The Writers' Circle

The Stereotypical Fantasy –

You’ve heard it before: the unexpected hero (usually the innocent young farmer who lives in a secluded village where evil is a thing of bedtime stories) must undertake a perilous journey (usually in order to find something, a trinket or a stone or a sword, or to destroy something, see previous). With a group of friends (often a “fellowship”, sometimes a “company”, or a “band”), they must do this impossible thing before the villain (probably a “Dark Lord” or an “Evil One” who sits in a black tower all day, sending out orc-like minions to do his horrible bidding) can catch the hero and steal the trinket or stone or sword or whatever it is the unexpected hero is most likely trying to find or get rid of.
Upon the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954-55, the interpretation of the word “fantasy” went from “garden fairies and knobby-nosed gnomes” to “high elves and evil orcs”. It has not changed since, and perhaps it is time for a new facet of this wide genre to be lighted up.
Even the most dedicated fans of magic and mayhem recognize that the formula for a passable fantasy plot has been growing a little stale. The authors must also realize that no longer will hearts speed up at the thought of an epic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. No longer does the wraith-like, black-hooded, soul-screaming rider strike fear into the minds of the audience. The omnipresent winged dragon gracing the cover of every third-rate paperbacked novel on the fantasy shelf at the local library no longer intrigues. Garish titles dealing with rogue knights, warrior princesses, and snowy-haired wizards promise nothing but the shallow and dry reflections of past archetypes. Even the use of magic has become a stereotype – it comes out of the “bearer” or the “gifted” in waves of neon power from fingertips or staves upon the chanting of magical words (such words usually being encrypted and completely incomprehensible, that is until the moment of peril arrives and the main character suddenly finds himself spouting them with little or no effort at all, usually “as though someone else were speaking through him.”)
Even the names become sickeningly familiar when one reads enough. (“Luthien” is a particular favorite since its debut in The Lord of the Rings.) More often than not, there are at least five characters in a single book who share the first seven letters of their names so that a reader is bemused and frustrated beyond any possible appreciation of the plot. Even more often, nothing short of a pronunciation lexicon at the end of the appendix will assist the reader in deciphering the abundant “ae”s and “úi”s that grace these mythical-sounding names.
Of course, this is only in the adult category. Young adult fantasy has its own particular warp. Upon commencement of the first day of school, a teenaged girl discovers a new kid (this new kid is always a boy. He is unswervingly brooding, probably dark-haired, and always drop-dead gorgeous. He also has a habit of popping up right behind said main character and sexily breathing down her neck, which sometimes gives her visions of other worlds but more often just leaves her smitten and gaping like an idiot.) This new kid ends up being a fairy prince, something that is surprisingly surprising considering how frequently they pop up. The boy and the girl fall in love, but of course, since she is not a fairy, she cannot go to Faerie with him. So she languishes. Suddenly, the evil usurper of the Faerie throne comes to earth to kill said fairy prince. In the moment of truth, the main character discovers a power she didn’t realize she possessed . . . she is a fairy (thanks to an unfaithful mother who shared a night of passion with a mythological creature and then apparently forgot all about it). Once the usurper is dead (most often taken down by the girl’s unexpected magic as the prince lies unconscious in a corner), the two of them are free to fly to Faerie. (This is completely permissible, as the main character’s parents are actually abusive or inattentive and won’t miss her if she vanishes from the face of the earth).
This is what happens when the unimaginative try to imagine a world of their own. They draw, leechlike, from other fantasy writers, escaping plagiarism by the skin of their teeth. They add their papery bricks of predictable nonsense to the genre’s house of cards, relying not on the stories themselves, but on the sparkling praise heaped upon them by reviewers (who are often treacherously close to being sued for false advertising.)
Fantasy is withering under the blasts of stereotyping commercialism. The genre needs new blood. Someone needs to turn the page, or perhaps close this present book altogether and pick up a new one, in order for fantasy to be irrigated once again by the waters of a fresh imagination, one that is unpolluted by the past age of rusty conjuration and is ready to explore the undetermined depths of myth and folklore and begin again.