McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
Hell's Belle:
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 17, 2007, 03:42:43 PM ---Well, the Die Hard movies proved you can just have the "wrong place, right time" senerio work.
A person doesn't need to have special powers to just walk into the wrong alley and get the wrong kind of attention. People in the real world all the time suddenly find themselves witnessing murders, saving people from murderers/thieves/rapists, jumping on top of people who are having seizures and have fallen on subway tracks, etc. Why can't an ordinary person walk in on a vampire or werewolf attack and actually manage to save the victim? Therefore attracting unwanted supernatural attention the same way someone who's witnessed a mafia crime attracts their unwanted attention.
Could you imagine what a supernatural witness protection would be like?
--- End quote ---
Die Hard movies. You can't use Die hard movies to prove your point. I love them, but let's face it- models of reality, they are not. They're an excuse to blow things up in more creative ways, and use a main character as a continuing thread in the story, to tie all those fireballs together.
An ordinary person doesn't save the victim. Ordinary people most often ARE victims; so it stands to reason that if they save someone, they have a quality that is extraordinary to begin with.
Most stories have vamps and werewolves being pretty fierce, frightening and strong, so unless the person is one of those gifted with preternatural abilities, it's not often going to happen that they can take them on and save a victim from the big bad. Part of the inherent scariness about monsters like that is that it knocks humans back down a rung on the food chain, and the potential hunter turns into the potential prey.
So an ordinary person most likely isn't going to be a hero. The hero is going to be someone with a lot of luck. Lots of bravado and smarts, but definitely lots of luck.
JamiSings:
--- Quote from: Borealis Belle on December 18, 2007, 05:21:50 AM ---An ordinary person doesn't save the victim. Ordinary people most often ARE victims; so it stands to reason that if they save someone, they have a quality that is extraordinary to begin with.
--- End quote ---
How about extrodinary compassion for other people? The willingness to risk their own life for a stranger simply because "It's the right thing to do"? There's ordinary people who do this in the real world. There's absolutely no reason it can't work in a fantasy novel. Sure, maybe they luck out and pick up an old iron pipe to hit the fairy in the head with, or a broken piece of wood that hits the vampire right in the heart. Or perhaps they have a talent like I suggested before - they're able to sing a werewolf to sleep simply because they're such a talented singer. All without having to be anything more then an ordinary human.
Hell's Belle:
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 05:38:51 AM ---How about extrodinary compassion for other people? The willingness to risk their own life for a stranger simply because "It's the right thing to do"? There's ordinary people who do this in the real world. There's absolutely no reason it can't work in a fantasy novel. Sure, maybe they luck out and pick up an old iron pipe to hit the fairy in the head with, or a broken piece of wood that hits the vampire right in the heart. Or perhaps they have a talent like I suggested before - they're able to sing a werewolf to sleep simply because they're such a talented singer. All without having to be anything more then an ordinary human.
--- End quote ---
Extraordinary compassion is fine when looking at pictures of starving and homeless puppies. It doesn't save someone from being mugged or worse in an alleyway. The best compassion can do is get someone moving, to do something. The emotion, in and of itself, isn't going to do the job. A person has to have some sort of way of overcoming the foe, and they may be spurred on by their compassion, but they'd better be able to kick butt, whip out a weapon, or be able to holler for help.
I don't buy the singing to sleep thing while the werewolf is in the middle of attacking/chomping down on a 'meal'. That requires a suspension of disbelief that's beyond what most readers are willing to give. It may work in RPGs or Anime cartoons, but I don't see that ability (which, by the way, makes that person above an ordinary individual) working for that particular situation. Even the legends that base the singing soothing the savage don't try it while the critter is attacking.
JamiSings:
Well I say that if an author wants to make it work an ordinary person CAN defeat the bad guys and it's boring and over-done to have them turn out to be half fairy or half vampire or whatever. I'm sorry you disagree but it CAN BE DONE.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 03:24:47 PM ---Well I say that if an author wants to make it work an ordinary person CAN defeat the bad guys and it's boring and over-done to have them turn out to be half fairy or half vampire or whatever. I'm sorry you disagree but it CAN BE DONE.
--- End quote ---
Have you any examples in mind ?
I'm not claiming it can't be done, I'm just not easily seeing how. And by that, I don't just mean ideas for how it could work, I mean stories where it's been done convincingly.
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