Favorite trope 348234: when person who nearly died wakes up in hospital bed, looks around, sees the object of their affection asleep in a chair next to them because they haven’t moved in days
I’m so fucking guilty of this trope in like everything.
no offense but the soft uncertain kiss followed by a pause where the people look each other in the eyes and then fucking pull eachother back into a more passionate kiss will always be the most soul destroying trope , catch me lying on the fucking ground sobbing and rewatching The Scene™✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼
character being all “you expect me to do X?” Gilligan Cut to character doing X
the squad gets captured and interrogated separately, and they’re all telling equally terrible, completely contradictory lies
people completely missing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them
alternatively, people absolutely seeing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them and just not giving a shit
bonus points if it’s a beleaguered minimum wage employee who just goes about their business like “yep same shit as always”
someone pretending they don’t know another character is eavesdropping, only to casually reveal at the end of the scene that they know (*leaving* “tell tom that he can come out now” *tom drops from the ceiling in spy gear, irritated*)
choosing to deal with the villain by just leaving them alone in a room with another character
the “hands go down” trope
example: “any questions?” *everyone’s hands go up* “…that AREN’T sarcastic?” *everyone’s hands go down*
people in fanfiction are so good at identifying v specific smells. I literally struggle to identify vanilla when I’m sniffing a candle labelled “VANILLA” how are these kids getting woodsmoke, rain, mint, and a whiff of byronic despair from a fuckin tshirt
Once I read a fic where they were like “he tasted like” and I’m expecting the typical formula (1 cooking ingredient + 1 natural phenomenon + “something uniquely [character name]”) but instead they said “he tasted like mouth” and it was one of the greatest fic moments of my life
click and drag to find out what your shitty fanfiction kiss tastes like
i know people love the fake-married-but-then-fall-in-love trop but they always do it for weird reasons and i never see the most obvious reason which is to commit tax fraud.
u know i’ve expressed my love for fake married/fake dating many, many times but like. is anything better. is anything better on this earth. does any trope or genre truly care for us quite like this one. let us reflect on a few of the gifts that fake married/dating consistently gives us:
character a asks “hey, will you pretend to be my date for a week for [convoluted excuse that could easily be solved without a fake relationship]?” character b, fully convinced of the futility of their DEEP AND UNREQUITED LOVE, figures this’ll be a chance to spend time with them and possibly put their feelings to rest. character b is always wrong & it is always amazing.
having to SHARE A LIVING SPACE FOR ARBITRARY FIC REASONS. having to see eachother in their pajamas first thing in the morning, messy haired, drowsy eyed and soft faced. going from “you can have the bathroom first” to brushing their teeth beside eachother and feeling like this closeness has always existed (at the same time, painfully aware that it won’t always).
related to the last one — “”practicing”” their casual touching so that it’s easier when they’re in public. feeling SWOOPS OF ARDOR AND AGONY when they feel the brush of a hand on their neck, or an arm loop around their waist. don’t you love how fake marrieds/dates are always method actors who must FULLY INHABIT their roles. i love it. i live for it.
bed sharing. :^) we all pretend we’re bigger than this but we are not.
“kiss me while everyone’s looking.”
the character who wasn’t aware they were in love (maybe always had been) until the fake relationship is in full swing, realizing they have to sort their feelings out before their time together is up. sometimes they succeed and angst is minimal. most of the time they don’t, really.
telling eachother “i love you” in public and meaning it, heart aching over it, but bELIEVING THE OTHER 2 BE ACTING. my soul is still 15, this garbage still gets me. u don’t get pining better than this.
the days leading up to the end of the arrangement where one of them, still confused and muddy about their Feelings and unsure how to break things off, stiffens to the casual, reflexive touching and puts their walls back up. the other one accepts and respects this as the end of their agreement and squashes back down all the hope they ever had, stuffs it next to the heartbreak they’re ignoring deep in their chest.
when they realize they’re actually fully and enthusiastically mutual about the way they feel and it’s, like, two parts euphoria and one part agony because they just cannOT BELIEVE, the happiness tears them in two. maybe there are weepy or laughing kisses. i don’t know but i’m usually invested like 2000%. i love fake dating/marrieds.
problematic tropes are only problematic due to their prevalence, not bad in and of themselves; they are bad on a statistical level.
this complicates the discourse significantly as it means any individual application of a terrible trope is not very terrible at all, a subtlety that is hard to express and which most people don’t seem to get.
bold talk for a post that doesn’t even pass the bechdel test
the friend-turned-enemy, the hostage with stockholm syndrome, the POW who doesn’t know what’s real anymore, the brainwashed slave.
you know how hard the heroes have to work to get them back, and how much it hurts. how the victim attacks their rescuers, screams the manifesto of their captors as if it’s their own.
and those are people who were turned by the enemy, who have nothing to lose but their chains and their false sense of certainty.
so why would you think you can convert someone who was raised from birth to wrong thought, and only ever benefitted from it, and sees no personal gain from joining the right side, just by being an asshole to them on social media? or punching them in the face?
captain america brought bucky back by dropping his shield. luke skywalker redeemed darth vader by refusing to kill him. janet rescued tam lin by holding him tight while he turned into monsters and red hot iron.
and you think you can turn comfortable people into freedom fighters by calling them names?
humanity tells itself these stories for a reason. learn.
i’d like to point out also that tam lin, in pretty much every version recorded, says that he likes living in fairyland. it’s his home, he’s been treated well, he’s considered a valuable member of titania’s court, he’s grown up there and enjoys his life. he ONLY asks janet to free him because he’s a nominee for fairyland’s tithe to hell. not because he wants to escape fairyland. not because he loves her and wants to do the honorable thing by parenting the baby he impregnated her with. they’re making a bargain: she bails him out of paying for the literally charmed life he’s been leading, he resumes human life with her.
it can be an extremely badass, romantic story. but there’s an important, hidden moral: people don’t leave fairyland when they’re its shining knight. they escape it when they realize they’re its victim.
just moving along like everyone else 