The mark of guaranteed badness

[rachelmanija]

On the drive to Judy Tarr's horse camp, Sherwood and I were talking about tropes which function as a warning sign, either of extreme badness or at least of stories we are sure not to enjoy.

Sherwood's nominee was serial killers. My nominees were Satan and Satanists (unless it's a comedy) and all stories in which abortion laws lead to ridiculous dystopias. For instance, "Because abortion has been banned and it's illegal to kill fetuses, parents now have the right to kill their children after birth and before age eighteen." (Actual book. I read that on the back cover, and my eyes rolled so hard they almost flew out of their sockets and bounced against the opposite wall.) And as I have ranted about before, I generally dislike stories in which infidelity or zombies play a very large role.

The ultimate Sherwood and Rachel scarer-offer would be, "Because abortion has been banned/legalized/made mandatory, parents have the right to kill adulterers. A serial killer takes advantage of this situation to create zombies to help him worship Satan." (Abort: a YA dystopia. Also, cats have been banned and the government controls heterosexuals.)

What are your Tropes of Ultimate Loathing?

Comments

[sovay]

Never mind two hundred pages of trust, never mind interrupting the momentum with irrelevance--no, the switch has to flip from friendship and support to self-righteous anger. And then, a half-chapter or so later, this is worked out and we get on with the conclusion of the story.

The third-act breakup is annoying even when there's no ex post facto betrayal involved. I accepted it in The King's Speech (2010) only because it was believable as a defense mechanism that Bertie would pick a fight with his therapist when Lionel gets too close to the things that really scare him (and plausibly nasty the way he did it, which I appreciated on grounds of characterization). I wouldn't like it, but there should be at least one film where if you have a stupid fight that drives away someone dear to you, they don't actually come back in the nick of the finale. Because sometimes they don't.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Agreed on both points. I think they managed to work the break-up into The King's Speech early enough and seamlessly enough that it didn't feel like just a thoughtless final obstacle to put in the characters' path: it was integral. And yes, it would be a painful, but very real thing to have a stupid fight that did irrecoverable damage. (And I would hate it... but not for being a stupid trope.)

I finally did see The King's Speech--as you can see--and I *loved* it, and when I did see it, I wanted desperately to find friends' old entries where they talked about it. I don't suppose you have an easy way of pointing me to the entry you wrote on it, do you?

[sovay]

I don't suppose you have an easy way of pointing me to the entry you wrote on it, do you?

No, because I never did write it up in any substantive fashion! I have e-mails from that time, but they never turned into a post. I'll write to you. Or you can post about it and I'll colonize your comments section.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Okay--I've been organizing my thoughts (such as they are: I wish I had a recall that let me tell stories the way you do), and I'll post later tonight.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

True that.