Tag: tropes

First Impressions: My Demon

Laura Highcove

My Demon is a Korean Drama currently coming out on Netflix. Korean Dramas are always hit or miss for me. It is still difficult in this day and age for K-dramas to have a romantic story where the female lead is empowered, or at least not reduced to a helpless damsel in distress if she’s not outright mentally abused by the male lead.

In My Demon, an immortal demon, whose job is to grant a person’s wish for payment of their souls after ten years, loses his power-granting tattoo to a powerful young CEO who is being targeted for death.

I just started episode 3 of this series and so far it has some nice green flags:

  1. The female lead is a CEO, competent, empowered one, and does not suddenly lose agency when the male lead shows up.
  2. The male lead has magic powers, but they are limited when his tattoo transfers to her (for unknown reason) so he does not hold all the power in the relationship.
  3. The female lead is told that the tattoo has his powers and that he needs to be touching her to use them, thus avoiding infantalizing the female lead in that he would just hang around using her without her knowing why.
  4. Most of the major decisions regarding how the two of them interact are made by the female lead instead of the male lead simply forcing himself on her constantly.
  5. And though the male lead is a self-centered jerk, is not set up as a child the female lead needs to keep cleaning up after.
  6. I swear, Korean Dramas are what YA Fantasy would be without the gd age restrictions.

I remain hopeful for this series considering how many of the painful tropes it’s already countered, but I’m annoyed that it’s coming out slowly. Also, since it’s a K-drama, the fact that it’s only 16 episodes is unusual, but they’re not pussy-footing around the plot, and we know the story will be wrapped up at the end of those episodes.

So if this series interests you, like it does me, give it a shot. I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Analyzing The Prince of Persia

Laura Highcove


I love a movie with a good title screen.

The Prince of Persia movie is one of the few video game movies that is considered good. It is in my own list of favorite movies, though not because it is a video game movie. This movie does a lot of things well and is overall an enjoyable experience, even if you’ve never played the game.

Here are a few of the things I think this movie does very well from a storytelling perspective:

Characterizing the three brothers


Dustan: “Garsiv, your hand is on your sword again.”
Garsiv: “Where it should be!”
Tus: “Oh, my brothers!”

From this first scene where the three of them interact while talking about whether to attack Alamut, they perfectly portray their personalities as well as their opinions of each other.

When Dustan is later framed for killing his father, the brothers act to type in that Tus is conflicted about what to do and Garsiv just wants to cut Dustan open.

It makes it all the sweeter when Dastan is able to convince both of them that he is telling the truth which leads to the feel-good moment when they come together at the end. I love that the trust between the three brothers is such an important part of the story.

Dustan and Tamina

The relationship between Dustan and Tamina is basically a perfect example of the kind of relationship development I love, down to them calling each other ‘prince’ and ‘princess’ sarcastically at first, which later turn into terms of endearment.

They have no reason to trust each other, each using the other to get what they want, but over time they begin to trust each other, and that leads to respect, and then love. It’s such a natural progression that you have no doubt that they will come to love each other again even after time is rewound.


Tamina: “Please don’t mock me, Prince.”
Dustan: “Oh, I hardly think we know each other well enough for that, Princess.
But I look forward to the day that we do.”

Parkour

The choreography for this movie is top notch and that includes all the parkour elements. Since it’s one of the selling points of the game, of course it’s important in the movie too. Unfortunately it is not easily displayed by screenshots.


I’ll just leave this here.

What I Didn’t Like

This movie is not perfect, and it has a few things in it that I don’t like, and it took a while before I stopped and looked at those pieces closely enough to determine why I don’t like them.

This scene always bothered me, because basically, the Sheikh and all his guys followed our heroes from the desert into the mountains before asking what the heck happened with the snakes the night before, and are about to leave before Tamina bribes them with gold. It’s a rather obvious example of leaving a discussion until a later scene in order to improve pacing, and it’s always bothered me since I’m not sure it would’ve been any worse for them to have that discussion when they were still in the desert.

Dustan makes a lot of leaps of logic. While this basically keeps the plot from being too slow, the boy really does piece together plot elements very accurately from very little information. He is characterized as thinking well on his feet, so maybe that’s where you’re supposed to get it from. Luckily he does draw a few of the wrong hasty conclusions as well.

The Sands of Time just …go away when Dustan and Nazam go back in time. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to assume that Tamina was just wrong about the Sands of Time wiping out the earth, or what, but it’s played up as a huge problem, and then it isn’t one.

Despite the flaws, I have watched this movie over and over again. Generally the only scene I skip is the race to the sandglass, which is pretty good for a movie I’ve seen so many times.

What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

Laura Highcove

Another prompt from the DIYMFA.com. To find out more, you can check out the DIYMFA.com’s instigator, Gabriela Pereira’s new book DIY MFA.

QOTW 15: What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

My favorite type of story is one that has a theme of camaraderie, either a pairing or a team of some kind. This does not (necessarily) mean an ensemble cast. I am a fan of characters interacting with each other in a place of teamwork and/or trust. It can be romantic or not. (I am always a fan of a good bromance.) I also like it when it starts out as hate or reluctance.


The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Examples across media include:

Castle: The four main characters are willing to do anything for each other, even if it’s sometimes outside the law.

Psych: Shawn and Gus seem to know what each other is thinking and are always together, have each other’s backs, and the jokes they pull off together are amazing.

Suits: In the cutthroat lawyer world, the two main characters are seriously loyal to each other.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Show and Movie): In the TV show, the two main characters are partners and work very well together. In the movie they start out hating each other and come to a sort of grudging respect.

BBC’s Merlin: The two main characters start out hating each other and eventually develop into friends AND in later seasons get a whole team that works together on trust.

Speed Racer This movie has a theme of family, and plenty of times when everyone has to work together to get stuff done.

The Avengers: More an ensemble cast, but they all have to learn to work together

Blue Exorcist: Team of students that bond through their adventures enough to keep them together when they find out the main character is the son of the devil. (This one’s an anime.)

The Legend of Eli Monpress: The main character and his team are already established at the beginning of the books, but it’s their bonds to each other that keep them from failing.

Brandon Sanderson novels: He likes to have a tight knit team that works well together and gets along (fairly well) in most of his books.

As you can see, it’s a wide variety of different types of relationships and teams that gets me interested, but it’s no surprise that I have a similar theme in all of my own stories.

Why does this archetype appeal to me so much?

Because I inherently want to trust people.

Because these are the kinds of relationships I want to have.

…it’s something like that I’m sure.

I don’t like books where everyone betrays everyone else all the time and are just out for themselves. I like to see people willing to go to the mat to defend a friend. I like to see people throw it all on the line for something they might not even understand because it’s important to the person they trust. I never get more teary eyed than when two people (especially who hated each other previously) go back to back. It’s about that connection. It also tends to result in some pretty awesome dialogue as friends snark at each other.

Out of this I am planning on doing a series of blog posts going into more depth with what I like about my favorite media, and what I didn’t like about media I consumed and didn’t like. I expect I’ll find that a lot of the things I like about the media I consume end up in my own stories, like this one, but there may be some that I’m not even aware of right now, and if I become aware of them, then I can manipulate them to better effect in my own storytelling.

Tropes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Laura Highcove

So all of our shows are going on their winter breaks, so my husband and I are back to some of the things we have on the back-burner, one of which is the original Man from U.N.C.L.E season 1, made in the 60s.

We both enjoyed the movie and my mother-in-law loved the show, so we figured we would give it a shot.

So for those of you who don’t know, the premise is a spy agency made up of people from all over the world who deal with things that are a threat on a global scale. Our main characters are Napoleon Solo (An American who likes his women and is suave.) and Illya Kuryakin (A Russian who has a myriad of skills).

It has been quite an interesting ride. Some of the episodes are better written than others.

Last night we watched “The Double Affair” in which the bad guys replace Solo with a double in order to get access to codes to a vault that has “something world changing” while they are being transported.

So this episode was bad for a number of reasons.

1) The opening sequence was the bad guys trying to kill Illia, since he knows Solo and would possible be able to out the fake. Illia knowing Solo did not play into the episode at all. He raises an eyebrow when Duo (what we called the fake Solo) does not mack on every woman he sees, and that’s it. If you’re going to have a Chekhov’s Gun, then fire the thing!

2) We assumed, because it was the 60s, that the ‘world changing power’ would be nuclear, it turns out instead to be, I kid you not, some sort of glowing energy (from space?) that if you look at it without protective glasses, will take over your mind and make you walk into it. This is what befalls the one poor chap who figures out that Duo got into the briefcase holding the codes. Yeah, it was basically a genre break, though TV Tropes doesn’t have a page for that one. Basically, we’re watching a spy show and then suddenly SCIENCE FICTION!

3) And, at the end of the show, the resolution is ‘hey, the real Solo didn’t get shot, everything is great because Duo couldn’t kiss well, and now the woman are happy’. Not: ‘btw, the bad guys actually did get the codes to the vault, is anyone even going to mention that we’re taking care of that?’ No? Okay…

It’s handy to be able to point out the blatantly bad writing and plot holes (along with MST3King it) because we also discuss how we would’ve written the episode. Luckily the next episode was far better, and not only because few minutes into the episode my husband said ‘Is that Leonard Nimoy?’, to which I replied in the next scene: ‘Maybe, but that is William Shatner. Man, he was hott when he was younger.’.

Gender Bending

Laura Highcove

One of the things that I am playing around with in The Storyteller are gender roles, because it’s something I’m interested in. I’ve always been a tomboy and unlike many girls, I never really grew out of it.

Both of the main characters in The Storyteller do not conform to standard gender roles. Tabitha was raised as a Prince Charming. She is dashing, brave, and kind, the ideal prince. She just happens to be a girl.

Wildrose is In Touch with his Feminine Side. He is a man who does not play to typical masculine traits, and is just as comfortable playing the role of a woman as a man.

Wonderfully enough, TV Tropes (which I introduced you to last week) has a page for discussing gender roles. (It is a long read, just warning you.) The article exists to help people write characters of opposite genders, and as such is a neat compilation of the differences between genders, with the necessary disclaimer that it’s hard to make blanket statements about genders.

What gender roles do you like to bend or break, and which do you tend to conform to?

Getting Tropey

Laura Highcove

It occurs to me that since right now I don’t have any writing stuff to talk about, that this is a perfect time to talk a bit more about the story I’m working on itself, as opposed to the process.

If you’ve visited the “The Stories” link over on the right, you may have noticed the line under The Storyteller heading: “I have always wanted to do a story in a fairy tale world where the characters are genre savvy (ie, they know the fairy tales are stories and respond accordingly.)”. Being genre savvy involves a knowledge of expected outcomes based on stories similar to the current situation. These expected outcomes are also known as tropes. Click on that link. I’ll wait.

Back so soon? I’ve been known to get lost for hours on that site.

Basically, all of the things that you expect to happen in tv, movies, books, etc. because you’ve seen them before. You know it is a bad decision to go down into the basement when there’s a serial killer or scary monster somewhere in the vicinity, but the person in the situation has no idea that they’re in a scary movie.

Part of what I’m playing around with in The Storyteller is that the laws of magic in this world are tropes, and fairy tales happen over and over in different places to different people. These people have no idea they’re in a story. My main characters are Storytellers, and it’s their job to be Genre Savvy. They have to know the laws (tropes) in order to make sure the world stays stable through the successful completion of the tales.

Think for a moment about Cinderella. It doesn’t matter if you think of the Disney version, or any other version. There are certain things you associate with the story. Cinderella is treated as a servant. Her ball. She meets a prince, loses her slipper, and is identified by it.

There are many tropes associated with this story, and tons of re-tellings of the Cinderella story that use different tropes. Some tropes are less necessary than others. Would it still be a cinderella story if she started out rich? If her stepmother loved her? If there is no prince? What about if there were two princes?

In The Storyteller, the Storytellers have to make sure that certain tropes (laws of magic) happen properly within the tale or the magic can go completely wild. As such, I’ve had a lot of fun playing with what tropes I can put into stories, and which I can take out without losing the essence of the story. And that doesn’t mean that my Storytellers don’t have tropes of their own.

Tropes are not good or bad on their face, they’re just a tool. A way of creating and possibly subverting expectations in the reader quickly and easily. If you find any tropes on TV Tropes that you particularly like, feel free to share them in the comments section or post to my wall.

Frozen

Laura Highcove

So on Tuesday I walked into the back room of Fun N Games, now newly moved to University Mall, where we hold our weekly D&D session. Gloves immediately stood up, pointed at me, and said ‘You have to go see Frozen.’ Now if you know Gloves, you will know that this is very odd behavior for him, as he is the type of guy who is perfectly happy in his own opinions, but for the most part does not try to impart them on other people. Therefore, my husband and I knew that this sort of declaration warranted attention.

We proceeded to talk about how the commercials and advertising for the movie were horrible, or at least did not make me excited about going to see the movie, which is the point of advertising. At that moment of the conversation with Gloves, I knew two things: One: Frozen was based on ‘The Snow Queen’ fairy tale, and they had both an annoying snowman mascot AND another hoofed animal acting like a dog (A la Tangled) which is a pet peeve of mine, as I actually work with horses.

Then Blake brought up the fact that he had read a review that said the reviewer basically could not say anything about the movie, because it was all a spoiler. I thought about that for a moment. It’s a rather tall order. It also would explain why there was nothing other than joke scenes in the commercials, in addition to a line from the main!? character saying ‘That’s not a blizzard, that’s my sister’, which did not actually occur in the movie. Spoiler!?

After seeing the movie, I can understand why they decided that pretty much, the movie is a spoiler for the movie. I will now proceed to explain why I think the marketing was done the way it was, which is in fact spoiler. If you haven’t seen the movie, go patronize it with money. If you have, you have no worry of spoilers.

Reasons the commercials were horrible:

1) They did not want to show Anna in princess garb, that cut out a large portion of scenes at the beginning.
2) They wanted you to think Elsa was the villain and there are no real villainy scenes with Elsa, because she’s not a villain.
3) They couldn’t show the actual villain, because unlike most Disney movies, who the villain was is actually a surprise. And most of the rest of the time he’s on camera, he’s singing or with Anna in princess garb.

However, I was really happy with the way I feel they played with tropes in this movie. Elsa became a queen and then went rogue (not villain, but still rogue). The trope being Disney Queens are evil.

Also, I have a thing for fairy tail characters who know (to some extent) that they exist in a fairy tale world. (My top two favorite books ever are examples of this, ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ by Diana Wynne Jones and The Fairy Godmother by Mercades Lackey) When they say ‘a supreme act of love’ and everyone goes right to ‘true love’s kiss’. (It’s a theme in ABC (owned by Disney)’s Once Upon A Time, which is also wonderful, go see it.)

Then there is Anna, who is an action girl, ready to go out there and deal with life on her terms, then becomes a damsel in distress. Sadface. They rush her back to the castle only to find out her ‘true love’ Hans is the villain at which point we assume she needs Khristoff to save her … only then she sacrifices herself for Elsa, which causes her to save herself! A wonderful break from normal fairy taleing, even if it makes Khristoff a rather handsome ancillary character.

So both girls had wonderful character development, the snowman ended up being rather perfect, and now the Internets have someone to pair Jack Frost with. Plus, the ice palace was rather spectacular.