First, a
distinction:
Stereotype: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or
idea of a particular type of person or thing.
Trope: A: a word or expression used in a
figurative sense, B: a common
or overused theme or device
In fantasy genre-fiction (I’m
thinking Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice
and Fire, The King killer Chronicles, and many others), you’re bound to
find not only ‘fantasy stereotypes’ but actual ‘fantasy tropes’, ideas that
seem to repeat themselves in this particular genre. People have something of a
love-hate relationship with tropes. On the one hand, you don’t want them to be
exactly the same every time, not only instantly recognizable but
indistinguishable from earlier incarnations in other stories. Yet on the other
hand, you don’t want them to be missing—we love most of the things that make
fantasy stories (perhaps I should say ‘high-fantasy’ or ‘epic-fantasy’) what
they are. If I go out to buy an apple, but attempt to locate an apple that isn’t
round, juicy, crunchy, etc… I might end up with something either totally undesirable,
or something that can’t be considered an apple at all. It’s the same with my endeavor
to find new fantasy literature.
What really makes a fantasy
trope wonderful is the way in which it is adapted, evolved, nuanced, developed,
improved upon, re-contextualized, deployed, executed… and so on…. By the
fantasy author. Let’s take a look at these wonderful fantasy tropes. I will
commentate on them in the order that they appear and are described as per the
lovely entry for them in Wikipedia.
Good vs. Evil
Obviously, the classical
approach to this concept is to clearly define these two forces as opposing
factions, showing the alignment to each for all relevant characters. In
contemporary works, we see a breakdown and deconstruction of the trope, but
without disposing of it entirely. By that I mean, there are factions and
characters set up against each other, and they may be construed as either good
or evil for the perception of the audience, but that colouring may change or
even become ambiguous as the story progresses. Bad-guys may turn out to be
good-guys and vice-versa, or the authors may even leave it up to us to decide
who the good-guys and bad-guys actually are. We may argue these points with our
peers in book-review sessions. But importantly, we’ll still be talking about
the concepts of good and evil. And if we are still doing that, this trope is
still a successful ‘keeper’ in the world of fantasy fiction.
Hero
Everyone loves a heroic
figure, but like ‘Good vs Evil’, it’s easy to be predictable and boring with
the trope. These days we also have the concept of the anti-hero, “a central
character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes.”
Audiences by-and-large identify more closely with heroes who also have meaningful
flaws. Yet characters, especially protagonists, can’t be too mundane. We find
something deeply agreeable about heroes who are capable of something we
ourselves aren’t capable of. Fantasy is a genre that further enables that
extension.
Dark Lord
Ah, my all-time favourite
without doubt. For the same reason that we like romanticized battles over real
ones, we prefer romanticized villains over real ones. Perhaps you’ve felt as
though you wanted to see more of Darth Vader during the story-telling process,
compared with Luke Skywalker. Dark Lords are cool. They hang out in Dark Towers
(another beautiful fantasy trope), wear dark clothes, have dark dialogue, exercise
dark powers, have dark agendas, and so on. But it becomes rather one-dimensional
unless you figure out realistic motives for them and subtleties that retain the
attention of contemporary audiences.
Quest
The trope most popularized by
Tolkien, it spawned countless computer/video-games and roleplaying games, not
to mention works of fictional literature. It’s SUCH a good vehicle for a story.
Just be wary of your quest starting in such stereotypical conditions, with such
stereotypical ending conditions, and featuring such a stereotypical blend of ‘character
classes’. Of course your story’s characters are going to need some kind of
problem to solve, some kind of agenda to pursue. But there is plenty of room to
carve out variation upon this trope.
Magic
This could go well beyond the
scope of the present blog-post, since the concept of the ‘magic system’ is a
bit of a thing. It’s such a malleable
and variable thing though. You can
keep your magic to something sourced ‘off-page’, a ‘black-box’, something like ‘magic-realism’
as in the genre, or you can systematize it and make it an integral part of the
storytelling. Both approaches have worked historically. What’s important is
that the magic present in the story should do something for the story or
characters. It shouldn’t just be an obligatory nod to the genre.
Medievalism
This isn’t a must as far as
fantasy-in-general is concerned, given that stories like Alice in Wonderland
and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory count in the genre. But it IS a must for
epic and high fantasy, in my opinion. Well perhaps not a must, but it’d be
quite the unusual story that didn’t draw from the trope if it wasn’t from the
high/epic fantasy sub-genre. There’s something romantic and yet brutal about
this type of setting. It allows for society to be portrayed in terms that are
superlatively easy to understand, and therefore the delivery of other tropes
comes even easier. Perhaps it’s just a generation thing, but one can easily
imagine what it would be like to have to confront medieval adversities without
resorting to guns and telephones and the like.
Races
Perhaps my least favorite trope.
Yet in our society there is such an ‘us and them’ attitude ingrained in us that
we can’t help but get behind struggles between the protagonist elves (they’re
civilized and elegant) and the antagonistic orcs (they’re uncouth and
disgusting) and similar opposing ‘racial’ factions. I actually don’t feel like
high/epic fantasy needs this trope. You can tell the same story without it.
Tolkien made it work because he characterized his races so well, even went to
the length of designing whole languages for them to speak. When a contemporary
author just invents a new race out of nowhere, deriving it from some
pre-existing fantasy race idea, it just makes me somewhat skeptical, although I can and do appreciate the gesture
Ultimately we read stories for
the sake of conflict and how the characters resolve it. But in fantasy we
encounter tropes along the way. We identify them, pass judgement upon them, and
potentially appreciate them. They can add, or detract from, a story. But what
is a genre if not for its tropes?
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