#fantasy rant

[tinyy-jj]

I’m tired of fae in mainstream fantasy being glorified elves. What happened to the wings? The inhuman gills or talons or claws or horn or tails? Why stop at ivory or dark skin? Give us blue or purple or translucent? Can you imagine seeing every vein just barely there under the surface? Why make them all beautiful? Give us rugged and brutish. Give us something other

[smuglysasha]

I really wish fantasy authors would stop being so weird about goblins and orcs. I mainly blame Tolkien at this point for the decades of ontologically evil species we have been forced to endure. I want justice for goblin and Orc kind. Give me good orcs and goblins. Please creators stop making goblins just low level monsters to kill en masse with the weakest moral justifications imaginable. Please stop making them as a people inherently dumb, or evil, or greedy etc. just let them be people.

[neftgriffin]

The Little Things Count: Stuff I See Everywhere and Hate Passionately Part 2

I had to review more stories in my creative writing class today, so what a good excuse to mention things people are doing and don't know it. One again, not really a fantasy rant, but a rant nonetheless.

Perspective Switches. When someone's writing in third person limited, this is seriously important. I've seen writers talk about Joe and then all of a sudden say "Cole took another drink to drown the memory of his father's death." Suddenly I'm in another guy's head and wondering what's going on, especially if I didn't know about the father beforehand.

Hiding in Fear from the Comma. Listen, they're not out to hurt you. Complex sentences are nothing to be afraid of. They make writing flow, and the lines are much more interesting to read. Commas don't bite, I promise.

Don't Rush Torture Scenes. Look, I get that they can make some people uncomfortable, but if it has to be there don't try and run through it. These are usually emotional high points and rushing through those is never a good idea. If blood and screams are really that bad, skip the scene over. I won't judge anyone for it.

I actually had a pretty good story to read, hence nothing too harsh. You guys potentially lucked out depending on whether or not you'd rather see me angry or not.

[neftgriffin]

The Little Things Count: Stuff I See Everywhere and Hate Passionately

Also known as "The Things I Have Learned Lots of People Do in My Creative Writing Class." Yes, this means that this isn't based off of fantasy alone. Fun. This should be a pretty quick one so let's get at it.

Melodrama. Now, this can happen a few ways. 90% of the time I've seen it in this class is people not getting me attached to their characters at all. Listen, if I'm supposed to take a death seriously, let me get attached first. I don't care about anyone with a name immediately. People also make the melodrama alarms go off with ALL CAPS DIALOGUE or way too many exclamation points!!! I admit, I laugh a little when I see this.

Short Choppy Sentences. Everyone knows the comma, right? They're your friend. For some reason people don't necessarily want to use them often. I bet this is because they're afraid of using them wrong, which is understandable, but paragraphs sound almost robotic otherwise.

"Seemed" in Omnipotent Voice. When writing in first or third person, your character wont know everything, so I think using seemed is okay. But when the narrator is a separate entity that floats between people, nothing should 'seem' anything, it should just be.

Basic Fact Checking. No, a longbow isn't three feet long. No, EMT procedure doesn't involve doing that. And my biggest pet peeve: No, schizophrenia isn't the same thing as having multiple personalities. Google is your friend people. Don't know for sure? Google it.

I still have ten more stories to workshop, so you guys might luck out and see even more of these. Sheesh, I haven't done one of these in a while. That felt good. Rant over.

[neftgriffin]

I just read this thing online with griffins. (Yay!) And a griffin was a perspective character. (YAY!) But they were all sad about having to kill to eat. (What.)

To me, this makes no sense. If you are a carnivore, and have to kill other animals otherwise you die, I don't believe you would feel bad about this. Does this make sense to other people? Really, is it believable that a carnivore would be perfectly happy with killing? I'm just trying to make sure I'm not over-thinking this "Non-human Mindset" thing.

I feel like a nonhuman would have a very different set of morals, whether they're dwarf, elf, griffin, dragon, dog, horse, or magically animated trash can. If they have to kill to live, I feel like this mindset would be even more different. And with an animal, especially when deep in an animal's perspective, an alien mindset isn't bad. Non-humans are, well, not human. Let them be that way.

[neftgriffin]

5 Things I Hate in Fantasy

First can you even see that weirdness above this or is it just me?

Yes, I have a list of them. If I could get rid of three things in the genre these would be it. In countdown form. Yes, I know elimination of certain aspects of writing would decrease the variety out there, but I’m allowed hyperbole every once and a while, right? I can’t say this enough: This is from reading amateur fantasy online, not necessarily published works. They aren’t as bad. This is also way more personal and opinionated then my other rants up to this point. Brace yourself.

5) Magic Items. These are simply overdone. From the Special female lead with the amulet to the object the Hero is trying to destroy, they are everywhere. Might be why I find myself swaying towards low-magic worlds as of late. It’s always “hide object from villain.” Satire idea! Let’s see this from the “villain’s” side.  I want to see the frustration at losing the tiny one-weakness object yet again. They are never entire inns or mountains, are they? I understand that they are a staple of the genre, but this one rubs my feathers the wrong way.

3) Specialness/The Chosen One. I think that if the fantasy genre as a whole has an addiction, this is it. There are unicorns out there snorting this stuff to crap out another mediocre adventure into Fantasyland. This seems like a shortcut to creating a “fascinating” character, from what I have read. If someone is “the last” or “the only” of something, it triggers a red flag for me. Sure, these kind of characters can turn out well is there is enough behind them to make me like them without being so special. If there’s something for me to like about the Hero aside from him being the best fire mage in centuries, then I’ll like him. The awesomeness of a character doesn’t need to be obvious at first glance. The Chosen One thing I hate because of point 1.

2) Unnamed and Pure Evil Monarchs. Since one of my best characters is a very well developed and morally ambiguous monarch, this always causes a twitch for me. First, the unnamed thing. Why? Are the authors really too lazy to devise a name for these people? I’ve seen quite a few stories where a princess only refers to her father as “the King.” Never “father” or “Lord Clevername.” Never. If he’s related to the perspective character, I think a name can be spent on the guy. If he’s the main villain, I want a name. On that subject, why are they almost always evil? Listen, I understand that in ruling difficult decisions need to be made, but stop with the evil already. Not every authority figure is an asshat, okay? Develop him better please. In fact, I don’t believe in writing with Evil at all. Moving on to that…

1) Black and White Morality. This. I hate this more than everything else on this list combined. When I see bright and shining Heroes and dark and brooding Villains, I am struck physically ill. I will admit, sometimes this is good, but if someone is setting out to write a complex story, this isn’t going to cut it. I love when I can’t tell who to root for, or when that bright and shining Hero has his armor tarnished by the blood of slightly shady killings so slowly we don’t see it until we look back. I love those characters that just don’t care and do whatever they want, both good and bad, to achieve their goals. I squeal with excitement for those characters that have a different system than I do. The characters who will probably never register that killing is Wrong because their psychology is so alien to mine. There is so much depth with gray morality, and it hurts to see it so often ignored. I’ll take protagonists over heroes any day of the week. They tend to have more fun.

Sorry for the lack of rants recently, school has been killer on my free time, and without that I can't write or read bad online fantasy. Thanks for sticking around while I get frustrated enough to ramble on.

[neftgriffin]

Where are the Dwarves?

I have searched high and low through the land of amateur online fantasy and seen a disappointing lack of dwarves. Elves practically grow on trees in Fantasyland, but I have yet to see a vein of dwarves.

This, I do not understand.

I feel the need to say things about the two mentioned races. Elves, in extremely simple terms, are near-perfect humans. Dwarves are, well, dwarves. I haven’t seen much variation on dwarves and their culture in any work, especially online. They dig holes. Elves either sing and are nice or are generally complete jerks, depending.

Elves, people consider mutable. I’ve seen them as a slave race and a ruling race. I’ve seen them as perfection and as an unwelcome thief. Though a few things remain constant (tall, pretty, pointy ears), writers do different things with elves. To a degree, a writer can make their elves Their Elves.

They’re short, dig holes, like gold, are good smiths, and dig holes. Never anything else, at least as far as I’ve seen. Simply because their standard is less desirable than elves seems to mean no one wants to bother with them. Fictional societies are very much like clay. It may take a bit of work, but after a while something forms from the mess. Keep the constant, and flesh out or change everything else. In other words, hang on to mining/living underground and build from around that.

As TvTropes says, “Our Dwarves are all the Same.” Change this, and I believe that a swelling of popularity is in order. No, I don’t mean make them into short underground elves either. Their own society should be fascinating. You know what I want to see? A dwarf politician. (And more actual politicians, for that matter. Monarchs who sit in a giant chair all day, anyone?)

My rules for any society apply to dwarves. Where does the food come from? The water? Why do they mine so much? What do they believe in? What is the government like? Class divisions? Values? The more these questions are answered, the more I think actual differences in dwarves and their societies will arise.

I’m starting to fear that people don’t bother to write dwarves anymore. Me? I want to write a story set entirely in a dwarf society someday, so this hurts. Someone, anyone, needs to make their dwarves Their Dwarves.

Just a note for my unaware followers (or anyone who cares), I fairly recently moved into my dorm, which means school has started, which means less time for me to look through bad online fantasy. I'll do my best to get around to it, but I sort of need to focus on school for now.

There will be more rants, I promise. It just might take me a little longer to get very, very angry at something.

[neftgriffin]

On Breaking Perspective

Writing is like a lot of things, depending on how it's going at the time. Running full pelt. Fire. Flying like you have wings. Walking through a swamp. A day in the mines. Maybe even just sitting at a computer.

Don't. It breaks perspective, for one. This is Bad. No matter the point of view, take one. This is also a lot to take in at once. More people need to consider whether we need to be told how bustling the village is at harvest time right at the start, when two pages later we get to see it. It should be pretty obvious what perspective a story is in after a paragraph or two, and it needs to stay that way. (I'm not talking about switching third-person PoVs. This is omniscient to first, third, second, or some alien perspective as-yet undiscovered by humans.)

I've found a lot of breaks in perspective in online fantasy recently. This isn't a burning rage problem for me. Its probably just one of those things people don't think much about until they start to write. When this "omniscient scenery/background to limited" change happens, it's jarring. Like being rear-ended. (Yes, I have been in that kind of accident before. Wasn't a big one by any means.)

I thought this would be a little "this annoys me" post, and it turned Long. Oops.