Disney Channel and romantic tropes

[meganbmoore]

My DVD player has died and I've been compensating by watching Disney Channel shows.  Do not ask.  I think I've mostly thinking about how they'd be so cool if I were 12.  All the supposedly charming or cool or cute guys need a ounch in the face.  The goody girls who I'm supposed to like are snooty and superior, all other girls are supposed to be annoying, materialistic comedic relief, but are more entertaining.  The smart boys are supposed annoying twats and the "cool" boys are annoying brats who could do with being grounded for years.  I think the only character I like is the hyper competitive and academic sister in some show that's a Brady Bunch knockoff that's named after her irritating stepbrother.  I despair over her taste in boys, though.  (The only show whose title I know is The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.  That one is entertaining, though I keep wondering why the adults haven't murdered all the kids.)

Make me stop watching them.

ANYWAY!

Over at Dear Author, they have a poll about favorite and least favorite romantic tropes.  Since this is a type of topic I never tire of (people's likes and dislikes) give me some of yours.

Comments

[rhap-chan.livejournal.com]

Disney channel shows used to suck less. Or... they used to appeal to my mental age. One or the other. I liked "Phil of the Future," for example. "Suite Life" ticks me off. Those boys are obnoxious. Sort of want to ship the girls together though...

Ooh, forgot the tropes. I hate:
Marriage of Convenience
The Revenge Plot
The Big Misunderstanding
The Secret Baby
The Virgin Widow
Amnesia
Captivity Romances
The Will Made Me Do It
Blackmailed for Her/His Love
Forbidden to Love

Um, this may be why I rarely read romance novels.

[radiotrash.livejournal.com]

I hate hate hate the healing penis. I can't think of what I like right now and my break is over but I had to post my hate.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes, that, and all versions of The Mighty Wang, must die.

Well, the post isn't going anywhere! You can sit and brainstorm until you have internet again!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes, the girls are fun. I sometimes wonder if we're supposed to ship them. The boys...it'd be less annoying if the academic boy weren't supposed to be annoying because he's smart, and the other boy weren't supposed to be cool and fun because he breaks rules and is rude and makes fun of people and causes trouble.

I've been wondering at the sucks less/mental age thing, too, but I'm afraid to find out.

ETAs for ETA: Amnesia and Forbidden to Love can be done well, but rarely are. In or out of romance novels. Most of those other tropes should die, though. And yet, they somehow irritate me less in romance novels than elsewhere, but I tend to prefer my romance in plots where the romance isn't the main plot.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Suite Life can be funny but the kids are all pretty obnoxious. I kind of sympathize with Moseby (the one who hates all the kids.) Though Arwin, the superintendent guy, kind of cracks me up.

I didn't see that much of Phil of the Future but it was a good show.

I saw one episode of the stepbrother one, except I'm not sure I remember the title either. (Life With Derek, maybe?) It did have a higher level of acting quality than some of them.

I kind of like Hannah Montana.

In my own defense I usually only watch these when my daughter is over.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Oh, tropes!

I have a secret weakness for The Marriage of Convenience.

I do really hate The Big Misunderstanding though. I always want to shake everyone and scream at them.

I also seem to have outgrown The Dangerous Rake And His Mysterious Appeal.

[kirarakim.livejournal.com]

I am actually not sure what all these tropes signify from their title. I tried to search for them on TV tropes but no results. Is there a way to find these?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I loathe the wicked older man who must be redeemed by loving a pure young woman. I mean, why on earth is said wicked older man even interested in the pure young women? Aren't older, corrupt women more of his type?

This, despite the fact that These Old Shades is one of my favorite Georgette Heyer novels. I hate all the other versions of that trope, okay? (Also, it is possible that I love Justin, Duke of Avon so much that I can forgive the trope at the center of the book.)

...Okay, so Venetia is another one of my favorite Heyers. That doesn't count either. Damerel isn't really wicked. He just thinks he is. Also, Venetia isn't really pure. She does actually want to host those orgies.

Do you know Heyer?

[rhap-chan.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder if we're supposed to ship them.

And you never ship anybody, so I feel totally justified now lol.

The boys...it'd be less annoying if the academic boy weren't supposed to be annoying because he's smart...

I think you're totally right-- I was always that irritating nerd and part of me resents the show for doing what it does with that idea.

I've been wondering at the sucks less/mental age thing, too, but I'm afraid to find out.

I've been playing with it by watching Disney movies, and those stand up to the test of time, so far. But the TV shows aren't quite the same caliber.

Um ETA for ETA for ETA (LJ isn't delivering comments swiftly enough!): Yeah, my main problem with those tropes is never seeing them done well. I like real plot with my romance too.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Moseby and the mother. I tend to just wait for the scenes where they have to be long suffering. Life With Derek sounds right, and I definitely agree that the acting is a bit better than other shows.

[annwyd.livejournal.com]

Least favorite:
--I see they have something called "the big misunderstanding" there. I'm not sure exactly what that refers to, but I can guarantee you that if a romance gets dragged out because the characters are constantly misunderstanding each other in ways that would be fixed if they'd just freaking talk to each other, I'm going to want to throw something at the characters.
--Anything where one character (especially the woman, because it's usually the woman) has to adhere more to stereotypical gender traits in order to be acceptable to the other.
--Anything where one character (especially the man, because it's usually the man) "protects" the other character by preventing them from doing things.

Favorite:
--I really like when two characters have some unusual previous connection (something less typical than a childhood marriage promise, although if done well I guess I could go for that too) and this later develops into a romance.

I'm kind of headdesking over this at the moment, actually, because one of the anime I follow just resolved a romantic plotline that I'd been very interested in (read as, in fandom terms: canoned my OTP!) in such a way as to contain both least favorite and favorite tropes. AUGH.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Big Misunderstanding is possibly the one I hate most. The Dangerous Rake and His Mysterious Appeal I was tired of before I was out of high school. And then I entered fandom and found that everyone thought he was the best thing ever. Really, it's why so many popular characters don't do it for me. They're the generic lead of the historical romances most people look down on, and I'm tired of them.

[ryanitenebrae.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Disney Channel. I still haven't forgiven them for what they did with So Weird. When I was 11-13 I was also smitten with Lizzie McGuire, and while I don't like it now, I still believe it is leagues better than most of the shows they have on there. I enjoy Life with Derek, but it's not actually a Disney show. It's a Canadian sitcom that gets shown on the Disney channel, hence the very different style. Suite Times with Zack and Cody is also decent, sometimes. There was a very weird episode that involved them putting on a production of High School Musical. I haven't watched any of these shows in forever, and really don't know what the current line-up is. I remember thinking Naturally Sadie would be something that might appeal to my inner 12-year-old before realizing that it really didn't.

Hm. I'll give the Romantic Tropes thing some thought.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

And then you change "older man" to "angsty immortal" and it just gets worse and more confusing. Also variations of "raising your wife."

I haven't read Heyer yet, no.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...not off the top of my head. There's some expansion on them in the comments, though. Which ones confused you?

[rhap-chan.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. I hate to hijack other people's posts but I loved So Weird so much. It was literally the first TV show I watched that wasn't a cartoon. It went all weird when they changed the main character, though.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

I just keep thinking about how in real life the Dangerous Rake probably kept being a huge jerk and marrying him would be a really big mistake.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I SHIP! Just...not in everything. I squee over anything that doesn't annoy me, I just don't get involved in as many. But yeah, if they were m/f, I suspect they'd be paired.

The thing with romance centric plots is that I'm rarely convinced they can make it through real life after they work out their personal issues. If they're having to deal with other things that aren't related to their relationship too, or the conflict isn't about getting together, i'm more comvinced. (Which is why, of my favorite shoujo series, the only one where the romance is the main focus is one where they get together quickly, and the conflict-when there is conflict- is about what they'll do with their lives after HS.)

ETA: I've been rewatching Disney mvies lately too. I think that, once you reach Little Mermaid Disney goes "hmm...our target audience is teenaged girls...let's make more of these focus of finding their place in the world, and less on being rescued by the prince" and it even carries into the male-lead centric shows.

[paperclipchains.livejournal.com]

Man, I hear you. At least one TV in our house is always tuned to Family Channel (Canadian version of Disney Channel) thanks to my little sister, and it is horrible. I'm with you in that the only character I find entertaining is London or whatever her name is.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

London is the spoiled rich girl in suite life and is a blast. (I've seen the actress in a couple other DC things, and the actress is just fun.) The other one is, I think, named casey, and the show is Life With Derek.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

These Old Shades is a "raising your wife" book. The fabulously wealthy and fantastically corrupt eighteenth-century nobleman Justin, who is the kind of man whose friends call him Satanas, adopts a gamine street child named Leonie as part of a baroque plan to torment his enemy. In the process of raising her, he discovers he actually wants to be as good as Leonie imagines him to be.

The more I think about the plot, the less I understand why I adore it.

Where can the angsty immortal variation be found?

I do recommend reading Heyer; yes, her books do follow quite a number of tropes, but that's partially because she invents some of the tropes as she goes.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hijack to your heart's content. I never care as long as there aren't spoilers flying around, and things are kept civil and relatively clean.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Also, as I tell people regularly, I don't read Heyer because she writes romance novels. I read her despite the fact that she writes romance novels.

[ryanitenebrae.livejournal.com]

^_^ Oh, I miss that show very much. I wish desperately that Disney would release it on DVD. I would most definitely purchase the first two seasons as soon as I could.

It did. It became less based in folklore, and lost a lot of the edge to its writing. Also, it's just . . . it was much more enjoyable when you had Fi, who was short and had dark brown hair and whose main talents were computers and an encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural. And, then they replaced her with Annie, before even finishing her story. Tall, blonde, musically talented, guarded-by-a-spirit-panther Annie. *sigh*

[paperclipchains.livejournal.com]

I hate Life With Derek. I hate Life With Derek with every fibre of my very being. If I have to listen to that horrible theme song even one more time I will commit ritual suicide.