McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Your Pet Urban Fantasy Cliche Peeves
The Corvidian:
--- Quote from: vultur on May 13, 2013, 12:26:04 AM ---Given a society of immortals, it doesn't strike me as implausible, really. Supposedly part of the reason WWI was so pointlessly bloody was that the commanders tried to fight it like nineteenth-century wars, with a set of tactics that were on their way out even in the American Civil War. Now multiply that by lifespans four or five times as long (like Dresdenverse wizards) or thousands of years long or practically forever (vampires).... Also, a fast pace of innovation is really more the exception than the rule, taking human history as a whole.
The bigger problem to me is, in a lot of UF settings where the supernaturals have theoretically been around for ages, why did they ever let humans develop technology? The Dresdenverse has a powerful human organization which doesn't depend on technology for its power (the White Council), but lots of settings don't. If the supernatural world is mostly werewolves and vampires and maybe faeries ... it should still be ruled by those beings, and humans would never have gotten a chance to develop technology.
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Read Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. The vampires are the reason that steampunk technology exists, because they funded it. (Very minor spoiler)
vultur:
--- Quote from: Sully on May 13, 2013, 01:16:55 AM ---Oh, and the muses just struck.
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I'd be interested to see what you do with it...
I had the basics of a world along these lines worked out, but never did anything with it.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: OZ on May 13, 2013, 02:35:17 AM ---Have you read Dan Wells' John Wayne Cleaver trilogy? It's young adult but I would still highly recommend it.
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I bounced hard off it, because female characters as Rewards to Fight Over really do not work for me.
Aminar:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on May 21, 2013, 03:11:26 PM ---I bounced hard off it, because female characters as Rewards to Fight Over really do not work for me.
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They don't work for anybody, but are immensely in character for a sociopath... That and I don't think things actually work that way much... But there is plenty of potentially offputting things in those books.
Dom:
I'm pretty over the dom/sub, alpha/beta thing. There's not much new that's being brought to the table on that topic, and very few authors truly explore the idea in a rational way (as opposed to shallow kink fulfillment). I think Jacqueline Carey is the only one who has who I find interesting still.
I'm also tired of "bitchy" as being synonymous with "strong". I actually follow http://www.artofmanliness.com/ blog, and I'm a woman, because it's really not "the art of manliness" but "the art of being self-sufficient, a good person, and honorable" and I like those traits even as a woman.
Jim Butcher is actually writing more of what I'd consider "strong" female characters than many female urban fantasy writers I read, and that's WITH Harry running about attempting to rescue some of them!
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