Metaphors

I've been lazy lately and preoccupied with my other project, an as yet unnamed board game.

So I'm in Barne's and Nobles a few times a week because I tutor in there--don't buy from them, shop local!--and occasionally I'll go pick up a fantasy novel to see what the state of the art of fantasy is. One of the more interesting things I see is this desire to make metaphors sound scary with flourishes of ghouls and such. So you end up with things like, "She shuddered as though chilled by the devil's own kiss." Or even, "The wood was rotten and old, like the wood of a vampires coffin!" And you have to ask whether these really work as metaphors when they make a comparison to something that we here in the real world are not familiar with. I've never been kissed by a devil. I mean, I think I actually misquoted the second one, because I seem to recall the author talking about something smooth, so it was as smooth as a coffin's lid maybe... that belonged to a vampire! Is that smoother than a modern coffin lid? Do vampires keep their lids extra smooth? Or "As she spoke she slurped her words, as though sucking the marrow from a bloody bone." Really, does the bone need to be bloody? Does it make a different noise? Really, I think most people nowadays have probably never actually slurped marrow from a bone, bloody or not. The bloody just seems kinda, "err...it needs something, uh, BLOOD!" I think the image of speaking like you're sucking marrow sounds nasty enough; I think I'll swipe it and use it myself; woot.

Have you ever slurped marrow from a bone? I have. Its delicious.

Its no wonder, however, because so many people are divorced from reality, from metaphors you could find in nature, that your left making up shit...a vampire's coffin is just as real to a kid nowadays as a dank wood or a beetle's shell; those things are practically fantasy as well. Really, considering the detachment from traditional comparisons modern folk suffer from, wouldn't it actually make sense to use more anachronism in our metaphors? For instance: "Ashthar watched as Beatrique the she-wizard mounted her horse and rode away, leaving him feeling wretched and alone inside, like when a text message is not immediately answered."