Are you going to cry because I think your book series is a bloated, repetitive load of mindless tripe?

I can appreciate tripe. Mmmm. Vietnamese food.


True enough. It's too bad that the Wheel of Time adheres to almost every fantasy cliche named in this thread, while a Song of Ice and Fire dispenses with all of them, more or less. THAT is why I find it superior.

Reading that book is torture. I've tried to read it several times, and there was clearly a massive amount of thought put into it and it would make an excellent read if it were better-written, but it's just so incredibly dense and difficult to get through that it ends up being completely unenjoyable.

Good for you. Noone else is pissing all over other series just because they don't like it. Keep the acid out of your posts, maybe, and you won't get this sort of response. Right now you read like you're flailing at your keyboard ("Boohoo, I don't like this series and anyone else who does is stupid and also ugly.") I don't like Song as much as I do WoT, but I'm not preaching how horrible it is from a soapbox.

At this point in time, Song of Ice and Fire has all the same cliches as the other fantasy novels.

He should have stopped writting after the third book.

I am, unfortunately, filled with acid and bile.

I am also flailing. See me flail? Like an epileptic monkey, I flail at my keyboard.

The Wheel of Time Series is still tripe. It's entertaining, sure, but the whole series so far could have been condensed down to a much better, much less redundant six books.

Daganev: I'd be happy to entertain that notion if you'd like to provide examples. So far... Martin is one of the better modern fantasy writers.

Really, i'm not actually trying to avoid cliches completely. Trying to do that is like trying to avoid getting wet while taking a swim--its just not very practical. What I am trying to do, is at least give the cliches I can't avoid as fresh of a paint job as possible. Personally, as long as the writer is able to make things interesting, I don't care if they're using elves and dwarves and wizards wearing pointy hats. Its all just a matter of making it work together in a fresh way.

My world, for instance, has a scattering of cliched fantasy races, but they've all got unique places. The elves, for example, are actually a breed of creatures completely incapable of magic, as they are a force of pure order and are tied to the very fabric of reality. Yes, they're a bit like Vulcans, but hopefully the unique backdrop i've created for them is enough to make them their own entities, that when encountered can be seen as individual creations rather than "oh, they're a bit of this and that."

I think that's all a good creator can really hope for. Sure, when looking back on it, or when analyzing it, you can see the influences--but when you're actually reading or playing, everything should fit flawlessly into the world.

And my opinion is, so long as a creator manages that seamless integration, then the cliches aren't really cliches, but just another part of the world they created.

Wizards have to wear pointy hats, they keep their lunch under there

Then every reviewer who has ever touched it is wrong, as are all the people who read it and enjoy it, because you disagree with it. Brilliant.

You imply that all of (or even the majority of) the reviews have been positive, to which I can think of no more appropriate reply than:

LAWL

An appeal to an uncited majority. Brilliant.

You'll be needing to cite a specific example, as you were poking Daganev to do, then. Preferably a majority of bad reviews? Better get hunting for something like metacritic, then, for books.

Wot and Song are both a good series. Which one you like better, or which one you think is better, is a matter of personal opinion. They're both rife with fantasy cliches. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's suddenly better or worse.

You don't get the luxury of saying "ALL REVIEWERS SAID THE WHEEL OF TIME IS GOOD" and then, when I mock this hilariously unbacked statement, declare it to be valid unless I can prove that the majority of reviews have been negative. I declared an opinion, you decided to counteract it by appealing to the majority. Thank you for failing.

The Wheel of Time is tripe. Entertaining tripe, sometimes, but tripe nontheless.

(Oh, and by the by: I was poking Daganev for examples of the cliches that both you and he suggest exist in Song. I can point them out in droves for the Wheel of Time, if you like.)

The WoT series was terrible.

No, I didn't read it, nor am I knowledgeable at all or going to qualify that opinion. But I'm stating it in a forum on the internets so it must be true.


Clichés are bad. I think the word you are looking for is "trope."

Why is it that the king is always:
A ) A lovable peasant who tries to do the right thing.
B ) A puppet.
C ) A sadistically insane mass murderer who knows his wine.
D ) Any combination of the above.

Why is the princess always beautiful?

If the wizard isn't wearing his pointy hat and robes, something serious is going down.

Why is there always a death cult?

(And right now, always doesn't look spelled right.)

It's quite interesting that Harrow claims that the Wheel of Time is both entertaining and a bad book. As far as I'm aware, the only standard that most people judge art for their own enjoyment by is how much they enjoy it. I'm not sure by what standard he judges books, but it seems a bit pretentious (read some reviews at pitchfork for more examples) to claim that a book being enjoyable can ever be a bad thing.

Massively inventive, a jewel of the nation's literary heritage it may not be, but the Wheel of Time is very entertaining. It's a good series.

Also, Harrow, since you were the one who started this whole argument, I think the burden of proof falls on you rather than Yrael.

@SAW: Back to the original topic. There's a very interesting series of articles on worldbuilding here. It was begun way back in 1999, so it's pretty old but you might still find them useful.

@Jigan: King Shrewd and King Verity of the Farseer Trilogy aren't evil. King Regal is, though, but two out of three ain't bad.

So clearly no one loves Feist ( and consequently will not be playing ire mud based off his books) or are deciding to leave him alone. I agree with Shamarah Tolkien had alot of world building, but most readers will only get so far into it, which LOTR pushed alot in the first book as it was.

Final Fantasy has its own list of strange tendencies too in regards to airships and them always appearing near end.

Alright, edit the wording, if you want to argue semantics. "Most reviewers". Judging by Amazon, I'd say that they work fairly well. I'd also like to know how you can call something "good" and "bad" at the same time, actually. Although Xineal makes a good point. You started it; you provide some proof, rather than demanding other people do the same.

Edit: And Verithrax? Shut up. You don't like *anything*. Everything is beneath you, or so you seem to think.

Calm down. Back to the topic at hand.

No, not really.

A trope is an enhancement or literary device, like irony or metaphor.

A cliche is something (overly) commonly used.

Though it does depend on how you use them, and they can both classify the same thing.

Vampires are cliche.
Vampirism specifically to represent sexuality is a trope. A cliched trope, but a trope moreso than merely having vampires for the sake of having vampires.

Cliches cannot be avoided unless you want to completely alienate readers. Yes, you want to be as original as possible, but the fact is that most things have been done in some way before, so its hard to completely avoid them. You can sidestep the major ones, yeah, but each genre sort of comes with its pre-requisite cliches, if for no other reason than you have to meet certain standards to fall into that genre in the first place.

I actually sort of disagree with that Trope Wiki that Cuber posted, because of a lot of what it lists are actually cliches and not tropes. Mecha are not tropes for merely existing. Mecha are only tropes if they represent something beyond big ass robots.

I think you're just using a different definition of trope to Verithrax. I would have agreed with Verithrax, but on looking it up yours appears to be the correct one.

To Verithrax and I, a "trope" is a kind of pool of concepts or something.

Elves are a fantasy trope. They appear in various forms in fantasy genres, usually with a set of certain characteristics. The trope can be expanded upon by doing things like Lorwyn, where the elves have pan-like horns and are ruthless aesthetes that winnow out ugly people with scarring poison and have a beauty-based caste system.

Vampires are also a fantasy trope, which can similarly be interesting, or they can just be too much like other archetypal vampires, at which point they become cliche which is a bad thing.

I think our use of cliche is correct, but your use of trope is correct. Either way, hopefully you get the point now.

EDIT: Hmm, wikipedia seems to agree with me, actually: "a common pattern, theme or motif in literature." OED seems to think SAW is right though, as does dictionary.com.

Huh. I hate the evolution of language thanks to the internet sometimes.

Either way, regardless of what the word means, I suppose our points are pretty similar then. You can have elves, just give them a fresh coat of paint to avoid falling into the garish cliche that hacks into the reader's soul and steals it for good measure.