Hallo! National Novel Writing Month is next week, and that is very stressful. There are less stressful things on the way too, though–YALLFest is coming up, and next week there will be pizza. You win some, you lose some. I am also currently re-reading Guards! Guards!, so expect that in the Book Diary review if you’re on Facebook or Goodreads.
I wanted to do something vaguely for Halloween, and I settled on this. I’m not really a horror guy, it’s the best I can do.
Another listing! I’ve been re-reading some Limyaael recently as well.
Bad Monster Tropes
There are some tropes pertaining to monsters in fiction that bother me. I’m not saying that they all need to go away entirely, but many of them need to be… tempered. These things need to be thought about before they’re applied to a story. Maybe it’s because they’re overused, maybe it’s because they’re dumb. Just… consider them, okay?
Wendigo Antlers: For reasons, it’s become popular to depict wendigo, a cannibal monster from the Great Lakes region, in fiction now. I don’t get it. Like, yeah, cool, indigenous American monster! Heck yeah! But is this the only one you can come up with? In any case, it’s clear that it’s a trend because depictions often have antlers. Hannibal, Sleepy Hollow, and heck, there’s a movie about wendigo titled Antlers.
Here’s the thing though: this isn’t a feature from folklore or mythology. This is a feature added by the movies. Which means that everyone doing it afterward isn’t doing it based on legends, they’re doing it based on Hollywood and assuming it’s part of the mythology. It’s not, and I don’t know why people assume that it is. One wouldn’t think that a cannibal monster would be associated with deer of all things.
Werewolves & Silver: This is another thing that’s been propagated by movies, and isn’t really that part of the original folklore. I’m not actually super against this, in general, especially in urban fantasy, given that most people don’t have a lot of silver weapons lying around, making it hard to make a fair fight. Dresden Files even has the cool thing about loup-garou that it must be inherited silver for it to work. And heck, I like the idea in The Witcher and Bartimaeus Trilogy that silver is a general kill-all for a certain type of magical monster.
I am annoyed that fiction purporting to be based on mythology use this. Chief among them is Heroes of Olympus, based on Greco-Roman mythology, in which Lycaeon and his wolves can ONLY be hurt by silver, not divinely-blessed bronze and gold weapons, because “Everyone knows only silver hurts werewolves!” That’s certainly not a thing in Greco-Roman mythology, so it being a part of the series is really dumb. Riordan could have easily dispelled this with something more mythologically-accurate–instead he plays it straight. Iron Druid is also pretty annoying in this regard, because the protagonist keeps telling us how backwards modern people have certain mythological ideas, all the while getting them wrong himself in his narration.
Vampires & Stakes: I remember that the edition of Dracula that I read in college for my senior seminar had a footnote explaining that hammering a stake through the heart doesn’t actually kill vampires in that novel, it only keeps the vampire in place so you can decapitate them. And in folklore, the point of a stake isn’t to kill the undead, but to make sure that they don’t leave the grave.
In vampire folklore, very often the stake itself does it. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, any piece of wood that barely pushes into the chest seems to be enough (one time a wood spatula handle does it), making them disintegrate instantly. Here’s a question, though: why would an undead creature, one that presumably doesn’t have a heartbeat, be killed by piercing its heart? I don’t know. Some fiction tries to explain it–The Librarian has it through some convoluted theory that it has to do with Judas being the first vampire or something. Eragon doesn’t have a vampire, but Shades are only killed by piercing the heart because there’s an explanation about evil spirits being bound there (or something).
And if you do decide to stick with the heart thing, because the heart has some spiritual/occult significance, at least keep in mind that stabbing through the heart is hard. There is A Reason you have a ribcage, it’s to protect those organs from being so easily pierced.
[We’re not doing vampires and sunlight because that’s a no-brainer. It’s not supposed to be A Thing.]
Kill vs. Containment: Leading from the vampire thing above: yes, in some fiction, like Supernatural or The Witcher, killing the monster is the entire point. Sometimes though, especially with the undead, or with ancient abominations, the point of a fight shouldn’t necessarily be killing the creature, it should be containment. Again, many traditions about the undead (stakes, burying upside-down, or with a sickle blade over the throat) aren’t about killing them, it’s about making sure they can’t even climb out of the grave.
I’m reminded of the Last Apprentice series, where the Spook, Gregory, has dead witches buried in his yard, and he has to regularly turn them over so that they don’t climb back out. For some reason, he thinks this is more humane than permanently killing them? I suppose because that has to be done with fire or with cutting out the heart.
Sometimes, there are problems you can’t kill. You can only contain them. And if you’re planning on making a series, it’s a great way to make sure that a villain can come back without making a stupid excuse.
Monster/Species Origin Stories: I don’t actually mind the idea of origin stories for monsters; that being said, I also don’t think they’re necessary. So many writers decide to try to come up with an origin story for Dracula, or vampires, for instance, are often given some Biblical or demonic origin, for giving you an explanation.
Fun fact! You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to give monsters an origin story. In some case, I understand that movies or books are meant to be origin stories. Okay, fine(ish). If it’s not, though? I think not having an explained origin tends to work better. One of the parts of Salem’s Lot that sticks with me is the note the vampire leaves, in which he tells the priest that he’s older than his religion and that he is not “a serpent, but the Father of Serpents”. That’s downright creepy! And for all we know it could be a lie to psych him out! We don’t know! It’s creepy.
We don’t need to know the origins of vampires, or other monsters, especially if you haven’t fleshed out enough backstory to give it weight. Castlevania: Nocturne makes Bathory the reincarnation of Sekhmet, or something? Even though Egyptian gods have so far never been mentioned, so it only feels weird instead of a good addition to the backstory.
Sometimes, the less we know, the better.
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