Bizarre Decisions and Implausible Situations

via GIPHY

So, this rather excellent post from Tumblr prodded some of the more annoying nonsenses that appear over and over which we just have to totally agree to (especially slicing the palm of your hand - ye gods guys you can slice a tendon that way! Stop!). And those people playing high-wire artist on those teeny thin bridges? Who are you trying to impress?

Of course, we definitely have our own to add - because this genre may be about the fantastic but there is a limit to the suspension of disbelief. Add in the comments either things that don’t make sense you keep seeing - or dubious decisions characters always make

BULLETS ARE NOT POISONOUS!

Someone is shot, they’re injured and need medical attention. Time to leap into action and rip that bullet out - no time for sterilisation, that bullet is going to kill them! Somehow?

Once a bullet has stopped moving it’s pretty much done all the damage it’s going to do. Now if you’re supernatural is, say, a werewolf shot with silver or a vampire shot with holy water or a Trump supporter shot with common sense then I guess the bullet needs removing (or not, depending on how terrible the monster is). But if not rooting around in the wound in amateur surgery is definitely not good for anyone; even when in a nice sterile hospital with a nice sterile surgeon bullets still get left in bodies because they’re not dangerous and cutting into people when it isn’t necessary is generally considered a less than ideal thing. Staunch the blood and stop poking bullet wounds.

CPR DOES NOT MAKE YOU A NECROMANCER

So you need a near death experience for some reason - maybe you need to wander around the underworld and avoid pomegranates. Maybe you need to pretend to be brain dead. The simplest solution is to use technology/poison/magic to die… after all, a little CPR and they corpse will spring back to life, right?

Except it hardly ever works… it’s not actually supposed to. CPR keeps oxygenated blood flowing to the brain so emergency help can arrive and do the actual reincarnation/resurrection/zombie bit. So if you’re going to use your death juju and hope someone will CPR you back to the land of the living, you better hope they also hook up a defibrillator and call emergency services. Actually skip the defibrillators - they actually don’t work on a heart that has actually stopped. Damn, none of these miracle cures work?!

WHERE DID YOU BUY THIS?

Some characters are assassins, connected to crime cartels, the police, military and who knows what else. As such you expect them to have the nicest toys

But when your YA protagonist or nice-normal-person-dropped-in-weird-situation can somehow get their hands on illegal firearms, explosives, endangered exotic animals, drugs or small children I do have to question how they know this? Exactly who does Originalnamee, orphaned (always orphaned) girl in a nice middle class high school know how to get her hands on several lumps of C4?

A Letter from Urban Fantasy Parents to their Beloved Children

Dear Long Lost Son/Daughter

Hey, this is your dearly departed parent. I have a lot to tell you and, since we’re in an Urban Fantasy story, I thought it best to write it down because the chances of me living long enough for you to get past the “gaa-gaa, goo-goo” stage is pretty limited.

You have just turned 16/18/21/met that super hawt guy and everything has changed! You can now see things you never thought existed. You can do things that were impossible! You have powers and skills and a whole lot of teenaged angst about them!

Surprise!

You’re actually a vampire/dhampire/lost faerie princess/super powerful mage/shaman/god* (Delete as appropriate)!

This must be something of a shock to you since we decided to keep it completely secret all of your life, but we had our reasons. See it’s dangerous to be a (insert shiny magical thing) so we decided the best way to help prepare you was to keep you completely ignorant of everything so one day you will have to fight/run from/conquer the terrible, dangerous evil while also dealing with disbelief, culture shock and one hell of a learning curve

If you’re really lucky, you’ll also be doing this while grieving over my recently deceased body.

Yes, we decided this was a much better way to prepare you than, well, actually preparing you. But I’m sure this note explaining things will be far better than a childhood of understanding, teaching, support, learning your skills, training and being told about your enemies

It’s quite possible that our decision making skills may be why Urban Fantasy parents don’t live very long...

Don’t worry, child, these new powers come with a full set of plot armour. You’ll be fine!

Love you forever for lots and lots of angst that should still be having you moping in Book 3,

Dead Urban Fantasy Parent.

(P.S. Please find enclosed cryptic magical Mcguffin/Deus Ex that I won’t explain because I’m running out of paper or something, but it’ll be useful. Honest).

(P.P.S. Trust Complete Stranger Guide person who I have never ever introduced you to before despite them being my oldest friend in the world. It was necessary to hide this person you will completely rely on from you because…oh look, out of paper again.)

Pet Peeves in Urban Fantasy

Have you ever imagined what super power you would like to have? I can never decide but generally settle on invisibility. Or used to any more - these days I think I’d swap it for the ability to send a psychic alert to authors “Stop! Don’t do it!” or to teleport behind them mid typing and just yell “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Now some are for obvious reasons - we’ve written post after post on the various isms, prejudices and stereotypes that are rife through the genre - but sometimes it’s for more mundane reasons, some writing habits we see time and again that make us roll our eyes so much we get friction burns


Recapping
It’s book 6 in the series and a lot has happened in the last 5 books. And the author wishes to tell us, at length.

No! Stop!

Ok, I know some reminders are helpful - after all it could have been 6 months or more since the reader read the last books. It could even have been years for SOME authors (naming no names, you know who you are, don’t make us fanpoodle you), so some reminders are helpful. But trying to cram the entire last book into a convoluted summary or info-dump - let alone the last 4 or 5 books - doesn’t work. It slows the book down, breaks suspension of disbelief and looks like padding. The later we get into the series, the more horrendous this can be and when your series gets into the double digits and you’re trying to cram 10 books of plot and character development into one convoluted internal monologue and it really really doesn’t work.

At some point, you’ve got to trust the reader to have read the many many previous books and if they haven’t, tough, they should have.


Let the Story End!
Publishing is a business and so today you will rarely find authors who write stand alone books in this genre. Most try to release at a minimum one book year. As long as they have something to say and are still interested in their own story this is fine. There comes a time however no matter how great the writer, when it’s time to let the series end. What’s in the best interest of the series and what’s in the best interest of the authors pocketbook are two different things. This leads us to the series that never ends. It just goes on making less and less sense with each book, as readers pray for some sort of relief.

Then there are the authors who start out with one really good idea and then beat it death by telling the same story for six or seven books. They change one or two details but really, it’s the same shite.  Another trick is the author who has two series, but uses the same characters and simply changes the names.  

I would write the eulogies myself if they would just give it up already.


The Big Reveal... in the Prologue
The book begins, and characters move together to talk about the Special Protagonist who is Destined to do Special Things with their Specialness, all described in special detail. Perhaps they’re describing a constantly repeating cycle and what is needed to break it. Perhaps they’re describing a prophecy. Perhaps they’re villains describing their enemy and how they intend to get her despite her Special Powers (that she does not know about).

Whatever the vehicle, they have one thing in common - they’ve just spoilt the entire book. We then move beyond the prologue and start a story with a Special Protagonist and their journey to find out why they are so special and who these odd people around them are... but we already know. The book already told us WHY she’s special, the book already told us who these people around her are. While the protagonist is flailing around in confusion trying to figure out why all these odd things are happening, we, the reader, already know and are dragged along waiting for them to finally get it. It’s like reading a murder mystery with the murderer starting the book with a long monologue about who he’s killed, who he intends to kill, why he did it and why his alibi is a lie; then spending the rest of the book watching Hercule Poirot slowly figure out the answers you already have.

Related, if your story requires a great big mystery or a massive, terrible secret to hold then it would help if said mystery were not blatantly obvious to everyone with sufficient brain power to actually breathe.

There's Always an Excuse for Prejudice, Erasure and Tropes

One of the things we’ve found in our many reviews of the genre from a social justice perspective is how many times people will make up various excuses for the problems we talk about. There is no limit to the different excuses people raise, but often it can feel like we’re responding to the same script since we see the same points raised again and again. Since, we assume, they are widely believed we’re going to poke a few of these:


The Protagonist doesn’t hate them because they’re a minority - it’s because they’re horrible people.

This normally becomes an issue when we point out, for example, that a character has no female friends and strikes sparks with every woman around them. Or the protagonist hates every single POC in the book/TV series. Or that the only GBLT characters in a book have been the protagonist’s enemies.

Now these protagonists rarely turn round and say “I hate women!” or “she’s my enemy because she’s a lesbian, evil lesbian!” because most authors aren’t that ridiculous. Usually, the protagonist does have a very legitimate reason to hate these people. Yes, every woman they met was mean to them. Yes, all the POC around them were cruel and rude. Yes, that evil GBLT villain is indeed evil. There were big story reasons for the character to hate all of these people. This is true.

But this a work of fiction, not a report of real people. The writer is an author, not a journalist. The cruel POC, the evil GBLT villain, the mean women - they don’t exist. They’re all creations of the author. And if the author has created a book where all the women/POC/GBLT/etc are set up to be awful and hateable then it is because the author chose them to be so.

If the marginalised people in a series are all hateful people that the protagonist loathes - for good in story reasons - then the author has created that scenario. And, yes, that’s problematic.


It’s just who they are! I see them as people not POC/GBLT/etc

So you’ve written your story and it turns out you have a sexually predatory GBLT person, or a loud, angry, sassy black woman side-kick (bonus points if she has magic to help the protagonist) or some equally tired, stereotyped trope. Naturally we’re not impressed but the protest is “they’re not a sassy, magical side-kick because they’re black, it’s just who they are!” In other words, you assert that their adherence to an extremely tired trope is just coincidence.

Now it’s vaguely possible, I guess, that you are somehow packed into the Mars Rover and are actually beaming you books or scripts from there and your intended audience is actually aliens from the planet Zog. In which case I applaud you for being able to write under such difficult conditions and being our ambassador for the Zoggi with books about vampires.

Face Off: Tropes We Want to End

Having read and watched so much in the genre, we begin to see elements that get repeated over and over again. Some of them we want to keep - as we’ve said with vampires and werewolves - but some we could really do without. There have been some items that keep raising their ugly heads more often than classic Dracula and we really wish they would be staked, beheaded and their ashes scattered over different bodies of water

Inconsistent Powers
Urban Fantasy tends towards long long series with multiple books. It also tends to have complex magical rules, rich worlds with differing powers and a lot to keep track of. And some writers don’t get it right, or they mold their world building around the story. So we get a character who can use a super power in one book or has a magical tool or ability, yet in the next they seem to have forgotten all about it. A dire threat becomes a minor inconvenience. Magical laws are shattered, creatures recover from their restrictions.

It’s a pet hate of ours - be consistent with your own rules!


No Angst Without Reason.
Angst is a staple of Urban Fantasy, we know we can’t be rid of it. The tragically tortured vampire is, alas, here to stay. But, we beg, if you’re going to make your vampire/werewolf/whatever tortured and sad give them a reason to be. We are beyond tired of beings lamenting the fact they’re going to live forever, be immune to any and all disease and have super powers as well. Oh, it’s such a hard life! They need a reason to lament their super powers - a curse, being hunted, some kind of downside. And no, “not being able to see the sun” doesn’t really detract from the whole living forever thing. Nor does “I just want to be normal” count - because, really, who is ABOVE normal desires mundanity? Really?

Someone who complains when they have little reason to is generally considered spoilt and whiny - it’s not endearing.


Ancient Teenagers
And lo the ancient vampire came into the room, the millennia resting on her shoulders. In her eyes you could see the weight of the centuries and around her everything felt weak, transitory, before her eternal presence. And then she spent the next 3 episodes obsessing about going to the prom. And oh, my god, isn’t that boy so cute?!

Chekhov's Junkshop

Chekhov’s gun is a theatre and literature term coined by Anton Chekhov saying: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

Or, in other words, you shouldn’t have something in the plot if it is not relevant. If you mention something, it should add to the plot, the characterisation, the world building - something. Well, reading Urban Fantasy, we have gone beyond mere Chekhov’s gun. We’re lost in Chekhov’s junkshop. We have so many irrelevant things piled on the shelves, stacked under foot  and hanging from the ceiling, that it is an arduous task to battle through it all.

If you are an avid reader of fiction, I am quite certain that you have come across this little trope. For the life of me, I don’t understand why writers have a tendency to tell rather than show.  This of course results in copious amounts information delivered in the most dry fashion possible, that leads a reader to look at their toilet and think that it would far more fun to clean it, than read another ponderous word.

And when showing really needs to be the norm when it comes to emotion. Aside from the fact we really do not need to know every single little emotional nuance a character feels at every given moment (seriously, it’s like having a mood ring attached to the book), please show us. We can usually infer anger, sadness, etc from their actions, we don’t need to be told - and if your telling us takes the better part of 2-3 pages of moping, for you to adequately describe just how very very sad your character is, then I am going to go find something more interesting to do. Like clean tile grout. And if there is anything worse than telling rather than showing - it is showing AND telling. When I see lines like this: Jane collapsed, sobbing piteously. Her heart was like ash, she never imagined she could ever feel happiness again, she sobbed in misery, her grief almost overwhelming I despair. The minute she was prostrate and sobbing piteously, I knew how sad she was. I don’t need 5 more paragraphs to tell me the sad character is sad.

Speaking of telling, not showing. We know your world is fascinating and interesting and we know you want to tell us about it. But World Building should not be a series of info-dumps. If we want long lectures we can go back to university or dig up our text books - show us the world, introduce us to concepts as they become relevant - don’t treat us to essays. And on the subject of essays - if you have a degree in English literature (or any field) your novel is not the place to show off how many books you’ve read and can quote or how much you know. If you’re that desperate to establish your credentials, include your letters in the “about the author” section.

The really inventive writers then of course get into bed with Mr. Thesaurus in an attempt to make their ramblings seem more important.  This means we get the happy marriage of over written prose, combined with words that no one has used since the 1400’s.  Please, please, if you must bore us with over written pretentious nonsense, for heaven’s sakes at least spare poor Mr. Thesaurus such abuse.  What did he ever do to you, to result in such a continuous beating?  If you must continue to thrash Mr. Thesaurus, may I recommend that you have the decency to at the very least introduce him to Ms. Dictionary.  You see, using a word improperly further throws off your useless prose and makes it even more frustrating to have to slog through, in the hope of somehow magically finding a plot.  Sometimes finding a plot behind all of the info dumping and useless world building is like searching for the one grain of salt in the pepper grinder.

Existence is not Entitlement, Erasure is not Acceptable

As we have often made note of in this space, Urban Fantasy, Dystopian, Horror, and Steampunk is often filled with the erasure of GLBT people (note: a universal erasure applies to trans people) disabled people and people of colour.  The default as with all forms of media is to fall back on the most privileged bodies at all times. And it’s wall to wall - not only will the protagonist always be as privileged as possible, but so will most of the people who surround them as well.

And in the few cases were marginalised characters do exist, all is not rosy. It’s very rare for us to get more than a single token character; in fact, sometimes we’re lucky to get that - often we will see the odd marginalised face in a crowd scene, or someone referred to in passing without any real ‘screen’ time at all. When we do have them, the characters are often hollow. They have no real traits or personalities, no goals, no personhood - they’re just a placeholder for the necessary inclusion cookies. And, were that not problematic enough, usually they exist to serve the privileged protagonists - side-kicks, best friends, entourage, never people in their own right.

Of course, in the few occasions when they do have some traits, they normally fall into ridiculous, stereotyped tropes that are hardly progressive and serve to further “other” them while maintaining the supremacy of privileged people.

As we have mentioned in the past, gatekeepers do effect the ability of writers to include historically marginalized characters; however, they are not solely responsible for the dearth of representation.  Just like everyone else, writers are born into a discourse that privileges certain bodies and unless they have made a conscious effort to decolonize their minds and consider a world which may be outside of their lived experience, the tendency to repeat dominant social narratives becomes normalised. Even with writers who are aware of this phenomenon, they often fall into the trap of hunting for inclusion points by introducing the gay uncle or a wise negro to fulfill what they deem to be a quota rather than investing in these marginalized characters to the same degree that they invest in characters that come from a dominant sub group.

And this erasure costs. Our children grow up forever seeing themselves as not worth talking about, their stories not worth telling. And when they see themselves? They see themselves as less, or they see some caricature that’s supposed to be them but is barely human. This is why even today when Black children are asked to take the “doll test” they routinely invest the White doll with all positive traits and the Black doll with negative traits. Children learn at an early age to internalize the negative images and messages created by media, and this inevitably follows them all the days of their lives.

Abuse as True Love in Paranormal Romance

There are a lot of tropes in paranormal romance that consistently raise their ugly heads - many of which we explain in our Lexicon

Many of these destructive tropes are often “justified” by being “explained by the woo-woo”. In other words, the fact that it is magic or some kind of preternatural creature doing these things makes it okay, not problematic or otherwise acceptable. So a possessive or stalking boyfriend is explained by being a werewolf or a vampire - therefore a creature with territorial instincts. This has the additional problematic element of justifying or excusing the problematic behaviour - and these explanations are very reminiscent of the old excuses: “he can’t help it” and “it’s just his way” and “I could smell your desire” sounds very much like “you want it really.”

Regardless of the excuse provided by being a possessive supernatural being, or an aggressive, violent or out of control creature - we’re still looking at relationships that look very abusive and in some cases are outright abusive and they don’t become harmless just because the abuser turns furry or has fangs. It is particularly problematic because these books are largely written by women and the books themselves are quite often targeted at a young female audience.

Stalking as Love trope.

In the Twilight Saga S. Meyer has her vampire Edward watch Bella as she sleeps. Think about that for a moment. A man enters a woman’s room without her permission and watches her. In the real world we call that a peeping tom and that normally leads to a quick trip to the local jail and yet repeatedly this is constructed as romantic. Even Edward’s faults however are far outstripped by Adam Hauptman of the Mercedes Thompson series. Because Adam is a werewolf as is supposedly naturally protective (Read: creepy stalker dude), he installs cameras into Mercy’s garage without her permission. Of course this is only because he is worried about an unsavoury element wanting a damn oil, lube and filter but what it really comes down to is ensuring that he has the ability to monitor every single moment of her day. Patricia Briggs, the author of this series, could have redeemed this by having Mercy demand that the surveillance be removed but of course if that is what the alpha werewolf wants, that’s what the alpha werewolf gets.

Unwanted Touches and “No means I want you More”.

This is one of the more prevalent and problematic tropes we see repeated over and over. The idea that a woman is always reluctant when it comes to romance, relationships and sex - so she has to be won over, her resistance worn down and, basically, she needs to be nagged or coerced into sex.

In Twilight Jacob forces a kiss on Bella because he believes that this will force her to admit her feeling of love for him. At that point she had repeatedly explained that her feelings did not expand beyond friendship but why honour a woman’s feelings about her own body when the woo justifies forcing oneself upon her. If that were not enough, Bella’s father then goes on to congratulate Jacob for assaulting his daughter. I suppose as long as you get daddy’s permission everything is a okay. Woman have, after all, been transferred from father to husband for generations.

In Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series we have this repeated multiple times in at least 8 of her books. The Psy women (Faith, Sascha, Ashaya) are all very reluctant  to engage emotionally or even be touched. Repeatedly their Changeling lovers touch them when told not to, make romantic and sexual advances despite being told repeatedly that it’s unwelcome. This is often “explained by the woo-woo” by their emotionally damaged culture but, ultimately, they are women saying “no” who are repeatedly ignored. And this is exacerbated by the Changeling and human women (Talin and Indigo) who, again, say no but are pursued no matter how often they say they are not interested in a relationship

JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series takes this to the next level. In Lover Eternal Rhage has just met Mary when he pushes her against a wall and presses his body against her. She asks to be let go and he keeps pushing against her in a scene that, frankly, looked like sexual harassment.