Done To Death
Time for a small, not all that shocking confession. I’m a fan of the TV show Castle. Nathan Fillion, playing a writer? Yes, please! I love the wit and the banter and, while I hope one day Castle and Beckett will ‘fess up about their feelings for one another, a larger part of me hopes that’s a long time coming, simply because we all know that once a smoldering TV romance goes “hot,” it’s pretty much a death sentence for the show.
And yet, as much as I love Castle, I also love reading Lee Lofland’s blog, The Graveyard Shift, after each episode. Mr. Lofland is a former police officer and each week, he dissects the episode for mistakes made in the police procedure. It’s always a fascinating look into how it’s done in the “real world.”
One of the things that Mr. Lofland has done, though, is identify some Castle “tropes” that have been done to death. For example, Lanie, the ME, will always spout off some ridiculous voodoo forensics at the start of the episode. Beckett, the tough and savvy police officer, will usually get kidnapped and/or have her gun taken away from her. And the real killer will always be “subtly” introduced in the early part of the show (but usually in such a hamhanded way that long-time viewers can guess who it is). These are tropes that, I suspect, Lofland would consider “done to death.”
These sorts of “been there, done that A LOT” tropes can pop up just about anywhere, even in Christian speculative fiction. You know what I’m talking about: the plot that’s been done a dozen times over. The character that shows up in too many books. The theme that everyone wants to expound on. It got me thinking: I wonder what the readers at Speculative Faith think has been “done to death” in Christian speculative fiction?
But before I officially throw open the floor, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and share one such concept that I think has been overdone: the Nephilim.
In some ways, I understand why people gravitate toward that short snippet in Genesis 6 that describes the Nephilim. It’s kind of bizarre:
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend withhumans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4, NIV)
Like I said, weird, right? We’ve got the whole “sons of God” marrying the “daughters of men,” and the men of renown popping up afterwards. Seeing as speculative fiction writers like the bizarre, it’s understandable that so many of us have gravitated toward this passage, crafting tales of fallen angels mating with human women, producing monsters of varying sorts that need to be wiped out by the Flood.
Yawn.
Oh, excuse me. Like I said, in my grubby little opinion, the Nephilim have been done to death in Christian fiction.
Now, to be honest, part of the reason why I’m sick of this trope is because I have theological problems with the angel/human hybrid explanation. I don’t actually think that’s Biblical (notice in the above quote that the author of Genesis never says that the Nephilim were actually the children of the sons of God and daughters of humans!), and the arguments I’ve seen in support of that theory are filled with extra-Biblical texts that people try to bootstrap into pseudo-canonicity.
Or, to put it another way, I don’t buy it.
Personally, I think there’s a more mundane explanation for this passage. I believe that what’s being described here is an intermixing of two different human families, specifically the descendants of Cain (the daughters of man) and the descendants of Seth (the sons of God). Notice in Genesis 4 and 5, when the author shares the family trees, that we have additional data about the seventh son of each branch. In Cain’s family, the seventh son is Lamech, who brags about killing a man for wounding him. The seventh son in Seth’s family is Enoch, who walked with God and then was no more. The way I read the whole “sons of God/daughters of man” business is that the descendants of Cain corrupted the more pious descendants of Seth.
As for the Nephilim, I’m not sure what they are, but they sound human to me. They’re described as “men of old, of renown.” Old heroes. But given that the word nephilim in Hebrew means “the fallen ones,” it makes it clear that what’s heroic to men isn’t necessarily heroic to God.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now and turn it over to you. Disagree with me if you want, but I really do want to know: what’s been done to death in Christian speculative fiction?
As much as I hate to say it..Narnia-type worlds. Stories where people go through a portal/door/etc into another dimension and return barely a minute after they left it. Some of them are pretty good, but I think to make it work, you need equal focus on both sides of the door (not that this is exculsive to Christian speculative either).
I’ll never get tired of doors into other worlds, but I do like to see originality. How would it be if someone from another world crossed into ours, and we were their fantasy? Or if they come out sometime and find out time passed faster while they were gone, and now they’re alone? That seems to fit Faerie legends more, at any rate.
“One glance and they knew they were soul mates.”
Mistaking the hoo-yeah! of attraction for the real thing gets so many people, especially the young, into trouble. I am beginning to loathe books that perpetuate this trope, for how it messes up young readers’ expectations in particular.
No complaints here, about your complaints, John. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met, in real life, who believe the sum total of the Bible’s themes are only about some kind of mystical hybrid between demons/aliens and humans that occurred some long time ago. It’s rather annoying, really, when a) as you demonstrated, it’s not that freaky, b) all of Scripture is about Christ and this stuff is a distraction. (Disclaimer: it’s still fun to speculate, of course.)
At present, the Speculative Faith Library has nine books with the Nephilim BookTag. Please understand: I am not critiquing any of these novels! I’ve enjoyed several of them (such as the Cradleland Chronicles). But I know these are not the only novels that include the Nephilim, either in the present-day frame of reference, or as the alien/demon predecessors of the plot’s current alien/demon threat.
I do believe done-to-death logic, and theology, prove it’s time to ponder other themes.
That also goes for what Galadriel wrote (in her successfully posted comment?) …
Here’s where I can add a modification or expansion. Not just magic worlds accessed via “portal” per se, but magic worlds that behave like this …
Hmm. That sounds a bit cruel. Please understand: I am not faulting these stories. I love many of them! But like Galadriel, I’ll just come right out and say it: Narnia got to me first. It is now embedded in my consciousness, since childhood, and therefore has a place that no other story, no matter how well-written, can “top.”
Of course, I’m speaking for myself; an author with a Narnia-like story may “reach” another child in his/her formative years and similarly become endeared. But do we not have a glut already of stories that try to be “the next C. S. Lewis“? This next is partly facetious: I wonder if the C. S. Lewis estate (with Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham in charge) might consider some kind of legal action, based in copyright law, to block use of the name ascribed to authors who might need to obey the words of this proverb:
I also agree with Sherwood:
… Though I’m curious which Christian novels perpetuate this. I certainly hope that, apart from the pulp-Christian-romance most of us dislike, this hasn’t infected spec-fic.
Other tropes I could do without (I’ve mostly heard of them in books I have not read):
I’m sure I have more. Wish I’d thought up this idea for a series. ‘Tis a great one!
Secular critics complain about this cliche in mainstream high fantasy, too. For instance, I’ve read reviews on Strange Horizons that cast the Prophetic Hero as a tired cliche. Christopher Paolini, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, etc.
I love real heroes in my fantasy. They don’t necessarily need to be Chosen Ones (Tolkien didn’t do so, except perhaps a little with Aragorn). However, I think this is one of the cliches that we shouldn’t want to eliminate. For me, it still has a lot of potential.
I’ve heard the line of Seth and the fallen angels argument both. The problem being the giants came from this union, Goliath being one of them (giants on the earth in those days and also after that) and standing at least 15 feet tall. (When nonbelievers marry believers, their kids may be monsters, but they’re not giants. Hee hee.)
Theological quibbling aside, I think Stephen pegged the tropes that I see in Christian fantasy so much. The one that annoys me the most is the Chosen One. The kid, the slave, the person from Earth, whatever. They always come as a Messianic figure of some kind and they always Save the World.
Also demons. Ever notice that everybody ALWAYS fights Satan and the demons of Hell? I’ve seen very few Christian fantasy novels that fight something else. It always goes back to Satan. I was especially disappointed in that one series where the kids are half dragon and their parents were dragons disguised as humans … because at the end of the series, they fight demons.
…. I mean … really? You have dragons and dragonslayers and it comes down to demons?
Kessie, you might recall a certain politician who recently mentioned America being under attack from Satan. Skeptics and non-Christians went nuts. My thought: guys, give him credit for something — at least he was blaming an external enemy for all the evil we see around us. Just wait until you learn for the first time what true Christians believe about the human source of depravity!
Human evil needs to be shown in our fiction, at least along with all the emphasis on external sources of evil, such as demons. But what we’re dealing with here, I think, is a long Christian emphasis on man’s “neutrality” and the devils’ fault, rather than holding all at fault, and man completely responsible for his own sin. “The devil made me do it” is a joke, and should be kept that way, as we laugh at ourselves for our own anti-God choices, and then in Christ “work out our own salvation” in Him, resisting all evils.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, is it too much to fight dragons or monsters or evil wizards? (That aren’t stand-ins for Satan?)
I think of the first Spiderman movie with the Green Goblin. That was a great conflict between the bad guy and his insane alter-ego. (Very Jekyll and Hyde.)
On the theology part of your post, John, I have a theory about the Nephilim. I think that Adam and Eve had children before the Fall. My reasoning here is that they didn’t fall the day after they were put into the Garden, and God had commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. So why wouldn’t they?
So the Sons of God would have been those made in the likeness of God — without a sin nature, and possibly possessed with advanced attributes, as I think Adam may have had. Long life, we know was theirs. Why not a greater mental and physical capacity? But I digress.
The Sons of Man would then clearly be descendants of Adam after the Fall. And by the way, I’d suggest that those Sons of God would have died, not because of a sin nature but because of their own sinful choices.
I floated this idea on Karen Hancock’s blog (she, the author of one of those Nephilim books in our library), and she had a look at Scripture, giving her reasons for thinking my theory doesn’t hold Biblical water. I certainly won’t argue about whether or not this idea is true — Scripture simply doesn’t say. But I think I’m still open to the idea.
As to overdone tropes — none. I don’t think there are any. All of them can work if they’re done well. By that I mean they feel fresh, have an original spin. As you said, John, it’s ALL been done before, so we aren’t going to come up with that new trope that no one’s thought of before. And if we tackle one that hasn’t been done for a while, it doesn’t guarantee it will seem new.
I’ll leave it at that for now.
Fun topic.
Becky
I tend to think most of the time they’re too distracting. I like Castle and Beckett the way they are. Same with Marshall and Mary in “In Plain Sight” (which, honestly, I doubt the characters will ever get there, because of Mary). It just works better with Marshall’s quiet, unyielding love that Mary is incapable of returning. Castle and Beckett are just funny. And I like funny.
Nephilim and the antichrist. Course, I’m willing to bet money the “sons of God” were not demons and not necessarily evil.
Huh. That makes sense. I’ve heard someone say it was a reference to a kind of prima nocta rule at the time, and I’ve heard that “sons of God” is a reference to angels, not demons. But using the phrase “sons of God” to describe demons simply doesn’t make sense.
Ha. Yeah.
–Demons masquerading as aliens
–the antichrist
–political events thrusting us into the last days
–anti-evolution stories masquerading as fiction
–the bad guys use the occult, invoking demons who are vanquished by the good guy praying and/or performing a local exorcism through some means of “battle of the Bible verses” or “Demon be vanquished!” (Okay, so I read a lot of supernatural stories.)
I’ll admit to loving a good creepy supernatural story, which means I kinda have to work to avoid the cliche myself as a writer. It doesn’t actually bother me if a demon shows up in a story. I’m just growing less and less convinced humans need to be directly combating them, as seems to be the point of Jude’s warning in his letter. (He writes that Michael, when fighting Satan over Moses’ body, didn’t try to handle Satan himself, but instead rebuked him in the name of the Lord.)
But I am very leery of most accounts of exorcism. The longest attempt recorded in Scripture was when the disciples couldn’t do it, so they went to Jesus….who then punt-kicks the demon with a single word.
Kessie, I read those books. What bothered me was, one, the invasion of the body snatchers, and, two, knowing I liked the characters better in dragon form, not human form. It’s like their dragon natures could not translate in human bodies. When did they fight a demon, though? The witch was human, I thought. (Just asking…it’s been awhile so I really don’t remember…if you want to email me instead you can.)
Addendum: And I will say I’m tired of “door to other worlds” because I inevitably prefer one world over the other; and I have an incredibly hard time taking child heroes seriously because I can’t stand adults hiding behind children.
Interesting point, Kaci. In Narnia it may work because they were kings and queens over talking animals by virtue of the fact that they were human. Of course later there were other humans. Prince Caspian was a human, and I never felt it was off for him to yield to the High Kings and Queens (contrary to the movie rendition).
Becky
I just looked it up again, and I must have been thinking of a different series. Morgan La Faye is the bad guy (snicker, because she’s like the Dr. Robotnik of the Arthurian legend–something’s wrong? Morgan’s up to her old tricks again!). But she’s more of an older trope and she’s not around as much as she used to be. Eh, maybe I will pick up the series and finish it one of these days.
There’s been a great deal argued for and against the whole “angels vs. sons of Seth” thing and I don’t feel like retreading that old ground. Here’s an article that goes over the semantics and compares to lots of other verses throughout the Bible, if you’re interested: http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/110/#articles
I’d say that pretty much all of my pet peeves have been touched on in the comments so far.
The “transported to a new world to fulfill a prophecy” is probably the one that gets me to look away the fastest.
Though I think the biggest thing to take away from these, is to understand how they have been done before, and if your story falls into one of these categories, how can you make it different and entertaining enough to defeat the trope?
For instance, with Castle (which I also love), I don’t think people watch it for the police procedures or even the mystery to be solved. They watch it because of the character interactions and snappy dialogue. The rest is trappings through which to highlight the characters and cause conflict.
So if you’re writing a niphilim book, make sure that your hook & focus isn’t on “hey look! Nephilim” but on something that can transcend the trope and cause people to fall in love with the story.
Because we know that it’s a delicate balance between meeting people’s expectations and surprising them with a fresh take on the tropes that they are comfortable with.
Well said, Stuart.
I hadn’t thought of that. It does help, though, when very young characters can behave maturely. That allows me to either forget or be assured they really are capable of rising to the occasion.
Well, in the book, I never thought of them as children. I think Lucy was about 12 or 13 in my head for book one, and by the end of the book they’re adults. In Prince Caspian, it even talks about them being in pain as they try to get their bearings because their turning into their adult, Narnian bodies. Caspian’s 12 or so in the book, and I kinda liked him better older in the movie, but yeah.
In Prince Caspian, it even talks about them being in pain as they try to get their bearings because their turning into their adult, Narnian bodies.
Hm. I’ve read the books more times than I can count and I’m certain this isn’t the case. The Pevensies stay the same age when they get to Narnia in Caspian as they were in England, even though they did grow to adulthood in Narnia on their first visit in TLTW&TW. It’s true that in Caspian the others notice Peter assuming a more kingly tone and bearing as his experience in Narnia comes back to him, but it’s not a physical change and there’s certainly no pain involved.
As a kid I thought it was mega-cool that they could go back to Narnia as kids but still remember their lives there as adults, and draw on all that adult experience and knowledge. Yet because they were kids I could still relate to them.
I’d have to look. Something in there gave me that impression. But my first read was in middle school and my second was in college…six or seven years ago.
Who knows, maybe my brain invented it.
Ok, here is one that hasn’t been mentioned yet. The whole farmer’s son (or daughter) who is really the long lost king (or queen). Now I have read some books and they are good with this setup. But why can’t we have a hero that isn’t destined for royalty? What about a guard, or a scribe, or the butcher 😉 And they go back to that occupation?
Also, I dislike finding out the hero or heroine is related to the villain. It worked for Star Wars. But other than that, please, no familial relations. It’s always an uncle who went bad, or grandfather, or sister.
[…] Faith recently, in Stephen’s series on stereotypical characters, in John Otte’s post “Done To Death,” and in our guest writer, Anne Elisabeth Stengl’s post about personalizing universal […]