Dark fantasy setup parameters
Dec. 18th, 2005 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThings I'm now looking for in a story (the ones I can think of so far today):
No seperate races of magic user. No just being born that way. No secret hidden culture that looks out on the mundanes with, at best, patronising affection. No magic users being inherently better than humans.
Just magic as one more thing a person can learn to do. Something that requires hard work and study. Something that some people are better at than others, yes, but by comparison to maths or athletics, not having some inherent magic twinkle dust. Just magic as hard work.
And absolutely no mocking the poor deluded wiccans et al, the mundanes who think they do magic, poor dears. Personally I find that attitude more offensive than the 'burn in hell' thing.
No cuddly vampires. None. No living vampires who are just born that way but aren't evil really. No baby vampires trying to eat the dog. None of that cutesy stuff.
Vampires are the big scary things that prey on human blood. Some vampires choose to try not to. And preferably there should be no shiny mcguffin involved, they just try and make a choice.
That does complicate things for the vampire hunting team - if the bad guys have free will and can choose not to hunt, you have to prove that particular vampire was a hunter before you blow them up. And that is exactly as it should be. Vampires are criminals, not an opposing army. They are exterminated because of what they do, not what they are.
That is key - people are about what they *do*, not what they are. No aristocrats here. No racism.
Demons can be nifty metaphors for all kinds of dark things. Or they can be your friendly neighbourhood aliens, with strange eating habits. If the story has both kinds it gets problematic, because then what you have is an ethnic minority who represent some aspect of evil, and hello to the racism again.
The key is free will. If people have it they are people. If entities just do the bad things because they are the bad things, then they aren't people. They are perhaps animals or forces of nature, but not people.
I suspect that is why the lines got muddied up so much on Buffy and Angel. Fighting fires is interesting, but fighting an evil genius who actually is pretty and cares about his girlfriend even though he doesn't care about anyone else at all except maybe some of the good guys... layers and subtleties. Turns it into a chess match. Not just hunting any more. Much more interesting stuff.
So vampires can be hunger on legs, hunt and kill, but that gets rather boring. They can be charming hunger on legs, but still you always know exactly what they're trying to do. To get really interesting they have to have some options, and that leads to the option of not acting like a vampire. But I'll say again, it does not lead to the option of vampires being cute and cuddly misunderstood woobies. Not in any story I want to read.
No seperate law for vampires. Vampire politics and vampire gang wars are not some mysterious seperate thing. If they live in their own world literally, fine, whatever laws they want they'll have. If they live in our world and just decide it is a seperate world, no, not fine. And all the arguments about humans not being able to cope rest on the idea that humans wouldn't understand. When humans are born they don't understand anything. But collectively we understand rather a lot. There's this process called learning that puts the lot into the little, and then someone can cope.
Learning to cope is key, both as a thing I want from a story and as a way of drawing readers into the story. The reader must learn the rules and methods of the new world before they can feel properly involved with it. Therefore the humans of the story world can learn it all too.
And maybe the vampires are faster, stronger, all of that scary stuff, but humans are everywhere, and we have technology. Of course vampires were human once and also have technology, if you want to play it that way, but humans typically respond to being outclassed by being *more* and being *smarter*. David and Goliath, early weapons tech at its finest.
And if both vampires and magic exist, the trick would only be learning the spells that kill the vampires.
Everyone should play by the rules. Only killing in self defence, with review boards and all. No exemption because 'they just wouldn't understand'. No muscular person standing up and deciding they are the law. Their peers *will* understand. They can be explained to. They can very well decide if something was out of line. Everyone should answer to the law.
So basically what I'm looking for is this world only with a few extra options, more magic and more dangers. More learning, about more choices.
No seperate races of magic user. No just being born that way. No secret hidden culture that looks out on the mundanes with, at best, patronising affection. No magic users being inherently better than humans.
Just magic as one more thing a person can learn to do. Something that requires hard work and study. Something that some people are better at than others, yes, but by comparison to maths or athletics, not having some inherent magic twinkle dust. Just magic as hard work.
And absolutely no mocking the poor deluded wiccans et al, the mundanes who think they do magic, poor dears. Personally I find that attitude more offensive than the 'burn in hell' thing.
No cuddly vampires. None. No living vampires who are just born that way but aren't evil really. No baby vampires trying to eat the dog. None of that cutesy stuff.
Vampires are the big scary things that prey on human blood. Some vampires choose to try not to. And preferably there should be no shiny mcguffin involved, they just try and make a choice.
That does complicate things for the vampire hunting team - if the bad guys have free will and can choose not to hunt, you have to prove that particular vampire was a hunter before you blow them up. And that is exactly as it should be. Vampires are criminals, not an opposing army. They are exterminated because of what they do, not what they are.
That is key - people are about what they *do*, not what they are. No aristocrats here. No racism.
Demons can be nifty metaphors for all kinds of dark things. Or they can be your friendly neighbourhood aliens, with strange eating habits. If the story has both kinds it gets problematic, because then what you have is an ethnic minority who represent some aspect of evil, and hello to the racism again.
The key is free will. If people have it they are people. If entities just do the bad things because they are the bad things, then they aren't people. They are perhaps animals or forces of nature, but not people.
I suspect that is why the lines got muddied up so much on Buffy and Angel. Fighting fires is interesting, but fighting an evil genius who actually is pretty and cares about his girlfriend even though he doesn't care about anyone else at all except maybe some of the good guys... layers and subtleties. Turns it into a chess match. Not just hunting any more. Much more interesting stuff.
So vampires can be hunger on legs, hunt and kill, but that gets rather boring. They can be charming hunger on legs, but still you always know exactly what they're trying to do. To get really interesting they have to have some options, and that leads to the option of not acting like a vampire. But I'll say again, it does not lead to the option of vampires being cute and cuddly misunderstood woobies. Not in any story I want to read.
No seperate law for vampires. Vampire politics and vampire gang wars are not some mysterious seperate thing. If they live in their own world literally, fine, whatever laws they want they'll have. If they live in our world and just decide it is a seperate world, no, not fine. And all the arguments about humans not being able to cope rest on the idea that humans wouldn't understand. When humans are born they don't understand anything. But collectively we understand rather a lot. There's this process called learning that puts the lot into the little, and then someone can cope.
Learning to cope is key, both as a thing I want from a story and as a way of drawing readers into the story. The reader must learn the rules and methods of the new world before they can feel properly involved with it. Therefore the humans of the story world can learn it all too.
And maybe the vampires are faster, stronger, all of that scary stuff, but humans are everywhere, and we have technology. Of course vampires were human once and also have technology, if you want to play it that way, but humans typically respond to being outclassed by being *more* and being *smarter*. David and Goliath, early weapons tech at its finest.
And if both vampires and magic exist, the trick would only be learning the spells that kill the vampires.
Everyone should play by the rules. Only killing in self defence, with review boards and all. No exemption because 'they just wouldn't understand'. No muscular person standing up and deciding they are the law. Their peers *will* understand. They can be explained to. They can very well decide if something was out of line. Everyone should answer to the law.
So basically what I'm looking for is this world only with a few extra options, more magic and more dangers. More learning, about more choices.