The thing with telling “cliche” stories, but with representation, is… these stories aren’t cliche for us.
Picture this. The people at the table next to you have been getting chocolate cake as a dessert for YEARS. After every meal, they get a chocolate cake. Now, it’s been years, and the people at that table can barely stand chocolate anymore. They want maybe a cheesecake. Or lemon mousse.
But your table? Has NEVER had chocolate cake. Mousse is also good, but you are SO hungry for that chocolate cake, cause you never had it before, and it’s brand new for you, and you’ve been watching the other table eat it for YEARS.
That’s what’s like getting a “cliche” story that’s representative. Has it been done a million times before? Yes. Has it ever been done for US? Well… no. Maybe it’s the 500th chocolate cake in existence, but all the other chocolate cakes weren’t meant for us (girls/PoC/queer folk/disabled folk/etc)
So it being cliche is not a bad thing. You may not want chocolate cake anymore. But we want our slice too.
This post got a bit of traction! FYI, my original point was about The Dragon Prince!
I don’t care how many times Elves, Dragons and Medieval Europe have been done before. Now it’s Elves, Dragons, and Medieval Europe — only people of color exist, women constitute half of the population, and disabled people are living their best lives. THAT hasn’t been done to death before. THAT isn’t cliche for us.
It’s maybe the FIRST TIME many of us get to enjoy “Elves, Dragons and Medieval Europe”. This is our first chocolate cake. I don’t want it to be smart and substitute chocolate for strawberry. I JUST WANT MY DAMN CHOCOLATE CAKE. I’VE WAITED FOR IT GODDAMNIT.
Incidentally, the same point can be made about Eragon. Whine all you want it’s Tolken-fanboy-plagiarism. I can’t hear you over the sound of WOMEN FUCKING EXISTING.
What you’re talking about is tropes, not cliches. Tropes are setting concepts or character concepts or story concepts that show up frequently in fiction. These are inherently neutral and are only bad or good if the writing using them is bad or good.
Cliches on the other hand are kind of tired and boring and have nothing fresh or new about them. Cliche is a word to describe a trope, plot, or concept that was badly written and executed rather than just familiar. Someone can take a trope that has the potential to be good and make it cliche with bad pacing or boring dialog or unrealistic character growth, etc.
I’d argue that the Dragon Prince is just using some common tropes, not cliches. The setting dressings are familiar since we’ve been over-inundated with Tolkien-esque western European fantasy, but the execution makes it fresh. Even aside from the representation (which is great) you have snappy dialogue (written in a colloquial style instead of that boring formal style most fantasy defaults to), some interesting worldbuilding, great characters, and already some dark and interesting themes. It takes some very familiar tropes and makes them fresh with good writing, character design, voice-acting, etc. Something isn’t a cliche if it’s executed in an interesting way, no matter how familiar the setting elements are.
But back to the idea of cliches (which the Dragon Prince is not particularly guilty of), cliches are still bad writing, and if that kind of bad writing shows up in a piece of media with lots of representation, it’s still bad in a quality sort of way. So the people that want to grabby hands at fiction that has representation that retreads well-tread ground are certainly in their rights to and sometimes it’s written very well. But if it’s not, if it truly is cliche and boring, it’s also okay to reject something if it’s not your jam. Representation is, in and of itself, something that can make something fresh, but if it has boring plots and terrible dialogue it’s just good representation, not good storytelling. And it’s okay to reject that. (And I think some would argue that something can’t be good representation unless it is good storytelling, but ymmv).
The thing is you should only be rejecting it for yourself, not telling someone else to. If another person wants to cling to something badly written and cliche just because they see themselves in it, let them have it. But also recognize you’re allowed to reject it for yourself and to criticize the writing of it because you want something more. People should lay off anyone else that wants to grabby hands at representation even if they don’t like it. Let them have their cake.
All that said, Dragon Prince isn’t even close to cliche. It’s good representation and genuinely good. And retreading old paths like western european fantasy ground is fine as long as you have new things planned for that playground.
Also women have been in fantasy stories FOREVER. Tales Series, Fire Emblem, Bravely Series, ATLA and LOK, most fantasy and Isekai anime that aren’t SAO clones have had strong female characters (Ex – InuYasha, Yona of the Dawn).
Even Lord of the Rings had Arwen Evenstar and Eowyn. And there’s Tamora Pierce too. And Dragonriders of Pern.
Women in fantasy are NOTHING new. I don’t know why OP is acting like having women in fantasy is something shocking or radical.
Also we shouldn’t hold something to a lower standard just because of representation. This means that writers are going to be able to get away with providing women/lgbt/poc with low quality stories by saying “well it’s for rep!! So nothing else matters!” And this will lead to outsiders typecasting ALL MEDIA meant for those groups as inherently bad.
That’s what happened to romance novels, they were written cheaply because “they’re for women”, which lead to anything with romance in it being seen as “girly” and “bad.”
Women/lgbt/poc deserve better than that and we shouldn’t let bad storytelling or cheap writing slide for reasons like this.
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