(no subject)

[esmenet]

I just spent about an hour and a half articulating to myself why

1. I intensely dislike media that prioritize a magical world over a real one—the real world has all the stuff I care about in it already, and if your shiny cool magic world is full of sparklies but not one goddamn personal conflict I will not give a drop of ink for it—and

2. Real conflict is not in events but in how people react to them.


Piece of articulation I am fairly proud of, considering the lateness of the hour:

I don't care about your huge fireballs and your dragon-slaying and your oh-so-special self who is so privileged to be in this oh-so-special world. I care about fights between friends and social (in)justice and household chores and academic research and culture clash, I care about actual difficulties that have to be dealt with.

It doesn't matter if it's physically impossible, so long as it's real.

Not entirely unrelated to this: The Magicians is a very good book so far, and the author seems quite aware of what he's doing, but I kind of hate Quentin a lot of the time. And Loveless is fast becoming my comfort manga for not-enough-internal-conflict media. INTERPERSONAL DIFFICULTIES WHAT HO. (Other things good for this: gateway_girl's Blood Magic, dolores_crane's In Loco Parentis, kirinin's Secret of Slytherin and Geas of Gryffindor, and all things Utena.

Comments

[annotated_em]

I had the same problem with The Magicians. I thought that what Grossman was doing with his critique of that hero's journey meta-narrative was really neat! But I spent the book actively disliking most of the characters and really wanting to punch Quentin in the face.

[esmenet]

Yes, that's exactly it! Quentin especially doesn't seem to actually care about anything except for the Fillory books, and when he's thinking about and critiquing those I almost like him, because that's a very fannish thing to do. But right now he's in New York doing drugs and hanging out with people he doesn't really like anymore and I am just like ugh, Quentin, I hate your face. Also there are about three thousand more interesting things you could be doing in NYC with unlimited money than drugs and boring parties, you really suck.

I guess this is one of the things you see in ~literature, where the main characters go off somewhere potentially and are boring partygoers who absolutely fail to do anything actually enjoyable, which is why I don't read ~literature.

Also I actively hate the hero's journey, and even though the author is critiquing it the characters aren't. But I know there is more Fillory stuff later, and Penny comes back, so I'll go ahead and finish the book. Because Penny does actually care about things, or at least I think he does, so he is the one character I actually kind of like. (And if he doesn't, DON'T TELL ME.)

[annotated_em]

Yeah, this book is painfully literary! Where "literary" means "solipsistically devoted to a white boy's prolonged examination of his own navel."

*sigh* Which is why I don't read a lot of ~literature~ if I can help it.

[boundbooks]

I rather liked Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents as a book that both critiques the hero's journey and has the characters actively engaging in the critique at the same time. There's a main character who's practically a TV tropes index, in that she always compares their situation to stories, but all of the characters are active and care about their problem!