Remember Me On This Device
For my 20th Livejournal anniversary, how about some 20 for 20 lists?
10 dumb/lazy movie & tv tropes that I shamefully love, and 10 that I angrily hate.
SHAMEFULLY LOVE:
- The Poncey Enemy.*
- The Peabo.**
- Anything Dickensian, including time travel reveal.
- Finding one's sound. This can apply to other fields as well, such as sports, visual art, social activism, etc.
- One person from each demographic, and they are somehow all forced to work together.
- Saving the community center (or theater, cafe, garden, any place than non-rich people like to go) from greedy developer. How? Only one way.
- You thought character was dead, but they they were there all along, you just didn't know it was them.
- Blonde friend + dark-haired friend. Oh, they have their troubles, but they will always be there for each other.
- The Chosen One / Hero's Journey.
- You worried that something bad would happen to the cat, but the cat is OK.
ANGRILY HATE:
- Person steps up to microphone, feedback is heard.
- Character makes elaborate dinner, smoke is seen emanating from one item. Guess they have to order pizza because no other possible food.
- It's the 60s. Male character has big ideas about helping humanity and saving the world. Wait a minute, he was mean to his girlfriend once.
- Oops, main character "lost the baby". Everything back to normal, no need to make any difficult decisions.
- Anything implying that a cat, dog, or bird will not live forever.
- Daughter and mother are almost the same age because no one allowed to be over 40.
- Book is British but let's set it in New York.
- It's set in San Francisco. Character drives up to curb and parks exactly where they were planning to go without circling for 1/2 an hour.
- It's set in San Francisco. Character works in a bakery or something, but they live in the coolest Victorian or Craftsman apartment you've ever seen.
- It's set at Stanford University. It's clearly filmed at a place not even remotely resembling Stanford.
- *This is a family term for the character whom you are meant to identify against, mainly because they are rich and blonde, although that is not always the case. They are often a sibling or classmate. Some classic examples include Nellie Oleson, Sharpay Evans, & Johnny Lawrence. A favorite sub-trope is when the protagonist and the poncey enemy eventually become friends because it is revealed that the poncey enemy had past trauma or unfortunate circumstances that you didn't know about earlier. (I understand that the word "poncey" can be used in a homophobic manner in the UK, and that is not what is intended here.)
- **This is a family term for the smooth r&b / adult-contemporary ballad that plays over the end credits of an animated movie, from the early 90s onward. It is often a reinterpretation of a song sung by a character in the movie itself, but is sometimes a stand-alone song. We call it "The Peabo" to honor Peabo Bryson, the featured vocalist on not one, but two of the earliest and best examples of the genre. I've made a playlist that collects many of these, but I'm sure I'm missing a few. The tinkly synthetic keyboard sound that opens almost every one of these is referred to as "The Peabo Keybo" (my daughter's idea).