Everybody's doing it

[ritaxis]

I'll edit to add links afterwards. It's James's fault, I guess.

So it starts out as a bunch of things you won't do when writing fantasy, except some folks (links later) are doing what they won't do when writing science fiction. I do both, so here's a generic list of won'ts.

1. Won't have protagonist be the very best at everything all the time. Not even if they have to go through a bunch of stuff to be the very best of everything every time.

2. Won't have species or races or nations or classes of evil.

3. Especially won't have species or races or nations or classes of evil which it is desirable or even okay to kill or destroy just because they are the species or races or nations or classes of evil.

4. Especially won't have characters who are good because they are good, or characters who are bad because they are bad.

(I'm using control-V (paste) a lot: maybe I should just use control-V as a stand-in phrase)

5. And most especially won't have second-tier, minor, or walk-on characters graphically tortured and murdered, or tortured and murdered offstage just to promote the development of the major characters or to prove the control-v are the control-v.

6. Won't have oppressed or conquered entities or working class or poor entities acting as Learning Experiences for a privileged protagonist. This means:

--no wise aliens or Indians dispensing advice to the proteagonist (well, I do have a curandera advising the guy in The Conduit, but she's his best friend's fiancee's auntie and the guy isn't a privileged character in need of a Learning Experience either)
-- no helpless victims chewed up by the Mahcine so the privileged protagnist can learn the evil of the system and go on to become rich, powerful, good --
-- no unsuitable lovers of the oppressed or conquered classes or races or nations or species to open the privileged protagonist's eyes to the facts of life and then die or nobly send the protagonist back to its own kind or both or betray the protagonist in some convenient way.

7. No class steretypes, thank you: no dumbass lumpen proletariat, no loyal servants, no unthinking accepted anything ever.

8. No planets with only one climate.

9. No planets with only one culture.

10. Nobody falling in love with a guy because he has a masculine voice, a masculine body -- particularly not masculine thighs, shoulders, jaws, pectoral or abdominal muscles, or butt(!!! masculine butt!!! what are they thinking?), or a clean, masculine scent. Duh. If the character is oriented towards men, the man he or she falls in love with will be a man (unless the point is that he or she falls in love with some other thing than what she or he is ordinarily oriented towards) and will have men's characteristics. Yeah, even your most effeminate man has a man's etc. So what's actually interesting about the man in question? If his voice is interesting, what is it about his voice? It can't just be that it's a masculine voice, or the poor dear would be falling in love every time he or she or it got on a bus or went into a grocery store.

11. Everybody else seems to be doing eleven, so I'm striving to find another one. Oh, yeah, but everybody's already covered this one, I think. Now I can't remember what I was going to write here.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Links:

motociquala (http://matociquala.livejournal.com/853011.html)
truepenny (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/456453.html)
sosotris (http://sosostris2012.livejournal.com/329865.html)
cpolk (http://cpolk.livejournal.com/173110.html)
limyael (http://limyaael.livejournal.com/503333.html)
bright-lilim (http://bright-lilim.livejournal.com/12266.html)
katalien (http://katallen.livejournal.com/161224.html)
dreamlessness (http://dreamlessness.livejournal.com/721245.html)
ladyphoenix (http://ladyphoenix9.livejournal.com/182883.html)
otakukkeith (http://otakukeith.livejournal.com/65422.html)
elynne (http://elynne.livejournal.com/972981.html)
katfeete
and the post (http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/415307.html) that started it all
(http://www.katfeete.net/nucleus/index.php?itemid=643) ()

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

It can't just be that it's a masculine voice, or the poor dear would be falling in love every time he or she or it got on a bus or went into a grocery store.

*heh*. a particularly deep (low baritone) masculine voice doesn't exactly make me fall in love, but it will touch me somewhere primal, and i have been known to follow people with such a voice for a little ways (before i hit myself over the head and make myself stop stalking). this never happens with any feminine voices. on the flip side there is a type of shrill feminine voice that makes me want to KILL (not quite, of course, but there is an impulse to throttle the person). that never happens with any masculine voices.

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

I do have a similar thing for some male voices -- not deep baritones, in fact they're tenors, but it's the quality of the voice rather than the pitch that makes the difference (famous example: Bono of U2). Embarrassing when the owner of the voice is a good friend, married with children, and whom I wouldn't otherwise consider swooning over -- on occasion I've had to leave the room when he started singing :-). (The effect happens with speaking as well as singing, but singing intensifies it, assuming the person in question can sing.)

But I wouldn't call that voice "masculine". I mean, it's definitely a male voice, but if I was to describe it "masculine" wouldn't even occur to me as a characteristic. (I'd be hard put to describe it, in fact. Which is why I've given an example instead. But sand would probably figure in the description somewhere.)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that the point is that the bare description "masculine" is like saying "he had a face." More is needed. What aspect of the masculine voice? What kind of masculine voice? And not the same damned adjectives over and over. Masculinity is just not sufficient to explain attraction.

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

Re number 2, I was reflecting a couple of days ago, while watching Pirates of the Caribbeans 2, on the convenience of having the undead as enemies. I mean, with the undead you are genuinely doing them a favour when you kill them...

However, I don't think I'll ever end up writing about the undead, so in practice I will without any special effort go along with this point myself :-)