Gor/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
< Gor


These things about Gor are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

The original literary series

  • Cult Classic: To the point that there are even people in the world who try to model their life on the ideals presented in the series.
  • Ho Yay Shipping: Some readers find men embracing men automatically homosexual, so they get a lot out of the books.
  • Internet Backdraft: In 90% of the internet, a mention of Gor is equivalent to trolling, unless followed up with scathing hatred and opening the floor to burn John Norman in effigy. It is a banned topic on the StarDestroyer.net forums.
  • Jumped the Shark: Some will say that the shark was jumped by page 1, but a not-uncommon sentiment is that "the first N books aren't that bad..." for values of N that range from 2 to 6.
  • Marty Stu: Tarl is one of the most obvious ones ever.
  • Mary Suetopia: The trope could be named "Lands of Gor" instead.
  • Snark Bait: One of the main reactions by most to the ideals behind the series, followed closely by horror and/or hatred, and considering the premise of the series...
    • If Houseplants of Gor is any indication, Gor is just begging for an Abridged Series.
    • And don't forget Gay, Bejeweled, Nazi Bikers of Gor.
    • Somewhere out there is a fan novel called Transvestites of Gor with a followup called Female Men of Gor. Fans at conventions used to joke about Podkayne of Gor, but it's uncertain whether that one actually exists.
    • And indeed the Quotes section of this very page consists only of parodies, not selections from the books themselves.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Not so much implied as bashed over one's head. One standout is a black woman in Assassin who takes to slavery extremely easily, even by Gorean standards (the others comment on this).
  • Values Dissonance: Tarl expresses this himself throughout the first books, when he's still a Stranger in a Strange Land, less and less as he adapts. Then in the late series, he and a few other Masters clinging to their values refuse to see that the world is changing, and keep insisting that it's wrong.
    • A meta example: The loudest critics simply can't accept that they have Values Dissonance with a completely fictional culture, and analyze it with that in their perspective. And so they wage as much as War On Straw over the books as John Norman does with the characters in it.

Outlaw (of Gor) and the Gor movie series


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