Good times bad times

[altariel]

A brief discussion elsewhere about writing dystopia had me musing about happy-world stories and sad-world stories, what you lot preferred, and why.

Here is the ever-quotable Le Guin on the subject: "It is sad that so many stories that might offer a true vision settle for patriotic or religious platitude, technological miracle working, or wishful thinking, the writers not trying to imagine truth. The fashionably noir dystopia merely reverses the platitudes and uses acid instead of saccharine, while still evading engagement with human suffering and with genuine possibility" (2004: 219).

Are happy-world tales escapism? Do sad-world stories back out on the possibility for action and change? What do you like to read? Why?

[Poll #614661]

Le Guin, U. (2004) A War Without End. In: Le Guin, U., The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. London: Shambhala Publications.

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

perhaps I'll revise that to 'puppy dogs' just to buck the trend. I actually love a story that can make you feel elated without backing away from grim reality - pleasantville for instance, or I remember a Kim Stanley Robinson story (Gold Coast?) which ended with a guy thinking 'I'm the unhappiest person in the world' and it was a happy ending.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

what an idiot I am, 'puppy dogs' represent evil, I meant revise it to 'sugar and spice' which I have now done.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was just having a little fun with that childhood rhyme:

"What are little girls made of? What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice - that's what girls are made of.
"What are little boys made of? What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails - that's what boys are made of."

I like snails too, but I've not been keen on slugs since the Great Kitchen Invasion of 1994.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The weird twists and turns of my mind.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I rewatched Pleasantville a couple of months ago - it is so good! "feel elated without backing away from grim reality": I guess Serenity counts too.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

It's a marvellous film, one of my favourites.

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

Ursula Le Guin makes me nod my head and grit my teeth in equal measure. "The fashionably noir dystopia merely reverses the platitudes and uses acid instead of saccharine" is the kind of sweeping statement that makes me grit my teeth, although like most sweeping statements she makes it has an element of truth in it, although is not the whole truth.

Her utopian story 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' is certainly not escapist, and could even be seen as dystopic. And dystopias can't just all be noirish for the sake of it, otherwise they wouldn't engage the reader/viewer (a film like 'Equilibrium' fails because of its too-easy happy ending).

Meh. I should just post my utopias essay!

I can't say which I prefer. I'm about to embark on The Man In The High Castle; I'll let you know when I'm done...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Please post your utopias essay, I would love to read it! Le Guin utterly convinces me for as long as I am reading her, and then other people point out flaws and I think, "oh yeah..."

I couldn't make head nor tail of The Man in the High Castle; I just don't 'get' PKD.

[kerravonsen]

I couldn't make head nor tail of The Man in the High Castle; I just don't 'get' PKD.

I haven't read The Man in the High Castle -- probably because I also don't 'get' PKD, and have given up on him utterly, apart from occassionally watching movies based on his works (grin)

[cirdan-havens.livejournal.com]

Eh. I think Le Guin just has a different outlook on life. I mean, honestly, I don't think she really knows normal human suffering. She can empathize with it, but ultimately I don't think she's ever had to work a day in her life.

[manna]

I answered as a reader (and also using the wrong LJ, but, hey). As I writer, I write a reasonable percentage of bitter-sweet and dystopic stuff, so it really depends.

Also, as a reader, I'll tolerate more slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails so long as there's a happy ending. Even as a writer, I've written a very small percentage of stuff which doesn't at least end happily by some definition.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Somehow, too, you manage to make the slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails things of joy.

[manna]

Maybe it's because I'm a biologist :-)

(Completely OT -- or not, maybe, with the sugar and spice -- what's the name of the place where you get your monthly subscription box of chocolates from?)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Chocolate is never OT in this journal. It's Hotel Chocolat: and I saw to my delight that they're about to open a shop in Cambridge city centre.

[manna]

Thank you :-)

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

If you have a perfect utopua in which nothing bad ever happens, then I don't think that you can have an effective story. I was tempted to go for the "in between" option in the poll, but decided that that would be a bit of a cop-out and chose the dystopia option. Many of the most effective SF novels have been about the overthrowing of a dystopia. One that comes immediately to mind is Dune.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I suppose in Dune the dystopia is replaced by another dystopia too.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

In the following, not as good, books in the series, yes. But Dune itself ends on an upbeat note.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Applying Le Guin's words to fanfiction, I suspect the acid-for-saccharine substitution is part of what gets me about a lot of angst.

(Oh, & methinks you may have biased your poll by including that little word 'coffee'.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think I got a bit carried away making that final option sound so delicious...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

But you nearly put me off!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Cinnamon? Chocolate? Cream?

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Don't like cream much, either. I think a dark and bitter chocolate seems most fitting.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Just had a rum truffle from the Chocolate Society, mmm.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't for the rum part, you might've had a hand come through your screen then :)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

That would have been... alarming!

There was a lemon buttercream and mint one too, that was yummy. Looking forward to the plum truffle as well.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

There was a lemon buttercream and mint one too, that was yummy.

It sounds like it. You would definitely have been alarmed if I'd known that :) The other one sounds like it's perfectly safe for you to consume without worrying about distressing phenomena erupting from your monitor.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Mouth watering here...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

[Snaffles a few squares of Green&Black's bittersweet dark chocolate. Plus a few squares of vanilla white for good measure.]

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I like the ginger one best.

[kerravonsen]

Naw, not for me. Lindt Lindor cinnamon ball, from their assorted Christmas Special box. (It's even named after a planet in B7!)

[kerravonsen]

I don't mind sadness and grimness so long as there is a hopeful ending. I don't insist on happy endings, so long as there is hope. If you give me a story with no hope (or worse, a story which had hope, and then crushes the hope in little pieces at the end) then I will throw the book against the wall, jump up and down and stomp on it, and be generally cross.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Aha, now I understand why you liked Spirits of the House! ;-) I'm guessing this is what is inspiring The Butterfly Effect?

[kerravonsen]

Aha, now I understand why you liked Spirits of the House!

Because it's a hopeful ending? Yeah, I suppose so.
Though I'm also much more of a campaigner-for-Denethor-reform than I used to be, after his character was mangled in the film. (Boo! Hiss!)

I'm guessing this is what is inspiring The Butterfly Effect?

That I'm trying to rewrite the ending of B7? Oddly enough, I think B7 is one of the exceptions -- I didn't want to jump up and down and scream at the ending, I was sort of more resigned to it; it wasn't as if there were really any dashed hopes, it was more like a classic tragedy. The blow was probably cushioned by the fact that with the long gap between season 3 and 4, I'd been watching The Omega Factor, something else which Chris Boucher was involved in, which was also rather gloomy in that our poor hero kept on losing, so when B7 ended that way, I just muttered "Typical!".

Interestingly enough, now that I think of it, though, season 3 of B7 falls into the "hopeful" rather than the "tragic" ending, since even though they've lost their ship, they're all still alive (at that point), Servalan is probably dead, and they do have some hope of not being stranded forever.

Sure, the motive for "The Butterfly Effect" is trying to see, in a disciplined manner, how one small change could lead to greater changes (and a less tragic ending), but it's also cuz I'm a sucker for Avon-is-a-telepath stories...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if I've recced this to you already, but Dwimordene's Lie Down in the Darkness, Rise up from the Ash is a step by step retelling of LotR: how would the Quest turn out without Gollum. It's extremely dark, however (and still a WiP at the moment).

[kerravonsen]

I can't remember either, but "extremely dark" and "WIP" are not sounding appealing to me, because if it's a WIP, how can I know if it isn't just going to be an extreme downer all the way to the end...? LotR itself was dark enough in the dark bits...

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

It depends very much on my personal situation. I love reading well-written humor, and I enjoy a well done crime-plot, but most of all I like historical novels with a good dose of drama, erotic and humor... hwich makes it understandable that the fabulous Outlander-series by Diana Gabaldon is on top of my favorites-list (Mrs. Gabaldon will probably never know it, but she was of enormous help giving me the clue how the heroine of my tale Winter Fire came to Middle Earth...*grins*). And I'm hoplessly romantic, of course... which makes me adore really good love stories. They never fail to make me happy.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I am increasingly a sucker for a romantic story too.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I read a very good book by Daphne Patai about Orwell which I bet you'd find interesting; The Orwell Mystique. Patai is the academic who rediscovered Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night and has written interesting things about how Burdekin is hopeful where Orwell is ultimately nihilistic, and connects it to what she thinks is Orwell's misogyny.

[genarti]

I answered bittersweet, but really it depends on my mood in some ways. I like happy escapism; I reread the books I loved as a fourteen-year-old girl, many of which are the Mercedes Lackey variety of cotton-candy fluff. A bit of a guilty pleasure, but everybody needs a few of those.

But the ones that stay with me -- the ones that ring true, the ones I quote and push at people crying "You must read this!" in allcaps -- those are nearly always the bittersweet ones, the sharp-edged and lyrical works that offer hope and mercy but ask a price for each bit of it. Someplace To Be Flying, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower series (although that is bitter-bittersweet, perhaps), the Dark Is Rising series, Diane Duane's books... I like choices and consequences, and loss to make the joy the sweeter.

But books that are unremittingly sad mostly just annoy me. I am an optimist at heart, and there's only so long I can take an emo story before I want to start flicking dried peas at all the characters.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

there's only so long I can take an emo story before I want to start flicking dried peas at all the characters

Heh, I do like that!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I'm reading some of these and feeling baffled - because surely it depends on the story and the end that naturally comes out of it? It might be hopeful, or sad-but-hopeful, or utterly desperate, but as long as it's right for the story, that's all that matters. And, of course, one person's happy ending is another's dystopia. Jane Eyre thinks a happy ending is getting married to a blind demanding MCP; I think I'd shoot myself, but there you are....

[manna]

And, of course, one person's happy ending is another's dystopia. Jane Eyre thinks a happy ending is getting married to a blind demanding MCP; I think I'd shoot myself, but there you are....

Interesting. For me, the important thing is whether the characters I like are happy, I guess on the principle that they're the ones who have to live with the ending. 'The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily...', and all that.

[kerravonsen]

For me, the important thing is whether the characters I like are happy, I guess on the principle that they're the ones who have to live with the ending.

That certainly makes sense to me -- but perhaps hafren might lose all respect for a character who would be happy to have that kind of ending, and therefore Jane Eyre is no longer a "character I like"?

[manna]

but perhaps hafren might lose all respect for a character who would be happy to have that kind of ending, and therefore Jane Eyre is no longer a "character I like"?

I do hate it when authors wreck characters at the end of books by making them do out of chracter things so the plot works out. On the other hand, I think marrying Mr Rochester is completely in character for Jane Eyre, and that she's tremendously unlikeable all the way through.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Jane Eyre is no longer a "character I like"?

I don't think I ever liked Jane much. But I did like Lucy from Villette. CB originally wrote a sad end for that (at least sad for Lucy in that the MCP she's in love with is drowned, lucky escape if you ask me). CB changed it because her father wanted a happy ending - she made it open-ended so the reader could choose - but personally I think her original choice was right for the book. Still more obvious is the rightness of Dickens' original downbeat ending to Great expectations, changed to suit the publisher's demands but now available in all good editions.....