Should Fantasy books show our modern social problems?

Should Fantasy books show our modern social problems?

I've been conflicted about this lately. On one hand, the problems of today are the problems we are dealing with today. They are relevant.

On the other hand, reading about how our views of women, race, religion, and so many other things have changed over the centuries really gets me thinking.

It makes me oddly hopeful to realize how many of our modern prejudices are only a few centuries old. Because cultures and societies have changed before, why can't they change again?

[Z.A.M.]

Or how women have always worked, even ran businesses. It was only recently that people thought women of nearly every class shouldn't work.

[theoldar]

People know very little about the past. For example they think that a nuclear family with a stay at home mother was the standard throughout history, when it's actually less than three generations old.

[davidhamilton]

The solution: people need to learn a small but decent amount of real history. Specifically, things that happened and how at certain points of transition in history. What I'd also like to see- when kids take Shakespeare in highschool lit, roughly 1/3 of the class needs to be about the social economic realities of the time and how they relate to his stories. Demonstrating that books/stories/etc are reflections of the culture and time they come from helps cement this concept.

[giannaberetta]

Yes! Thank you! Someone who understands me 😭 The problem is not only with fantasy, but also with historical ones (we are deliberately ignoring the TV series). One thing that I absolutely hate is when they take a classic and read it finding modern problems in it (that's fine), but than pretending that was the original intention of the writer to highlight such problems! just no!!!! It wasn't a them problem, it's a you problem! Why can't people understand 😭 Everyone talking about diversity, but is very difficult to actually find a different moral and social point of view.

[HungryWolf]

Scifi/Fantasy will aways show what year it was written. My friend instantly deduce that Dune were written in the 60's just from watching the new movie, between the war for oil in the middle of the desert, LSD giving you future sight, Magic nun that can control all their bodily functions like a Yogi, and all the sexism present.

IMO just write whatever you want; your culture, value, issue are going to be present even if you dont intend them anyway.

[Tessa_Ru]

I feel you on the mixed feelings. On the one hand, fantasy is a good outlet to explore modern problems, without the pressure of being completely factually accurate. However, I think the best fantasy books build a world with characters that have ideals and biases that are unique to the society created, and historical context is a really great way to start a foundation for that.

[TenThousandDoors]

"I don't have a solution, it's just something I think about." I like that, actually. It means that there's still room for conversation about the complex and nuanced issues that people face and how to portray those issues through the medium of literature. I think right now, some of the issues that women face are the pressure to not *only* become wives and mothers but also to be providers for their families and enter the workforce while balancing work and home along with social and political expectations, whereas many of those roles were solely up to men to fulfill in the past. We're becoming more dynamic, rounded people who are expected to "do it all" while remaining soft and feminine, but not too soft because then we're seen as weak. So its a struggle, and not many works of literature have been able to accurately portray that yet.

[pienkunicorn]

I think it would be both funny and informative to write a modern fantasy book with actual medieval attitudes.

[mr.nobody]

"I don't have a solution, it's just something I think about." Mood. Valid. Felt that. Usually with problems as big as things like the patriarchy, it takes a lot of small solutions coming together or just acknowledging the problem is a great start. So I would say just pondering about it is already super good, wouldn't you?

[Rynewulf]

I remember from my classical history course at university, that a secondary source describing something always tells you something about the time contemporary to when it was made intentionally or not, which can be useful in of itself even if its not an accurate source for the original primary thing.
Just look at old history books: a historian describing Caesar's career in the 1800s, 1900s and today all sound very different despite technically writing the exact same thing, and all can be compared with political letters from Caesar's own time to say track the change in view over centuries

[lovetolovefairytales]

I also think sometimes people forget fantasy is escapist fiction. If its modern social issues are too ham-fisted there's a good chance a burned out reader just looking for their magical fairytale fix is going to skip your book because they're sick of being reminded of this crap already. Like, I grew up with a crazy grandmother who would watch news cycles twenty-four seven, the last thing I want is a book announcing the problems in the world I already freaking know too much about and need a break from.

But more on track to what you're talking about in your video, interestingly the problem you presented here of people thinking "that's how it's always been" is something I've personally encountered more in Historical Fiction than fantasy. I got so burned out by the "oh women have always been seen this way" claptrap, for almost a year I stopped reading Historical fiction altogether and would only read books actually written during the time periods themselves since they were obviously more accurate.

I got back into historical fiction recently but am finding myself burned out again by sheer stupidity. I'm also unnerved by the current overlap between historical fiction and fantasy books to the point where I've read books wherein the genres have merged into one and they're not good for EITHER.

The worst part is I see these books getting dozens of positive reviews and it's like dude NO that's not true. And if you try to tell these people no historically that never happened they're like "oh I know people in history couldn't move motorcars with their minds or waterbend or something" and I'm like that's not even what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the friggin magic powers or the woman on a throne in a country that's not even a monarchy anymore since they literally killed all their rulers, I'm talking about the fact these women didn't just sit around crying because their evil parents made them wear corsets to formal events and resent their fathers and brothers for being men. This is not how women back then thought!

[Jean-ddsl]

oh yeah. i'm doing research on ancient greece for my fantasy novel, and the way gender, humanity, and the gods are portrayed in ancient texts are SO different from modern western, christian society. i'm having to pick and choose what to be "historically accurate" with just to have the setting be understandable to people who don't have the patience to sit through a 10 hour lecture about sparta's* particular brand of misogyny in the 4th century bc (*as told by athenian writers because the spartans were notoriously opposed to writing shit down)

[Spookybluelights]

One of my favorite light fantasy series' is the _'Treaty Brides'_ by Samantha Cayto. It explores a lot of gender politics because every single one of the titular brides is a feminine man who is married to a much more masculine, powerful (both physically and politically) man and is thus quite patriarchal in and of itself.

The books are smart enough to acknowledge this and treat it as more of a problem than it being "just the way things are." But it also tries to have it's cake and eat it too because it's still ultimately about a heteronormative couple who are still in power thanks to the masculine man and how he fits into the patriarchal world. And I am fully aware that my enjoyment of these books is trying to have my cake and eat it too. I just like butch daddies falling in love with femboys, I can't help myself. 😭

[EcstaticTeaTime]

A Brother's Price is a book I like recommending to think about. If you don't think much past it, it's like a flip in gender norms with a harem. But it really let's you ponder what we see as normal for each gender by putting it on the other and how we find that odd.

[sydneydaum]

but an important part of the story of the virgin Mary is that she WAS a wife and mother while ALSO being a "pure" virgin. and she was the ideal woman all others were comaired to. if you had sex you lost your "purity" but if you stayed celibate you could never fulfill your "purpose" as a wife and mother. it was an impossible standard back then and it's an impossible standard now.

[stephanie]

What a lot of fantasy and historical books with medieval setting or inspiration have is the whole issue with having a son. Like so often its shown that the men don't want a daughter, that they are pressuring their wifes (and the wifes pressure themselves too) to give birth to a son. In Medieval Europe, having a daughter was perfectly okay, not having a son was most of the time no issue at all. There are even cases where men took the title/dynasty name of their wifes when they were higher in rank and absolutely noone would be looking down on them for that. Not to talk about the way that "pressure on women to be a mother" was mostly for people who owned land, so the land stays in the family and they don't end up homeless. Childhood was also something Medieval Europe didn't understand, for them children were the same as adults, just with less knowledge. And i hate the "women weren't allowed an education" take as well, like, again, in Medieval Europe the girls and women were most of the time better educated than the boys and men (during the 11-13.th century in France and Germany especially, women were even allowed to rule in their own right) adoption was btw in Germany perfectly okay for nobles, nobody was like "i don't have a bloodrelated child, what do i do Most accusations against the Middle Ages that are still depict in literature and media to this day actually come from 16.th century and later, after the Middle Ages were over.... sorry for the rant

[KalebCorvid]

I don't have time to type the entire thing out, but I still to this day love the essay segment from Jasnah Kholin (Stormlight Archive) regarding a "woman's place". In that saying that a woman "has a place" is problematic in itself, because it implies that women are limited to specific roles. Where the real point should be more along the lines of "each individual woman has a place" and that place should be theirs to choose.

I'm seriously paraphrasing and maybe some people interpret the text differently, but that's how I see it personally.
Also, because Jasnah Kholin is incredible and I (platonically) love her.

[mavrickglo]

The reality is that in all cultures at all times women had multiple and varied roles they played in their families. Which were not nuclear families but include multiple generations.

[Voidelle]

It really is a hard balance! I want my fantasy books to feel tactile and lived-in and interesting, but sometimes it just feels like “oh, they just reinvented sexism/racism and xenophobia… again… hooray?”

And in a way that can feel sceeeetchy lol. These social issues deserve attention, it’s just when they’re written from a really privileged or power-biased position, it kinda falls apart lol.

[MistressBella]

I read to escape, not to have more of... the modern narrative (idk how to explain it) shoved down my throat some more.