20 Things Fantasy Characters Should Do More Often: ysabetwordsmith

20 Things Fantasy Characters Should Do More Often

This is an interesting list. Let's see ...

1. Forget things, for no reason.

Some of my characters are notably absent-minded, others not. Alex from Schrodinger's Heroes is a good example of one who is.

3. Read other fantasy novels.

That's a meta trait, it only works in characters who are going from an ordinary life into extraordinary experiences.

5. Meet a woman who’s not a witch, a healer or a princess and not remark upon how extraordinary it is that she’s not a witch or a healer or a princess.

There is no shortage of ordinary people in my stories.

6. Meet a non-white person and not subsequently discover they’re from the Burning Lands Far to the South or something like that.

In my main fantasy world of Hallelaine, the Southern Continent has a bunch of different non-white races. The Central Continent and Northern Continent have some, along the lines of Native American styling. And the Changu elves and Hunnar centaurs are sort of Asian, from another continent.

7. Suffer chafing issues

If they're not used to riding horses, oh yes, this happens. Or certain other activities.

8. Change diapers.

If you're telling a story in conventional time, with an infant in it, and there is no diaper change then that gets implausible pretty quickly. So for instance, there's one at the end of "Brought to Bed."

9. Meet an orphan whose parents just turn out to be just as random and ordinary as his or her adoptive parents.

I think this is actually the majority for mine.

10. Drink non-alcoholic beverages.

Hmm, probably water is the most common for my characters.

11. Meet an orc who actually isn’t an asshole.

Hicket, put your hand down, you're a quarter-orc.

12. Hear ominous noises that then turn out to be nothing.

*laugh* I can barely resist the temptation to do this, it drives characters nuts. We actually had a character in a gaming party once with a knack for mimicking monster noises. She drove everyone nuts.

13. Die of natural causes.

Pretty common for mine.

16. Have guard duty and not bicker with the other person who has guard duty.

Anyone who can't manage this has a very short life expectancy in my stories. I can't abide stupidity.

17. Meet a dwarf who’s actually pretty good with a bow.

Huh ... don't think I have a dwarven archer yet. They're rare, and I don't write dwarves often, so I keep getting the more usual sorts of dwarves. Well, okay, Druga is traff, but that's different.

20. Get eaten by a dragon. Come on, if dragons were real they would eat _everybody_.

My dragons that like to eat people usually do get to eat somebody.

kimuro

June 27 2012, 12:56:09 UTC 9 years ago

New comment

8. Change diapers.
Until recently, if there was a baby/toddler in my dream, at some point, I would end up changing a messy diaper. I am very pleased that this no longer seems to be the case.

9. Meet an orphan whose parents just turn out to be just as random and ordinary as his or her adoptive parents.
Or better still ... if the so-called ordinary hero didn't turn out to be be somehow extra-ordinary. In Lois McMaster-Bujold's Curse of Chalion, the hero is told that there were many who could have broken the curse, he was just the only one who didn't turn away or ignore the call.

10. Drink non-alcoholic beverages.
If we're talking about standard fantasy worlds here which correspond to no plumbing or city-type infrastructure, then unalterated water isn't the safest thing to drink. All sorts of horrible things ended up in streams and rivers - rotting corpses, faeces, urine. A small amount of alcohol helped to kill the germs. And if you didn't have your own cow, then milk was even more chancy.

16. Have guard duty and not bicker with the other person who has guard duty.
According to military wisdom, it's a soldier's perogative to complain and bicker. It's a form of entertainment. ... Not one that a serious guard in a danger zone should engage in, granted, but in a policing situation, completely understandable.

Actually arguing with intent, otoh, yes, it's not a good idea to post two people who can't stand each other to protect each other's backs.

Deleted comment

June 27 2012, 17:10:18 UTC 9 years ago

There was something I read about the advantage that tea drinkers had over coffee drinkers that had to do with the boiling of the water, although that advantage was negated for Victorian drinkers of green tea, the Chinese treated the tea leaves with Prussic acid and ... something else that I forget ... to make it greener (For all the Tea in China by S. Rose).

I suspect that juice is also mixed with water but it also runs the same problem as milk (and obviously the tea as well) that you can't be sure that the vendor hasn't added something else to the drink to increase his/her profits.

Ale was subject to a quality control officer, other beverages were not.

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

June 27 2012, 21:09:19 UTC 9 years ago

>> In Lois McMaster-Bujold's Curse of Chalion, the hero is told that there were many who could have broken the curse, he was just the only one who didn't turn away or ignore the call.<<

I really liked that. Bujold is a master of the flawed hero. I like special heroes too, but it's important to have variety.

>>If we're talking about standard fantasy worlds here which correspond to no plumbing or city-type infrastructure, then unalterated water isn't the safest thing to drink.<<

True. Depends on the circumstances. My desertfolk are careful about their water supply. Some other places, people drink water because that's what is available or affordable, not necessarily optimal. For Shahana and Ari, the wild water is fairly safe and the villages are typically using wells. But drinking the water in a larger city probably wouldn't be a good idea.

>>According to military wisdom, it's a soldier's perogative to complain and bicker. It's a form of entertainment. ... Not one that a serious guard in a danger zone should engage in, granted, but in a policing situation, completely understandable.<<

By my standards, they're allowed to indulge off-duty. Making noise while on guard duty can cover up the sounds of an approaching enemy or other subtle clues of trouble. In which case the guards had better hope they get killed in action, because that will be far more merciful than I would be.

paradigmshifty

June 27 2012, 13:16:10 UTC 9 years ago

I'd like to see a dwarf using one of the asymmetrical Japanese bows.

Ooo...

June 27 2012, 22:17:37 UTC 9 years ago

That's a fascinating idea. Feel free to request it in a poetry fishbowl some time.

bodhifox

June 27 2012, 14:36:13 UTC 9 years ago

I think I noticed a dwarf with a bow on the Hobbit movie trailer. Some of them were good looking fellows too.

Yes...

June 27 2012, 19:46:43 UTC 9 years ago

Now that you mention it, I think I did too. I loved that trailer.

*sigh* But Thorin didn't have his harp, and I didn't see any of the other dwarves with their instruments. One of the cool things about Tolkien's writing, for me, was that everybody was bardically equipped. The dwarves had different musical instruments with them. The hobbits made up songs and poems spontaneously. Even the freaking goblins had a freaking awesome sadist national anthem!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!
Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,
While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
Round and round far underground
Below, my lad!

Ah, well. The voices were glorious. I've had "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold" in my head ever since we saw the trailer. It's a very popular song for harpers in a filk sing, and I've heard that.

June 28 2012, 01:01:11 UTC 9 years ago

It's better if a series can keep the same basic tone. Gradual shifts can work if you're careful with them; sudden shifts tend to be jarring.

June 28 2012, 00:52:49 UTC 9 years ago

That's a good one. Heroic yet realistic.

doni_dyke01

June 27 2012, 16:30:51 UTC 9 years ago

11. Meet an orc who actually isn’t an asshole.

I have a story I'm sort of working on about an orc who is going against the tradition of his village, by becoming a warrior. Most of them are artists, smiths, and intellectuals. His father, who's a philosopher, is very unhappy about it.