Re: 11 Things I Will Serve My Best Never to Put In A Fantasy/SF Novel..

James A. Donald <jamesd@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
infidel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

My list:
1. Virgin Heroines and Slutty Heroes. In fact, gender roles/behavior
that are the exactly the same as the ones in 21st century America.

It is realistic behavior that the hero wants to bang the heroine on
sight, plus every other female in the vicinity, but does not get to at
first.

Just wondering; you don't think guys interested in other guys can be
heroes? ;-P

(Deliberately not using 'gay' because in both my larger projects that
particular idea does not exist. In one homosexuality it's so much not an
issue that all the implications 'gay' brings with it are completely out
of place, and they don't even have a use for the neutral term. In the
other it is just as much not an issue because it isn't possible.)

That said, I don't have heroes, though.

(Besides, what you call realistic, I'd call stereotype. A different
attitude can be refreshing. Not that you have to agree, but some people
would.)

3. Societies composed of immortals that are frozen and completely
resistant to change. Until the humans come along!

Consider how vast the universe is in time. We are changing rapidly.
We are unlikely to meet any other races that are changing rapidly,
because over millions of years, they would have transcended, or
exterminated themselves, or exterminated us, or some such.

Therefore if we meet another race that is roughly at our own level, or
at least not inconceivably more advanced, they will likely be stagnant
immortals.

Allright, I want my own number 3 now:

Another race we meet in space that is roughly at our own level.

But I don't think I want to chuck out any possibilities, so take this
just as something that annoyes me that I might just do anyway.

5. Psychic Animal Companions

6. Talking Animals

Kind of hard to represent non verbal communication in a novel.
Observe the distressing tendency of fictional horses to resemble motor
bikes.

Heh.

If you give them the ability to communicate in ways that can be
plausibly rendered as speech, this often makes them more, rather than
less, realistic.

Hm. Will have to check whether my drakes actually ever talk, rather than
just 'sending impressions (to the receiving mind)'. Can't remember for
sure, but I don't think they ever do. The people that receive those
messages tend to just say "he said <that>".

Consider for example the talking cat in "Dominic Deegan, Oracle for
Hire". The cat talks, but its topics of conversation are for the most
part restricted to the sort of things that real cats really do
communicate with their owners about. Thus its talking makes it more,
not less, realistic.

I think Gaspode's observations about Laddie are more realistic. :)

9. The Horrible Evil that doesn't really do anything horribly evil to
the main characters. The first example that comes to mind is Angelus.
He was supposed to be so evil, but what did he really do to Buffy and
Co.? Kill Miss Calendar and tortured Giles a bit. That's it. He spent
the rest of the season lurking around and killing bit characters.

Torturing a major character and killing a major character's love
interest seems quite adequately evil to me. If your evil character
does more than that, you are going to have to have some justification,
or else people think it is a bit over the top.

He's supposed to enjoy being all evil, and then he doesn't come up with
more? I thought Angel was pretty lame, too. I think all the Baddies Of
The Season were.

Also, just become someone wants to help/save you, doesn't mean they
like you, e.g. some white abolitionists were incredilby racist. I
could buy "Don't kill the humans cause genocide is kinda bad."
but "Don't kill the humans cause I love them so!" annoys me so much.

You want the reader to love your good guy alien. So if your alien
hero thinks that humans should be preserved in their natural
environment because diversity is a good thing, and also so that he can
hunt and kill the occasional human for sporting purposes, and make
decorative lampshades out of the skins of the pups, is probably not
going to engage your reader.

Well, the latter would be preferable to me, but I'm not a reader, so
that's a pretty useless comment from me. :)

--
Tina
WIR: Magic Earth series, a serial in six parts.
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy, a serial in three parts.
Posted to Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition.

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