Narrative dealbreakers

[dolorosa_12]

A discussion I was having in the comments of a previous post with merit made me realise something I'd never really thought before: just as I have tropes, relationship dynamics, and themes that are like narrative catnip to me, I also have the opposite — tropes whose presence will ruin an otherwise deeply enjoyable story for me. I'm not talking about tropes which are pretty much universally regarded (at least in the circles I hang out in) as dreadful (things like Bury Your Gays, women fridged for manpain, black characters dying first), but rather other common tropes which I dislike not because they reinforce societal inequalities, but simply because they're not to my taste.

These are the big ones for me:

A character being pressured by the other characters to forgive an abusive or neglectful family member, and welcome them back into their lives for the sake of 'closure,' 'healing,' or similar. I hate this especially if it's a child having to forgive their father (which is the most common iteration of the trope). The end result is often that the characters — and the narrative — minimises the harm which the forgiven character has done.

Heroines with supernatural powers giving up their powers at the end of the story in order to settle down and 'have a normal life'.

Immortal characters giving up immortality for love (or even wanting to). I much prefer the rarer alternative where the mortal and immortal stay together, knowing one character will die and the other will not, and accepting that consequence.

Love triangles being resolved by suddenly making one love interest a terrible person where they weren't before. This goes doubly so if it's a way to resolve a love triangle that causes a married character to be unfaithful to their spouse — I don't mind if the spouse was always terrible, but if they're suddenly written as horrible, it feels like a cop out.

Supernatural/superpowered characters keeping their identity secret from their family and loved ones out of concern for their safety.

Sisters who hate each other, especially if this is in a mundane/real-world setting. Oddly, I don't mind it if a story is about antagonistic brothers, or an antagonistic brother-sister set of siblings. (I've not seen this trope in which one or both siblings were nonbinary, so I can't speak as to my like or dislike of it with nonbinary siblings.)

Characters whose whole arc has been about finding a family and a sense of home and purpose among other people choosing at the end to give that all up and live alone (or alone with their love interest). (*shakes fist at the Obernewtyn Chronicles*) A related version of this trope has dispossessed/migrant/misfit characters choosing to return home to the land of their birth, after spending the entire narrative finding a family and sense of home in a new land or city. (*shakes fist at the Six of Crows duology)

Those are the main ones I can think of at the moment. What about you? Do you all have similar narrative dealbreakers? Is this something you've also thought about before?

Comments

[cloudsinvenice]

- "Relationships cannot succeed." I hate it when a show spends months or years gradually getting a couple together, and then once they are together, they don't know how to write interesting stories about a partnership that survives, so somebody has to have an affair or, as in your love triangle trope, become an arsehole. Or they kill one of them off.

- Keeping secrets for plot tension: the secret identity thing is a subset of this. I hate the "will they find out, wont' they find out?" thing, and I suspect it dates back to watching Lois and Clark - I'm not sure if they ever actually did a reveal that wasn't retconned away, but I remember it as this interminable situation that you knew would never change, yet they insisted on dangling the possibility in front of you forever.

- A friend brought this one up years ago in relation to Atonement and I agree: Surprise War, i.e. any story that doesn't start up being about war, but the character joins up and suddenly you're reading a bloody war book you didn't expect.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm so, so sick of the idea that happy, stable relationships are boring. Strangly enough, there are ways to create progress and change in married (or otherwise long-term and stable) relationships that don't break the couple up or kill one half off. It's just that writers don't seem to know how to do so.

I never watched Lois and Clark, but I've seen enough shows with a similar premise, and I don't think I've ever seen a version where it's done well. It always just seems so disrespectful to the person who's having secrets kept from them — surely if you loved someone, you need to be open with them, and given in those kinds of canons the villains always target the superhero's love interest, telling said love interest about their secret identity will help keep them safer, because at least they'll know what they're up against! (And I know from real-life situations where spies hid their identities from their families it messed the families up immensely when they finally learnt the extent of the deception.) That's one reason why, although it's a flawed show, I will always be grateful to the Buffy writers for not hiding Buffy's secret identity from her friends and family — they were safer knowing about the supernatural goings-on so that they could fight with the right tools.

I've never actually thought of Surprise War as a trope, and in fact Atonement is the only story I can remember where this is a plot point, but if you've encountered it enough it must be a regular thing, just not in the kind of stories I read/watch.

[cloudsinvenice]

That's a really great point about BTVS as a counter-example to the secrecy thing. And this is going off the point a bit, but I remember years ago getting into an interesting discussion about the impact of secrecy in things like HP, where there's a younger audience: how many times would they have been safer, sooner if they'd confided in someone, etc. Of course, that was before we learned the extent of Dumbledore's machinations... but it is interesting to look at Buffy from that POV: it's nice that the message is, "You can trust people with the deepest parts of yourself."

[dolorosa_12]

"You can trust people with the deepest parts of yourself."

What a beautiful way of putting it. And yes, I value stories that say this so very, very much.