Darth Angelus - I'm no survivalist either; I've never even been camping. Not since I was about 6, anyway. But using a lens (and yes, they were convex) is just so fracking obvious!
I'm inclined to agree with you about the emphasis on the social side, too. Loads of time spent rabbiting on about group dynamics, and no time at all spent on the fact that they got hammocks of some sort built.
Yeah, I can see what you mean about how using that convex lens would be obvious. Of course, there are occasions when obvious things slip your mind (it happens to me, occasionally, anyway). Of course, if it was a whole group, chances are the idea would pop up in at least one mind, and that is all that would be required.
I would not put too much into it. TV is often staged, sometimes to a very great extent, I believe. In one Swedish survival TV programme, the participants were very restricted in where they could move. Information leaked that a very small piece of land had been leased for making the programme, something like 200 by 200 yards, probably even smaller. There are things in these programmes which are not mentioned onscreen.
I would not rule out that there may have been a rule against using the glasses for any other purpose than sight. I doubt they could forbid people from bringing their glasses entirely, because that would probably violate some rule against discrimination. But they could rule against using it for survival tasks, because it is an outside item brought in.
I realize I am speculating wildly, now, but it is all I can come up with. However, given the nature of these programs, I would not put much weight into it.
In my original post, I was referring to extremely skilled people often failing at tasks or struggling in contests within their skill area against opponents way below their level (hence the Oxford professor in English vs. non-native English speaker analogy). Despite being designed to be "relateable" to a fairly average audience, many heroes in speculative fiction are established as among the best in their world, and this does create some dissonance (since being one of the best in the world is quite a far cry from average), as many readers/viewers want to see the heroes challenged, but if portrayed consistently with their established skill level, they would only struggle with extremely difficult tasks or opponents.
I'm right there with you--in fact, this is something
I've written about extensively.
I see a major difference between "grit with implications explored" and "grit for grit's sake."
I read an article of yours a couple of weeks ago (and agreed with most of it), but after skimming over your link, I am fairly sure it was not that one. I shall have to give it a look soon.
This is something that bothers me, too. If something is dark enough, there is that (very vocal) subgroup who refuse to look at it as objectively as they would anything less grim and violent, and who can get very angry if anyone else dares to criticize it. And their defense of anything that someone might criticize too often comes down to "that's the way things were back then" -- very often (but not always) from people who have only the vaguest and most limited idea of how things really were.
And besides that, I believe those most vocal readers and writers gravitate toward that era because it offers a chance to depict a level of violence not present in other times and places. Writers have a story that they want to tell (for whatever reason), and that story is filled with rape and violence, and they choose or invent an era that allows that plot to unfold. It's not an accident. And do readers who use the argument of realism say to themselves, "I'm going to read a book set in a faux medieval world because I rather like that era ... oh, darn, that means I am going to have to read about a lot of violence. Well, I guess I will just have to put up with it." I think not.
Even if that is "how it was back then" (and ignoring everything else about that period that might be interesting to read about and did not involve war and violence) why must so much fantasy be written about that particular era, when there is a whole world and all of history to read and write about?
Yes, and given how things are very different between different places in the world today, sometimes between countries geographically close to one another (I am under a very strong impression that Mexico is very different from the United States, and your share a border), one would have to assume there would be plenty of local variations back then, as well. I can't say I am an expert on the subject, but surely local cultural variations would likely have existed ever since the human species settled?
I think most people would agree with that as a general statement, the problem is that art is subjective and often one person's justified darkness or artistically valid grimness tends to be another persons "nasty-for-it's-own-sake" moment. This tends to come up when people pinpoint specific moments that they feel crossed this line.
Yes, I guess that is the catch. I might also add that a person's tolerance for certain things in fiction can shift, usually to higher tolerance after some exposure to it, I think. And only the author knows for sure their true intentions when including something in their work.
I will grant (in hindsight) that the way I wrote that sentence was quite vague, very general, and possibly bordering on meaningless because of it. I will try to come up with a better or more specific description, but am not sure I can. In the meantime, let me go with an example of what I would call nastiness for its own sake (and it is not Ramsay Snow in Game of Thrones, though he is a good candidate, too)...
Spoiler alert, for the show Vikings...
In season 2, there is a scene of blood eagle, a very brutal execution method where someone's back and ribs are cut up with a knife, chopped up further with an axe, and finally their lungs ripped out and hung out like wings. According to the Wikipedia article, it doesn't seem historically certain it took place, but in that uncertainty, they still opted to include it. Since this uncertainty means either option is a flip of a coin as far as historical accuracy goes, anyway, its inclusion means they would probably not have been very reluctant to include it simply by its brutal nature.
) fantasy in general has become more accepted over the last 20-30 years. Once something becomes more accepted, then it's possible to delve into the deeper and more meaningful facets of it, rather than just present the easier-to-understand angle of heroes vs. villains, because the 'simple' view of things has been done to death already.
