weekly wednesday blogging challenge

Plotlines I refuse to read/watch

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.

6 thoughts on “Plotlines I refuse to read/watch

  1. 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).

  2. 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!

  3. 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.

  4. 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! 😀

  5. 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.

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