Cliches, and why they don't suck
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| Title: | Cliches, and why they don't suck |
| Creator: | Destina Fortunato |
| Date(s): | April 2002 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | multi |
| Topic: | fic discussion, fic readers |
| External Links: | Cliches, and why they don't suck, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Cliches, and why they don't suck is an essay by Destina Fortunato.
Excerpts
Fans say they are sick of cliches, but I have a different spin on this. Some fen have plot archetypes, and the things that make them horrible to read, overlaid with one another, though they are not necessarily the same thing. Many fen are simply sick to death of poorly written plots that incorporate overused phrases, quirks, bad characterization and fanon. Some examples: Danny-as-victim, Blair-as-childhood-abuse-survivor, Fraser-as-repressed-virgin. Or, for example, an "aliens make us have sex" plot without a smidgen of originality, with bad dialogue and hurt without comfort.We see these things that are too familiar to us, and it's hard to look past them and give a story a chance, because we've experienced the tortuous pain of seeing them done badly over and over again and we're afraid to get sucked in to yet another bottomless, unsatisfying void. It's easy to slap the label "cliche!" on them and toss them away, and let them all rot together in the same pit - but the problem is, that label is slapped on good stories with familiar plots as well, and they suffer by association.
More than that, all of us have our little kinks, things we enjoy. And they're cliches in that sense of being overfamiliar or even commonplace. Most of us have a fondness for one or more of the following situations, when they are written well...
Anna S. puts this so well on her recs page: "Cliche, like Michelle, is such a common name, but then you meet Cliche , who is like no other Cliche you've ever met; she's sharp and she's chic and, yes, she wears trendy designer clothes but she makes them her own, she puts her stamp on them, she sets the trend, she reinvents it and makes everyone else look drab. Cliche, you murmur as you gaze at her piquant face over candles, then later, dreamily in your sleep." Exactly. Oh, how I wish I had said that. And might I add, sometimes I'm in the mood for the version of Cliche who doesn't exactly set the trend - but she does look good, and she's fun, and she's solid, and I enjoy her because she's well put-together, and she's familiar in the way of an old friend, and she's satisfying. You know?