An Anthem to The Iron Age
An Anthem to The Iron Age
The Iron Age is a growing movement of 21st century creatives. Its mission is to free entertainment from the dead-end of modern and often ideologically driven conformity.
I ran across this marvelous Substack post earlier this week, and knew I had to share it as soon as possible. It’s inspiringly rebellious and revolutionary in tone, but in a uniquely poetic and evocative way. And it captures, better than anything I’ve read recently, the true spirit of what I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to doing with my writing.
We are The Bards of the Iron Age
We, the Creators of the Iron Age, stare into the cultural void and find it abominable. Music, Art, Movies, Books, Media - rewritten at the touch of a button, banned from all discussion, created to satisfy no one, designed to destroy all unauthorised views. What was once a Culture is now a Cemetery, killed by those who would Reset the World.
We defy you. We reject you. We Create.
What is The Iron Age? It’s a new idea to me as well, although it turns out that the traditions it aligns with may not be. I obviously don’t speak for it, but I believe I can offer some observations. And as a thinker with a pro-reason, pro-value orientation, my take on it will be framed (I hope, understandably) in terms of what I see as the basic philosophical issues facing our society today.
To start, let me rewind a bit to when I discovered this provocative new movement. That goes back to a Twitter/X post from a few weeks ago:
Needless to say, this piqued my curiosity. So I did a quick search, and replied:
I've seen the label "IronAge…" but I don't actually know what it means. Is this a good description, or is there another source I should look at to learn about it? https://ironage.media/mission.html
The rest of the thread is enlightening and worth reading, as Katie and several others joined in to offer their thoughts. That included the publisher of IronAge Media’s Anvil Magazine, who even posted an article on it here. This is what I gleaned from it all.
“[I]t seems #IronAge is basically a coalition movement of creators marginalized by the corruption and calcification of the creative institutions of the past. It's not aligned with any particular censored culture or genre, but applies across them. Individual genres and movements within it (e.g Superversive, Comicsgate, etc.) align with this zeitgeist in expression of their own particular cultural values. But each has its own distinct focus that's "outside the institutional mainstream."
To put it more simply: Iron Age is a movement of counter-culture creatives to bypass the censorship, and the demands for stale and often ideologically driven conformity, of modern entertainment media.
In one sense, this is just a subset of “Indie Publishing.” Indies do bypass traditional media, but for a range of reasons that include simply practical ones. Iron Age authors, by contrast, tend to be counter-culture indies. They spurn today’s establishment because they want to create good art and entertainment that its gatekeepers won’t touch — for often, though not necessarily, ideological reasons. And so they unite under the #IronAge banner to support each other in that common goal.
The name “Iron Age” is premised on a simple observation. The institutions of the past have been infiltrated and co-opted by bad actors antagonistic to the values of an open and healthy culture. These were established over the course of generations, and include the entertainment and publishing industries that comprise today’s infrastructure of cultural creation. Think of Disney, and the “Big 5” publishing houses, as examples.
That infrastructure is now largely closed to those who don’t “toe the line” demanded by its new gatekeepers. If you doubt it, try launching an author career today. If your work expresses anything resembling the heroic, traditional, or even just “normal” values of the past, and you don’t “check the boxes” demanded by the modern obsession with identity and representation, then good luck facing the headwinds that result.
Because of this, limited resources are accessible to those who would chart a course back to a more open and value-driven entertainment culture. And so such authors find themselves thrown back into a metaphorical Iron Age of artistic creation. One in which they must rebuild everything from scratch, including the support systems needed to make a living creating their art and entertaining their customers.
And that is precisely what they are doing.
What struck me most about Iron Age was its similarity to the Parallel Society movement. Those who’ve read my non-fiction know I’m a strong advocate of that — and so much so, that I also write cultural commentary as Parallel Author.
Parallel Author is a newsletter on cultural reform through the creation of parallel structures. Penned by epic fantasy author Tony Andarian, its focus is on countering the totalitarian trends threatening the 21st century.
The connection is, I think, straightforward. If you live in a culture hostile to your personal values, then you have only two real choices. One is to submit; the other is to build the elements of a new culture that isn’t. That’s what the Parallel Society approach is about, and it’s exactly what Iron Age creatives are doing.
If you’re reading this, you may be wondering: what does Iron Age offer to me? That depends, I think, on who you are. If you’re content with a parade of pre-packaged, establishment-approved tropes and skin-suited franchises from the past, then the answer is probably: not much. Surprisingly many people do seem to be OK with that. And settling for it is, in large measure, what’s required by today’s captured and “corporate” establishment.
If, however, you value good entertainment for its own sake, and you understand that those forced to answer to cynical corporate minders are unlikely to be able to provide it, then the independent creatives of the Iron Age might just be for you.
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Copyright 2017, 2023 by Tony Andarian. All Rights Reserved.
Well said, and I see you've discovered my friends Miss Katie over at Periapsis Press and the "Queen of the Iron Age", R.H. Snow. I still maintain that the Iron Age is very much like you describe but it's a smaller school in the greater indie movement that is rapidly replacing tradpub and post-modernist entertainment by demanding something more than doubt, skepticism, cynicism and nihilism. Of all the schools of thought and entertainment, the Iron Age is the Gen X of this new counter-culture.
Thoughtful, well worded, and insightful.
I've only recently started actively contributing to the Iron Age myself, but I've been keeping a close eye on it ever since Razorfist first coined the term, and technically even earlier thanks to how closely I followed the projects of comics publishers like Iconic or the handful of independent tabletop gaming writers I've come to know over the last seven years or so. Based on what I've seen and experienced in that time, you've encapsulated the ideas behind the Iron Age as a movement wonderfully.