Problems in UF Worldbuilding

Here’s an interesting post at a new-to-me website called Mythcreants: Five Common Problems in Urban Fantasy Worldbuilding

My first impression of Mythcreants is positive, not just because the name is entertaining, but because the posts are long and interesting rather than the extremely short, facile posts that we see all over the place. Those short-and-shallow posts annoy me a lot. They’re like fake posts. Here, have a post about problems in UF worldbuilding in 350 words with a cute picture! It’s like, why even bother? So it’s nice to stumble across a new website that puts more into its posts than that.

So, what ARE five common problems in UF worldbuilding? I wonder if, when building the Black Dog world, I tripped over anything the author of this post would find problematic?

Right up front I see I avoided a problem — the unbelievability of The Masquerade. Yes, that’s a problem, and one of the worst examples I can think of offhand is the ridiculous masquerade in Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper series, where in the first books, normal people just about trip over evidence of the secret stuff going on over and over. The reader is supposed to believe that somehow everything weird has been hidden for … how long, now? Really?

Now, I love Ilona Andrews, and imo the Innkeeper world is not one you’re supposed to take too seriously. But the silliness of the worldbuilding is why I quit reading that particular series. I mean, I think it’s purposeful silliness, and for readers who like that, it’s really well done, but it’s a little over to top. I like all their other series a lot better.

Anyway, I think I handled that just fine: a single comprehensive supernatural explanation for why no one normal could notice the supernatural stuff in the world, and when the miasma finally failed, it failed completely and the masquerade ended at once.

None of that counts as one of the five problems. The Mythcreants post just says readers have to go alone with the masquerade, which is sometimes true, I suppose. Then they go on to what they think are real problems.

1) Ordinary humans are boring.

I think I pretty much dodged that one too, because I enjoyed building Miguel up into a primary protagonist. I hope readers like him as much as I do. He sure was fun to write in Copper Mountain, when it becomes clear that being brilliant does not cure all ills.

But this point makes me think of a UF vampire series that I just could not keep reading. This wasn’t only because the human characters were all boring, but they totally were, in a particularly obtrusive and annoying way. This is JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, which I see is up to 23 books now, the most recent of which is scheduled for release next year. I see they’re still picking up high star ratings and lots of reviews. I can’t remember when I quit reading them, but a long time ago. There were two reasons. No, three.

First, all the cool characters are vampires. If a human character is in the least danger of becoming interesting or important, he or she ALWAYS turns out to REALLY be a vampire, because humans need not apply to the Cool Kids Club, apparently.

When you have a superpowered race mingling with ordinary people, that should provide a fantastic source of conflict and tension: how can ordinary people cope even though they are not magic / superstrong / immortal / whatever. Go! Write! But Ward doesn’t do that at all. Instead, Ward’s books give the impression that she thinks ordinary humans are too boring to bother writing about. Her books are therefore Exhibit A for this type of failure.

As a side note, my second problem with that series is that the vampires, who are the main characters, and whose enemies are the total epitome of evil, have a culture that is so horrible that I sort of found myself wondering if maybe it wouldn’t be just as well if the demons won and exterminated the vampires. Every single thing that ever gets revealed about the vampire culture — the horrible way they treat females; the vicious brutality with which they “train” “soldiers,” the revolting way they have happy! slave! servitors! who are delighted to do menial labor for them, I mean, it goes on and on. My third problem was verbiage blot. The books kept getting longer, but not because there was more story. I mean, I love long books, and I don’t mind a slow pace, but I had the impression the editor just quit saying, “How about trimming 60,000 words?” because Ward got too successful for her editor to care.

Having said all that, I did like the first several. None of the stuff I disliked became apparent for quite a while.

Anyway, what is the second problem identified by the linked post?

2) Vampires have a curfew.

Wait, why is that a problem? That’s totally standard and expected!

Oh, the post is arguing that many authors fail to justify vampires not being destroyed. If these factions are in open conflict, then all the opposition needs to do is attack during the day, and the vampires can’t fight back. 

Well, I guess, but I think lots of authors handle that just fine. In fact, one obvious way to handle that is to avoid “factions that are in open conflict.” Boom, now there are lots of ways to avoid the instant destruction of vampires.

What’s another potential problem?

3) Generically aristocratic fae.

That’s an interesting one!

Unfortunately, it’s easy for fae to come across as little more than feudal humans, with dukes, knights, and crowns, oh my. There’s little to differentiate the kindly ones from a medieval French court, except that the fae are a little meaner and presumably have fewer Viking raids to deal with. 

That did make me chuckle.

For hard-to-understand nonhuman fae, I really like the winter fae of Spinning Silver. Here’s my review. Honestly, I admired that book tremendously, though it doesn’t come close to my favorite of Novik’s, which is the Scholomance trilogy, of course, and here are my comments about what I would argue is one of the very best fantasy trilogies ever written. However, no fae in that, of course, while the fae in Spinning Silver are wonderfully nonhuman and not at all like the medieval French court, or more to the point, the Russian court featured in the story.

4) Swiss Army Mages

Ha ha ha! That’s a great term for an annoying phenomenon! This is exactly why I didn’t like Dr. Strange when I was a kid — always a new Amulet of This or Crystal of That, whatever he needed was always available, in infinite variations. I’m sure that’s what this post is talking about.

The issue is that in this scenario, most supernatural creatures are limited to a narrow set of powers, while mages can do almost anything. The number of spells is far too high for a novel to list them all, even if readers could retain such an info dump. Once a few powerful spells are introduced, it raises the possibility of countless other spells that simply haven’t been mentioned yet. …

Then we have suggestions about how to balance mage powers against the supernatural abilities of vampires and werewolves and whoever, so that the mages don’t have too overwhelming an advantage.

5. No Reason for Conflict

Not keen on this. This isn’t a criticism that’s at the same level as the other four. This is a storytelling problem, not a worldbuilding problem.

Well, this post disagrees with me about that:

There’s a problem: most urban fantasy factions have no reason for conflict. In real life, group conflicts are typically over tangible things, be they land, money, minerals, water, etc. Ideology and personality also play a role, but they aren’t usually enough to create a confrontation if neither side has something the other wants. …

That’s because I’m thinking of conflict between specific characters much more than trying to come up for reasons resource limitations would create tension between vampires and werewolves, or whoever. However, there’s a super obvious solution: the supernatural creatures all need the same resource: human people. It’s not about iron or access to a good harbor or whatever. It’s about who gets to hold power over humans and exploit human populations. There you go, problem solved.

This post is offering solutions to everything. I wonder if they suggest this solution. … Nope. Well, I really did think that was pretty obvious. No need to come up with the Golden McGuffin that both vampires and werewolves need if they both need or want to rule human populations, but for different reasons and to different ends, as (for example) in the Black Dog world.

I do like Mythcreants and will definitely be checking out their other articles and posts.

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