I'm so not a fan of dragons. Especially the talking variety. It makes me feel like I'm in a children's book or something. Talking dragons? Seriously? *sigh*
One of the things that's cool about fantasy is that you can make stuff up. There's no catalog of existent mythological creatures that you're forced to pick from. So why dragons all the time? It's formulaic. And it's a formula that never worked for me even the first time I read it.
If there are going to be dragons, I don't want them doing any more than being a mute cameo. Seriously, come up with something new. But I am so sick of dragons that even a very subtle mention of dragons makes my brain tick over, and I swear I can't remember the next 3 pages after "dragons" first appears because my head has decided based on that word that whatever comes next is not important.
Elves... I like elves. But I'm starting to get sort of tired of the LotR-style ones, which are everywhere, because the characters are always the same. The reason I'm getting tired of them is the same reason Superman is boring.
Superman is too perfect. There's nothing wrong with him. Yeah, there's kryptonite, but it's so predictable and I don't mean allergies, I mean his
personality. There's nothing gripping about his personality. He's a Boy Scout in leggings. That's boring.
A lot of elves in modern fantasy are too perfect as well. They got the looks, the brains, the magic, the pretty handwriting, and everyone hates them because they're just
soooo perfect. It's sort of like the premise of any high school drama. And it's boring.
I like seeing gritty elves. In fact, I'm going to take this opportunity to ask for recommendation of books with messed up, evil/antihero, badass elves.
Give me some personality. Give me something I can relate to. I'm tired of "teenage dream" elves.
EDIT: Actually, you know what? My problem with both of these things are related. In both cases, my problem is that the author is writing "stick characters" - flat, unengaging characters - because it's easier to do and they care more about the action than the characters.
In the case of dragons, they're avoiding having to develop characters at all by using an absurdity as a distraction, and in the case of elves they're just embuing them with a character type that's been trotted out so many times it should really just be shot. Why?
Because it's an easy way to avoid spending time on the characters when you'd rather talk about the world or the action. And a LOT of fantasy writers do this. I HATE this. I want characters AND world/action. If the characters suck why should I care?