Fantasy stereotypes and archetypes.

[Nickeris86]

Not sure if this is the write place for this since it doesn't pertain solely to writing.

I have been devoted to scifi and fantasy since I learned how to read, and probably even before then, thank you Saturday morning cartoons. However there are always aspects of this genera in its many medias that bugs the crap out of me.

One of the biggest for me is the portrayal of good and evil. In most fantasy media there are always those certain races or types of magic that are always evil incarnate and no self respecting person would ever even consider associating with them. The first that come to mind are Orc's and Necromancy. Now orcs can be interchanged with any "barbaric" race but the principle is the same. In a lot of fantasy settings, orcs are nothing but raping, murdering thieves and raiders with few to no redeeming qualities. However this would also make most ancient European civilizations evil including the Romans and Spartans who's entire culture was centered around making war and concurring and enslaving others.

Necromancy also irks me when its said to be only evil and no good can come of it. Mostly this is because I do not view Death as an evil thing but simply the natural ending of things, its not good or evil it just is. Maybe it's just me but I could see a lot of really useful and benevolent uses for death magic. Being able to pull poison of disease from the blood, or remove necrotic infections without killing the patient, communing with a murder victim's ghost to help find their killer and bring them to justice, heck even in the Dresden files it was used to keep someone from dying before they could receive medical aid. Grated the person that did that was kind of a nutter but the principle still stands. As for making Zombies and the like I personally see no problem with it depending on the circumstances. Raising an army of the undead to go slaughter people is usually bad, raising them to help build an orphanage not so much. As for it being used to kill people, well duh its death magic, but any magic can be used to kill a person even "white" magic, heal someone to much and you could give them cancer or you could just keep bringing them back over and over to keep torturing them because your a sadistic dick.

any way these are just a few of the Stereotypes that bug me, does any one else have particular stereotype or archetype that just rubs them the wrong way. Pleas share what it is and why you dislike it.

I encourage healthy debate if your opinion differs from others but keep it civil and educated. No whining, or bitching or starting a flame war. Thank you

[LizW65]

Read Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals.  It's not one of his best, but it does deconstruct the myths of both Orcs and Necromancy--er, Post-Mortem Communications--in very entertaining ways.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

This may cut in direct opposition to the original post, but; it irks me when supposedly different species of sentient beings turn out to be just like us, really.  When they think like modern Western humans and have modern Western human psychology and emotional make-up.  Because that says to me that the writer really isn't paying enough attention to history and how these things vary; there are a couple of impressively alien people in Shakespeare, but if you get back to Aeschylus, the fundamental notions of how humans work are very very different, and that's in a culture that has has a pretty major influence on our modern Western society; I know just enough about ancient Mesoamerica or Sumeria to see that the gap there is far wider, and I'm not going to believe in a different species being any less alien than that at heart, it's kind of a lower plausible bound.

I have no problem believing in an all irredeemably evil sentient species in a world where we actively see the presence of an irredeemably evil god who made them that way, for example.  It's no harder to  believe in for me than the same degree but different shape of cognitive constraint that autistic people operate under.

[parthagenon]

Similarly to Neurovore, I believe there can be entire societies that we would deem "evil".  However, this is a function of the basic social premises we hold, compared to those of said societies.  For example, most people would say that killing is bad.  For a society that holds that killing is good, however, running about murdering people would be seen as morally acceptable or even praiseworthy (although this would probably be evolutionarily implausible, but whatever). 

We would deem them evil by our standards, and they may hold the same view towards us- our views on the world and the way society should work are simply so incompatible, and our moral underpinnings so different, that we could understandably and (relative to us) accurately label the entire society evil.  So if a fantasy race is always evil, there is definitely a basis for it. 

However, if a more "normal" character were to be inexplicably evil, with no given motivation other than to sit and stroke his goatee while plotting evil deeds for no reason other than to make trouble for the hero, that is a problem.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Similarly to Neurovore, I believe there can be entire societies that we would deem "evil".  However, this is a function of the basic social premises we hold, compared to those of said societies. 

I'm not just talking about social premises, I am talking about fundamentally different psychology arising from fundamentally different biology, social premises being IMO one manifestation thereof.

[parthagenon]

Well, society is a product of biology.  I was just pointing out that even humans can be categorized as always evil, despite being the same race.