Pundy is Wrong, Blue Rose is Cool

[Axiomatic]

Aldis isn't filled with broad sheets and penny-dreadfuls? How sad. The reporter idea actually sounds kind of interesting.

It never actually mentions any. The book does state that printing machines are everywhere, and are also quite cheap, so access to printing isn't a problem anywhere but the most remote villages, and even those apparently get serviced by wandering printers who roam the country with printing machines on carts.

It also mentions that everyone in Aldis has the equivalent of a modern-day elementary school education at minimum, so everyone can read and has access to stuff that can churn out things to read.

It just never combines these two, which is a shame, because I'd love to hear about daily newspapers printing stories about farmers who've grown humorously shaped vegetables, a lurid Shadow Cult exposé every week, and inexplicable showers of Sea-Folk in Lar'tya!

I mean, it's obvious that Aldis is going to be all about freedom of the press, but that also means you get the most popular newspaper being the one that just constantly runs stories wondering if the Queen is still single.

[Bren]

I mean, it's obvious that Aldis is going to be all about freedom of the press, but that also means you get the most popular newspaper being the one that just constantly runs stories wondering if the Queen is still single.

That does seem like an oversight not to have included some indication of what everyone is reading.

Though maybe I am too close to Early Modern Europe and the gazettes and broadsheets.

Also don't forget the Aldis Evening Post would be intensely pro-Royal and pro-Golden Hart. So there would be articles devoted to lauding and praising both. And letters to the editor from staunch Deerists (or whatever one calls the strongly pro-Royal faction), maybe True Hearts?

There ought to be lots of inns named the Golden Hart, but that is a tangent.

[apparition13]

Well, now it suddenly seems to me that 'Romantic Fantasy' becomes so broad that you might as well throw in the whole Song of Ice and Fire for good measure. It certainly has all sorts of relationships going on

Romance has more definitions than that relating to "courtship rituals".

2. A mysterious or fascinating quality or appeal, as of something adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful: "These fine old guns often have a romance clinging to them" (Richard Jeffries).

Googling "the romance of" I see grace, community, crime, the public domain, the confederacy, religion, travel, Alexander, and so on. I think of Goths and I think of romanticizing death.

That's what romantic fantasy does, it romanticizes fantasy, but tends to have some tropes common to it (though as always, there is going to be variation about which ones appear in any given work), some of which jhkim mentions.

Which seemed clear enough for me to say Lynn Abbey's stories about Rifkind and Andre Norton's Witchworld would fit in that box - to mention a couple of authors I have read.

I'd agree with both, especially the Rifkind books.

[James Gillen]

It never actually mentions any. The book does state that printing machines are everywhere, and are also quite cheap, so access to printing isn't a problem anywhere but the most remote villages, and even those apparently get serviced by wandering printers who roam the country with printing machines on carts.

It also mentions that everyone in Aldis has the equivalent of a modern-day elementary school education at minimum, so everyone can read and has access to stuff that can churn out things to read.

It just never combines these two, which is a shame, because I'd love to hear about daily newspapers printing stories about farmers who've grown humorously shaped vegetables, a lurid Shadow Cult exposé every week, and inexplicable showers of Sea-Folk in Lar'tya!

I mean, it's obvious that Aldis is going to be all about freedom of the press, but that also means you get the most popular newspaper being the one that just constantly runs stories wondering if the Queen is still single.

Then it's yet another Fantasy setting that doesn't deeply consider the implications of its magic/technology.

JG

[Gronan of Simmerya]

It just never combines these two, which is a shame, because I'd love to hear about daily newspapers printing stories about farmers who've grown humorously shaped vegetables, a lurid Shadow Cult exposé every week, and inexplicable showers of Sea-Folk in Lar'tya!

"I see what you did there," said William de Worde to Sacharissa...

[Thornhammer]

It never actually mentions any. The book does state that printing machines are everywhere, and are also quite cheap, so access to printing isn't a problem anywhere but the most remote villages, and even those apparently get serviced by wandering printers who roam the country with printing machines on carts.

"Dorcas, the village has been ravaged."

"Nay, Sir Verthage, the village has been...ravished.  By a gang of wandering printing presses.  See here, this lusty line of text imprinted on the barmaid.  And it continues here, violating the priest."

"The Night Letterpressers strike again?"

"No, these lettering points...too accurate for letterpress.  Only Imperial Linotype machines are so precise."

Print Wars, Episode IV: A New Font

[rawma]

"Dorcas, the village has been ravaged."

"Nay, Sir Verthage, the village has been...ravished.  By a gang of wandering printing presses.  See here, this lusty line of text imprinted on the barmaid.  And it continues here, violating the priest."

"The Night Letterpressers strike again?"

"No, these lettering points...too accurate for letterpress.  Only Imperial Linotype machines are so precise."

Print Wars, Episode IV: A New Font

Used to be that press gangs were only a problem in port cities.

[RPGPundit]

You know, the GoT mention had me thinking: it seemed pretty clear to me that a lot of the story there was an attempt to turn all the common fantasy tropes on their head.

Drogo was Conan, meant to be the great protagonist, and he dies in the first season/book.
Viserys was Elric, the exiled prince, another great protagonist, and he's a worthless shit who dies in the first season/book.
Ned Stark and Rob Stark were both the tolkienesque fantasy heroes, and they fuck up and die.
You could even say that Jaime Lannister is a kind of Lancelot figure, only to be a complete piece of shit and lose his hand.

I had never considered there being a sendup of "romantic fantasy" in GoT, but when you think about it that's pretty much Arya's role there. The young girl who finds herself an outcast and goes through a terrible situation but triumphs because of her grit and sense of nobility and fairness is a pretty standard romantic fantasy trope. Only Arya ends up triumphing (inasmuch as she has so far) by turning into a psychopathic monster instead.

To a certain extent you could say all the younger Stark kids are a send up of romantic fantasy standards.

[James Gillen]

You know, the GoT mention had me thinking: it seemed pretty clear to me that a lot of the story there was an attempt to turn all the common fantasy tropes on their head.

Drogo was Conan, meant to be the great protagonist, and he dies in the first season/book.
Viserys was Elric, the exiled prince, another great protagonist, and he's a worthless shit who dies in the first season/book.
Ned Stark and Rob Stark were both the tolkienesque fantasy heroes, and they fuck up and die.
You could even say that Jaime Lannister is a kind of Lancelot figure, only to be a complete piece of shit and lose his hand.

I had never considered there being a sendup of "romantic fantasy" in GoT, but when you think about it that's pretty much Arya's role there. The young girl who finds herself an outcast and goes through a terrible situation but triumphs because of her grit and sense of nobility and fairness is a pretty standard romantic fantasy trope. Only Arya ends up triumphing (inasmuch as she has so far) by turning into a psychopathic monster instead.

To a certain extent you could say all the younger Stark kids are a send up of romantic fantasy standards.

Sansa certainly is.

JG

[Nexus]

Sansa certainly is.

JG

You beat me to it. Sansa's story arc borders on being a deconstruction, and a mean spirited one at that,  of some romantic fantasy tropes. And a little meta in that sense given her idealized notions of knights and courtly love in the beginning.

[RPGPundit]

Sansa's is a deconstruction of the old-school romantic fantasy.  Arya's a deconstruction of the new-school Romantic Fantasy (the one Blue Rose claims to represent).

[rawma]

You know, the GoT mention had me thinking: it seemed pretty clear to me that a lot of the story there was an attempt to turn all the common fantasy tropes on their head.

A lot of it seems to be sticking in almost every fantasy trope in several versions, and most end up subverted. (There don't seem to be any goblinoids, though.) In some ways I like the television series better than the books because it's distilled out much of the excess.

How many different groups of mages? How many dead people wandering around, some of them good? How many different groups whose members don't marry? (The Kingsguard, the Maesters of the Citadel, the Nightswatch, the Faceless Men, and any number associated with the various religions practiced in Westeros.)

Drogo was Conan, meant to be the great protagonist, and he dies in the first season/book.

Drogo, son of a khal, doesn't match up with Conan's early history. There are a host of other barbarians of varying degrees to look for Conan among; the Wildlings (Tormund Giantsbane as Conan? probably not brooding enough), the northern tribes that Stannis recruits on Jon Snow's advice, the tribes that Tyrion recruits in the vicinity of the Eyrie, and even the Iron Islanders.

You want exiled or wandering princes? The Tattered Prince, Prince Quentyn Martell, Aegon Targaryen, and Brandon Stark, Prince of Winterfell.

You could even say that Jaime Lannister is a kind of Lancelot figure, only to be a complete piece of shit and lose his hand.

You could take Barristan Selmy as a better Lancelot figure (albeit aging); his only failing (as he sees it) was accepting a pardon from and working for Robert Baratheon.

I had never considered there being a sendup of "romantic fantasy" in GoT, but when you think about it that's pretty much Arya's role there. The young girl who finds herself an outcast and goes through a terrible situation but triumphs because of her grit and sense of nobility and fairness is a pretty standard romantic fantasy trope. Only Arya ends up triumphing (inasmuch as she has so far) by turning into a psychopathic monster instead.

To a certain extent you could say all the younger Stark kids are a send up of romantic fantasy standards.

Danerys is a romantic fantasy heroine by the described trope, and hasn't come out as badly as one might have expected, at least so far.