Me and My Brain Discuss Why I Don't Like Fantasy
My effort to understand an inner resistance to magic, taverns, and stories about elves
Me: Thank you for sitting down with me today to do this. I’ve come to a point where my automatic resistance to reading anything I might suspect to be fantasy is causing some shame and discomfort as it feels rooted in some un-articulated bias that I can neither overcome nor explain in conversation. But if the story has magic or a tavern in it - then I’m out.
My Brain: Interesting.
Me: It’s not magic or taverns themselves, of course. I like Lord of The Rings. That has magic in it. And one very good tavern scene. But other fantasy novels seem to recycle elements without creating a sense of exciting worldbuilding and discovery. I’m reading along…and then suddenly there’s a spell involved. And then a wizard shows up. He’s on a horse. There’s a magic potion made from some kind of weed.
Everyone walks or takes carts or rides horses and maybe, maybe catches a ship someplace - like seriously, I once put out a call on the internet for fantasy where the world involved long-distance communication technologies and faster vehicle transport than horses. And I did get some decent recommendations. But there’s still this sense of fatigue I get when I delve into a world and it’s the same medieval-esque elements that I recognise but don’t understand the appeal of.
I feel like this rant could make some people very angry.
My Brain: Quite possibly.
Me: This is why I need your help.
My Brain: And I am here for you. So let’s unpack these messy, not-particularly-well-informed ideas together shall we?
Me: Ok.
My Brain: Firstly, I have observed that you react strongly to a specific aesthetic of fantasy. It feels European, maybe the twelfth century. There’s a feudal class structure and pre-steam age technologies.
Me: And taverns.
My Brain: Yes. You don’t like taverns. Can you put into words why this setting seems to make you so angry?
Me: Am I angry?
My Brain: I think you’re angry. Which is very interesting. Because I don’t think that taverns or horses or even wizards are really what is offending you.
Me: Right…I would have said that when these world elements appear, I have found the setting to be predictable. There will be ancient magic and a realm of spirits or power and some myths and runes, and it all feels recycled, like there’s not much in the operation of the world to draw me in and make me so excited, lit up by the thought of ‘wow, I’m so curious about how this society works’. I just think ‘I know this place. I’ve been here before’. I’ve played ‘The Witcher’.
My Brain: Have you?
Me: I played a bit.
My Brain: Go on…
Me: Well, works of speculative or science fiction don’t have this same effect on me. Reading ‘Lilith’s Brood’, I was immersed in a thought experiment about a tech-ecologist alien species who at every page introduced new philosophical challenges for me as a reader; mass sterilization for mass immortality, a re-wilded and healed earth for an inherently extractivist society. There were layers. Neal Stephenson’s worlds are very fun lessons in cryptography, history, relativity, or cyber-punk aesthetics. I don’t have enough math expertise to appreciate all the worldbuilding in the Three Body Problem. But I’m motivated to learn. I don’t however want to learn about runes.
My Brain: Might this be simply a difference in taste? You find tech-cyber-alien-ecology interesting. Other people like magic - which, for many authors of fantasy - stems from as deep an engagement with myths and time-shrouded history as the authors you mentioned engage with science and technology.
Me: Maybe. I mean, I used to like fantasy novels. As a child. Garth Nix is an Australian author whose ‘Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen’ series I took as a primer in female leadership and adventuring. There is magic there. And horses. But also a fascinating political-metaphysical border condition between a pre-WWII England and ‘the Old Kingdom’. That was unique.
My Brain: I think at this time I’d like to make an observation.
Me: Yes?
My Brain: You read a book recently that opened in a train station. The characters were waiting for a person to arrive from the country on a train. The characters drank some coffee at a kiosk, went to a parking garage, drove down a side-street and bought groceries at a supermarket. I know you know what book I’m referring to because I am indeed your own brain - but to anyone else reading this, those ‘world-building’ features would seem entirely generic and predicable. We will probably have mobile phones next! And carpet! And school pick-up times!
Me: All of those features did indeed occur in that book. It was ‘Dinner with the Schnables’. By Toni Jordan. It was immensely joyful to read.
My Brain: Right.
Me: I think you’re about to make a point…
My Brain: Yes. When you read literary or commercial fiction set in the so-called ‘real’ world, you don’t get uppity about the worldbuilding being predictable, because it’s the necessary and acceptable context for the heart of a story about people. Reading literary fiction teaches you about other people and the intimacies of lives you otherwise don’t have access to. Or it teaches you about yourself. Reading speculative or science fiction teaches you about the world; its possibilities, its risks, its potential futures.
You get confused when reading fantasy because the setting is ‘not here’, as in, present-day reality. So you expect it to teach you something about the world in the same way. It probably could - if you wanted to delve into myths and magic and the like. But you don’t see that as productive.
Me: Productive?
My Brain: You want your reading to be useful to you. You want to learn things. God forbid you ever just pick up a book and appreciate how well written it is!
Me: I do that…
My Brain: Yes. When on holiday. You call it self-care. My point is that you’ve been going about reading fantasy all wrong. The point of fantasy is not some enjoyable primer on whatever you’re doing for work. You have to want to learn about the characters, or let them teach you about yourself. Or just escape the world for a bit. That’s allowed you know.
…
Me: Fantasy to escape the world…SF to learn about it…literary fiction to learn about yourself…
My Brain: I suspect that this is your intuitive understanding of genre.
Me: It’s hardly a comprehensive list and I’m sure there are many edge cases and exceptions!
My Brain: Indeed. However, the point of this conversation was to tease out why you browse the library shelves and by default turn away from any story that might include elves.
Me: That was a lame rhyme.
My Brain: I know. But do you feel more prepared to read fantasy now?
…
Me: Honestly I’m not sure. But I do feel better in understanding further my aversion to it.
I’m locked in a protestant capitalist productivity complex where even my moments of self-care have to so efficiently optimized that I choose literary fiction as a more familiar and hence less risky prospect when the desire to escape the world or reflect upon it can no longer be stuffed under a torrent of emails.
…
My Brain: I’m going to call this progress.
Me: Until next time then, my friend.
Well well well. I could fathom that this might be a plot my untrustworthy brain has pulled on me, finding some strong advocates of fantasy out there in the wild and smacking me round the comments with them. But I’m also aware this post could touch several magical nerves. And I agree with Chuck I think - I have had some unfortunate run-ins with sub par fantasy weavers and hence my mind and soul have been sullied. Also…there is still the matter of my ongoing entrapment by the Protestant capitalist complex where every moment of my leisure time must also be blessed with the endorsement “productive”.
Before offering any kind of counter, I really ought to say I enjoyed this thoroughly and saw myself in much of it, even as someone who writes fantasy. Without naming names, I would be comfortable saying that most fantasy fiction is garbage. But I'd also say most literary fiction is garbage. As is most non-fiction. As is most narrative history, or historical fiction. As are most movies, and most music. I enjoy all those things, even if I dislike most instances of them: I'm really picky.
But I do have to point out that the bit about being trapped in an internalized work-defines-worth worldview is precisely the sort of "prison" that Tolkien believed fantasy stories could helps us escape from, in order to provide recovery of our proper sense of beauty and consolation of heart. And I'll note that you filed that sort of reading under "self-care." If I can be so bold, it's as if a part of you realizes a need to experience that otherworldliness, some beauty from beyond. I'm not saying fantasy is the only war to do that (far from it!), but I do think (and argue in my own essay) that fantasy is at its best when it tries to do this. By extension, it is as its most flat and shallow when it simply becomes about the "vibe" of taverns and elves and magic spells and teenagers learning they're special.