Tropes I’m Tired Of Spec Fic Edition
Trash To Throw Away Today
Good morning, welcome to November and welcome back to Tropes I’m Tired Of, this time about speculative fiction—particularly, science fiction and fantasy. Spec fic also includes other genres like horror and paranormal, really it’s anything with elements that don’t exist in reality. Different people define it different ways. I tend to use speculative fiction to mean “I am talking about science fiction and fantasy together as one organism.” Margaret Atwood traditionally uses it to mean “my writing but don’t call it science fiction because I’m up for a major literary award.”
That’s not where the differences between me and Margaret Atwood end. To wit, she writes poetry and I do not; she has two Booker prizes, for which I am ineligible; and I understand that trans women are women whereas she retweets transphobic propaganda. Margaret Atwood and I make a good team because between the two of us, we have something to disappoint everyone.
I planted this document in my idea folder awhile ago and told myself I’d go ahead and write it when it grew to at three tropes but then Dune came out and boosted over the top; thanks Dune! There wasn’t anything new to me in Dune as I have read the novel but perhaps it just reminded me of some stuff I had repressed.
Herewith, a brief list of stuff that’s so overdone in science fiction and fantasy writing that I am ready to not see any of it again for quite a while or maybe never. It doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t use any of these things—just understand that when you do any of these things you’re relying on an exhausted old concept and you might want to think about whether you can put a new spin on it.
One World, One People
First of all I’m tired of fantasy and science fictional races or species where there’s an entire country or planet of people who are exactly the same. All the high elves are blonde. All the wood elves are brunette. All the people of this planet speak a single language. This entire species follows one religion. Everyone on the entire planet follows this exact naming convention.
Human beings only have the experience of one world and one human species to draw inspiration from and that’s us. Humanity follows hundreds of religions, speaks hundreds of languages, has billions of different life experiences. But Earth, told in speculative fiction would be:
Everyone on Earth speaks English
Everyone on the South American landmass has black hair and brown eyes
The entire planet practices Buddhism
All women in every culture on Earth are mothers and homemakers
All female names end with the letter “a” and all male names end with the letter “n”
I don’t understand why this is a thing. When I encounter science fiction that doesn’t mention any kind of translation device and everyone just speaks the same language that’s a big eye roll from me. My partner is Puerto Rican and comes from the northeastern side of the island. We have a friend who is Puerto Rican and comes from the southwestern side of the island. They encounter words and terms in Spanish that they have to explain to each other because the Spanish spoken in southwestern Puerto Rico and the Spanish spoken in northeastern Puerto Rico are not exactly the same. Let alone the Spanish spoken in other parts of the Caribbean; the Spanish of Latin America; and the Spanish of Spain.
But, okay, everyone in the galaxy speaks English without regional slang or dialect so consistently that everyone immediately understands one another, except when the plot demands a miscommunication. Sure, Jan.
That’s How It Really Was
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. The fantasy setting includes things like:
Seasons that last years instead of months;
Orders of magic that effect actual miracles through their practitioners;
Gods and monsters walking among people;
Time traveling to medieval Scotland and meeting your spouse’s evil ancestor;
An extinct species returning to life when a fourteen-year-old widow strolls into her husband’s funeral pyre with an assortment of fossilized dragon eggs.
Okay, if you say so. I can suspend my disbelief as well as anybody. But if you’re like, “Hey could you try to envision a setting with a little less rape?” or “Could we have maybe a few people of color in this sea of white folks?” the author will tell you “No can do, man, this is how it really was.”
Widespread raping is just realistic, so it has to be included. Women and people of color traded around and treated as livestock? That’s just how it was.
Plenty of other realistic stuff is left out. Nobody’s dying from drinking bad water, they’re only dying from glorious battle wounds. Nobody falls off their horse and breaks their neck. Nobody’s skin rots off their body because they didn’t take their boots off or bathe for six weeks.
The most realistic thing that ever happened in a fantasy series is in Blood of Elves when Triss Merigold has dysentery for like three chapters for no discernable reason and Geralt has to clean up after her. If you’re making your fantasy realistic then make it realistic. Mostly, the “realistic” elements that fantasy authors insist have to be preserved only seem to include racism and misogyny and never extend to their white hero guys.
Those Aren’t Arabs
This is the opposite of the “It’s Just Realism Man” thing and, hilariously, both can exist at the same time when an author or a fan is in full-on defensive mode.
Hey check out this race of savage fighters who live in the desert where they preside over an incredibly valuable resource that our heroes are trying to secure for themselves. The society awaiting the Mahdi, or messiah, of their mystical and strange religion while they ride around on Shai-Halud, the sandworm. Isn’t that a little racist? Well of course not because they’re not actually Arabs, get it? These are Fremen, can’t you see how it’s totally different!?
If you make a science fiction or fantasy person, culture, or religion as a caricature of a real person, culture, or religion that actually exists in reality as we know it, you can’t expect to escape criticism by claiming that any link to persons or cultures living or dead are irrelevant because this is fantasy or science fiction. We know this culture is based on stereotypes about the real people of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Levant. We know who was being made fun of when someone put Jar Jar Binks on the screen. Okay? We know who JK Rowling’s Goblin bankers were based on. You can’t say “nothing to see here just spec fic” and handwave racism away. You’re not fooling anyone.
All the Real Power
I’m super tired of the fantasy trope that women cannot own property or wield power in government, industry, or religion but actually, secretly, hold all the real power through their behind-the-scenes string-pulling machinations.
I’m looking at the Bene Gesserit, the Aes Sedai, the Lodge of Sorceresses, and so on. Many times, these women are depicted doing gentle, predictable woman stuff (think of Elaida Sedai knitting while she advises Morgase or Lady Jessica wringing her hands and momming around Paul) until the moment comes for them to reveal their secret badassery with a set piece show of magical force or martial mastery.
The authors and their fans want to argue that this is feminism at work in (often early) speculative fiction, because while men seemingly hold all the positions of power, well actually women wield all the power from behind the scenes, usually through advisory roles to important men and as their lovers, wives, and concubines.
This irritates me on so many levels I don’t think I can even get into all of them. The concept that engaging in domestic woman stuff is a ruse or a deception to hide the secret badass no one is supposed to know about. The mere suggestion that marrying a man so you can whisper political pillow talk to him in hopes that he will take it into consideration is just as good and in fact better than having direct political power.
And a big one, for me, is supporting the real-life belief a lot of men have that actually women are the more powerful people in every meaningful way and that we control the world from the shadows with our gatekeeping of which men get to have sex and reproduce. Real men on our real planet believe this. I have met some of them, and not just on the internet. These guys will enthusiastically tell you that even though women make up
33 percent of the federal judiciary;
27 percent of congress;
30 percent of statewide elected representatives;
0 percent of our presidents; and
41 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies,
The criminal and family courts, legislators, employers, and everyone else with power favors women and discriminates against men all the time. If you point out that men hold an imbalanced amount of the power in all those fine institutions, these guys will remind you that women have all the real power. It’s just the behind-the-scenes kind. They’ve been reading “too much spec fic,” a phrase I thought I’d never say.
“Europe”
Consider this a bonus trope. How is Europe a trope? Most high fantasy is based on or borrows elements from real, actual cultures that exist or have existed on Earth (see “Not Arabs,” above). I would like to humbly ask all writers of fantasy to please consider that there is a whole other hemisphere of our planet full of cultures with interesting elements and not all the elements you borrow have to come from Anglophone Europe. There’s nothing wrong with Anglophone Europe. I’m just tired of it.
I recently commented in a fantasy writing group that I’d like to see more fantasy with cultures based on anything but Europe and I got a number of replies that included:
You would like mine, it’s set in a culture based on Classical Greece and Rome.
Try The Witcher series, the author is Polish so the setting is based on Central Europe.
I completely agree with you! In fact, I’m doing a fantasy based on Portuguese culture and mythology.
Like I don’t know how to break it you guys but all those things are still Europe.
English-speaking Europe is the most overused, but America, Russia, and the Far East also get a lot of representation. The southern hemisphere includes most of South America, about half of Africa, and Australia/New Zealand. Not in the southern hemisphere but still criminally underrepresented are Central America, the Middle East and Northern Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.
I’m not saying appropriate somebody else’s culture for your fantasy if you’re descended from European white folks but consider that:
North does not always have to be cold and inhospitable. North can be hot and South can be cold.
Bland stew, brown bread, and plain roasted meat do not have to be the universal fantasy staple cuisine.
That is the takeaway here, friends: Don’t let English culture’s bad food be the legacy of our speculative fiction.
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