#pair the spares

[besttropeveershowdown]

The Most Annoying Trope Showdown: Quarterfinals, Poll 4

Found Family Breakup

When you have the found family, but then at the end of the story they all just leave and go start nuclear families with random love interests and live in different places and rarely talk to each other, or otherwise seem to completely lose the found family closeness they had during the story

Propaganda:

It’s literally getting rid of the found family, taking away the best trope ever

Pair the Spares

Every or nearly every character who did not get together with someone during the story is paired off in the epilogue or very end. The characters are often shown having kids together as well

Propaganda:

This may just be my aromanticism talking, but it's annoying seeing everyone getting shoved into a relationship at the last minute. It doesn't even make sense most of the time. Let! People! Be! Happy! Single!

I am aroace and I hate this. just let them be happy on their own, don't just pair up characters for the sake of pairing them up, even if they have zero chemistry. this happens so often in all kinds of media, and fandom is also guilty of this. not everyone needs a partner! leave them alone!

I love romantic subplots but this is just amatonormative bullshit. It has all of the "romantic partner=happy ending" bullshit that fucks people up in real life, with none of the fluttery crush feelings or the angsty decisions. It doesn't add anything to the character arcs and is only detrimental to the themes of a work as a whole. It can cast a shadow over other romantic subplots in the series I might have enjoyed up until this point, because I start to wonder if those romances were really about the character/themes/plot, or if the writers simply think "leading lady goes with leading man, sidekick with sidekick, etc. etc."

It's fucking stupid. A lot of the characters that end up together either barely interact, make no sense or both. It also implies the only happy ending requires love and marriage. It makes no sense for some of the characters to want to settle down and have kids even if they are with someone they love.

[whatsupwalnut]

Pair the spares, an Archie comics®️ staple that hilariously Riverdale found a way around it

you can always tell when a ship exists solely because they were the only two remaining characters left and the ship always sucks

[personalprin]

I think pair the spares is funny when it's literally just the two characters left alive at the end of a story. Otherwise the trope sucks

[th3e-m4ng0]

flicks them on the forehead

[rowanisawriter]

shadowheart/durge is THE messiest pairing in the game lol. zero memories between them, they barely even know their own names. shar and bhaal exchanging notes on how to fuck up a disciple beyond all repair and recognition. Shadowheart has her mysterious god hand injury and durge has AUTOPSY scars, imagine an early game conversation, “where did you get those scars” “idk what about yours” “idk” disaster. both of them in baldur’s gate walking through streets where they murdered stalked and/or terrorized random citizens like oh this place… looks familiar ….turn up suddenly at an underground hidden temple…. Home sweet home.

[al-luviec]

I really like this scene.

[baoxie]

🥀 sylvain + ingrid 🌼

[commander-diomika]

Whilst I'm more about polyships myself, if you do go in for monogamy I think the funniest trio of Origin ships is Gale/Astarion, Shadowheart/Lae'zel and Wyll/Karlach coz like

Gale and Astarion have their toxic old man yaoi thing going on and can't stop preening and puffing themselves up real big like angry cats as soon as the other one comes near.

Shadowheart and Lae'zel are literally trying to kill each other.

And Wyll and Karlach are like, braiding each other's hair and talking about how much they love saving endangered children

[cobra-wives]

ngl i dont like complaining but i’m a bit upset about how quickly we jumped over from tory’s mom dying to… keenry relationship drama. im seriously peeved about how many people are boiling tory and robby’s characters down to being romantic partners, and i don’t think the writers understand how leaning so heavily on keenry weakens both the individual journeys robby and tory go on — robby with his father/role as miyagi do’s captain/brotherhood with miguel/running in 2nd place, and tory with her mother/role as ck’s captain/relationship with kreese/betrayal of her friends. they CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT be each other’s personal saviors; they HAVE TO SAVE THEMSELVES.

[besttropeveershowdown]

The Most Annoying Trope Showdown: Semifinals, Poll 2

Out-of-Context Eavesdropping

Someone overhears a conversation and, lacking the full context, misinterprets it as something more serious.

Propaganda:

I hate all miscommunication tropes but this is the one that makes me want to strangle people the most. "we need to fabricate a reason for A and B to hate each other, but not one based on their actual personalities or situation. Instead, Person A talks about something personal and important, but they decide to word it in the dumbest way possible. Person B decides to listen in on a private conversation and then gets so mad at this stuff they weren't supposed to hear that they don't even listen to the final sentence that completely recontextualises the whole conversation. also 90% of the time A would never express feelings this way AND B would never snoop this way. just poor writing to inspire the world's most insipid conflict between morons.

Pair the Spares

Every or nearly every character who did not get together with someone during the story is paired off in the epilogue or very end. The characters are often shown having kids together as well

Propaganda:

This may just be my aromanticism talking, but it's annoying seeing everyone getting shoved into a relationship at the last minute. It doesn't even make sense most of the time. Let! People! Be! Happy! Single!

I am aroace and I hate this. just let them be happy on their own, don't just pair up characters for the sake of pairing them up, even if they have zero chemistry. this happens so often in all kinds of media, and fandom is also guilty of this. not everyone needs a partner! leave them alone!

I love romantic subplots but this is just amatonormative bullshit. It has all of the "romantic partner=happy ending" bullshit that fucks people up in real life, with none of the fluttery crush feelings or the angsty decisions. It doesn't add anything to the character arcs and is only detrimental to the themes of a work as a whole. It can cast a shadow over other romantic subplots in the series I might have enjoyed up until this point, because I start to wonder if those romances were really about the character/themes/plot, or if the writers simply think "leading lady goes with leading man, sidekick with sidekick, etc. etc."

It's fucking stupid. A lot of the characters that end up together either barely interact, make no sense or both. It also implies the only happy ending requires love and marriage. It makes no sense for some of the characters to want to settle down and have kids even if they are with someone they love.

[whetstonefires]

yk i've seen a fair amount done with Liu Qingge and Jiang Cheng as parallel characters, because like there's this angry sword guy who's very bad at communicating and very attached to the protagonist and wishes he wasn't, and ends the story in the 'not chosen' position. no argument here. that's fine.

kind of want to see though what you could do with Jiang Cheng and Luo Binghe as parallels.

guys who fulfill the narrative-structural role of 'antagonist' for a big chunk of the story, who are also the guy the protagonist would die for, and kind of literally does.

and in both cases the book makes space to convey both why each of them kind of deserves that, as much as anyone can, and also absolutely doesn't deserve it (derogatory), and also doesn't deserve it (sympathetic (that's such an awful thing to do to someone who loves you, holy shit; don't self-destruct for people and expect them not to take massive damage)).

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Look people can discourse about how problematic a ship is and how terrible people are for shipping it all they want, but the reasons they try and assign for shipping something are usually pretty ridiculous. The only actual point of discrimination on whether or not I’m gonna ship a pairing is just how narratively compelling the character dynamic is. Do they play off each in an interesting way? Is there some good narrative symbolism involved?? I’m there.

Yes that does mean I’m often a basic bitch and end up enjoying whichever slash and femslash ships are popular BUT there’s usually a reason why a bunch of writers have gotten into something! Tbh! Shit being popular doesn’t mean it’s bad, stuff usually pops off for A reason, regardless of it’s a reason you personally agree with.

[themintman]

ok so after a depressing amount of procrastination I have discovered that I DONT HAVE AS MUCH BROWN CLOTHES STASHED AWAY AS I THOUGHT I DID so I'm gonna have to buy and dye before the con. Anyways, figured I should show y'all how Nurm is looking so far! The shirt and jeans will be different, DW lol

You get this frame cause my cat was making me laugh so hard like GIRL WHAT ARE YOU DOING

Also I have a parrot. Perfect for Archie if I want to take him to the con

Solstice jumpscare

[dracocheesecake]

Someone please tell me I'm not alone here:

Is anyone else just maybe perhaps a lliiitttle teensy weensy bit thirsty for Besteel? Or am I alone here?

[i-ges]

Remember when Slime wanted to kill all the eggs hahaha

[callixton]

i think the thing to understand abt martha jones is that even after she leaves she is five seconds away from dropping everything and traveling with the doctor at any given time. bc that itch to blow everything up and damn her personal duty to hell in search of a higher call never leaves her. but martha is smart. and rational. and has spent a long fucking time needing to keep herself safe. (bc he comes when she calls but never before.) and so she has gotten very good at keeping herself on the right side of those five seconds. but i do think if ten was a different person (if he could acknowledge how much he needed her instead of just how much he liked her) (if he didn’t feel this righteous martyrdom when it comes to being left alone) (if he cared enough about her to beg. if he cared enough about himself.) i think that her answer no would come crumbling down pretty quickly is all.