McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
DragonFire:
--- Quote from: Borealis Belle on December 19, 2007, 04:40:21 PM ---EXACTLY.
This is the point I was trying to make...and I guess I didn't do a very good job.
Yes, people can be sung to sleep. I wasn't disputing that. I was suggesting that IF someone was able to 'sing a werewolf to sleep' while that werewolf was in an alley attacking somoene, it sure as heck wouldn't be someone ordinary that could do such a thing.
I wasn't saying any of this was impossible to write---I was trying to say that a) it would have to be written plausibly, to make such an unlikely event actually occur and b) were someone to be able to sing a creature to sleep during the commission of such an attack, they would not be what would be termed 'ordinary'. Unless werewolves or vampires or whatever monsters in that author's realm were different than the legends in THIS world. I kind of figured that went without saying, with this being a forum on an author's website.
I'm not argueing for arguement's sake---but I'm sure as hell not going to simply agree in order to validate a fantasy, either. The other point I was trying to make was that if it's a book idea, the author has to be able to establish 'the rules' early on. IF it's a case where the heroine sings a wereolf to sleep during the commission of an attack, the foundation has to be laid early on that it is possible. If the event was taking place in downtown Los Angeles (for instance) in this day and age, I don't think that I, as the reader, would be able to swallow such an occurrence. It flies in the face of what I know. If the author were able to explain early on in the book, or at the time of the singing, something about the timbre or the pitch or something to do with the heroine's voice, that would make it easier to accept.
But it sure wouldn't make her ordinary.
THAT is what I meant by my previous posts.
--- End quote ---
100% agree.
It's what I've been saying as well.
We aren't talking about ways or means to write this.
This was a very specific premise, layed down by one person. Kali's additions and suggestions are all very well, but I doubt, if they made it to a book, Jami would find they gave her what she wanted.
Quantus:
Moving on...
What Id like to see in modern fantasy more is Supernatural explanations/motivations for familiar things, especially locations. I mean, everyone expects there to be mysticism with old structures such as Stonehenge or various temples and pyramids. But, if Magic never died out, why would the practice of mystically significant architecture be a lost thing. Age doesn't have to be the only thing to give a place power or purpose. A similar vein was used in the recent Transformers film where the Hoover Dam was built to conceal alien artifacts and vast energy signatures.
Take the Dresdenverse for example:
Given what we know about magic, and that magic has a presence in an almost corporate guise with Monoc Securities, there has to be more to the design of the Pentagon than a mere misunderstanding of the phrase "Think outside the box." Maybe its part of some kind of giant sigil of malicious intent, or maybe its shape is part of some intense mystical defenses for our governments military and intelligence.
And this can work from almost anything:
Maybe Fort Knox is Fort-freaking-Knox because They (Capital T) needed to convince the masses that its was impenetrable to tap the energies of that mass belief into actually making it so, and gold was just a sellable euphemism for some other treasure.
Maybe the Arc de Triomphe, with its Twelve radial Streets, is actually a giant portal of Napoleonic Empirialism.
Same idea with the St. Louis "Gateway Arch" (tell me thats not just begging to be an invasion point for fey outsiders or black council).
The Vatican, which is structurally a circle inside a square inside a five pointed star, has some infinite possibilities.
(For a larger list of geometrically suspect structures, see: http://www.city.hakodate.hokkaido.jp/kikaku/kokusai/$summit/01-cities.htm)
Hell's Belle:
--- Quote from: Quantus347 on December 21, 2007, 06:37:47 PM ---Moving on...
What Id like to see in modern fantasy more is Supernatural explanations/motivations for familiar things, especially locations. I mean, everyone expects there to be mysticism with old structures such as Stonehenge or various temples and pyramids. But, if Magic never died out, why would the practice of mystically significant architecture be a lost thing. Age doesn't have to be the only thing to give a place power or purpose. A similar vein was used in the recent Transformers film where the Hoover Dam was built to conceal alien artifacts and vast energy signatures.
Take the Dresdenverse for example:
Given what we know about magic, and that magic has a presence in an almost corporate guise with Monoc Securities, there has to be more to the design of the Pentagon than a mere misunderstanding of the phrase "Think outside the box." Maybe its part of some kind of giant sigil of malicious intent, or maybe its shape is part of some intense mystical defenses for our governments military and intelligence.
And this can work from almost anything:
Maybe Fort Knox is Fort-freaking-Knox because They (Capital T) needed to convince the masses that its was impenetrable to tap the energies of that mass belief into actually making it so, and gold was just a sellable euphemism for some other treasure.
Maybe the Arc de Triomphe, with its Twelve radial Streets, is actually a giant portal of Napoleonic Empirialism.
Same idea with the St. Louis "Gateway Arch" (tell me thats not just begging to be an invasion point for fey outsiders or black council).
The Vatican, which is structurally a circle inside a square inside a five pointed star, has some infinite possibilities.
(For a larger list of geometrically suspect structures, see: http://www.city.hakodate.hokkaido.jp/kikaku/kokusai/$summit/01-cities.htm)
--- End quote ---
Now THIS is an excellent suggestion. I'd have never really considered it, but it adds another layer of depth and mystery.
david-de-beer:
Silver as Achilles Heel for werewolves is part and parcel of the mythos. A person self doesn't need anything extraordinary to use silver. An overweight housewife trapped alone in her house with a werewolf, her baby starts crying in the next room, the werewolf pauses for just a moment, she grabs the first thing she can find [a silver spoon] and beats the werewolf over the head with it. Maybe, in this world, silver doesn't need to penetrate werewolves, only make contact and then it acts like acid, or it releases a skin-contact neurotoxin into the werewolf that's lethal to their species.
Gremlins was one of the funniest movies I ever saw, but if memory serves, the nasty little critters were utterly enthralled the moment the Snow White jingle played. It was an accident they were sitting in the cinema and the movie started rolling to begin with.
It was also an accident the gremlins ended up with the kid who turned out to be hero. And he had no powers, just a sense of responsibility to fix the damage he'd caused and the guts to do it.
Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstanes can be heroes, and there are means to fight the supernatural that might require some creative thinking but doesn't mean you need to have either special blood, martial arts or any kind of fighting skills whatsoever.
A woman who is nevous around mice and blood, can become exceptional when her family is threatened and there is no one but her to protect them.
How on earth would a perfectly ordinary, wussy woman protect her family against critters of the darkness? I don't know, but as a reader, I'd love to keep reading and see if she can do it and how she does it. Everything against her, nothing going for her - the stakes have suddenly becoming delicious.
And, you know, this mousy timid woman might really always have been dominated by her father, her husband, trained to rely on men to do the job. "Go stand in the corner and look pretty, honey."
When push comes to shove there are no men and she has to do something she's never done before -make decisions and take action. She fights back and wins againts the odds and discovers she's not the wilting wallflower she always beleived herself to be. That kind of story and character can have power and resonance with today's audiences.
I'd like writers to stop trying to up each other by going bigger and more explosive and become more inventive and broader in terms of character and story. A hero who kicks monster butt not through his fists [he can't, they'd mop the floor with him], but through some other means. Discovering their weakness, exploiting their hubris of superiority, etc.
I like characters who have magic and can fight, but not all the time and I don't like the chosen one syndrome at all. "Only I can fight the monsters because only I have been accidentally blessed by birth with the right genes."
Down that path lies pure bloodlines, eugenics, racism, Adolf Hitler.
or do use that concept, but put some thought into how it would really go - only half-vampires can fight vampires. Fine, they are the speshul ones. Would they not be arrogant? would they not start looking down on full humans? would they not start feeling themselves entitled to certain exemptions from normal human law and morals? after all, they are a higher breed of being.
there's lots to explore there.
Heroes become extraordinary, but they are not always so to begin with and sometimes it's more an accident of events that forces them to choose - do they run, or do they fight and become a hero? Heroes are still very often ordinary people - baker's boys or handmaidens in second world fantasy - who do extraordinary things. Therein lies the charm of fantasy to all readers, we want to believe we, also, are capable of great things. That an extraordinary person is not ordained extraordinary, but is an ordinary person who becomes extraordinary.
I'd like to see urban fantasy employ more variations in character than tropes, really. Tropes can become new and fresh when used against characters who are not run-of-the-mill. Basically, characters whom you expext to lose.
meg_evonne:
Here, Here! I agree with David.
Oh and: "Could you imagine what a supernatural witness protection would be like?"--wasn't that the premise of the Incredibles?
I especially agree with the "ordinary person" who is thrust into an extraordinary situation. We love the underdog and we love identifying with that hero.
I agree on the sad state of --- Okay, an author did this, so now we have to have a bigger, more violent, more horrible enemy to confront in the next book. Sort of the Buffy-syndrome, you always have to have something bigger and more evil in the next story arch. On the other hand, it's what we want, right? I mean if you review Jim Butcher's writing journal he says that every "scene" has to build and push forward the confrontation, expose a new weakness, a new possibility for failure--but at the end of the day the hero wins by over coming that weakness. (EEK--at least so far, heaven help us if Harry bites the dust at the end of the acopalypse. ignor my spelling :) )
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