What Avalon High Can Teach Us About Writing Fantasies

Pretty much, it's all the negative extremes.

Welcome back! To all the other academic types out there, I trust you had a nice winter break before the school grind kicks back up. To everyone else... 'sup.

So guess what?

Yep

Remember the King Arthur vs Robin Hood post where I said I couldn't bring myself to watch Disney's interpretation of Meg Cabot's terrible book? Well, I brought myself to watch it. Here's the short version: the book was better (which generally isn't a surprise, but you already know how I felt about the book). If you actually cared to see it, then you should just skip ahead, for fear of spoiler alerts and whatnot. Otherwise, read on!

Generally, the movie followed the book fairly decently at first. Allie Pennington (wrong name, but I'm following) is a new student at Avalon High thanks to her parents, the traveling professors of medieval literature. She meets the captain of the football team/class president/teacher's favorite/all around Arthur-like character, Will, his girlfriend Jennifer, and his best friend Lance (all good so far). She also meets the resident nerd, Miles, who seems to keep having visions of the future (Merlin was the teacher, but I'm cool with making him one of the kids), and Will's evil stepbrother, Marco. Eventually she learns that Jenn is cheating on Will with Lance, and Marco seems to have a vendetta against Will. Starting to see the connections yet? So does Allie, once she learns of a prophecy predicting the return of Arthur and his court, unless Mordred can destroy Arthur first.

But then we get to the end, the twist, the big surprise. Remember, according to Meg Cabot, the surprise was that Ellie was the return of Elaine of Shallot/The Lady of the Lake, whose love made it possible for Will to deal with Jenn and Lance's affair. She also provided Arthur with the sword that became Excalibur and enabled him to defeat Mordred. Well, Disney decided that Cabot's version wasn't empowering enough for young girls, so they would change a few things. Just a few. Things like the fact that Marco was some kind of undercover agent to protect Arthur, not Mordred reincarnated. That role went to.....the teacher! Of course! What? But it turns out that it doesn't matter that Marco wasn't Mordred, because Will wasn't Arthur in the first place. Oh, of course...what?? Well then who is? Allie is!

Huh???

Allie is King Arthur reincarnated? How does that even make sense? What happened to the love triangle you just worked so hard to set up? What does that make Will? Allie's the new kid, how is she supposed to lead the way to victory? Victory over what, 'cause it sure ain't the football finals anymore! What is going on?????? Granted, now changing her name from Ellie Harrison (which sounds more like Elaine) to Allie Pennington (as in Arthur Pendragon) makes more sense, but that's about it. 

This is why I have to side with Meg Cabot on this one. Sure, she took a liberty there with Elaine/the Lady, but the backbone elements stayed the same. Some versions of the legend suggest that the Lady of the Lake returned after the fatal battle to reclaim Excalibur, subsequently bringing Arthur to Avalon where he either died or recovered, so Cabot's happy ending isn't really as far fetched as it could be. Whereas, for whatever reason, Disney took such pains to set up this story where Will is King Arthur personified, the love triangle has been recreated, he has a vengeful half brother, and everything fits together perfectly until they turn around and smash it into tiny pieces! Who cares about Lance and Jenn if it's not the cause of Arthur's downfall? Allie wasn't invested in their relationship, she was the new kid! Will's "knights" were supposed to be the football team. Who are Allie's "knights"? The four friends she made so far? 

Don't get me wrong, I didn't so much have an issue with Arthur being reincarnated as a chick. Whatever, it's a new age, Allie Pennington could easily have worked as a character. In fact, that's a story I'd read in a heartbeat. But in that case, at least shift the other necessary characters and their interactions to match, so that the legend stays mostly intact. As it stands, Avalon high is another movie about teenage drama (except, it's not even that dramatic) that they pinned King Arthur references to and called it a day. 

So that brings us to a golden rule about writing a fantasy: Stick to the rules. 

Which rules? Well first, natural laws should still apply. Of course, you can't necessarily be a stickler on the physics or else dragons would never leave the ground, but you better give me a darn good reason why there's no gravity on your magical island. The reader needs some thread of normal to hang on to in order to fully suspend their disbelief. The more unbelievable your cast of characters, the more natural the environment needs to be (obviously, this doesn't necessarily apply to science fiction, which is a different breed entirely). Think about Tolkien's Middle Earth or Lewis's Narnia; both were full of fantastic creatures and races, but lived in worlds with predictable seasons (unless a Witch was involved), realistic environments (that looked like New Zealand), and functional architecture (no one tried to build any upside down pyramids). 

Further, there are specific rules in mythology and legends. Oh sure, you have more free reign than in other genres, but there are specific elements in a story, creature, or character that let us recognize what they are. For a story, it's generally the characters' relationships and interactions that give them away, such as King Arthur and the betrayal of his wife and best friend, or the confusions and misconceptions between the four lovers in Midsummer Night's Dream. It's why we can recognize that the Lion King is Hamlet, She's the Man is Twelfth Night, and West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet.

Creature-specific rules can be bent, sure, as long as the backbone element is still there. What's a dragon, essentially? A lizard with wings. Whether it has four legs and wings, hind legs and wings, breathes fire, ice, lightning, or cotton candy is all up to the author, as long as it is clearly a dragon. Some creatures have less room for creative license than others, however. For example, this

does not equal this:

Honestly, I wouldn't have pegged the Cullens as vampires if it wasn't already spelled out for me, because they just don't fit the profile. They're more like...elves. Undead elves with odd eating habits. 

you know you can see it

Twilight defenders out there ask: But what about Blade? He was a daywalker and such, didn't he break the rules? 

My response: You saw Blade? (I'm not even going to assume you knew about the comic) Then why are you defending Twilight? Also, no; Blade created new rules for a new creature. All of the vampires in Blade were still clearly vampires, the rules remained intact. Blade suggested half-vampires, complete with half-power and half-weakness. New creature, new rules, but still comparable to the creature it was derived from. We are meant to believe that the Twilight vampires are 100% original blood-sucking terror...that sparkle. 

Finally, you can recreate an established creature if all connection to the present world has been severed. Stephanie Meyers could possibly have gotten away with her version of werewolves and vampires if she hadn't based the story in Washington. If we the readers are to believe that a creature exists in real life, then it needs to follow the rules set for them in our current mythology. We would never watch a dude turn into a wolf in broad daylight and call it a werewolf when all existing legends suggest that it must be something else. Why, then, would characters make these assumptions when they are supposed to have access to the same myths we have?

Only in a world of your own creation can you also create the rules for each creature. Tolkien, for example, completely recreated the image of an elf. Prior to Lord of the Rings, elves were primarily small and somewhat mischievous, or they liked to sneak into shops at night to make shoes. Tolkien presented elves that were tall, beautiful, graceful, and powerful. But it only worked because he first created a world with none of our preconceptions, then established the rules himself. No one in Middle Earth knew about North Pole elves or the shoemaker's elves, such concepts couldn't exist. One character could turn to another and say "Hey look! It's an elf!" and we the reader would have to wait patiently to learn what an "elf" was in this particular world. 

So there you have it. Whatever "it" is. 'Till next time, I leave you with this completely unrelated video!