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On Tragedy
Oct. 13th, 2009 09:10 pmNo, I don't pretend to be Aristotle. I think I'm older than a lot of my fellow FE-fic writers, but not that old. I was planning to write this a bit, and since sacae sent out a call for fictional love/hate quirks and specifically mentioned "Tragedy (when done well)," I figured this was as good a time as any to froth a bit about Tragedy.
Let me just throw down my ground rules. One rule, really.
Tragedy must be earned. Something sad or unpleasant is not necessarily tragic. And frothed-up "Diet Coke of Angst"-brand teenaged waaaah is not tragic either. I'm speaking here of tragedy in the classical sense, wherein a world that is "whole" at the outset of a drama is horribly fragmented by the end of the drama, often irretrievably so. Families are shattered, kingdoms fall, and men and women of noble or even heroic status come to grief through their own inherent flaws. That sort of thing. I'm talking Oedipus Rex and Antigone, not those bloody Lurlene McDaniel teen-death books that clutter the shelves of used paperback shops. Random and horrible death may be sad, but it does not by itself make a literary tragedy.
For my own part, I've categorized three of my (currently ten) 'fics as "Tragedy," specifically "The End of Love," "The Time Remaining," and "Forsaken." Whereas "Call Down the Rain" is specifically not tragic despite its subject matter, because a fragmented world is healed in at least one aspect by the end of the story (the drought ended). The number of dead bodies on the stage when the curtain drops is not necessarily a yardstick of how tragic the play was. While "The Golden Age" almost qualifies, given that a world that was at one point harmonious is now cracked into a dozen pieces, there's a cynical "tide of history" undercurrent going on there that puts it in a different box, IMO. I think that 'fic has the sense that maybe the world always was broken and it just looked whole for a little while.
I think "The Time Remaining" is arguably the most popular thing I've written, or at least it's the link people click on more than any other. Not bad for a 15,000 word one-shot. I also think its popularity is in part due to the fact that it is blatantly advertised as starring Marth. Put his name on the pixellated marquee, and fan interest spikes exponentially. I don't mean "twice as many hits," I mean eight or nine times as many. But, I digress. "The Time Remaining" is tragic not because of what happens to Marth in it[*], but because the Great Victory Over Evil that opens the story turns out to be so fleeting and hollow. The world should have been made whole, but clearly it isn't, and a lot of different factors are to blame-- human error, fate/the gods, and a fair amount of misunderstanding.
And then we have "Forsaken," my stab at the tragical tale of those mixed-up lovers Abel and Est. The scope of this is personal rather than epic, but the essence of it is texbook tragedy-- a brave and loyal man who is trying to do the right thing places love for his wife above his own honor and ends up losing both. Then, he compounds the intial error by essentially running away, convinced that he's going to reclaim his wife while hiding from the people he needs to face up to. Love mutates to obsession, a moment of weakness leads to a lifelong journey of delusion, and by the end of it Abel's lost everything that might have mattered to him.
I'm not saying any of this is Great Lit, not by any means. It's Fire Emblem fanfic! But it's an attempt to do something more than cheap-shot death fics or contrived "we can't be together 'cause the plot says so!" romantic angst. In both of the above cases, I feel the tragedy of the characters and their world has been earned and not slapped down for lulz. And if readers get some kind of "catharsis" from either story, then something I'm doing is working.
*Semi-hidden spoiler for those who want to ruin the ending: He was dying anyway, and Elice knew it.
Let me just throw down my ground rules. One rule, really.
Tragedy must be earned. Something sad or unpleasant is not necessarily tragic. And frothed-up "Diet Coke of Angst"-brand teenaged waaaah is not tragic either. I'm speaking here of tragedy in the classical sense, wherein a world that is "whole" at the outset of a drama is horribly fragmented by the end of the drama, often irretrievably so. Families are shattered, kingdoms fall, and men and women of noble or even heroic status come to grief through their own inherent flaws. That sort of thing. I'm talking Oedipus Rex and Antigone, not those bloody Lurlene McDaniel teen-death books that clutter the shelves of used paperback shops. Random and horrible death may be sad, but it does not by itself make a literary tragedy.
For my own part, I've categorized three of my (currently ten) 'fics as "Tragedy," specifically "The End of Love," "The Time Remaining," and "Forsaken." Whereas "Call Down the Rain" is specifically not tragic despite its subject matter, because a fragmented world is healed in at least one aspect by the end of the story (the drought ended). The number of dead bodies on the stage when the curtain drops is not necessarily a yardstick of how tragic the play was. While "The Golden Age" almost qualifies, given that a world that was at one point harmonious is now cracked into a dozen pieces, there's a cynical "tide of history" undercurrent going on there that puts it in a different box, IMO. I think that 'fic has the sense that maybe the world always was broken and it just looked whole for a little while.
I think "The Time Remaining" is arguably the most popular thing I've written, or at least it's the link people click on more than any other. Not bad for a 15,000 word one-shot. I also think its popularity is in part due to the fact that it is blatantly advertised as starring Marth. Put his name on the pixellated marquee, and fan interest spikes exponentially. I don't mean "twice as many hits," I mean eight or nine times as many. But, I digress. "The Time Remaining" is tragic not because of what happens to Marth in it[*], but because the Great Victory Over Evil that opens the story turns out to be so fleeting and hollow. The world should have been made whole, but clearly it isn't, and a lot of different factors are to blame-- human error, fate/the gods, and a fair amount of misunderstanding.
And then we have "Forsaken," my stab at the tragical tale of those mixed-up lovers Abel and Est. The scope of this is personal rather than epic, but the essence of it is texbook tragedy-- a brave and loyal man who is trying to do the right thing places love for his wife above his own honor and ends up losing both. Then, he compounds the intial error by essentially running away, convinced that he's going to reclaim his wife while hiding from the people he needs to face up to. Love mutates to obsession, a moment of weakness leads to a lifelong journey of delusion, and by the end of it Abel's lost everything that might have mattered to him.
I'm not saying any of this is Great Lit, not by any means. It's Fire Emblem fanfic! But it's an attempt to do something more than cheap-shot death fics or contrived "we can't be together 'cause the plot says so!" romantic angst. In both of the above cases, I feel the tragedy of the characters and their world has been earned and not slapped down for lulz. And if readers get some kind of "catharsis" from either story, then something I'm doing is working.
*Semi-hidden spoiler for those who want to ruin the ending: He was dying anyway, and Elice knew it.
