urban fantasy that doesn't revolve around FANGPYRES

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:09 pm

Most vampire fantasy, urban or otherwise, takes on a dark gothic tone and it gets hyper-idiotic after a while because of this very tone.

Even fiction that has more than just vampires in it or if the vampires aren't central to the plot become decidedly darker.

It makes a little sense why it is dark. We saw how Twilight turned out with the sparkle and that really isn't that great a turn for vampire fiction.

But it still doesn't make sense that fiction that only has vampires as part of the setting (Dresden Files) gets darker once vampires are introduced and stays dark even after their departure for a books length at a time.

OWOD accomplished to a degree in that Werewolf's tone was different from Vampire and that was definitely different from Changeling.

But this is really hard to do in urban fiction. This is partially because vampires are so fucking popular and glamorous. Whereas, werewolves are most of the time horror-slasher material. Fairies go the way of addled stoners and druggies in fiction. Of course, a lot of this is just stereotype. But it still seems to play out this way.

This is just a rant that seems to have gone stale after a while.

But as a question, is there fiction out there that revolves around werewolves or fairies or Fuck Trolls that actually doesn't have an air of darkness-and-night.

Cynic

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:37 pm

The discworld novels have werewolves and vampires and trolls and fairies in them, and they're not dark. But they're also more of a "standard fantasy" setting, so I dunno if that's what you're looking for.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 8:35 pm

I think you need to define "urban fiction".

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 8:53 pm

OWOD Werewolf is way darker by any definition of the word I'm familiar with than Masquerade ever was. More "doom," more "dog rape," more regular rape, more world ending, more you personally getting hunted down and killed. Vampire had a frickin win condition, and they had a little comic of some dude actually achieving it in the original book. Werewolf was all about Loraxing until you fucking died or failed. Any momentary win simply slowed the progression of things getting worse.

-Username17

TavishArtair · Post by **TavishArtair** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 8:57 pm

Laurell K. Hamilton writes two series, from my understanding, Merry Gentry and Anita Blake. They're both basically the same thing (girl surrounded by harem of men she fucks, gets powerups from sex, no seriously). But one doesn't really involve vampires at all since it's about a faerie princess (who is also a human detective). Doing a compare/contrast exercise on the two would probably be appropriate.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 10:51 pm

we'll narrow down "urban fantasy' to a world with supernatural creatures that coinhabits our current world or something clsoe to that.

Frank: OWOD was dark but it wasn't the the sense of neo-gothic darkness/horror that pervades most vampire fiction such as Anita Blake or the Sookie Stackhouse books.

edit: I do agree with you on that OWOD werewolf was brutal dark. But that also slightly reinforces what I kinda rambled about how werewolves always seem to go toward slasher-film horror style of things. This isn't completely true about OWOD with their doomsday stuff and their tribal magickss

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 1:28 am

Does Harry Potter count as urban fantasy? Because the wikipedia article says that Percy Jackson does and HP is similar enough.

If so then thats definitely an example thats not gothic dark. Well, not the books anyway. Unfortunately, that also means that Twilight could be labeled urban fantasy.

K · Post by K » Tue Apr 13, 2010 4:27 am

The problem is that all fantasy "goes dark" when adult themes are added. I don't know why, but it's the same with crime fiction and westerns: angsty emotions + "your genre" = dark.

I don't know about you, but if I was stuck in a fantasy setting I'd be getting power from sex too. Porno-mancer ftw!

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:12 pm

K wrote:The problem is that all fantasy "goes dark" when adult themes are added. I don't know why

I think it more goes the other way around: namely, that people started thinking of "dark" as "cool" and "adult".

Now how that came to be, I have no idea. But the important thing is the industry follows the trend, and when it gets used by the average and weak authors, the formula becomes banalized and character's moral discord turns into wallowing in self-pity for no good reason.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 1:51 am

Well, lots of things in the real world are dark when in a fictional context.

-Crissa

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 8:17 am

At this moment your statement makes absolutely no sense.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 3:32 am

In the real world, small decisions become big issues. From small injuries, responsibility financially or reproductively, to death. It all is alot darker in real life than in stories.

-Crissa

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:17 am

well, real-dark and fictional-dark are for the most part very different.

At least in fantasy fiction. I mean we don't go into the financial ramifications of the food industry economy in decline because of the increase of vampires and their inability to eat food. I'd read about it but you just dont' see it.

It's far more exciting and easier to write about the vampire running around like an idjit larper sucking blood from every little teenager in a mini pleated skirt and faux-wings than about the failure of the food industry because of vampires...

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:20 am

I think it's normally referred to as a "pleated miniskirt', which avoids a possible ambiguity.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:35 am

i like the ambiguity.

Nicklance · Post by **Nicklance** » Fri Apr 16, 2010 12:33 am

You can read Twilight as a comedy. Provided you are reading it on an assumption that Meyer is just out to troll and satirize.

Or you can make it a comedy by setting it on fire.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:15 am

I've been reading Guy Gavriel Kay recently. I pretty much went through almost all his novels except the Sarantine whatever...

It's a pretty awesome style of fantasy in which fantasy isn't at all important. You can see the tolkien influences but he goes past it to something crazy.