Random: If a stranger comes to town ...

[nebroadwe]

Sniggled from Making Light, as usual -- the "Urban Arrivals" post by Abi Sutherland:

A story starts when somebody comes to town.

      * If they’re a long-lost denizen of the town, it’s a Thomas Hardy novel.
      * If they’re a long-lost denizen of the town whom no one recognizes until someone dies of spontaneous human combustion, it’s a Charles Dickens novel.
      * If they leave town again, it’s a Cory Doctorow novel.
      * If they are in want of a wife, it’s a Jane Austen novel.
      * If they come to town in the company of a strange set of locals and go to meet the guy in charge, it’s Shane. Or possibly The Wizard of Oz.
      * If the denizens of the town are not of their species, it’s a first contact novel.
      * If it was their destiny to come to the town in quest of a magical artifact which will cause them to defeat a great evil upon the land, it’s heroic fantasy.
      * If they meet a lot of vampires there, it’s urban fantasy.
      * If there are plums involved, it’s Making Light.
      * If their ethnicity is mentioned, it’s a joke.

Said post is of course followed up by an epic comment thread with the kind of suggestions that make me laugh out loud at work:

      * If it's Lenten, and it's come with loue to toune, with blosmen and with briddes roune, then it's sung by someone crossed in love in fourteenth-century England.
      * If he has killed the local Sphinx en route, he is one bad mother-[redacted].
      * If it's a town that everyone comes to, but nobody is from it, and everybody wants to leave it, it's "Casablanca".
      * If the arrival is a mysterious supernatural woman who has come for the sake of a poor but virtuous maiden, it's probably a fairytale. Or A Wrinkle In Time. If it's a mysterious supernatural man who has come for the sake of a poor but virtuous maiden, it's a Child ballad, and the maiden should run like hell.

And so forth. Share and enjoy!

ETA: How could I miss the most important one?

* If the stranger appears with others in a shimmer of light and is wearing a red shirt, don't stand near him.

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

It may not be an option in the OLD ballads, but I see no reason that we can't recognize that times have changed and young maidens can be Xena, Buffy, or a young Honor Harrington.

Whee, yes! And all the advice-dispensing mother-figures can be Cordelia Vorkosigan or Lilith Clay.

[seawasp]

Indeed. My forthcoming epic fantasy has a young maiden of the above mold, and her aunt doing the advising is a former adventurer herself and a Badass Grandma.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Sign me up! :-)