Star-crossed Rantings
This is a self-rant, courtesy of fanficrants.
Apparently I've been using a trope in much of my ficcings. Let's look at some (or all) examples:
Star-crossed
- Prowl fails to tell Prime (or any other senior officer for that matter) about his relationship with Sideswipe, proceeds to hide it for about 2,500,000 years
- Sideswipe fails to tell Sunny about his relationship with Prowl (thank god Sunny's no idiot).
- Prowl fails to tell Jazz (who's friggin' blackmailing him anyways!) about his relationship with Sides, angsting ensues.
- Prowl fails to tell Sideswipe about his problem with Jazz, more angsting ensues.
- At least Prowl does let Sides know about the reassignment to the Moon Bases.
- But he then fails to tell Sunny what's going on until Sunny lets Sides 'possess' him.
- Have I mentioned that Sides hasn't told Prime?
- And let's not forget the current situation in the Halifax mini-arc, which would have a similar problem should I go down the route I'd originally intended (Prowl is far too proud a mech in my head).
- Prowl had ample opportunity to tell Ratchet, too, and he hasn't.
Do we see a pattern here?
And hey, it's not just limited to Star-crossed, either!
Nowhere to Turn
- Sides is failing to tell Jazz the exact nature of his relationship to Sunny.
- Hell, Sides is failing to tell Jazz much of anything.
- Jazz didn't exactly clarify just who and what he was in Prowl's unit.
- Let's not forget that he has omitted his meeting of Soundwave on several occassions.
And whoa! It's not even limited to my fanficcings either!
Original Fic: FNE
- No one bothered to tell Main Character that she was actually a Princess while she was growing up. (Long lost? No. She's been exactly where she's supposed to be.)
- No one then bothers to tell MC why she seems to be getting the crappy end of the stick, even when she's shunted to what's basically a storage space for a room when planet hopping with Race A.(She is last in a long line of older brothers and sisters, which is why Daddy chose her to take part in dangerous Plot Device.
- MC's guilty of this too, though I'm not sure if she'd quite be able to get away with it. She tells Race B that she has the authority to negotiate a peace treaty with them, without consulting her rulers first. Though she's not certain if this is true, and there's bullet number two to consider with this.
- Princes A and B don't exactly explain just why they're sitting on their asses while she's doing all the hard work until Prince C comes along and explains just why she's only supposed to have Male 'Sidekicks' (Race B found out a few of their people had been volunteered to be Sidekicks, plus one of Race Unknown).
- At least Prince D is saying something about his reason for being there, even if it's just a lie.
*glares at the list*
Poor Communication Kills. I'm gonna have to mutter that to myself whenever I do my plotting. Oh, I am more than sure that this is a wonderful plot device to use to further a story; however, judging from the list, I haven't just killed this trope, I've taken its cold corpse out of the morgue and flailed it, and then left it out for the crows to pick over. Gyargh!
So, how does this pertain to Star-crossed?
It means that I have had no character growth, at least not for Sides and Prowl. Sunny gets more character growth. Hell, even Jazz gets to develope a little! I'm actually okay if Prime doesn't really 'grow' out of this... ^^; But there's Prowl (especially Prowl) on the Moonbase stuck in the same damned scenario doing the same damned thing. He hasn't grown at all! Oh sure he talks to Sides this time (through Sunny) but then he goes and shuts right back up again! I'm raging that I didn'thave him deal with Jazz in Take Off (which would have really been the perfect and last opportunity for Prowl and Sides to deal with him together). Fortunately, I can hopefully attempt to fix this mess (fix the use of that damned trope!) in the final chapter of the 'Jazz Arc'. I'm glad I caught it now, so I can reconsider what's going to happen in the mini-arc and still work it to end where I want, how I want.
I'm still trying to figure out what Sides gets out of this. =.=
This also affects Nowhere to Turn because while I plan on Sides and Sunny ending in a different situation than they started in, there's Jazz, and Prowl, and Ratchet who I'm afraid are going to wind up stagnating. This is going to require some serious gnawing before I can continue it. (Which I do allow my mind to wander over to that bunny hutch occassionally).
I'm gonna go shovel out the remains of Star-crossed and see if I can stitch something half-decent together.
Hoping this makes sense?