[ SECRET POST #2636 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2636 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Pinocchio]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 086 secrets from Secret Submission Post #377.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

So, there are a lot of storytelling tropes that are annoying for reasons you can easily defend: they're sexist, or racist, or otherwise objectionable.

But some of them are entirely innocent, but somehow still ENRAGING.

For me, it's that in every crime series, the universal reaction to finding a body, is to stand still, open your mouth as wide as possible, and just SCREEEEEEAAAAAAAM!

I hate this.

I know it's just fiction and a way to hype things.

BUT NOBODY WOULD EVER DO THIS. THIS IS STUPID. I CANNOT GET OVER THE STUPID.

Yeah, sure, maybe you'll scream if you really found somebody's murdered ass unexpectedly. But a scream accompanied by ... leaving for safety, or reaching for your phone to call help, or furiously wiping whatever body part of yours came into contact with the dead body on the nearest available surface.

Or there'd be, perhaps, bafflement, or disbelief, or denial going on. "WTF, it isn't Hallowe'en, wait, is that a...? Oh hell, it IS! Time to call the police!"

Even, sadly realistically, the reaction could be to carefully check the area for live people, before slinking away because no way you're getting yourself involved in that.

Or, in the case of a loved one, you'd presumably... CHECK that they're dead. By, say, calling their name, or trying for a pulse, all, while (unless you happen to be a trained medic) reaching for the phone to get help. You do not stand there in the doorway, staring - not at the body, but at the opposite wall (where the camera can lovelingly zoom into your startled horrified face) screaming yourself horse.

I just refuse to believe this reaction.

And it's EVERYWHERE, goddamnit.

It's not like other stupid things people always do in films or TV where you can argue that it's meant to be a nicer, more aesthetic thing than RL or where when being realistic would just take too much time from the story -- Like the way nobody in movies fumbles while undressing unless its a comedy, or how people all look great exiting cars smoothly in one movement, or the post office actually works, or you can pay for cabs by throwing random bills at them, or order "beer".

Because this takes TIME (so, so much time, so that the scream can usually echo over the credits or filter into the next scream for dramatic irony or whatever) and it's not showing us people as we'd like to be if we could (because presumably, nobody imagines themselves in this situation and thinks "Scream at the air like a dumbass" as their ideal response). It's just so ... useless. I don't GET it. WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN, somebody please tell me why productions think this is a good idea.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

The trope I hate is the one where adding guns and violence automatically is more adult. I see it more as indicating the author is incredibly juvenile. Same for the people that insist fun stuff must be turned into some sort of dark, gritty and "realistic" (where realistic means humorless). Not everything has to be dark, gritty, and "realistic". If I wanted realism I wouldn't be be consuming fiction. Let fantasy be fantasy.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

YES THIS.

This whole idea that adding cynicism & sex & violence is automatically more adult, and optimism & niceness is automatically childish and stupid.

Honestly? I think cynicism is oftentimes more juvenile.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

I had to stop laughing when I became an adult. :( It really weighs on me, which gives me deep, realistic angst.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

Unnecessary romantic subplots.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[dreemyweird]

Yes. None of this, please.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

I find that screaming reaction weird, because I have to force myself to scream if something's really wrong and I need help (like the time I slipped in the shower and could see the moment coming when I would hit my head on the toilet). My natural reaction to fear and surprise is voicelessness.

The trope I have a real problem with is people who don't call emergency services right after someone gets shot/injured in such a way that they are unconscious. Bystanders just assume the wound is fatal and stand there while the person bleeds out. Even cops in some shows and movies do this.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

Absolutely! It's weird - I scream like a crazy person when startled by harmless things (an unexpected spider, a friend poking me in the side to get my attention, and, one particularly tired night, my own reflection).
When I was physically attacked and screaming might theoretically have HELPED...? Stuck in my throat. Nothing. At all. Fortunately, didn't end up needing rescue, but it'd've been nice to have been able to summon it.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't remember the standing still and screaming thing being a universal reaction. It's been a while since I've seen CSI, but I remember a lot more exclamations and telling other people to call for help.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[caecilia]

Okay, I don't know if there's a name for this. But say some characters go into the past and they meet idk, Abe Lincoln. And there's some line about how maybe he'll be President someday, and someone is like "Haha, THIS GUY? Like that would ever happen."

ugh, we get it, they're in the past and don't know things

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[dreemyweird]

"Fuck facts for the sake of drama". I just read an ACD Holmes fanfic that was about Watson faking the last stage of tuberculosis to give Holmes the taste of his own medicine (i.e. DYIN+FINA), and all I could think was "but it is horribly CONTAGIOUS??? Why does your Watson make himself look like such a spectacular DICK?"

This reading of DYIN annoys me, too. And I acknowledge that it is perfectly legitimate and that nobody is obliged to think that Holmes' behaviour is okay, but it still annoys me.

Actually, I have few narrative pet peeves. I'm usually very willing to accept the internal logic of a work of fiction (provided that it is otherwise good). The only real nope, I think, is the mother-child tropes that make abusive/otherwise unhealthy relationships sound OK. This makes me fume.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

I hate pair the spares. I also hate the common theme of a character's happy ending means being in a couple.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

People using chainsaws as weapons in zombie or horror or post-apocalyptic movies.

I used to work with chainsaws every day and they would be like the worst, most pain-in-the-ass weapon imaginable.

I have a whole fucking essay about this.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

The damsel-in-distress-maniac-pixie-dream-girl-who-is-supposed-to-be-awesome-but-does-nothing-and-is-boring-as-shit-trope. Sooooooo sick of seeing it everywhere. Much rather see the girl take charge of her own story and actually, you know, have a personality.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

People's entire behaviour on fictional crime scenes or soon-to-be crime scenes sometimes bugs me. I have whole rants on several topics, including the standard slightly-illegal-good-guys-who-work/ed-in-law-enforcement breaking into bad guy lairs and then bare-handedly mauling all the evidence in sight, the old drama trope of innocent people picking up visible murder weapons for no good reason at all (sometimes I believe it for reasons of shock or attempted medical aid or self defense, other times really not so much), and so on.

I know emotional reactions really screw with a lot of things. It's mostly when the characters for various reasons really should know better that it bugs me. That, and when it's visibly put in to ham-handedly heighten tension in stupid ways.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[philstar22]

Extreme opposites attract where the two characters share absolutely nothing in common and actively insult the things the other person likes. I tend to think relationships work better when people share at least some thing in common or at least are willing to try new things, and I can't imagine being with anyone who actively insulted the things I like every chance they got.

All the player needs is the love of a good woman to change their ways (and its never the other way around). Although weirdly it works for me with Barney/Robin on HIMYM. But most of the time, I really hate it because it makes no sense. People don't just randomly change who they are, and its rarely written believably.

Along with the one above, the guy always having more experience with the girl (whether its sexual or just romantic). Like taking another HIMYM example, when we see the episode from the Mother's point of view, of course we aren't shown her having the same amount or type of sexual or romantic relationships as Ted. Because its fine for a guy to have as many partners as possible before "the one", but heaven forbid that she does.

Actually, along with the above as well, even the idea of "the one" or "love at first sight". I dislike the idea that there is only one perfect person out there for everyone, that its possible to know that a person is that one right at first sight, and that no other relationships in a person's life matters or can ever be meaningful at all.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[jaybie_jarrett]

That reminds me of a Fear Street series book where a hasty reaction to a character 'dying' was used as a plot point. Basically these three characters went out hunting. One of them did something that made the others fight him and it ended in the gun going off and the guy falling down. The other two started freaking out and then went to go get help.

Turns out the guy just had a concussion and while they were gone the guys enemy came along (and the enemy was a macho jerk/gleeful little psycho) and finished him off.

It was an interesting twist I thought.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

The reason the scream seems so silly is that a real scream (under frightening circumstances) is involuntary -- muscles somewhere deep in your body just push the air out of you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Actors can't fake that sort of scream; they have to take a deep breath and deliberately make a noise, the way a child does when he or she is crying, and that's what looks stupid and pointless.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[case]

Zombie canons where literally none of the cast have ever seen a zombie movie or read a zombie comic or ever made plans in case of zombie apocalypse. Dramas where everything could be solved by a simple conversation but nobody ever has it even if they could, and no one ever suggests they do. Every single time a superhero lets a villain that is a huge threat to society live or escape (dozens and dozens of times, over and over again) and nobody starts up a huge negative PR campaign about said hero being totally ineffectual in the long run.

Basically: forced Genre Blindness

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

I could see myself reacting pretty similarly to the SCREAM reaction. Like, I'd probably yelp, stumble back and just stare for a few minutes mentally going "Omg, omg, omg, wtf" and just processing wtf I just found.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[ninthlife]

Nothing annoys me more than a romance getting shoehorned between the main female protag and the main male protag. Barf.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

Love at first sight. There are a lot of stories where I'm yelling at the screen "You literally just met the guy/girl!" It's worse in older works, where sometimes they haven't even spoken to each other yet, and already they'll die for each other. And I know, I know, courtly love and chaste love and several older romance tropes, I get it. It just ... irrationally annoys me.

Happens a lot in fanfic, too. AUs where they remove all the canon backstory for their OTP but still have them declaring undying devotion after about a week's knowing each other in this universe. It drives me wrong, it really does. Can we have some build-up before we go from 'you look pretty' to 'I will cut out my beating heart for you', please?

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

The idea that someone can only have One True Love in their entire lifetime, and all other relationships are unimportant.

Possessive jealousy as cute and romantic or as proof of love.

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

Most romance tropes.

The Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. Even in the rare instances that it's applied to guys. It's just the whole concept of "the love interest exists solely to bring you out of your shell and save you" and it's not like she has flaws or boring moments or other goals besides tending to your fragile self-esteem.

"The One" & soulmates. Because everyone is wandering the earth with a huge piece of themselves missing, doomed to misery, unless they somehow manage to find the other person, and join together in unholy symbiosis.

Most tropes around virginity & losing virginity & sexuality and how sex is either EEEEVIIIIL and if you have sex you will die especially if you're a woman. Or having sex is THE MOST IMPORANT LIFE GOAL EVER and everyone needs to be doing it all the time and it's a big competition and the moment you stick your penis in a woman you become A REAL MAN and confetti falls from the sky.

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus because we're totally different species and there's no way we can possibly understand or empathize with each other and obviously liking pink is 100% innate and socialization and culture and historical context has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Possessive jealousy because nothing says a healthy relationship like "WHY ARE YOU HANGING OUT WITH THAT PERSON YOU CALL A FRIEND, GIVE ME YOUR PHONE SO I CAN TRACK YOUR EVERY MOVEMENT YOU BITCH. HAHA BUT NO REALLY I LOVE YOU SWEETIE."

basically 90% of romance novel tropes i don't find romantic at all

Re: Tropes that irrationally annoy the hell out of you.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you about the screaming, in fact most of the tropes named here annoy me.
here's one you see in a million cartoons--characters who have nephews (and sometimes nieces, although that's much less frequent) but don't seem to have any brothers or sisters.