Limyaael

09:41 am: Magical object rant
For zekk_skywalk, who asked about magical objects. I did a quest rant, but not all magical objects are Quest Objects.

( Which doesn’t stop them from being annoying )

Hee. That was fun.

Tags: fantasy rants autumn 2004, stupid clichés rants, worldbuilding: magic

10:08 pm: My problem isn't (necessarily) Marion Zimmer Bradley (for <lj user
It's that she's so widely imitated, and she has so much in her work that can get dumbed down so easily, and that she started imitating herself (if there was any difference in basic plot between Lady of Avalon and The Mists of Avalon I couldn't tell what it was).

( So here's why I never, ever want to write like Marion Zimmer Bradley )

It's odd that the novels I like most by Bradley- Stormqueen!, The World Wreckers, and The Heritage of Hastur- are ones that I've been told are very conventional and not her best work.

I don't know. I find them far less conventional than what she did with the other things, if only because she has so many imitators now that she's become convention.

Tags: author-specific rants, fantasy rants spring 2004, stupid clichés rants

01:12 pm: Author's Darlings, and murdering them in their cradles.
Author's Darlings are not, for me, the same as Canon Mary Sues. Canon Mary Sues I consider those characters whose perceptions are perfectly in accord with objective reality, who are always right, who don't make mistakes. Author's Darlings are the characters who, when I read them, make me able to hear the author going, "Teehee! Isn't he cute?" in the background, or "Awww! Isn't she wonderful?" in the background.

No, they are not cute. They are not wonderful. They need to die now, and people need to learn the difference between loving their characters and falling in love with their characters.

To show more clearly what I mean, I'll use a character who could so easily have been an Author's Darling, but instead turned out pretty damn good: Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos.

( An Author's Darling this way comes... )

Having seen enough truly creepy character obsessions in fandom, I have no desire to see more in fantasy fiction.

Tags: author's darlings, fantasy rants spring 2004, stupid clichés rants

12:01 pm: Rant on abuse of abused characters.
This was inspired by trying to read Diana Pharoah Francis’s Path of Fate last night, which I won’t be finishing. It’s an excellent lesson in how not to begin a fantasy book. In six pages, we have angsty monologues, plucky!orphaned!heroine, infodumps, “As you know, Bob…” conversations, and the bully who, of course, only exists to make the heroine’s life miserable. The bully makes even less sense in context, since he’s apparently been chosen to be part of an order of good people.

Blecch.

( Why I find it hard to read fantasy stories with abused heroes and heroines )

Strange how there are authors I will let get away with anything, even melodrama (like Kay and Martin), as long as they show that the suffering the characters go through is not the only thing that matters.

Tags: characterization: protagonists, fantasy rants spring 2004, stupid clichés rants

05:49 pm: Inspired by <lj user
This one is on human/human empathic bonds, and especially the "soulmate" thing.

( It's perhaps no surprise to anyone that I hate these )

This is another idea that could have a lot done with it, just like the telcom idea, but authors are content to rest on their clichés and portray endless rose-colored love-bonds.

Tags: fantasy rants spring 2004, stupid clichés rants, worldbuilding: magic

09:15 pm: Telcom rant
"Telcom" is the cutesy abbreviation for "telepathic companion," those animals who follow the heroes around.

( And are they ever cutesy )

I recently bought a book that looked interesting, and only after I bought it did I realize that the book talked about the heroine bonding with a special hawk who "needs" her. I'm now scared to start it.

Tags: fantasy rants spring 2004, rants on nonhumans, stupid clichés rants

03:17 pm: Quests, again.
And because the lines yesterday were from "A Ballad of Life," these lines are from A Ballad of Death:

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.

Yeah. Anyway.

( Quests for the throne and other such annoyances )

It irritates me when people go on quests without considering a lot of the basics.

Tags: fantasy rants winter 2004, stupid clichés rants

04:33 pm: Quests and their conventions.
I suppose I don't have any more character motivation advice for right now. But there's always some Swinburne lines.

From A Ballad of Life:

I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,
Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,
In midst whereof there was
A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.
Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,
Made my blood burn and swoon
Like a flame rained upon.
Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue,
And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through
Seemed sad with glad things gone.

( Quests, quest objects, and bad-tempered Limyaael )

Maybe more on this one, too, as I think of it.

Tags: fantasy rants winter 2004, stupid clichés rants