#weird tropes

[kuzcos-poision]

What the hell is the trope of people getting together and then their parents start dating too?!?

[thoughts-of-ongoing-life-crisis]

There’s this couple on TikTok whose whole thing is being step siblings. (Which is problematic and gross). Their content is awful, full of toxic masculinity, and is just cringe (saw it on a “are the straight ok” video). Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is..

What if that does happen, like, yeah you aren’t blood related or anything. But how does this happen? The siblings meet and date first then the parents get married? Or the parents get married and the siblings date? Are both just as bad, is one better than the other?

Honestly if the kids dates first I think it’s fine, they didn’t ask for their parents to marry each other (which would be weird). But if the parents married and THEN the kids dated? That just seems so wrong on so many levels.

Thoughts?

Oh, as an add on: this is like That stupid porn trope come to life. But what made that a trope? Who looked at this situation and thought “yes. That is sexy. I want to bang my sister.” Just why.

[nyanmarumori]

What’s up with the trope in older shonen anime (or anime based on older shonen manga) where you aren’t allowed to dodge in fights? 

Someone throws a boulder from 100 meters away and you see it coming for almost a full minute? Sorry, no moving allowed. Gotta get crushed by that boulder ‘cause dodging would be...what? 

[salty-goatee-collection]

"I'm not like other girls" fan fiction edition

Has a crazy hair colour because "idgaf what people think of me"

Big Attitude™️ 

Daddy issues 100%

Probably 16, acts and looks 29

Finds a portal to another world

Can somehow wield a weapon??

The superhuman hunk loves her

She's totally NOT in love with him though

Oh gosh, look, she almost died, but he saved her

Whoops they kissed

"How could he love a nobody like me"

Homegirl is running from her true self

She's staring at herself in a mirror whining about her perfect body

He makes a dramatic statement if his love for her while gazing into her blue orbs

Now we get 6 pages worth of childhood trauma

But it's fine, he validates her, so she learns to accept herself

Messy bun

[thatfurryinthefandom-blog]

You know a surprising trope I keep seeing in the South Park fandom that is both really heartbreaking and intriguing? Clyde going into a psychotic break and/or the next likely to perform a wicked or immoral deed, only second to Cartman, in fanon. Heartbreaking cause, ah, my poor boy. It’s crazy to think someone as emotional and as much of a dunce as Clyde is would be able to pull off the schemes that I keep seeing him pull off or even have any thought to harm anyone, and yet, it’s a surprisingly common trope (Exhibit A, Yandere Clyde). Granted, I’ve seen almost every reoccurring character go into some immoral AUs, with the lone exceptions of Token, Stan, and Tweek (though I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed one of the last two), but Clyde seems to be the second most common only to Cartman. And weirder still, I haven’t found one where his mother’s death was a trigger; most of the time it was a relationship cause, which you wouldn’t expect from canon Clyde. At least in every psycho or immoral Clyde I found to date the personality is consistent; he’s usually clueless, naive, or completely driven by impulse. If anything else, it’d make sense if he ran by his heart before his mind and would be the type of person to let emotions take too much control. At the end of the day... South Park you scareh

[balioc]

So there’s this weird thing that happens to me sometimes --

I come up with an idea, or I remember an old idea I had a while ago, and I know it can’t really be really original.  My mind, as a rule, just doesn’t generate things of that particular kind.  I must have adapted it from somewhere, maybe throwing in a few personal touches.  Which is fine, as far as it goes.  But I CAN’T REMEMBER WHERE I GOT IT.  I can’t think of anything like the thing, anything that might plausibly be the source.  This drives me batty.  I feel like some kind of unintentional plagiarist or something.    

*****

Last night, I was reminded of two NPCs that I came up with for an old aborted RPG project: Lady Violet and Lady Ivy. 

These two were actually fiction-within-a-fiction characters; inside the setting of the RPG, they were the main characters of a series of children’s fantasy novels.  (As it happens, they also turned out to be secretly “real,” but that’s not relevant right now.)  I am sure that these fictional novels belong to some very well-established subgenre, and that some book out there is exactly like them, but I’ll be damned if I can put my finger on it. 

Notable features of the Violet & Ivy “books” included:

* The setting is extremely British-flavored.  Hard to place historically, since it’s fake cod-Britain rather than real Britain, but overall it’s probably a weird mish-mash of Regency and mid-20th-century. 

* The main characters are two young ladies who might plausibly be anywhere from, say, seventeen to thirty.  They live together, on their own, in a big impressive estate on the outskirts of a country town; this is as implausible a situation as it sounds, and every so often there’s some bit of exposition explaining why they’re not with their families etc. 

* LV & LI always wear old-fashioned dresses in their respective colors.  Their attire -- and their general affect -- is gorgeous, and fancy, and very Modest and Appropriate.  They enjoy various ladylike pastimes like music, dancing, embroidery, poetry, etc.  They’re clearly meant to be respectable wish-fulfillment fantasy for young girls. 

* The earlier books are mostly dedicated to them solving extremely ordinary, prosaic problems that crop up in their everyday lives.  “Someone new has moved into town, and is having trouble with social adjustment!”  “Lady Violet is throwing a ball this evening and there’s so much to organize!”  “Lady Ivy’s frail cousin is visiting, and we don’t want to bore her OR to wear her out!”  Things like that.

* The later books mostly involve them visiting other towns, meeting up with obvious-reader-surrogate young girls, and helping those girls with their own prosaic everyday problems. 

* The protagonists’ attitude is relentlessly responsible, down-to-earth, and pragmatic, but in a weird slightly-subversive way; the general vibe is “most of the people in the world are extremely silly, and that probably includes most of the grown-ups you know, so sometimes you’re going to have to be sensible for them.” 

* They are both powerful, badass magicians.  This fact is almost never central to the plot.  About once per book, there will be some kind of horrific rampaging monster, and the two of them will have to slay it with their enchanted weapons; this is treated as a regrettable inconvenience, like getting caught in a rainstorm or something.  Occasionally, the people they interact with are fairies or mermaids or demons etc.  The books do not portray this as being particularly out-of-the-ordinary. 

* Every so often, it is hinted that the protagonists have off-screen love lives of some kind, but no actual information about this is ever provided.

*****

So, uh...can anyone tell me where I got this?

[toons-boop-boop]

I love the

'A: What did I tell you not to do?

B: Do XYZ..

A: And what did you do?!

B: Do xyz......

A: That is the THIRD TIME this week! And it's only MONDAY!'

- Trope which just gets more rediculous as it continues

An example:

A: What did I tell you not to to?

B: Drink to much Coffee before bed, because I start to sleep walk off of high buildings and subsequently start a robot uprising due to the controversial media coverage framing it as a robot breaking the first and most important rule..

A: And what did you do?!

B: Drink to much Coffee before bed, causing me to start to sleep walk off of high buildings and subsequently start a robot uprising due to the controversial media coverage framing it as a robot breaking the first and most important rule...

A: That is the THIRD TIME this week. And it's only MONDAY!

[clairedelune-13]

Thinking about those old shows on CW back in 2010, where the cold open is a couple in the woods. It’s dark and one of them disappears and obviously, they end up dead.

But like, what the fuck are you doing wamdering the woods at night anyway, you idiots? Of course you can’t find your boyfriend, it’s dark and you don’t have a flashlight.

Stay home and watch something on streaming like a normal person.