Have you ever thought of completely reversing the stereotypes and cliches of fantasy? It would be a fun idea for a script or a novel.

Imagine it - clumsy elves who repeatedly miss arrow targets and implant arrows in other people accidentally, a vegetarian monster, a dragon who blows bubbles (no idea where that came from), a wizard whose staff serves no purpose whatsoever, stroppy unicorns, centaurs who are completely star-blind and sober, gorgons who use contact lenses... I could name so many more...

Can you add more to this list with each post?

This makes me laugh because I actually did write a story with a clumsy elf who couldn't use a bow and arrow to save his life. I wasn't trying to turn the cliche on its head. It was just how I felt Nicco should be.

I also have: a wizard who spends more time beating people silly with his staff than he does using it for magic; a dragon who was herbivorous (ie - he could only eat plants, as opposed to a vegetarian, who chooses that life style); and a pegasus who turns into a vampiric human (Of course, he then gets violently ill, because he can't actually digest the blood. He needs it for the psychic energy in it).

In Japanese mythology, kitsune often appear as beautiful women and seduce men... maybe a shy kitsune?
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NaNo 2006: Steel Bars - 59,233 words
Screnzy 2007: The Enchanted Forest - won
NaNo 2007: Turning Beetles into Buttons - 51,949 words
Screnzy 2007: Simple Gifts - 43 pages total & Butterfly - 4 episodes

Macbeth's witches as social workers? The Medusa featuring in shampoo adverts?

a wizard who spends more time beating people silly with his staff than he does using it for magic

You mean, like Gandalf? ;)

Heather
Forums Moderator

a wizard who spends more time beating people silly with his staff than he does using it for magic

You mean, like Gandalf? ;)

I don't remember seeing Gandalf hitting people with his staff in the movies all that often (maybe once? But I wasn't watching him all that closely in the battle sequences.). Was that something that happened more in the books?

I meant I have a wizard who carries a magic staff. Occassionally, he'll make one end glow, so that he has more light. Generally, though, he just uses it the way anyone would a staff - like Little John in Robin Hood.
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NaNo 2006: Steel Bars - 59,233 words
Screnzy 2007: The Enchanted Forest - won
NaNo 2007: Turning Beetles into Buttons - 51,949 words
Screnzy 2007: Simple Gifts - 43 pages total & Butterfly - 4 episodes

I seem to recall something like that in one of the Discworld books - and I'm going from memory here, so bear with me - where wizards' staffs are being discussed:

"One thing people often forgot was that, even if a wizard ran out of magic, he still had six foot of oak."

It was something along those lines, but much better phrased. Ho hum.

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SF08 - Mary Celeste, horror
Non Levitas Tolero Fatui

eh heres just thoughts on the spot.

really vain goblins.looking at themselves in mirrors etc.

elves allergic to plants flowers,hay fever

dwarves using stilts as weapons, or to move anyway

lazy wizard ,just drinks and takes drugs out of his pipe.his staff is a bong

Meh!

A mermaid who's afraid of water, and allergic to water.
A dragon who's afraid of fire.
A prince who has to be rescued from a tower being guarded by a dragon by his beloved, only because he's afraid of the dragon.
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"That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scron the anxiety of the old." said by the librarian in "The Golden Compass", by Philip Pullman

Ha- the story I'm working on right now actually does centre around a prince being rescued from a tower (but he's being held there by a witch, not a dragon) by his beloved...and his mother.
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Chamberlain: What's wrong with it?
Housman: It's half Greek and half Latin!