Feeding the id monster

[alias_sqbr]

cupidsbow has an interesting post Clichés and the id: a map to fictional seduction.

The conversation made me realise that I really like the moment in stories where the A has met their True Love B, and knows that B did love them before, but circumstances have changed or A has a Big Secret and chances are B doesn't/won't love A anymore. And then there's a big revelations and it's all ok and they live happily ever after. See: Cinderella, Pride and Prejudice.

It also got me thinking about the self indulgent tropes I have used in my stories(*) because they hit my id rather than because they were necessarily the right thing for the story, and I was amused at what they say about me.

The broad not very interesting ones are:

• A meets B, A loses B, A gets B back again (sorry to spoil the plot of my WIP there :D)
  
• Subverting cliches in a simplistic gotcha sort of way
  
• "Little guy" triumphs over more powerful person and the status quo
  

Then there's:

• Traditional narrative where people should save the day through pluck and determination against the odds..except they all DIE because they are STUPID AND ILLOGICAL. (Seriously, this was pretty much the only sort of story I wrote all through highschool)
  
• Strawman character says things which annoy me and then is PROVEN WRONG because they are STUPID AND ILLOGICAL (what I have progressed to as an adult)
  
• Laughing at self important talking cats (Two stories so far consist almost entirely of this :))
  
• Flashbacks (I have written and discarded a LOT of these for ACOS)
  
• Snark between women (femslashiness an added bonus)
  
• Becoming all powerful and using that power to create a better world through representative democracy (does nobody else have this fantasy?)
  

Heh. Thinking about my art tropes my immediate thought was "Angels. Dragons. Spirals. Pretty dresses." and then "Floating islands. Trees. Books.". And thus this picture :)

(*)A lot of which are too embarrassingly bad to be seen by anyone ever.

Comments

[sanguinity]

:: Snark between women (femslashiness an added bonus) ::

That startled me for some reason. I think it's because my brain keeps interpreting it as "catfight!" (and it would surprise me very much if that was one of your tropes).

Nearly all of my fiction, up to a couple of years ago, is about how difficult it is to live up to the Nice Girl you are in your head.

[alias_sqbr]

Hah, no, not catfighty snark :) And thinking about it the gender of the snarkers isn't such a big deal anyway.

Nearly all of my fiction, up to a couple of years ago, is about how difficult it is to live up to the Nice Girl you are in your head.

Interesting. *Holds my stories up to that template to see if they fit*. Kind of. Hmm.