TV Tropes meme
"I put on the boots and kicked some monster ass. I dropped the ghoul, and I'm the one who rammed a chainsaw through the head of that plant monster thing. Crippled the ogre too. What did you do? You threw a can of Sterno at him. That's barely an assist."
-Detective Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, The Dresden Files.
redbrunja is doing this meme thingie where you comment and she gives you 3 tropes from TV Tropes Wiki to either write fic or meta about. All these are things you could probably set me off big time on, so I'll keep it brief.
#1: The Action Girl
The Action Girl is, essentially, Badassitude molded into a sleek female frame: a female character who is spunky, agile, and can take you down with an array of kicks. Or punches. Or guns. Or anything else in her arsenal if she has to. Note that she is not The Chick. She doesn't sit around waiting to be rescued. She's got moves of her own to make.
I'm going to ignore the passive implication here that non-Action Girls are useless, ok? Actually, it really isn't even passive.
I love action girls. I resent the idea so much of fandom and fiction seems to have that a girl can only be strong if she kicks ass. I ESPECIALLY dislike the fact that so much of it seems to take the form of "a strong woman is a man with boobs," to the point where I sometimes hate myself for having an instinctive "hell no!" reaction to some such characters. An action heroine is an awesome thing a lot of the time, but the character type tends to get ruined when it's clear she's only like that because you "have" to be an action heroine to be a "strong female character," and when THAT'S ALL THERE IS. Unfortunately, I don't see fandom or fiction realizing you don't have to kick butt to be a worthwhile female character, and that there's nothing wrong with traditional femininity.
Also, I feel a compulsion to add about 50 names to those lists.
#2 Murder the Hypotenuse
Love Triangles are tricky business. Trust us, we've already done the math.
It can get particularly twisted when some sides of the triangle are completely one-sided. Andy may be in love with Blair, but Blair not only fails to realize it, but may be in love, or already in a relationship, with Chris. This is a classic recipe for drama (or humor), but sometimes, it goes too far.
Sometimes, somehow, Andy gets the idea that Chris is the one in the way of Andy's happiness with Blair, and if Chris were to somehow have an "accident", then surely Blair would come to love Andy instead. It's true -- Love Makes You Evil.
*ahem*
90% of the time, I despise love triangles with every fiber of my being.
There are some good, well done love triangles out there. Complex ones built of respect, deep feelings, and complicated relationships. They are a rarity.
I find most love triangles to be cheap grabs at "conflict" and "angst" and "complexity." It's a default conflict that often makes me disinclined to like ANYONE involved, and I do not remotely see the appeal of "oh, I can't decide who I love, let me fret about it and be torn between them for ages." Blech. Most of the time, I feel like the writer went "Man...things are going too well between these two...I need CONFLICT! Screw lifestyle, family, choices with what to do with your life, difficult decisions, or anything that requires actual depth or plot, I'll just write in a third party in love with one of them and it'll provide all the angst and conflict I need!" The fact that most triangles make the second male oh-so-appealing-and-likable and the second female oh-so-petty-andevil-and-grasping-and-manipulative doesn't help. The inherent misogyny in most triangles moves the trope from something that alienates me to something that inspires unholy rage.
#3 My Girl Is Not A Slut
"A woman wants one man to attend to her every need. A man wants every woman to attend to his one need."
A sexually active man is a stud, a real man, a jack-the-lad, a playa.
A sexually active woman is a slut, a slag, a skank, a tramp, a whore (or 'ho', if you insist on trendy pseudo-ethnic jargon).
For a man, the loss of his virginity is an achievement. For a woman, it is a surrender.
I assume that anyone who's known me for even a few weeks can guess my opinion of this mindset. For the record, one of my most despised tropes is the "manslut because of his deep romantic angst and loss." It's disgustingly disrespectful to the lost love and the flings, and by default, the characters usually don't respect the people they sleep with, so why people are obsessed with having those characters sleep with other characters they supposedly like is something I will never understand. But that's another rant, aside from the fact that almost any female character to pull that act would be despised and probably die messily for it, after being endlessly punished by the canon, and the fandom would cheer. Wait, maybe the topic was more on topic than I thought.
This whole trope seems to be tied into the idea that males are more interesting and deserving of love, sex and attention than females, and that, while it's only natural to want the male to get romance and/or sex, it's "wrong" to apply the same standard to female characters. It's like how 90% of fandom's shipping seems to be focused on the male, while there's no need to pair the female. It's like being shipped is a reward for the male, while not being shipped (or "accepted, but only because I have to...this one would be better!") is a reward for the female. (See one of the many reasons I dislike fanon shipping.)
Fiction and fandom both seem obsessed with with male secuality, but scared of female sexuality, and it seems that female sexuality is focused on just the male, allowing male sexuality to define female sexuality. It's why the "I slash/fanon ship because I believe one deserves better" thing bugs me so much BECAUSE NO MATTER WHO "deserves better" THE ANSWER IS TO GIVE THE MALE ROMANCE MOST OF THE TIME. The male's sex/romantic life being viewed as more important or worthy or interesting with the implication that the female should be happy to be tolerated or single(and no, I am NOT saying girls need romance to be happy, I'm talking about the automatic seeking of partners for male characters without giving the females the same consideration.)
(And as I seem to be ranting on the subject: I'd just like to mention again that I don't remotely see why it always has to boil down to sex/shipping with so much of fandom, and really just dislike the mass shipping mindset in general, especially as most of it's ire is taken out on female characters, in my experience.)
All that said: I couldn't get into BSG. I do, however, find it interesting that the fandom essentially reverses this trope, with Starbuck as the angsty woobie who can sleep around all she wants because of her issues, with Lee and Anders as the critically viewed love interests.