Otherland - We love every Fantasy Trope
Every couple of weeks, a confused-looking person gets lost in our
glorious halls, looks around with a frown and pulled down corners of
their mouth and always thinks it’s necessary to tell the (un)suspecting
employee standing behind the cash machine, that they don’t like all this
„weird fantasy stuff“. This always awakens the dragon in me, I do a
little magic and lo and behold: the person leaves with an Otherland bag.
But where are the roots of the prejudice that genre literature is
trivial? Perhaps it's because of the flooding of a particularly
hackneyed genre trope, that has the mass media holding in a firm grip.
Twilight, Sarah J. Maas and lots and lots of hideous covers with two
people looking deep into each other's eyes while one of them holds a
sword. Have you guessed it?
Yeah baby, you’ve got it: Enemies to Lovers.
My mission for today's newsletter is to find a few exceptions even in this trope that won’t suck and even if it took some convincing, each and every one of my colleagues came up with something. But then most of them gave me more Lovers to Enemies things...somehow none of us is really into that trope, I guess. Let's start with THE standard work: Enemy mine. The 1985 movie is based on a short story by Barry B. Longyear and describes the cautious rapprochement between a human and a lizard-alien. A good read, and not at all cheesy. Personally, I was always hoping for a kiss between Brienne and Jamie in George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire", but tbh I felt more or less repulsed, when they showed it in the incredible awful last season of the Series. The deep friendship between the two of them was probably far more loving for me than a bad sex scene. I've also grown quite fond of Nina and Matthias in „Six of Crows“ by Leigh Bardugo. All the bickering and snickering…and the slow burn Romance, Yes that convinced me!
A whole book about Enemy to Lovers that is really really good is „This is how you loose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Not only is it well written, but it uses time travel and small, intelligently placed messages from the two protagonists, who aren't actually allowed to love each other.
It has long been a fact that Ursula K. Le Guin was incapable of
producing anything bad. In the Earthsea Chronicles, or more precisely
the Tombs of Atuan, there is a subtle rapprochement between Ged and
Tenar without any annoying label being imposed.
Joe Abercrombie also has a knack for breathing new life into fantasy tropes, but where exactly the Enemies to Lovers thing takes place I'll keep a secret, just read the whole everything!
If you're going through a breakup and would rather see your ex-partner's head on a pike, I recommend the short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Definitely a lasting way to break up with someone.
And that's it for now, because that's all I can think of.
Have fun with the novelties!
Yours (loving) Esther, from the Otherland