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I was going to sign up for

mm_rares (signups open here) but then I realized you have to both request and offer a minimum of four different fandoms, and I just don't have that many I'm interested in writing. For some reason I'd thought it was four different pairings, which I could've managed between AC and the MCU, but no. Ah well, maybe I'll pick up a pinch hit if any catch my eye.

I'm presently re-reading Robert Asprin's Myth books. I came across a couple of them while cleaning out my bookshelves, and I don't think I've read them since I was a teenager. They're turning out to be surprisingly not-terrible, considering that the last time I tried to read one of his more recent books (one of the Phule ones) I noped out just a few chapters in. I'm not sure if I'd recommend them exactly, and they're definitely products of their time, but they're fun. Also, it is really amazing how growing up can change your perspective on character dynamics.

12-year-old me: Man, Aahz is a jerk. Though he can be cool sometimes.
Adult me: Wow, Aahz has the patience of a saint.

Seriously, I remember him being basically a jerk, but at worst he's abrasive, somewhat mercenary, and ruthless when cornered; I was completely unprepared for how patient, protective, and generally decent he is. Though maybe he gets worse later on; I seem to recall the characters getting slightly flanderized as the series proceeded ... moreso than they already were, as most of them are basically parodies of various stock fantasy types to begin with.

It's also making me think about how popular SFF comedy was in the late 70s/80s, and how few books along those lines there seem to be now -- just off the top of my head, there were Asprin's books, the Xanth ones, Spellsinger, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the early Discworld books, at least three different series I can think of in which an ordinary Earth schmoe answered an ad to be a wizard/king/etc or otherwise got tapped for a similar fantasy-kingdom gig while woefully unprepared ...

And it's just not really a thing anymore, I don't think. At least it's not a bestselling thing. It made me wonder if the same ecological book-niche as comic fantasy held in the '80s (light, bestselling, brain-candy spec-fic) is currently occupied by urban fantasy instead.

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I think it's partly that, and also I think that a lot of those comedies were based off spoofing tropes that in the previous decades and up to that point were being taken straight and, ironically, much like the straight-tropes, eventually the spoof becomes boring.

And at this point we've spoofed, taken the spoof seriously, spoofed the serious take on the spoof, and basically reached trope singularity and/or trope "I do not give a fuck I like this story".

I think it's the same reason that A Song of Ice and Fire looks very different now than it did when it started: when it started it really WAS NEW, it was new/adventurous (at least in mass-distributed stuff) to take your Typical Fantasy Setting and go "yeah you know what? It's a lot uglier to live there than that, and being that kind of stupid noble does not actually get you Rewarded For Virtue By The Gods, it gets you dead."

Except it's taken him so long to read it and it's been so influential that it's become the mainstream trope now, we have a whole GENRE name for "grimdark", so.

(Plus also his actual understanding of mediaeval European culture, which is what he's jumping off from, is bad-to-mediocre, and he should feel bad. >.>) (But that's true of like . . . so many. SO MANY. And so many of them on the "oh but it wasn't that bad!") (Look the mediaevals were both better and worse than anyone thinks.)

What I remember most about the Myth books was loving all the apocryphal quotes at the beginning of chapters. >.>

Edited 2016-05-31 04:01 (UTC)

I will always and forever maintain that is ASOIAF had been the trilogy/quartet originally planned, it would a) be better off for it quality wise, b) have had more staying power. By now, no matter what he does, the shine's off the apple.

Though having seen any number of people trying to do the same thing BADLY in the years since, my appreciation for Martin has increased. The multiple PoV thing, especially in the early books, is handled extremely deftly.

A friend in middle ages studies has commented that if he was looking for realism, there isn't nearly enough dysentery.

There's not enough illness of every kind, including randomly dying from a fairly shallow wound you got in a bar fight after dinner that went septic. There's not enough "whoops history just went sideways because this king had a habit of putting the heads of his enemies on his saddle and one nicked his thigh with a tooth and he died two days later of sepsis."

Also not enough people dying of toothache. (Abscess, usually.) Etc.

There's not enough random bread riots or peasant invasions of the local manor that actually don't kill anyone but burn all the rent ledgers, there's not enough squabbling of the under-nobles amongst themselves and/or the peasants going "ahhh fuck this shit" and moving over to the next lord, there's not enough random crap. :P There's not enough towns fighting endless games of Chicken with the local kings or dukes or whoever, and there's definitely not enough huge stupid hilarious fights between Church and Crown, with Pope and Emperor both deposing one another, including the pope nullifying all oaths to the Holy Roman Emperor by excommunicating him at least once, after which Henry came to the Holy See in full on absolutely ludicrously overdone penitence, full sackcloth and ashes and so on, and Gregory KNEW he was full of shit but had to take him back anyway because The Rules.

(I got to read some of their correspondence through that period, for my degree: one of them began "to Hildebrant, NOT pope but FALSE MONK!", Hildebrant being Gregory's pre-papal name. It was fantastic. We proceeded to shout FALSE MONK at each other in our seminars whenever possible. Meanwhile this ludicrous fight was also totally killing people.)

And, well, I'm . . . not sure I'm with you on "staying power", considering where it is as a cultural phenomenon at this point, but quality possibly. Although frankly I'm not the one to go by - I like giant rambling sprawling universes that actually give me the impression of being as big as the real one, which literally no nice tidy "tightly edited" story has ever done, so. (Also to be fair while my knowledge via osmosis is at this point probably better than many people who HAVE read them, I haven't yet, because I refuse to read unfinished series anymore. :P So mostly I can't comment on the quality of the writing/actual storytelling qua storytelling: I can comment on use of tropes, and where those were viz the 90s when it started versus now, and also on oh god GRRM stop talking about the mediaevals you know NOTHING.)

For a fictionalised 14th century, or whatever, there's surprisingly little church involvement of any kind. And yeah, the peasantry basically doesn't exist.

I will grant that with seven books and a tv show, it's pretty well stayed. But people are also making fun of it while it's coming out (and not just because it's late), whereas if it had been done as planned, it could be this complete thing that got in before the trope wore out its welcome.

I bailed a while ago, with a strong impression that the series was never going to end, and also I didn't care any more. It's possible that Winds of Winter is the finest thing to hit epic fantasy in recent history. I just don't consider it super likely.

That's a good point, and I think you're probably right. Eventually you're going to run out of new riffs on the same jokes, and a joke stops being funny when everyone's heard it ...

And yeah - the danger of a long-running series: the culture moves away from where it was. I think the window for me to ever read and enjoy those books is past; I kinda wish I had actually read them back in the early 2000s, when I was into that kind of thing (also when most of my friends were reading them) and I probably would have enjoyed them, but I just have no interest now, for all kinds of reasons ... I've moved on, the bookscape has moved on, etc.

Man, I shipped Aahz/Skeeve so hard, back in the day. Basically I just want all the h/c, and read Missing Persons like twelve times. (I had a type when I was 12, and that type was patient, protective, and generally decent under an abrasive cover.)

I've never read past where the series initially broke off though (I think the one where Gleep died). Any idea how the later books are?

Edited 2016-05-31 04:02 (UTC)

Yeah, it's really interesting to me that I remember him being basically a jerk (although I did love the Aahz/Skeeve relationship even then, and I remember being thrilled by what h/c we did get). As my tastes have matured, he's pretty much EXACTLY my type now -- or, well, one of my types: smart, competent, sarcastic, and, as you said so perfectly, decent under an abrasive cover.

... and I don't know, although I expect I'll find out eventually; after Memorial Day I'm going to hit up the library and see which ones they have. There must have been some reason why I stopped reading them, though it might have been that I just wandered off to other things and never started buying them again.

I remember Aahz and Tanda being tied for my favourites back in the day, but being REALLY interested in the h/c in the Aahz/Skeeve relationship.

I stopped reading because the author stopped writing them! I think he had a lot of issues with depression or something, and took a break for ten years, by which point I'd wandered off. A lot of them you can only get via e-book now, I think?

Ohhh, is that what happened? I think what's confusing the issue for me is that there was a big discontinuity in ALL of my media-consuming for the majority of the '90s, due to going off to college and having a number of years when I didn't have time, money, or in some cases access (I didn't own a TV) to watch/read/etc ANYTHING -- plus my tastes were changing really fast at that time, because of being exposed to so many new outside influences, so a lot of what I used to be into got suddenly dropped. I got into a few new things during those years (like Bujold's books), but for the most part I ended up having to play catchup afterwards, and there are still a number of influential series from the '90s, like Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9, where I've seen (or read) the first part but never saw the end. So I assumed the Myth books fell into that big black hole that makes up most of the '90s for me as far as media is concerned. I don't think I had realized that it actually did stop, since I knew there were a number of books I hadn't read!

Tanda is also great -- and Massha! I'm really loving her on the reread; once you scrape off the cringeworthy fatphobia in how she's written, she's actually a fantastic character. I can definitely see why I liked these books so much back in the day, because they've got the whole bickery-loyal ensemble thing going on, which I've always been a sucker for.

I stopped reading after picking up one of the newer ones (though given how long ago that was, it's, uh. Probably not a "newer" one now? Basically, one of the first ones after the hiatus, when he picked up a coauthor) because it just wasn't doing it for me.

Alas, I can't remember my specific annoyances/objections. Obviously nothing brain-searingly bad; I think it just sort of had a strained feeling to it, and maybe also had started to feel rather mercenary? Like Asprin had gone to such trouble to end it well, with everybody getting what they wanted or needed... and then the PTB decided their cash cow wasn't allowed to dry up, so they reset it and yanked everybody out of their happy endings for some very episodic adventure. I dunno, it's been so long maybe I should try it again?

I left off and it wasn't a happy ending, it was a cliffie! So I'd be interested to at least see where it goes. Though admittedly my dedication is pretty low.

Ahh, I wonder which one you left off at?

I should try to find my copies and see if anyone else wants to do a readalong...

Gleep had just died in Skeeve's arms! It was very dramatic! I was an extremely upset 12 year old.

Wowww, I don't remember that at all! Now I hope the library books go that far (er, not because I want Gleep to die, but now I'm curious, heh).

It's actually surprising to me how little of this series I remember. I think everything I do remember comes from just one or two books, even though I know I read them multiple times as a teenager.

That was the one where they were at war with Queen Hemlock, and it was from the point of view of one of the mob bodyguards, who was infiltrating the army. It was right after the one where Skeeve went to Perv to find Aahz (which has just about my favourite slashy scene for those two).

I wonder how much I'd remember. I had them pretty well down back in the day, but that was a long time ago.

Hahaha, Aahz does have the patience of a saint, really. :D Though even as a younger reader, I thought he was pretty awesome. And I have always been a complete and total sucker for the "nobody believes in our relationship, but WE DO and we'll go through anything for the other's sake!" thing that Mything Persons so satisfactorily filled! I have also read that one a whole lot. :D

Massha and Tananda were also great - looking back, I think this series might be the start of my realisation of just how much I hate the "hot trophy female character as reward for male character" thing. Skeeve quite reasonably has a crush on Tananda, doesn't let it get in the way of becoming her friend, and doesn't end up in a romantic relationship with her... That was pretty groundbreaking and awesome!

(Younger me had had The X-Files to teach me certain facts about my narrative kinks, so by the time I hit Asprin I already had an underlying grasp on "You know what I love? Male-female friendships that stay friendship and are validated as such!" I also, alas, had a good grounding in just how rare that was.)

Loved that Massha was both competent - despite not having an innate magical talent, she often contributed to the success of The Great Skeeve's missions - and self-aware enough not to let her insecurities overwhelm her. She got character growth, insight, and eventually a romance, and none of it required her to get a makeover.

I honestly had no idea Skeeve/Tananda wasn't endgame in this series -- I mean, I'm far enough along now in the reread that it's reasonably obvious they're going to stay friends, but that's how little I remember of it; I just sort of vaguely remembered that he had a crush on her.

Actually, considering what a goofball series it is, I keep being surprised by how serious and stereotype-breaking it actually is. Most of the characters are utterly ridiculous when they're introduced, but then they end up being developed in a genuinely respectful and thoughtful way. Also, I have a feeling that this was one of the formative series for my longstanding fondness for the trope of a bunch of friends/surrogate-family all living together in a big weird household. (Not the only one, but probably one of them.)

I loved the Myth books! Can't remember a thing about them now, though the name Aahz at least does sound vaguley familiar, lol.

Another comedy-type fantasy series was Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom for Sale...Sold!, which I remember liking, but I also liked his Shannara books at the time, so idk. :p Probably best something left to fond memory.

Hah, yeah, I remember those - it's one of the ones I was thinking of, in which an ordinary dude answers an ad and becomes a fantasy wizard/king/etc. I liked them too, but I have a feeling they probably haven't aged well.

Oh, man. Magic Kingdom for Sale...Sold! has not aged well.

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