[ SECRET POST #2560 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2560 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 052 secrets from Secret Submission Post #366.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[ketita]

Yeah, I've seen some of that stuff, too. For me it's worse, because I don't particularly like ASoIaF, so having it be a massive trend isn't making me very happy.

[elialshadowpine]

I can sympathize. I like dark fiction (FFS, Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series is my comfort reading) and honestly it's gotten to the point where it's just too fucking much. For fantasy, I'm mostly reading YA (with some exceptions; being a SFF writer myself, I follow a lot of SFF/book blogs that are also Not Pleased with the grimdark trend).

If you have not looked there, there is some AWESOME YA fantasy that reads like stuff that would've been published in adult category ten years back. That doesn't have the grimdark "let's see how far we can go" troll mindset. If you want recs or anything, I'm happy to make suggestions there. :)

[ketita]

Oh, you're a writer? That's awesome!
I actually haven't taken a gander to see what authors are saying about this trend right now, though you've gotten me curious. I suppose on one hand you could view it the same as any other trend that comes and goes which is annoying, but I guess I find some trends more... benign than others? Maybe because this isn't a "genre" within fantasy/sci-fi, like urban fantasy or whatever, but just a way to write /any/ story within the genre.

I'd be happy to hear some recs, though I will say off the bat that one of the reasons lately I haven't been reading YA lately is that I got a bit burnt out on kids saving the world. Not being a kid myself, I have more of an appreciation for the years of hard work it takes to achieve competence, so these uber-talented kids waltzing in out of nowhere and being so much more competent than people who've trained for years gets on my nerves a teeny bit.
But throw some at me :)

[elialshadowpine]

Thank you. :) I've had some stuff electronically published but they aren't available at the moment; long story short, the e-pub I was with did not market well at all, and since I was making less than $50/yr on 3 books, decided to ask for rights reversion and am looking at self-publishing sometime. I'm disabled, with physical and mental health conditions, that make stress a very very bad thing, and NY publishing is... pretty stressy. 2014 goal is to get back out of the disability-induced writing rut and stock up a pile of stories, novellas, and novels so I have at least 2yrs of releases lined up. (And hopefully in the meantime Amazon and such won't change their royalty rate so as to make it completely pointless.)

Okay, so I have a clarification question re: kids saving the world. Is the issue ridiculous stakes in books? I've run into the same thing with urban fantasy, too -- with the literal world at stake with each book. It gets... well. How many freaking times can the world be at risk? Or is it more to do with the kids being young? Because a lot of adult SFF (Mercedes Lackey comes to mind) has teen protagonists with special powers, also. Are you meaning stories in which the character's special abilities (whether it be magic or else) don't save the day with no real work on the part of the protagonist? See, I would recommend different things for "lower stakes" vs "quit it with the magic deus ex machina already", which is why I'm asking. :)

[ketita]

that sounds pretty annoying :X good luck with your writing next year! I hope the self-publishing works out for you.
(I'm actually writing a webcomic in my free time, so I've recently gained a lot of interest in the publishing etc. side of things. The comic's not posted yet; it's slow going, since I've got a bunch of other stuff on my plate right now. But I'm also thinking a lot more about worldbuilding, these days, because of it!)

Basically everything you said has aspects that annoy me, these days.
Like you said, one issue is the world constantly being in danger. Something like that, and every time you need to find some kind of bigger danger, and it kind of inflates to the point of absurdity. Something like Harry Potter, where the world was in danger as a general thing but during the books they were fighting smaller enemies, that's okay for me. It's not that Epic Battles are out all the time, it just needs to be... judiciously done. So I guess, it partially depends on the quality of the world-saving.

I am slightly sick of reading about teens. You're right about Mercedes Lackey, which brings up one thing - modern teens are more annoying for me than anything in a different world/different era where I don't have to read about high school drama. But also, tbh, I read Mercedes Lackey when I was in high school myself and haven't revisited it since. I don't know if that would hold up to my current nitpicky tastes in reading. So it's also like, if they're teenagers that act painfully teenage that's part of what bugs me. Like, say, Percy Jackson. It's cute, but just a bit on the WE ARE TEEENSSSSSS kind of feel.

The magic deus ex is definitely on my list of annoyances. Just, that thing where 1)kid has Power. 2) kid enters Organization. 3) kid is magically more talented and skilled than all the people who have been training and studying for years and THE WORLD RESTS ON THEIR SHOULDERS structure has gotten on my nerves. Tbh I've read plenty of adult-fiction that has power fantasies of that sort, too. I call it Main Character Syndrome XD

So in sum, it's not that teens on their own bother me, or that the world being in danger is a deal-breaker, it's a balance of all these things XD
I, er, hope this was helpful and not too rambly!