the idea: create a feminist medieval fantasy world

My sister Mairead and I both graduated within the past month and have been keeping each other updated on where we are in post-school limbo world.  For the most part, I’ve been enjoying it so far.  I finished my book launch and then spent around a week and a half doing nothing watching TV.  But I can only do nothing for so long.

Tonight we were on the phone, lamenting about various parts of our lives as siblings are wont to do, when we had an idea.  What if we created a fantasy world that we could write together?  One that had all the classic elements of medieval fantasy, but somehow managed to not turn all women into prostitutes, ladies, or women pretending to be men so they could fight.  The list of tropes we created as a mental exercise was actually much longer than that.  I’ve added it below in case you can think of any additions to our brainstorming.

I’d tell you all about the world, but this is still a baby idea and as such needs to be protected.  However, I’m sure there will be more to come as we could our world together through the awesome tool of Google documents. (I could see her typing me idea out as I was saying it!  Magical!)

 

Female Tropes:

Ice Bitch

Femme Fatale

Bimbo

Virtuous/Naive Virgin – often deflowered by the bad guy with the golden heart

Unfeminine Warrior

Fiery Red Head — starts a lot of fights with love interest

Unfeminine Intellectual (Hermione)

Sexualized Enchantress – very easy to flip to men

Old Hag – trickster

Generic victim– usually relative of hero (sister, mother)– exists to be protected / avenged (Percy’s mom, Ginny)

Spy – sneaky, emotionally disconnected/confused, sexual

MOMMIE – nurturing, desexualized, often portrayed as overweight (Mrs Weasley!)

Love Interest Sidekick – May be combination of the above.  Is kickass, but not quite as kickass as the main guy. May symbolically save him once, but will be MORE saved by the end.  Ends up with Generic Hero. (Or with Sidekick in Harry Potter)

 

Male Tropes

Generic hero – moral, needs training in the story, easy for the reader to imagine themselves as this person (Harry, Luke, Percy 🙂 etc)

Grizzled mentor – old, wise, powerful, dies partway through (Gandalf, Dumbledore, Obi Wan)

NEMESIS – Just plain evil, probably wants to take over the world, usually was close to Grizzled Mentor as a young man before they went wrong (Darth Vader, Voldemort)

Sarcastic, intellectual trickster. — also often spy or thief

Bad guy with a golden heart, often turned “good” by the lead woman. – Anti-hero

Sidekick– really good guy, often funny and/or black, never gets as much attention as the main hero, usually his best friend, less attractive. (Ron, Xander).  Often has crush on Firey Redhead and enjoys getting beat up by her

Father Figure (not always father because bad things often happen to the parents before the story starts) – Hero’s father, usually, sometimes a mentor figure who’s closer to his age than Grizzled Mentor.  

Actual Father – dead or evil or dumb

Barbarian With A Heart Of Gold– large, bumbling, clumsy– people usually are scared of him before they get to know him– usually stupid (Hagrid).  Needs to be “cultured” (Tarzan)