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More narrative dealbreakers
Apr. 25th, 2020 02:07 pmThe sun is shining, I'm completely exhausted, and it's time for Day Twenty-Three of the fandom meme:
W: A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.
I think we've established from previous posts that I particularly dislike stories which 'reward' characters who spend the narrative drawing closer to other people, finding family and community and closeness and saving the(ir) world and each other by separating them forever from those connections, that community, and indeed the very world that they have saved. I think the only time it works is in The Lord of the Rings.
Other tropes which I really despise: characters being pressured by the other characters around them into forgiving or rebuilding a relationship with people who have abused or hurt them, and painted by the narrative as being unreasonable or heartless for not wanting to do so. (This happens frequently with teenage or adult children being pressured by other characters to restore contact with abusive parents who they previously cut out of their lives.) 'It was all a dream/hallucination/"just a story"' cop outs also irritate me, as well as situations which have characters doubting their own reality, or being disbelieved by everyone in their lives.
Generally you see these tropes in original works rather than fanfic (in fact fanfic often seems to be written as a deliberate effort to overturn a lot of these tropes).
Fanfic tropes I dislike include 'shovel talk' situations, any scenario in which friends and family members seem overly pushy or invested in other characters' potential love lives (I really hate when other characters just appear in the fic to be a sort of cheer squad of shippers to the main pairing), and making a character's canon love interest abusive (if they aren't abusive in canon) as a way to justify breaking them up for the fic's preferred pairing.
Due to tagging, the fanfic ones are generally pretty easy to avoid, but the tropes in original fiction can sometimes appear out of nowhere, souring me on stories that I'd previously enjoyed.
Do any of you have similar narrative dealbreakers, whether in original works or fanfic?
( The other days )
W: A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.
I think we've established from previous posts that I particularly dislike stories which 'reward' characters who spend the narrative drawing closer to other people, finding family and community and closeness and saving the(ir) world and each other by separating them forever from those connections, that community, and indeed the very world that they have saved. I think the only time it works is in The Lord of the Rings.
Other tropes which I really despise: characters being pressured by the other characters around them into forgiving or rebuilding a relationship with people who have abused or hurt them, and painted by the narrative as being unreasonable or heartless for not wanting to do so. (This happens frequently with teenage or adult children being pressured by other characters to restore contact with abusive parents who they previously cut out of their lives.) 'It was all a dream/hallucination/"just a story"' cop outs also irritate me, as well as situations which have characters doubting their own reality, or being disbelieved by everyone in their lives.
Generally you see these tropes in original works rather than fanfic (in fact fanfic often seems to be written as a deliberate effort to overturn a lot of these tropes).
Fanfic tropes I dislike include 'shovel talk' situations, any scenario in which friends and family members seem overly pushy or invested in other characters' potential love lives (I really hate when other characters just appear in the fic to be a sort of cheer squad of shippers to the main pairing), and making a character's canon love interest abusive (if they aren't abusive in canon) as a way to justify breaking them up for the fic's preferred pairing.
Due to tagging, the fanfic ones are generally pretty easy to avoid, but the tropes in original fiction can sometimes appear out of nowhere, souring me on stories that I'd previously enjoyed.
Do any of you have similar narrative dealbreakers, whether in original works or fanfic?
( The other days )