Snowflake Challenge #9

[evandar]

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)



I'm going to very lazily post a link to my response to the same prompt on last year's challenge.

In that challenge, I wrote about soulmates and my preference for obsessive, singular love - especially when it leans hard into codependency and uncomfortable dynamics. A year later, my preferences haven't changed. So, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about the trope that I mention at the very end of that post instead: Outsider PoV.

I love a good Outsider PoV, particularly when they're the outsider to something major like a soulbond or hell, time travel. It can turn twisted so easily: anything from small misconceptions that start to snowball, to complete incomprehension and horror. It can be funny, or heartbreaking, or scary. It's something that I really enjoy exploring in my own fic, regardless of fandom, and I love to read it.

I usually don't really like reading about misunderstandings that would be easily resolved with a conversation, but there's something very entertaining about someone who has no idea what is happening encountering a very weird situation that they're excluded from.

Comments

[athaia]

I like how the outsider POV can reveal new sides of a familiar character, especially to me, the writer! And how it can also shake loose the habitual perception of that character for the readers. It's a really cool technique, apart from resulting in really interesting scenes or stories.

[mithun]

I too enjoy Outsider POV. It can be a dramatic irony thing where the outsider character doesn't know the characters like the reader does, so they don't entirely understand what's going on but the reader can easily put it together from what they're witnessing.
Plus it's just fascinating to get to see how the core characters come across to the other people in their world! Maybe their stranger relative to the setting than I thought - or less strange? And I like seeing that the other people in the setting have their own lives, where Our Heroes are minor side characters.