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[Tumblr crosspost] why I don't like the dragon argument
Sometimes, it seems like every discussion about how fantasy (especially high fantasy) tends to be focused on white, straight dudes rehashes the exact same points:
Person A: It’s just being historically accurate!
Person B: …there are dragons.
Person A: Yes, but–
Person B: DRAGONS.
There’s some variation depending on which work comes up in discussion, but the basic rebuttal is “the setting includes something that blatantly diverges from the basic laws of reality; therefore, there’s no reason not to diverge from reality in much smaller matters.” I do understand it, but I … um, don’t agree. And I actually dislike it quite a lot.
The thing is, it’s treated as completely irrefutable by the people who make it and/or do agree with it. Yet I suspect that it’s very unlikely to succeed with the people it’s aimed at (not me), for the same reason it doesn’t work for me.
As I see it, including fanciful elements in a story makes it more important to feel otherwise realistic, not less. The more dragons and wizards and such that a story has, the more it needs to be anchored in reality - less with things on the level of “laws of physics” (though layering on changes there does heighten the sense of unfamiliarity) and more with with the smaller, more significant stuff that resonates with the living experience of real people.
And the thing is, women/poc/lgbt folk are real people. They are not comparable to dragons, bizarre, impossible creatures from the realm of Faerie, they are right here in the real world, and have always been right here. There’s no reason for them not to show up in, say, an alternate version of late medieval England (+ dragons), since they existed in actual medieval England. So when people go “all my main characters are straight white men because ACCURACY,” the main offense is a white-washed, heterocentric, patriarchal view of history, rather than an author’s desire to keep their fantastic setting firmly attached to reality.
HOWEVER.
I do think it’s really suspicious that there are so many premises of the ‘how would people be affected if reality were different in [x] way, but otherwise recognizable’ variety, and it virtually never includes ‘hey! suppose gender equality evolved as the dragon invasion forced every fit adult into combat.’
We can have worlds where everyone’s careers are decided in infancy by the astrological signs at the moment of their birth, or where secret enclaves of mutant humans live among us, unseen by the normal world, or where social psychology can predict the future with pinpoint accuracy, but the associated breaks from reality rarely seem to include gender or racial or other kinds of equality, even where it’d be perfectly likely to exist. It’s not that ‘it’s fantasy, reality need not apply’ but that it’s significant which aspects of reality are commonly broken and which are treated as indestructible.
And “you don’t need historical accuracy because you have dragons” does not really address any of that at all.
(It's sort of like fics where you have your one AU premise. When all sorts of things get changed for no reason, it's usually a shitty AU, and you can't relate it to canon at all, unless it's just some kind of out-there idfic anyway. And ngl I judge unrealistic lalala funtimes fantasy a lot hrasher for perpetuating certain things than I do serious high fantasy, unless they're actually being accurate.
...Which they often are. Anyway, BUT DRAGONS is nonsense in either case. It should be more like BUT CONDOMS THAT AREN'T MADE OUT OF SHEEP GUTS in some.
Person A: It’s just being historically accurate!
Person B: …there are dragons.
Person A: Yes, but–
Person B: DRAGONS.
There’s some variation depending on which work comes up in discussion, but the basic rebuttal is “the setting includes something that blatantly diverges from the basic laws of reality; therefore, there’s no reason not to diverge from reality in much smaller matters.” I do understand it, but I … um, don’t agree. And I actually dislike it quite a lot.
The thing is, it’s treated as completely irrefutable by the people who make it and/or do agree with it. Yet I suspect that it’s very unlikely to succeed with the people it’s aimed at (not me), for the same reason it doesn’t work for me.
As I see it, including fanciful elements in a story makes it more important to feel otherwise realistic, not less. The more dragons and wizards and such that a story has, the more it needs to be anchored in reality - less with things on the level of “laws of physics” (though layering on changes there does heighten the sense of unfamiliarity) and more with with the smaller, more significant stuff that resonates with the living experience of real people.
And the thing is, women/poc/lgbt folk are real people. They are not comparable to dragons, bizarre, impossible creatures from the realm of Faerie, they are right here in the real world, and have always been right here. There’s no reason for them not to show up in, say, an alternate version of late medieval England (+ dragons), since they existed in actual medieval England. So when people go “all my main characters are straight white men because ACCURACY,” the main offense is a white-washed, heterocentric, patriarchal view of history, rather than an author’s desire to keep their fantastic setting firmly attached to reality.
HOWEVER.
I do think it’s really suspicious that there are so many premises of the ‘how would people be affected if reality were different in [x] way, but otherwise recognizable’ variety, and it virtually never includes ‘hey! suppose gender equality evolved as the dragon invasion forced every fit adult into combat.’
We can have worlds where everyone’s careers are decided in infancy by the astrological signs at the moment of their birth, or where secret enclaves of mutant humans live among us, unseen by the normal world, or where social psychology can predict the future with pinpoint accuracy, but the associated breaks from reality rarely seem to include gender or racial or other kinds of equality, even where it’d be perfectly likely to exist. It’s not that ‘it’s fantasy, reality need not apply’ but that it’s significant which aspects of reality are commonly broken and which are treated as indestructible.
And “you don’t need historical accuracy because you have dragons” does not really address any of that at all.
(It's sort of like fics where you have your one AU premise. When all sorts of things get changed for no reason, it's usually a shitty AU, and you can't relate it to canon at all, unless it's just some kind of out-there idfic anyway. And ngl I judge unrealistic lalala funtimes fantasy a lot hrasher for perpetuating certain things than I do serious high fantasy, unless they're actually being accurate.
...Which they often are. Anyway, BUT DRAGONS is nonsense in either case. It should be more like BUT CONDOMS THAT AREN'T MADE OUT OF SHEEP GUTS in some.
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As I see it, including fanciful elements in a story makes it more important to feel otherwise realistic, not less.
Exactly! Which, for me, means that if you have a western European analogue fantasy where there are dragons, but also people wearing silk, you should probably give some thought to the trade routes that provide that silk (and other goods), and the people who travel, and the diversity they bring to your fantasy kingdom. It's lazy worldbuilding that excludes those things! And equally lazy worldbuilding to just go, "Welp, I've got my dragons, now for the human diversity."
(Obviously that's one potential starting point, I'm not the worldbuilding police.)
On the other hand, good worldbuilding doesn't mean your universe can't be well-constructed, diverse and still super racist, ie, A Song of Ice and Fire.
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That's a great way of putting it, too, and a great example. There's a point at which you're introducing change from your own source by not including more diversity, which is the total opposite of "if you've done thing, you can do anything."
Total agreement on ASOIAF, too. There are hiccups where he essentially denies that his choices are choices rather than depictions of history (lalala child brides w/ early consummation are just historical accuracy!! uh...no), but by and large, it is creative and well-developed and complex and JFC so much that's a mess. A well-intentioned one, too, which has a very different flavour.
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There is a special irritation with things like that—things that have become so widespread even in reputable circles despite being profoundly and manifestly wrong—because you can't expect people to just know. And so much research is locked behind paywalls, ugh.
At the same time, GRRM himself has researched plenty in the course of the Real Gritty Middle Ages shtick, so he should know better. In fact, I think he probably does know, because he actually has commented about how child brides are uncommon in Westeros, he just ... constantly includes them, treated far more poorly than nearly all the small minority of historical child brides were actually treated.
And that really does make it an artistic choice as much as anything. To some degree, it'd be a creative decision in any case (deciding what to keep from your sources can be as significant as what you choose to discard), but when he's falling back on the trope in defiance of his conceptions of his setting, it's—uncomfortable.
(It definitely bothers me more than things like the idea that medieval people didn't really conceive of childhood, far less adolescence, which is equally wrong but something I think he genuinely didn't realize as he went about his Now With More Realism worldbuilding. That's annoying, but an error rather than gross in the way that the contradictory fetishization of young girls can be.)
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