manatees do suck though seriously

The problem with people who use terms like “nihilist fantasy” is that there tends to be a fairly good point frequently buried under a mountain of shit that inevitably turns into the most bizarre paranoia ever spewed about fantasy.  That point tends to get lost, because who wants to wade through shit to get it?

Me.

I do.

And I did.

Beneath all the buzzwords, the namedropping and the contempt for youth, there is an actual point to the idea that fantasy should not be a vehicle for negativity.  It’s an idea that’s been tossed around a bit on a few Facebook posts (that eventually became kind of looney, and I’m lazy, so I won’t go hunting them down to link) that fantasy needs…well, to be fantastic.

A hero, a monster and a quest, the theory goes, is what’s needed.  There’s something about these traits that makes fantasy what it is, something that protagonist, antagonist and conflict lack.  Something loftier, perhaps: the kind of qualities a hero has that we can aspire to, the kind of villainies that a monster has that can make us fear, the kind of weight a quest has that makes it so much more than the tension of a guy and a girl staring at each other, thinking.

There are obvious issues with this, of course.  Heroic qualities can remove the protagonist too far from reality, denying us the chance to relate to him.  Villainous properties can make a monster a shallow and boring and, if we can’t relate to the monster, then we don’t know why he’s a threat aside from the fact that the author told us so, in which case we’re removed from the story and it feels hollow.  And dropping the One Ring into Mount Doom is not something someone experiences as much as a guy and a girl staring at each other, thinking, thus making the stakes for the latter frequently higher.

But then there’s the other end of the spectrum: the idea that fantasy is just like reality and that it’s a good vehicle for exploring how utterly shitty humanity can be.  In the name of relatability and reality, we have grit, and in the name of grit we have a lot of really depressing instances where people never rise above their shit and frequently sink down further into it.  War is everywhere and everyone is dying, there are no goodly kings and fair princesses since all the politicians use people like pawns to murder each other, the sex is loveless and the romance is completely gone and at the end, you don’t so much not feel the warm fuzzies as you feel pretty crappy.

There’s obvious issues with this, too.  Portraying something as unrelentingly bleak and despairing where there simply are no good people, and if there are, they’re too stupid or just fated to get fucked over time and again is as unrealistic and shallow a conflict as one where all the Good People are always happy and beautiful and all the Bad People live underground because that’s where they belong.  A conflict in which no one wins and everyone ends up shittier than where they begin can often feel like a talk with Lie Bot: meaningless, empty, designed just to make you feel bad.

So, which is right?  Well, as impotent an answer as it is: no one is.

In my opinion, conflict is up and down, give and take.  We need to see the protagonist succeed and the antagonist succeed from time to time to keep things interesting.  And we need to be able to relate to both of them so that we’re invested in their successes and failures, hence why I tend to lean away from the idea of traditional “good must always win and evil must always wear black armor” fantasy, since it tends to discourage relatability in the name of escapism/tradition.

And yet, at the same time, I believe in magic words and I believe in love.  I want the hero to succeed in some way.  I want the villain to be taken down, after a huge fight.  I want my talking magical creatures and ancient worlds and my heroes and my monsters.  I want fantastic stuff and I don’t read to feel like shit.

Tome of the Undergates is gritty, sure, but it has love, it has inspiration, it has wonder and poetry and tropes alongside the grittiness and the stomping in of groins and the despair and sorrow.  I wanted that.  I can’t see how you can have one without the other.  The real thing I don’t want to do is have it all clear-cut and easy to figure out.  I don’t want love at first sight and I don’t want villains to wring their hands and cackle.  But I don’t want Lenk drinking himself to death in a pile of his own filth as he gently strokes a blood-soaked picture of Kataria, wondering how it all came to this.

I guess, at the end, the best answer I can give is that the ideal end to this is conflict.

See, all art, by its very nature, makes a statement about humanity.  How loud and how convincing a statement it makes, of course, is up to the author.  If the hero ends in a puddle of his own shit, the statement is still loud.  If the hero gets the girl/boy and becomes king, the statement is still there.  This is why, in general, we don’t like stories where there is no struggle, no conflict and the hero ends up exactly where he was.  The statement is something akin to shuffling your feet, clearing your throat and going “uh…I don’t think manatees are completely worthless, no.”

But here’s the thing: which of them makes the bigger statement?

So, as ashamed as I am to take such a weak stance, I’m really not sure what the right answer is.  Maybe there is none.  Maybe that’s the statement.  Either way, that’s why I wrote this and that’s why I’m opening it up to you.

Shit-holes or cloud-nines, people?