![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
RP/Writing Meme: 8
8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?
The short answer is: things that are terrible.
I have always loved fantasy as a genre, because I think that swords, fencing, dragons, unicorns, harpies, phoenixes, and elves (o especially elves) (and especially Tolkien elves, of whom it has been said somewhat disparagingly that they are not fairies but seraphs) are super awesome. It interests me, the realm of Over There, East of the Sun and West of the Moon; the world I live in is wonderful and amazing in its own right, so I require something equally fantastic, in another direction, for my mind to go.
My life is also pretty nice, given I have health, spending money, freedom of movement and of expression, family, and friends. I enjoy hearing about people whose lives are much worse, in interesting ways, than mine are, and I don't require a happy ending if the ending is right.
I enjoy dark fantasy - K.J. Parker's worlds don't tend to have much if any magic, but they're human beings who aren't on Earth and who have new cultures and totally sweet new settings. I hesitate to call them 'fantasy', strictly speaking - no elves, no dragons, barely any goblins bar a few mentions of the fantastic by Ziani Vaatzes - but there's a lot of fencing (oh god is there ever fencing :D :D :D), and they SURELY ARE TERRIBLE. Consequences reverberate. Decisions get made, sometimes badly. The people act like real people, and there are no gods or magicians to bail them out. It is fabulous, and awful.
By that same token, I also really enjoy fantasy in which people act like people, but there might be something bigger or brighter or larger than life to bail out the littluns - Granny Weatherwax springs to mind. (KJ Parker has no larger-than-life, even Teuche Kunessin or Jarnac Ducas. They're just large.)
I like writing things that are terrible, but right; Siddharsvara Dhaumradana ends well, eventually, although there's an interstitial bit that he doesn't like. There is a particular scene in his story that I've had written for a very long time - him laughing under the stars in the ruins of Girprasdha - that is probably more terrible than anything else I've ever written, although some of the hideous alternate realities that I've written for Greyspell have come pretty close.
Sometimes I like writing things that are happy and fluffy! Not often, though, because I am pretty fluffy myself, so why would I want to write that even more?
Other things I love: the fall of Gondolin. That's the other short version. :D
The short answer is: things that are terrible.
I have always loved fantasy as a genre, because I think that swords, fencing, dragons, unicorns, harpies, phoenixes, and elves (o especially elves) (and especially Tolkien elves, of whom it has been said somewhat disparagingly that they are not fairies but seraphs) are super awesome. It interests me, the realm of Over There, East of the Sun and West of the Moon; the world I live in is wonderful and amazing in its own right, so I require something equally fantastic, in another direction, for my mind to go.
My life is also pretty nice, given I have health, spending money, freedom of movement and of expression, family, and friends. I enjoy hearing about people whose lives are much worse, in interesting ways, than mine are, and I don't require a happy ending if the ending is right.
I enjoy dark fantasy - K.J. Parker's worlds don't tend to have much if any magic, but they're human beings who aren't on Earth and who have new cultures and totally sweet new settings. I hesitate to call them 'fantasy', strictly speaking - no elves, no dragons, barely any goblins bar a few mentions of the fantastic by Ziani Vaatzes - but there's a lot of fencing (oh god is there ever fencing :D :D :D), and they SURELY ARE TERRIBLE. Consequences reverberate. Decisions get made, sometimes badly. The people act like real people, and there are no gods or magicians to bail them out. It is fabulous, and awful.
By that same token, I also really enjoy fantasy in which people act like people, but there might be something bigger or brighter or larger than life to bail out the littluns - Granny Weatherwax springs to mind. (KJ Parker has no larger-than-life, even Teuche Kunessin or Jarnac Ducas. They're just large.)
I like writing things that are terrible, but right; Siddharsvara Dhaumradana ends well, eventually, although there's an interstitial bit that he doesn't like. There is a particular scene in his story that I've had written for a very long time - him laughing under the stars in the ruins of Girprasdha - that is probably more terrible than anything else I've ever written, although some of the hideous alternate realities that I've written for Greyspell have come pretty close.
Sometimes I like writing things that are happy and fluffy! Not often, though, because I am pretty fluffy myself, so why would I want to write that even more?
Other things I love: the fall of Gondolin. That's the other short version. :D