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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32404 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Mistborn alone was enjoyable. The two follow-ups moved it into the spectacular—largely because they engaged with the prophecied-one dynamics common to other stories. Given that you were cold on the original, I can’t say that you would find it worthwhile, but it’s about an opponent intentionally subverting such prophecy to play the long game. Coupled with certain puzzle pieces of the world building, I thought it was quite good.

I didn’t know Elantris was considered weak. It’s not as original, in some ways, but works well enough and commits very few sins. Though I was playing a lot of Dark Souls at the time I first read it, which may have improved my mental imagery.

But I agree completely that Sanderson is legibly conservative. While I’ve joked that it’s his women that give it away, you’re on to something with the willingness to play it straight, to make something leaning into those aesthetics. Other decidedly conservative authors, the David Webers and Eric Flints [edit: David Drakes, Craig Alansons, etc.] of the scene, have something similar going on…Sanderson just stays a step or two ahead.

In college, I had a professor who’d converted to Islam in order to marry in. He seemed to take it quite seriously, though. He also spoke fluent Farsi, so maybe he was spending more time in the Middle East. Point is—people can have all sorts of reasons. You don’t have to be attracted to the trad side, just willing to tolerate it.

David Weber is certainly conservative. Eric Flint is not even remotely conservative. While they've collaborated professionally multiple times (and generally come out the better for it; they tend to rein in each other's faults), their politics are very very different.

My knowledge of Flint was largely limited to 1632, which scanned as very conservative. But perhaps I’m just making assumptions from blazingly red-tribe it is?

Looking at his Wikipedia, apparently he was in fact a socialist and a labor organizer. Learn something every day, I guess.

On the other hand, we have @badnewsbandit claiming Weber doesn’t count as conservative. I don’t know how that shakes out.

He's reasonably conservative in the same way that the British system of government is a Democracy. An NRA member United Methodist (who have been undergoing their own amusing CW related schism over the past few years). Not welcome at a DSA meeting, but not a modal red triber either. That particular title I referenced is free to read, at least the first edition is, and the plot involves the somewhat progressive space British empire (ruled by a Queen) in the person of femHoratio Hornblower trying and initially failing to form an alliance with a small backward, vaguely Mormon coded conservative patriarchal Christan nation before proving her mettle protecting them from the even more backward schismed fanatics the next system over (who somehow code Muslim complete with Hijabs and Stoning's and rejecting Jesus). The final chapters and even the ending are pretty clear that the results will lead to a major social change, essentially ending the patriarchal structure of that society and that's a good thing. They have been saved by the enlighted Queendom and will be made the better for it.

The Honor of the Queen is the second book in a rather long series, and the Graysons (the patriarchal vaguely-but-actually-not-Mormons) recur pretty frequently over the course of it. While Grayson society does nudge a bit more liberal over the course of the series--and contact with Honor herself and diplomatic relations with Manticore (UK in Spaaaace) is not a small part of that--the process is complicated, not frictionless, gradual, and results in a society that would still be considered very conservative from both Utah and South Carolina standards. Grayson society is not held up as perfect--none of Weber's societies are--but even before its gradual liberalization, it's presented as reasonably healthy, on the whole.

Broadly speaking, Weber's societies can be grouped into healthy and unhealthy categories. The unhealthy tend to eventually converge into totalitarian hellholes with different color uniforms, but the healthy ones don't converge into a particular mode--the Andermani Empire (mostly-ethnically-Chinese Prussia in Spaaaace) is an absolute monarchy, but a mostly positive example. Also, Chien-lu Anderman, Herzog von Rabenstrange is great.

My knowledge of Flint was largely limited to 1632, which scanned as very conservative. But perhaps I’m just making assumptions from blazingly red-tribe it is?

The protagonist is the head of the United Mine Workers local. Flint was very much left wing; he was a card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers Party (the Trotskyites)

legibly conservative

David Weber

One would be forgiven for not coming to that conclusion given the very overt neoliberal consensus feminism in The Honor of the Queen of course.

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