We are back again, debaters, with a seasonal question! This month's discussion is all about the spooky season. Specifically, paranormal creatures and the stories revolving them. Let's hear from some of our members.
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Question posted on October 7, 2023:
What are your favorite paranormal creatures? Are there tropes that follow stories revolving them, and do you enjoy making use of the tropes?
*note, all answers are slightly modified for grammar and structure*
Winning answer (tied) by ToWolfKin:
I can't say I'm in the paranormal genre at all, but I do like the concept of werewolves. Wolves are, as you may guess, one of my top favourite creatures and the concept of massing them with humans is facinating. How does smashing two (pretty) highly social creatures together work? What kind of societies would form? How does shifting work physically and conceptually? These are the questions I'd love to answer some day!
Sadly, werewolves have a lot of tropes that range from questionable to downright toxic, giving the subgenre a bad rap. The concept itself isn't bad, it's just badly exicuted or plays a part in something untasteful, and I'd love to take the good ideas and tropes (like pack life and mindlinking) and expound on it while also making something unique. Wolves are amazing creatures and so are humans! There are so much more to them than fur, teeth, war, death, and mates.
Winning answer (tied) by WrenMorgan:
No one has said vampires yet, so I'm gonna root for vampires! They're sexy and spooky! I love how versatile they are: you can go full horror and portray them as undead carnivorous nightmares, or at the other end of the spectrum they can be romantic brooding tortured souls.
I love the tropes surrounding them too. Blood drinking has a lot of rich metaphorical potential, immortality can give a character a ton of emotional depth and history, and mind control is always fun. Like any supernatural creature, there's always that sense of them being different, 'other', so either playing into the outcast aspect or a supernatural elite. And the dynamic of hunter/hunted, which can be flipped from the vampire stalking its prey to the hunter taking out the vampire. There are so many directions you can take.
1st runner-up by sandydragon1:
My favorite are chupacabras because how could I not have a massive soft spot for them after writing about Miguel. xD
On a more serious note, I love how I was basically able to use them as a blank slate for the focus of the kind of paranormal romance story I would actually want to read. I love a lot of different paranormal creatures, but unfortunately a lot of them come with baggage that ranges from details that give me a headache if I think about them too hard (mind linking and the logistics of how shifters handle clothes in different stories) to tropes that make me really uncomfortable (don't get me started about the ableism I've seen in a lot of paranormal romance stories).
I do still play around with a couple familiar tropes like packs, but I've done my best to give my chupacabras their own unique cultures and customs. I enjoy exploring the things that make my chupacabras unusual (such as being venomous reptiles and being a lot less prosperous than paranormal creatures often are) rather than what readers might find familiar.
What can I say? I love my big, scaly idiots
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And that's all! Thank you to everyone who participated in this round's discussion questions, and congratulations to the winners! Feel free to leave any additional thoughts in the comments.
See you next round, debaters!
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