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Stuff We Like #14

2/18/2015

8 Comments

 

Welcome everyone to another week of Stuff We Like. Brought to you by Freddy, still managing to survive the bitter cold from the Lake Effect playing with the Canadian front.

Stick around for after the post because we have a question we'd love for you to answer (and get a chance to win a $10 gift certificate).

*looks around*

Everyone settled with their blankets and hot cocoa? Good. Shhh, Toni, we know you're hot *winks* but the rest of us are buried underneath snow.

We all have our favorite things when we read. Me, personally, is SFF (science fiction and fantasy) - graphic novel, book, short story - any and all are welcomed. I do have my preferences for SF and for F, getting them to overlap can be hard, but when done well we have glorious results.

Now with every genre, there are tropes or fallbacks or characters that pop up over time. It's enivitable really. Someone sees something, reads a story, and people love it to death. They want to write their own story or find more like it.

I don't think shifters or vampires will ever go away, not really. They're too ingrained at this point. Has their meaning changed? Yes. Most certainly. But good characters never really go away, just adapt to represent the times.

Vampires once symbolized how the old men aristocrats married young money so their houses stayed afloat. These young women who had money but no title got it, and maybe some respect, that's debatable. Now, with True Blood, they helped symbolize the LGBT civil rights movement, whether the author intended that or not, the show pushed our fight to the forefront.

For me, science fiction had appeal because it's about possibilities. A philosophical debate of man and our nature, where our future may go, are we at our best? Possibilities, wonder, desire, dreaming, all of those become more vivid for me when put on the landscape of pages before me.

Fantasy was always about getting lost. Adventures. About being in awe of he unknown around us, and sometimes, just accepting things as them come.

When those two combine? I'm in fucking heaven. It's hard to have a universe with both, but I often felt them together made a better picture of humans. That they complimented each other and how humanity is.

I have things that I see, when I read them, and roll my eyes. Am I tried of SF being about spaceships? Yes. Yes I am. There is such a broader world out there when it comes to SF, and while I appreciate Star Trek and Star Wars for taking nerds mainstream, I miss the other SF that got left behind. Also, why does paranormal equal wolf shifters? The paranormal is so much bigger and richer. (And I would love to see the alpha pack structure demolished to be honest).

Do I get why people still write these, and why people have their go-tos they want to read that include these things? Completely. Everyone has a comfort zone. Sometimes you just need to turn off and enjoy something uncomplicated - a concept I struggle with, but I appreciate it. Sometimes I'm too complicated and turn myself (and others) in circles when I'm trying to figure something out. Simplicity is sometimes more impactul, says more, than all the subtle layers of the world.

When I read and when I write, my brain is wired in a certain direction and it takes off at a million miles per hour, assuming the rest of me will catch up. I want fresh and new and different. I don't want to tread on the past taken before. Every time we open a book, the possibilities are laying out their in front of us.

Is it a new adventure? Are we testing humanities' resolve again today?

As a reader and I writer, I certainly hope so.

So I ask you these two things:

1. What is your favorite trope that you will never get sick of, and why?

2. What would you love to be challenged and renewed, and why?

Answer below to enter yourself in our little contest today.

*waves*

8 Comments
Susan
2/18/2015 10:33:16 am

I agree with you on SFF as my favorite reading/viewing material.My favorite trope is the little guy saving the day, a la Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. While elven princes are great, I like to see an average being as the hero every time.

Reply
Denise Dechene
2/18/2015 11:33:43 am

I love paranormal. Like SF you can so much with the world they live in, the possibilities are endless. I love the geeky twink guy who is the hero. Everybody always underestimates them but most the time they are smart, making be known the biggest muscle is the brain. I'd like to see more chunkier characters get their man. Just because you have a little extra padding doesn't mean you can't get a cutie or muscular hero.

Reply
Lee Todd
2/18/2015 12:13:21 pm

I adore PNR, BDSM, GFY and military themes ....but PNR is definitely my fave...there are so many combos that can be made to work

Reply
Diane A
2/18/2015 12:18:45 pm

My first foray back into fiction, after many years of reading non fiction, was with paranormal and I really like it when the old standards are challenged. Amber Kell was the first author I read who mixed shifters together, now quite a few have done that and while it is much maligned, I did like the concept of the Twilight vampires of being "vegetarians" that live in certain climates like normal people because it was different. In a different realm of paranormal, I'm like Denise, I love stories with what is considered a geek or nerd character that turns out to be stronger than he thought and possibly the hero of the story. Whether it's paranormal, contemporary of SF/F, when you take two seemingly opposites (Shax and Ness) and they find their common ground, I love that! As for what I'd like to see challenged, anything that has been a standard plot up to now, it's fiction, let's play - as long as the characters are well written, a reader will go on any journey they do...but that is just my opinion!

Reply
Crissy M
2/19/2015 04:20:34 pm

There are sooooo many great tropes out there...but the two i waffle between so often are enemies-to-lovers and GFY...yep, I'm that girl...and if ypu can combine them...grrrrr...just something about the struggle for what they don't think they want but obviously need

Hmmm... I'm a huge paranormal/sci-fi fan, so i always love vast vew worlds...i love when an author throws me completely off my game with something i never expected because that rarely happens anymore.

Reply
Freddy
2/25/2015 12:25:37 pm

Hi Chrissy!

You are the winner of the GC. COngrats! I will be emailing you about who you'd like it from tomorrow (it's bedtime for me).

Freds

Reply
Sula
2/25/2015 08:49:44 am

I just about enjoy reading most tropes and genre. I often differ in what I read, from paranormal to contemporary, from MF to MM, but mostly MM at the moment. I do like the challenge of reading different genres and letting them broaden my understanding of different lifestyles, such as light BDSM, or cultures different from my own.

I think that the power of a well written book can transpose/transport me into another world and share another thoughts to allow me to be part of their world just for a short while. A place where I can meet an alien, or know what its like to love a shifter, to be a lawyer, a detective and even look at the world through the eyes of an assassin and understand his motives.

Reply
Freddy
2/25/2015 12:26:41 pm

Hey Everyone!

Thank you for all the wonderful comments. It was definitely fun to read all the different answers. Chrissy won the GC, so congrats to her! We hope to hear from everyone again soon!

Freds

Reply



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  • Home
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    • Coming Soon
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      • Translated Paperbacks
  • Authors
    • Andi Anderson
    • Angel Martinez
    • Carole Cummings
    • Evelyn Benvie
    • Foster Bridget Cassidy
    • Freddy MacKay
    • Gregory L Norris
    • J Scott Coatsworth
    • Jana Denardo
    • Jayne Lockwood
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    • Lou Sylvre
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