Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Romance #2

[Mars447]

Ok.
 
So Urban Fantasy is like City of Bones. Fantastic world hiding behind the façade of an urban setting.
 
And Paranormal Romance is like Twilight. Protagonist falls for a supernatural creature.
 
And Grimmedarke has more of a medieval or steampunk setting with grey characters and unpredictability like IRL.
 
Correct?  :eek:

Urban fantasy has magic creatures coexisting in a contemporary (typically urban) setting to various degrees of success.  The supernatural world can be hidden or open to the mundane world, depending on the series, but the story usually revolves around killing shit/solving problems.  Lots of urban fantasy is first person perspective, due to cribbing notes from noir.
 
Paranormal romance is similar but instead the story revolves around the pretty (usually utterly ineffectual/wimpy) heroine and the pretty (alpha male but REALLY sensitive etc etc) hero hooking up, usually while the hero goes around saving the heroine from the baddies/herself because feminism is dead.  A lot of paranormal romance doesn't actually bother to go beyond the Happily Ever After, so if you see a series that shares a setting but is constantly introducing new male/female leads that's a big telltale.  Another indicator is if the book has a Goodreads blurb that reads something like:  

"Female Character is an X, Setting Depiction, and she meets Hot/Sexy Guy she can't keep her eyes off of/stop thinking about and together they must do plot."

 

Nobody knows what Grimdark is.  Seriously.  Supposedly it relies on subverting High Fantasy tropes (like Lord of the Rings), but everybody and their grandmother does that now, and what would that make Sword & Sorcery?  Major themes include amorality, bleakness, and subverting the Heroic Warrior archetype, but of course it's harder to find a series that doesn't do that these days.  Grimdark includes everyone from Joe Abercrombie (although his work has been getting much less bleak as of late) to R Scott Bakker, which is to say that its a very vague descriptor.  

 

Grimdark is usually associated to low fantasy rather than urban fantasy, however.  A grimdark urban fantasy would probably inch into straight noir or horror.

[voodooqueen126]

so any of the stuff published this year Hugo worthy?

[voodooqueen126]

The feminism and Mercy Thompson series seems fascinating in its contradictions: able to do rape recovery well, but completely prone to "Exceptional Woman Syndrome".

[Mars447]

I picked up one of the more recent Mercy Thompson books and near the beginning the other female werewolves were basically written off as "those jealous bitches" who hated Mercy because she was banging the alpha. I'm not sure how accurate that is to the series but I didn't get much farther than that.

[Richard Writhen]

Hmm. Food for thought. I've never liked the High / Low fantasy labels. I mean just because of its ties to the real world The Dark Tower is low?

[Mars447]

@Mandy
It's [ spoiler ] Blah Blah Blah [ /spoiler ] without the extra spaces.
 
Or you could quote any post with spoiler tags in it and then hit the "BBCode Mode" button on the very top left to see how you can do the tags yourself.
 
[spoiler]Soylent Green is people![/spoiler]
 

I don't remember how to do spoiler quotes. Meh. 
 
There are only 4 other females in the pack and one of them actually did have a thing for the Alpha, her guy. Some things happen that make the other females not like her for other reasons, plus she's not a werewolf herself, but only one of them is actually jealous.

That's still kinda shitty.

[Mars447]

Be advised, Fool Moon is easily the worst book in the series. Things don't get really good until book 4, and I'm not hugely fond of the books after 12.

How's the Kit Colbana series? Read a Goodreads review talking about how the resident sexy werecat ambushes her and she's powerless to resist, which what the fuck.

[Gigei]

After my re-read of the Kate Daniels and Mercy Thompson books, I did notice something that I hadn't before, and that is: both Kate and Mercy were actually AFRAID of the guys they became involved with eventually.  Like... actually SCARED of physical threat.  How the HELL did I miss this the first run through?  I have a problem with this.  I do.  Psychologically, what exactly is going on with these women?  It's kind of gross, I won't lie.  I mean, I'm pretty sure I willfully chose not to digest that information the first run through with these books.  Just weird.  The same happens in Alpha and Omega, but it is made clear that since Anna is a beta wolf that nobody but an insane wolf would hurt her - however she TOO is afraid of Charles.  Christ.  What is this pattern saying?

Has anyone else had such a big change in reading a series once loved and now hated?

Uh, I already mentioned that a long time ago that I thought the Mercy/Adam dynamic was pretty gross. I only read up to the third book. You also replied on that same thread.

 

Edited to remove spoiler.

[voodooqueen126]

From "Pale Demon" by Kim Harrison, first chapter: "“That was a black spell,” I whispered, stepping forward and out of Ivy’s reach. “That was a black spell!” I yelled, and he retreated to the table, his eyes falling from Jack and Jill."
 

Christ, Rachel - these are two people who just tried to kill you and your partner's ENTIRE FAMILY. Remember what happened last time your partner's family was attacked? They killed his wife. But you're concerned about the fact that someone else did a black spell, when you do them for MUCH LESS? I hate you, Rachel. You're an idiot.

 

 

I haven't read the Clayton Danvers books - I'll have to check them out, for laughs.  In my recent Mercy re-read I was a little shocked that she, too was afraid of Adam initially.  Like.. was concerned that he might kill her, not just a little intimidated.  And to me it was not clear that he even liked her a little.  The beginnings of that relationship were as out of the blue to the reader as they were to Mercy - confusing, and seemed like he was claiming her as a mate just to make sure nobody from his pack murdered her.  The first time I'd read them I went in expecting some kind of romance angle, and I assumed that was what was going on, but if I hadn't expected it and just read it for what it actually SAID, it would be unexpected.  Anyway, I thought it was interesting that I missed that the first time around.  And I liked the fact that she tried to deny their connection because she wanted to have an independent life - she didn't just fall happy go lucky in love and immediately move in and let him take over, although, he did try. 

 

And I hear you on not getting why a woman would want to be with some testosterone fueled dude - not to be overly personal, but I'm not interested in guys anymore... disgusted with humans in general really (haha) - but even when I was dating them I was not interested in this type of guy, really.  So... I think I just assumed that these books and the interpersonal relationships with these controlling shifts were more of a BDSM slant than anything else.  I mean, are they not?  It's completely possible that this is simply the way I can come to terms with them personally.  You see it more clearly with the JR Ward kind of books - the women are clearly dominated and want to be dominated by these ridiculous trope male vampires.  I think it's a reoccurring thing in a lot of UF.  Maybe less so with Kate Daniels, as they are both pretty badass and I like to think they are just playful with each other and it's cute.

 

Alpha and Omega are much better, but I think only because of the "beta wolf" thing where all Alpha wolves want to protect her and do what she says.  Oh, and yeah, Anna is only afraid of Charles in the beginning and it has more to do with her prior abuse than him being scary to her or her feeling threatened.  And I like that the guy who is literally considered the "scariest wolf in existence" tries really hard to not make himself scary to her :P  That's actually kind of adorable.  The only thing I find incredibly annoying in those books is the miscommunication between them - I can't stand it when lack of communication is used as a plot device. Makes me want to smack Charles a LOT.

 

 

 

YYEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS.  I was really happy with the way they handled Mercy's rape recovery and simultaneously uncomfortable and sympathetic for her since some jerk from the police department essentially put the entire video of it up on YouTube.  I like that they also didn't just drop the whole thing and the reader can see several books later that she still thinks of it and is so strong for dealing and compartmentalizing all of it.  Can you discuss "Exceptional Woman Syndrome" a bit more?  I think for a while I was really only interested in reading and enjoying my UF and now I'm more interested in actually looking at what is going on in it.

http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2012/07/there-can-only-be-one-strong-female.html

Wackily I hadn't read that article before I argued that Mercy Thompson suffered from Exceptional Woman Syndrome, but from the feminist review, it seemed she had it.

and  someone else had the "name that trope" issue

https://bitchmedia.org/post/name-that-trope-the-super-hot-bro-girl

it seems like exceptional woman syndrome is related to "cool girl" of Gillian Flynn fame.

Some of the discussions here

http://geekfeminism.org/2010/07/09/geek-feminism-as-opposed-to-mainstream-feminism/

centre around it, but it is more tangental, I guess because computer science is a less masculine profession than car repair (since Mercy Thompson is a mechanic)

[Puntificator]

Nobody knows what Grimdark is.  Seriously.

That's not true. Lots of people know what it is, it's just that there isn't unanimous agreement on a definition, primarily because its use as a non-negative term to be taken seriously, is, relatively speaking, too recent (it was originally intended to be pejorative and humorous). This ambiguity of meaning happens to be true of all genre definitions; people even disagree on the definition of fantasy itself, but very few of us seem as overly concerned about this as they are about grimdark's alleged "lack of definition."  

 

Here is what I think is the best definition of grimdark (though, like all definitions, it can be improved): Grim speculative fiction having strong qualities of tough uncompromising realism, told in a world that has an undefined, murky future and disturbing, sordid, or dark aspects, places, people, entities, occurrences, or circumstances that are emphasized, and which is about antiheroic protagonists who have agency in making moral choices and are morally ambiguous, gray, vague, complex, or flexible, or immoral, and thus with more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and motives, and with realistic behavior and consequences. 

 

Some observations about this definition: (1) The phrase “having strong qualities of tough uncompromising realism” is a dictionary definition for “gritty,” which is an essential characteristic. The longer phrase is used here instead of the more direct “gritty,” because many people don’t seem to know what “gritty” actually means in this context. (2) Grimdark is distinct from but intersects with both “dark fantasy” and “horror.” Arguing that grimdark is the same as either of these makes “grimdark” a useless redundancy. This definition avoids this. For example, those dark fantasy or horror stories that lack grittiness are not grimdark. Nor are they grimdark if their protagonists don’t meet the criteria of this definition. Etc. (3) "Dark" in the context of this definition means “morally corrupt; evil; or characterized by great unhappiness or unpleasantness.” (4) The "undefined, murky future” means that there is no predestination and thus there is also no certainty of a happy ending or that "good' will ultimately triumph. (5) The definition doesn’t require the presence of nihilism (a misunderstood word that some seem to think defines grimdark), hopelessness, or violence, but doesn’t exclude these either. Violence, in particular, is a common element of grimdark stories, and is almost always present, but is not a necessity. As an example, a story in a setting where the protagonists are enslaved and deprived of basic rights and privacy, and are depressed, with no hope of escape, could easily be written without violence, while still meeting the criteria for being grimdark. (6) Being grimdark doesn’t preclude the story or its world from having parts that are bright: very, very bright. (7) Note that there are specific high fantasy tropes that it subverts, but not all high fantasy tropes are subverted.

[Maester Llama]

Been thinking about the question of whether I've significantly altered my positive opinion of any of the uf I read over time / rereads. I'd say yes, to a degree. I don't think I've ever transitioned from "yay this series is the bestest" all the way to "fuck this series," but I've certainly had my enthusiasm grounded and eroded by more considered readings. I don't read a ton of uf, but when I do read it and I get into it I tend to start out very enthusiastic about it. I invest heavily in the characters and how they run their lives -- both as expressed through the lens of supernatural metaphor and just in general. It usually takes several books before my reading of the series can come down from its initial high to engage on a more critical level.

 

There's The Dresden Files, of course. I do still love them, but I now read them in a much, much more cynical way, because of their very mixed track record with the portrayal of women and the male gaze. I devoured them merrily for years without noticing these issues, despite this being a pretty major part of my post-secondary education, but little niggling things that I couldn't quite feel comfortable about cropped up occasionally, and then Cold Days, which is an incredibly squicky book in terms of its narrative voice, happened. While I'd been aware of the criticisms of the series in this realm before Cold Days and I'd kind of gotten them, it was Cold Days that overloaded me and forced me to retroactively re-examine my own reaction to the series. [At this point someone uses "Yes Cold Days is uncomfortable, but it has in-story reasons to be so," and it's not very effective, because in response I use "Yes, but every narrative and dramatic choice is, well, a choice."]

 

I struggle a bit with Seanan McGuire's October Day books, which are a happy place for me even though I consider them to be formally quite flawed, just in terms of the aesthetics of the series: the repetitive plug-and-play world-building explanations and banter, the occasional tendency to rub points in. I'm also becoming annoyed, and a little weirded out, by the series' increasing tendency to restrict some of its most interesting supporting cast to cameo appearances. McGuire has a deep bench of supporting players in the Toby books and seems to be explicitly dedicated to making space for a cast that is diverse in many ways, but in the most recent few novels there's been a lot of Toby running around with her menfolk, particularly Quentin her squire and Tybalt her manfriend, while characters like Toby's sister May are mostly relegated to phone support at home [May leaps to my mind as an example because it feels to me like she in particular has been benched for a long time now, though I happily acknowledge that I'd have to check before I asserted that's actually the case.] Some of the Toby / Tybalt relationship stuff is becoming awfully ... straightforward, though I'd say it's still early days to be making that accusation. And, finally, I'm not totally sure how I feel about the politics of some of the "you have to choose" business that's been going on with people of mixed fae bloodlines in the series. I like the idea of the series exploring tangled blood connections / heritage and confused and unconventional family ties, exploring the difficulty and delicacy of walking on those borders, and I feel like there used to be more of that, rather than this lean toward squaring away connections that conflict with one another. All of these problems I've got with the series are, kind of by their nature, concerns that could only build up after a while reading and enjoying the books.

 

Just the other day I had a conversation with a friend who was made a little bit uncomfortable by the way Ben Aaronovitch -- a white man [albeit one with some notable family ties to what he's talking about] -- talks about blackness in Rivers of London, and also by the way Peter discusses women. I'm a fan of the series, so it was a good conversation, because now I'm thinking about my own reaction to the series, and whether any of my friend's criticisms land with me [I'm not yet sure they do, particularly, but at least now I'm thinking about it.] So I think rereads / rethinks can play an important part in getting past that "I love Toby / Harry / Peter / Mercy / Fort / Suzume / Carlos / whoever and their story is the bestest story!" in order to think about what the series is saying in a more engaged way, even if this process doesn't lead all the way to "fuck this series," which ideally of course it won't. The enthusiasm phase is great, but the exploration / reappraisal phase is great too.

[Puntificator]

Been thinking about the question of whether I've significantly altered my positive opinion of any of the uf I read over time / rereads....

 

Excellent introspection and retrospection. I really, really enjoyed reading it.

[C.T. Phipps]

Well, I did a couple of essays on grimdark so if you want my opinion:

The Appeal of Grimdark

What is Grimdark?

 

On my end, I never really had too much of a problem with Mercedes Thompson's relationship with Adam because while he's physically intimidating, her primary problem is with the patriarchal sexism of the werewolf system which coats all of their actions. Unfortunately, my biggest issue is that Mercedes has the same problem as Anita Blake and so many other UF protagonists in that she has absolutely no relationship with other women.

 

So any message on sexism in society is kind of off-putting.

 

The Dresden Files are one of my greatest inspirations for writing and I wouldn't have created Esoterrorism OR The Rules of Supervillainy without Jim Butcher's influence. If I ever meet the man in-person, I've made a promise to buy him a beer. However, I will say that the male gaze stuff was amusing at first but has gotten way-way overboard. It also became retroactively less enjoyable with COLD DAYS and the whole very-very uncomfortable, "Harry is a latent sexual predator" business followed by SKIN GAMES abyssal treatment of Murphy.

 

I still love the series but really hope Jim Butcher learns to dial it down a bit. Not every woman must be the most hottest thing on the planet.

 

The Hollows is a series which started off as one of my favorite in the entirety of Urban Fantasy with the strong relationship between Ivy and Rachel w/ the hint of sexual tension really fun. I don't know what happened there as it was balanced really well by Kisten but the books really went downhill the more they went away from the Ivy and Rachel relationship. Even if it was non-sexual, it was their powerful friendship which drew me to the series.

 

Amusingly, this has just encouraged me to go more to the independent circuit and I'm rather fond of the indie [b]Demon Squad[/b] series by Tim Marquitz and [b]Clandestine Daze[/b]. Demon Squad is great, really over-the-top and read like a humorous Vertigo comic book. The problem is they do suffer from a lot of the same problems as the Dresden Files with female characters primarily existing in relationship to Frank Trigg the Devil's Nephew. Clandestine Daze is a pair of books which has to deal with the fact, well, it's amazingly well-written spy fiction but it's hero is evil.

Deliberately so.
 

The central conflict of Clandestine Daze is Z, the doppleganger, has assumed the form of a man as part of his duties to spy for the Fairy Courts on humans. This includes pretending to be the husband of the man's wife and father to his child. He refuses to sleep with her because, well, that's a bridge too far despite the fact he's already murdered the guy. Demon Squad recently killed its primary female character (even if it still has a few) and a major secondary one as part of the attempt to dial up the angst. I still love the series but wish it hadn't done that.

[Mars447]

Yeah, I don't know what is up with so many female led urban fantasy series (that are frequently written by women) where the heroine basically has no relationships with other women that she considers her fellows. The thing is that in a lot of male written works female characters only exist in relation to male characters. In female written works... it's basically the same thing.

At least Kate Daniels has Andrea and Julie.

Also, Werewolf patriarchy suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of wolfs. Even the hypothetical Alpha Male had an Alpha female. And of course we now know that the Alphas are basically just the parental unit.

[C.T. Phipps]

It was one of the things I wanted to avert in my novels. My early attempts at writing were very very hero-centric with only the love interest and otherwise but I had some wonderful women as readers who pointed out the flaws. So I do my best to make a rough 50/50 equality to male and female characters. I also make it a point to have the female characters interact on page because, well, why not?

Indeed, while it wasn't what drove me away from the series (that was the shift to porn), I always noticed this was an odd thing in the [b]Anita Blake[/b] series. Anita Blake had only one female friend in the series and eventually drove her away because she was jealous of her love life. Retrospectively, there was always an undercurrent of, "Anita isn't like other women! She's not weak but tough and awesome." Which is problematic because of the assumption of the latter to say the least.

 

But I do generally consider this mantra true, "Problematic elements shouldn't make you avoid a book if it's still good. Just be aware of the problems."

[Mars447]

I tried the first book of the Demon Squad series.  Dear god it is horrible with Male Gaze.  And by this I don't mean that it's not PC or respectful or whatever, I mean that it is horribly executed.  It's not funny or hot, it's obnoxious, annoying, and fairly pathetic.  Especially since the woman being objectified here is his cousin.

 

Sorry, Tim Marquitz.  "Hah I wanna fuck my cousin" is a pretty shit joke.

[C.T. Phipps]

I tried the first book of the Demon Squad series.  Dear god it is horrible with Male Gaze.  And by this I don't mean that it's not PC or respectful or whatever, I mean that it is horribly executed.  It's not funny or hot, it's obnoxious, annoying, and fairly pathetic.  Especially since the woman being objectified here is his cousin.

 

Sorry, Tim Marquitz.  "Hah I wanna fuck my cousin" is a pretty shit joke.

 

Well, the entire point of Frank Trigg is that he's a lewd, obnoxious, self-hating pathetic individual who is compensating for the fact he's surrounded by horrible people because, well, he's the Devil's nephew and Hell is not a nice place. His attraction to Scarlett is meant to be pathetic because she's about the only decent person in his life and I make an exception for the relationship because, well, I'm not sure "cousin" has any real meaning when all angels and demons are brothers and sisters.

 

I've read a lot of Tim Marquitz's other works and the male gaze elements are completely absent from the others. Z from Clandestine Daze, for example, is almost asexual. So, it's very much a specific choice for Frank in Demon Squad rather than anything else. It's also resolved by the second book where, afterward, Frank's only interested in his canonical love interest.

[Mars447]

Well, the entire point of Frank Trigg is that he's a lewd, obnoxious, self-hating pathetic individual who is compensating for the fact he's surrounded by horrible people because, well, he's the Devil's nephew and Hell is not a nice place. His attraction to Scarlett is meant to be pathetic because she's about the only decent person in his life and I make an exception for the relationship because, well, I'm not sure "cousin" has any real meaning when all angels and demons are brothers and sisters.

 

I've read a lot of Tim Marquitz's other works and the male gaze elements are completely absent from the others. Z from Clandestine Daze, for example, is almost asexual. So, it's very much a specific choice for Frank in Demon Squad rather than anything else. It's also resolved by the second book where, afterward, Frank's only interested in his canonical love interest.

The Male Gaze in Demon Squad is obnoxious and annoying, but it's a symptom of the disease that is the rest of the writing in Demon Squad being absolutely atrocious.  The prose is terrible, but I found the dialogue to be particularly bad.

[Richard Writhen]

The Male Gaze™? Seriously someone needs to write this book lawl :drunk:

[voodooqueen126]

It was one of the things I wanted to avert in my novels. My early attempts at writing were very very hero-centric with only the love interest and otherwise but I had some wonderful women as readers who pointed out the flaws. So I do my best to make a rough 50/50 equality to male and female characters. I also make it a point to have the female characters interact on page because, well, why not?

Indeed, while it wasn't what drove me away from the series (that was the shift to porn), I always noticed this was an odd thing in the Anita Blake series. Anita Blake had only one female friend in the series and eventually drove her away because she was jealous of her love life. Retrospectively, there was always an undercurrent of, "Anita isn't like other women! She's not weak but tough and awesome." Which is problematic because of the assumption of the latter to say the least.

 

But I do generally consider this mantra true, "Problematic elements shouldn't make you avoid a book if it's still good. Just be aware of the problems."

 

Yeah, I don't know what is up with so many female led urban fantasy series (that are frequently written by women) where the heroine basically has no relationships with other women that she considers her fellows. The thing is that in a lot of male written works female characters only exist in relation to male characters. In female written works... it's basically the same thing.

At least Kate Daniels has Andrea and Julie.

Also, Werewolf patriarchy suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of wolfs. Even the hypothetical Alpha Male had an Alpha female. And of course we now know that the Alphas are basically just the parental unit.

Yeah. What is with this? Why would a woman write this way?