To all the great denizens of Tumblr…
What is your most despised plot/writing trope of your favorite genre? And what is your most Ride or Die trope?
!MINOR SPOILERS FOR JOHN WICK 4, SKYSCRAPER (2018), NIGHT AGENT (2023) AND LOST!
Action stories are definitely up there as one of my favorite genres.
To everyone else this may seem like a hot take, but I do not particularly enjoy romantic plots. Unless the story is a romantic genre I tend to get annoyed of them, especially because it’s always the two main characters and a good portion of the time are a guy and girl. Like- why can’t they just be best friends at the end of the story, instead of having this prologue of them ending up together one way or another?
I recently watched Night Agent, y’know that Netflix show? Needless to say it had this exact plot device. It came completely out of left field too. I’m not even joking. Peter and Rose showed almost no indication of a relationship and were colleagues for a time (which I was really digging), then completely out of left field they start smooching and stuff in episode 6 I believe. I may have the timeline messed up but it was after their dumbasses managed to get labeled traitors of the US. The ‘woe is me’ trope I speak about more below about REALLY came into full effect here for Peter. It messed with the tone too. I felt less of a feeling of dread for Peter specifically being framed, and more of a ‘oh so THIS is how they force him and Rose together?’ There’s scenes where Rose is healing his wounds, then caressing his muscles, all while this broadcast plays about Peter being a traitor. The entire time it’s like the writers forgot we are supposed to feel terrible about that and instead made it into a scene, where we are made to feel like it’s hot that this girl is running around with her fugitive boyfriend and is the lone person who believes in the good will of Peter.
I find that romantic plots such as these are usually shoved in to add some amount of drama to the story where that drama never had to be present. It gets pretty repetitive and lazy as I see it over and over again in medias outside of the romantic genre. As mentioned before, I see they tend to do more harm than good. There’s usually some amount of ‘woe is me’ involved, or a love triangle or needless break ups and such. One example that immediately comes to mind for me is Lost.
Bro- the love square going on in Lost was a mess. I cant even begin to fathom why they dragged out the whole ‘Who will Kate end up with? Jack or Sawyer?’ for as long as humanly possible. There was the silly old simplicity of the ‘bad girl with a soft side™️’ having to ‘choose between the bad boy with a heart of gold or the noble Boy Scout™️’. Not to mention the random inclusion of Jack maybe ending up Juliet and that needless amount of tension from everyone questioning her loyalty. The story did this a lot where they simply didn’t have characters communicate with each other, and this was by far its worst example. If Jack just pulled Kate- or heck anyone aside- and said ‘It’s not like that, she’s just letting me know some valuable information that can save our lives’??? That is just the tip of the iceberg with that whole debacle, but I’d rather move on to my favorite tropes.
You know what tropes always get me good? Is my number one Ride or Die trope? I love fluid fighting sequences. Especially ones that in some way show the characters wit or willpower. I don’t mind these scenes when they go on for several minutes, typically because any well written one won’t FEEL like it’s been several minutes. It will just go and go and fully immerse you into the action- and suddenly it’s been ten minutes and the scenes still going but you don’t know that. Why? Because you are having too much fun watching those creative and unique ways each participant is using to try and take each other out.
I do believe the greatest modern example of this trope done right is the entire John Wick franchise. I could rewatch all four of those movies in a heartbeat and it’d hardly feel like an hours passed for me. All because of how beautifully choreographed those fights are, and how unique each opponent is for Wick. How each character has their own distinct fighting style even if it may just look like they’re throwing punching at each other. John Wick 4 especially had this really cool scene (well several actually), showcasing a new character called Caine, and the several ways he navigates around being blind and still putting up as good a fight as every other High Table assassin. There was this one moment in particular where he was being introduced as a threat for the first time that we see him very clearly have limitations in navigating his surroundings, but uses sounds such as the enemy drawing their bow, the woosh of an arrow, the footsteps of another, and so on to tell where his opponents are. He even has these little audio buttons which he places along one of two routes the enemy can enter from so he knows when they are coming. It’s quite nice seeing him maneuver around being blind while still being realistically blind.
There is another really tense action scene from a film Skyscraper (2018), where the main character Will is trying to get through the towers manual override to rescue his child. Because he is locked in a room with no access to the control panels he decides to deactivate it by cutting the wires outside the building (complicated I know but bear with me). What follows is this moment where we visibly see Will’s exhaustion as he makes a precarious pulley system and makes his way to the panel. Him deactivating it seems like a small victory, however because of the encroaching flames he’s forced to make a daring escape where he then is left wildly dangling on the side of he building. We are forced to watch him struggle to gain his bearings as he twists and turns midair, before being slammed into the buildings wall and nearly falling to his demise, only for his prosthetic leg to be caught in the rope. He then used his leg as a more solid bearing to grab into where he finally climbs back up to safety. All I’m saying is it was a really great scene, you could hardly tell it was three minutes.
Oh yeah! Before I finish off please know I don’t hate neither Lost or Night Agent. Lost especially is one of my favorite shows. My opinions are more so my own preferences for writing, as I am sure many really digger the romance in both those shows. I’m just not too much a romantic person. It just means those plot lines are not for me. Every creative work as some amount of value, every creative work has potential, always remember that! I cant wait to see your responses! 💙💛
