Six Things I Hate About Fantasy

For all its cultural marginalization (a topic for a different post), science fiction and fantasy cover a huge amount of literary and cinematic ground. Unfortunately, this breadth also means that it covers a fair amount of very bad literary and cinematic ground; there are dozens of books with a title something like "[Occupation/Species] of "[Region/Planet/Fictional Location]" or "[Name]'s Quest/Journey", and the phrase "b-movie" conjures more images of cheap rubber suits and bad vampire makeup than pretty much anything else. And don't even get me started on the comedic fantasy genre (Pratchett gains special exception from my aspersions on the matter).
Now, there's not a lot to be done for this; every genre of book, film, and TV show is going to attract its bad apples, it just happens that, as a fan, I am more pained by the bad fantasy shows than the bad mainstream stuff. Like any writer with a blog and a little bit of faith in their ability, I like to think that there are some people reading this who have considered writing in the same genre I do; and it is for you, my loyal readers and colleagues, that I write this post. What follows is a list of things which have not only infiltrated the genre, but have been done to absolute death. The ideas have entered the realm of parody kicking and screaming; barring some truly revolutionary spins on these concepts, any attempt to use them must be performed only in conditions of abnormally high irony.

1. Count Dracula. This guy has narrowly escaped death, only to be killed again, more times than I can count. I understand the literary desire to revamp old myths and legends and books--Alan Moore has built a fantastic career out of this desire and some form of hallucinogen. But Dracula has been strip-mined into oblivion. He's been portrayed by four great actors (well, the jury's perhaps still out on Leslie Neilsen and David Carradine), battled at least three generations of the Van Helsing family, been Mina's captor, been Mina's lover, led a town full of vampires to redemption, and, at least twice, has been part of a vampire movie's "twist ending". Vampires are a difficult trope to work with in general--the BBC series Ultraviolet being one of the few versions of the myth that hasn't been done to death--but the Big D himself has been trod into the ground and sewn back together so many times he looks like a Victorian hamburger. Leave him in peace.


2. Jack the Ripper. Speaking of the urge to revamp...the indomitable Liz Lacy has already tackled this subject previously, so I will keep this brief: I understand that the Ripper murders are one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries. I understand that the rumors of a Masonic connection make him very appealing as a focal point for a sci-fi or fantasy piece. But trust me, whatever you want to do with him, it's probably been done. Move on to the Zodiac Killer, or the Boston Strangler; they are far creepier for their lack of wide cultural exposure.


3. The Third Reich. I'm not sure if Raiders of the Lost Ark started it, but I'm hoping Mike Mignola will prove to have finished it. "It", in this case, being the constant narrative abuse of Nazi occultism or super-science. It is, from what we can tell, a historical fact that Hitler was a member of an occult secret society, and that certain non-Judeo-Christian mythologies were a part of National Socialist belief. It is even, according to some sources, a fact that Hitler and his top men were involved in all sorts of strange black magic rituals to ensure the victory and endurance of the Reich. And certainly, I love some good urban fantasy, and I appreciate that the Nazis are one of the most universally-accepted villains here on God's green Earth. But just as it is impossible to tread new ground with Count Dracula, Hitler's purported demonological experiments have seen too much action to be employed well at this stage; a mention of "Nazi occultism" is more likely to get rolling eyes than clapping hands. Given the examples of both Hitler and Dracula, maybe you can use this rubric: If it's been used as the final boss in a video game, don't write about it. (It has the advantage of also covering ninja...)


4. Heroic Vampires.
I never watched Moonlight, and I never watched it for one simple reason: I'd seen the exact same show twice before. I love a good redemption story, but we're to the point where the heroic vampire is an assumed part of the vampire subgenre. That isn't to say that your vampires should be cackling and inhuman to a man, but there are far more ways to add humanity to a vampire than to have them go out and fight crime. And for God's sake, learn from the examples I just linked to: if you have to add a vampire to your story, don't ever make a vampire a detective.

5. Assassins. People who kill for money are all over every form of entertainment media, but the fantasy genre is particularly bad about them, I think; the "fantasy novel about an assassin" is an exhausted subgenre in and of itself. Again, giving these authors the benefit of the doubt, I think this stems from a need for a psychological and cultural backdrop of the character's inner morality and struggle to be good with evil methods, and a need for an excuse to put the main character in harm's way, but you can paint these narrative elements with a much finer (and less worn) brush.


6. And last, but not least...The Honorable Loner, Outcast from His People. The temptation to title this last item "Drizzt do'Urden" was almost irresistible. Drizzt is just one of the most visible (to a fantasy nerd) examples of a trope that is also embodied in the Heroic Vampire, above, and the heroic assassin, and a vast number of other characters who are from more noble backgrounds. Fantastic literature, stretching all the way back to ancient mythology, is brimming with heroes who rejected or were rejected by their cultures, families, what-have-you. Some theorists think this is the hallmark of the hero's journey. But the outcast has gained a certain cultural sheen that I think goes unremarked-upon far, far too often; someone I know once commented that they felt it was stupid that the rebellious main character of a video game was punished and had to make do with substandard equipment for most of the game, when as the rebel they should be a bigger badass than anyone who obeys the rules. James Dean was a beautiful drop of poison in our culture's narrative cup; Wolverine made the poison taste like beer. That is not to say that I think every main character should be utterly accepted and mainstream and integrated--having a normal man wander out into a paranormal adventure is just as bad , stereotype-wise, as having the main character be an outcast vampiric assassin. I certainly play with the stereotype of the outcast hero in my own manuscripts. But I do think that it needs to be approached with caution, lest you find your main character developing a squint and a predilection for cigars (a point at which there is no choice but either descent into parody or narrative euthanasia).

There you go. This is certainly advice from someone who may or may not be qualified to give it, but even if all this does is make one budding writer reflect a little on the content of their narrative, I feel like I've made a worthy contribution. And as proof that I do not consider myself infallible, I encourage you to read my short story "A Study in Hellfire", and judge for yourself whether or not I achieved a sufficient level of irony. If I did, maybe you'd be willing to listen to my thoughts on the narrative uses of Jesus...