Reading more widely, I shouldn’t be surprised at the number of fantasy genre tropes we love and hate.
A trope is any type of figure of speech, theme, image, character, or plot element used so often it becomes ingrained in storytelling. All genres have them, but the fantasy genre is piled higher than the Dark Tower.
The full list of fantasy genre tropes rums longer than an old-fashioned phone book. So what swoops down like a dragon out of the sun this week?
The map in the front of the book
Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth at the start of The Lord of the Rings, set a precedent fantasy authors ignore at their peril. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, and immerse us more fully in the world, what is it about a map that irritates? Why can’t you just describe it? In words. Like authors do.
The Protagonist is ‘The (Chosen) One’
A classic, made even better if there’s a Prophecy involved. Frank Herbert nailed it to the Fourth Wall in Dune:
“They’ve a legend here, a prophecy, that a leader will come to them, child of a Bene Gesserit, to lead them to true freedom. It follows the familiar messiah pattern”
But every protagonist is some kind of Chosen One. Better still if the protagonist is a lowly orphan, street urchin, or farm boy. Preferably all three. We love an underdog.
The Dark Wizard, Necromancer, Demon, or Demi-God with a British-English vocabulary
Every. Single. Time. Need we say more?
Complex magic systems that don’t make sense (or are downright silly)
Okay, almost all of the ‘hard magic’ systems get silly somewhere down the line.
Bryce O’Connor summed up Potter-verse magic as “aggressively wave a hollow stick filled with dead animal parts through the air while yelling bastardized Latin and hope the damn thing doesn’t blow up in your face.”
First prize goes to Brandon Sanderson whose sorcerers swallow heavy metals then burn them internally to create electro-magnetic fields. That’s some acid reflux.
Stupid names with too many syllables and apostrophes
Tolkein set the bar for fantastical-sounding names, not with apostrophes, but Old Englsh and Old Norse diacritics (accents). Fantasy authors invented all manner of weird and not-so wonderful character names ever since.
Anne MacCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern has naming convention with F’ followed by random letters: F’lan,F’nor, F’lessen, and F’lon. And F’Nar-F’Nar. I may have made that one up. I’m still waiting for F’Artbendar F’Artfayce.
Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time) gets the gold medal for working this lot on multiple fantasy levels: Tel’aran’rhiod and Trolloc band names – Ahf’frait, Al’ghol, Bhan’sheen, Dha’vol, Dhai’mon, Dhjin’nen, Ghar’gheal, Ghob’hlin, Gho’hlem, Ghraem’lan, Ko’bal, Kno’mon.
But Sanderson takes first prize again. Nodding and winking through the Stormlight Archive: Numuhukumakiaki’aialunamor, or as he’s known for most of the books, Rock.
A Fine Line
I’ve only skimmed the surface. Fantasy Book Fanatic goes to town with a seventeen-point list of fantasy cliches including ‘Monotonous World Building,’ ‘Enrollment in an Academic Magic Institution’ and the ‘Old, Decrepit Mentor.’
So why do we keep reading? Because we love them.
No one had ever tried [the blindingly obvious solution] before a teenager thought of it!
The idiot sidekick to the Dark Lord who needs the plan explained to them
The idiot sidekick to the protagonist who needs the plan explained to them
The rampant horn-dog bard who will sleep with anything, animal, vegetable or mineral.
“But I can’t kill the evil mass-murdering Dark Lord without becoming evil like them.”
“Magic is dying!”
“The age of other races is ending.”
The Reluctant Hero.
Because Willing Hero’s are vain, narcissistic, unsufferable a-holes?
“The End of an Age.” J.R.R started it.
Actually I don’t think he did. There’s always been a “this is the passing of the magical age of X.”
Dragons. Cool dragons. Wise dragons. Supremely evil dragons. No dragons are ever whiny, insecure a-holes.
Dragons without a coherent ecosystem or food chain.
Old enough to be hot, young enough not to have their s*** together.
“Apprentice, I must pass on to you the one secret only I know and it’s this-” Mentor dies.
Mentor gets resurrected in Book Two.
“Apprentice, it took me four hundred years to learn this s*** but you’re going to do it in four days.”
Mentor dies again in Book 3.
I can feel a whole ream of master/apprentice tropes coming down the line.
“Apprentice, you just accidentally discovered the forgotten spell that no one used these last ten thousand years!”
900 pages of tedious Fantasy Soap Opera, but the main characters don’t have THE conversation that’s bugging them until page 850.
Relationship Councillor doesn’t exist as a character class in these fantasy worlds.
Teenager gatecrashes the King’s council, President’s cabinet meeting, elven moot or whatever and all the vain, greedy, arrogant a-hole adults meekly go along with whatever they say.
Teenager saves the world. Yeah, right.
“We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves to save the kingdom.” Screw the kingdom.
The farm boy is a secret prince. The milking maid is a secret princess.
Chosen One becomes the villain. I’d read that.
Paul Atreides, Dune.
Thousand-year old fae/vampire/wizard sleeps with a teenager. Ick!
Ick and also why?
“You can cast the un-castable spell. Just believe in yourself.”
“Luke, trust your feelings.” Barf.
“The power was in me all along.” Projectile barf.
The Twist Ending: our side are the bad guys.
Ender’s Game, Fourth Wing, etc.
“You must restore the balance between Good and Evil (capital letters).”
Why? Just get rid of the Evil and let everyone be happy?!?!?
‘Morally gray’: a-hole. Anti-hero: a-hole, but fun. Refuses to kill the villain: a-hole; introduce them to the anti-hero.
Rehabilitating the villain through their origin story
Malificent, Wicked, Cruella, Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Star Wars prequels
Female character gives up her powers for the greater good. No male character ever does.
But then she gets them back again as a reward x10.
The Under-dog’s Last Stand.
Are you for or against?