Story Memes or Themes You Just Can't Stand

[gallows_fodder]

There must be 39085 books with this formulaic title:

The [location] [food item and/or activity] [congregation]

All real titles:

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club
The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Cub
The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club
The Persian Pickle Club
And I’m sure there are dozens more that I can’t find from a lazy search through my library catalog. Ridiculous. They’re all fiction, mostly about a group of disparate women who come together under tentative circumstances and forge bonds of lasting friendship. I haven’t read any of them, but I read the backs of a couple and can now judge an entire book by the structure of its title. So good job on creating a kind of brand, publishing companies?

[JohnT]

@And_his_buzzer_goes

Another I thought of : in the situation “don’t do it, it will make you as evil as him”, they generally break down and hand over whatever weapon they’re holding. Why not take out a limb as a bit of revenge if you’re not the killer type ?

Or just realize “Killing the guy who tortured my child, killed my wife, has done this for 16 years, and if I let him go now, I’ll end up dead and he’ll go on to do the same for perhaps another 16 years… you know, I won’t be as evil as him if I cap his azz.”

[Irishman]

@Weeping_Wyvern

Umm… Sauron was definitely NOT “the embodiment of pure evil”. If anything, that honour would go to his old master Morgoth/Melkor, the primeval Dark Lord of the First Age. And anyhow we are specifically told in LOTR that Sauron was not evil at the beginning.

While he may not have started out a long time ago as the embodiment of pure evil, he certainly is by The Lord of the Rings. There’s never any indication that he is redeemable, and his motivation is pretty much “conquer all for my nefarious purposes”. So yes, by then, he is the embodiment of pure evil.

@JohnT

Or just realize “Killing the guy who tortured my child, killed my wife, has done this for 16 years, and if I let him go now, I’ll end up dead and he’ll go on to do the same for perhaps another 16 years… you know, I won’t be as evil as him if I cap his azz.”

You know, when engaged in a life or death struggle with a villain who has just been committing wholesale slaughter, and in particular has killed/threatened a personal family member, and the hero happens to overcome said villain and have him disarmed and at gunpoint “helpless”, it is not coldblooded murder to go ahead and waste his ass. A case could be made for murder II, and possibly a case could be made for justifiable homicide, but it isn’t Murder I.

Now spending 20 minutes slowly plugging him with bullets in his appendages to hear him yelp, that is a step in the direction of “being just like him”. But a quick termination? Not even close.

[JohnT]

"Seriously, officer, he kept coming after me! I figured the only way to stop this maniac was by slowly bleeding him out. So I shot him 32 times in a 24 minute period, no torso shots 'cause I suck at using guns.

Really!"

[Mister_Rik]

@Irishman

You know, when engaged in a life or death struggle with a villain who has just been committing wholesale slaughter, and in particular has killed/threatened a personal family member, and the hero happens to overcome said villain and have him disarmed and at gunpoint “helpless”, it is not coldblooded murder to go ahead and waste his ass. A case could be made for murder II, and possibly a case could be made for justifiable homicide, but it isn’t Murder I.

Now spending 20 minutes slowly plugging him with bullets in his appendages to hear him yelp, that is a step in the direction of “being just like him”. But a quick termination? Not even close.

That’s why that scene in one of the Lethal Weapon movies was so awesome. The one with the South African ambassador.

SA Ambassador has just finished filling Mel Gibson full of lead.

Sees Danny Glover and calls out, “Diplomatic immunity!”

Danny Glover: “… has just been revoked!” BANG

Or was it BANG “… has just been revoked!”?

[Baker]

@outlierrn

Gay male nurses

That one irritates a cousin of mine, who is a male nurse, and very straight.

[Baker]

@FairyChatMom

I absolutely hate plot lines where the government and/or military is always evil/corrupt/incompetent/omnipotent/unanswerable to anyone. Yes, there is corruption and incompetence within these, and many other, organizations, but unless you’re telling a fantasy story, the story line is just stupid.

I spent 37 years either in or working with the military (and by default, somewhat close to the government) and for the most part, each is made up of ordinary people doing their jobs in order to follow a career path and earn a paycheck. And like any business, there are good and bad workers, good and bad managers, dedicated and wasteful and incompetent and hard-working and glad-to-be-there and just-putting-in-time employees.

I’ll suspend disbelief a little bit in the interest of drama, but sometimes, I hurt myself rolling my eyes - I’m thinking specifically of E.T. - when the scary men in decontamination suits descended upon the house in the dark of night, not talking to anyone, not explaining anything, just coming in and grabbing the poor, cute little alien.

Or the conspiracies where the “government” is keeping a deep, dark secret from the governed. Get real - look at all the leaked information that shows up on the news, some of which *should *have been kept secret. What sane person believes that secrets can be kept? Ben Franklin hit the nail on the head - “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” No kidding…

The leaking is one big reason to believe we really did land on the moon! If it had been faked, it would have been too big of a secret not to have been leaked!!!

[Nature_s_Call]

@Der Trihs

The magic-in-the-real-world stories where the various gods and spirits of myth are real, but it just happens that the Christian god is the One True God, Supreme Being & creator of the universe, while the other gods re just powerful supernaturals.

@Ibn_Warraq

What sort of stories have this meme? I’ve never heard of any.

One example is an episode of Star Trek TOS “Who mourns for Adonis?” Apparently the gods of the ancient Greeks were aliens. The crew of the Enterprise comes upon Apollo. Apollo captures Kirk and Company in an attempt to relive his past glories as a god, “welcome my beloved children” Debate ensues over the indiviual freedoms that must be sacrificed in subjugating oneself to a god’s will Kirk declares “We have grown too old for gods!” then after a pause adds, “We find the one sufficient.”

My eyes achieved Warp factor 2 in their orbital rollings.

@Klytus

There is a bull-headed, obnoxious, arrogant, Man In Charge of Something Really Important, and he is moving things forward exactly as he feels is best because he knows he can “make it work the way it should.” However, everyone around him, including the main character, is constantly warning him that what he is doing is wrong and/or dangerous, and will most surely lead to a disaster. They even show him evidence of this. But Man in Charge brushes their concerns away as weak-minded, overly conservative, etc. and goes right on doing things His Way, and no one can do anything about it because he’s the Man in Charge. Then, like clockwork, much to the Man in Charge’s surprise, the warned-about disaster happens, and it is up to the main character to fix it.

It is truly stunning how accurately this describes the current state of my career.

[LaurenIpsum]

@Gangster_Octopus

Jerry fumbles with remote, but eventually turns on TV, it is of course already tuned to the news.

“…In summary, a plane carrying executives of MacGuffinCorp crashed over the Rockies today, killing all on board. This comes days after reports of corruption that threatened the highest levels of government was uncovered. More after the break…”

That kind of thing drives me nuts, where the news channel is apparently reporting the story a second time for the benefit of the protagonist. I remember being annoyed when I first saw it done on Gilligan’s Island, and I think they did it more than once. The castaways are standing around talking, and then Gilligan or the Professor or whoever will burst onto the scene holding the radio. They say “Hey everyone, listen to this!” And then the announcer on the radio goes, “And so, to repeat that last news story, we’ve just found out that…”

[LAV25]

No visible means of support. Wait, no. That I can deal with, but characters who have jobs (which may or may not be important to the story line) who can get out of the office for an hour or two to cope with something. Several times a day. Every. Damn. Day.

I love the show, but Dexter? I’m looking at you, buddy.

[Boyo_Jim]

@LAV25

…I love the show, but Dexter? I’m looking at you, buddy.

It’s already been discussed and agreed in multiple threads that Miami Metro police are the most incompetent group of cops since Keystone. Apparently that incompetence extends to auditing their time sheets.

[Mister_Rik]

Sorry to rez this thread again, but I thought of another one that I don’t think was mentioned:

Hired killer is confronting the person he’s been hired to kill, and says something like, “Nothing personal. It’s just business.”

And this is usually said as if it’s supposed to make the victim feel better. Like, “I am relieved to know that you’re not about to kill me out of any feelings of hostility on your part, but simply because you’re being paid to do so. I am at peace. Go ahead and shoot.”