Top Ten Tuesday 64 - Ten Tropes I'm quitting

-


Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week's theme: Top Ten Bookish Tropes I'm Quitting

 Here are a list of phrases and tropes that tick me off when I see them. I started out with contemporary/YA tropes and then moved on to SF/Fantasy tropes, so they're a little random...I couldn't think of 10, but here are a bunch of tropes that I'm really tired of!
  1. "But she wasn't like the other girls"


    This one is inspired by my current read. I'm so sick of the main character of books being "special" and "not like the other girls". It's subtle girl hate, and it's so annoying! Must every main character be some sort of Chosen One?

  2. "S/he let out a breath s/he didn't know s/he was holding"

    This one is just SO OVERDONE and it doesn't even make any sense!
  3. Love triangles.


    I'm so, so done with these. Thankfully they're pretty rare in Fantasy/SF so I don't run into them much anymore but love triangles (squares? PENTAGONS?) just need to stop being a thing.
  4. The ice-queen beauty

    This one is inspired by The Red Queen and every Taylor Swift music video ever. There's always that one beautiful girl the male MC likes, but she's apparently actually a bitch and the female MC spends all her time feeling worthless in comparison. More girl hate. Go away.
  5. Hand-wavy science

    I wrote a whole post on this for Sci-fi November last year, but it really bugs me when an author tries to explain away something with really flawed science. The most infuriating example that comes to mind is the genetics nonsense in the Divergent series, but there are plenty more. Just don't try and explain it with science if you aren't even going to try and make it reasonable!
  6. SF/fantasy worlds that lack diversity


    The real world isn't full of people who all look the same or have the same heritage, but invariably in fantasy and SF worlds, almost every story takes place in either a medieval European-inspired world or a world where only the white people managed to make it to space. It's getting better recently in terms of more races/gender identities and less stereotypes, but it's crazy how homogeneous made-up worlds are when there is so much freedom to have even more variation than the real world. This is why I love The 100: they actually do have a good representation of all sorts of people.
  7. Unpronounceable fantasy/SF names

    I did a whole post on this a long time ago too! I listened to Robert Jordan's Eye of The World on audio, so I thankfully missed all the infuriating apostrophes and didn't have to worry about pronouncing names. Some books do better than others with creating a linguistic pattern that is both interesting and easy or intuitive to pronounce.
  8. Magic powers/technology that only work when all is lost

    This is basically deus ex machina. I hate when the lost memory of our orphaned main character triggers their magical powers in the last second or when a technology that has taken a back seat suddenly comes to life and saves the day. It's so unbelievable and so overdone!



blog signature photo 4bf1c374-231a-40b6-8756-317f9308721c_zpsf45cae08.jpg
Follow on Bloglovin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Way of Kings Readalong: Wrap-up

-
Image
So it's finally over. That was an amazing book! Thank you everyone for joining in and making my first readalong so much fun :) I have said over and over again that Brandon Sanderson is a storytelling god. This book makes me believe it even more fiercely - it takes a mastermind to create such intricate worlds and piece together so many character and plot threads. He does such a great job of feeding you just enough answers/revelations to keep you happy, but keeps you hanging by dangling all sorts of questions for you to answer. Not to mention the bombshells he throws in at the end... Having read Mistborn, I really should have been more prepared for disaster and mindblowing moments towards the end of the book. The end was just bombshell after bombshell - some were interesting revelations, and others were shattering. The bombshells of this week: 1) Navani proves that Dalinar's visions are real , and says his unconscious decoding of an ancient language will help pave the
Read more

Way of Kings Readalong: Gender roles on Roshar

-
Image
We've seen a little bit about the differences in what members of different genders are allowed and encouraged to do. I thought it was interesting how things like reading were entrusted only to women, since reading is how you gain knowledge (and power!), and it seems like the men were the ones who wanted all the power in this world. So here's a discussion post about the different gender roles and what some possible implications are. But first, a few words from Brandon Sanderson: I found this video on YouTube where Sanderson talks a bit about gender roles in history and in The Way of Kings. It's only a minute or two in the middle of the video (4:30-6:58), but I thought it was interesting. YouTube is being annoying and I cannot embed the video so here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqeKPBHquOg Gender differences on Roshar A table of some basic differences in genders: Men Women Can read glyphs Can read an
Read more

Top Ten Tuesday 54 - Book to Movie/TV adaptations

-
Image
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme: Top Ten Movie/TV show adaptations of books I've read Sometimes movies and TV shows do a great job of portraying the spirit of the books they're based on, and sometimes they really don't. Here are a few adaptations I loved and some that I felt were lacking. Great Adaptations 1. The Hunger Games/Catching Fire/Mockingjay       Stunning visuals, pitch-perfect portrayal of the characters, and just enough new changes to keep the movies fresh. 2. Harry Potter The movies captured the spirit of the books so well, and again, all the actors did an amazing job of portraying the beloved book characters. Some movies did better than others, but I'm generally really happy with these! 3. The Book Thief     I was really nervous about watching this because The Book Thief is one of my favorites. I shouldn't have been worried, because this movie captured t
Read more