MIND MELD: SF/F Tropes That Should Be Retired
[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know! This week's Mind Meld question was suggested by Adam Callaway.]
Last week we queried our panelists about the next big trend in SF/F. This week is the opposite side of that coin. We asked:
Christ, which tropes don’t need to be retired. But that’s what genre is, isn’t it? The promise of a very similar experience to one you’ve already had and enjoyed. Sure, my elves are different, but then again, you ain’t reading about my elves for their differences, are you? I suppose I should throw in one of those disclaimers about how anything can be done well and that tropes that have devolved into cliches can be rehabilitated by an author of sufficient skill, but I’m sure that other flapgums you have in this mind meld will have covered that already. In the end, what most people do is just pile on more tropes rather than reinvigorate those they’re working with. I remember one time looking at the back of a paperback in the grocery store and coming across the tale of a woman who was “half-vampire, half-Valkyrie.” And I thought to myself, Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. And then I thought to myself, Wait, when did half-vampire alone start making any sense to me. Then I thought, I’ve wasted my life. So, how about…
- Military SF that’s just extant military history in disguise
- Airships
- Zombies (but my zombie book is different)
- Vampires, and not just the glittery kind–all must be damned!
- The kick-ass lady with the vampire boyfriend and the werewolf boyfriend
- Bookish little twats whisked away to some magical world where nobody knows what a nerd they are
- Tentacles
- Help, Muslims are havin’ BABIES!
- Aliens that are just like Japanese people…well, not like any Japanese people I’ve ever met, but like the Japanese people of bad books from a previous generation
- Secret law enforcement groups that police the supernatural
- A spaceship or a colony on another planet where someone goes crazy and ruins it for everybody
- The Corporation as all-around antagonist or, for that matter, protagonist
OK, first one’s easy: the undead and lycanthropes (the latter to include all similar folkloric shapeshifters). I mean, come on – am I the only person who’s tired of this stuff? Is it really only me?
Now, let me be clear: I’m not saying that there aren’t people writing good fiction – even excellent fiction – about zombies and what have you. I’m not saying there’s anything inherently bad about them as tropes (though I think even the hardiest necrofan would be hard pressed to say there’s not some terrible cliché-ridden tosh on the shelves, and that the Undead Austen mash-ups – as “you’ll never guess what someone went and did!” linkbait-cute as the idea may be – are really a bit desperate and Janey-come-lately). I’m just saying it’s too much. You know that horrified feeling of being hemmed in on all sides by an amorphous mass of dull-voiced putrescence that we’re supposed to feel in sympathy with the heroes at the end of a zombie movie? That’s exactly how I feel about books about zombies. Only I don’t have a shotgun handy, nor a pulp movie character trait that’s of any use in this particular situation … though I have all too many useless ones, I fear. Cigarette, anyone?
And if you need me to tell you why vampires have jumped so far over the shark they’d need a satellite imaging system to spot it again… well, actually, I’d like your advice on successfully avoiding popular media of all types. UR TINFOIL HATZ: SHOW ME DEM.
(Digression: it’s interesting to consider the root causes of the incredible tenacity of the undead as tropes, though. Despite loads of Googling that has heretofore failed to locate it, I’m sure I vaguely remember reading a critique that suggested the subtext of zombies in pop culture taps into our subliminal fear of a greying population demographic declining into senility, and that vampires tap into the even scarier notion of smart and inexplicably unwithered old people (paging Ray Kurzweil!) scheming and predating upon us, draining the blood economy that the young are working desperately to shore up. A deeply cynical reading, sure (nor one I’m certain I agree with), but a very timely one. Elsewhere, Futurismic columnist Jonathan McCalmont has suggested the undead represent a fear of transhumanism… which is more up my street, but still pretty unlikely, IMHO.)
Second verse, same as the first: let’s give Lovecraft a rest, shall we? Yup, hugely influential, a keystone of speculative literature, recent anniversary, blah blah, yadda yadda, I know. But if you’ve ever seen what strip-mining does to a neighbourhood, you’ll maybe consider letting the old bugger’s oeuvre lie fallow for a little while. How’s about it? Let Cthulhu dream a while, give his tentacles a chance to recharge.
Third: steampunk, for no other reason than that it’s rapidly approaching its pop-culture saturation level, and maybe (a vain hope, no doubt) if we screwed in the governor for a little bit, we might be able to avoid the inevitable end-point of cheaply rented off-the-peg “sexy steampunk” outfits turning up at the New Year’s fancy-dress office party. Chin-stroking “subculture” reports in respectable dead-tree broadsheets should be warning enough, but when dildo manufacturers are boarding the bandwagon, it’s definitely time to hop off and find a new bar to drink in. Still not convinced? Three words for you: Steampunk Sarah Palin.
And fourth, I’m going to take a pop at one that’s actually a big favourite of mine (no partisanship here, no-siree): the Simulation Argument. The Simulation Argument is to early 21st Century science fiction as the Multiple Universe Hypothesis was to late 20th Century sf: instead of postulating that the world in the narrative frame is one that has followed one or more different branchings on the infinite temporal tree to the one in which the reader is sat, the writer postulates that the world is in fact a simulation running within the “real” universe… or possibly a simulation running within a simulation, but it’s the same thing, essentially, how ever far down the turtles actually end up going. It’s a great story tool for science fiction, and has been used to great effect in recent years by some of my favourite writers (MacLeod. McDonald, Stross, Roberts and more). Trouble is, there’s only so many ways it can be used, and I suspect we may be running out of good ones… well, in this universe at least. And I worry that maybe it’s a handy way of turning away from the problems in the real reality; I’m something of a fellow traveller of Mundane SF and Jetse de Vries’ optimism manifesto, I suppose, and some days it just feels like we’ll take any narrative route out of a corner, just so long as it means we don’t have to confront the possibility that – after the initial thrill of finding we’re living in a lost Philip K Dick novel that’s been remixed by William Gibson and Rudy Rucker – the real tomorrow beyond the page isn’t going to be a roadside picnic. Reality’s full of good stories, but they’re getting much harder to write.
My first instinct is to shout: None! Every SF trope ever created is a toy and, no matter how old or worn that toy is, you want the option of picking it up again and polishing it and then banging it repeatedly against the frame of the sandbox to see what happens.
Having said that, though… where do I start?
I never really got the whole singularity thing. Does it make sense? To anyone? I mean, really?
And the idea of AI as a human-coded thing. As far as you can say anything about AI, it’s most likely to be evolved rather than programmed. I think we should stop using “artificial intelligence” and use “digital intelligence” instead. Put it another way – a group of humans writing code is going to come up with Windows Vista, not Wintermute! (and we all know how THAT turned out. Can I have two years of my life back, please, Microsoft?)
Also, I wish some hard SF writers would please-dear-God stop writing these incredibly awkward and weird sex scenes! Also, do not use the structure infodump-action-infodump-weird-sex-interrupted by-infodump-action-ending. Unless, you know, you want to win an award or something…
I never really got Lovecraft, either. Would the world be a better place without so many Lovecraft pastiches? Absolutely. Would it lead to world peace? Possibly. Read my lips: NO MORE SHOGGOTHS!
And superheroes? Just Say No.
There are no tired tropes. There are only lazy readers and lazy writers.
Tropes form the backbone of any genre whether it be science fiction, fantasy, crime, horror, romance, or kosher low-sodium cookery. As fashions change and authors enter and exit the conversation that is a literary genre, some tropes will bloom while others will die back. For example, at the moment steampunk and paranormal romance are in full flower and their tropes are being milked hard by dozens of authors all trying to grab some head-space in crowded market places. What governs this cyclical process of trope death and rebirth is the amount of work authors put into renewing the tropes they inherited from those who came before them.
For example, at the moment, the tropes developed by the likes of Anne Rice, Laurel K. Hamilton and Stephenie Meyer are all quite fresh for a huge number of readers and so the market is filling up with authors producing works of paranormal romance that really do not seem to move the genre on very far. The tropes still speak for themselves. However, as more and more writers pile into the marketplace, those tropes will start to feel slightly shop-worn even for the most devoted fans of the genre. Tropes are like a conceptual commons, they’re a shared resource that all authors can draw upon BUT if people draw too heavily upon these commons without anyone putting anything back into them then the commons cease to be rewarding. This is arguably what happened with the horror genre in the 1980s; the market was saturated by weak unoriginal books that were content to rehash the same old ideas until the market for any kind of horror trope died off. It is only now that the conceptual commons have rested and a new generation of writers have started to tend the conceptual garden that we are starting to see the horror genre as a whole regain its commercial and critical self-respect thanks to authors like Kaaron Warren, John Langan, Sarah Langan, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Joe Hill.
One of the problems with the life-cycle of tropes is that they are dependent not upon the actions of individual authors but upon the amount of energy invested in the commons by the relevant genre’s authors collectively. For example, it would be easy for me to point to the vampire as a trope in need to lying dormant for a while but there are alternate visions of the vampire out there. Visions that could re-energise entire sub-genres if only other authors could be bothered to work on them. Indeed, how interesting would paranormal romance become if instead of flogging Anne Rice’s old ideas to death, authors started to adapt the vision of the vampire laid out by Peter Watts in Blindsight (2006) and the related powerpoint presentation? Suddenly, paranormal romance is no longer about the struggle between the pressures of heteronormativity and the certain knowledge that all men are potential rapists. Now, it’s about the challenges inherent in dating a psychopath or someone with serious mental health issues. Similarly, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In (2004) beautifully deconstructed the paranormal romance genre by introducing elements of paedophilia and genderqueering into the traditional undead love story making it not only actually quite disturbing but also quite genuinely thought provoking.
There are no tired tropes, only lazy authors who are content to use and re-use other people’s ideas and lazy readers who buy this sort of recycled bilge when it is sprayed at them by publishers.
Annoyed by the number of MilSF stories about futuristic marines shooting at each other? Read Adam Roberts’ brilliant New Model Army (2010) for a glimpse of what future warfare might really be like. In fact, read it purely for the fantastic battle sequences. Fed up of endless tales of the zombie apocalypse? go and watch Robin Compillo’s They Came Back (2004) for a story about how we could easily deal with the appearance of the undead but not with their indifference towards us. Frustrated with stories about the elegantly deranged minds of serial killers and the gristly murders they commit? Seek out Peter Straub’s novella “A Special Place – The Heart of A Dark Matter” (2010) for a demonstration of how mundane and healthy emotions like love and a desire for affection can turn people into monsters just as easily as childhood traumas and eerily religious parents.
Science fiction and fantasy are full of new takes on old ideas, you just need to know where to look in order to find them and if you genuinely think that some ideas are so over-used that they need to be put on the shelf then you are just not looking hard enough for good writing.
Related posts:
- MIND MELD: Worldbuilding
- MIND MELD: The Future of Written Science Fiction
- MIND MELD: Keeping Space Opera Relevant [UPDATED]
- MIND MELD: Scientific Accuracy in Stories
- MIND MELD: The Forgotten Books of SF/F/H
Filed under: Mind Meld
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Ok I agree with the general sentiment that there is no such thing as a bad trope… just bad and lazy writing.
That said there are a few tropes that are probably in need of a decent holiday:
Steampunk – I am fed up of reading about airships and even more sick of them being shown on book covers, I am also bored of seeing steam trains in unlikely settings (on the moon, on mars, on alien planets).
Urban Fantasy – especially ballsy sexy women who deal with the undead, vampires who are dark brooding and more interested in sex with said ballsy sexy women than they ever are in blood… well apart from the fact they used to be ruthless killers (or still are but only of ‘bad’ guys), the fact that those ballsy sexy women are sexually liberated that they sleep with any and every supernatural type that comes within 200m.
One person can save….. – this trope goes across all genres and is just lazy and predicatable… only the lone nutball/ divorcee/ mad scientist/ put down office temp/ rookie pilot/ child warrior can save the world / universe, everyone else is incompetent and often misguided/ working for the ‘big bad’ and no authority can be trusted.
great idea, shame the author didn’t think it through – I am sick and tired of authors coming up with interesting settings /worlds /technologies/ magic e.t.c. and not thinking through what these actually mean or how they might work on a consistent basis… there is nothing worse than building an interesting whatever and then forgetting about it when its convient to the plot.
Well, I’m mainly with Jonathan McCalmont on this one (and not *only* because John Ajvide Lindqvist is a fellow Swede
) — most ideas and themes can be examined from new and original angles, with a bit of effort.
That being said… there are these tropes I think should expire, most of all because they were never that good to begin with:
1. Invincible computers.
Yes, Fredric Brown’s story “Answer” is a classic — but it’s also a joke story, a send-up, not supposed to be taken seriously.
Both in theory and in practice, there are limits to what can be computed. (See also Gregory Chaitin’s discovery of the uncomputable number “Omega”… or Gödel’s Theorem.)
No, computers are not going to rule the world — or save it. They are not going to predict the future, or turn out to be the underpinnings of a simulated reality, or any such godlike thing.
Because computers are fallible tools. And no matter how big and fast they get, they will still be fallible tools.
2. Whitey McWhitebread conquers the galaxy and fulfils America’s Manifest Destiny.
All evidence points to a future where, if colonization of space is at all possible, people living on other planets will use all the tools at their disposal – genetic engineering, developing their own unique cultures, terraforming, shaping their lives after an alien environment — to survive.
They will thus inevitably evolve away from their Earth origins, or they will probably die.
A historical example: Vikings built a settlement on Greenland, but refused to change their lifestyle to suit the environment. The Viking settlement perished. The native Inuit, who did not try to live as if Greenland were Denmark or Sweden, live on to this day.
In other words, people living on other planets will, in time, seem quite alien to Earthlings — and they will certainly not resemble WASP Americans.
This trope is of course particularly evident in American-produced sci-fi television, but it is also fairly easy to spot in written SF. Space will not be populated by people who talk, look and act like ourselves.
From Tidhar, not really a trope but definitely Best Advice Ever: “…hard SF writers would please-dear-God stop writing these incredibly awkward and weird sex scenes!“
Stop giggling and get back to your story.
I would also like to see less evil/ruthless/mindless corporate bad guys. When an individual as villan is characterized this way we call it cardboard or cliched. Corporate baddies have been depended on a bit too much.
I agree with both Tidhar and McCalmont that tropes are tools that should always be available for the enterprising author. But the feeding frenzy that results when something becomes popular is taxing. I don’t have the time or patience to wade through it all to find the few that are doing something creative and different with it. Inevitably, I’ll go elsewhere. Call me lazy all you want. I’ll be reading over there.
Mike
Post Collapse
Post Apocalypse
Nice Vampires
Giant Robots
Zombies
The Chosen One
Super-Heroes
Conspiracy Theories
Conservative Politics in Military Science Fiction
Magical Science
Nothing. Because with sufficient effort and a gifted writer, anything can be made new again.
I agree. Let’s tie the hands of authors with arbitrary rules — the snarkier the better.
Literati Fiction disguised as fantasy or science fiction.
Polemical Science Fiction that preaches instead of telling a story. If I want a political lecture or read an op-ed, there are other places I can go where the material is written far more effectively by specialists in the field.
Ecotopian Fiction.
Post peak oil fiction.
Revisionist Alternate History which totally ignores the primary source record. Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Lucky Strike is the worst offender in my opinion on this score.
Vampires.
Zombies.
Urban Fantasy in general.
Stories which portray Midwestern Rural inhabitants as sheet wearing, cross burning bigots.
Stories which portray soldiers and law enforcement personel as cardboard antagonists.
Stories which portray the Singular Noble Veteran/Soldier who is repentant. Haldeman can pull it off because that is what he is and comes by it honestly. Some zit ridden clown whose only military experience comes from watching manga or playing shooter video games isn’t going to be able to pull it off.
Stories which portray the United States at the modern day Roman Empire.
Having said all of that, I dislike tying anyone’s creative hands. I’ve railed about publications that have a Thou Shalt Not page. It isn’t some other clown’s job to tell me what I can or can’t write. That is my job and it is one of the most aggravating things about the present American Science Fiction Community.
We are a community the community of can not, do not, should not and better not.
Sad. Pathetic really.
S. F. Murphy
On the Outer Marches
I never really got Lovecraft, either. Would the world be a better place without so many Lovecraft pastiches?
or:
I never really got the whole singularity thing. Does it make sense? To anyone? I mean, really?
The comment “I wish we’d retire X” means one of two things. Either, as above, you never liked it to begin with or you’ve gotten burnt out on it.
But why should one interpret one’s personal response to a particular trope as indicating what should be done by the field as a whole? That’s the trope I’d like to retire.
Space Cowboys. You may be able tell an entertaing story by transposing the clichés of the Horse Opera into the future, but don’t expect me to take it too seriously.
Gotta agree with Tidhar on the sex scenes. I’ve never read one in a hard SF book that didn’t make me cringe.
Speaking of sex, the one trope more than any other I’d like retired is the unabashed hedonism of the near future. In 90% of SF books, the human race becomes more and more, er, slutty. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Is Trojan funding these stories?
Like everyone else, I’d love to see vampires, lycanthropy, etc retired.
Corporations taking over the world, nay, the galaxy are quite over-played.
Military-industrial complexes that exactly resemble the West. There are other cultural centers to base MI complexes on. I guess this goes with the “conservative politics in military sf” complaint JD posted above.
Aliens that we can relate to.
It’s pretty funny that people seem to think that this SF Signal will somehow lead to the tying of writers’ hands. If hearing or reading “We don’t like stories about X” is such a an obstacle for a writer, than that person just has a weak personality.
Jonathan McCalmont wins. Not that the other replies were much compettion.
Do you not get many entries to these things?
Take a chill pill…. This article is just people letting off a bit of steam and having a bit of fun.
Anyone who reads widely knows that there are good and bad usage of tropes, none of us want to tie the hands of authors with regards to what they can and can’t write… but we are entitled to say enough when we feel we have had enough of some much used tropes.
I would like to follow on from what Nick Mamatas said, if an author reads the whinges on this and gives up at that slight hurdle then its unlikely they will get anything published anyway… if they show a bit of backbone and think ‘screw you guys’ I am going to write the best ever vampire/zombie/military scifi and show them that these tropes deserve more life then good go for it….
Just because I am personally sick of steampunk doesn’t stop me reading China Melvile’s Bas’Lag novels, just because I am sick of vampires doesn’t stop me watching and loving True Blood….
I want more tentacles.
More tentacles means more iron.
I just made a comment. Why did it bother you so much?
I agree with Jonathan McCalmont here – I think that the reason that a lot of the more commonly complained about tropes (Vampires) comes from the fact that popular trends demand a lot of content – sometimes, it doesn’t matter what the level of the author is, it’ll sell – I think that Twilight is a good indication of this. Whatever the genre is, there will be good and bad writers.
At the same time, there are bigger things that I think need change, and I think that’s coming – the idea that science fiction is purely an American/Western/Civilized/White Guy/Gal enterprise is giving away to a more international flavor with books set overseas. I hope that we’ll see more along those lines.
Tropes/genres/etc are meaningless to me. I read what I like, and I ignore what I don’t like. The ONLY downside to this is that the tropes/genres/etc that I tend to dislike seem to be very popular (vampires for one) and they seem to be squeezing out what I do like (hard science fiction).
The only thing that really bothers me are people trying to pass off something that clearly isn’t science fiction AS science fiction. blastr.com is guilty of this…every…damn…day.
Maybe this is the wrong week to announce my upcoming duodecimilogy, COLONEL NELL STORMFRONT AND HER STEAM-POWERED ZEPPELIN BATTLE ACES VERSUS THE VAMPIRE PHARAOH OF UNDEATH.
In the far future world overrun by a population explosion of Muslim, the Caliphate has no choice but to turn to the secret law enforcement group, branch of the Men in Black, known as the Angels in Tight Black Leather, whose leaderess, the spunky young but angst-ridden yet spunky ninja-teen Colonel Nell, who was raised in the St. Dismas’ Home for Criminally Undesirable Youths and tormented by the ghastly yet overweight Mrs. Slogde, was magically transmitted to the far-future all-Muslim Earth because she is the Chosen One Other (the first chosen one having failed the entrance exams) and the reincarnation of Isis possessed by the unquiet spirit of Napoleon.
Now with the help of her alien but Japanese Martian Ninja Sumo-Wrestler-Vampire Boyfriend, Susan-no-O van Broodster McGlumdark, and the support of her spunky but angst ridden werewolf-fox-spirit Inari sidekick, Fangs Moody, Nell Stormfront must opposes the evil mechanizations of a mechanical but faceless world-wide supranational chain of funeral homes known as CorpsCorp, Incorporated, who are controlled by the faceless Dark Pharaoh Undeathotep, who is secretively raising an army of flesh-eating but faceless cyborg-zombies —but will the evil Vizier of the overfertile Muslim population of overpopulators overpopulate the earth before the Zombie world-war erupts and underpopulates them? The military action follows blow-by-blow the historical account of the War of Jenkin’s Ear, except, um, with steam-powered Zeppelins crewed by Vampire Samurai from Mars.
But since all these tropes are being retired, curse it, instead I will write a much more original book, about an invasion from Mars, a recruit trapped into fighting this pointles war, and an oppressed group of superhuman telepaths living in hiding from the evil prejudice of an oppressive yet post-apocalyptic theocratic dictatorship. It will be called THE FOREVER WAR OF THE WORLD OF NULL A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ. No one has done anything like that before!
Oh … wait …
You forgot tentacles.
@John C. Wright – Nah. I’d go with the first one. Cyborg-zombies. ‘Nuf said.
I am all for LGBT civil liberties and rights, but if you place L, G, B or T private investigator in front of the tropes above, then you will have many novels that I find tiresome.
I’m glad I struck a chord
One trope that I do struggle with is the competent man. Back in the 50s you had protagonists who were impossibly heroic, impossibly brave and impossibly skilled. Their job was to basically solve every problem that the plot could throw at them without soul-searching or hestitation.
Now, this is one boring character. In fact, it’s not even a character in the traditional sense, it’s a foil for the narrative.
At some point in SF’s history, people started noticing that these competent people were always men and that if these men did interract with women it was usually as plot devices or status symbols like the bit at the end of Star Wars where Lucas has them put medals on his characters just to make sure that we don’t forget that they’re god-damned heroes! So people started demanding strong female characters.
Fast forward half a century andthe market is swamped with ‘strong female characters’ that are basically competent men with tits and better dress sense.
However even here the problem isn’t with bad tropes so much as with bad writing. The problem is that a lot of these kick-ass vampire-killing babes take their cues from Buffy but what made Buffy a compelling character was the fact that she was profoundly fucked up and actually quite unpleasant a lot of the time. However, other people trying to re-articulate the Whedon formula of ‘Battling Beauty’ + ‘Emotional Basketcase’ have little skill with characterisation and so you get the likes of Laurel K. Hamilton whose books see her female protagonist getting more and more powerful and then whining in an entirely unconvincing fashion about all the hunky men who are battling for her attention. But because the character could arguably kill all of these men with the flick of an immaculately scultped eye-brow, it’s supposedly not misogynistic.
The problem isn’t with hot chicks lusting after gorgeous vampire men, it’s badly written female characters with utterly unconvincing inner lives pursuing pedestrian relationships with undifferentiated and flat male characters.
There are no ideas that cannot be rejuvenated by good prose style and good characterisation.
I am all for heterosexual civil liberties and rights, honey, but if you place “heterosexual” in front of the tropes above, then you will have many novels that I find… write my sexuality out of fricking reality.
The shoddily-written homoexotic subset of Mary Sue, on the other hand — now that should definitely be retired. (Homoexotic: It’s like homoerotic only with added exoticism!) Retire it like a replicant in Blade Runner, I say.
I’m hoping that’s what you mean, actually. Cause if we’re talking about the faux-bi private eye written for them as think Teh Gayz are just soooo awesome as BFFs and slash fiction material, well, I’m with you. (Likewise where it’s a matter of how lesbianism is such an empowering/hawt fantasy for a BUG Gothgirl/Emoboi!) Tain’t an LGBT character if they’re being fetishised though, far as I’m concerned, just sexuality as spectacle.
But the thing is, fantasy + noir is pretty much the recipe for that genre in which private detectives are a cliche woven into the fabric. Not being bored with that per se, but being bored specifically with LGBT variants… sounds awfully like “not another queer getting all protagonistic in my urban fantasy.” And if that’s where you’re coming from, sorry, honey; that’s an ugly-ass complaint, soul-ugly. Like, “How come all those seats at the front of the bus are taken up by Negros these days?” ugly.
It all gets so tiresome… but then maybe I am just getting old… I just want to give those pesky kids a clip round the side of the head when they start going about how LGBT (delete as applicable) they are, and the same applies to those same character in literature.
I don’t care what their sexuality is, I just object to having it rubbed in my eyes by authors who think they have to make some grand emoesque statement about how ‘liberated’ their characters are. I have always found the best sex scenes in any book are the ones that go unwritten… give us the nod that its gonna happen as you finish the chapter and start the next chapter after its finished.
“Not being bored with that per se, but being bored specifically with LGBT variants… sounds awfully like “not another queer getting all protagonistic in my urban fantasy.” And if that’s where you’re coming from, sorry, honey; that’s an ugly-ass complaint, soul-ugly. Like, “How come all those seats at the front of the bus are taken up by Negros these days?” ugly.”
Defensive much?
If you’re writing a LGBT protagonist just so you can infuse a murder mystery with sexual orientation sermonizing, yes that is tiresome. I don’t particularly care if the protagonist is gay or straight. Just like 20 years ago I didn’t care if they were black or white. What I want is the murder mystery. If using a LGBT protagonist lets you do interesting things with the plot, then wonderful! If I have to wade through pages of cliched gender studies just to find the plot, then I will find that book tiresome. Why? Because you’re making me do a lot of work to get what I want!
Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies, Vampires+Zombies………….
OK?
Yes, I think the best sex scenes are the unwritten ones; let my imagination go for a while and I can go as wild or as conservative as I want. My stories usually stop at the bedroom, or where ever, door and let the reader go from there. There are so many Tropes that need a rest but what do you want?
Another interesting take on vampires is Club Blood by Lauralynn Elliot. It is a new way of looking and experiencing the vampire story.
I am tired of the horrible outlook so many have on the future. I can see how you could think that in taday’s world but somehow I think we’ll have that moment, no matter how horrible it may be, and humanity will ‘overcome’ and survive. Maybe somewhere else but we’ll still be around for a little while.
I agree with the idea of if I want a sermon or a political statement I’ll go to the source. I want to read something that makes me think on a different level than I do everyday. Something that can give me an escape, for just a few hours if need be, from this world into something different.
I wasn’t aware that there WAS a surplus of LGBT activity in the urban fantasy milieu. Would Honey or Andy care to suggest any authors? I ask because I am definitely labouring under the impression that there’s nowhere near enough LGBT genre writing going on out there right now.
If there’s a whole genderqueer PI sub-genre going on then I want to know about it!
Yes, I think the best sex scenes are the unwritten ones….
So you’d prefer they be filmed? Well, I suppose with ebooks that becomes more of a possibility…..
SF/F could stand well-written sex, boyz, at the expense of gizmoz and (lately, hip) torture.
I haven’t noticed torture becoming a frequent theme in SF (though that could be because my tastes don’t bring those sorts of books to my notice). What novels/authors are you referring to?
Actually Jonathan my complaints are more about the emoesque nature of much urban fantasy sex, off the top of my head I can’t think of many LGBT stuff, but there is a LOAD of trans-species sex which is just as annoying as the LGBT carrying on of youngsters at my local night spot.
The problem I have Athena is that there is very little well written sex, in fact most written genre sex is cringeworthily bad.
Andy: I don’t care what their sexuality is, I just object to having it rubbed in my eyes by authors who think they have to make some grand emoesque statement about how ‘liberated’ their characters are.
Of course, one man’s “rubbed in my eyes” is another’s “oh hey, this character isn’t actively desexed.” For some, a gay sex scene is “sexuality being shoved down my throat” even when you’d have the exact same symbolic consummation act with a straight relationship. For some, the exact same level of explicity is seen as *way* more graphic when it’s two blokes making the beast with one back (c.f. the response to Morgan’s The Steel Remains). For a lot of us, yanno, it’s not a grand emoesque statement, just par for the course in treating LGBT characters the same as straight characters.
Also, if I happen to be sitting beside you at a convention bar sometime, chatting up some vapid but oh-so-pretty emoboi, does that mean our yammering faggotry might bring out the desire to do violence in you? Juuuuust so’s I know, like. (My tongue’s kinda in my cheek here, of course, but still… if someone’s likely to try and malkie me, be good to know in advance.)
No probs Hal, my problem is more that there are half a dozen regulars at my local night spot who make a great play about their ‘sexuality’ (and run screaming when its offered for real)… these kids just seem to me to fit right into a trope that particularly prevelant in urban fantasy that I find boring (boring not distasteful – as I said in an eariler post maybe i am just getting old).
I agree completely that its a matter of taste, as for Morgan’s The Steel Remains I would have to say its one of the best fantasy novels I have read in a long time and after the initial reaction of oh the main protagonist is gay, how brave it just became back ground to an interesting character. I used to be in regular corespondense with a British author Juliet McKenna and remember having a discussion with her about sex in her novels (which also included a gay character) and my opinion was that I prefered her eariler novels where the sex was implied to one of the later novels where it became graphic, because I personally found it a bit embarrasing.
When it comes to urban fantasy most of my gripes with the genre can be highlighted by Laura K Hamilton and her Anita Blake series, where the amount of sex ramped up in each novel becoming more graphic, longer and more ‘emoesque’ as Anita got caught up in more and more bizarre sex whilst the character whined more and more about. It got the point in book 9 or 10 where I simply lost the will to turn the page during one particular sex scene at the start of the novel which went on for several chapters (I gave up after about 3 pages but one of my mates read on) that involved half a dozen protagonists of various sexualities, genders, races both alive and undead. For me what had been an engaging series of novels became somethign that I jsut didn’t want to read, and this is something that I have found time after time in the urban fantasy setting.
As for you chatting up some emoboi go for it, but if you start getting it on expect me to a) tell you to go get a room and b) get threatened with a bucket of cold water if you don’t c) get a cold bath if you don’t take the hint – all done with a laugh and a smile
and I hope you would feel free to return the favour if I was chatting up some hot young lady (although I would use b) to try and seal the deal in a hotel room).
Jeff: Defensive much?
Nope, I’m just a bolshie motherfucker prone to pointing out… interesting attitudes. Such as objecting to LGBT P.I.s in the urban fantasy genre rather than just P.I.s in general. The latter is a huge-ass cliche that certainly merits a place in “tropes to be retired.” But if you object to that, the LGBT is redundant. If you object to LGBT variants specifically, not to the private eye part, that’s kinda just objecting to LGBT (unless it’s something about the way it’s done other than just the sexuality per se.) I don’t find this offensive, yanno; it doesn’t hurt my poor sensitive feelings. I’m just happy to point out the fugly nature of such objections where they rear their head. Like, “Oh, look! Man, that’s one fugly-ass point-of-view. One fugly-like-Anne-Widdecombe’s-unwiped-ass point-of-view.”
If you’re writing a LGBT protagonist just so you can infuse a murder mystery with sexual orientation sermonizing, yes that is tiresome.
Ain’t what we’re talking about though. Honey’s talking about the mere act of placing “L, G, B, or T private detective in front of the tropes.” Simply adding a character trait and occupation doesn’t suggest sermonising, which is, again, a problem in and of itself. I mean, didacticism is always tiresome, for sure — I couldn’t agree more — but it’s not like making a character a faggot magically transforms a story into a treatise on sexual identity. So again, if you’re not objecting to sermonising per se, why zero in on one variant?
And actually, the whole “private detective” thing, as I say, suggests a quite different issue — the idiom of urban fantasy with this homoexoticism that’s more slash than social studies. Which is indeed quite tedious, to my mind. (I blame Anne Rice myself.)
I don’t particularly care if the protagonist is gay or straight. Just like 20 years ago I didn’t care if they were black or white. What I want is the murder mystery. If using a LGBT protagonist lets you do interesting things with the plot, then wonderful!
I’m down with that. I’m just pointing out that this viewpoint is integrationist. You have no problem with an LGBT character sitting at the front of the bus — being a protagonist. Which means, I assume, their sexuality doesn’t have to serve the plot, any more than their hair colour has to, right? But if it does, man, all the better! Just as long as the book isn’t didactic.
But honey’s comment taken as is expresses a segregationist discomfort that kicks in simply when the protagonist — the character sat at the front of the bus — is transformed from straight to queer. Like that is something to care about, in and of itself. Like you get on all these buses and — oh noes! — there’s queers sat in the front seats again! Can’t we just “retire that trope”? Can’t we just stop doing that so’s when I get on a bus, I won’t be fed up by the fact that there’s an LGBT private detective in the front seat yet again?
To which my answer is simply to point out the ugliness of that sentiment. And to allow for a reading in which that’s not the sentiment intended.
I’ve avoided Hamilton for that reason, Andy. From what I’ve heard it’s exactly the sort of ardour=ordure stuff I’m talking about, in which sexuality is spectacle. But it’s the Mary Sue aspect of such that’s truly cringe-inducing, I’d say. It’s not about LGBT private detectives but about a private detective character used as a vapid cipher for self-absorbed fantasies of sex, power, being the centre of the world, yah de yah. C.f. the similarly Mary Sue bollocksitude of Twilight, which is basically the same fantasies but desexed and with slightly different vectors of fetishisation.
I agree with Neal:
It seems like anything the publishers don’t know what to do with is labeled SF/F. Horror/vampires/half-shirted sword welding heroines are not SF or F. I’m fine with people liking them and reading them, but I’m tired of the real SF/F stuff being crowded off the shelves. Of course, I haven’t been to a bookstore in years, so if the stores ever do put new SF/F ont he shelves I won’t notice. I’m never going back to the big box bookstores.