What to avoid in webcomics?

[NakedElf]

Mostly I'm refering to people who figure, big ears are cool, different species are cool, being all mythical and misteeerious *wiggles fingers* is cool, and perhaps maybe add the "living in forest" think...

Pointy ears are awesome. ^_^

My affection for pointy ears probably makes me far more tolerant of elves than most people, though actually there's only one comic on my entire reading list which has any elves in it... (not counting my own comic.) Good elf comics are hard to find.

The big issue I generally have with the depiction of elves is that they're so damn stereotypical. They're all 6 foot tall blond haired blue eyed archers wearing really stupid armor and living in the woods, and have very little to do with the elves from actual mythology. People use race as a substitute for personality, rather than figuring out how race helps create and affect a character. It's an elf, so it has to be noble and stuck up and love nature and beautiful and blah blah. Because obviously we've never had any Asian elves or short elves or elves who had individual interests or managed to make it into the modern era.

I love mythology. I love mythological creatures. There's so many ideas people have come up with. Hell, I think even vampires still have a lot of good ideas in them if people would stop using the stereotypical Hollywood vampires and read some actual vampire myths for a change. Any character which is just a stereotype is going to be boring, whether an elf or a vampire or a gamer...

[Killbert-Robby]

Stephen King wrote an awesome couple of short stories about vampires that are worth reading. They were in his book Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

[Black Sparrow]

Mostly I'm refering to people who figure, big ears are cool, different species are cool, being all mythical and misteeerious *wiggles fingers* is cool, and perhaps maybe add the "living in forest" think...

Pointy ears are awesome. ^_^

Quoted for truth.

I know the elves discussion has been done to death at this point, but I don't care.

I love alternate races... they're fun to play with. Random superpowers too. I have a really high tolerance for pure crap. But the problem is that, when things like elves and superpowers have been overdone so much, you need to do it REALLY WELL so that it sticks out. Make sure you have good, compelling characters BEFORE you apply the bells and whistles, and try to keep the comic away from "I'm an elf; that makes me cool!" The character should be a cool character who just happens to be an elf.

[Yeahduff]

It was a long process, finally admitting that I still, had always, wanted a career in comics, and taking steps towards that goal. (Or at least becoming a good writer, because I am willing to settle for that.) It started with One-liners, which I started because I knew it would be, by comparison, so easy to do. Problem is, since the strip is autobiographical, all I'm doing is reporting. I'm not exercising my writer's muscles, so in that sense, my efforts have been wasted.

I'm now working on, among other things, a story I hardly know anything about. I don't even know the fucking names of my characters, all I have is a vague notion of their personalities, a few other things, and what they look like. I have no idea how they will get out of the situations they will face, or anything in detail about those situations themselves, I have only vague ideas of what the setting will look like, etc.

In short, what I am doing can only lead to something so poorly written that it amounts to raping all who read it, and I shall finally be crucified by all who despise shitty webcomics and their creators. (Frankly, I'm surprised I've remained unscathed this long.) But at least I will be producing something.

OK, I'm done being emo now. Which reminds me, don't be emo, it's fucking disgusting.

Heh heh wow, you're kinda insecure, huh?

Nothing wrong with autobiography. Some damn fine books have been autobiographies, and it's far from something just anyone can do well. Fiction is not necessarily better or harder than nonfiction.

As for your story, well, most of the places you're vague about have to develop on the page. The more you write, the clearer it'll come. Sure, you'll end up with a few less than great things that way, but that's why you revise.

[Adobedragon]

...if you write an elf that has almost nothing similar to traditional representation of elves, then you haven't wrote an elf, you wrote something and just named it elf.

Well, of course. My contention is with writers (stretching the term perhaps) who rely on on weak archetypes, usually from D&D or Hollywood, to create a character.

The archetypes themselves, however, aren't something to avoid altogether in writing. Archetypes recur because audiences are drawn to them.

Vampires, for example, have the whole immortality, forever young thing going for them. And yet, they are simultaneously weak in the face of ordinary forces, i.e., sunlight, pointy-wooden stakes, etc. And so they continue to hold some degree of fascination for many people.

This doesn't, however, mean a writer can't take the standard archetype and make it his/her own, so long as there is still something in the character that is recognizably elf, vampire, orc, etc. Vampires are usually parasitic immortals; elves, pointy-eared and magical. Beyond that there is a lot of leeway in how the archetype is developed.

A vampire doesn't have to feed on blood, but instead souls. Blond elves can be the bad guys; dark the good. Basically, there are no hard and fast rules for fictional tropes.

The big issue I generally have with the depiction of elves is that they're so damn stereotypical. They're all 6 foot tall blond haired blue eyed archers wearing really stupid armor and living in the woods, and have very little to do with the elves from actual mythology. People use race as a substitute for personality, rather than figuring out how race helps create and affect a character. It's an elf, so it has to be noble and stuck up and love nature and beautiful and blah blah. Because obviously we've never had any Asian elves or short elves or elves who had individual interests or managed to make it into the modern era.

The reliance on D&D and Tolkien style elves is so...Aryan nation. Bleh. Elves and elf-like creatures have been a staple of myth and lore for many cultures, long before Tolkien and imitators came on scene. Ditto, Bram Stoker and those that followed.

With such a wide diaspora of mythology to draw from, it's a shame the best many [writers] can do is the standard blond, blue-eyed elf or Dracula-style vampire.

[Shishio]

Heh heh wow, you're kinda insecure, huh?

It's partly that, and partly fortifying myself against the inevitable onslaught.

Nothing wrong with autobiography. Some damn fine books have been autobiographies, and it's far from something just anyone can do well. Fiction is not necessarily better or harder than nonfiction.

I appreciate your attempt at encouragement, but anyone can do what I do provided you have

1) A good memory

2) Interesting anecdotes to share

Everyone has stories they tell at the bar, at parties, to their friends, etc. That's all I'm doing. The only difference is I tell them in comic form and post them on the internet.

As for your story, well, most of the places you're vague about have to develop on the page. The more you write, the clearer it'll come. Sure, you'll end up with a few less than great things that way, but that's why you revise.

That is true if you are that type of writer, which, even though it defies all fucking logic, I apparently am, so yes, you're right. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing, despite the fact that by just jumping into a story, I will inevitably fuck it up because I have no idea what I'm doing. I just want to be able to do it right. Is that so much to ask?

God, apparently dead set against not masturbating furiously to my misery, seems to think so.

[Yeahduff]

Heh heh wow, you're kinda insecure, huh?

It's partly that, and partly fortifying myself against the inevitable onslaught.

Nothing wrong with autobiography. Some damn fine books have been autobiographies, and it's far from something just anyone can do well. Fiction is not necessarily better or harder than nonfiction.

I appreciate your attempt at encouragement, but anyone can do what I do provided you have

1) A good memory

2) Interesting anecdotes to share

Everyone has stories they tell at the bar, at parties, to their friends, etc. That's all I'm doing. The only difference is I tell them in comic form and post them on the internet.

Well it's less encouragement than philosophical disagreement. Your insecurity is amusing, so I have no interest in aleviating you of it.

But anyway, there're always people at the bar who tell the best stories and everyone wants to listen to them. Some people tell em better than others because there's a skill involved. I mean, if you suck, that's another issue, but storytellin is storytellin, whether it happened to you or you made it up. It's still all about choices, what you include, what you leave out, how you phrase things, how in depth you go, etc.

[Sorcery101]

Ditto, Bram Stoker and those that followed.

With such a wide diaspora of mythology to draw from, it's a shame the best many [writers] can do is the standard blond, blue-eyed elf or Dracula-style vampire.

Quick correction. Most people actually don't do a Dracula style vampire because there is far more to Dracula than what people pick up from hollywood (Because Hollywood cut it out to make the story shorter or because special effects at the time couldn't pull it off). Most people do Anne Rice or White Wolf vampires. So they are like super watered down Dracula. Because orginal Dracula could do A LOT of neat things people usually ignore. Fun stuff like turn into and control nighttime creatures, his specail dirt, and bug eaters usually get cut out because it rarely comes up when someone is writing An Anne Rice vampire. And those are the ones that are SUPER DULL (and usually just an excuse to write yoai).

[NakedElf]

Don't even get me started on vampires, I'll probably ramble on even longer than on elves...

I enjoy teh hawtness just as much as any lonely horny teenage girl, so I see that as having its valuable place. But a good vampire has to go beyond that. I *liked* evil Spike and Drusilla not because they were hot (I mean, good Spike looked just like evil spike) but because they were awesome. Angel/Angelus was never interesting. Oh noes I'm a vampire blah blah. Stuff it, I don't wanna hear it.

I guess that's my 'pet peeve' in vampires--vampires who sit around whining about how hard and angsty it is to be a vampire. If you don't like your life, fucking DO SOMETHING about it.

Also, there are tons of vampire myths from places other than Hollywood. Modern 'vampires' don't even resemble their Slavic origins anymore. Real vampires from Slavic myths were <i>not</i> pretty, they were half-decayed walking corpses sent by the Devil to terrorize your village and randomly kill and mutilate your livestock. They had more in common with zombies than Lestat. And then of course there's all the other blood, life, and essence-suckers of other mythologies...

Oops. Ah, well.

[Sorcery101]

As I said, Anne Rice vampires whiney pretty and oversexed.

[Princess]

Then there are bastard variations like Hannibal Lecter , who is a bit like a vampire only badass

[NakedElf]

As I said, Anne Rice vampires whiney pretty and oversexed.

When Anne Rice did it, it was fun. :P A great many crappy things can be fun the first time. When everyone else did cheap knock-off inferior versions, it got old really quickly.

Then there are bastard variations like Hannibal Lecter :D, who is a bit like a vampire only badass

Cannibals seem to fall in a really different genre to me. For starters, there's nothing 'magical' going on with them... obviously there's a connection, but vampires more *drain* and cannibals more just kill you.

[Kels]

When Anne Rice did it, it was fun. A great many crappy things can be fun the first time. When everyone else did cheap knock-off inferior versions, it got old really quickly.

Unfortunately, that includes Anne Rice doing knock-offs of her own stuff. When the hell did Armand get so whiney!

As to the other stuff, I've seen really interesting stuff that makes vampirism symbolic of STDs and other diseases, or applying the concept to novel cultures. The idea of going back to the slavic vampires and doing something that intersects zombie and vampire themes is an interesting one, although I'm not horror-oriented, so don't expect me to do it.

[Princess]

As I said, Anne Rice vampires whiney pretty and oversexed.

When Anne Rice did it, it was fun. A great many crappy things can be fun the first time. When everyone else did cheap knock-off inferior versions, it got old really quickly.

Then there are bastard variations like Hannibal Lecter , who is a bit like a vampire only badass

Cannibals seem to fall in a really different genre to me. For starters, there's nothing 'magical' going on with them... obviously there's a connection, but vampires more *drain* and cannibals more just kill you.

I'm thinking more of Dracula really, I mean technically Hannibal is a count.

(but being a Doctor is better, more modern)

and he is much more violent and much less sexual than a vampire

[NakedElf]

Isn't Anne Rice doing a novelization of the Christ story now?

Bwaahahahaha


Vampires got AIDS is an interesting concept, but I think it's hard to go from there with it. I read a few stories in that vein back in highschool (OMG how the time flies.) I like the 'vampires got OCD' angle, personally :P

[Kels]

Actually, it's more "vampires are AIDS", in the same way that in Ginger Snaps, the werewolves were menstruation. The passing of vampirism through blood makes for lots of interesting disease metaphors, if you're willing to get pretty deep with your writing.

But then, handled well, you can make deep concepts seem light at first glance.

[Adaz]

Actually, it's more "vampires are AIDS", in the same way that in Ginger Snaps, the werewolves were menstruation. The passing of vampirism through blood makes for lots of interesting disease metaphors, if you're willing to get pretty deep with your writing.

But then, handled well, you can make deep concepts seem light at first glance.

I remember an awful series called Dracula where Dracula got bested every single chapter by a trio of kids (I have a good memory for this kind of stuff), where once they actually did the 'Vampires got AIDS' storyline. Dracula bit someone who had AIDS, and suddenly he was starting to be alive. I never understood how that was supposed to work, but it was sort of original.

[BrownEyedCat]

The lycanthropy/vampirism as a disease/explained away by science angle can be done well, but . . . dammit, I like my supernatural creatures to be supernatural.

Same with my Jedi-ism. Damn midichlorines . . .

[The Mortician]

BEC, you are right. Midichlorines killed the force.

[Lady Yate-xel]

...if you write an elf that has almost nothing similar to traditional representation of elves, then you haven't wrote an elf, you wrote something and just named it elf.

Well, of course. My contention is with writers (stretching the term perhaps) who rely on on weak archetypes, usually from D&D or Hollywood, to create a character.

The archetypes themselves, however, aren't something to avoid altogether in writing. Archetypes recur because audiences are drawn to them.

Vampires, for example, have the whole immortality, forever young thing going for them. And yet, they are simultaneously weak in the face of ordinary forces, i.e., sunlight, pointy-wooden stakes, etc. And so they continue to hold some degree of fascination for many people.

This doesn't, however, mean a writer can't take the standard archetype and make it his/her own, so long as there is still something in the character that is recognizably elf, vampire, orc, etc. Vampires are usually parasitic immortals; elves, pointy-eared and magical. Beyond that there is a lot of leeway in how the archetype is developed.

A vampire doesn't have to feed on blood, but instead souls. Blond elves can be the bad guys; dark the good. Basically, there are no hard and fast rules for fictional tropes.

The big issue I generally have with the depiction of elves is that they're so damn stereotypical. They're all 6 foot tall blond haired blue eyed archers wearing really stupid armor and living in the woods, and have very little to do with the elves from actual mythology. People use race as a substitute for personality, rather than figuring out how race helps create and affect a character. It's an elf, so it has to be noble and stuck up and love nature and beautiful and blah blah. Because obviously we've never had any Asian elves or short elves or elves who had individual interests or managed to make it into the modern era.

The reliance on D&D and Tolkien style elves is so...Aryan nation. Bleh. Elves and elf-like creatures have been a staple of myth and lore for many cultures, long before Tolkien and imitators came on scene. Ditto, Bram Stoker and those that followed.

With such a wide diaspora of mythology to draw from, it's a shame the best many [writers] can do is the standard blond, blue-eyed elf or Dracula-style vampire.

My comic is chock full of elves, and I don't think a single one is blond haired and blue eyed. I came up with a whole big thing with elves and half elves and humans when I was in something like 5th grade, and it's now getting worked into comic-y form. I don't think any of them are mystical forest dwellers either.

I've also got what some people would consider furries and there are some vampires coming, so I've got the whole spectrum of 'Oh god, not again.' I feel like I'm making good on not turning them into something horrible though. I feel good about them, because they've been made my own.

I just recently discovered 'Dreamland', where I think everyone is supposed to be a stereotypical fantasy being, at least to some degree. But the art there is amazingly cool, and I hate the Princess (who I expected to love because she was kicking ass and taking names) just because her personality blows, not because she's an elf - unless every elf in the whole damn place is supposed to be that way, in which case I hope very few more show up, because 'We are so regal we can't be assed with decency towards anyone' can only be taken in single doses if it must be taken at all.


I think, in all, what to avoid is not so easy as what to DO. DO come up with your own mythos and worlds and character concepts. DO take inspiration from a wide variety of other things, but don't take too much or let them define things for you. DO enjoy yourself, and DO talk to other people for three pages about elves.