I started this essay with, “What is fantasy fiction?” then crossed it out. Then I tried, ” Why is so much fantasy fiction so stylized?” and crossed it out. And then there was more. But a recent conversation has put some things into perspective for me; what I’m grieving, how I’m grieving, why I felt like I’d lost myself and the biggest thing of all; something that felt so not me I couldn’t fathom it.

That thing is – I don’t like the fantasy genre and probably never really have, but never realized it.

Do note, this is not the same as not liking fantasy fiction; fiction involving magic and myth and wonder. This is about the genre, what it is, the stylizations, the focus; The reason why I’ve rolled my eyes so many times when I heard ‘Tolkien is the Father of Fantasy Fiction’.

Except now I think that’s very, very true. I think he set a template that people have followed and followed and perhaps not given much thought at all about what it is they are saying and doing.

Tolkien who drew on the claiming of the land in European mythologies and legends as inspiration for creating his own saga of the legendary unbelievable and amazing for Great Britain – specifically England. And of course there’s the affects on him of WW1 & WW2 and industrialization and the rush towards technology and seeming race away from even basic respect and acknowledgement of the beauty and bounty of nature.

But there’s a lot of war in the claiming of the land even without Tolkien’s war experiences; there’s a lot of friction and conflict, opposing factions, fighting and bloodshed. There’s all that driving the old out, whether it be indigenous peoples or dangerous creatures or obstinate plantlife.

So we have, first comes love Tolkien. And I know that then came D& D, which, while it drew inspiration from Tolkein’s works, originally stemmed from medieval war games (a thing I hope to find out more about at some point if I can just find some that mention the female contributors and maybe even some written by women). So we have medieval war games with the possibilities of amazing beasts and beings and we have Tolkien’s embellished tropes of ‘the claiming of the land‘ – of course many fantasy tales spinning down from two such sources will busy themselves with battle scenes and battle plots, about the overthrow of evil and reclaiming the homeland/saving the land, etc…

The thing is, I don’t like reading about war. I don’t like reading about tactics. I loathe being told geographic attributes not because they mean something to the characters or represent the beauty of the world, but are important so that as a reader I’ll supposedly appreciate the tactical genius of the author as per writes up characters on a charge, or holding ground or fending off against all odds.

The only sword I ever gave a true damn about was Excalibur. The only scabbard that interested me was also Arthur’s. The only armor that caught my eye were Lancelot’s, Gawaine’s and Galahad’s. Those bits of weaponry signified the characters and were sometimes characters in their own right.

When I picked up the fantasy genre, I was trying to find more mature books that were like the fiction I’d read when I was younger. I wanted the possibilities of mystical xenoanthropology and xenosociology. Children’s books have dragons and magic, talking trees, animal societies, fairies, supernatural guiding or parental figures; children’s books have aspects of delight, they play up the possibility of worlds unseen and unknown bursting with more wonders than the imagination. It was probably only natural for me (and perhaps for many others), having enjoyed those works to go seek out more works involving the same. And the place to find those things, the most logical lead was, is, fantasy fiction.

If it came with battles and clashing steel and long discussions about holding the high-ground and companies and other groupings – well, I would deal. And I did. I skipped pages and it became such a habit that I’ve skipped pages unconsciously for years and never really thought much about it.

And if it came with no thought as to who got to be the privileged heroes and who were the misguided sidekicks or evil villains – then I would deal. And I did. I did for a very long time.

And then came Racefail 09. And I’ve been grieving and I’ve been hurt. And I’ve been waiting to get better – but I didn’t. Every-time I picked up a fantasy book recently it wasn’t just dissatisfaction, it was disgust and horror and more hurt. And then I had that realization yesterday; the fantasy genre has let me down twice. It associated all the wonder of the books I read as a child with war and conquest and revolutions. It associated all the growing up and maturing and gaining knowledge tales with a Euro-centric focus on the cruelties of the feudal system and wouldn’t it be amazing to reinvent that era without such harshness. It took a playland of imagination and boxed it into a very specific thing – one fantasy. One story.

And of course with Racefail 09, I discovered that the institutions that bring such tales; the editors and many writers and of course various publishing houses and their PR employees were, some maliciously, some uncaringly and obliviously, boxing it in a second time as a very specific thing.

Aside: And I need to make a note here so I don’t forget about Urban Fantasy and readers of fantasy worlds possibly reclaiming fantasy from the warscapes, along side with resurging Gothic Romance and trying to apply a Sexual Revolution. Though what about the G v E warscapes in UF itself?

So, I love the possibilities of flights of fancy in fiction and yet I loathe the fantasy genre – for hurting me, for crushing my spirit, for ripping a sense of my self from me, for desecrating my childhood, for telling me I was wrong to ever think I belonged – that I could dream; that I could tell a story. It seems I really should have given more thought when I started using the term non white futurism and fantasy; I should have considered what did I mean by futurism, what did I mean by fantasy?

Because it matters.

The fantasy genre as comes to mind, for me at least, is narrow. And after thinking, all my life, that a fantasy genre writer is absolutely what I wanted to be – for it all to become narrower still; to be squeezed out; to realize who I am when I’m not writing wasn’t, couldn’t, reconcile with who I am when I am writing – not if I wrote fantasy genre – no wonder I’ve been in such a confused daze and whirlwind of shock.

Note: I’m honest here in this space wondering if there are other writers who feel blocked from writing because of what happened and inviting them to comment – I won’t be tolerating stupidity or ignorant well meaningness.

My pain and hurt and upset is not here for your voueristic pleasure, for your learning moment, for your Eureka. It’s here because I can’t filter this blog to only non-whites (far less non-whites who have not bought into the dirty sticking plaster of absolute whitewashing that current parlance calls colourblindness).

So…

If fantasy is set up for non European environs to be ‘exotic’. If Tolkien, when held up as The Father Of… leads to certain expectations as afterall he came from the school of thought of the mysterious orient and the civilizing presence of colonialism as much as early eco-conservatism. Then the ‘birth’ of fantasy, if it is Athena to Tolkien’s Zeus, sprung from his head heavily steeped in a privileged perspective. And those who built upon it, looking to the past to add a twist, looked to the past of other cultures through the eyes of romantically racist outsiders.

And that lens is what creates, perhaps, a ghetto out of non-European environs. Because it doesn’t matter how well a bit of writing is, it will always be comprehended through the attitudes and experiences of the reader. And if their attitudes are filled with stereotypes and twisted ideologies on what’s ‘real and authentic’ – there’s no room for anything else.

And I know personally right now, I’m not at all enthused at the idea of breaking them of such attitudes; of surprising them or having a twist or turn they didn’t expect because they were basing what comes next on those stereotypes. I don’t want my writing to be all about Learning Moments For Them. Not just because it places me in the role of teacher (exhausted teacher at that). But because that’s not why I write, that’s not what I want to put across in my writing. My focus, why I write, the stories and themes I want to go over have nothing to do with educating the majority on their privilege. I don’t want to speak to them, or write for them. And I can feel the resentment stirring in my stomach even now, stealing breath in a tight squeeze of frustrated tension.

Seems like writing about the block is definitely working, as painful as it is to work through.

Every fantasy series I have loved; many of whom don’t swerve away from the reinvented medieval European past; I have never looked at them as teaching me more about Europe; the food, the people, the politics, the weaponry, the weather etc… And it’s rare there’s a fantasy that uses herbs in a way that makes me rush to an encyclopedia in a bit of herb lore geekry.

Those fantasy stories (high fantasy they called themselves) that took me away from myself tended to focus on a Dark Lord who needs to be vanquished, and the artifact that must not fall into the wrong hands, to the ism-filled darkskinned mercenaries and orcs and urakai monsters and the gracious civilized uber pale skinned elves. And here I must nod to Dianne Wynne Jones’ The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: The Essential Guide to Fantasy Travel, at the very least for confirming all those tropes I’d seen (and come to think boring) even if she didn’t notice the ism, particularly racism, filled others. But no where in any of that, did I ever think that this is the way Europe is, was or should have been. And I could think that because there was so much around me reflecting Euro-centrism and western-centrism; a fantasy story with European reflections could remain just a fantasy story. A narrow focused fantasy story.

But as me, as a non-white/PoC writer, I ponder representation, how infrequent it is, and how isolated the representations that do exist are – so that I do need to worry about ghettos and stereotypes and adding to the narrowly framed pile of examples that currently exist, and the resentment that comes with that; the burden I do not want to bear.

Aka the tokenized exceptionalism or exceptional tokenism within fantasy that leave me cold. Cold and angry.

My cup runneth over.

My tolerance has worn out.

And if I was already wondering about why the stories only focused on one thing in the first place….

So I don’t like the fantasy genre and now I no longer want to even try and fix it or expand it. Which explains perhaps why I can see that more needs doing than sticking people with different ethnic features into the pre-existing templates (still filled with their problems). And if distributors are liable to stick me in only one part of the store or library anyway – (should publishing happen), then… then what? Chromatic Futurism & Flights Of Fancy is seriously long winded and I don’t think one person can create a genre on their own (no matter what people say about Tolkien or Tolkien and Lewis) – far less if they’re not institutionally, traditionally, of the peoples with the power.

And, note, naming a thing is not creating a thing. Because the difficulty with finding the books and the stories doesn’t mean they’re not already out there, slotted into all sorts of places, hoping for readers. Example I didn’t find The Haunting of Hip Hop under Urban Fantasy or Horror.

Anyway, now I feel like I know a large portion of this block I’ve been dealing with, and why I haven’t wanted to even examine it. I can’t write about something I like, but dislike, grew bored with and feel excluded from trying to transform. I can’t write where how I feel is side-barred as ‘PC Police Whining’ or where people have the gall to say shite like ‘You’re making it unsafe for us who do like things this way to keep on liking and making things stay this way‘ (echoes to other conversations in the blogsphere).

But crap, having a clue doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to find a path.