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Random thought: plots and fonts
Feb. 10th, 2012 06:24 amI'm tired and hoping this morning doesn't turn out bad, so here's a random thought:
Stock plots in fantasy are like the font Papyrus or Cooper Black. They're distinctive, strongly designed, and most people who haven't seen them before look at them and go "hey, kinda neat."
Then there are the other people, who have seen 10,000 poorly designed flyers covered in Papyrus font, or 3,000 t-shirts designed in Cooper Black, who have an incredible aversive reaction. It's almost like a flinch. "Oh, god(dess), not Papyrus!"
But Papyrus and Cooper Black are perfectly nice fonts, separate from their current cultural usage. And that story about the little orphan child destined to save the world because of their inherent niceness and the band of scraggly outsiders who are drawn to protect and support them is a perfectly nice story, really, if you haven't seen 10,000 horrible executions of it. If it's your first time, you just go, "oh, neat font."
Stock plots in fantasy are like the font Papyrus or Cooper Black. They're distinctive, strongly designed, and most people who haven't seen them before look at them and go "hey, kinda neat."
Then there are the other people, who have seen 10,000 poorly designed flyers covered in Papyrus font, or 3,000 t-shirts designed in Cooper Black, who have an incredible aversive reaction. It's almost like a flinch. "Oh, god(dess), not Papyrus!"
But Papyrus and Cooper Black are perfectly nice fonts, separate from their current cultural usage. And that story about the little orphan child destined to save the world because of their inherent niceness and the band of scraggly outsiders who are drawn to protect and support them is a perfectly nice story, really, if you haven't seen 10,000 horrible executions of it. If it's your first time, you just go, "oh, neat font."
