[Andorion]

WinterPhoenix, on 24 October 2014 - 02:39 AM, said:

From that knowing comment I am now certain I am far from the mark, I'll be completely ready fro Crokus to become Sauron, or at least the MBotF equivalent

Yeah, I also feel that in terms of his origin Ganoes does seem to fit a modified version like you say, but as you also say his character development veers far from that course rather fast.

Lets just say that theres a lot of RAFO.

If you are in DG now, I look forward to hearing from you in the DG forum as there are some really cool characters there, as well as some continuations from GotM

[worry]

Ganoes crystallizes one aspect of the farmboy trope: the young man who dreams of personal glory (particularly through battle). Crokus and Sorry are also certain facets of the trope as WP notes (Crokus maybe the more traditional bildungsroman facet, a real Peter Parker type; Sorry is the "nobody" swept up in an adventure by larger forces). You might predict that characters who are divisions of a trope would wind up being even simpler archetypes, but SE somehow does the opposite with them, particularly as he contorts and subverts them all.

[WinterPhoenix]

worry, on 24 October 2014 - 07:31 AM, said:

(Crokus maybe the more traditional bildungsroman facet, a real Peter Parker type; Sorry is the "nobody" swept up in an adventure by larger forces).

This really illustrates the differences between Crokus and Sorry on a character level that I was trying to elucidate, in a nice short and concise manner no less


I think that it would be extremely difficult within the genre of fantasy to ignore the trope completely as opposed to subverting it for the authors intentions. If you present the reader with a cast of characters all of whom have already grown up, hit their stride and are well into their lives, the reader will just yearn for backstory. At the end of the day the greatest evil and most steadfast paragons of good usually have humble origins they had to grow away from.

[nacht]

The problem is not the trope itself but the fact that the trope dominates the story when told by several authors. The hero will ultimately succeed against all odds. As a corollary to this, the villian is all powerful and gets it at the end.
It is actually a problem with the human mindset. Neil Armstrong went to the moon but how about all those other people that made this happen.
I know the second guy (Buzz Aldrin) but can't recall the third guy who stayed in the module (He went to the moon too at the same time as the other two).

Ganoes got knifed and died. Wasn't that delicious.

[WinterPhoenix]

The third moon guy's name is Michael Collins (I didn't look that up, just one of the many, many pieces of useless info floating around my head)

I agree with you entirely though Nacht, it is dispiriting when the trope becomes the central plot point of the novel in question, as it most certainly does in many cases of fantasy fiction and in fact in film and TV also. I was merely attempting to illustrate the universality of the trope in question, it would be nigh on impossible to ignore completely, character development in and of itself almost demands certain facets of the trope be used when dealing with the typically large casts that a fantasy series entails.

[polishgenius]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I just wanna say that the 'farmboy becomes hero' trope isn't nearly as dominant in modern fantasy as is being made out. While yes, it does still exist in the broader form Abyss describes (though not really in the literal sense) -and to be honest it's not necessarily a bad thing if done right, if you're not using the exact same framing every time; for example American Gods fits the description in a lot of ways in terms of the way the narrative works but it's a great usage of 'everyman becomes important' - if anything it's just as normal these days to go the other way.


China Mieville, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, Mark Lawrence, GRRM, Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Mary Gentle; I could go on for a while. It's pretty standard nowadays to approach the story from different angles.

[worry]

Maybe so, but GotM was published in 1999 and more importantly written in the very early '90s. Plus it quite plainly sets out to break and otherwise comment on tropes, not just avoid them.

[polishgenius]

I'm not knocking on what GotM did at the time; I'm just responding to the topic's claim that it's particularly unusual nowadays.


Although I don't think GotM is deliberately approaching and playing with those particular sorts of tropes in anything like the manner aSoIaF did before or Abercrombie or Bakker have since. Those deliberately invoke the classic forms in order to subvert expectation, whereas GotM really just goes 'yeah, no' and chucks you in a whole different story. There are other archetypes that the series comments on, though in this forum I'm not going to name them, but I really don't see any comment on the farmboy-hero trope in Paran or anyone.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

polishgenius, on 07 November 2014 - 12:35 AM, said:

There are other archetypes that the series comments on, though in this forum I'm not going to name them, but I really don't see any comment on the farmboy-hero trope in Paran or anyone.

I can see the facets broken down in Paran, Sorry and Paran as worry described them above, but I think the comment/subversion comes in where they all go from there in terms of development in the later books - none of them end up where I would have expected when you consider the facets of the trope they inhabit.

Is Martin really considered that ground breaking? I could be doing him a huge injustice (it's quite a few years since I read 1-4, and the less said about 5 the better for me) but I just don't see it from what I do remember. His magic is subdued (but most of it is standard cleric faith-based magic when you pare it right down) but aside from a couple of "You killed WHO?!" moments I can't think of anything else that particularly stood out.