Smut Sales are Booming

[Areala-chan]

Hm, does Pratchett count as epic fantasy? He riffs heavily on epic fantasy tropes, especially in the earlier books, but once he got into his stride the epic-fantasy elements became less of the main event, more like protective camouflage for stories about people.

One of his most-quoted passages is a chunk of real-world economic theory with a light coating of fantasy to make it taste better.

fucking Gaiman, eh

I was using 'epic' as kind of a synonym for 'long-running'. Discworld has 41 books to it, though of course, it takes about 3-4 of them to equal one installment of Martin or Jordan in terms of page count. Sorry for the confusion; my bad.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Fair enough. It's a new enough label that I don't know that it's 100% broken through yet. If you were going to define a cozy fantasy, it'd be something like "a low-stakes, low-stress slice-of-life story with a happy ending." Lots of strange but welcoming communities, lots of quirky but nonthreatening people, almost no violence ever, usually no risk to life or limb. It's fantasy for people using books as therapy for anxiety.

There's a whole sub-subgenre -- which is a combination of Instagram/Tiktok wish fulfillment and Legends and Lattes derivatives -- that basically goes: "what if this incredibly powerful person had a hobby?" World's most powerful mage makes jam. Evil queen's personal bodyguard runs away to open a tea shop. Demon-princess sells spices. Witch who can see the future invents the fortune cookie. Robot sells matcha to woodland creatures. Librarian and her faerie prince write a book. There's a slightly tongue in cheek cozy-fantasy Madlib in this article:

Hmm. I would not consider "no risk to life or limb" to be an accurate description of Legends and Lattes. A major theme throughout the book is that Viv is somebody who's used to solving her problems with violence, trying to move on from that but dealing with pressures where it would be very easy to revert to "I hit it with my sword". Those pressures include a protection racket menacing her for money and an attack on her shop that could easily have killed people. It's not exactly the Red Wedding but it's not nothing.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Hmm. I would not consider "no risk to life or limb" to be an accurate description of Legends and Lattes. A major theme throughout the book is that Viv is somebody who's used to solving her problems with violence, trying to move on from that but dealing with pressures where it would be very easy to revert to "I hit it with my sword". Those pressures include a protection racket menacing her for money and an attack on her shop that could easily have killed people. It's not exactly the Red Wedding but it's not nothing.

I think it's closer to nothing, to be honest. Are the consequences for defying the protection racket ever spelled out, or are they just "you'll regret it?" Isn't the problem just solved with, like, literally baking the nice old granny who runs the crime syndicate (?) some cinnamon rolls? And then yeah, there's a bad guy who attacks the shop (you know he's a bad guy because he's a jerk, and all jerks are bad and all nice people are good). The whole town bands together to rebuild it for them. He steals the McGuffin and it turns out to not matter at all, because friendship is magic, and then one of the friends eats him.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think it's closer to nothing, to be honest. Are the consequences for defying the protection racket ever spelled out, or are they just "you'll regret it?"

IDK, maybe they were just going to TP the inn or something, but it didn't give that impression.

Isn't the problem just solved with, like, literally baking the nice old granny who runs the crime syndicate (?) some cinnamon rolls?

The fact that violence is averted doesn't mean the threat didn't exist. I'm also not sold on the apparent implication that the threat is any less threatening because it comes from an old woman, but then maybe you haven't met some of the old women I've met.

And then yeah, there's a bad guy who attacks the shop (you know he's a bad guy because he's a jerk, and all jerks are bad and all nice people are good). The whole town bands together to rebuild it for them. He steals the McGuffin and it turns out to not matter at all, because friendship is magic, and then one of the friends eats him.

"Frodo and Sam trek into Mordor and face dreadful hardships, but it turns out not to matter at all, because they get rescued by eagles"

I'm not arguing it isn't comfort reading, just saying that "no risk to life or limb" is inaccurate.

 

[YmaOHyd]

The fact that violence is averted doesn't mean the threat didn't exist.

The threat doesn't exist. It's lightly alluded to at best, because actually making it real would make Viv complicit in their violence. That's probably not even subtext; it's text, unless the author is striving for something like The Zone of Interest about the banality of evil as Viv tolerates brutal gangs she and her friends are fully capable of stopping to preserve her own self-delusion. That would make the story quite a bit more interesting, especially the aftermath of the fire. But I don't think he's doing that. I think he's making the standard YA jerk-versus-not-jerk distinction, where all jerks are bad.

"Frodo and Sam trek into Mordor and face dreadful hardships,

"and emerge forever changed by the experience. Frodo, wounded by sting and claw and long burden, sails into the Undying West while Sam, strengthened with new resolve, serves as Mayor seven times, rebuilding the Shire and healing the scars of the Scourging."

Edit: didn't see the edits, so just to touch on them. The threat can't be outright stated, because once it's made clear what the Madrigan is doing, Viv's choice to not use her resources to stop them makes her complicit in whatever happens to everyone else. Choosing to leave everything at 'other people regret it' is a lazy way to solve that.

That she's a grandmother doesn't make the threat less threatening; the threat's not threatening regardless. That she's a kindly granny puts her on the Nice side of the Nice Versus Jerk equation and makes it acceptable for Viv to work with her. Once Viv goes to see her, it's clear she sees herself on the Nice side of the equation and her henchman on the Jerk side, so she cuts the baked-goods deal without really any difficulty.

If she was Mags Bennett from Justified and we saw her smash her own son's hand with a ball-peen hammer for disobedience, Viv wouldn't cut any sorts of deals with her even if there was no threat at all, because in Cozy the protagonist can't work with jerks. Moral compromises are directly counter to the fantasy.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The threat doesn't exist. It's lightly alluded to at best, because actually making it real would make Viv complicit in their violence.

Or because people who run protection rackets generally don't specify up front exactly what they're going to do, for more reasons than one. You are taking something that admits to more than one possible explanation and going straight for the most unfavourable explanation.

That's probably not even subtext; it's text, unless the author is striving for something like The Zone of Interest about the banality of evil as Viv tolerates brutal gangs she and her friends are fully capable of stopping to preserve her own self-delusion. That would make the story quite a bit more interesting, especially the aftermath of the fire. But I don't think he's doing that. I think he's making the standard YA jerk-versus-not-jerk distinction, where all jerks are bad.

There's a longer discussion that could be had here, about legitimate vs. illegitimate forms of "government" and how individuals should respond to them. In Default Fantasy World where L&L is set, it's generally taken as inevitable that every city will have some kind of Thieves' Guild equivalent functioning as a kind of secondary government; while Viv and her friends would no doubt be capable of hitting them with their swords, it's not clear whether the resulting destabilisation would be a net plus for the city. RL history provides plenty of examples where killing bad people and overthrowing bad governments just created a vacuum to be filled by something worse. Viv doesn't seem like the sort of person to handle those complexities.

Could L&L have handle that theme better? Certainly. Did Pratchett handle it far, far better? Absolutely.

But all that feels like a deflection. You asserted "almost no violence ever, usually no risk to life or limb" and that's what I was responding to. Violence was a significant presence in L&L, even if both of us can find fault with how it was handled.

As to whether it would've been a more interesting story if Viv had gone to war with Madrigal, I'm not convinced. "Vigilante takes on criminal gang" is a story that's been milked dry over the years. The point of L&L is "person whose life has been based on destroying things decides to build something instead", and while there's room for improvement, it is at least a somewhat fresher premise.

"and emerge forever changed by the experience. Frodo, wounded by sting and claw and long burden, sails into the Undying West

...where he presumably gets healed of all those hurts, so again, they don't count!

while Sam, strengthened with new resolve, serves as Mayor seven times, rebuilding the Shire and healing the scars of the Scourging."

Indeed. It's almost like "they escaped the danger and rebuilt what was destroyed, so the danger and the destruction doesn't count" is an unhelpfully reductive take.

Edit: didn't see the edits, so just to touch on them. The threat can't be outright stated, because once it's made clear what the Madrigan is doing, Viv's choice to not use her resources to stop them makes her complicit in whatever happens to everyone else. Choosing to leave everything at 'other people regret it' is a lazy way to solve that.

Or, the threat isn't outright stated because protection rackets don't usually do that. Unless Travis Baldree wants to stop by to clarify his intentions, it seems a bit speculative.

That she's a grandmother doesn't make the threat less threatening; the threat's not threatening regardless. That she's a kindly granny puts her on the Nice side of the Nice Versus Jerk equation and makes it acceptable for Viv to work with her.

Again, you're going for the most unfavourable interpretation without admitting the possibility of alternatives. Is this actually "nice people are good, jerks are bad" storytelling? Or is it just the "politely-spoken boss in contrast to more overtly violent minions"/"good cop, bad cop" thing that shows up so often in fiction because it shows up so often in real life?

There's a guy in my city who's a household name because of his history with organised crime. He was a major figure in a gang war that took place about 15 years ago, and it's a matter of public record that he personally killed at least one person in that struggle. (He claimed self-defense, which could have been true, in which case he was very lucky to prevail against an armed hit-man.) But since then he's been reinventing his image. He has a business in industrial negotiations and more recently he's founded his own charity after his grandson was diagnosed with a medical condition. How heartwarming!

The fact that he now presents himself as a kindly grandfather does not mean he suddenly became a good person. It just means that he's seen advantages in establishing that persona. I expect he prefers having the local papers running soft pieces headlines like "Gangster to Grandpa!" instead of running exposés on his business empire, his tax avoidance strategies, what exactly is involved in "industrial negotiations", and various other uncomfortable topics.

That's roughly how Madrigal came across to me. If she were actually Nice, she wouldn't be employing the kind of people she employs in the first place. But she's somebody who understands that sometimes the carrot is a better option than the stick, and there are advantages to being able to put on a respectable face.

Once Viv goes to see her, it's clear she sees herself on the Nice side of the equation and her henchman on the Jerk side, so she cuts the baked-goods deal without really any difficulty.

You think so? I don't. I very much doubt the Madrigal would've settled for the baked-goods deal if Viv had offered it at the start of the story.

My read on that interaction was that Madrigal's come to recognise that Viv's presence benefits the community (hence, indirectly, Madrigal) and that it'd be better to be on amicable terms with Viv than have her and her friends as enemies.

Baked goods as a token payment means they get to avoid a conflict that would have gone badly for both of them, and both of them can present it as a win. Madrigal can tell her people she didn't back down; Viv can tell herself she didn't give in.

But getting to that point depends on what Viv's achieved in the course of the book. That's the "difficulty" part.

 

[YmaOHyd]

We're far enough afield of the thread topic that I'm happy to let you have the last word.