{"id":114405,"date":"2020-08-07T08:21:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T07:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=114405"},"modified":"2020-08-11T14:53:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T13:53:02","slug":"author-guest-blog-favourite-tropes-by-ashley-poston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/blog\/author-guest-blog-favourite-tropes-by-ashley-poston\/","title":{"rendered":"Author guest blog: Favourite Tropes by Ashley Poston"},"content":{"rendered":"

The execution of a trope can make or break a story. A well-executed trope will likely send you looking for other pieces of media similar to it. A badly <\/em>executed trope…? Well, we try not to think about them. Sometimes it might not be because the trope was executed badly at all, but that it was used a few too many times. There\u2019s a reason a fair majority of people groan at the very mention of a klutzy girl or the chosen one. As media consumers, we have been bombarded by a lot<\/em> of tropes, but that\u2019s not always a bad thing. Sometimes you find tropes that just stick with you.<\/p>\n

Here are a few of my favorites that will never, ever get old.<\/p>\n

The first one that comes to mind is the classic Tin Man trope, m<\/strong>ost notably utilised in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz<\/em><\/strong> with – well\u2014the Tin Man<\/em> himself. The Tin Man character is an archetype who cannot show any outward emotion. They are either made without that ability, or they were never taught, to emote. This includes magical tin men, robots, and supernatural beings. These characters also tend to be the softest characters despite \u2018not having emotions.\u2019 Take Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em><\/strong>: as a Soong-type Synthetic Intelligence Android-lifeform, he was created without emotions but he is ever curious about them. In the film First Contact<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, he even yearns to have emotions and the Borg tempt him with such a proposition, but of course he is much too loyal and good to give in to the Borg\u2019s temptations. Data, as we all know, has the softest heart out of everyone. Even if it is artificial.<\/p>\n

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Data has a soft heart!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another one of my favorite tropes has a rather hilarious name – Draco in Leather Pants.<\/strong> As the name suggests, this trope got its name from the Harry Potter <\/em><\/strong><\/a>fandom back in the day when leather pants were a sign of misunderstood and desirable characters – you just had to give them a chance. The trope itself happens when the fandom of a property softens a controversial or villainous character and makes them more palatable, often turning them into misunderstood and broody anti-heroes. Their original villainy is rarely addressed in the fandom. But when you\u2019re writing a Reylo coffeehouse!AU, you really don\u2019t want to mention how the cute barista, in another life in a galaxy far, far away, killed billions of people because he felt misunderstood. Doesn\u2019t really sit well, you know? It\u2019s okay, Ben Swolo, we love you anyway.<\/p>\n

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We love you Ben Swolo…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a connoisseur of anime, I have grown to love the Flashback Stares<\/strong>. You know the ones – you have to – when a character looks off into the distance and suddenly you, the viewer, are in his or her childhood home, reliving the moment the entire Uchiha clan\u2019s murdered by Itachi Uchiha himself? Yeah. I\u2019ll never be over that one, either. Thanks Naruto<\/em><\/strong>. What might seem like lazy storytelling to me feels like an ingenious way to piece a person\u2019s past history together exactly when you, the audience, need it the most. Sure, you could have been fed that information at the beginning of Naruto<\/em><\/strong>, but would you really have started crying your eyeballs out if you\u2019d known what you found out in that flashback? It would\u2019ve hit a little differently, I think, and not in a good way. Sometimes it\u2019s refreshing to have pieces of a story given to you exactly when you need them the most. Long live the Flashback Stare, making its timely comeback in Jojo\u2019s Bizarre Adventure<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Thanks Naruto…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lastly on the list is Fake Your Death.<\/strong> It\u2019s exactly what it sounds like. It\u2019s when your favorite secondary character meets an untimely end! Are they actually dead-dead, or are they fake-dead? Who knows! The characters sure think they\u2019re dead-dead, but you have your suspicions… and then it turns out they\u2019re not dead-dead at all! They\u2019re alive<\/em>!<\/p>\n

One of my favorite masteries of this is in the Doctor Who<\/strong> <\/em>episode ‘Dalek’ when Rose is trapped on the side of the door with a Dalek, and everyone thinks our Doctor\u2019s favorite companion succumbed to her mortality, only to hear her voice over the radio later in the episode. It\u2019s such a bout of whiplash, the episode still has me reeling years later. It\u2019s also notably present in Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban<\/em><\/strong>, when everyone thinks the hippogriff is executed, but as it turns out it the sound was just the executioner hitting the fence when he realizes the animal has escaped. But my favorite iteration of this trope has to be in Dreamwork\u2019s Megamind<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, when the famed superhero Metroman fakes his own death to restart his career as a musician. Classic.<\/p>\n

There are a multitude of other tropes that I love – There\u2019s Only One Bed, Snowed In, Cross Country Road Trip<\/strong>, a solid Love Triangle <\/strong>\u2014 but I\u2019ll have to wax poetically about those another day.<\/p>\n

Bookish And The Beast is out now from Quirk Books.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bookish And The Beast author Ashley Poston tells us why ‘The Tin Man’ and ‘Draco In Leather Pants’ are up there with her favourite tropes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":114406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1,1624],"tags":[6921,82,2031],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/AshleyPoston_AuthorPhoto.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}