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

[gryfndor_godess]

This ties into broader themes of agency but is a very specific example: I can't stand when characters turn evil or turn into monsters (literal or figurative) through no or little fault of their own. The degree to which it squicks me depends on context (and gender, probably); sometimes I can get through it, but other times I nope right out. This was a decade ago, so I don't remember specifics, but my first memory of recognizing how much I hated this trope resulted from a fairy tale fantasy quartet I'd previously enjoyed; I put down the fourth one a little ways in and never finished it because one of the main characters got enchanted or possessed by a demon and became the villain, and it upset me too much. Other examples:

-The Dark Swan storyline in OUAT. I think I'd already stopped watching by that point, but hearing about it made me even less inclined to go back to it.

-Dean turning into a demon in the SPN S9 finale; I was already angry at the show for many reasons, but that was when I stopped watching (and I'd even predicted it would happen). Arguably, Dean was sort of at fault for what happened, so I might have come around to the storyline if the writers had actually held him accountable and if it had led to character growth, but in the end there were basically no consequences for that trash storyline, so I continue to hate it.

-I just finished a YA fairy tale trilogy in which the male love interest gets turned into a monster that the villainous witch controls like a puppet, and while it made me uncomfortable, I could get through it since I didn't super care about him in the first place.

I'm trying to think why Angel turning into Angelus in BtVS never squicked me in the same way. I'm sure it's partly because I can't stand Bangel in the first place, but I think it also has to do with how that plotline resulted from his specific curse and tied into the world-building; it wasn't something thrown in because the writers had no idea what else to do, and there were definitely consequences. Or hmm, maybe it's because he was Angelus to begin with, so it wasn't the same as an ~always-heroic~ character getting turned evil.

[lirazel]

Oh, that's interesting! I can't think of any examples of this I've encountered, but I do not think I would like it either.

but I think it also has to do with how that plotline resulted from his specific curse and tied into the world-building; it wasn't something thrown in because the writers had no idea what else to do, and there were definitely consequences. Or hmm, maybe it's because he was Angelus to begin with, so it wasn't the same as an ~always-heroic~ character getting turned evil.

Yeah, it's really well done in BtVS, but I think in general that's hard to pull off.