Peak Fantasy

I gotta pick that up; afrofuturism is such a niche genre I was only getting it in George Clinton and Sun Ra albums.
Thanks man.

There's still Brandon Sanderson and other good fantasy writers.

muh nigga
also youre dumb because Steven Erikson will just run that shit more than he already does

Tolkien is to creative literary genius what Martin is to hack pulp idiocy. They both so far surpass anyone else in their field that they will be remembered 1,000 years from now as a kind of yin and yang of fantasy, a Manichaen duality of speculative letters. For every sublime, luminous beauty that Tolkien has gifted the world, Martin has cursed us with a tedious, banal ugliness. It is unfair to compare the two directly on any one point, because Martin is in every way the anti-Tolkien, patently sterile, parasitical, and inferior, but so much so that he becomes a monument in his own right, and counterbalances Tolkien. Could one exist without the other? Tolkien obviously could. But it is only by the contrast that Martin offers that we can truly appreciate the full depths and heights of Tolkien. Our understanding of Tolkien would be incomplete if Martin had never set pen to page. It is through only the abject failure and futility of Martin that we can approach an apprehension of the true scope and scale of Tolkien's hitherto inconceivable greatness. Perhaps this is what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote about the Music of the Ainur. If Tolkien is a subcreator in the image of Eru, truly Martin is like unto Melkor. It is only reflected in the awfulness of the one that we can fully see the goodness of the other.

I think there's something to the idea that atheists are incapable of writing good fantasy. I've never seen one anyways.

Shaddap dumbass, they're both literary genius.

The beginning several chapters are peak fantasy writing. I feel like GRRM was doing acid and/or coke or something when he wrote that shit. But the rest of ASOIAF is just great to good to 'I read that'. Don't oversell its importance. His latest work is very much the latter.

Once he dies Fantasy will go back to being good.

I think we're going to find out if Martin actually had any impact on the genre. I think we're in for an unprecedented crop of "gritty realism" fantasy where antiheroes abound and nobody is morally superior to any other. (If this sounds familiar it's because we've been in this rut for 20 years now.)

Maybe we'll eventually go so far around we'll revert to saturday morning cartoon fantasy where the heroes are perfect and their enemies evil as sin.

youtube.com/watch?v=kRmoy6bHUX4

She had this really fucked up interview where she denounced the label 'Afrofuturism' because it was 'an African American' thing, and although she is an African that lives in America, she's not an 'African American' because she's newer to the continent. It had some weird undertones of intra-ethnic racism – definitely about class (educated West African immigrant badmouths African Americans, who are 'low class,' etc.) It's also interesting how recent African immigrants to America benefit from policies intended to benefit descendants of slaves while explicitly shitting on those descendants, making sure people know their ancestors are of higher stock.

Quotes from the interview:

>Okay. A lot of African science fiction is described as Afrofuturism. What’s your relationship to this term?

>Afrofruturism is complicated. Most people use it as synonymous with African Science Fiction. That’s the easiest way to go about it. My relationship to the label Afrofuturism is complicated because, Afrofuturism is a word, a label that, over the years was typically assigned to African-American visions of the future, and mainly through music—like Sun Ra and P-Funk, and later on like Outkast, with their “ATLiens” album, and Janelle Monáe.

>That’s a really big bird, okay. That’s my issue, that Afrofuturism is a label that is steeped in the United States. The roots are African-American and I feel very strongly, that the roots of Afrofuturism—if we’re talking about narratives of whatever kind be it visual art, music, whatever—it should be rooted in the continent first. Because that’s where we came from, and then we left. Some of us left, and some of us stayed, and some of us go back. That’s the root of it.

>A label can’t shake its origins. Not that I have any issue with African-Americans of course. You want to have that conversation, that’s another interview. I do think it should be rooted in the continent, then the diaspora, which would include everybody in an equal way; because, we all came from there. That’s what it should be. I think the easiest way to define Afrofuturism, is African Science Fiction.

>Okay, I get that, but then how would you respond to African Americans who say, “Well, we don’t know our history, or our origin? We’ve created a culture out of our experience post-slavery, or from slavery. This definition of Afrofuturism as developed and designed by African Americans is authentic to us.”

>That would be making Afrofuturism an African-American thing. That would exclude everybody else. I find that to be problematic. Just because you don’t know something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Okay, we don’t know our culture. We don’t know where we came from that doesn’t mean you didn’t come from anywhere. And, of course, I understand that we don’t know our culture, and we have recreated it. That makes complete sense. I think that’s one of the beauties of African Americans. I think that the recreation is very important, but to use that as a definition for Afrofuturism, is highly problematic. That can be an aspect of Afrofuturism, but not the root and not the overall definition of it, because it’s excluding all the other parts. Not everybody is American. I know that people in the United States can often forget that. That’s why, in the United States, anyone who is black, anyone who is of African descent is called African-American, which is wrong. I think that’s a reflection of that attitude.

Really fucking weird, sets off alarm bells in my head.

American blacks are generally spoiled monkeys. Meanwhile, black africans that make it to USA are aspiring doctors, lawyers, etc. and they actually honor their families.

That's what I'm talking about. You just recapitulated the racist sentiment I meant, but my point is that often more recent West African immigrants do it too. If I were African American, I would read the above as shitting on me.

t. libcuck

aaggh....

libcucks would never say that about american blacks.

obviously man, america has high immigration standards

Nice pasta