Author Appeal

Meta-humor. Lots and lots of meta-humor. Also, there's always at least one who's completely nuts and assists the hero, somehow.

For me...

• A primarily female cast.
• At least one Yangire or a cute, somewhat ditzy female character committing first or second degree murder.
• Elemental Powers
• UK English

edited 23rd Apr '11 7:40:14 AM by Mankoi

badass angster

Some type of betrayal plotline or subplot

badass army

humans are bastards/humans are morons

My governments usually range from very idealistic and pure to very corrupt and turned away from ideals. Communism is ALWAYS evil in my worlds.

realistic mixes of gray, black, and white morality, with white being portrayed as largely unrealistic, and gray being the best.

Mankind in general being selfish and heartless bastards. Think the Bible's view of men and their intent.

Troubled, gray, but fundamentally good main protagonists, or at least ones who value themselves and others, regardless of outsiders.

Xenophobic attitudes towards un-allied and sometimes allied nations and government structures (like communism or monarchy, as opposed to say a aristocracy)

A shortlist of sorts:

• The Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes (I enjoy a healthy mix of all five gradations, with plenty of traffic in-between)
  • The Byronic Hero (horrible people working towards decent goals are fun to write)
  • The Arthur Dent (everyone has been out of their depth at some point)
  • Good Is Not Nice (once more, television speaks the truth)
• Nice Hat (why not?!)
• Playing with Complete Monster (what makes someone irredeemable?)
  • Cry for the Devil (...and if they are, can you still feel bad for them?)
• Pure Is Not Good ("purity" is a scary word...)
  • Knight Templar (...as are the people that use it)
• Cosmic Horror Story (can you handle the truth? OF COURSE NOT!)
  • Eldritch Abomination (there are more important things than you in this world)
• Mind Screw (confusion is a perfectly natural state, and to be encouraged)
  • Surreal Humour / Surreal Horror (the line is rather thin)
  • Widget Series (it has more fun than you do)
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel (of course!)
  • Paranoia Fuel / Fridge Horror (fear should only increase with contemplation)
  • Lightmare Fuel (sometimes the unspeakable is unspeakably funny)
• Viewers Are Geniuses / Genius Bonus (I want a clever audience that feels clever)
• Gainax Ending (...but that doesn't mean I'm making it simple...)
  • Bittersweet Ending (...or happy)
• All Love Is Unrequited (I like to let my characters reel a bit)
  • Ho Yay / Foe Yay / No Yay (...and any fans I might have)
• The Woobie (I feel sorry for them, too...)
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (...and sometimes, I let them kill people!)
  • Iron Woobie (...or just, you know, live...)
• Yangire (normal or cute façades are great for hiding long tons of crazy)
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander (space cadets, reporting for duty)
  • The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right (and, again, why not?!
  • Crazy Awesome (naturally)
• The Combat Sadomasochist (because sometimes resilience is not enough)
• Blue-and-Orange Morality (everything is relative, though some things are more so than others)
• The Fair Folk (fairies are supposed to be utterly terrifying)
• Black Comedy / Dead Baby Comedy (part of my natural mode of humour)
• Hurricane of Puns (...and another part of it...)
• Sarcasm Mode (...and yet another)
  • The Snark Knight (from whom no-one is safe!)

edited 23rd Apr '11 8:39:19 AM by JHM

From the top of my head:

Badass Longcoat's

Dark Is Not Evil - and how.

Ax-Crazy Anti Heroes: I also have an urge to combine Ax-Crazy characters with Escapist Characters

BFS's: Up to and including the main characters in one of my stories wielding a BFS Chainsword as her primary weapon.

Cool Sword: Ditto

Girl with Psycho Weapon: the aforementioned Chainsword girl, among others.

Demons: Overlaps with Dark is not evil above

A usually Chaotic protaganist

A usually disproportionate amount of female characters: The only ones exempt from this are fanfics.

Les Yay: once again, ditto

Rule of Cool Driven action sequences

When writing stories based on an established franchise, I usually do what I can to please any fans. Or in the case of fanfics, give more life to a usually ignored character.

Atleast one Badass Biker / Biker Babe.

edited 23rd Apr '11 1:02:22 PM by Rynnec

Perhaps my most alarming one tends to be Gorn afflicted strongly on protagonists more than antagonists. I think it's because, in my mind nothing says badass like a hero who's spirit moves them even after their bodies would have normally failed. It's also because I'm the son of a nurse who doesn't shut up about her work, so I hear lots of icky details about human anatomy.

Somewhat related is that all my characters tend to have inherent knowledge of basic martial arts. Usually this is mostly formed in them just happening to know which rib to break, where on the collar bone to strike for disabling hits or kills, where major arteries and vessels are, etc. Sometimes this is justified because the character is an actual martial artist of some type, or simply a very experienced fighter, but sometimes, even newbies seem to know the exact spot on the throat to go.

OK, I've recently found that all my characters have started drinking mugs of hot chocolate an awful lot. Stop it, subconscious.

Which I'm doing right now... Do you have any penchant for killing your characters off....?

Speaking of which: For some reason, I am disproportionately fond of gruesome death scenes, mostly implied or carefully toed around via some kind of Gory Discretion Shot. They also tend to get more grotesque relative to moral reprehensibility, with some rather cruel exceptions.

edited 27th Apr '11 3:12:03 AM by JHM

Nah, generally speaking I don't kill them off. I haven't yet, anyway.

I have not written this yet, but may in the future if it works. But obsessive (as opposed to possessive) yandere really, really... ya. But it more has to be mild, not really souped up. It gets really weird for me when they go killing everyone who gives you a glance. Maybe amounting to assault and death threats, but a masscure is not what I have in mind.

But still...

Anyway, I had an idea for something dealing with this and a kind of Foe Yay. What could possibly make it worse? The female yandere in question is the guy's ex.

Ya, I know, it's complete wish fulfillment, but I just MUST write it. It seems the work is incomplete if I do not have one tiny thing in there that is, and even at that I still portray it as it would probably play out in real life (with bad stuff happening), but out of context it may seem different.

edited 27th Apr '11 4:21:01 AM by jasonwill2

As far as characters go, casts of snowflakes, Ugly Cute characters, and averting Beauty Equals Goodness come immediately to mind.

For settings, I like Aliens in Cardiff. Also, Real Place Backgrounds and Scenery Porn.

Magical Realism is pretty awesome, too.

I try to keep my sexual preferences out of my stories.

Let me see...

• Russian Culture: I'm just in love with that country
• Hans Christian Andersen: All the non-comedy efforts I've made are trying to ripp-off his style
• Characters that speak two or more languages
• Coming of Age themes
• Postmodernism and Meta Humor
• Playing with Jewish people stereotypes
• John Hughes films, even one of my strongest series is named after The Breakfast Club
• I've made at least 3 parodies or homages about Cinema Paradiso...

edited 28th Apr '11 7:14:07 PM by Anthony_H

I have a weird habit of making my "abnormal" characters female and my female characters "abnormal," unless their abnormality is one that's almost always male in other fiction. Sometimes, not even that stops me. ("Did I just write a female orc as a love interest?")

Also, I write way, way too many stories about the mind-body relationship. At this point, I've called a moratorium on any further stories about shapeshifters, but now I've moved towards the Clingy Costume instead.

edited 28th Apr '11 7:57:31 PM by feotakahari

My Author Appeals seem to run a wierd gamut: blink-and-you'll-miss-it historical references, poking fun at modern culture with my snarky main character's commentary, and lots of hidden double entendres. I try and keep my sexual kinks out of it, but sometimes I have more fun sneaking them in and seeing if people notice.

My protagnists tend to come in pairs, one male, one female, usually related somehow.

Everybody Smokes

Whenever I'm writing, and I need time to think about the story, but don't want to do anything that will keep me away for long, I pop out for a cigarette. It tends to come across subconsciously in whatever I write. If I wrote a children's book, it would probably be called "Timmy takes up smoking", but it wouldn't have started that way. It would just have happened.

LOL. Brilliant. I think one of the reasons most people smoke in my books is because I'm constantly popping outside for a ciggy as well.

Hold on, are we talking about

• Author Appeal or
• Creator Thumbprint or
• Favorite Trope or
• Any of the above?

Mine's definitely appeal - I'm one of those sad bastards who actually enjoys smoking and my characters tend to as well. I actually have to remind myself that not everyone smokes and consciously put in non-smoking characters.

All my main characters smoke, tho'.

I have no idea. It does make the thread much more palatable to read than one focusing solely on Author Appeal would be.

My female (main) characters almost always wind up as tough and not particularly feminine at all, as well as commonly having mean-spirited, almost sadistic affections for the lead male characters.

And the lead male characters are usually not-all-there; they're just a tad crazy most of the time.

Honestly, common sense, I hate the Idiot Ball with a burning pasion, depending on the situation my characters might do something stupid, but unless there's a valid reason for a lapsus no character of mine will ever do something for the sake of plot.

All my characters are named after my friends (I choose a friend's name at random regardless of the character).

All my unamed characters actually share my name (but nobody will ever find out because, well, their names are never given).

Also, unless plot-relevant I tend to give my characters good endings (being an extra in any of my works means that you have higher chances of getting a girlfriend than of dying), if there's no reason for it I don't want my characters to suffer.

Yeah, hate that Idiot Ball or any other form of Plot-driven Stupidity.

Hmm, let's see here.

• Author Appeal: Long haired gentle girl with bluish/purple hair, basically girls◊ look like this◊.
• Creator Thumbprint: Attack helicopters, Night-Vision Goggles, Grenade Launcher, revolver, assualt rifle, oh hell, guns in general. Oh, and combat knives like Ka-Bar, flame based weapon, Cool Bike, big, honking, laser, especially orbital ones. There's also references to abridged series, animes, psychology, mythologies, and The Bible.
• Favorite Trope. Oh boy:
  • Affably Evil
  • Ax-Crazy
  • Blood Is the New Black
  • Blood Is Squicker in Water
  • Dark Action Girl
  • Evil Laugh
  • Friendly Enemy
  • Gunship Rescue
  • Knife Nut
  • More Dakka
    • Gatling Good
  • Serial Killer: Seriously...
  • Villains Out Shopping

edited 28th May '11 1:15:21 AM by dRoy

I tend to follow genres strictly, so it doesn't come up much. Trope Overdosed, I guess, and my addiction to Crowning Momentof Heartwarming tends to result in Romantic Plot Tumor.