Virgin light novel protagonist. (GATE © A-1 Pictures)
On a Google+ thread by Jeffro Johnson, he talks about the decline of sci-fi since 1940, but that wasn’t what generated the most discussion.
A discussion on heroism within the genre did, prompted by this Twitter thread.
A boy named Reiji is brought by a summoning ritual to another world, a world of magic and monsters. In this world, the king tasks him with defeating the Demon Lord, who has destroyed many kingdoms and now threatens to wipe out all humanity. As the chosen hero, he learns the ways of magic and progresses with great speed, determined to bring an end to the Demon Lord’s terror.
This book is not about him.
This book is about his friend Suimei Yakagi, an expert magician capable of astounding feats far in advance of anything in the other world (hence the book’s title.) Angry at having been accidentally summoned alongside Reiji, he seeks a way back to his home dimension — all while hiding from Reiji and his friend Mizuki Anou that he has magical abilities.
The magic in this other world is too far behind, and this light novel, translated from the original Japanese, is a good way to kill time.
Lately, I had been doing some thinking after listening to various Youtube videos critiquing the current Disney canon of Star Wars, as well as reading JD Cowan’s recent blog posts about the sci-fi and fantasy genres and the death of the short story. All together, it gave me so much the consider that I completely rethought my current novel project and went in a radically different direction with it.
However, a tweet from Daddy Warpig brought everything into sharp relief:
It’s rare that I find writers who haven’t been poisoned with Post-Modernist theories about what makes for a good book or good story, even in anti-SJW circles.
Cultural Marxism did its job very well.
— Daddy Warpig (@Daddy_Warpig) June 7, 2018
A while back, I made a post critiquing a common modern view of heroism — namely, that there is no heroism, only differing definitions of what is right. I argued against this notion, and received a large number of comments in the process. Below was one of the comments, with the original poster’s words in italics and my responses in bold.
“Heroism” is anti-egalitarian when we are looking at the concepts of heroism that come from inherently anti-egalitarian societies. And when we look at the classic, or lets say stereotypical image of heroes in the fiction of recent years, it draws very heavily from the Ancient mediterranean and 19th century Western Europe and North America. Both extremely inequal forms of society. To become a hero, a character has to be an imbodiment of the qualities that their society promotes and favors. Which in these cases is the ability to use force to subjugate anyone who isn’t part of the ruling elite and to impose their will on their environment.
UPDATE: Yakov Merkin responds.
UPDATE: Benjamin Cheah responds.
I like the Youtuber Super Eyepatch Wolf. His analyses on The Simpsons’ rise and fall as well as the archetypes of shonen manga are quite informative, going in-depth while keeping the content interesting throughout and the delivery smooth. He’s not a bad videographer, so be sure to check his stuff out.
That being said, I disagree profoundly with this particular video:
A few days ago, I wrote a post detailing the far-left bias in traditional publishing; this bias is so pervasive that anyone even slightly non-extreme leftist must go indie to have a career at all. Now, from the UK, we have a report (archive) that stories about traditional masculinity will be avoided.
Reading through what goes on in the world of sci-fi and fantasy publishing, I’ve come to a very simple conclusion:
Anyone even mildly right wing must self-publish on Amazon if they hope to have a career.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a committed Republican ideologue or a simple housewife. It doesn’t matter whether you pack heat or just favor lowered taxes. It doesn’t matter if you wear a MAGA hat or just think America is a good place to live. Any inkling of non-progressivism is certain to get you excluded from the traditional publishing industry.
The new year is here!
2017 is finally over. A new year begins for all of us, with new beginnings, new challenges, and new opportunities. There will be new stories to write, new books to read, new movies and anime to watch (including the next season of My Hero Academia) — everything. So many new things to try, and so many rewards to obtain.
That being said, here are my plans (not resolutions):
A white male.
On a Discord chat I was in, I saw Superversive Press put out a call for submissions to an anothology celebrating masculinity. Since I was knee deep in my own projects, I ignored it — after all, I was already writing something and I didn’t want to saddle myself with more work. I was going to let it pass.
Then I saw these folks snark about it.
I changed my mind.
The weapon of creativity. (Photo by MAKY.OREL)
Revolutioooooooooooon!
In a flash of inspiration over the weekend, I have decided to take up pencil and keyboard, I have decided to take up the literary struggle of National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo! As I gathered my plan in my mind, however, I found that the official beginning of the challenge was nigh, and I had not yet completed my plot. Inspiration had come too late for me, and I would have too little time to bring a draft into the world.
So I declared rebellion.
