Here at Speculative Chic, we talk a lot about different speculative genres, often science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Within these genres, there are many different permutations. Consider epic fantasy, urban fantasy, historical fantasy. Also, military science fiction, space opera, along with hard and soft science fiction. Psychological horror, hack and slash, ghost stories, and haunted house stories. There are probably dozens, all told. Each of these genres and subgenres have their own tropes — that is, themes or devices which are commonly used. Tropes help define these genres and set reader expectation.
All photos courtesy of IMDB.com
An example of a common trope in science fiction is this: an alien race invades Earth in order to eat all the humans. You’ve seen this in Doctor Who with “The Two Doctors” and various other episodes, Stargate Atlantis, V (the television series), Star Trek (both television and movies), and lots of others. The trope is common; it’s the stories themselves that make it different from others using that same trope.
Some of the most interesting stories come from an author or creator taking a genre’s trope and turning it on its head. It then becomes both familiar and new at the same time. Doing this also keeps tropes from getting stale and becoming a cliché.
Motherland: Fort Salem, an alternate future series on Freeform, has done a great job of breaking some common urban fantasy tropes, thereby creating a really interesting and fun show.
The premise, taken from Wikipedia:
Motherland: Fort Salem follows Raelle Collar, Abigail Bellweather and Tally Craven, three witches who are enlisted in the U.S. Army. They train in combat magic and use their vocal cords to enact “seeds” or “seed sounds,” which is layering vocal sounds to create powerful spells. The series takes place in a women-dominated world in which the U.S. ended persecution of witches 300 years ago during the Salem Witch Trials after an agreement known as the Salem Accord. The world finds itself at odds with a terrorist organization known as the Spree, a group against the military conscription of witches.
School Is in Session
We can see a couple tropes already being shaken up, such as the use of magic in warfare, just in that description. One of the most common urban fantasy tropes currently is the concept of the magical academy. The current wave can likely be attributed to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, but wizarding schools and magical academies have been around for almost a century in literature. You’ve also seen it in The Magicians, The Magisterium, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and one of my current favorite shows, The Witcher.
Motherland is set in Fort Salem, which is a boot camp for witches. Here, they train their bodies, their minds, and their magic in order to serve in the U.S. Army as the country’s first line of defense. So it is a magical academy, a wizarding school, but in a military capacity, which is unexpected when looking at other fiction with this trope. Just that one change sets the characters up for all sorts of interesting possibilities. Like, what happens when one of the students goes against the military rule of law?
While not a trope in urban fantasy, a military school is a trope in science fiction. Most military science fiction is marketed toward a male demographic, so most officers and often main characters are male. Every person in Fort Salem is a woman. The commander of the Army is a woman. All officers are women. It’s appropriate to note that all-female witch schools is not uncommon in fantasy. So in this case, conforming to a the all-female witch school subverts the military academy trope.
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
Abigail Bellweather, Raelle Collar, Tally Craven
There are a few other tropes that Motherland plays with. One is the Weird Sisters/Three Faces of Eve trope. These are two tropes similar; one references Macbeth’s Three Weird Sisters and the other references the movie The Three Faces of Eve. These tropes are interesting, because they’re very closely related and can be found in a lot of literature, mythology, and folklore going back centuries. Think of the Fates in Greek mythology.
The basic premise of these tropes is of a trio of women, usually magical in nature, who are representative of some aspect of womanhood, such as the maiden-mother-crone triad. We see this a lot in our speculative fiction. Charmed, Gotham City Sirens, and Van Helsing all have examples of triads representing aspects of women.
TV Tropes gives this listing for the Three Faces of Eve:
- Calm and Capable
- Hot and Sexy
- Playful and Innocent
In Motherland, Tally Craven has been sheltered, never been kissed, and looks at life through rose-colored glasses most of the time. Abigail Bellweather has been raised in a staunchly military family and is a type-A, take-charge woman who does not apologize for having sex with men as she wishes.
So far, so good. Now we have either the Wife or the Crone, depending on which trope you want to go with. Basically, we’re looking for level-headedness and wisdom. But then we get to Raelle Collar. Raelle’s mother, a healer/medic, was killed in combat, and so she has a lot of animosity toward the Army and, more specifically, toward Abigail’s mother, who was the commander in charge when Raelle’s mom was killed. This makes her rebellious.
Raelle falls in love with another student — another trope broken, since most academy romances in the genre are with a man. After a ranking officer warns her off the relationship, Raelle doubles down, making more than one questionable decision out of reaction rather than logic. Her character can often match any of the triad roles, as she is sometimes seductress, sometimes rebellious child, and sometimes wise woman.
Here There Be Witches
A trope specific to stories about witches is one TV Tropes calls Salem Is Witch Country. There are various premises around this one.
- Witches are real, but it just so happens that there weren’t any in Salem at the time of the witch trials.
- Witches are real and were in Salem at the time of the witch trials, but the story takes place in a verse in which witches are not necessarily evil.
- Real witches would easily be able to protect themselves with magic, so the witch-hunters were only ever a danger to falsely accused Muggles.
- The witch trials were actually orchestrated by the witches themselves, or at least a rogue faction of the witches, for some nefarious purpose.
In Motherland, witches are real, but they are not just in Salem; they are everywhere and, more specifically, the Army. This is not a huge departure from the trope, but enough to be different.
But Let’s Not Break Everything, Shall We?
While trope-busting is important in creating new and interesting speculative worlds, having things too different can be unsettling for viewers/readers. So it’s critical to also use tropes in the familiar way. We all watch and read our favorite types of books and shows because something about that genre speaks to us or makes us happy. When a story breaks too many tropes without reinforcing others, readers and viewers can come away feeling disappointed or even betrayed. So being faithful to some tropes gives a sense of comfort. By doing that, the audience’s expectations are fulfilled, and, more importantly, their needs around why they enjoy the genre are met. Motherland also does this with many urban fantasy tropes, including witch-specific tropes such as weather manipulation and “military mage.”
The “military mage” trope is obvious, since the Army is such a central focal point of the story. The way the witches’ magic works is by making certain vocal sounds, which cause things to happen. Even in the opening credits, one of the “paintings” shown is of witches creating storms and tornadoes during a battle.
There is a Burn the Witch! trope that Motherland meets by showing the attempted hanging of Sarah Adler, the leader in Motherland. This is accurate since no witches were ever burned in America. They were hung, drowned, and tortured to death, but never burned. I think the trope is better named as Death to Witches!
And So It Goes
Motherland is about halfway through its season, maybe a little more by the time you read this. I’m enjoying it so far. It does have its flaws, but I’m hoping those are just first-season kinks they’ll eventually work out. I find the show to be entertaining for me because I love the way it plays with our expectations but still delivers a lot of fun and interesting stories.
If you’d like to check out a somewhat exhaustive list of tropes that can be found in Motherland, check out the TV Tropes listing for the show (beware though; TV Tropes can be a total time-suck!).
If you don’t have Freeform, you can also watch Motherland: Fort Salem on Hulu.
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