How do I break out of those weird tropes but still write something with gnomes and shit? What does it look like when wizards control the means of production?
How do I break out of those weird tropes but still write something with gnomes and shit? What does it look like when wizards control the means of production?
Malazan is great, especially when you get to the America analog. Erikson is a vocal leftist and it shows.
For revolutionary fiction being "too on the nose": nonsense. The more on the nose your writing is, the better. Most political work cloaks itself in layer after layer of abstraction and metaphor, and everyone just ends up missing the point. In my book, the good guys are communists. The bad guys are cops and capitalists. Connecting it directly to the real world doesn't distract from the writing; it gives people context, grounds the story, and lets you spend more words on your characters and plots than world building that just recreates what people are already familiar with.
Yo I love this advice thanks, time for Shmoseph Shmalin to make his debut.
And I'm on Dust of Dreams right now - so good - this has been the best series I'm glad I didn't walk away from when the first book hit me like a wall.
No problem! I have a Shmarl Shmarx type person that's long dead as of the book taking place but it's pretty clear who they're supposed to be if you're familiar. I'll probably add in a Shmao Shmedong in my rewrites as well.
Also, I stopped Malazan during Toll the Hounds, but one day I'll get back to it.
So much this! I think the subtle form of implied ethics in a narrative has become subservient to aesthetics in so much literature and other popular media forms. This is why Parasite hit so hard for many people, it didn't concern itself much with trying to be so damn subtle about the message.
Uncritical support for Tehol Bedict crashing the Letherri economy.