McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Your Pet Urban Fantasy Cliche Peeves
Quantus:
haha, ya, well said. Anyone who can manage to turn a Lois Lane-esk damsel in Distress into a tragic Hero superchick is doing something right. :)
LizW65:
Zombies. I just don't get 'em.
Vampires have become somewhat of a tired cliche through overuse, but I still enjoy a well-written vampire story that brings something new to the table.
And I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm getting a little tired of the "all myths are real" trope; just because a particular story involves, for example, angels and demons, doesn't mean that vampires, Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens and the Fae also have to exist in that particular fictional world.
Shecky:
--- Quote from: LizW65 on May 03, 2013, 01:32:12 AM ---Zombies. I just don't get 'em.
--- End quote ---
Have you read Mira Grant's "Newsflesh" series? For those not in the know, "Mira" is actually UF author Seanan McGuire, whose Toby Daye series is a peer of TDF, and the lady knows snark, epidemiology, the whole damn horror genre and how to spin a cliché back into something interesting. "Newsflesh" is easily one of my favorite series of the past decade.
--- Quote from: LizW65 on May 03, 2013, 01:32:12 AM ---And I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm getting a little tired of the "all myths are real" trope; just because a particular story involves, for example, angels and demons, doesn't mean that vampires, Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens and the Fae also have to exist in that particular fictional world.
--- End quote ---
I'm OCD enough that going the other direction, saying that one mythos obtains while others don't, bugs me; I can't see why just one could be true and no others. Plus, it takes a big pair (of cerebral lobes, duh) to take on all the world's mythology and at least make a nice dent in incorporating them. At the very least, it makes a wide-open, potentially HUGELY rich resource for the author when he doesn't just limit himself to one take on one mythos.
Wordmaker:
Personally I'd like to see more protagonists that don't have all that many supernatural powers. I love underdogs, and there's no better way to create an underdog than put a regular guy up against sorcerers and monsters. That's partly why my Locked Within series is less focused on magic and more on the hero rediscovering his past.
Also I think "sex for power" has been a bit overdone. The Anita Blake books are arguably the worst offender here. I'm not against sex in fiction, by any means, but it feels a little skeevey that so many heroes get power-ups from sex with supernatural beings.
Oh, of course: Powerful monsters stalking young girls, controlling their behaviour, and generally being emotionally abusive, and this being depicted as romantic and a good thing. That needs to stop.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on May 02, 2013, 06:36:07 PM ---haha, ya, well said. Anyone who can manage to turn a Lois Lane-esk damsel in Distress into a tragic Hero superchick is doing something right. :)
--- End quote ---
That comparison mildly irritates me because it kind of misses out on some of the better stuff that's been done with Lois Lane as a character this past forty years, which is admittedly not a majority of the Superman comics in that span, but still; there's been a lot more to her than damsel in distress.
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