Friday Forum Philosophy - Week 3

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Sometimes bad or broken logic bugs me, but it doesn't usually keep me from enjoying a movie. In a book it bugs me more.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Last words, anyone?

[Steerpike]

One another trope (or perhaps cliche - or perhaps just something that creators do) that annoys me a lot is the exact reverse of making your elves ten foot tall blue punk-rocking acid-spitters or whatever: it's when they create a "new" race with characteristics that are practically identical to those of another common fantasy race, but give their race a new name in a transparent attempt to appear more original than they really are.  These races sometimes have mild cosmetic differences from the creatures that inspired them, but sometimes they even resemble one another.  It's like Peter Griffon and Homer Simpson.  This phenomenon seems to be most com mon with orc-like races.

Examples: Trollocs (Wheel of Time), Urgals (Eragon).

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Examples: Trollocs (Wheel of Time), Urgals (Eragon).

People also seem to do this with hobbits/halflings sometimes (names like "pech" and "half-men" are some I read).

My final word is that as much as we may hate some tropes we may have to live with them.  Just as mental exercises I've found a few that are just off-putting to subvert, perhaps more because what's feeding the trope is my own strong preferences.

[Ghostman]

I only read a little bit into the massive Wheel of Time series before giving up on it, but I seem to recall that the Trollocs didn't have a common anatomy, they were just a motley horde of humanoid monstrosities. Their place in the world and their behaviour was pretty much Orcish though.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I only read a little bit into the massive Wheel of Time series before giving up on it, but I seem to recall that the Trollocs didn't have a common anatomy, they were just a motley horde of humanoid monstrosities. Their place in the world and their behaviour was pretty much Orcish though.

Correct on both counts.

However, they might also be assumed to be based on trolls. Obviously that's the source of their name, and Jordan did use other inspirations from mythology (including the Wheel of Time itself).

In fairness, it's hard to take a race of savage misshapen creatures and not get comparisons to orcs. To make them seem truly different, you'd have to spend a lot of time on them, and that's more page space than most readers want to see dedicated to bad guy grunts.

[Llum]

I personally don't see how Trollocs are based on anything aside from perhaps some kind of beastmen. They don't have any really special defining traits aside from their bestial attributes and their low position on the totem-pole of evil.

Urgals however are essentially ram-horned orcs.

[Steerpike]

Trollocs do look a little different than orcs/trolls, but they're still pretty much the low-level big, stupid, brutish, obedient henchmen who get bossed around by the more elegant, intelligent evil dudes in black (Myrdraal/Nazgul).  I mean, it's not like they ruined Wheel of Time for me (that falls to the overwriting and all that damn braid-tugging), but whenever I read about them I kind of rolled my eyes a little.

Personally, I love monsters, and as a reader I'm totally willing to have very different baddies explained at length - but I realize I may perhaps be in a minority in that regard.

[Superfluous Crow]

Braid-tugging?? What do you mean by that? I thought WoT was a pretty good book; not so much for the setting perhaps, but because the writer has immense scope (that story is so big i can hardly imagine how he came up with it all and made it fit) and because it actually has a decent unique magic system. What bothered me the most was the "there was once future technology!" parts.
Hmm, can see I'm a bit late for the discussion if we are already at last words. Personally, I can hardly get myself to read something that doesn't in some way expand a genre for me. Tropes like "anthropocentric setting" I'm okay with because they do not in essence have any effect on how the settings unfolds; they are just basic scaffolding that allows for easier suspension of disbelief.
Beyond that I'm all in for originality and innovation. More than anything that's what draws me to a setting. It doesn't have to be completely new though; a twist is enough if performed deftly enough. But our goal is to make our own settings, and as such we can't just use a template. Just like stories can be alike only with different scenes and characters, settings can be alike as well as long as there are notable differences in the primary elements.

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

People also seem to do this with hobbits/halflings sometimes (names like "pech" and "half-men" are some I read).

Just as a minor note, "pech" is actually the name of a small Celtic fey known for its ridiculous strength despite its stature, so chances are someone using that one either is going for a Celtic (or generic real-world mythological) tone in the setting or is actually going for token short race that is different from the usual hobbit tropes.

Using "half-men," though, is pretty much just renaming halflings.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Using "half-men," though, is pretty much just renaming halflings.

Except in Wheel of Time?

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Cataclysmic Crow]Braid-tugging??[/blockquote]Hmm how many of the series did you read?  I quite liked the first three or so, then they started going downhill.

Braid-tugging is something that the character Nynaeve does a lot.  Jordan likes to write Strong Women, and his idea of strong female character seems to revolve at least partially with them getting very, very exasperated with "Men!" all the time and being generally irritable.  Nynaeve often physically manifests this by tugging forcefully on her long braids.

As the books progress, it seems like Nynaeve starts tugging her braid with greater and greater frequency.  Braid-tugging has become sort of infamous as a symbol of the gradual decay of the books from well-paced high fantasy adventure - perhaps not the most original stuff on the block, sure, but a damn good yarn with strong characters, believable dialogue, geuinely scary baddies, and an epic quest - into a sluggish, overwritten slog through pages and pages of nothing happening, in which lengthy descriptions of people's clothes, women getting irritable at men, and (of course) Nynaeve tugging her braid increasingly replace the ruined cities, magic, skullduggery, and battles that everyone enjoyed in the first books.

EDIT: found this mock interview online that pretty much exemplifies the decay of the Wheel of Time (and boy now are we off topic!):

ED: Robert Jordan, bestselling author of the Wheel of Time series, welcome.
RJ: It's an honour.
ED: It's an honour for me too.
RJ: That's what I meant.
ED: Mr. Jordan, may I call you Robert?
RJ: My friends call me Robert.
ED: Robert...
RJ: That's Mr. Jordan to you.
ED: Fine. Mr Jordan, tell us about your latest novel.
RJ: This is Book 22 of the Wheel of Time series, Rand Clips his Toenails .
ED: The book has come in from some criticism from the fans on the forums.
RJ: I can't imagine why.
ED: Perhaps because the entire book is devoted entirely to a description of Rand clipping his toenails.
RJ: I felt that there were a lot of important plot points addressed in the book.
ED It's seven hundred pages about toenail clipping!
RJ: I think you are failing to understand the significance of the toenail clipping act. Each toenail must be clipped in the precise order as laid out in The Prophecies of The Dragon. The manner in which each toenail is clipped is subtly different, with serious implications for all of the other characters.
ED: What possible implications could there be for the other characters? None of them even appear in the book!
RJ: I'm afraid you will have to Read and Find Out.
ED: Lets try a different approach...Mr. Jordan, how do you react to accusations that your novels consist almost entirely of meaningless trivial subplots and feature precious little actual plot development?
RJ: I can't understand where these accusations are coming from.
ED: Allow me to give a couple of examples...Book 17 The Paint Dries . The infamous braid tugging sequence... "Men!" growled Nynaeve, tugging her braid and folding her arms under her breasts. Elayne stormed into the room. "Men!" she exclaimed, tugging Nynaeve's braid and folding her arms beneath her breasts. Aviendha stormed into the room. "Men!" she growled, tugging Nynaeve's braid and folding her arms... . This goes on for an entire chapter! Thirty-seven different women complain about men and tug Nynaeve's braid. How can you justify this? Or how about Book 19 Overtaken by a Snail ...Elayne knits clothes for her baby...and you include the knitting pattern!
RJ: These are all important plot points. To appreciate the significance you just have to RAFO.
ED: Have you any idea how irritating that phrase is?
RJ: Let me stroke my beard while I think about that...yes.
ED: Fine. Was it a conscious decision of yours to concentrate on one character for the entire book? Are we now going to get a dozen one character books?
RJ: Let me stroke my beard and think about that...no. The next book will have another change of emphasis. It will consist entirely of subplot and will not feature any of the main characters.
ED: None at all? That's incredible! What is it about?
RJ: The book introduces two hundred new characters, none of whom will appear in any of the subsequent books. As to the plot, you will just have to wait until the first part of the prologue goes on sale.
ED: Yes, I suppose...hold on a minute, what do you mean by the first part of the Prologue?
RJ: I am releasing the Prologue of the next book on a sentence by sentence basis.
ED: Good God! How long is this Prologue?
RJ: Approximately 700 pages.
ED: That doesn't leave much room for the rest of the book.
RJ: There is no rest of the book. The entire book is a Prologue. It's part of my FARO policy.
ED: Don't you mean RAFO?
RJ: No, FARO - Fleece and Rip Off.
ED: Have you a title for book twenty-three yet?
RJ: Not yet, I was thinking Laughing All the Way to the Bank or maybe The Dragging Really Bores why?
ED: Might I suggest The Mattress.
RJ: Why?
ED: Because its full of padding.
RJ: Let me stroke my beard and think about that.
ED: Robert Jordan, best-selling author of the Wheel of Time series, goodnight.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

[mock interview]

To be fair to the author I've read books which were terminally boring despite not having any of this in them.

[Superfluous Crow]

Meh, never noticed the braid-tugging thing. If she has a tic she has tic. And although the interview complains about minor characters, one of my favorite points of WoT is how minor character return return and come to the foreground in latter books. They don't have a static role in the book. But yeah, the series is quite... long.
I have heard a lot of people complain that the plot never moves, and i never noticed, which is kinda surprising since my attention span is unfortunately rather short... Plenty of interesting stuff happen as far as i can remember in the later books. Admittedly, it's a long time since i read them, and I don't plan on doing it again. :)
I'm no fan, but i don't dislike them either.

[Steerpike]

My above post probably exaggerates my dislike for WoT.  I do get bored by the latter books, but they're still not complete drivel, even if they have their flaws.  If someone were asking for reccomendations, though, I'd always reccomend ASoIaF over WoT.