Moments of Permanence - Because I need to think about things that are differently stressful, sometimes...

From: sqbr Date: May 9th, 2009 10:29 am (UTC) (Link)

I totally agree. I think a history without the jewish diaspora would be interesting, but definitely different.

What struck me a while ago but noone else seemed to think was a big deal is that most pseudo-european fantasy has no pseudo-jews.

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From: eisen Date: May 9th, 2009 12:27 pm (UTC) (Link)

I have nothing, really, to add to this post. sami said all I was thinking anyway and I agree with all of it. So I'm going to respond to this comment because there's something odd I noticed in your link there.

It's totally weird nobody on that entry there mentioned the Drasnians from Eddings' Belgariad/Malloreon series, because they fit the bill of pseudo-Jews so well that, like all the other cultures in the Belgariad, they're stereotypical of it. :/

It is so unexpected to think of Eddings as doing anything unique with the fantasy genre in his worldbuilding that I might have to go lie down for a while at the shock of it.

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From: anatsuno Date: May 9th, 2009 11:55 pm (UTC) (Link)

wow. you are so right. And now I get all of a sudden what I found so likeable and yet vaguely nauseating in the Drasnians: they're my people, except they're my people defaced by prejudice / stereotype.

God. How did I never see this before?

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From: sami Date: May 10th, 2009 12:03 am (UTC) (Link)

I'm disconcerted by this - I never would have twigged Drasnians as faux-Jewish.

Possibly because of the whole Alorn thing, I just... in my head, all of the Alorns are tagged as variant northern Europeans, because they're all descended from the Alorns, who are kind of Vikingish in my head.

I suppose it doesn't help that I haven't read Eddings in about ten years.

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From: anatsuno Date: May 10th, 2009 12:10 am (UTC) (Link)

Hmm. Less than ten years for me, but I haven't reread in a while. I had forgotten the Alorn roots - I'll have to think about this more, but yeah, once pointed out, I can't not see the merchant / spy emphasis-on-the-nose angle, either.

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From: sami Date: May 10th, 2009 12:18 am (UTC) (Link)

The nose thing was only Silk, though, wasn't it? I don't recall other Drasnians with nose issues. But... many years. And I'm only just now really thinking about it.

On the one hand, the spying thing - that doesn't code Jewish to me, because on the one hand, Drasnians outside Drasnia generally are spies, but on the other hand, they don't tend to pass as anything but Drasnians, and, as they have their own well-marked homeland, etc, they don't have a lot of the same historical characteristics I associate with Jews-as-ethnic/national group.

Eddings is fairly strong on ethnic determinism, after all, so having characteristics ascribed to nationalities isn't exactly limited to Drasnians. Tolnedrans are secular and greedy, Arends are stupid, Sendarians are practical, the, um, snaky people are junkies, etc. (Issan? Nyissan? Something like that.)

It's easier than characterisation, I suppose.

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From: sqbr Date: May 10th, 2009 12:29 am (UTC) (Link)

*Thinks "Drasnians? I don't remember who they were"*
*reads discussion below*
OH THEM OF COURSE ACK. I think I vaguely twigged at the time but was Very Young so didn't think about it very hard.

Based on reading the books more than a decade ago so it may be bunk: One thing I liked about the Belgariad is that unlike say Tolkein where you have "normal" humans and then a bunch of kooky other species, you have all these different cultures and they're all human and all kind of weird (and mostly positively portrayed Except of course the Slytherins). Of course the fact they're so neatly defined despite having no particular reason not to get all mooshy at the edges due to intermarriage is kind of..hmm.

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From: embryomystic Date: May 11th, 2009 07:34 am (UTC) (Link)

The Drasnian thing is interesting, and not something I would've thought of by myself, but I think in The Rivan Codex (I skimmed, and didn't leave the library with it, and it still ruined my quasi-rosy memories of the Belgariad and the Malloreon, which I hadn't read since I was in my early teens) David Eddings baldly states (in between bizarre pronouncements like, 'every fantasy story needs a wise old wizard') that the Ulgos correspond to the Jews, and UL is YHWH. I think he lists the real-world analogues of every one of the cultures in that storyworld, actually, which seems kind of tacky, but.

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From: sami Date: May 11th, 2009 07:59 am (UTC) (Link)

I... wow.

So, the Jews are the subterranean religious fanatics everyone finds kind of weird, and whose major character representative is a thoroughly weird religious fanatic everyone finds really irritating until he becomes more like them. Including overcoming a lot of the moral teachings of his people.

That's not problematic at ALL.

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From: embryomystic Date: May 11th, 2009 08:25 am (UTC) (Link)

I know, right? But they're subterranean Jews with superpowers, remember. They can walk through stone. Wait... this is clearing up that whole 'empty tomb' thing in the Gospels. Jesus could walk through solid stone! Cool.

As much as those books came to frustrate me once I started getting critical (and it was gender stuff, mostly, that got to me; men are like this, and women, well, they're like that), it wasn't until skimming The Rivan Codex that I really began to understand how consciously formulaic they were. Why would anyone write a book that explains how uncreative they were in writing their most famous books? Self-effacing, I get, but this is, like, a guide to creating your own shitty fantasy series.

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From: eisen Date: May 11th, 2009 12:04 pm (UTC) (Link)

That is weird and disturbing. I've never been able to finish the Codex, so I always figured the Ulgo were stereotyping the fundamentalist sects of all the Abrahamic religions; it never would've occurred to me he'd have had a specific one of them in mind. As opposed to the Drasnians, who, since it was my impression that each member of the questing party was meant to typify their ethnicity of origin (like in old-style high fantasy - and there's not a cliché from old-style high fantasy Eddings doesn't love), I honestly felt were the more stereotypically Jewish because of how much time the books spent making odd comments about Silk's nose and Drasnians' unerring eye for a good deal - characteristics I rarely found particularly prevalent in the Jews I knew IRL but found repeatedly in the Jewish characters I knew from fiction. And between the two of them OH GOD SO MUCH SKETCHY RACE PROBLEMS HERE, EDDINGS, WTF.

Eddings' honesty about the fact that he has never been very interested in doing anything but hacked-off cliché-ridden fantasy is one of the reasons I liked him when I first found him, actually? It was really refreshing, at the time I picked up Eddings, to have a fantasy author who was so blatantly honest that he wasn't interested in writing anything new, just writing a bunch of old stories with a sense of humor about their origins. But no, sometimes he just goes too far; men are all brave to the point of idiocy and women are always complaining and everyone must get married and every marriage is "yes, dear *sigh*" on the man's part and and and. And then there is the racial stuff which was totally sketchy as hell the whole time and was only barely tolerable because even the main character wasn't all that immune to the rules of the stereotypes. There are all these unchecked and unconsidered assumptions riddling the Eddings books - even on top of the ones Eddings took from his study of fantasy, looked at carefully, and tossed in anyway because he thought they might be funny and/or necessary to the generic plot he wanted to build.

And yet, I still like his books, because on some level they give me what I'm used to with a nice, fluffy coat of silly hijinks on top, even when I can't stop my brain shrieking at the problems underneath. They're like the worst sort of comfort food: it doesn't even taste all that good, but your brain's become convinced it does, and afterwards you're full and blissfully incapable of coherent thought through the food-induced stupor you've put yourself in, but you'll feel queasy for the rest of the week. If I'd discovered Eddings now I'd feel differently, but I've spent too much time being stupidly fond of the things to be able to shake my enjoyment of them even when they hurt me, these days. :/

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From: lady_ganesh Date: May 12th, 2009 11:54 am (UTC) (Link)

At least it was unique in a stereotypical way?

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From: naraht Date: May 9th, 2009 03:30 pm (UTC) (Link)

You know, this is a seriously good point and I can't believe I've never thought of it before. Huh.

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From: james_davis_nicoll Date: May 9th, 2009 04:34 pm (UTC) (Link)

Oddly, I've read secondary world fantasies that have Gyspies, despite the notable limitation of not having an India for them to have come from.

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From: morgan_dhu Date: May 9th, 2009 08:42 pm (UTC) (Link)

Jacqueline Carey, in the Kushiel series, is the only fantasy writer I can think of off-hand who has analogue peoples for both Roma and Jews.

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From: dhobikikutti Date: May 9th, 2009 08:53 pm (UTC) (Link)

And Guy Gavriel Kay who deals explicitly with the interactions of the Kindath (Jews), and the Asharites (Muslims).

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From: naraht Date: May 9th, 2009 11:50 pm (UTC) (Link)

Guy Gavriel Kay is sounding more and more interesting. I've been meaning to read him anyway because of his books about Byzantium (my family and religious history).

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From: dhobikikutti Date: May 9th, 2009 11:59 pm (UTC) (Link)

I loved his Sarantine Mosaic although I've heard many complaints from people both in terms of gender, and in terms of 'he just stole everything from history books'.

I also have an utter and unholy love for his 'Lions of Al-Rassan', which again, has been criticised.
I am too biased to care, but I acknowledge the opposing view points for the record. :)

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From: elspethdixon Date: May 11th, 2009 06:21 pm (UTC) (Link)

in terms of 'he just stole everything from history books'.


I would be interested to hear what these people think of straight historical fiction, then -- the similarities/parallels to European and Middle eastern history were one of the things I really liked about the Sarantine Mosaic and Last Light of the Sun.

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From: holyschist Date: May 11th, 2009 12:30 am (UTC) (Link)

I love Kay like burning, and I think he handles female characters fine. And I love how he's taken history to make a fantasy world that seems utterly real and rich but which is recognizably not our own (it's hard than it looks).

On the other hand, I really didn't like his straight fantasy novels. But Saratine Mosaic (Byzantine) books are gorgeous, and so is Al-Rassan and The Last Light of the Sun. I still haven't read Tigana or A Song for Arbonne (I really should--I was saving them to spread out, but it's been a couple years).

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From: sqbr Date: May 10th, 2009 01:22 am (UTC) (Link)

Yes, I think it's interesting how much more common they are.

Roma (apparently "gypsies" is an offensive term) are I think a bigger part of the typical vision of the Romantic Past. They turn up in folk tales and period fiction a lot more than jews. Of course the stereotypes about them are just as harmful and untrue, and as you point out very disconnected from their actual history but they're more "fun" to play with :/ Also I think people are more aware of the fact that european jews experienced constant attempts at genocide so are more self conscious about replicating anti-semitic stereotypes. The more I learn about the actual history and experiences of the Roma (and I don't know much) the more skeeved I am by stuff like "Evil Gypsy Curses".

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From: lady_ganesh Date: May 12th, 2009 11:58 am (UTC) (Link)

And they're a very insular people, which I think makes it easier to tell stories about them that may or may not be true. (Agreed on the actual history making everything skeevier and more uncomfortable.)

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From: lady_ganesh Date: May 11th, 2009 10:45 pm (UTC) (Link)

Dude, I'd never realized that. Fail on my part, and something to think about as I attempt to craft my pseudo-european/middle-eastern/african world.

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From: willow Date: May 9th, 2009 10:36 pm (UTC) (Link)

{ I'm not saying it's impossible to write speculative fantasy on these premises - what I'm saying is that you can't do it as background. }

This.

Thank you for putting this into words. The point had been nibbling at my brain but the closest I could get was "Even when we're (minorities)invisible/erased, we're the fucking props!" which is not as all as concise and pointed as your paragraph.

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From: sami Date: May 9th, 2009 10:44 pm (UTC) (Link)

You're welcome.

Seriously, The Thirteenth Child is just doing it wrong.

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From: lea_hazel Date: May 11th, 2009 12:46 pm (UTC) Sorry to drop in out of nowhere (Link)

I followed a bunch of links here, via Seeking Avalon. Sorry if I'm intruding.

I just wanted to mention: there is an alternate history series similar to what gohover described, but not quite. The premise is that the death of Jesus created a powerful new divine force that prevented the rise of Christianity, leaving Christians to take the role that Jews did in medieval Europe, of an often-dislocated and persecuted minority. The twist is, there are no Jews.

I mean, every single Jew in the entire world was overcome by the urge to believe that Jesus Christ was no only the Messiah, but also the son of God (which fact is stated explicitly to be fact in these books). Of all the readers I've spoken to, no one who read this book ever thought about why there weren't any Jews in this world who didn't believe in Jesus.

The series is Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books. They revolve around an alterna-France that worships the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene etc. etc. Carey does not appear to understand that "Jesus = Messiah = son of God" is not an automatic equation, nor do any of the other readers I discussed this with. Without going into a whole theological discussion, it just doesn't make sense from a sociological point of view that everyone would be so easily converted, when the equivalence in real life was highly controversial.

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From: sami Date: May 11th, 2009 12:56 pm (UTC) Re: Sorry to drop in out of nowhere (Link)

'sok, getting to posts like this via links is par for the course.

As for those books, I... wow. That sounds really kind of problematic, on a whole range of levels. (Some of which may be less failtastic in the books than in your summary? Maybe?)

Given that part of the reason, I've been told (from an Orthodox perspective), that some Jews are certain Jesus wasn't the Messiah is the very fact that he was able to be put to death so terribly (the Messiah should have been strong enough for that not to happen, as I understand it), I don't see how Jesus dying anyway and then a mysterious force causing the Christians to be weak and persecuted is going to change that.

I am Christian, myself, but based on your summary I still think that sounds pretty awful.

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From: lea_hazel Date: May 12th, 2009 05:53 am (UTC) Re: Sorry to drop in out of nowhere (Link)

It's pretty failtastic. I mean, like lady_ganesh said, it's hard to catch among the flying plot and tons of world-building, but once you realize it you see Carey set up a society of Jewish cultural markers, and an archtypical Friendly Rabbi Advisor. But these bearded, black-coat wearing people point to the death of Jesus as their genesis, not the three thousand odd years of history before that.

One of the problems is, in order to analyze the divergence between Judaism and early Christianity, you have to treat Christianity as myth and Jesus as a construct. Jewish theology typically treats Jesus as a false prophet, when he's addressed at all. Starting from the premise that the Christian mythology is factually correct precludes the Jewish tradition that Jesus was an upstart who wanted to be king, and accedes to the Christian tradition, that maintains that Judaism was theologically acceptable up until Jesus, but once it diverges from Christianity it becomes heresy for refusing to acknowledge the divinity of Christ.

The idea of "Judeo-Christianity" is an interesting social construct, but it creates the impression that Judaism and Christianity have a lot more in common than they actually do. It belies the fact that Jewish and Christian theologies are mutually exclusive; one has to be wrong for the other to be right, and it's the one that encompasses the majority of the Western world that usually wins out, unsurprisingly.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: May 11th, 2009 10:48 pm (UTC) Re: Sorry to drop in out of nowhere (Link)

I had not read far enough in the Kushiel books to realize that that was the case. Wow. (This is also perhaps one of the reasons people don't call it out-- by the time they get there they're so deeply immersed in the world they're more or less along for the ride.)

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From: lea_hazel Date: May 12th, 2009 05:56 am (UTC) Re: Sorry to drop in out of nowhere (Link)

Yes, it took me a while to notice, too. Carey emphasizes the cultural markers enough that it's easy to grab at the familiar and forget the discrepancies. I was so excited about a medieval setting with actual, recognizable Jews in it I forgot all about everything else. She also drops in some stuff with just enough historical background to make it tantalizing. I don't know how far you've read, though.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: May 12th, 2009 11:52 am (UTC) Re: Sorry to drop in out of nowhere (Link)

I've read, I think, about half the first book, and had realized the Jesus/Mary M. stuff. That all Jews had converted hadn't sunk in, though.

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From: elspethdixon Date: May 11th, 2009 06:34 pm (UTC) (Link)

I'm not saying it's impossible to write speculative fantasy on these premises - what I'm saying is that you can't do it as background.

Hmmm... see, what I took away from the comment you quoted was that that was what the commentor was saying -- that you couldn't just have a group of people be magically absent as a background detail because you didn't want to write about them. That you had to foreground their absence and the effects of it in the text and essentially write something that was *about* said group and their effect on history, or it was creepy (i.e. I saw the comment as agreeing with your concluding paragraph, not disagreeing).

These are not just unfortunate by products of history - they are integral, causative factors of the shape of history as it turned out, of the shape of America.

So much word. Especially on slavery (not saying that slavery is more or less important in terms of American history than Native Americans -- I just personally know a lot more about it). Slavery had a massive impact on the Southern US that's still present today, and a not insignificant amount of influence on the North and West, too. And international impact as well -- the British textile industry relied heavily on American cotton before the Civil War.

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From: elf Date: May 11th, 2009 09:06 pm (UTC) (Link)

If you write a people out of existence as background, rather than as the setup for an exploration of how the world is different without their influence

Never mind "exploration." How about "consideration?"

The problem is not that a carefully researched timeline and 75-page sourcebook are required to discuss the differences. The problem is that wiping out a race of people and then saying "oh, but the world is pretty much the same," is saying those people are irrelevant--they had no influence on history, they made no crucial inventions, their agriculture and towns had no effect on later dwellers in the same areas.

The insult isn't in wiping them out; it's in wiping them out and saying "and that wouldn't be noticed at all by anyone else on the planet."

A book wouldn't have to be *about* that gap in history to be good; it would just have to acknowledge that things would be different. In this case, very different.

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From: smillaraaq.livejournal.com Date: May 13th, 2009 06:20 pm (UTC) (Link)

I'm not saying it's impossible to write speculative fantasy on these premises - what I'm saying is that you can't do it as background. If you write a people out of existence as background, rather than as the setup for an exploration of how the world is different without their influence, then you're almost guaranteed to be doing it for reasons that are entirely offensive.

Yes, yes, THIS. And I would add further to your equally spot-on note about untoward glibness in wiping out the icky dark bits of history, that if one is going to try to pursue a premise that imaginatively eliminates a people who have historically been subjected to genocide, particularly genocide within living memory, then it really would behoove such a writer not to discuss their projects in terms reminiscent of the historical horrors. Say, in your hypothetical case of an AU where Europe (or the whole world) contains no Jews, an author with an ounce of sense or sensitivity would at the bare minimum hopefully not make blithe remarks in the vein of "Well, I didn't want to have to deal with the ugly old stereotypes of the tight-fisted moneylender or the newer stock figures like the neurotic intellectual mama's boy and the materialistic spoiled princess, so the final solution that I settled upon was just removing Jews from the worldbuilding entirely." (And if such a statement sounds utterly horrifying even in the hypothetical -- that's pretty much the level of nausea-and-rage-inducing gutpunch Wrede's glib comment about "eliminating the problem" of trying to write non-stereotyped Indians was to me.)

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From: sami Date: May 14th, 2009 12:26 am (UTC) (Link)

I can understand that. That phrasing horrified me fairly profoundly, and I'm not even American, let alone one included in her mass deletion. My attachment to American history is distant at best.

You're right - the word choices really matter quite a lot, in this context.

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From: cheshyre Date: May 14th, 2009 10:59 pm (UTC) (Link)

If you write a people out of existence as background, rather than as the setup for an exploration of how the world is different without their influence, then you're almost guaranteed to be doing it for reasons that are entirely offensive.
That is one of the most brilliant things I've seen written regarding this whole debacle...

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