Orignal rant about vampires→ Why people like your story- the main character

Original rant about cliches (the list of 65 in full rant form)  → Part 15- Cliche and illogical 1/5

All 5 parts are linked in the original

Harry Potter vs. Twilight rant brought out by school, please forgive me. "It's called Wizard's Chess, you idiot!"

With fics, almost all of them have a cliché theme to them. This is inevitable. Fanfic ideas have been washed and reused so many times, one fic is different from the other but they are actually completely the same. To be successful with using an overused plot or stereotype an author needs to make it their own and put an original twist on the idea and not emphasize that point. One of the main reasons for these plots to seem overused is that the author makes a big deal over it.

This is why the Twilight series has received so much backlash. There are two main points to the books, 1) Vampires vs. Wolves vs. Vampires vs. Vampires, 2) Romance. These two points have led into a whole supernatural romance genre. This is the perfect example of a plot being used too many times and not well enough. Once you realize that Twilight is very superficial, it becomes hard to ever read it again. The characters are flat and shallow, the events are forced, and the romance is cheesy and fake. However, most people don’t recognize these traits and see that Bella has an amazing ability to block vampire powers and is very intelligent and beautiful. The gorgeous vampires adds onto the appeal factor. They see this as a love triangle instead of a hopeless, hopeless forever alone moment for Jacob until that last Jacobxthebaby is pushed randomly.

All of this is okay for younger readers. When I read Twilight for the first time, I was twelve and it was really interesting to me. The sentence structure was very simple and comprehendible and the idea of these powerful beings possibly living among us intrigued me. When I was twelve.

Twilight is an open book, there is nothing to think deeper about. There is this superficial aspect to it that makes it so easy to despise.     

On the other hand, the Harry Potter books take on an equally cliché idea. An orphan boy with abusive relatives and a cousin that is a gang bully mistreating him for the first ten years of his life with them to suddenly get surprised by a giant that tells him he is a wizard and is going to a school for wizards just like him. His best friends fall in love, Cedric died, the girl he liked didn’t like him back, he is the chosen one that can defeat a superior evil force, he faces many tasks and conquers them when supposedly a more adept witch or wizard couldn’t, and he in the end triumphs over evil spouting inspirational words about how he isn’t evil and good and stuff.

Harry Potter is the opposite of Twilight in the sense that all of these details make the series whole. If Harry was not a wizard there wouldn’t be a series. That is not the case with Twilight. If Edward wasn’t a vampire he’d be a human and he could still fall in love with Bella and get married and have a child. If Harry wasn’t an orphan he wouldn’t have any motivation for defeating the dark Lord or any means of protection before he came of age. There wouldn’t even be a VoldeMin, it’d just be Harry living in London with his abusive Aunt and Uncle because Lily and James Potter were killed in a car crash.

It is not superficial. The characters are extremely real and the events fall into place and lead into each other so perfectly that by the seventh book everything is a mind blow.

How exactly is this rant about Twilight and Harry Potter relevant? It is the same for fanfics. There can be these cliché elements like gangs or bullies or even vampires, but they have to seem realistic and they can’t be pushed too far. One of my favorite fanfics is a vampire based story. In fact, my favorite fanfic author writes some of the most cliché ideas ever, but they are so realistic and developed that I hardly notice. She has a unique writing style and I can immediately recognize it.

The easiest way to avoid a similar fic to others is to make a sturdy plot. Most fanfics are about some form of romance and they are so centered around romance that the added ideas like this person is an orphan or they joined an idol group become overshadowed and completely pointless. Twilight manages to do this, but just barely.

Almost a year ago Maria and I created a list of things we hated to read about unless they were written really well. The list amounted to 65 different cliché or illogical topics and took several months to rant about. I will do 5 of them now and possibly more later.

1) Vampires- cliché and illogical

First of all, vampires don’t exist, but unto fanfiction if you must.

The idea that a monster can be tamed and can fall in love with a human is a severely flawed concept. Human blood is food. Vampires are monsters. The end.

Romance with a vampire is just a bad idea. If anyone wants to read a supernatural romance story they can head to a bookstore and choose from their massive selection.

UNLESS a concrete plot is added like a vampire rebellion against the vampire government or a clash between clans or something not really human world related.

Definitely no vampire in high school and vampire babies and vampire families.

School for vampires? Vampire Knight is also slightly overrated.

Vampires are no-nos, unless with some other creature or vampire that is not human. 

This is a character trait, not a plot trait.

2) Slaves- illogical!

Unless the story is a complete AU in a different time period or another planet OR the plot follows the legit black market, slavery should not exist. The idea of buying people and having them do whatever we want is because we own them is popular. Most of the time slaves are intertwined with slaves and also done side by side with the child working hard to earn money for their master or parent.

Slavery fics do terribly most of the time because the person that is supposedly the master doesn’t treat the slave like a slave. They’ll comfort their servant and treat them gently and humane. This takes away from the tragic life a slave has to live. When that slave is not on their knees crying and begging to die, you haven’t written slave life well enough.

There are so many different forms of correct modern day slavery. Slaves to the government, to a job, to an abusive spouse, as a e, etc. A fic would be okay with slavery in this form.

When slavery is human slavery like ‘get on your hands and knees and my /scrub the floor’ abuse and the slave suffers a terrible fate in some sort of alternate universe, that is also acceptable.

This world we live in is too modern for this. We don’t hear about slaves being sold (except in this imaginary place called the black market) so the solution is to create another world. This is very difficult to do and those that try often fail and follow the same patterns.

1. Person is captured 2. Sold as a slave in some auction in a world where this is normal 3. They are bought by a person and forced to endure some sort of abuse.

Black Market? The world is not Okane Ga Nai, normal people generally don’t amount millions of dollar in debt and then get sold off as a slave. When you think black market, think organized crime. This can include big CEO bosses, but will generally be dealt with by the guys holding the guns.

This is a character trait and can be a plot trait.

3) Nerds- cliché and illogical

Nerds in 2012 is synonymous with Hipster. Big nerdy glasses? No, those are Hipster glasses now.

Gets good grades? This student is now looked up to by the entire school. This student is competing with other students for the best test scores and highest ranks. This student will help you on your homework if you be nice to them. This student will be signing your paychecks in 10 years.

If this student is not mentally unstable, chances are that they have friends, whether one or a one hundred. One friend is all someone needs to escape the dramatic clichés of school life.

These “nerds” that people have in their mind are basically intelligent rich kids that dress well and get good grades. They’re supposed to be ugly but all of a sudden when they take of their glasses they are handsome or gorgeous? That is extremely shallow.

The previous idea of a nerd is a socially awkward person that studies and can’t make friends. NO. A socially awkward is usually someone with a mental handicap like autism. Autistic people generally have above normal intelligence but have a lower mental age. This makes it more difficult for them to interact with peers which leaves them isolated and bullied.

“Nerds” that work hard and want to succeed in life can be normal or beautiful people. Intelligence does not define a person’s appearance.

This is a character trait.

4) Maids-CLICHÉ AND ILLOGICAL

Maid is an occupation that is same as a housekeeper. It is not a slave! Maids do not defend the house from assassins, get held for ransom money, make meals, or take care of children. Maids do the house chores. The end.

Usually they do not live with their employers. For instance, if the girl is a maid for, lets say, Super Junior, there is not a free room for this girl to live in Super Junior’s dorm. In modern times, people will call a housekeeping service and have someone come by about twice a week.

Being a maid for a wealthy person is just being a servant for them and doing all those chores in a bigger house. And once again, this idea that masters are abusive is overused and farfetched.

A common theme in maid fics is there is a girl with financial problems that only has domestic skills and is finds a job as a maid for some idol group or rich corporate boss. She works there for awhile, they fall in love. It is very common.

Just don’t write maid stories ever. There are way too many of them.

This is a character trait.

5) Orphans- Cliché

Hi am I am Devi and I am an orphan. –(x_x)→*

When a child loses their parents they are most likely to be into homes of one of their relatives. If that is not an option, they will be taken care of by foster families. Foster families is not an orphan only occurrence, they happen to children that were abandoned by parents or by children that lost their parents because they were not able to care for them or were abusive.

And… and… and… I’ve ranted about orphans too many times to do this again.

This is a character trait.

A romance story is not going to embellish on these ideas. A romance story will leave these as extra details to a sour fanfic written by a teenager who doesn’t even understand that love is more than affection and hardships. Turn these ideas into creative flowing words and transform that basic idea of high school love and Hollywood drama into realistic and compelling works. A human can only face so many events before they crack and turn into a human. Idols and OCs are fictional people too. The parents, bullies, masters, rapists, murders, second love interest forever alone best friend, and overall other characters are human too. Humans are the most interesting to read.

Adding on little bits of bogus pseudo realism takes away from this humanity and the overall enjoyment.

It’s not creative when it has been done a hundred times. It isn’t gripping when the actions of the characters seemed phony.