This week’s Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge asks about A plotline you refuse to watch/read and why. And honestly, my first response was that I think I’m going to struggle to answer this. I read such a variety of books in different genres that there isn’t really anything I’ll refuse to read.
Li and I were talking about this last night, and she was saying she won’t read anything that treats an unhealthy relationship as being desirable or as a good thing. I think for me there are a couple of things, but they’re not really plotlines per se.
I’m not a huge fan of The Hero’s Journey, when in an epic/high fantasy setting. There are exceptions – but not in fantasy – but I don’t like farm boy is set upon by a random wizard and tasked on a long journey with a group of travelers in order to save the world.
As a disabled and chronically ill person, I hate inspiration porn. I wish there was more representation, but not in a way that either ‘fixes’ the character, or holds them up as being inspirational just for being alive.
I don’t like purple prose. I have no patience for a narrative that spends pages and pages describing a moor, or a single blade of grass. We’re looking at you here, Tolkien or Hardy.
And I fucking hate bad porn. Especially bad kink. Even more so, when it’s bad kink that doesn’t realize it’s bad kink and makes a vanilla reader think that is how the lifestyle works.
Ooh, I like your answers!
I mentioned the unhealthy relationship thing in my post.
I hate inspiration porn, too. We’re people, not parables. I tend to avoid books that mention my disability because of how irritating the misperceptions of it are (to me).
I also mentioned unhealthy relationships, specifically rape or being forceful or mean. I also DO NOT like movies about people have extra marital affairs…I mean, let’s not glamorize these things, folks. Wrong is wrong…period!
I agree.
Your answers are so spot on. There are too many bad porn type reads out there that if a vanilla reader were to read them and not realize that’s not how it’s supposed to be could be harmful to them in real life.
I think I agree with everything except The Hero’s Journey. I’m a sucker for that plot line. I don’t know why, but I love it. Like you, it depends on the situation with unhealthy relationships seen as good. Great answers and post! 😀
I mean, the main thing that bothers me about The Hero’s Journey is the idea that it’s somehow universal. It can be done well; it can be done poorly; but it’s definitely not the only way to tell a story.