This page is intended to gather together what I consider my most important opinion pieces. For the most part, these deal in some way with fantasy writing, but unlike my Fantasy Writing articles, these are less concerned with how to improve our own writing. My goal here is to identify which elements of which stories we should emulate.
Of course, I’ll also examine which stories, in my opinion, we should be careful not to emulate. This has less to do with what’s good or bad storytelling per se, and more to do with how stories shape our understanding of the real world. Yes, stories do that, whatever the alt-right pundit might tell you.
This last point is not merely an opinion; it’s the consensus among scientists. Stories may not turn a normal person into a murderer, but they absolutely do reinforce ideas we already hold and even plant the seeds of new ideas. To suggest otherwise is naïve at best and intentionally dishonest at worst, and it’s a damaging message regardless.
Do No Harm
I’m going to take a close look at various fantasy stories and voice my opinion as it pertains to whether a story is helpful or harmful. In my opinion, fiction’s inherent purpose is to communicate one’s own worldview and shape the worldview of the reader or listener. It follows that we must take steps to ensure we don’t cause harm.
Authorial endorsement is important to understand if we are to avoid sending harmful messages through our work. We each communicate our own opinion through our work, but it’s easy to endorse a character’s actions even if we don’t mean to—particularly when it’s the main character or one we’ve been building up as wise.
It’s not enough to tell a good story. If your story contains themes that harm real people, you are causing harm. You’re not entitled to that, no matter how many times you cry “Art!” Art cannot be immune to criticism; such thinking only shields bigots from those who dare to question their views.
Opinion: Atlas Shrugged Is the Worst Book Ever
Atlas Shrugged is an overlong novel about rich industrialist super-humans who heroically wipe out the ordinary people so their superior offspring can repopulate the earth. It serves as the primary manifesto of Russian-American cult leader Ayn Rand, who championed a philosophy that holds selfishness as the highest virtue and compassion as the wickedest sin.
Ayn Rand’s magnum opus is the vilest and most tedious book I’ve ever had the displeasure of forcing myself through. There’s a scene where one of the super-humans sits down and just talks uninterrupted for five hours. You read that right—five hours!
Atlas Shrugged has inspired numerous corrupt businessmen and politicians, who’ve gone on to commit shocking atrocities in the name of “radical self-interest.” They routinely seek to deprive society’s most vulnerable of whatever they need to survive, and Atlas Shrugged is largely to blame.
The Worst Fantasy Stories
With so many authors publishing fantasy novels, it’s inevitable that for every great fantasy epic, there are going to be thousands of bad attempts you’ll have to wade through. In my opinion, the majority of those failures are unmemorable and unworthy of notice, but there are some fantasy stories so loathsome that they stand out from the sea of mediocrity.
I’ve compiled a list of works that are, in my opinion, the very worst fantasy stories I’ve encountered. Far from the mediocre, meaningless works that one must always sift through to find the good stories, the worst fantasy stories push ideas so vile that it’s hard not to be shaken when you realize that someone actually put them on paper.
From the horribly written to the perverse to the downright reactionary, read on and see the very worst the fantasy genre has to offer.
Opinion: Harry Potter
When I first read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I loved it. However, my opinion on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has changed over the years. I now realize that Harry Potter, for all its magic and wonder, is a childish and rather sick power fantasy.
Harry embodies this fantasy: discovering not only that you are a magical super-human, but also that you’re rich and famous. After a few years at a school untouched by muggle untermenschen, Harry later learns that he is the Chosen One, destined to save the world from the bad super-humans. Also, even the good ones are slaveowners.
The Wizarding World, which the books ask us to fall in love with, is really a dystopian nightmare where the super-humans own slaves under the noses of slavery-averse mortals. Far from condemning the wizards, Rowling deifies them and expects the reader to do the same.
When I first read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I loved it. However, my opinion on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has changed over the years. I now realize that Harry Potter, for all its magic and wonder, is a childish and rather sick power fantasy.
Harry embodies this fantasy: discovering not only that you are a magical super-human, but also that you’re rich and famous. After a few years at a school untouched by muggle untermenschen, Harry later learns that he is the Chosen One, destined to save the world from the bad super-humans. Also, even the good ones are slaveowners.
The Wizarding World, which the books ask us to fall in love with, is really a dystopian nightmare where the super-humans own slaves under the noses of slavery-averse mortals. Far from condemning the wizards, Rowling deifies them and expects the reader to do the same.
When I first read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I loved it. However, my opinion on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has changed over the years. I now realize that Harry Potter, for all its magic and wonder, is a childish and rather sick power fantasy.
Harry embodies this fantasy: discovering not only that you are a magical super-human, but also that you’re rich and famous. After a few years at a school untouched by muggle untermenschen, Harry later learns that he is the Chosen One, destined to save the world from the bad super-humans. Also, even the good ones are slaveowners.
The Wizarding World, in my opinion, is really a dystopian nightmare where the super-humans own slaves under the noses of slavery-averse mortals. Far from condemning the wizards, Rowling deifies them and expects the reader to fall in love with their society.
The only character who opposes slavery is the target of ridicule by every other character in Rowling’s books, and eventually Hermione comes to accept said slavery as moral. This is how J.K. Rowling treats an issue that is still negatively affecting the whole world. With all this in mind, I have no more patience for Harry Potter.
Opinion: Game of Thrones
Let me be clear. I don’t care if you love Game of Thrones. It is my opinion that George R. R. Martin’s magnum opus glorifies ideas that are undeniably harmful to real people. Even if his storytelling were as great as you think it is, that doesn’t give him an excuse to endorse the actions Martin endorses.
Nor is realism a good excuse for the way Game of Thrones treats things like rape as though they are inevitable parts of human existence that we just need to accept. That is a message that plays right into the hands of alt-right politicians.
If rape is treated as inevitable, then right-wingers will argue it’s “not the male rapist’s fault.” When people see rape in that way, people tend to shift the blame onto female victims for dressing wrong or something.
Game of Thrones takes this a step further; just look at King Robert and Queen Cersei. Robert beats and rapes Cersei on a regular basis, but it is Robert we’re meant to sympathize with. Why? Because, in the jargon of those who would agree with Game of Thrones on this, Robert is a “cuck.”
This is only one of many criticisms that, in my opinion, need to be said concerning Game of Thrones. Martin’s books are a hotbed of sexism, racism, and other bad ideas that the alt-right love. And there is a sizeable alt-right section of the fanbase, and they embrace every harmful idea that Game of Thrones has to offer.
A modern writer should know better than to repeatedly tell their audience that paedophilia and war crimes are okay. I’ve met Game of Thrones fans who’ll defend the Holocaust if it means justifying what their favourite characters did in their favourite show. And Martin seems not to care what effect his work has on the world.