Why some people hate/refuse Fantasy books, movies etc. ?

[DraconianOne]

Thanks JC.

[Thrawn]

- The first bunch of Laurel Hamilton's "Anita Blake" novels were pretty entertaining, before she veered off and it became vampire erotica.  Starts as 2, ends up as 6.

I JUST finished book ... I think 9 of Anita Blake on Audiobooks.  I started out enjoying the series and have liked it less and less the last few books to the point where I think I'm not even going to bother going forward.  Glad to see it's not just me.  I like the contemporary fantasy settings, but just keep running into number one from your list over and over.  Like the Mercedes Thompson books my wife had me read, I enjoyed the ones I read enough to read more, but they fit exactly into your description.  I also listened to the first Marla Mason book recently which again fits easily into your groupings, but in that case I hated it and never moved to the second book even.

[Johny Cee]

- The first bunch of Laurel Hamilton's "Anita Blake" novels were pretty entertaining, before she veered off and it became vampire erotica.  Starts as 2, ends up as 6.

I JUST finished book ... I think 9 of Anita Blake on Audiobooks.  I started out enjoying the series and have liked it less and less the last few books to the point where I think I'm not even going to bother going forward.  Glad to see it's not just me.  I like the contemporary fantasy settings, but just keep running into number one from your list over and over.  Like the Mercedes Thompson books my wife had me read, I enjoyed the ones I read enough to read more, but they fit exactly into your description.  I also listened to the first Marla Mason book recently which again fits easily into your groupings, but in that case I hated it and never moved to the second book even.

The general endpoint people give for Anita Blake is book 10, Obsidian Butterfly....  pretend that's the finale and give up.  After that, it's loose shreds of plot wrapped around orgies and really increasingly bizarre sex behaviour/hangups.

Female authors, and female centric wish fulfillment, are just more prevalent in UF than in SF/F which is kind of a boys club.  I like plenty of 1s, but I have grown heartily sick of the bad novels in that category...  you know, female protag who thinks she's ugly, everyone has a secret crush on her and thinks she's perfect, and a great big heaping of deus ex to tie up the plot.  It's as cliched as farm-boy prince levels up, slays badguy and wins heart of scantily clad beauty.

[Thrawn]

The general endpoint people give for Anita Blake is book 10, Obsidian Butterfly....  pretend that's the finale and give up.  After that, it's loose shreds of plot wrapped around orgies and really increasingly bizarre sex behaviour/hangups.

Yeah, Obsidian Butterfly is the one I just finished.  I started the next audio book and it was a different (and VERY bad) reader which was kind of the clincher killing it for me.

[HaemishM]

And Haemish, if you like George RR Martin's prose that's fine, but it gives you and I zero common ground on which to discuss writing. It's a long, long way away from my taste.

Well, that's a LONG LONG WAY from saying that Martin's prose straight up sucks, which is what you seemed to be saying to me. It's not to your taste, well, different strokes. Saying it's "terrible, tedious, simplistic writing" is pretty saying it's utter shite, and well, it's not. I don't put him amongst the greatest wordsmiths of all time, but it is hardly the utter crap you make it out to be. His prose reads at a good pace. My biggest problems with it seem to be his fascination with describing the meals people eat and the clothes they wear, but those tend to be over quick and I can move on to the more interesting stuff. Compared to the last book I read (The Windup Girl) which had more intricate prose but read REALLY SLOW, Martin's a breath of fresh air. Windup Girl was a really good book but it took a lot more mental chewing and I almost gave up a few times because I just wasn't sure that the author was taking me to a place I gave a shit about. He did, but it was a close run thing.

If Martin's prose is so goddamn bad to you, what is it you consider really fantastic prose that you are trying to compare fantasy genre stuff to?

[Selby]

After that, it's loose shreds of plot wrapped around orgies and really increasingly bizarre sex behaviour/hangups.

Seriously.  My ex-wife loved those books but stopped with Obsidian Butterfly because it was just all about dirty sex (I believe there's even some hentai thrown in for good measure).  The author is actually a trip to talk to and discuss her writing thought processes and how she develops characters, but honestly the books themselves are more like pr0n now.

[Chimpy]

Urban Fantasy: the women's gateway drug to tentacle rape?
 

[apocrypha]

And Haemish, if you like George RR Martin's prose that's fine, but it gives you and I zero common ground on which to discuss writing. It's a long, long way away from my taste.

If Martin's prose is so goddamn bad to you, what is it you consider really fantastic prose that you are trying to compare fantasy genre stuff to?

What's the point? We've established that we have different tastes. I already said that I was probably being elitist and a snob in my first post in this thread. If you want me to list some writers I like so that you can call me pretentious or argue about our tastes then tough, I'm not interested.

[Wasted]

If we know what your tastes are we may be able to suggest to you some fantasy you might actually like.

[Bunk]

Exactly - I don't think anyone wants to tear you apart Apoc, it's more curiosity as to what it is you are looking for.

I've read books by authors that make me stop and reread every other paragraph to fully comprehend it, and then make me pause again to think it through. After a chapter or so I feel like I may have exercised my mind, but I don't typically feel entertained. I would say that William Gibson is about as "hard" a reading as I am looking for.

I'm actually quite proud of the fact that I could only get ten pages in to Gravity's Rainbow.


On another topic from the thread - Anita Blake. I made it about as far as each of you did, giving up when it reached the point of entire book covering basically a 24 hour orgy. Quite a divergence from the gritty, macabre crime drama of the first few books.

It annoys me, because I liked the first couple books quite a lot, but any attempts I've made to find other authors in the genre have been met by what could be best described as "utter drek".

[Johny Cee]

On another topic from the thread - Anita Blake. I made it about as far as each of you did, giving up when it reached the point of entire book covering basically a 24 hour orgy. Quite a divergence from the gritty, macabre crime drama of the first few books.

I think I made it a couple books further than that.  It wasn't so much the orgies or dropping of plot as much as the bizarre sex/fetish/hangups she got into.  For instance, the vaguely bisexual vampires switched to straight because Anita was that good or she was jealous or something... and some of the dominant/submissive wank that got worked in was out there.  Or the fact that literally every time Anita was captured someone tried to rape her, at which point she overpowered them and escaped... or later I think she ended up raping some submissive boytoy or something? 

Basically, it was the female version of the Piers Anthony descent into the darker and darker reaches of the author's personal sex hangups and fetishes.

It annoys me, because I liked the first couple books quite a lot, but any attempts I've made to find other authors in the genre have been met by what could be best described as "utter drek".

On the JC Urban Fantasy scale, you sound like you want a good #4.  Harry Connolly Child of Fire, Charlie Huston "Joe Pit" books, Mike Carey "Felix Castor", Sandman Slim.  All "darker" in tone, more noirish. 

- Just recently found Connolly, and I really liked it.  Modern world, magic is secret.  Magic is actually Lovecraftian, so the good guys are callous assholes who are trying to stop people from accidentally calling an eldritch horror.  The bad guys are usually pretty sympathetic....  trying to use magic for a good purpose and not realizing what they've done.

- Joe Pitt is very noir vampire story, with an asshole protag whom life shits on.

- Felix Castor is basically the comic book John Constantine with the serial numbers filed off.  Carey is a comic book guy, who wrote the Hellblazer comic for a while, so it's a really good Constantine knock off.

- Sandman Slim is a darkish action book.  Read the first, ignore any followups.

[Bunk]

Its tough to say what I'm really looking for. Dresden with a little more sex? (I'm on like book eight, and he's been pining for the same woman for the entire series)

Dan Simmons meets Urban Fantasy?

[murdoc]

The Connelly books are pretty good, actually. They were a nice change of pace.

Mr. Cee usually makes pretty good recommendations imo.

[HaemishM]

If we know what your tastes are we may be able to suggest to you some fantasy you might actually like.

This. I'm actually curious what apocrypha considers good writing that he rags down genre writers so badly. If I just wanted to call him a crotchpheasant, I would have done that in the first post I made. apocrypha, you brought up the discussion, you claimed the writers were so bad. If so, who is SO GOOD? Not knowing what you are comparing it to doesn't help the discussion.

You also started off the discussion with the idea that people who write or like genre fiction need to somehow justify it to people who think it's drek. That's a bad starting point. I think most of Dickens is drek, and yet literate types would clutch the pearls to hear me say that.

[Lucas]

Absolutely.

That's pretty much what I've been saying all along, and it's in response to the thread title which is "Why some people hate/refuse Fantasy" etc. I am one of those people, and my posts here have been explaining why that is for me.

Sorry Apoc if I'm only quoting this phrase among the other replies related to your posts.

Topic got an interesting turn, maybe strayed a bit from my original dilemma (wow :P) : as you can see, most of us who wrote in this thread are actually insiders. Read or tried to read fantasy and got a positive or negative opinon about it.

I was more interested in the outsiders, with average interest toward reading in general, which refuse *any* fantasy or science-fiction media in general because they cannot connect it to reality, and see if there were some psychological meanings behind it.

Here's something you may find interesting:

"Investigating imagination: Research shows we all experience fantasy differently, which determines how much we enjoy it" (published on Nov. 8th 2011)

http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/nov11/fantasy110811.html

[apocrypha]

Alright, a quick run down my bookshelf of the last couple of years, most recently read first, kind of:
Tim Winton
China Mieville
Peter Carey
Salman Rushdie
John Steinbeck
Jorge Luis Borges
Franz Kafka
Hermann Hesse
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bret Easton Ellis (bit of a love/hate thing there though)
Will Self (same again)
Irvine Welsh (and again! All those last three I love their writing, hate their stories & characters)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bram Stoker
Mary Shelley (and P.B. but poetry is a different beast that I read in dribs & drabs occasionally, never in large chunks like a whole book)
George Orwell
Hemmingway (although he infuriates me)
Hunter S. Thompson

That's the kind of general gist. I tend to read 2 book at a time, often with more more lightweight stuff thrown in - Iain M. Banks, Pratchett, other trashy SF - what I think of as brain candy floss - for when I'm too drunk to read a proper book or only have 10 mins spare, etc.

Here's something you may find interesting:

"Investigating imagination: Research shows we all experience fantasy differently, which determines how much we enjoy it" (published on Nov. 8th 2011)

http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/nov11/fantasy110811.html

I'm not really sure how much that applies to me - I regularly get heavily emotionally invested in a story (in any media) but also have a visually rich internal landscape and am perfectly capable of daydreaming far too much! But yes, an interesting read, would have been nice to have more detail on the research, for all we know from that article he could have interviewed 10 people.

You also started off the discussion with the idea that people who write or like genre fiction need to somehow justify it to people who think it's drek. That's a bad starting point. I think most of Dickens is drek, and yet literate types would clutch the pearls to hear me say that.

No, I don't believe people need to justify their choices in what they read/watch/etc, that's what taste is all about. If someone likes J.K.Rowling then that's fine with me, but I'm not ever going to say that I think she's a good writer. I agree about Dickens, I've never been a fan. I love they way he makes a connection with real people but I don't like his writing, I find it one-dimensional.

In fact that's a key thing for me with writing - I need layers, complexities, things I don't understand at first (or ever sometimes!), a feeling that the words are a window onto a busier world than they are able to convey. The use of the medium is also crucial for me - you used the term wordsmith earlier, and that's what works for me. Writers who are masters at turning words into more than the sum of their parts, not just using them as a simple tool to describe things. George RR Martin is a very good example (IMO) of this limitation. His writing is entirely one-dimensional. He describes scenes and events and that's about it. There are no layers, what you see is what you get. There's no poetry to his prose! He's heard of alliteration and metaphor and he tries them out sometimes but never in any way that would surprise you if you read it in a high school homework assignment.

If you don't like my views on writing then, well, fair enough. I know what I like, I've never read any fantasy (talking specifically about the genre here, there's incredibly strong elements of fantasy in a generic sense in almost all of the writing I do like) that came close to hitting the notes I like. If it helps then simply append the words "In my view" to the front of every one of my posts.

[Ingmar]

George RR Martin is a very good example (IMO) of this limitation. His writing is entirely one-dimensional. He describes scenes and events and that's about it.

I disagree with this so completely I don't even know where to start.

[HaemishM]

Your list of writers is about half what I would put on my list of "non-genre" writers. But this:

That's the kind of general gist. I tend to read 2 book at a time, often with more more lightweight stuff thrown in - Iain M. Banks, Pratchett, other trashy SF - what I think of as brain candy floss - for when I'm too drunk to read a proper book or only have 10 mins spare, etc.

Wow, so much wrong with that one line. The bolded part is what really gets on my tits. You have essentially started with the wrong attitude. You consider sci-fi or at least the sci-fi you mention as not a "proper book." As a writer of "not proper books," you might as well have come and pissed in my bowl of Cheerios. It's like you are starting from the point of "genre fiction cannot be proper literature" and proceeded into beret territory after that. Why do you not consider them proper books?

I'm sure Hunter S. Thompson would get a right kick out of you including him on that list, BTW, as would Kafka. The fact that both Stoker and Shelley are essentially fantasy genre fiction that just happen to be old enough for literate types to point to as proper books is also funny.

In fact that's a key thing for me with writing - I need layers, complexities, things I don't understand at first (or ever sometimes!), a feeling that the words are a window onto a busier world than they are able to convey. The use of the medium is also crucial for me - you used the term wordsmith earlier, and that's what works for me. Writers who are masters at turning words into more than the sum of their parts, not just using them as a simple tool to describe things. George RR Martin is a very good example (IMO) of this limitation. His writing is entirely one-dimensional. He describes scenes and events and that's about it. There are no layers, what you see is what you get. There's no poetry to his prose! He's heard of alliteration and metaphor and he tries them out sometimes but never in any way that would surprise you if you read it in a high school homework assignment.

If you don't like my views on writing then, well, fair enough. I know what I like, I've never read any fantasy (talking specifically about the genre here, there's incredibly strong elements of fantasy in a generic sense in almost all of the writing I do like) that came close to hitting the notes I like. If it helps then simply append the words "In my view" to the front of every one of my posts.

I think you are incorrect about the writing quality of fantasy, though most of the genre probably would fall into the "unoriginal hack" category. If you don't see the poetry or alliteration or wordsmithing of Tolkien, you are not looking hard enough. The man created entire languages, FFS. Though a lot of the work is very dry, that was an intentional stylistic choice. Again, I think Martin is an adequate writer, not on the level of a Kafka but certainly not trash.

[tgr]

I've never understood why metaphors seem to be so important to some people, but I guess they're just reading books with a very different viewpoint from mine; I'm just in it for the story, and my expectations of a book is that the language shouldn't get in the way of said book.

I guess it's telling that I didn't trigger on f.ex Eddings' or Goodkind's language, but in Eddings' case the incessant humour, and in Goodkind's case the bipolar-ness of the main chick. vOv

Edit: In fact, I'm not sure I'd recognize metaphors unless I were specifically looking for them, simply because I just don't spend time thinking about it.

[Chimpy]

Coming from a background where I had to read and listen to a ton of analysis and criticism of literature, I can say that a lot of the metaphors being "found" in analysis are the product of the reader looking for a "why did the author write this?" reason that is deeper than "because he liked the sound of it".

[apocrypha]

Yeah I didn't think you were really interested in what I had to say Haemish, it was pretty obvious you were just looking for an opening to get personally butt hurt about my tastes.

Have at it, I don't feel like there's anything to be gained from further participation in this discussion from me.

[Tale]

Alright, a quick run down my bookshelf of the last couple of years, most recently read first, kind of:

I like your tastes. One m in Hemingway though. Winton, Steinbeck, etc... You're naming artists who string words together like no-one else.

George RR Martin uses words as a blunt instrument to tell a wonderfully epic story. He'll use what he thinks sounds cool like "The morning air was dark with the smoke of burning gods", but he's no Annie Proulx. He's also inconsistent in the way his characters speak. They mix an old style English with Americanisms, which is jarring like a US accent in a fantasy film.

But it's far from shit. He builds a fantastic world and you absolutely don't know where he's going with it. If I can see what the author is trying to do to me, I put the book down in disgust, like Markus Zusak's The Book Thief or Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer. And it's not painful to read like Dan Brown or Matthew Reilly. It's enjoyable.

[HaemishM]

Yeah I didn't think you were really interested in what I had to say Haemish, it was pretty obvious you were just looking for an opening to get personally butt hurt about my tastes.

Have at it, I don't feel like there's anything to be gained from further participation in this discussion from me.

Based on your second sentence, I don't think it's my posterior that's smarting. And I'm not talking about your tastes in reading, because as I said, half your list would be on my list of some of my favorite writers ever, especially Thompson and Kafka.

No, my problem is that you are essentially confirming what Lucas started the discussion about - why do some people refuse to read fantasy books? Which in your case is because you apparently dismiss it as trash that isn't a proper book. The specific case you mentioned was George Martin's Game of Thrones, dismissing him as an untalented, poor writer because he is not the wordsmith of a Thompson or Kafka. I would actually agree with you that he's not nearly the writer Kafka is - only I don't think that means he's trash. If you don't find him entertaining, well, that's a matter of taste. Calling him a poor writer and lumping him in with hack writers like say a Piers Anthony or Terry Brooks, I think is a mistake and given your stated reasons, a little snooty.

In other words, you come off sounding really pretentious when you say things like fantasy or scifi lit are not proper books. If you don't feel there's anything further to discuss, there probably isn't.

[Ingmar]

I would posit that if you're not reading Kafka in German the translator deserves at least an equal share of credit.

[tgr]

So, would I be terribly off base if I assume that the people who seem to like scifi/fantasy are concentrating mostly on the story and characters themselves, whereas those who look down upon those genres are looking more at how said story/character is presented?

I'm assuming that's being a bit simplistic, but that's a bit of the gist I'm getting.

[stray]

Lately, I've spent a lot of time learning Jungian psychology. I'm sure most people here have taken MBTI tests? It's based on the same theories.

Anyhow, there are different dichotomies in it's system.. How people percieve (down to earth/hands on Sensing types vs big picture/imaginative Intuitive types), how people make judgements (rational/pragmatic thinkers vs gut feeling and value oriented judgements). Not to mention how even those branch off into different styles. There's introverted sensing, which is more detail oriented, and extroverted sensing which is less on the details and more utilitarian and action oriented. Introverted intuition is just weird.. not sure how to explain. Extroverted Intuition is very wholistic, puts a lot of small pieces and forms a whole, and invents new perspectives on things. A lot of "brainstormer" career consultants would be extroverted intuitives a lot of the time. Same goes for inventors, who can look at a problem, and invent a solution from something seemingly unrelated. Like a Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

That all said, what I found is that a lot of people who were extroverted sensors, especially young ones who probably haven't had time to think on their other faculties, hated fantasy stuff. I didn't take a poll or anything, but it came up often. They were all into sports, clubbing, working with tools, shit like that. Their interests were tied to the "moment", rather than going deeply into stuff. They also liked more realistic movies. A lot didn't even have the patience to read much. I'm not knocking it though. I think I'm borderline with these people. After my teen years, I changed for various reasons (you're not completely destined to be "one type" or anything.. It's just a matter of preferences or strengths).

So that's my 2c.

edit: Oh, and as for thinking it's just people "trying to look cool". I don't think it's that simple. My dad's an old fart who doesn't like fantasy, but the last thing on his mind is trying to look cool. He just has a more down to earth mindset.

And like I said, I used to be the same way. Maybe I did too many drugs.. "unlocked the intuitive" achievement.   I remember I used to be a lot more "fun" in the traditional sense. I was always out doing something. And when it came time to sit around and geek out, I wasn't trying to be cool. I just got bored easily. I remember being a dick once and turning off someone ELSE's television, when they were watching Star Trek. But it wasn't about being cool. I was probably pissed off that we weren't doing anything.

Fast Forward 10 years and I've fucking seen all of the Trek seasons back to back. Go figure.

[Ironwood]

Lately, I've been looking in the mirror.

[Bzalthek]

So you prefer horror to sci-fi/fantasy then?

[Count Nerfedalot]

Lately, I've been looking in the mirror.

oh that was cruel.  fair, but cruel.

[lamaros]

Because the people who like them are socialally inept very often and as social animals human beings don't like to be associated with those people.

Same goes for authors like apoc likes to read. Talk about them in some groups and people start glazing over. However those people often make more money and the like so there is more cultural capital to invest in, giving wider audience appeal.

Also there are works of fantasy that are very umm, 'fine' in their craft. Umberto Eco wrote fantasy for the last half of Baudilino (spelling). There is just a difference between fantasy writing and fantasy authors.

Also, most writing in every genre, including lit fiction, is fucking awful.

[stray]

Because the people who like them are socialally inept very often and as social animals human beings don't like to be associated with those people.

Funny that. I've grown to hate people and socializing in general as I get older, and coincidentially, my knowledge of fantasy works has improved.

[Sheepherder]

So, would I be terribly off base if I assume that the people who seem to like scifi/fantasy are concentrating mostly on the story and characters themselves, whereas those who look down upon those genres are looking more at how said story/character is presented?

You would.  Because, you know, Hemmingway and his weird fucking style which apparently doesn't allow syntactic sugar.  Let's not forget the Russians either: nobody murders the pace of a story like a Russian.

[Bzalthek]

That's because there's nothing to do in Russia except drink or bitch.  (I have this on good authority from one of my professors from Russia!)

[Lucas]

So, would I be terribly off base if I assume that the people who seem to like scifi/fantasy are concentrating mostly on the story and characters themselves, whereas those who look down upon those genres are looking more at how said story/character is presented?

You would.  Because, you know, Hemmingway and his weird fucking style which apparently doesn't allow syntactic sugar.  Let's not forget the Russians either: nobody murders the pace of a story like a Russian.

Heh, my favourite author is Dostoevskij    (and "White Nights" is probably the short story I love the most) but yeah, tough fella :P.If you think about it, you could even categorize some of Dostoevskij works as "fantasy" ("The Idiot", for example), because of the dreamy atmospheres, extreme characters, situations, and inner psychological troubles.

"Good Lord, only a moment of bliss? Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man's life?"

[stray]

I've never finished any Dostoevsky stuff, except Notes From Underground. Which is all the Dostoevsky I probably need (I liked it, don't get me wrong).

My favorite fantasy author is Robert Howard, but he would probably be one of those that didn't consider himself one. He started Conan because he wanted to write historical fiction - except he was fascinated with all ancient cultures, and decided to place them all in one basket, in order to commentate on civilization as a whole. He ended up created a neat fantasy world because of it.