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/lit/ - Literature

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2584510 No.2584510 [Reply] [Original]

How do I do a cliche femme fatal without it coming off as cliche?

>if ya no wat i mean

>> No.2584511

>How do I do a cliche

you don't.

>> No.2584516

>>2584510
Motivation.

Every femme fatal is a badass because of some tragic past. Daddy left her or some shit. Or she's the sort of girl that has a complex on proving herself in a "man's world".

Just make her a sociopath or some shit.

>> No.2584518

>>2584516

Interesting. But that shit's a bit in your face, and I need something subtler. Outright sociopaths have been done.

>> No.2584522

Make her the main character in a first-person story.

>> No.2584523

well, op..
why don't you tell us more?
Why do need a femme fatale?
Is she a missing piece over which you are struggling?
Or is creating a "non-cliche" ff the point here for you?

>> No.2584526

>>2584522
that's a good suggestion
If there's anything original to be done with her and her scheming ways,
it's to let her tell her schemes outright as the narrator.

>> No.2584528

More along the lines of the dark void inside manifests itself as the impulse towards cruelty or sadism and blah blah blah. And self destruction, lots of it.

At the moment shes a missmatch of Dagny Taggart (without the philosophical derp) Marla Singer and that bitch from Blade Runner. I need examples of books where the specimen occur though.

>> No.2584533

>>2584528
Well, if that's your question:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/16/literary-femme-fatales
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme_fatale

>> No.2584538

>start with a cliche
>define the characteristics of those cliche
>subvert those characteristics
>ta-daa!

>> No.2584549

Alright let me flesh this shit out.

Its a surrealist pastiche that begins in the near future with the protagonist, who is an architect student, chasing the source of an illegal psychedelic drug (so he can get some) and generally partying and getting up to shit with his mates ala Fear and Loathing. Then he meets a bunch of activists at "occupy wall st." where different classical philosophy's make personified appearances. All the while he is building a future utopia in virtual reality that mirrors the world he is in. This is where he starts to get a bit disturbed and it turns out he isn't actually in the future, and all these things and people are sort of glamorized instances in his life that aren't really what they seem, that he more or less made up. Needless to say there is some surreal inversion like in Scanner Darkly where the future is actually the past or something.

Anyway, the femme fatale is the manifestation of the hero's innermost dreams and desire, except tainted with the a "something" that is mirrored in the world at large that comes between the manifestations of dreams and desire in a perfect world. (like in Atlas Shrugged) She is used to explore the ideas of the impossibility of a perfect reality and why human nature is inherently incompatible with utopias and why people can never get what they truly want without ceasing to want it anymore etc. She represents a sort of inversion of the protag himself, the conclusion being that it is impossible for the duality to be resolved on earth without destroying the constituent parts.

Its all pretty straightforward really.

>> No.2585395

write her as cliched as you want.

Then make her a man.

JOB DONE.

>> No.2585397

Think of a male fatale and then take away reason and accountability.

>> No.2586561
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2586561

Make her a train. Think about it.