Nerd Mecca

Nerd culture is alive and growing. Each year, many of these nerds make a holy pilgrimage to the convention of all conventions, and it happened this weekend. San Diego Comic-Con, the ultimate destination for geeks and nerds everywhere, took place from July 24 to 27 in the San Diego Convention Center.

Sure, there are Comic-Cons all around the country - we have a good-sized one in Denver - but San Diego brings international attention with panelists and attendees from across the world. Naturally, that means tickets are a hot commodity. This year, every last pass sold out in just 72 minutes. (Source)

With hundreds of exhibits and panels featuring writers like Patrick Rothfuss and Joe Abercrombie, cast and crew of world-famous television programs like Orphan Black and Game of Thrones, comic book creators and more, it's hardly a wonder that it draws such a crowd. It is, however, a staggering number. In 2014, the Con saw over 125,000 attendees. That's more than 12 times as many as there are students at UNC, and it doesn't include panelists, press or special guests.

Some con-goers dress up in elaborate costumes of their favorite superheroes, movie characters or video game faces to win contests and generally impress everyone else. It's pretty extensive: people spend months or even years building their costumes and sometimes create them completely from scratch.

Tickets for all four days of the Con plus the Preview Night cost a whopping $200. Add in the cost of travel a trip to SDCC is a serious investment, yet thousands obviously do it every year. So if you'd like to donate to the "Send Awnna to SDCC 2015" fund, you can visit my Kickstarter...

Just kidding! But I wouldn't say no...

Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus

Never tickle a sleeping dragon, or so says the Latin motto of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The dragon is perhaps one of the most intriguing mythological creatures of all time. It has a presence in the history of nearly every culture, inspiring countless stories of fantasy and mystery, documentaries and searches by cryptozoologists and other legend-chasers. Aside from perhaps the unicorn and the Grim Reaper (or some physical embodiment of death), the dragon is the most universal concept of unreal creatures.

The name "dragon" originates from the Latin draconem, loosely translating to "large serpent."

In western culture we have come to accept the dragon as a fierce, fire-breathing, lizard-like creature with scaly wings and a full body resembling some dinosaurs: an interpretation stemming from the Slavic dragon legend known to the Vikings that I briefly discussed in an earlier post. These depictions have seeped into pop culture through Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, The Elder Scrolls games and countless other books, movies, games and paintings.

In contrast, eastern culture, specifically China and surrounding parts of east Asia, have a much different interpretation of the beast that is perhaps more true to its name. The typical eastern dragon is more snake-like with elements of a cat in the face (like whiskers or mustaches). Asian dragons are often seen as less dangerous and potentially good omens, and are depicted as such in The Never-Ending Story, among other places.

Even Native American culture had its own version of a dragon, a bird and lizard hybrid creature.

It's clear to see that the dragon must have some basis in reality as nearly every society has some kind of dragon legend. Archaeology in ancient times was hardly an exact science. When someone discovered a fossil from a dinosaur next to a fossil of a bird, it would be easy to mistake them for one creature - a reptile with wings.

Travelers' accounts of creatures like crocodiles and spitting cobras would have been difficult to interpret for those who had never seen the animals and could be easily misinterpreted. There are countless examples of living species with elements that might suggest a dragon.

Regardless of historical origin, dragons are a permanent part of fantasy literature, and every fantasy author is allowed their own interpretation of the beasts. Some hoard gold and speak perfect English like Smaug. Some are fierce and bestial like Drogon or the Hungarian Horntail. No matter what they look like or act like in the mind of a writer, it's undeniable that dragons are engrained in our imaginations forever.

Empathizing the Unreal in Grimdark

When reading a story about magical spells and alien creatures, the one thing you're always aware of is that none of it is real. Fantasy is just that: the unreal in literature. Yet somehow, it's easier to feel the world and the story in fantasy than it often is in stories with real-world settings.

Feeling empathy for a character - even a non-human one - is a universal in fantasy, and while it may be related to the type of person that often enjoys such reading, there's no denying that the genre gives authors certain freedom to mess with the reader's emotions.

The sense of touch is often lost in literature. Authors describe what something looks like, sounds like, tastes like or smells like. That drops you into the setting in a more immersive way. However, it's rare that touch and how someone actually feels is given the same attention. It's mentioned in passing with texture or temperature or pain, but rarely is it presented in a way that allows the reader to truly feel what the character is feeling.

Remember Game of Thrones and the definition of "grimdark?" The author of The First Law Trilogy, Joe Abercrombie, recently did a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") about his two heavily grimdark series and new young adult novel that deviates from his usual writing. One of the defining characteristics of First Law is the extensive detail he gives about feeling, both physical and emotional.

One Redditor in particular was intrigued by his presentation of a character's pain.

akiaki007: "The First Law trilogy is…one of the few series where I could actually feel my entire body (especially that one when you feel real fear), tightening up when reading through the torture scenes. The nails.... How did you come up with that stuff? Did you read excerpts of what soldiers have gone through?"
JA: "I sometimes felt the epic fantasy I read as a kid was a bit detached, a bit formal, a sense of seeing things from a distance. I wanted to write in a way that felt visceral, involved, uncomfortably close to the action, that put the reader in the skin of the characters. That was really the approach to the violence, the sex, the torture, to everything."

 

Abercrombie's writing is a particularly good example of how grimdark is often more effective at presenting feelings. I mean, the guy's Twitter handle is @LordGrimdark, so it's clear he knows the genre a little bit.

 

You can find an abridged summary of Abercrombie's AMA via Tor.com here.

Wand Waving Weirdos

Let's just talk about what a genius J.K. Rowling is.

Since the release of the first book in 1997, Harry Potter has become a complete classic and has defined many of our childhoods, mine included. I remember lying in bed every night while my dad read me the books and did funny voices for all the characters. I was five, maybe six when it started, and I hardly remember a time that I didn't want to jump into Harry's world, ride my own broom and read by the light of a wand.

The book took off before it became a movie, which is so rare these days that alone deserves recognition. Perhaps it was the controversy the book raised among some parents. (Magic? For our kids? No way! The only magic they need is God.) Controversy surrounding books and books that are even banned tend to collect more readers than they would have. Any publicity is good publicity, right?

However, it takes a mature eye to notice the nuance Rowling put into her novels while writing. It may seem obvious that she would use other languages to come up with many made-up words necessary for the series, but the extent to which she does is impressive. Every single spell and many of her names are variations and mashups of ancient languages, modern words and archetypal names, all of which are directly related to what the spells do or who the people are. It's so extensive, there's a page on the Harry Potter fansite dedicated to decoding her personal lexicon.

It's not just the words that make Rowling an effective writer, though. In essence, the story grew up with the readers, and not just because Harry and his friends grew up over the course of the seven novels. The early novels begin as middle-grade fiction, or fiction dedicated to children between the ages of eight and twelve or thirteen. As the novels progressed, they could be classified as young adult novels, aimed at kids thirteen to eighteen or so. It's not just the age of the protagonists, though that plays a part. The content grows darker, too, and it's all relevant to the age of the reader. At thirteen, what child didn't feel lost and a little bit unhappy, like Harry facing the Dementors? At fourteen, who didn't feel just a little too young for what they wanted to do, like Ron being unable to enter the Triwizard Tournament?

J.K. Rowling certainly knows how to write for an audience, and by doing so she created an empire out of her mind. I mean, you have to have some sort of storytelling prowess to get a theme park based on your books. Even without magic, the characters speak to readers, and that's a rare talent.

Vikings in Pop Culture

The cold, hard north breeds cold, hard men.

In fantasy, at least. The hardened society from a desolate land is a concept we often steal from Vikings, or, more generally, the ancient people of Scandinavia, Iceland and other parts of northern Europe. You all know the stereotypes: wooden dragons on ships, braided beards and horned helmets, brutal men that pillaged as they traveled.

While only some of those stereotypes have real roots, they have taken hold of the world and Norse culture has permeated almost every aspect of modern pop culture. Norse mythology seems to have a pull greater than other pantheons, so stories from Norse myths often make their way into stories that aren't even directly related to such mythology or Vikings at all.

Here are some examples of Vikings in pop culture.

Comics

With superhero Thor and super-anti-hero Loki, Marvel Comics were among the first to modernize Norse mythology. Thor, the hammer-wielding Norse protector god, uses his mythical hammer Mjölnir in the comics to fight supervillains. Historically, Thor and the symbol of Mjölnir were a beacon of hope for Vikings who resisted Christianization. Loki, Thor's on-screen brother, was a trickster god who sowed chaos in the heavens (Asgard) to promote rebellion among the gods and their underlings, the men of Midgard and the giants of Jotunheim. Obviously their presence in Marvel's publications has been extremely influenced by Stan Lee's interpretation of Norse mythology.

Movies

How to Train Your Dragon is probably my favorite movie of all time. It's adorable and fulfills my dreams, okay?! And it's set in Berk, a village of Vikings who originally fight and later tame and race dragons. The movie plays directly on the stereotypes I mentioned before, as Hiccup narrates in the opening and closing sequences of both movies. I mean, Stoick the Vast. With a name like that, you are a walking stereotype no matter what!

However, the movie highlights something I'll be blogging about later: cultural perceptions of dragons. In Norse culture, dragons were fierce and elusive but embodied strength, which is why they carved the heads of dragons (or, um, "artistic" interpretations) onto their ships.

Video Games


While many gaming companies could stand to make their names slightly more creative, there's no arguing the presence of Vikings in many mainstream video games.

The Elder Scrolls: The Nord, a playable race crucial to the storylines in most of their games, especially Skyrim.

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2: The Norn, a playable race larger than humans who live in, you guessed it, the cold north.

World of Warcraft, The Warcraft Series: Vrykul, a race of enemies in, oh my gosh guys, the cold north. Also, much of a World of Warcraft expansion andWarcraft game are centered around Norse mythology with characters like Loken (Loki), Thorim (Thor), Hodir (Hod or Hodr, dialect dependent), etc.

I mean, really guys, you can be more original than that.

However, it's undeniable that Vikings have pushed their way into our culture through sheer enchantment. Their society, though long gone with the Christianization of Scandinavia, left a lasting impact on the world with unique takes on every aspect of life from religion to the written language.

Worlds within Books: The Fantasy Epic

In literature, an "epic" is a long narrative about the deeds of a hero in a serious tone and often dealing with real-world issues. The epic is one of the oldest forms of written stories and originated in poetry like Beowulf, Homer's Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh, all of which are ancient literary prizes.

More recently, the term has come to refer to prose: stories about idealistic heroes and their impressive journeys that often dealt with topics not entirely of-this-world. Those stories didn't become common until the literary Romantic period which rose in Europe in the late 1700s and peaked around 1850. Everyone is familiar with at least some of the artists and authors from the Romantic period, some of the most famous being Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I would argue that writers like Poe and Hawthorne fathered the modern transition into fantasy literature and the roots of the movement are much deeper in literary history than many insist (as J.R.R. Tolkien is generally credited with starting the trend). Poe and Hawthorne specifically wrote about the supernatural, the occult and the deeper aspects of psychology including mental illness.

Poe especially delved into the seriousness of human psychology with jarring tales like Berenice or descriptive narratives like The Raven.

The link that makes Romantic literature correspond so well to the ancient art of epic poetry is its seriousness. Romantics openly criticized satire and general humor in literature, because to them it was not truly "art."

Now, cut forward two hundred years and we see the epic making its comeback in the form of high fantasy - which is sometimes conveniently known as "epic fantasy."

Perhaps the most relevant example of the scope epic fantasy would be A Song of Ice and Fire in which George R.R. Martin employs the points of view of some thirty-six characters within the first five books of his series to tell a story spanning continents and kingdoms.

We all learned about the hero's cycle in high school English class. You know, the hero has a call to arms and a fatal flaw and the journey changes him and blah blah blah. The Lord of the Rings provides a good look at how the hero's journey plays perfectly into fantasy. The journey makes the story more epic than the setting.

However, it's a lesser-known series that encompasses all those aspects - scope, journey, basic epicness - in a way that defines fantasy literature. That's The Malazan Book of the Fallen, a ten-piece series by Steven Erikson that was perhaps the fantasy world's first look at grimdark as well.

Reading the Malazan series is no small task, but if you're up for the challenge, I highly recommend the read as Erikson's brainchild is one of the most brilliant stories I have ever been fortunate enough to absorb.

Escapism: The Real Exodus

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."

- Shirley Jackson

Escapism.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, "The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities." And it's a root of fantasy.

Fantasy is perhaps the most escapist art form of our time. Much of it takes place in a world that is literally not ours. Many who choose to read, write, watch and imagine fiction of any sort are doing so to distract themselves from the real world. It's enchanting to fall into the life of another person, especially if that life includes some element of imagination.

The farther away from reality, the better the escapist result.

It's wanderlust.

Instead of the thousands of dollars it would take to suddenly jump on a plane to Paris and wander around Europe for a month, you can pick up a book or turn on a movie and visit places just as spectacular. Storytelling is one of the most lasting forms of entertainment - and, it could be argued, might be the only form of entertainment, as all others stem from it. So naturally people flock to stories that whisk them away from their own lives.

It's a rescue from monotony, sadness and worry. An escape from regular life. All fantasy stems from this idea of escapism. Fiction authors from centuries ago acknowledged the same.

Fantasy can also put the real world into perspective without forcing readers to face painful truths. Much classic fantasy literature exhibits strong commentary on the state of the world at the time. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien commented on the selfishness of world powers and the true solution being within the individual. Every message taken through a fantasy story can impact reality as well.

An Obsession of Ice and Fire

If you say you don't recognize this logo, you're lying. HBO took over the world with the fantasy sensation that is Game of Thrones. It's become the most pirated television show and among the most watched, even by those who wouldn't call themselves fantasy fans or, let's face it, "nerds."

Why is it so popular?

It's based on the Song of Ice and Fire series - Game of Thrones is the name of the first novel - by George R.R. Martin, a five-volume (and slowly counting) saga that rivals even the longest series in scope. It's bloody and unforgiving and fits nicely into a category of fantasy called "grimdark." Loosely translated to normal-people-speak, grimdark fantasy means everything sucks and everyone dies. Sound familiar?

Everything does suck and everyone does die.

Grimdark appeals to our generation for the same reasons we flock to dystopic or post-apocalyptic stories like The Hunger Games or The Walking Dead. While it's not a new concept, it certainly has taken hold with the younger generation: we have an obsession with negative change. Our lives, especially in the US, are on some kind of pedestal. We've got virtually everything we need and many things we want, so that, for some reason, makes us wonder at other peoples' suffering.

Why do people enjoy horror movies? Slasher movies? It's the same reason. (In a non-rhetorical way, though, why does anyone enjoy Saw? Eughh.)

Martin's magic storytelling power comes through character building. He presents us with a full cast of lovable and hatable characters, all of whom we immediately connect with and get attached to. Then he tortures and kills them brutally. And we eat it up.

Not only are the characters deep, troubled and brutalized, their actions speak to our own world. The political world of Game of Thrones is practically more outrageous and rich than ours, although Renaissance France could give it a run for it's money. Stranger than fiction, but I digress.

Although the first novel was published over 18 years ago, Martin's series didn't gain nearly the momentum and following it has since the show began in 2010. Obviously, that's because television has a greater realistic reach than books. It takes a certain kind of person to sit down and read thousands of pages rather than watch it all play out on screen.

But it also has something to do with the way we can immerse ourselves into the world. One of Martin's particular strengths is his worldbuilding. He created a rich history for his world and knows details that really have no bearing on the actual story, but he knows Westeros and Essos deeply. With Martin as a producer on the show, it's truly a way to see into his head and glimpse what he believes this intense world looks like. And we desperately want to see a world that is not our own.

Fantastic!

Fantasy is not just defined by castles and dragons. Multiple sub-genres stretch the word into hundreds of possible definitions. So what makes something fantasy? 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, "A genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world." In truth, fantasy fiction can encompass any amount of imagination in any setting.

Major categories of fantasy are simple: high fantasy and low fantasy. 

When faced with the term "fantasy," it's common to think first of high fantasy. Remember those castles and dragons I mentioned? That's high fantasy, a story surrounding its fantastical elements, where the premise of the story exists specifically because of those elements. For example, The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy. Many immersive video games like Skyrim are high fantasy. Most commonly, high fantasy is set in a world that is not our own. 

Low fantasy, in contrast, displays fantastical elements mixed in with real life. Magic tossed in to modern-day New York. As much as it hurts to use the example, The Twilight Saga is a perfect representation of low fantasy: a real world setting with everyday actions but a clearly imaginative element mixed in. I don't think there are any sparkling vampires in real life Washington, but Washington sure does exist outside the story.

Those terms are just simple overviews, though. It's far from black and white. The middle ground in fantasy categories is sometimes overwhelming. 

For instance, where would you place Harry Potter? Low fantasy, right? Because it happens in London and there are real people and -- WAIT! Hogwarts is kind of its own place. The setting isn't real and the story is specifically about magic. So.... High fantasy? Low fantasy? Highlow fantasy? 

It isn't so clear. Generally, authors place their writing into categories like urban fantasy - that magic in New York thing - or epic fantasy. Unfortunately, it doesn't even stop there. The Wikipedia page for fantasy genres lists over fifty examples. 

In this blog, most analysis will focus on the mass appeal of high fantasy, but I'll definitely touch on low fantasy as well.

My Reality

This blog is part of my summer class at the University of Northern Colorado, "Blogging for Journalists." In this blog, I'll be analyzing the culture surrounding fantasy literature - why it's popular, who reads and writes it, etc. - and revealing some of the effects fantasy, as a movement, has on modern society.

In my three weekly posts, you can expect interviews with authors and editors, analyses of shows and books you might just be familiar with and some examples of fantasy fan culture.

In addition to being a fantasy writer and fan myself, I am an associate editor for a romance publisher, the copy editor for The Mirror and the editor in chief of The Claw Magazine here at UNC. I'll be graduating with a bachelor's in news-editorial journalism in the spring. I'm a music minor and play the saxophone in the UNC wind ensemble: Colorado's premier college band.

In my free time, I like to read and write! Who knew? I also love to cook and experiment with foods. You can find my personal blog on both those subjects, Eat Your Words, on Wordpress.