This post has no title…
…just words and a
Anyway, I should be working on my WIP, but I’m feeling a bit sad (read: depressed). And dealing with Lucifer in
But in order to feel even the tiniest bit productive, here we are.
Garden Gnomes
I was discussing movie tropes with a friend not long ago and I came to an interesting conclusion: I don’t hate all tropes, movie or otherwise. I thought I did, it’s why I started writing in the first place. I was tired of all the tropes – but I actually like some of them. That surprised me.
Tropes are cultural shorthand – remember that
It might be lazy, but I don’t care.
I had to acknowledge that I was throwing all tropes out with the bath water. It’s the cliches that make me nuts — those need to die in a fire. (Heh, see what I did there?)
Examples:
- The
poc that dies first in a horror movie. In 2017, if the entire cast of your horror movie is NOT made of people of color, then having them be the first to die is stupid, cliched & racist. I wanted to see Life, but after seeing the trailer – no thanks. - 99.99999% of romantic comedies. Spin the wheel, pick one, it will be a trope-y mess. (It is possible that I just hate romantic comedies.)
- Mentor recruits newbie and dies before newbie is even marginally trained, but somehow newbie survives & kicks ass. (Yes I know, hero’s journey, blah blah blah. Star Wars blah blah blah.) I love Kingsman, but it still irks me that Eggsy is like a super spy in less than 2 hours.
- Screaming women.
- Running women who trip. (Apparently, we ladies are unable to run w/o falling flat on our faces.)
- Pseudo-masturbatory shower scenes. (Apparently, we ladies just can’t help feeling ourselves up when we shower.)
Notice how the last three aren’t even story conventions but just stupid shit that gets thrown in for no reason? I hate those the most. Screen time is valuable, maybe with a tiny bit more thought, we can alter our tropes to make them interesting? Maybe rotate out some of the nonsense? Just a thought. Are there some tropes that you love or hate? Pop on down to the comments and tell us about it!
Speaking of