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Cliches you can't stand

DestinyPlayer said:
I was considering writing up a world where culture evolved in a way to consider darkness, rain, thunderstorms and such to be "good", and sunlight, day and the clear sky to be "evil". It wouldn't actually be that way metaphysically, just culturally.
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We've Made Children 'Fear The Sky'
Unfortunately, not thinking about drones is a luxury many people don't have, a point made overwhelmingly clear by a clip of a 13-year-old Pakistani boy whose grandmother had been killed by a drone strike. In the clip, Zubair Rehman testifies that he no longer loves blue skies, he prefers grey skies. "The drones do not fly when the skies are grey."
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Already done, courtesy of the War on Terror. Thanks Obama.
 
Mortis Nuntius said:
The hero having modern values in a historical setting.
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Admittedly that one is nothing new but is honestly rather normal and common across the ages, King Arthur and his knights as well as romances that involved figures of Greek and Roman mythology tended to have traits and values that would have been out of place in lets say migration period Britannia or ancient Greece and Italy but wouldn't have been out of place in the time periods the stories were written.

It often led to things like different knights like Galahad, Lancelot(who apparently originally came from a separate and unrelated french tale originally) Percival and so forth being the foremost knight of King Arthur's court depending on the time and what part of Europe the tale was being written down.
 
The Laurent said:
This can also be justified depending on the value or idea, because there have always been people who are outliers

Please provide an example of a "modern value" and a work of fiction it appeared in.

And do you mean, "Particular modern values, or that their every value is modern"
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Atheism, gets on great with Jews or Muslims as they appear, knows that humours and by extension bleeding is full of crap will intervene to stop a witch burning, thinks its fine to fuck up a noble's day when the latter is being a dick and will believe in some form of democracy, will treat women as perfect equals, a strong moral stance against slavery hundreds and hundreds of years before that was really a thing and will often paint their own side as fighting for freedom or civilisation rather than a mix of civic/feudal obligation and profit.

Generally, you'll find protagonists would not be out of place in the modern day. Now people have always been people but by this point its so common place that its not excusable to me anymore that everyone we're meant to root for is basically a 21st century person sent back hundreds or thousands of years.
 
Alane1 said:
Admittedly that one is nothing new but is honestly rather normal and common across the ages, King Arthur and his knights as well as romances that involved figures of Greek and Roman mythology tended to have traits and values that would have been out of place in lets say migration period Britannia or ancient Greece and Italy but wouldn't have been out of place in the time periods the stories were written.

It often led to things like different knights like Galahad, Lancelot(who apparently originally came from a separate and unrelated french tale originally) Percival and so forth being the foremost knight of King Arthur's court depending on the time and what part of Europe the tale was being written down.
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Yeah but Le Mort de Arthur is basically a super hero comic. It has Arthur unite Europe to fight and defeat the Roman Empire, carry out amazing feats, impress and awe everyone important he meets and multiple passages can be summed up as "these super special people meet and are totally badass together and then drink and eat and pray and stuff and wow they were amazing" its pure wish fufilment and the people writing it were often completely ignorant about Roman Britain. They'd have no idea what an early Roman-British/Anglo Saxon king and his men would look like and if they did they wouldn't care because its part morality tale and part chivalric romance and part Action Comics.

This is fine but I don't really hold it to the standards I do of works written when a few books, phone calls and later google searching could give you at least an outline of what life would be like for the people you are writing.
 
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Numby said:
It's somewhat necessary. It's hard to really present why the terrible things they think or do should be acceptable or condonable, at least not without implying that they are acceptable or condonable.
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People still gladly read Gilgamesh or the Greek stories today, though, so I wouldn't call it necessary.
 
Mortis Nuntius said:
Atheism, gets on great with Jews or Muslims as they appear, knows that humours and by extension bleeding is full of crap will intervene to stop a witch burning, thinks its fine to fuck up a noble's day when the latter is being a dick and will believe in some form of democracy, will treat women as perfect equals, a strong moral stance against slavery hundreds and hundreds of years before that was really a thing and will often paint their own side as fighting for freedom or civilisation rather than a mix of civic/feudal obligation and profit.

Generally, you'll find protagonists would not be out of place in the modern day. Now people have always been people but by this point its so common place that its not excusable to me anymore that everyone we're meant to root for is basically a 21st century person sent back hundreds or thousands of years.
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Now, all of those together is not that realistic, but some of them are actually more realistic in isolation than you think.
 
The Laurent said:
Now, all of those together is not that realistic, but some of them are actually more realistic in isolation than you think.
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Yeah in isolation but they almost never are in isolation. Generally "good" characters will be good by our standards but frankly I like exploring the headspace of different characters who feel real. I don't care if they do evil shit and don't see anything wrong with that because that's how the world works isn't it? To clarify their victims or the consequences of their choices should also be shown and the reader left to deduce that obviously that's fucked up without needing their hand held to realise something evil is evil whatever the person carrying it out thinks or is thought of by others.
 
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The Laurent said:
Eh, I've seen them in isolation or partially but not all of them before?
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I can't tell you what you've seen. I've seen plenty of characters tick at least a few of them.

Normally any main character in a Conn Iggulden book or Simon Scarrow or Ken Follet's favourites. Just of the top of my head but there are plenty of others I recall reading over the years. Generally I dislike sanitized protagonists whose day job includes murder, slavery, exploitation and dealing with the power structures of their time and yet are above it all.
 
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I don't especially care if it's realistic. I would read a protagonist with modern values over one with, for example, 50s American values literally every time. There's only so far you can justify focusing on and sympathising with a truly godawful person using "Period appropriateness".
 
I don't read historical fiction so I can't comment on that but 'period appropriateness' in fantasy is almost always crap. It almost always is 'look at how dark and edgey this setting is' and never the banality of evil that crap things in the real word is. It is like having a 'period appropriate' fantasy set in modern day where everyone is working at mcdonalds/sweatshop with a boss that is a millionaire and laughs constantly at everyone's suffering while being mustache twirling racist.
 
The trouble with trying to be "period appropriate" is that it often involves concepts that we, as modern folks, are hardwired to consider absolutely revolting or as a villainous trait. Things like the acceptability of war and marital rape, slavery, crippling punishment, judicial torture, killing all males in a settlement and resettling the survivors (i.e. ethnic cleansing), propaganda, and brutal violence against heretics and pagans. Other things, like concepts of religiosity and honour culture seem equally strange and alien to us and just weird.
The problem if you're trying to be completely "period appropriate", the audience will lose sympathy with your viewpoint characters, so it should only be done in moderation.
There's a way to do "period appropriateness" without having your character be a complete piece of garbage, though! I don't know if you folks have ever played tabletop, but I've recently begun playing my first game of Legend of the Five Rings, and it's interesting because everything about the setting and the way characters act and behave is drenched with these values we'd consider alien today, and it makes it very easy to accept things like the hierarchical social structure involving untouchables, the importance of honour and courtesy, and the prevalence of violence and brutality.

There are limits, of course, related to not snapping the audience out of that mindset -- e.g. LotFR has female samurai (though there is some historical precedent to that) -- but it's possible to evoke sympathy in the audience and be period appropriate if you properly contextualise the setting and characters so that the audience accepts these different values.

Few stories go to the effort, of course. Shame, really.
 
Fernandel said:
The trouble with trying to be "period appropriate" is that it often involves concepts that we, as modern folks, are hardwired to consider absolutely revolting or as a villainous trait. Things like the acceptability of war and marital rape, slavery, crippling punishment, judicial torture, killing all males in a settlement and resettling the survivors (i.e. ethnic cleansing), propaganda, and brutal violence against heretics and pagans. Other things, like concepts of religiosity and honour culture seem equally strange and alien to us and just weird.
The problem if you're trying to be completely "period appropriate", the audience will lose sympathy with your viewpoint characters, so it should only be done in moderation.
There's a way to do "period appropriateness" without having your character be a complete piece of garbage, though! I don't know if you folks have ever played tabletop, but I've recently begun playing my first game of Legend of the Five Rings, and it's interesting because everything about the setting and the way characters act and behave is drenched with these values we'd consider alien today, and it makes it very easy to accept things like the hierarchical social structure involving untouchables, the importance of honour and courtesy, and the prevalence of violence and brutality.

There are limits, of course, related to not snapping the audience out of that mindset -- e.g. LotFR has female samurai (though there is some historical precedent to that) -- but it's possible to evoke sympathy in the audience and be period appropriate if you properly contextualise the setting and characters so that the audience accepts these different values.

Few stories go to the effort, of course. Shame, really.
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There's a limit to what you can and can't do. I usually just go for trying to make the protagonist at least reasonably fair for his/her time, and then also make sure situations don't crop up where some other views might be present. Unless they're meant to be as part of a point.

EX: The average person in medieval England really doesn't have to think about slavery, and doesn't have to go on a one-page rant about how Aristotle, hallowed by his name, was right that some people are naturally servile/etc. Obviously there are some topics that will come up no matter what, of course.
 
The Laurent said:
There's a limit to what you can and can't do. I usually just go for trying to make the protagonist at least reasonably fair for his/her time, and then also make sure situations don't crop up where some other views might be present. Unless they're meant to be as part of a point.

EX: The average person in medieval England really doesn't have to think about slavery, and doesn't have to go on a one-page rant about how Aristotle, hallowed by his name, was right that some people are naturally servile/etc. Obviously there are some topics that will come up no matter what, of course.
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Sure, but fantasy nearly always tries to tackle things like chivalry and aristocracy, magical and nonmagical slavery, kingly duties, etc... And it's just absolutely shocking how little attention authors generally pay to matters of station, courtesy, honour culture, heritage and ancestry, religion, and other such things that would be relevant.

I deliberately brought up Legend of the Five Rings because it doesn't shy away from this. It fully expects characters to deliver challenges to one another when their honour is impinged; rank, status, and courtesy drench every single conversation; and people are required and expected to be able to commit violence when ordered, when insulted, to others -- and to themselves. Honourable suicide is not just possible, but also expected.

It deliberately clashes with our modern sensibilities, and with a good GM and a good gaming group succeeds at subsuming characters into this worldview and attitude that seems alien to us. There are far too few stories that try to do the same.

For what it's worth, I'm turning our sessions into prose, and at the moment the most difficult thing doing so is just trying to achieve that effect. Totally worthwhile, though! More stories should do it, is all I'm saying.
 
An idea on this tangent: the subject of slavery.

Ask a 21st century human what s/he thinks of slavery. Excluding the fringe crazies (neo-Nazis, Confederate apologists etc.), you will most probably hear something like "Well, it's clearly evil and wrong. Why are you even asking me this?"

But if you ask the same question of a human from an earlier time, who has grown up in an environment where slavery is a fact of life? The response will probably be much more neutral, something along the lines of "Well, it's clearly a very lucrative industry."

(I think this came up in Spice and Wolf?)
 
The Victorian said:
"Sorry, Timmy, you're just too kind and peaceful inside! Until you learn to be more of a prick to others, it's to the moon with you!"
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I think it'd be more of a "Sorry Timmy, you just aren't giving a shit about other people enough so it's to the moon with you to wake up your emotions."

I think I've said it before, maybe even in this thread. Dark Side= Bad, but! Okay simile time.

The Dark Side is Protestant Satan, it's bad. The problem is D&D, in that people are running around and saying it's of Satan when it's not.

So when people say the Dark Side isn't so bad they're probably talking about the D&D.
 
Mithras said:
Game of Thrones tends to be the worst for it ("look at Danaerys, she is just like Hillary Clinton! SLAY KWEEN!")
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ASOIAF goes back on forth of this tbh.

On the one hand its view of women are worse than the periods it takes influence from and all the child brides and complete lack of authority and respect save in very niche situations is kind of well noted.

On the other it does a good job of humane and likable characters thinking democracy or rather mob rule and individualism is utter madness that leaves communities chaotic, inconsistent and vulnerable to outside attack. Very few characters question the right of the nobility to rule or enjoy privilege and there are very few pure white heroes totally removed from their society.

Its imperfect but the world at least shows systems can be totally evil and yet have good people buying into them wholeheartedly whilst other good people fight back against them. Part of the advantage of such a large cast of characters.
 
NemiTheNen said:
I think it'd be more of a "Sorry Timmy, you just aren't giving a shit about other people enough so it's to the moon with you to wake up your emotions."

I think I've said it before, maybe even in this thread. Dark Side= Bad, but! Okay simile time.

The Dark Side is Protestant Satan, it's bad. The problem is D&D, in that people are running around and saying it's of Satan when it's not.

So when people say the Dark Side isn't so bad they're probably talking about the D&D.
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...what the heck does Dungeons and Dragons have to do with Star Wars? I mean, beyond Saga and d20 editions of Star Wars RPG.
 
Kylar said:
...what the heck does Dungeons and Dragons have to do with Star Wars? I mean, beyond Saga and d20 editions of Star Wars RPG.
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Did you fail high school English, or just have a shitty program?

The Dark Side is the Devil; it eats, it destroys it is ruins and perverts, it fucks you up. But you also have people saying D&D is the Devil even though it's not. There's PR Dark Side, D&D, whatever people with authority are calling the Dark Side, And then there's actual Dark Side which is like angry PCP that 'makes' you murder a temple full of children.

Gray Jedi, people who are all The Dark Side isn't so bad are more likely to be doing the D&D version of The Dark Side, it's not the Devil, but people still call it that. The stuff hat isn't evil but people call bad anyways.

It's like the problem people keep running into when talking about Dresden Files Laws of Magic, there's the Laws of Magic as codified by the White Council, and there's the Laws of Magic that are inescapable metaphysical laws. It causes people to talk past each other a lot.
 
NemiTheNen said:
Did you fail high school English, or just have a shitty program?

The Dark Side is the Devil; it eats, it destroys it is ruins and perverts, it fucks you up. But you also have people saying D&D is the Devil even though it's not. There's PR Dark Side, D&D, whatever people with authority are calling the Dark Side, And then there's actual Dark Side which is like angry PCP that 'makes' you murder a temple full of children.

Gray Jedi, people who are all The Dark Side isn't so bad are more likely to be doing the D&D version of The Dark Side, it's not the Devil, but people still call it that. The stuff hat isn't evil but people call bad anyways.

It's like the problem people keep running into when talking about Dresden Files Laws of Magic, there's the Laws of Magic as codified by the White Council, and there's the Laws of Magic that are inescapable metaphysical laws. It causes people to talk past each other a lot.
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The thing is, the D&D point is so out of left field. And also from the 1980s.
 
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