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

[trascendenza]

Things that will nope me out of something:

• Too much focus on any of the following: scenery/geography/setting, fight scenes, political intrigue.

• An ensemble cast where no one really likes anyone else. I can deal with this for awhile in the beginning, because I love a good antagonistic-to-friendship arc, but if it just stays relatively antagonistic I can't.

• People being awful and mostly just staying awful. Ex: I made it to S2 of Shameless and hit my limit.

• The ~cowboy~ who comes in and saves the day through impulsive, ill-planned decisions, while quieter, harder-working, and more level-headed people are completely shoved aside and narratively treated like they were "wrong" for not believing in the cowboy from the beginning. (AOS Kirk and Spock felt this way to me in the first movie. I aaalmost didn't make it far enough into B99 to get past the part where Jake felt this way to me, too.)

• When the narrative is saturated with revenge, betrayal, backstabbing... probably why I'm not super into court/political intrigue stuff.

I also agree about a lot of the ones you've listed, especially the "person creates a found family and then abandons the life they've built for themself in the end," though it's hard to nope out of that since sometimes it happens at the last minute, ugh. (Eff you, White Collar! I'm still angry at you!)

[china_shop]

(Eff you, White Collar! I'm still angry at you!)

That made me think of White Collar too! *shakes tiny angry fist at TPTB*

[trascendenza]

I'd never really experienced the sensation of "I can never, ever forgive the people who made this thing happen" until White Collar and Sleepy Hollow burned me, albeit in much different ways. *joins in fist shaking*

[dolorosa_12]

I loathe your ~cowboy~ trope with a passion. I've always been more interested in stories of quiet competence, slow, consistent, persistent everyday labour and so on, so this obsession with chaotic mavericks who ~don't play by the rules~ really irritates me as well.

I love political intrigue, backstabbing and the like, and I don't mind stories with a strong focus on scenery and setting if it's done well — I like stories with a strong sense of place, where the setting is almost a character in its own right — so I don't share your dislike of those particular tropes.

The bickering ensemble cast where everyone dislikes each other I find infuriating. Unless it's one of the above political-intrigue-with-backstabbing stories, I want to read about found family, not people who spend all their time together but seem to violently dislike one another!

[trascendenza]

where the setting is almost a character in its own right
Mmmm, true, sometimes that can be very well done! I seem to remember liking that sense of place in Un Lun Dun and Neverwhere. But my attention will start drifting with Tolkien-level landscape prose a few paragraphs in.

[dolorosa_12]

Awww, I like Tolkien-level landscape prose! But I can see that it's definitely not something that everyone would enjoy.