10 KiB
[D] Rationally Writing, Episode 20 - Religion in Fiction
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Author: u/DaystarEld Pokémon Professor*
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Score: 12
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Created: 2017-01-07T08:25:41
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Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+8] Pokémon Professor (4 minutes later)
I'm also going to start posting my book recommendations in these posts, since I write them out before recording anyway to stop them from being full of "um"s and "uh"s. If this seems too commercially and anyone finds it offputting, please let me know!
The Golden Compass is the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and it's hard to go into why I'm recommending it without massive spoilers. The series is amazing though, with great characters for every role, from heroes to antiheroes to villains to antivillains, and has one of the most unique multiverses I've ever read.
Just to mention what makes the first book great though, its main character is still my favorite female protagonist in a published novel, people in her world have sapient, shapeshifting familiars, and one of the nations is populated by TALKING ARMORED BEARS.
Seriously, it's awesome. If you like to listen to books as well as read them, then you can get a free audiobook when you sign up for a 30 day trial at audible.com. Just go to www.audibletrial.com/rational to get your book credit, and help support the podcast. Thanks for listening!
u/Cariyaga [+2] Kyubey did nothing wrong (a day later)
Oh man I love His Dark Materials. Read that trilogy at least twice a year throughout middle and high school.
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (16 hours later)
FYI: putting a URL as the link text triggers many spam filters.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (16 hours later)
Hmm. Spam filters in reddit?
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (17 hours later)
It's a pretty standard automoderator rule, because it can be used to trick people into visiting malicious sites and generally low-impact on the false positives.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (17 hours later)
Gotcha, good to know!
u/Kuiper [+7] (5 hours later)
This isn't really related to most of what was discussed in the podcast, but I think that worldbuilding religions in secondary-world fantasy is an interesting topic. For example, one thing to consider is the way that religion colors language, and more specifically, the way that characters curse. People often use the word "profanity" to generically refer to any kind of swearing, but profanity refers to something very specific, namely language that specifically invokes the "sacred" without regarding it with the respect that something sacred ought to command. (For example, "damn" and "hell" are profane, whereas "fuck" and "shit" are obscene, but not profane.)
If you're writing a secondary-world fantasy, I think it's worthwhile to spend some time thinking about how characters can swear. Obviously, it would look horribly out-of-place for someone to exclaim "Jesus Christ" in a fantasy setting where Jesus of Nazareth was never historically present, but even some simpler and seemingly innocuous phrases might be out of place depending on the setting. For example, consider the phrase "go to hell." Is hell a concept that is understood by the people in this setting? Furthermore, is hell universally regarded by the characters within the setting to be a bad place that people wouldn't want to go? There are a lot of cliches that actually have an afterlife belief embedded in them, e.g. "see you in hell."
Also, when worldbuilding language, it may be worthwhile to go back to first principles, rather than just playing mad-libs with phrases taken from a contemporary context. For example, understand that if you have a polytheistic say "oh my gods," or a character who invokes a feminine deity by exclaiming "oh my goddess," you're not exactly being original. That said, when done correctly, I've always had a certain appreciation for people who take concepts that are often presented as cliches and re-contextualizes them in a way that presents the same message in a way that's at least somewhat original, especially when you specifically want to draw attention to a line instead of having the reader gloss over it.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (13 hours later)
Yeah, a lot of stories get around this by just replacing the name of any particular god (instead of shouting "Jesus Christ!" they'll shout "By Odin!"), and a lot of pokemon fanfictions will invoke Arceus or Mew as deities that people would invoke in language.
I think it's fine to overlay the generic concepts themselves, overall. Even nonbelievers will use profanity of beings they don't believe in due to cultural influences, and it always interested me as a kid in Star Wars when Han said the "See you in hell!" line in Empire Strikes Back. As you say, it was a fairly simple signal (if intentionally done, which it might not have been) that there are religions in the world and many common ones have the belief in a bad afterlife for those who have spent their days being immoral in some way that Han clearly considers himself.
u/TexasJefferson [+1] (19 hours later)
For example, consider the phrase "go to hell." Is hell a concept that is understood by the people in this setting? Furthermore, is hell universally regarded by the characters within the setting to be a bad place that people wouldn't want to go? There are a lot of cliches that actually have an afterlife belief embedded in them, e.g. "see you in hell."
Han saying "Then I'll see you in hell," in Empire always bothered me as a kid.
u/trekie140 [+1] (a day later)
Brandon Sanderson continues to show us up by doing this exact thing in the Alloy of Law and Stormlight Archive books.
u/FishNetwork [+7] (2 days later)
It's grating when authors have real, interventionist powers AND modern theological cliches.
Real world priests don't perform visible miracles. And our discussions about religion are shaped by that.
As a result, there are tons of works that look into why people believe despite a lack of evidence. "Proof erodes faith" or "God works in mysterious ways," or "You can't test God" or whatever. Real-world religions don't hold direct contests because it would look bad for everyone involved.
This should change in worlds where priests do overt magic. If people thought that faith moved mountains, you'd see mountain-moving contests to prove which faith is right.
Even the bible has a story where Elijah challenges some Priests of Baal to a spellcasting competition.
People in Fantasy worlds would undoubtedly have their own cliches. But they'd be cliches for solving different sorts of problems. Like, "why are there evil priests?" or "why do both of our pantheons have spells of similar strength?" or "why can't priests heal all the sick kids?"
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
This is a really good point that we didn't get a chance to go over in the episode. What you'll often see in such worlds is that everyone acknowledges that each-other's gods exist (so there's no need to prove one or the other is "real") and some of them are kind of dicks, so invoking them just to prove who's stronger is a good way to get your life screwed up, even if you win. Also, some of the gods are just evil, so the evil priests using faith magic for bad things tend to be theirs.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+3] (7 hours later)
Oh, man, I came here to get attacked and I didn't get mentioned once. Just as well, though, it was still a very interesting discussion and discussing GWSI would essentially have been a tangent.
u/DaystarEld [+4] Pokémon Professor (13 hours later)
Haha, sorry to disappoint :) I said most of what I wanted to say in that one post, but thanks for reminding me to read your epilogue!
later
Okay, so first off: the Omakes were brilliant. I enjoyed them all quite a lot, and actually think they're as good as the ones in HPMOR. But then, writing skill and creativity were never the problems with GWSI :)
As for the epilogue itself, eh. It was basically more of the same of what bothered me, except even worse in that it just confirmed the perspective that God is real and nothing matters because everything eventually ends in everyone being happy forever.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice belief to have. Always has been, always will be. But a reality that really works like The Egg kind of removes any semblance of a point or meaning from the whole charade of existence, let alone the tension or drama of any given story, as was mentioned in the podcast.
Not to say that that's evidence that it's not true. It's always possible, however unlikely I might think it. But I do believe it makes for a worse story, for those not already accepting the premise.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (15 hours later)
I'm glad you liked the omakes. I wasn't sure if anyone would appreciate them, but several people including you now have positively compared to the ones in HPMOR so I'm glad I included them. :)
As for your criticism, yeah, I accept it. You brought it up in a more generic context in the podcast so I did expect that reaction from you.
Hope you're having a great day!
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (15 hours later)
Same to you :) As always, looking forward to your next story!
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 minutes later)
This week we discuss the common pitfalls and problems surrounding religious beliefs in fiction, and how to avoid mistakes that can turn off readers, whether religious or not. Links to mentioned books or webpages are in the shownotes, as usual.
Enjoy!
u/trekie140 [+1] (a day later)
I'm surprised you didn't give a shout out to that story you shared with me about an atheist having a chat with God.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
Ehh, that was more of a philosophical exploration than a "story," ya know?
u/syncope_apocope [+1] (a day later)
Fascinating episode! Thank you, guys!
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
Glad you liked it!