Fannish Friday: tropes/plotlines you can't be normal about

[lirazel]

This post is inspired by a conversation I was having the other day on Mastodon about how I can't just accept soulmate AUs as a fun fantasy thing like, idk, time travel or amnesia fic or something simply because it just reads as too Calvinist to me. I am Team Free Will! I am horrified at the idea of choices being made for me by the universe or God or whatever! I will read a soulmate AU if it's written by a writer I already love, but I am never going to seek it out, and it's always going to be a bit ew to me.

And that is so specific to me! If you have zero Calvinist background--if, say, your background is East Asian and you associate soulmate AUs with, like, red string of fate stuff instead of people being predestined to burn in hell for all eternity--you are going to have a very different reaction to soulmate AUs!

So that got me thinking about other tropes or plotlines that I just can't approach like a normal person because of my own personal baggage.

And here's the ultimate one: what happens to Donna on Doctor Who.

Donna was one of my favorite eras of the show--I found her completely delightful. But I have never been able to rewatch her season or even reblog gifsets on Tumblr because of how upset I was that the Doctor ended up wiping her memories in order to save her life.

Why? Because at that time my grandmother was dying of Alzheimer's. The idea of wiping someone else's memories, particularly without their consent, even if it was for "their own good" was so horrifying to me that it ruined Donna's run.

I think objectively that was a gross plotline, but I don't think most other people had the intense emotional reaction to it that I did.

But I will never be okay with memory alteration treated as okay. I just won't.

So what's a trope or storyline that you bring baggage to that completely shapes how you see it?

(Obviously the answer is: every trope or storyline because we all bring baggage to everything, but I'm talking specifically about ones that make you a bit of an outlier and that are easy for you to see: "Oh, yeah, that's definitely why I don't [or maybe do?] vibe with that particular story.")

Comments

[evewithanapple]

So I've been watching Homicide: Life on the Street for the past couple months, and there's this storyline in the fifth and sixth seasons where one of the characters has a breakdown, tries to kill himself, does not succeed, ends up murdering someone else, and just goes on a really awful downward spiral. And there's a lot going on with it, thematically (the show's overarching theme is the inherent moral injury of police work and how it psychologically erodes anyone engaged with it) but also: I watched this a couple weeks after I went through a serious episode of depression/suicidal ideation. And the episode where he tries to kill himself is, bar none, the best depiction of depression I've ever seen onscreen. Because the thing is, sometimes depression doesn't mean sitting around crying in sweatpants with unwashed hair; sometimes it makes you mean and horrible and angry and saying the worst things you can think of because you don't know how else to communicate the amount of pain you're in. Sometimes it means screaming at the people who try to help you because you're so far gone, you resent anyone even trying to suggest that it can get better. The body language, even - there's this bit where he's got his arms pulled up in front of his face like he's cocking his fists, and it took my breath away, because I recognize that pose. All of which is to say: yeah this character does some awful stuff, but I encountered his storyline at such a time as I simply cannot be normal about him.

(I'm fine now, I left the horrible job that was making me depressed before I did anything awful. Also my job does not require me to carry a gun, which is another point the show is making.)

[lirazel]

OOOF. Yeah. The more accurate something like that is, the harder it can be to watch if you relate to it. It makes so much sense that it was so hard for you. SO glad you're in a better place now!

the show's overarching theme is the inherent moral injury of police work and how it psychologically erodes anyone engaged with it

This makes me want to watch it! I've thought about it because of the cast and hearing it highly praised, but I never have watched it myself.

[evewithanapple]

It really wasn't hard to watch - quite the opposite, actually, it made me feel better. So many depictions of depression just lean into the sadness aspect of it, but you rarely see ones that demonstrate how angry it can make you. I've watched it several times over now.

It's a really interesting slow, subtle burn - you could do things like that back in the day when TV shows had twenty episodes per season - because it doesn't come right out the gate with "POLICING IS EVIL AND ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS" but sort of plants seeds at various points and lets them grow until the audience is like "wait -" Stuff like how many cast members die violently, either by their own hand or someone else's, or how the characters who come in as idealists end up self-destructing hard when they come up against the reality of how little policing has to do with actual justice, or how the characters who the audience were introduced to as loveable will suddenly come out with a line like "they wanted a war, now they've got one" or "we used to own this city" and you go OH - this is endemic, and the writers know it. (And on a lighter note, Brooklyn 99 was absolutely riffing on Braugher's role here when they wrote Holt. And this show had the first bisexual main character on American tv, which I didn't know beforehand!)

Also the whole thing is online in a google drive! So that's nice, because it is not streaming anywhere legal.

[lirazel]

Oh good! I'm glad it worked for you!

you could do things like that back in the day when TV shows had twenty episodes per season

GOD DON'T REMIND ME.

Thank you for the link! I am sure I will check it out sometime!

[lirazel]

OOOF. Yeah. The more accurate something like that is, the harder it can be to watch if you relate to it. It makes so much sense that it was so hard for you. SO glad you're in a better place now!

the show's overarching theme is the inherent moral injury of police work and how it psychologically erodes anyone engaged with it

This makes me want to watch it! I've thought about it because of the cast and hearing it highly praised, but I never have watched it myself.

[pauraque]

the show's overarching theme is the inherent moral injury of police work and how it psychologically erodes anyone engaged with it

This is very well said and I need to rewatch HLOTS. It's been ages and ages.

[evewithanapple]

It took me so much by surprise because I went in thinking it was a standard 90s police drama! (I grew up on Law&Order, which actually did a few crossover episodes with HLOTS, and tends to be . . . you know.) But it went in a really unexpected direction.