And then of course

[dragovianknight]

There are the books where chapter 1 feels like the DM is setting up the campaign world for you. *sigh*

Is the current trend in YA really the "I am incompetent at everything and also clueless about my surroundings" character? Or is this just people trying to ape Harry Potter without going the necessary step of putting their MC in a world they genuinely have no way of knowing anything about?

Comments

[maureenlycaon_dw]

Not sure.

There's also a post making the rounds on Tumblr about what a toxic environment the community of YA fiction writers is. Maybe there's some relation -- like the genre draws a lot of jagoffs or something.

http://maureenlycaon.tumblr.com/post/164040096051/the-toxic-drama-on-ya-twitter

[recessional]

I think it's always been a thread that gets more and less obvious depending - it's often people just trying to get a handle on the idea of a teenage character who DOESN'T know everything, and the idea of Learning, coming into their own, bildungsroman, all that stuff.

I mean Garion in The Belgariad (which totally starts like a YA) is a perf example and that's the 80s.

[recessional]

Okay so I have to giggle: you actually totally reblogged that from dragovianknight on tumblr, and I posted the article because dragovianknight linked it here. :D Circle!

[maureenlycaon_dw]

Yep. I think my mind's a bit off today!

I blame it on Mercury retrograde, because the other alternative is probably encroaching senility.

[recessional]

Also there’s kinda been a lot happening in the world to eat cognitive bandwidth. And I promise I wasn’t mocking-laughing, I just loved that it was literally a full circle. >.>

[dragovianknight]

I've never read The Belgariad (though my sister loved it), so I don't know how bad Garion was? And I can understand the "I don't know how the greater world works" for a teen character (though, clearly I am less tolerant of "and I also am oblivious to things that happen under my nose"). I'm mostly thinking about the books where things which SHOULD have been part of the character's everyday life are being explained to them.

This was triggered, not by Thor's book (I mean, hey, he DID at least know how to tend the sheep!), but by the book I tried to start after that one. In which the Very Poor Hero living in the Falling Down Shack with his drunk father and hard working mother had somehow managed to make it to fifteen with zero useful life skills. Though, as this was on top of the Very Poor Family having a horse (but as far as I could tell, no chickens/livestock/garden) that the mother rode to her job as a fish-gutter, I'm going to guess the Hero had no clue about the world because the author had no clue about the world.

[recessional]

Yeeeeah I'm gonna go with that one there - author not realizing the kid NEEDED useful lifeskills? What lifeskills would be useful? Wait people in this situation would know things I don't know?!

[dragovianknight]

He was fifteen and his days consisted of wandering around the woods pretending to swordfight the trees. Though, at some point he'd learned to read and write because...reasons?

And then the Three Most Important Knights In The Kingdom showed up to make him a squire and I just quietly turned off my kindle.

[recessional]

So the problem here is "someone saw a Three Musketeers movie and didn't actually understand any of the context, at all, and went to write an Adventure Novel."

[dragovianknight]

That is entirely possible.

My boggle over them having a horse, but no chickens or other food animals, is topped only by the book where the poor starving family did have chickens and sold the eggs to buy food. All of the eggs. Not the extra eggs that were left after they fed their starving children. And then the daughter used the egg money to buy ribbons or some nonsense.

Many of these books are only saved from being wallbangers because I won't throw my kindle.

[maureenlycaon_dw]

:)

Yeah. It's been a rough weekend emotionally for lots of us, given recent events.

[maureenlycaon_dw]

I am grimly reminded of some of the LotR fanfiction I used to see.

[dragovianknight]

I morbidly re-opened the book, and now they're feeding the knights as best they can...which is meat stew. Where did the meat come from? Hell if I know; the horse is still alive.

Mind you, at this point given that the House of Extreme Poverty has separate living room, kitchen, and (one assumes, though these aren't mentioned) bedrooms, I'm going to wager that mom had some stew meat in the freezer for a special occasion.

[maureenlycaon_dw]

*facepalm* So they think a medieval House of Extreme Poverty is basically like a First World suburban home. I wonder what they think the bathroom is like . . .

It's not like you have to dig through a library any more to get this stuff. I've found very good basic medieval info in a few minutes of Googling, written by historians

But they probably think that since it's all fantasy, they don't have to do any research.

[megpie71]

May I recommend "A Tough Guide to Fantasyland" by Diana Wynne Jones, which covers all of these tropes and more.

Seriously, it should be a starter text for all writers of fantasy works because it's essentially a list of "traps for young players". If I can basically tick off items on the fantasy "tour" from that book, you need to re-draft.

[dogstar]

..... are the three knights members of an order of Rainbow Knights and/or have there been any shirtless floggings yet?

I may have read this book in draft form, just sayin. Grab me on skype if you want o know more :P