to work for a living.

Omg the tragedy. What are you going to do? You can’t just sit on your behind at home and do nothing? You can’t get paid for playing video games?

Omg. So unfair. Capitalism the evil. Pure evil!!!

[historyisveryserious]

So uh, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about who the ancient Egyptians were, ethnically, and I don't really want to stir up a pot of emotions, but uh, here are some general rules of thumb.

The area around Egypt has been invaded a lot, and so the people who live there today are not exactly the same as the people who lived there 7,000 years ago. (Like how the Celts in Britain were replaced by the Saxons.) In general, you can extrapolate from the modern inhabitants of Egypt what their ancestors looked like, and generally speaking they're more closely related to southern Indo-Europeans than the people of Central Africa. (The Sahara is a bitch to migrate across.)

But before you get angry, that doesn't mean that the Egyptians were "white" in the modern sense of whiteness, it's not like they were running around looking like Legolas in Thebes, that's a really dumb idea. The Indo-European branch of ethnicities are wide spread as far east as parts of China, as far south as the Arabian peninsula. There are lots of buffer zones of intermarriage, so it's understandable if the people separated by desert from the rest to Africa could gain some influences from other areas to their north and to the east.

That said, the Egyptians left a lot of art and representations of themselves over a long period of time that make it easier for historians to study their self-conception and racial dynamics in their society. In general, they paint themselves as having reddish skin if male, yellowish skin if female, nappy black hair, and almond-shaped eyes. So, uh, I guess they don't really conform to the modern western European phenotype, but they also stand distinct from other people in their area, who are depicted differently in their art. They drew Mediterranean people as "white" by modern convention, and Nubians from modern-day Sudan as "black" by modern standards. The Egyptians were pretty xenophobic, and saw themselves the center of the world, so they made sure to profile any strange people they met.

This whole messy issue is complicated by the fact that we have the clearest and most famous representations of members of the royal family of Egypt, and royalty are often removed, ethnically, from the common people they serve. By the time of Cleopatra, the ruling dynasty of Egypt was entirely Macedonian. It's always irked me a little bit to see Alexander the Great depicted as a strapping white dude and Cleopatra as an independent, strong-willed African queen when they both came from the same neck of the Hellenistic woods. (But that's pop culture doing history for you.) I get that we all want to have cool conceptions of our favorite historical figures, but the truth is rarely as awesome as we want it to be. Cleopatra was an inbred, middle-aged Greek lady with a hook nose, but that's not sexy to think about, so it's better if we just keep painting historically inaccurate babes. The last king of Egypt, Farouk, was pretty much European.

I guess that I just wanted to clear up some bad genealogy and poorly understood conceptions about who the ancient Egyptians were as a people, and how they relate to the people around them. The cradle of civilization has been claimed by lots of different groups over the years, looking for some of the majesty of antiquity to rub off on them. The imperialist Europeans wanted the Egyptians to be "white" so they could stake a claim at the land they were seizing; afrocentric historians in the early 20th century claimed the Egyptians as "black" so they could have pride in an ancient culture at a time when African culture and achievements were not widely studied in academia. But I guess what I want to say is that history is the story of people, and people are nuanced, history is nuanced, and that complicated historical events are difficult to condense into snappy, reblog-able posts that make you feel good about yourself.

The Egyptians were Egyptians.

Ancient Egypt Rant

The ancient Egyptians were not white people! Modern day Egyptians no longer have dominate Afro features because Northern Africa has been conquered by Arabs many times, and so modern day Egyptians have a lot of Arab DNA. ALL of Africa started out with brown and black skinned peoples! There is a reason why hieroglyphics depict brown/black skinned people with braided/dreaded hairstyles! White people are not native to any part of Africa!