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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Velgron on September 19, 2007, 03:37:48 AM
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Thinking of writing first novel. Basic fantasy setting with elves and all that jazz, but im incorporating werewolves and vampires. Basic plot line is that the main character witnesses his family's slaughter at the hands of vampires and is saved by a werewolf. The child grows up and goes out for revenge however the vamps and wolves have formed an alliance through crime syndicates and so forth which makes things difficult etc... just wondering if this is too overdone or would be too stale.
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Thinking of writing first novel. Basic fantasy setting with elves and all that jazz, but im incorporating werewolves and vampires. Basic plot line is that the main character witnesses his family's slaughter at the hands of vampires and is saved by a werewolf. The child grows up and goes out for revenge however the vamps and wolves have formed an alliance through crime syndicates and so forth which makes things difficult etc... just wondering if this is too overdone or would be too stale.
Sounds kind of like a spinoff of Underworld, or Underworld: Evolution. Do you have a character that looks like Kate Beckinsale in a leather bodysuit? :)
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I wish I had a character as such as beckinsale. I realize that it does sound similar but what I stated was the broad plot line. I plan on now having the vamps and werewolves as enemies per se in this. They also wont stick to the shadows. The actual story will be much more complicated... but then again I just came up with this idea earlier today.
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IMO, yes. Vamps and werewolves are overdone. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find any sort of twist or new direction to make them interesting again.
Not as overdone as elves though. I have taken to tossing aside any book that introduces "mysterious, beautiful people, tall and graceful, their voices like music, eyes glinting with the knowledge of ages..." and rot such as that.
If I ever write a story involving elve sI'm gonna make them hideous insectoid things, cannibalistic and stinking, who speak in gutteral grunts and clicks. :P
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IMO
If I ever write a story involving elve sI'm gonna make them hideous insectoid things, cannibalistic and stinking, who speak in gutteral grunts and clicks. :P
Kinda like Terry Pratchett's elves with the glamour turned off?
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Yeah I agree...vampires and werewolves too overdone. These days they're being too modernized in the stories that seem to make it into the spotlight. It's always some scientific thing, a virus or chromozome or something. Why can't they just be vamps and weres, with no explanation of why they exist? We fear the unknown right?
Also, you guys talking about the elves sent up a red flag in my mind about my as yet unwritten trilogy that, in my mind, will end up being my magnum opus if I pull it off the way I want. I wanted a Tolkienesque backdrop, but without the fantasy cliches. Like elegant and ancient elves. So, in my story, the Elves were the world's enemy and eventually were wiped out in a collective effort by the other nations, except one; the heir to Elven throne. For centuries he has been hunted to no avail. You could compare him to Jason Bourne, I guess, lol. Anyway, the trilogy is centered around the events of this missing heir to the throne and his half-elf offspring, the son he hid away in order to keep his elvish blood a secret. He does come back in the stories, and there are many dormant bounty hunters that come after him and his son.
So, elves as the world's ultimate enemy...has it been done before?
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I think vampires are too overdone but werewolves aren't. Not too many people know how to write werewolf stories all that well. I have read a few and the majority of the stories weren't all that great. But your plot idea sounds cool, not something I've read or heard of. Sounds like a good Anti Hero theme which I'm all for.
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IMO, yes. Vamps and werewolves are overdone. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find any sort of twist or new direction to make them interesting again.
I've never been overly fond of werewolves, but there are a lot of directions one can go with vampires that people aren't focusing on at the moment. I have very little time for the paranormal romance genre, but books like David Wellington's Thirteen Bullets do nice innovative things with bits of traditional vampire lore that have barely been touched in modern vampire fiction, and Peter Watts' Blindsight, justifiably nominated for lots of major awards this year, has among its various peculiar spaceship crew members a vampire with seriously inhuman psychology, so I think the notion is far from mined out.
Not as overdone as elves though. I have taken to tossing aside any book that introduces "mysterious, beautiful people, tall and graceful, their voices like music, eyes glinting with the knowledge of ages..." and rot such as that.
If I ever write a story involving elve sI'm gonna make them hideous insectoid things, cannibalistic and stinking, who speak in gutteral grunts and clicks. :P
Of course, if you're a hideous cannibalistic insectoid thing who wants the nice tasty humans to get close enough to gobble, some way of appearing mysterious, beautiful, tall and graceful is as good a lure as any.
The thing about most contemporary takes on elves that bores me is that most of them are as you describe, on the surface, and have nothing behind that to back them up. [ With Ford's The Last Hot Time as an honorable counterexample. ] Tolkien's elves have much more to them than that, and it's easy to miss on a quick reading of Lord of the Rings just how much there is to them - they are basically Miltonian angels dressing way down, and the couple of places where that mask slips [ "All shall love me and despair" ] are to my mind moments that stick.
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So, elves as the world's ultimate enemy...has it been done before?
Don't think so. John M. Ford's The Last Hot Time has the elves come back - pretty much by every city of any size acquire an Elf Quarter that has suddenly always been there - and become the most dangerous mafia in the world, and the knock-on effects of this shift and the introduction of a small but pervasive amount of magic into the world on the global economy are about the same as that of a limited nuclear war, but that's very much a background-shape thing, what the book's about is on a different scale entirely.
The potential problem with elves as the world's ultimate enemy, IMO, is that it could all too easily come across as the kind of thing that on the surface looks like aristocracy-bashing, and with a bit more thought is very hard not to read as fear of any kind of reward for merit.
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Well, there's a reason they became the world's enemy. They weren't always that way, but something huge happened that turned the world against them. I don't want to divulge too much. I've been developing this story since I was 12...that's 13 years in the making.
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Depends on how the story is executed. I can be iffy with weres and vamps, but part of it is personal bias: There used to be this crazy girl on the Recursion of The Matrix Online who roleplayed as a vampire, and she was the most anNOYing about it: used to randomly try and turn people into vampires (especially females, since it seemed she was a bisexual who used RP as an outlet for her sexual drives...), whether they wanted to RP a vamp or not, and that included me/my character. She even lead a faction full of vamps and weres until the thing got to be the laughingstock of the server and the phrase "lesbian vampire" became a catch-phrase for someone who badly RPed a vampire/werewolve/preternatural Exilic program of choice.
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Well, there's a reason they became the world's enemy. They weren't always that way, but something huge happened that turned the world against them. I don't want to divulge too much. I've been developing this story since I was 12...that's 13 years in the making.
Umm, well yes, I'm doing.
Race ya to publish!!!!
OF course, my synopsis is nothing like yours, so maybe there is room for both of us!! :)
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Me, I think they're a little overdone. But I just like various mythologies rather than the same monsters.
Who cares what anyone says. If it's got you dragged in, write it. :)
Kate Beckinsale, bodysuit. Gahh.
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I've never been overly fond of werewolves, but there are a lot of directions one can go with vampires that people aren't focusing on at the moment. I have very little time for the paranormal romance genre, but books like David Wellington's Thirteen Bullets do nice innovative things with bits of traditional vampire lore that have barely been touched in modern vampire fiction, and Peter Watts' Blindsight, justifiably nominated for lots of major awards this year, has among its various peculiar spaceship crew members a vampire with seriously inhuman psychology, so I think the notion is far from mined out.
IMO, 'overdone' isn't the same as 'mined out'. Overdone simply means that too many novels/stories focus on those archetypes. I'd certainly never discourage a writer from tackling them -- in fact, every writer of horror/fantasy should probably do them even if it's just to get it 'out of their system'. If you keep up with magazine (online and paper) sub guidelines, you'll see that many editors are honestly stating that vampire stories are going to be a tough sell because they are deluged with them.
I agree about Blindsight and think he was robbed at the Hugos. As much as I enjoyed Vinge's Rainbow's End, I feel the Watt's novel broke more ground, told a more exciting story, and was basically superior on a literary level.
Of course, if you're a hideous cannibalistic insectoid thing who wants the nice tasty humans to get close enough to gobble, some way of appearing mysterious, beautiful, tall and graceful is as good a lure as any.
True, true. But I was thinking more along the lines of. "Oh, Lord -- it's a bunch of stinkin' elves. Watch out, little one -- they're weak and stupid, but quick. Might lose a finger if you're not careful. Give 'em a wide berth, luv."
The thing about most contemporary takes on elves that bores me is that most of them are as you describe, on the surface, and have nothing behind that to back them up. [ With Ford's The Last Hot Time as an honorable counterexample. ] Tolkien's elves have much more to them than that, and it's easy to miss on a quick reading of Lord of the Rings just how much there is to them - they are basically Miltonian angels dressing way down, and the couple of places where that mask slips [ "All shall love me and despair" ] are to my mind moments that stick.
Well, literary philosophy-wise I suppose I'm basically a Campbellian. Humancentric to a fault. :P
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We need more FAE...Seelie and Unseelie Court. To date, the only place I've seen this come up is Jim's work, Matt Wagner's Mage,Delint's Jack the Giant Killer...and my unpublished stuff.
There's so much more to the mythos than bloody elves.
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We need more FAE...Seelie and Unseelie Court. To date, the only place I've seen this come up is Jim's work, Matt Wagner's Mage,Delint's Jack the Giant Killer...and my unpublished stuff.
For what it's worth, there's Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, and Kara Dalkey's Steel Rose which is pretty much a direct response to the Bull. Both very good books.
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Most of the ideas I have with vampires and werewolves have them being the trouble makers. They have come to believe their own PR that they are the "Lords of the Night", something that many of the other supernaturals like to dis-abuse them of.
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We need more FAE...Seelie and Unseelie Court. To date, the only place I've seen this come up is Jim's work, Matt Wagner's Mage,Delint's Jack the Giant Killer...and my unpublished stuff.
There's so much more to the mythos than bloody elves.
Hmm, mine revolves around the Sidhe coming to 'reclaim' the earth.
Atlantis and Avalon pop up too.
I figured while I'm minign the mythos, I should go full throttle :)
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For what it's worth, there's Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, and Kara Dalkey's Steel Rose which is pretty much a direct response to the Bull. Both very good books.
Oh! I've read both of those. Good books.
Nobody's cuter than Prince.
BTW, Emma Bull is not what you'd expect in real life. She's like an american version of Emma Thompson, and charming as hell. She has a new book in the works, btw.
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There's more Fae than that! :)
How about Holly Black's Tithe and its sequels.
Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry...
Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which had a lot of advertising on Locus's website for a while.
EDIT: Or do you mean fae that's not young adult? That's more rare to find...
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I'm conciously attempting to avoid all mytho-folklore tropes in the fantasy work I'm doing now. This is beastly, bitchily hard considering that the very structure of storytelling is bound up with those tropes.
It can be done, though. LeGuin's mid 70's and early 80's short work, Jeff Ford's entire career. Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan and Steph Swainston also labor in this particular garden.
My...hmm, direction may be the best term...at the moment is a sort of focused use of the unexplained as both a reflection of and map through various human conditions, which are then distilled through the individual characteristics of normalized characters. The responses of everyday folk faced with 'reality unmasked; naked and with no excuse' to quote a work-in-progress (Meeting The Last Man On Earth, For Coffee: A Raincheck) functions as a form of hyperactive allegory. The metaphor rests not in the description, but in the interpretation of events and facts that fit no previous dataset.
All an experiment of course. Hell, I once wrote an entire story just to see if I could make a ridiculously convoluted plot make sense with no explanation whatsoever. I'd seen other writers do it and wondered if I could. Not to be snobbish, but the great joy of not writing to sell is that I get to pay attention to no voice but those that babble in my own head. :)
ETA: Oddly enough, the decision to use a framework of a completely unreliable universe teeming with unexplainable events has produced my most realistic stories ever. Might be a lesson in that. :P
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There's more Fae than that! :)
How about Holly Black's Tithe and its sequels.
Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry...
Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which had a lot of advertising on Locus's website for a while.
EDIT: Or do you mean fae that's not young adult? That's more rare to find...
I would also recommend Yasmine Galenorn's Daughters of the Moon series. I like her version of the Otherwold, and that there is more then one race of Fairy.
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Nothing is new. It's the way you present that can be new. Anything BAD is overdone. But you could write something about elves and if it's good, no one will complain.
For Fae stories, Holly Black is good: Tithe, etc.
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RMatt--any interest on the publishing end? Wishing you the best!
Could not believe another series that uses the term, "Otherworld". I thought I was being clever. Yeah about as clever as fried hamburgers. Put the thinking cap on Meg....
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RMatt--any interest on the publishing end? Wishing you the best!
Still working on it. An agent is still (after two months) reviewing my manuscript. No faeries in this one, though. I'd like to work on a fae novel sometime.
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Just this morning I was thinking about how almost all the real famous monsters have their beginig mythos tale. For instance Vampires have Dracula and zombies/undead have Frankenstein. But Werewolves don't really have one.
So on the way to work I was contemplating how one could create a begining to the Vampire legend.
So far the best I've come up with is sort of build off of Jim's examples of werewolves in Fool Moon and more so on Norse mythology. Where the story takes place about a Viking (said to be son of odin)having a run in with Fenresiflr(sp?) and killing him. Loki distraught over his sons death curses the viking to walk the earth bearing the mark of the wolf which causes the soul of Fenresiflr to posses the vikings body at each full moon.
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Just this morning I was thinking about how almost all the real famous monsters have their beginig mythos tale. For instance Vampires have Dracula and zombies/undead have Frankenstein. But Werewolves don't really have one.
Actually, vampires and the undead predate those Victorian novels by hundreds of years. Thousands in the case of African folklore.
Werewolves have just as long a historical/folklore tradition. The beserkers of Viking lore, the Romanian varcolak, similar beasts in almost every European tradition. Lycanthropy is a Greek word, and comes from the legend of Lycaon -- a man cursed with becoming a wolf after indulging in cannabalism.
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Speaking of greek, although modern vampires and eastern vampires have been done to death, how about the tradional vampires, the Lamia and the Vrykolas?
Lamia: Female vampire/ demon, ancient meditaranain.. lots of stories, many of them conflicting. A vampire that turned to a shadow by day? Or sucked blood thru the soles of men's feet as the walked over her grave?
Vrykolas: A 'temporary' vampire, could be called from the grave, was someone who died leaving a major promise unkept. Could be called forth by the promised one, and forced to fullfill the oath..
The oldest stories ussually involve a young man promising to care for a younger sister, only to be killed and the girl kidnapped. the elderly granmother forces the man to rise from the grave to find his sister...
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Speaking of greek, although modern vampires and eastern vampires have been done to death, how about the tradional vampires, the Lamia and the Vrykolas?
Lamia: Female vampire/ demon, ancient meditaranain.. lots of stories, many of them conflicting. A vampire that turned to a shadow by day? Or sucked blood thru the soles of men's feet as the walked over her grave?
Vrykolas: A 'temporary' vampire, could be called from the grave, was someone who died leaving a major promise unkept. Could be called forth by the promised one, and forced to fullfill the oath..
The oldest stories ussually involve a young man promising to care for a younger sister, only to be killed and the girl kidnapped. the elderly granmother forces the man to rise from the grave to find his sister...
Good stuff, ms! Far more interesting than the beat-to-death 'I am the sensual doomed Euro-boy. Fear my angsty hunger!' :P
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A couple of yers agao I came up with a 'is it a vampire test' for Ad&d.. went kinda like this..
Does:
He/She speak french?
Wear Black?
Have hair impossibly long?
Obviously Bisexual?
Sigh with angst on uneccacary occasions?
Cant tell if he/she is a he/she or it? Double points for answer c: all of the above.
In a modern setting, have ridulous ammounts of firearms, or know someone who does?
Are they related to a well known historical figure?
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Actually, vampires and the undead predate those Victorian novels by hundreds of years. Thousands in the case of African folklore.
Werewolves have just as long a historical/folklore tradition. The beserkers of Viking lore, the Romanian varcolak, similar beasts in almost every European tradition. Lycanthropy is a Greek word, and comes from the legend of Lycaon -- a man cursed with becoming a wolf after indulging in cannabalism.
Yeah there have been the stories about them all before those books but werewolves dont have any character like dracula where if someone mentions vampire you automaticlly think Dracula. It would be cool if Wolfman finally got a name.
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A couple of yers agao I came up with a 'is it a vampire test' for Ad&d.. went kinda like this..
Does:
He/She speak french?
Wear Black?
Have hair impossibly long?
Obviously Bisexual?
Sigh with angst on uneccacary occasions?
Cant tell if he/she is a he/she or it? Double points for answer c: all of the above.
In a modern setting, have ridulous ammounts of firearms, or know someone who does?
Are they related to a well known historical figure?
LOL!
Speaking of Lamia and AD&D, a Lamia stomped a mudhole in my party while I was playing Troika's CRPG adaption of The Temple Of Elemental Evil. Beautiful game, but buggier'n a rural Florida trailer park.
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He/She speak french?
More or less. I have lived in Quebec for five and a half years.
Wear Black?
All the time. It goes with anything. Well, anything that is also black.
Have hair impossibly long?
To my waist; there's a picture around the seventh or eighth page in the "Pictures of You" thread in Mac's.
Obviously Bisexual?
What counts as "obvious"
Sigh with angst on uneccacary occasions?
They're all entirely necessary from my POV.
Cant tell if he/she is a he/she or it?
Guilty as charged.
In a modern setting, have ridulous ammounts of firearms, or know someone who does?
I fail on this one, thankfully.
Are they related to a well known historical figure?
Not overly well known, but sort of.
Also, I am fiercely photosensitive.
Conclusion: oh, dear.
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After some consideration I've dropped the typical fantasy setting and the typical fantasy character archetypes of the elves and etc...
Instead I am planning on setting the novel in a post apocalyptic future where all of the worlds super powers were overthrown simultaniously through hackers tapping into nuclear weapons systems, Disease Control Centers, and the like. The idea of country no longer exists and anarchy is the law of the land. The only place where there is hope and law and a decent standard of living is in Germany and Russia (sorry I just love the landscape and history of the two countries). The ruling figures of the two countries join forces and dump vast amounts of money into what they call the hammer and scythe project. The projects goal is to create an army that is totaly unstoppable. They use genetic engineering and nanotechnology to amp the reflexes and strength of those in the hammer unit of hammer and scythe. They also used genetic splicing to give them a monstrous appareance... the appearance of thick fur and razor sharp claws the knees back jointed and feet looking like paws... making the men look more like Lupine beasts... even worse... Werewolves. The Scythe project has the same basic objectives but instead of infantry the aim is to make a perfect spec ops team. The same techniques were used except in addition to hieghtened strength and reflexes it heightened their intelligence. Genetic splicing was also used but there are no noticable changes except for the claws and grayish skin... that is until you looked upon thier backs and saw the massive wings... wings of a daemon. With this Germany and Russia would rise to dominate the rest of the world... that is until their creations ambitions outstretch that of themselves.
Thats basically what its going to be about... wondering what yall think
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sounds good, would need a lot of backstory. aLSO what point of view are you telling it from? Whos the main character? Whats the main character?
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How about a pov of a character who is convinced of vampires, and sees them , in a world where no one else does? You could do a backstory for say the polices view where they are tracking down a dangerous manman who stabs people to death with a woodeden stake...
leave it open till the end ( or afterwords) wether the hero is crazy or not..
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The main character was going to be the projects weapons trainer who resigns his post after seeing the projects final results. He would also have help from some of the people from the town in which the hammer and scythe project was located. I realize alot of back story will be needed and I think following a police angle against him only to have the police see the light and then side with him or help him in some capacity would be pretty cool. I also thought to make the main character a Scythe infantrymen who kep most of his true humanity and does not agree with the leadership inside the group and wants to stop them. Maybe I could make a sort of mercenary group out of townsfolk. the weapons trainer. and a dissatisfied scythe project infantryman....
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Did anyone know that Anne Rice's sister, Alice Borchardt, is trying to do for werewolves what her sister did for vampires? ;D
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Great, now we'll get a bunch of kids moping around on all fours and covering themselves in fur
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Phil Phoglio (www.airshipbooks.com if ya dont know who im talking about) tried to 'sex up' zombies to be like anne rice vampires in a strip a few years ago. It was hilaroius.
The only difference between zombies and vampies is freel will:
Zombi " Brainss..."
Vampire " Bloood. But first, I shall eat this waffle."
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Phil Phoglio (www.airshipbooks.com if ya dont know who im talking about) tried to 'sex up' zombies to be like anne rice vampires in a strip a few years ago. It was hilaroius.
The only difference between zombies and vampies is freel will:
Zombi " Brainss..."
Vampire " Bloood. But first, I shall eat this waffle."
Yay! He and Kaja have a real gift for making each pane of their webcomics delicious. I encourage everyone I know to check out their site and buy their dead-tree versions of their comics as they are all delicious!
Getting 'special syrup' for the waffle,
-LN
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Hmmm, sounds interesting Velgron. I like post-apocalyptic stuff. My WIP is sort of PA, but not to an extent that a bunch of people were wiped out.
Good luck with the book!
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Great, now we'll get a bunch of kids moping around on all fours and covering themselves in fur
Owch, sounds like a bad emo version of Billy and the werewolves.
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Late joining the discussion again.
But just my two cents. Make sure you have characters who just happen to be vampires or werewolves. Not vampires or werewolves who are characters.
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I've gotten to where I hate vampire based books. It's overdone and most of the vampires these days are just emo/goth people with too much makeup and some kind of primal sex urge. Not to mention that a vast majority of the young teen (most likely female) are "raping" the Twilight series. but that is just my opinion of course.
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I've gotten to where I hate vampire based books. It's overdone and most of the vampires these days are just emo/goth people with too much makeup and some kind of primal sex urge. Not to mention that a vast majority of the young teen (most likely female) are "raping" the Twilight series. but that is just my opinion of course.
If you're seeing too many of that kind of vampires, you're looking in the wrong places for the good stuff; if you're actually interested in the good stuff, check out my recommendations on the first page of this thread.
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I am quite tired of the vampire and werewolves (and etc) stories about, oh, having a life and having adventures (with angst/romance/thrills thrown in as appropriate). I know this sounds like it would cover pretty much everything, but I am thinking of a specific type of story. They're all blurring together in my mind...i liked them, but now it feels like the last bit of candy you have as a kid on halloween. You're sick of it. Person is werewolf/vampire. There are downsides, which they complain about, but really, they aren't as bad as they make it seem, because there are a lot of upsides and they go and have adventures, fighting evil/monsters/politics/what have you and getting a love interest.
After all this, I'm in the mood to read about a truly tortured soul (not an angst-ing one), for whom being a werewolf (for example) is actually a curse... all downsides... I guess what I want is a horror story, and not the sort that is about a rampaging monster. The internal horror story, the stories that are about guilt and redemption, of the struggle and triumph (although that does not imply 'happily ever after') against one's own faults, failings, weaknesses and disadvantages.
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Personally I would just like to have a vampire or werewolf story that doesn't read like it should have a picture of Fabio with fangs on the cover.
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The real trick to keeping vampires and werewolves from being too overdone is to remember to marniade them overnight and for God's sake, baste them every fifteen minutes! Also, if you make a little tent of tinfoil over the vampire or werewolf while it cooks, it'll keep the moisture in and keep it tender and juicy. Don't be afraid to experiment with seasonings, and consider a slow-cooker as well - there's nothing better than a good werewolf roast that's slow-cooked in the crock pot all day with some veggies... ;D
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It is important to tenderize the meat as well. The problems with werewolves is that they have a tendancy to be gamey. Vampires are stale and dry. Hence, the important part of the dish is the sauce. (If a sauce can make snails taste good, then it can repair anything...;))
-LN
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Yes, there's nothing like vampire tenders with a good Szechuan dipping sauce.
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Yes, there's nothing like vampire tenders with a good Szechuan dipping sauce.
Stop it now. You are making me hungry. It also make me a bit curious about some of those chinese mystery meats nuggets.
Heheh.
-LN
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Stop it now. You are making me hungry. It also make me a bit curious about some of those chinese mystery meats nuggets.
Two words: Jade Court.
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Two words: Jade Court.
Do they do take-out?
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Though I am not a big fan of vampire books, I enjoyed Robin McKinley's Sunshine so utterly that I have read it time and again. And though I am no fan of werewolf stories generally, I'm hooked on the Mercy series (Moon Called, Blood Bound, and the short story 'Alpha and Omega' (soon to be a full novel)) by Patricia Briggs.
Oh yeah. And hi. :D New here.
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Do they do take-out?
Nah, they just rely on their friends at Ninja-Burger!
http://www.ninjaburger.com/ (http://www.ninjaburger.com/)
-LN
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Gillman gets no love ???
(http://www.swapsale.com/Creature_From_Black_Lagoon_3.jpg)
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Gillman gets no love ???
(http://www.swapsale.com/Creature_From_Black_Lagoon_3.jpg)
Your Kink Is OK But It's Not My Kink.
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I always had an background idea where werewolves were extremely rare, and the ones who do exist tend to be very old and curmudgeony. The first reason being that most people are more likely to not survive being mauled by a large anthropomorphic beast with superhuman strength and endurance, so passing on the curse is hard. Secondly that younger werewolves have no control. The essentially turn during the full moon, lose humanity and sanity, and kill. This tends to be a problem for humans as being eaten is a major downer. So young werewolves tend to be hunted and killed, that and the younger they are the more physically vulnerable they are to massive damage and silver.
However, as a werewolf ages (over 100's of years) they gain better control over their bestial side and increased invulnerability. I always thought of playing werewolves off of vampires, in that vampires get front loaded with power in the beginning, but plateau fairly quickly. That and making a vampire is essentially like falling off a log, any white trash inbred vampire moron can do it.
I thought of a story where a young werewolf is on the run from just about everyone. Vampires hunt him because killing young werewolves is sport (like boar hunting) and mauled half eaten humans tend to bring bad attention. Werewolves hunt him because he is to wild and dangerous. In the past a werewolf could find an uninhabited area with a large enough territory and grow. Now with modern society this isn't the case, they cause too much havoc and draw too much attention. Humans hunt him because after eating a couple of people they started to get a wee upset.
I was planning to make Vampires not necessarily very angsty or goth. They aren't also necessarily the brightest most productive bunch. Since making a vamp is so easy most aren't proactively selected to be vamps. In fact the ones who most likely get turned are the ones stupid enough to hang out in dangerous places, flirt with the supernatural, or drunk on the street. There are vamps who tend to think things out, but Chester the hillbilly who was turned after passing out drunk in a gutter after drinking moonshine probably hasn't read Sun Tzu or Machiavelli.
Of course I fear that the vamp/werewolf thing is overdone so that tends to hold me off on writing anything. You know what they say, "If you notice the trend, it's already dead."