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

[Lucas]

Just wonderin'.

- Yes, of course it's a matter of different tastes, but dwelving a little deeper than this:

- In other cases, do you think there is an unwillingness to detach yourself from the 'real world' ? A consequence of this, is that you consider everyone else who is willing to do that a weirdo?
- And why do you think some people can't "suspend their disbelief", while other accept to do that?

- Is the "12 yrs old loner daydreaming in a basement" clichè still viable in a post LOTRO trilogy world? An adult that reads fantasy has an impossible Peter Pan sydrome, blocked in his/her childhood?
- And probably, it also depends on what fantasy have you been exposed to, because some of it may be quite hideous (especially some "high fantasy" stories).

Have you been in contact with friends/parents etc. who offered an explanation to this, when they refused your proposal to read certain fantasy books (or watch fantasy movies, etc.) ?

[Merusk]

A large part is probably fantasy fanatics who don't help promote anything but the "loser in the basement" stereotype.

Whatever else you can say about the US, 90% or greater never moves past high school and still worries about looking cool.

[murdoc]

I think that the success of Harry Potter has made it so that fantasy isn't quite the niche it used to be. Between HP, the Lord of the Rings movies and now Game of Thrones on HBO, fantasy is becoming more and more mainstream. The same thing has happened to video games beginning with consoles and now hugely due to mobile and facebook games.

[Merusk]

Yes, but you're still regarded as weird if you play certain games.  No, not just J-Date sims and MLP.

I agree it's changing, but the stigma for fantasy and gaming is still there, as are the old jokes and stereotypes.   Many comedians, late-night TV hosts and prime-time sit-coms still go back to that well of tired tropes and get mileage out of them.

[Bzalthek]

Yet another question falls to the answer of "People are stupid"

[Nebu]

For me it's that I just don't enjoy reading fantasy novels.  I prefer to read nonfiction when I do read.   To the rest of the topic, I don't care what others read nor do I place any stygma on people that like fantasy novels.  Hell, my best friend is a HUGE reader of fantasy novels. 


Hope that contributes something.

[Mrbloodworth]

Isn't like, 90% of media, books, TV, movies Fantasy?

I mean, I know there is a glut of cop shows and shit, but most of them are also Fantasy. I am constantly amazed at the resources the show bones has. Fucking interactive 3d holograms!

[Cyrrex]

Hell, my best friend is a HUGE reader of fantasy novels. 

Yes, they often are huge.  Add that to the list.


 

[Bzalthek]

In my experience there are much more frail, skinny fantasy lovers than obese cheetos-blooded ones.

[ghost]

A large part is probably fantasy fanatics who don't help promote anything but the "loser in the basement" stereotype.

Whatever else you can say about the US, 90% or greater never moves past high school and still worries about looking cool.

I agree with this somewhat, but I think there's something more inherent in it.  Some people just cannot break that barrier, and I think it has something to do with the right brain/left brain division, etc. 

[Rasix]

It was kind of discouraging that hanging out with same aged friends when I was around 28-29 that they were still really concerned with how cool they look.  I got a lot of dork stares for reading at all (and fantasy lit at that) and mentioning a video game that wasn't Madden/Halo/CoD was beyond the pale. 

I wonder how they'd feel if I explained them a Persona game or Shadow Hearts 2.  They'd probably run off and take a shower to wash off the dork.

[Merusk]

Isn't like, 90% of media, books, TV, movies Fantasy?

I mean, I know there is a glut of cop shows and shit, but most of them are also Fantasy. I am constantly amazed at the resources the show bones has. Fucking interactive 3d holograms!

Only technically.  It's only "mass media" fantasy if it has elves and shit.  Bones is Sci-Fi and that's "Totally Different!"

[Ingmar]

Fantasy is much, much more mainstream than it was 20 years ago. Give it time.

It helps that you see a lot fewer chainmail bikinis in cover art these days.

[apocrypha]

For me it's mostly been that pretty much every fantasy novel I've read has been terribly, terribly written.

Sure there's some great stories, some wonderful characters, some amazing imagination in settings and worlds and the like, but I've yet to read a single one that wasn't desperately sub-par in terms of actual writing ability.

Maybe that makes me elitist, or snobby, or whatever, but I like writing that challenges me, that makes me think, that pushes me a bit, and I've never read a fantasy novel that comes even close to that.

[schild]

Because the majority of fantasy in any media is utter shit.

That about settles it I think.

[Chimpy]

In my experience there are much more frail, skinny fantasy lovers than obese cheetos-blooded ones.

It is all about the extremes. Finding an average sized fantasy nerd is the difficult part.

[Bzalthek]

I think that's a large part of it.  The extremes tend to gravitate towards media or entertainment that doesn't reflect real life so much because for a lot of them real life sucks donkey dick.

[ghost]

Because the majority of fantasy in any media is utter shit.

That about settles it I think.

You've played, and loved, Demon's Souls and play lots of Magic: The Gathering, so I think that rules your opinion to be unreliable.

[Bunk]

For me it's mostly been that pretty much every fantasy novel I've read has been terribly, terribly written.

Sure there's some great stories, some wonderful characters, some amazing imagination in settings and worlds and the like, but I've yet to read a single one that wasn't desperately sub-par in terms of actual writing ability.

Maybe that makes me elitist, or snobby, or whatever, but I like writing that challenges me, that makes me think, that pushes me a bit, and I've never read a fantasy novel that comes even close to that.

I was going to try to challenge you on this, but I do kind of get what you mean. Standard Sword and Sorcery Fantasy is so full of basic tropes and standard settings, it doesn't tend to be overly complicated. I actually read far more Sci-Fi than Fantasy because of that.

I'm sure there must be something in Fantasy I've read that would quallify as deep... I'll have to think on it.

[Lucas]

What I'm more interested about is the prejudice toward the genre (no matter the media, and yes, I include sci-fi too, although there may be differences).

- Yes, you have those who dislike it based on what they think is the average person who reads/watches it ("it's kid/loner" stuff ! "); also because maybe they tried a couple times but unfortunately read the wrong authors or watched disastrous fantasy movies/series;

- But, as I observed before, there is another, far more interesting category, and it's those who cannot excerise the so called "suspension of disbelief", who often can't understand why should they get emotionally involved in something that isn't grounded in our real world. It would be interesting to understand why some people lack or utterly dislike this kind of "attunement". I feel, sometimes, that it's more than "I prefer other stuff", they consider it as some sort of "taint", wrong behaviour or something.

Yeah, it's akin to the "pretending" game of our childhood; maybe, for a lot of people, playing "pretending" at an adult age, throughout books or movies, seems wrong, out of place: they're too involved in the gritty real world stuff to escape to another world for a few hours; they don't want to.

[Bzalthek]

There is a subset of people who have difficulty with empathy, I think it is.  If it's not grounded in the real world they have trouble connecting to it.  I wonder if that covers completely with the group of people who can't empathize with people they don't know.  I'm sure everyone knows the type:  Someone who simply cannot or will not care about someone or something unless it falls within their personal sphere of interest.

[ezrast]

Most fantasy is terrible, and while it's true that most of everything is terrible, terrible fiction in other genres is often merely boring or amusingly hackneyed. Terrible fantasy is the most painfully cliched, implausible, vaguely racist bullshit there is.

I think I would read a lot more in general today if I hadn't had such shitty taste as a kid.

[SurfD]

- But, as I observed before, there is another, far more interesting category, and it's those who cannot excerise the so called "suspension of disbelief", who often can't understand why should they get emotionally involved in something that isn't grounded in our real world. It would be interesting to understand why some people lack or utterly dislike this kind of "attunement". I feel, sometimes, that it's more than "I prefer other stuff", they consider it as some sort of "taint", wrong behaviour or something.

I wonder if those same people could be "weaned" into accepting hardcore fantasy (Tolkien etc), through gradual exposure to less "fantastic" fantasy (for lack of a better term).  For example, if they have serious difficulty getting even remotely interested in Elves and Dwarves and Dragons, how do they respond to historical fiction, like a King Arthur story with well researched "history" that tries to show how the legend might have been plausable, or stuff about Roman Legions trying to deal with pagan fanatics in Northern England, or the adventures of Vikings etc.

If you could get them interested in that, could you then work them into more and more "fantastic" stuff, untill you have eventually moved from "Historical Vikings" to "Viking Legend" to "Outright Norse Mythology" and then finally end up with them reading LoTR, or is there some point where they hit a wall and just go: Nope, mind not going to go there, too fantastic for me.

[tgr]

This was a few years ago, but I was once unironically ribbed for reading fantasy/scifi books, instead of reading crime novels or something. For some reason, the concept of "the commute sucks and is filled with mouthbreathing asshats I'd rather not lock eyes with, these books happen to be well-written, so fuck you I'm reading fantasy/scifi books" just did not sink in. I gave up discussing books with her, she was obviously dead against the kinds of books I normally read, so spending more time on it would've been a waste of time.

Having said that, I actually decided to try to read a crime novel, and I actually managed to stumble onto the least crimenovel-y book I think has been written, ever. It took 100+ pages (out of 700) just to get to the point where someone had finally gotten killed, and the main chick was still spending half a page discussing whether or not one guy she was going to work with would hit on her or not, or if they were attractive or whateverthefuck. I've only ever stopped reading books from two people before this book, one was Terry Goodkind because of his 2D bipolar main character, and the other was Melany Rawn for exactly the same thing I put the the crime novel away: I don't deal well at all with what I can only assume is a steam of consciousness of the female mind.

And for all I know, the chick who ribbed me for the fantasy/scifi books had been through one or more similar experiences with fantasy books, and just thought all of them were like that. I know I would've been much more inclined to avoid fantasy books if Melany Rawn had written the first book I read.

[Sheepherder]

Northern England, or the adventures of Vikings etc.

You know who does excellent crime novels?  Dostoyevsky.

[Margalis]

1. Most fantasy is really bad and fantasy as a whole seems like the lowest-quality genre on average.

2. A lot of people seem to only read fantasy (check out our own book thread) which is kind of an odd turnoff to me.

That said of course there are good fantasy works and watching/reading them is fine. But I don't get why a lot of people seem devoted almost solely to fantasy. To be honest I am a little suspicious of people who are so into fantasy, to me it's not particularly different from being really into romance novels - a mostly garbage genre read purely for escapism.

As someone who has read a decent amount of both science fiction and fantasy it's pretty evident that science fiction writers are just a tier above in general.

[Chimpy]

There are good and bad things to be said about any genre or entertainment medium. People read fiction that entertains them, just like they watch movies or play a video game or play poker or whatever.

If reading a book (or a type of book) keeps you entertained it is doing its job.

There are very very few themes in western literature that have not been rehashed ad infinitum in multiple genres. To single out one type of  writing as being the only place where the same basic premise is done again and again is totally ignoring the fact that ALL fiction is guilty of it.

[ghost]

Most fantasy is terrible, and while it's true that most of everything is terrible, terrible fiction in other genres is often merely boring or amusingly hackneyed. Terrible fantasy is the most painfully cliched, implausible, vaguely racist bullshit there is.

I think I would read a lot more in general today if I hadn't had such shitty taste as a kid.

Racist?   

[Furiously]

The same can be said of comics. Only more so.

[apocrypha]

If you're a writer with some promise, and you're good enough to know that you've got some real talent are you going to aim for a Booker Prize or an Academy of Arts Award or something or are you going to write fantasy and go for a Bilbo Baggins Beardy Merit Badge or whatever?

Seriously, if you're any good you ain't gonna paddle in the pool that the 3rd graders have peed in.

There's another thing about fantasy as a genre too - it's inherently backward looking by its very nature and thus attracts a more conservative type of writer and reader. Science fiction suffers from some similarities in writing ability but not to the same degree because the essential nature of science fiction is forward looking - either utopian or dystopian, but still forward.

Fantasy is locked into medieval styles and constructs. It's always castles and lords and serfs and preindustrial and pre-enlightenment and as a result has a tendency to go hand in hand with an unoriginal approach. That's an inescapable aspect of the genre. If someone writes a fantasy book that doesn't conform to those tropes then, well, it's not fantasy any more, it gets labelled as something else.

[tgr]

You'd think there'd be more focus on actually telling a good story, though, since there's so little perceived flexibility within the fantasy genre. Personally, my experience with scifi is that some of them take scifi in a ... very weird direction, much more so than fantasy usually does. So much so I'm spending a lot of time trying to fathom what the rules in their universe actually are.

[Simond]

Because the majority of fantasy in any media is utter shit.

That about settles it I think.

The majority of everything in any media is utter shit.

[TripleDES]

I like fiction. Just not the specific middle age, knights and dragons style setting. If I'm reading something, then it has to be in a contemporary setting, or scifi. And by scifi, I mean sprawling cities with skyscrapers featuring tech all over the place, interstellar spaceships and all that. Not laser guns or rare references to high tech while in a medieval setting. Iain Banks fooled me once with his book Matter, and I'm still resenting him for it.

[pxib]

Fantasy and sci/fi have the same trouble that Romance does, though. There are some people who will read and recommend books in those genres regardless of how shitty they are. Except in fantasy and sci/fi the books will be 1000 pages long. Here, you can borrow my copy. It doesn't get good until about page 700 but then? OH MAN.

[ezrast]

Most fantasy is terrible, and while it's true that most of everything is terrible, terrible fiction in other genres is often merely boring or amusingly hackneyed. Terrible fantasy is the most painfully cliched, implausible, vaguely racist bullshit there is.

I think I would read a lot more in general today if I hadn't had such shitty taste as a kid.

Racist?   

Man, that's what takes Salvatore's Drizzt stuff from harmless hackery to total WTF material for me. Bruenor the surly dwarf is all DON'T JUDGE MY DARK ELF FRIEND BASED ON THE COLOR OF HIS SKIN and then five pages later turns into THERE'S NOTHING I LOVE MORE THAN INDISCRIMINATELY KILLING ORCS HURRR. It just highlights that dark-skinned races in D&D-style fantasy are uniformly unintelligent savages and it's okay to kill them and take their stuff, which is an elephant I might be okay with ignoring if Salvatore didn't point it out every few chapters and shout "But it's okay because SOMETIMES there are EXCEPTIONS, you see!!!" as if he's actually making an allegory about real-life racism somehow.