Ogres Are Cool

There's an error in the text. It says they were Huguenots who left after the Edict of Nantes, which is not true. They left after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had protected Huguenots until then. This last edict is called the Edict of Fontainebleau. So they left after the Edict of Fontainebleau.

ZeroGravitas• 1 year ago

So it's still technically correct in a Mitch Hedbergian sense?

jagged-chisel• 1 year ago

After the Edict. But also after the revocation of the Edict.

I suppose one could also say “After the Edict” as if “the Edict” were the period of time it was in effect.

(enhancing parent comment, not arguing)

n1b0m2• 1 year ago

I’d never heard of him before. This is why I love HN :)

gunian• 1 year ago

as a ugly person was hoping this was the inception of the ogre lives matter movement but was disappointed lol

jhbadger• 1 year ago

On this site, I was thinking this would be referring to Ogres in the Steve Jackson sense of autonomous AI supertanks featured in the the classic board game (and several computer games since)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogre_(board_game)

mock-possum• 1 year ago

Man I feel like half of what I like so much about HN is just the coincidental things I stumble across in the comments.

partomniscient• 1 year ago

Belatedly relatedly: Hexagons are the bestagons.

Imustaskforhelp• 1 year ago

I really read it as orges and I was so confused as how it can bypass hackernews's t&c

adamc• 1 year ago

This was just splendid.

no-dr-onboard• 1 year ago

read this as "ogress", thinking it was some new variant of postgresql. My mind has been destroyed by HN!

thayne• 1 year ago

Ogress means a female Ogre

layer8• 1 year ago

PostgreSQL, former name Postgres, is the successor of INGRES = INteractive Graphics REtrieval System. Maybe OGRES is the Original Gangster REtrieval System.

drfuzzy89• 1 year ago

This was a really great article. This part stood out to me in particular:

But what these tales are absolutely forbidden from representing is any agent or action that falls into the social class or milieu of the people who chiefly collected and read them. So the Grimms’ own world of government employees, highly literate women, libraries and universities is perhaps the most profoundly forbidden space of the folk tale. Indeed you might even say that not including that world is what makes a tale seem folkish, rather than, say, novelish. Part of the fiction of the Volk is that there is an absolute social void between the princes, the kings, the princesses on the one hand, and the tailors, discharged soldiers, huntsmen, kitchen maids and impoverished forest dwellers on the other.

I wonder why we don't see this perspective more often in modern popular fantasy. It seems that for the most part, they stick close to Tolkien or Arthurian models, primarily following the exploits of kings and knights. Even the popular fantasy authors who actively seek to subvert the genre's tropes tend to stick close to that perspective. And when we are treated to the perspective of a "common" person, they often turn out to have been born special for some reason, soon finding out they're some powerful person's lost heir or the subject of some prophecy, with the character being swept off into the world of the ruling class. Obviously, a lot of folk tales end with the commoner running off with a prince or princess, which isn't terribly dissimilar, but I don't remember Cinderella or Snow White being special beyond being pretty and charming.

It may be a blind spot of my own, but I can't think of many examples of fantasy with truly common folk as the primary perspective.

shoubidouwah• 1 year ago

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is definitely one, as well as a bunch of the "big epics" like the Malazan empire / The annals of the Black Company?

It may be less common than "high castles", but that is either because of opportunity cost (non-special characters do not survive well this kind of world, so their stories are either short or picaresque) or feature creep if they start from the bottom: if you want an uplifting tale, upwards mobility is needed and at some point only the king is up...

protocolture• 1 year ago

It may be a blind spot of my own, but I can't think of many examples of fantasy with truly common folk as the primary perspective.

How common and how fantastic?

Conan is a hillman. He just becomes more accomplished over time.

Fafyrd is from a frozen waste, trained as a skald. Notable only because he left his tribe interested in civilization.

Vaatzes from KJ Parkers Engineer Trilogy is foreman. A really good engineer, but replaced instantly when he is banished.

Sort of inverted with Saevus Corax, where the main guy is trying really hard not to be royalty, and so he scavenges dead people on battlefields for a living hoping no one will find him.

anyonecancode• 1 year ago

In that vein, you might find this article interesting:

https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/discworld-rules

It also was posted here on HN recently -- discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299815

hoseja• 1 year ago

Literally Banazîr Galbasi

pjc50• 1 year ago

I don't remember Cinderella or Snow White being special beyond being pretty and charming.

Snow White was, at least in the canonical Disney 1937 version, "the fairest of them all": the most attractive person known to the magic mirror.

Cinderella was the chosen one, high femme edition: rather than being handed a magic ring or sword she got a pair of shoes and a carriage. Both of these are folk tales that fit the fantasy trope mould.

Really I think this is a slightly circular problem of genre, because if you try to write this sort of story without centering on The Chosen One you end up just doing literary realism.

(possibly urban fantasy gets into this more, by explicitly starting from the modern post-feudal world. Anyway, I agree with you that it's a great article!)

Rygian• 1 year ago

I wanted to cite a specific book by a great author here, but even hinting at it constitutes a major spoiler.

Ogres Are Cool

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