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alias_sqbrA lot of western fantasy has worldbuilding involving a balance between two fundamental forces: usually Light and Dark but sometimes Order and Chaos. This often very explicitly draws on Chinese ideas about Yin and Yang, where in theory both are necessary and neither is all good or all bad.
Examples: Star Wars, Delta Rune(*), The Cinderella Principle
But in all the cases I can think of the cultural Christian influence causes one to be the Good Force and one to be the Evil Force. The Good may have it's flaws and the Bad it's useful/necessary aspects, but to a large extent, that's how it plays out. I don't think I've ever seen Western Fantasy make the two anything approaching genuinely morally neutral. Even stuff like The Legend of Korra, which is set in quasi-Asia, doesn't always escape.
Note: I would like to apologise in advance to anyone with a better understanding of yin and yang than me I am sure I am getting some of this wrong!
But afaict, that'a not how Yin and Yang are seen in China. I mean I'm working from a very limited understanding here, mostly based on cheesy fantasy, but afaict while Yang (masculine/light/active) is often overall seen as better than Yin (feminine/dark/passive) the idea of keeping them in balance is much more baked in and natural, especially since so many morally neutral things have yin or yang associations. For example, since yang is associated with heat and dryness, too much yang causes overheating/dry skin/constipation etc, and someone might eat yin foods like crab and beans to fix it(**).
I've seen this sort of mostly-morally-neutral approach in Western Fantasy when there's more than two forces, eg when there's elemental forces like Wind/Air/Fire/Water etc. People can conceptualise those as all good but limited in their own way. Maybe one leans kinda bad and another leans kinda good, but you can see them as roughly equivalent.
But when there's only two, the culturally baked in Good vs Evil dichotomies take over. There may be a Twist where it turns out the Good one is actually Bad (and the Bad one is either also Bad, or secretly Good), but that's not the same thing. Like, I can't imagine people in the Star Wars universe going "Oh, you're constipated? You have too much Light Side, eat some beans to up your Dark Side and keep in balance".
And I mean there's nothing wrong with having a (supposedly) Good force and Bad force in principle. It just gets jarring when the worldbuilding claims they're both important and need balance, but then fails to be consistent with that. To give a similar example, it's like the way Harry Potter worldbuilding claims all the houses are good but Slytherin is clearly written as the Evil House, and a few kinda-good Slytherins and bad non-Slytherins doesn't make that not true.
Also I'm just curious to know if anyone has actually written Western Fantasy not set in (quasi-)Asia(***) with a genuine balance between two dichotomous forces where neither is the obvious Good One.
(*) Or, as was pointed out in the comments, the story Delta Rune is pretending to be but probably isn't.
(**)This was the least awful seeming source I could find, there sure is a lot of exotifying woo about yin and yang on the internet...
(***)Since there are a few Western authors who've gone to the effort to try to write Ancient China etc accurately. I am not qualified to say if they overall succeeded but based on my vague memories some of them at least did better on morally neutral yin-yang-esque dichotomies than Korra with it's "Order and Chaos are both important but also Order is a beneficent God and Chaos is the Devil".
Examples: Star Wars, Delta Rune(*), The Cinderella Principle
But in all the cases I can think of the cultural Christian influence causes one to be the Good Force and one to be the Evil Force. The Good may have it's flaws and the Bad it's useful/necessary aspects, but to a large extent, that's how it plays out. I don't think I've ever seen Western Fantasy make the two anything approaching genuinely morally neutral. Even stuff like The Legend of Korra, which is set in quasi-Asia, doesn't always escape.
Note: I would like to apologise in advance to anyone with a better understanding of yin and yang than me I am sure I am getting some of this wrong!
But afaict, that'a not how Yin and Yang are seen in China. I mean I'm working from a very limited understanding here, mostly based on cheesy fantasy, but afaict while Yang (masculine/light/active) is often overall seen as better than Yin (feminine/dark/passive) the idea of keeping them in balance is much more baked in and natural, especially since so many morally neutral things have yin or yang associations. For example, since yang is associated with heat and dryness, too much yang causes overheating/dry skin/constipation etc, and someone might eat yin foods like crab and beans to fix it(**).
I've seen this sort of mostly-morally-neutral approach in Western Fantasy when there's more than two forces, eg when there's elemental forces like Wind/Air/Fire/Water etc. People can conceptualise those as all good but limited in their own way. Maybe one leans kinda bad and another leans kinda good, but you can see them as roughly equivalent.
But when there's only two, the culturally baked in Good vs Evil dichotomies take over. There may be a Twist where it turns out the Good one is actually Bad (and the Bad one is either also Bad, or secretly Good), but that's not the same thing. Like, I can't imagine people in the Star Wars universe going "Oh, you're constipated? You have too much Light Side, eat some beans to up your Dark Side and keep in balance".
And I mean there's nothing wrong with having a (supposedly) Good force and Bad force in principle. It just gets jarring when the worldbuilding claims they're both important and need balance, but then fails to be consistent with that. To give a similar example, it's like the way Harry Potter worldbuilding claims all the houses are good but Slytherin is clearly written as the Evil House, and a few kinda-good Slytherins and bad non-Slytherins doesn't make that not true.
Also I'm just curious to know if anyone has actually written Western Fantasy not set in (quasi-)Asia(***) with a genuine balance between two dichotomous forces where neither is the obvious Good One.
(*) Or, as was pointed out in the comments, the story Delta Rune is pretending to be but probably isn't.
(**)This was the least awful seeming source I could find, there sure is a lot of exotifying woo about yin and yang on the internet...
(***)Since there are a few Western authors who've gone to the effort to try to write Ancient China etc accurately. I am not qualified to say if they overall succeeded but based on my vague memories some of them at least did better on morally neutral yin-yang-esque dichotomies than Korra with it's "Order and Chaos are both important but also Order is a beneficent God and Chaos is the Devil".
no subject
Date: 2018-11-24 01:17 am (UTC)Me: Oh I know lots of exa- Huh. Lol.
(I am going to mention my own Fae Tales verse though because while the Seelie Court is the obvious 'Good One' initially, the story is written from the perspective of the Unseelie, who are very much more the good guys than the Seelie Court over time. It would be like if HP was written from the POV of Slytherin and Draco did actually save the day despite everyone still blindly loving Gryffindor. But that's a clumsy example).
Outside of that, it's actually one of the reasons I did my thesis in like, redemption narratives in Studio Ghibli, or Japanese vs. western feature animation character stereotypes with especial focus on the way villains are treated in Disney vs. how good/evil is treated with Hayao Miyazaki. Like, the predominant religions that evolved through the country and set the foundation of our cultures have a LOT to answer for here, in terms of our protonarratives or fundamental narratives around good and evil.
So to find shows in western culture (or books or other content) that have some how shed the protonarrative of Christian 'good and evil' (even if the people involved were raised atheist, we have still generally been bathed in those stories all around us), and deliberately seek to do something different.
I feel like western stories *claiming* that there needs to be balance but ultimately failing totally (or significantly) in the execution is also some internal conflict or disruption around trying to genuinely shed the narrative but being ultimately unable to, possibly because the person can't actually imagine what a genuine abandonment of this narrative would look like (due to lack of exposure to other stories that don't do this).
And I think also we get indoctrinated with systems like Disney (which at least for the bulk of their existence have been a strong Christian (and bigoted) corpo), so that even if you do get slightly more nuanced stories (like The Secret of NIMH, by another studio, where the two opposing forces are humans vs. rats, and even if the humans are the 'obvious bad guys' they're also us not behaving in any more cruel a manner than usual which is pretty confronting), I don't know how much of a knock on effect they have until you begin to deliberately kind of self reflect on the issue? And a lot of kids don't see those movies, because they're like, by side studios and that's not where the money and power for marketing lies.
Then even with self reflection, I'm not sure how much it can grow without intentional exposure to other narratives. Maybe? Idk.
I feel like I have read or seen things in western fantasy, but honestly sitting here I can't pinpoint anything that doesn't ultimately circle back around to 'no but these are still ultimately the Evil even if you like one of them.'
(Also I like your blog and your thoughts and I apologise for early morning - for me - ramblings but I am having lots of thinky thoughts now <3 )
no subject
Date: 2018-11-24 03:47 pm (UTC)Now I want to read your thesis, even though I'm sure my brain would overheat.
I feel like western stories claiming that there needs to be balance but ultimately failing totally (or significantly) in the execution is also some internal conflict or disruption around trying to genuinely shed the narrative but being ultimately unable to, possibly because the person can't actually imagine what a genuine abandonment of this narrative would look like (due to lack of exposure to other stories that don't do this).
Right!
I like your ramblings <3