I just discovered Limyaael’s rants, thanks to a friend’s suggestion, and I’ve read through a ton of them today. I’m so much more random than she is in my blog posts and rants (and exponentially more prone to tangents), but it’s absolutely refreshing to read someone well-read, thoughtful, and full of really well-substantiated complaints, rather than just a rant for the sake of a rant. It’s so rare to meet someone as obsessed with fantasy who also works or has worked within the confines of the typical university English department. So many English students at the undergrad and grad level are utterly disdainful of fantasy literature. Probably fewer now than a decade or two ago (and certainly exponentially more than a generation ago) but still. Thinking fantasy fiction isn’t valuable in any literary sense is still too widely held an opinion for me to be happy… but that’s tangential to my point here.

Anyway this post got me thinking more and more about Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind. I’ve both bashed and defended them on this blog, pretty recently, too, and her utter evisceration of them led me to two interesting revelations about my own opinions of them and fantasy in general: I am really haughty and elitist (or really, really contemplative?) about fantasy literature, what I like about it, what I hate, and what I write — but I do so enjoy the B-movie (or C-movie) novel or series every now and again. The part of me that in a very hick, low-brow manner really, really enjoys a movie the high-brow folks tell me I should disdain, or enjoy a fantasy book that the academic nerd part of me wants to beat remorselessly until it’s beyond dead. I’m that way with movies, too.

The first time (and subsequent second two times) I read Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World (the first book in his Wheel of Time series), I loved it. I still, deeply, do enjoy it. I read it when I was 15; I was in 10th grade social studies class when the kid behind me said, “You like fantasy books, right? You’d probably like this book.” And pointed it out to me. I went, bought it, finished it, and bought the second… and third… up to the eighth, which was all that existed in paperback at the time. The ninth was coming out soon in hardcover, but I was cheap. Anyway I devoured them during the spring of my 10th grade year, amid jeers of my high school softball team compatriots who thought I was a complete and total nerd for reading 800-page books. (Some thought I was insane, others were incredulous, others nodded and said really complimentary things that embarrassed me and my loath-to-brag-about-my-high-grades attitude; I was rather the reluctant good student in 10th grade as opposed to the bitter elitist I became as a senior in high school.) At the point I was at in my life, those books really made a difference to me. They were, now that I think of it, the first major epic fantasy series I read. (I read Tolkien for the first time almost eighteen months later.)

Goodkind was more of an accident. I stumbled upon Wizard’s First Rule in the bookstore (or was it on Amazon.com?) in the desperation of one looking to move their addiction from one drug to another. I stand by what I said a few weeks ago — I did enjoy Wizard’s First Rule. I devoured it and the subsequent five or six books — with a bit more pain and reluctance, each time. In fact, Wizard’s First Rule was the book that helped bring Bryan and I together — I saw it sitting on the desk in his room at college and pointed it out, saying I’d read it and enjoyed it, and we bonded over it. (Long story short, he never actually ended up reading beyond the third book, I think.) However, in re-reading it years later, in the fall of 2006, I stopped after a few chapters. I cringed. I’d been fully immersed in English literature and Creative Writing classes at college by then, and I’d also read a lot more fantasy. A lot. Not only fantasy but other genres as well; I’d discovered the 18th century, too, a century I’d somehow mysteriously skipped in my education in high school and college up until the fall of 2005.

I now, in 2008, have come to agree with Limyaael’s assessment, that the books are more or less full of excess, badly disguised tropes, and annoying, annoying things. (I’ve always been a hater of the Sisters of the Light, but I didn’t start disliking the Aes Sedai until later.) I think a lot of Jordan fans (speaking from experience as a former active member of a Robert Jordan fan site) idealize the books far beyond their merit, and in addition a lot of them take the framework of the books (which is more or less fun) and use it to imagine their own worlds, characters, and doings, all of which are a lot more interesting than what Jordan came up with. Also, there are a few particular characters (all female) that had me gnashing my teeth, probably Faile in Jordan’s chief among them. Oh, Faile and Perrin. Shoot me in the foot. Not to mention Rand and the three ladies, which me, the mostly liberated woman, found irritating for its sheer implausibility based on a bad characterization substantiation rather than its concievability as a basic concept. I’m all for well-written open marriages or polygamy, or what have you, but it has to be well-substantiated and based in concrete characters. When your characters are flimsy, which Elayne (sorry) mostly is (Aviendha was always a favorite until she started being all cuddly with Elayne in a manner that was so blatantly not the Aviendha we all know and love)… oh, on and on.

But I still think of them fondly, for all of that! I find I’m embarrassed. I too am embarrassed somewhat by how inordinately excited I am by the upcoming Legend of the Seeker series based on the Sword of Truth books. (There was a half hour preview on TV this past Saturday; I was all geeky about it. Gosh, I am really geeky.) I’m also excited about the movie Twilight, even given how much I’ve criticized the books on this blog. Why? Maybe it’s that I find I have a personal stake in the genre, and I am really emotionally connected to how well those series/movies portray their source material as well as how well they do financially.

(I always find myself wondering what I’d do if someone options my stuff. Depending on the contract I’ll probably have little say or choice but still… I just hope it doesn’t turn into a Seeker: The Dark is Rising atrocity. ATROCITY. They ruined Susan Cooper’s book! Not that the twelve year olds ever heard of the Newbery Honor-winning book The Dark is Rising before that film, but…)

True Blood, HBO’s series based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books, is terrifically true to the books (as far as Sookie’s plot is concerned), but it also takes its own liberties in creating interesting, new subplots (Tara and her mother, Tara and Sam, Jason and his addiction) that aren’t in the books at all — but the show does it well, while still staying loyal to the source material. I’m also fascinated by the adaptation process (and Hollywood versus independent means (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) versus television, both cable and network). Twilight is likely to be either decent or bad (it can’t be better than the book unless it halves the angst and quarters the melodrama, which from the trailer I can’t imagine it doing), and Legend of the Seeker looks, well, good. I doubt it’ll be amazing (even Sci Fi’s excellent take of the Dune novels wasn’t amazing, though I do own it on DVD, teehee). I don’t watch a lot of amazing television, but I do watch a lot of decently good television — more than I did in college, anyway. Fringe, Pushing Daisies — they’re not perfect or out-of-the-heavens wonderful (they’re not the pure, unadulterated nerdgasm that is 30 Rock, for instance), but I do enjoy them. And what, may I ask, is wrong with that? Nothing, I hope.

I was thinking earlier that this has to be one of the reasons I’ve always been compelled to be a writer. I’m a nit-picker, a perfectionist, one who constantly enjoys picking out things that don’t jive with me and explaining what would work for me and why. But rather than stop there (or merely point out what doesn’t work for me and bemoan the state of the world), I write. When I saw Disney’s Pocahontas as a 5th grader and was up-in-arms pissed and self-righteous about how utterly inaccurate it was, I knew I wasn’t like all the other kids. Or, even, some of the adults. (Yeah, I was over-dramatic from the cradle, ask my mother or my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Galdeau. They’ll tell you.)  As a kid, I’d read a book about a male protagonist and the whiney female he saves and initially love it. The older I would get, the more I would question it. I’d wonder what if it’d be like this or what if that had happened instead. Eventually I’d get to the point where I’d get pissed and go write my answer to it. (Harry Potter evoked that in me. I was 13 and hopelessly annoyed at it after I was initially bubbling with giddy joy over it.)

As I’ve read more of the canon, as I’ve learned about writing, re-writing, hacking and slashing, editing, and all of the details, I find myself needing and demanding further complexity of myself, of my characters. I find my plots twisting in ways I’ve never seen in a book before, characters doing things I haven’t seen characters in books do before. I keep asking myself the questions. What if, what if. Why be confined to stereotypes or tropes? I’ve studied Campbell inside and out (and have the thesis to prove it) and knowing the formula I feel I’ve full license to break and bend it and find new ways to explore it based on the trends my characters take and the answers to the questions I find myself inescapably asking. Naturally someone’s done everything before in one way or another; I mean, there are only 36 basic plots and Shakespeare wrote most of them. I don’t know how much I really believe that. Our world is constantly changing. Our literature, our fantasies, should, too.

I write things that intrigue me — I don’t write to make myself happy. I’m not easily made happy. I enjoy challenges, being made to think, and yes, while I hate seeing myself mess up, I do it all the time. With enough hindsight, I look back on my mistakes, blunders, and unexpected happenings, and I learn from them. Or, ideally, I hope I do.

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