Ok, with this I am specifically talking about stories that feature tropes that are commonly on the romance, drama, action, and sometimes fantasy sections. Cliche stories, basically. I haven’t read much of the horror and thriller sections and they tend to be okay, same with the sci-fi. I’m probably gonna be talking the most about the romance and drama sections but these tropes can bleed into fantasy if you have those cliche werewolf stories or savior complexes.
Welcome to: Things Star Hates in Episode Trending Stories: Conflict
Side note: Feel free to discuss anything you hate regarding conflict in these stories as well! But I’ll go into my rant about them now lol.
Introduction: One almost requirement of being a trending story is suspense. And to create suspense, you have to have good conflict. And is it suspenseful enough to keep you reading? Yes. Is it often written well? Mostly, yes. But my problem arises when, in creating this conflict, you bring in toxic tropes or romanticize something seriously wrong, or just downright portray something wrong, and never address it. I’m probably guilty of this too, and I’m also not super experienced with writing (although I would call myself a good writer) but I see this so often in Episode trending stories that I wanted to address it. But I also want to acknowledge that if not for the toxic and problematic tropes this could be done very well, and I am in no way calling out any authors who use these. This is just a bit of analysis and reflection on what I see harmfully and often used in these stories in particular. Moving on…
Chapter 1: Romance/Drama/Action Stories
With this category, I will be specifically talking about any stories relating to billionaires/stories about dating your boss, m*fia, and the cliche high school romances. Probably more so the first two.
Oftentimes, these stories follow the pattern of the good girl falling for the bad guy. And I’ll also discuss what happens when you have the reverse, which still doesn’t work (IMO).
The main character is usually innocent, pretty, smart, sometimes naive. She’s the only one able to break the LI’s hard shell. The LI of course is toxic, masculine, and incredibly superior to every other male on the planet. In the high school setting, this LI is usually the son of an incredibly wealthy or powerful man, and outside of the high school setting, the LI is the incredibly wealthy and powerful man. Oftentimes regarded as THE most powerful man. And I’m not exaggerating with this. In m*fia, this is more of a secret but somehow everyone in the story world knows and fears his name, in billionaire stories it’s known that he’s powerful.
Clearly, there is an awful power dynamic sh*t storm happening here lol.
The MC is either (smart?) and sassy but still innocent, or completely naive and innocent. She captures LI’s attention by being “different”. She’s often in a situation where she’s close to the LI (ex: staying at LI’s house for some reason or arranged marriage).
Now, with this set up, let’s get to conflict!
Because the LI is often powerful and well known, there is often an outside evil force scheming against him. That’s the external conflict. There is almost always an element to it of mystery, or new but also familiar characters (characters who are friends with LI or know him, sometimes it’s the mean girl (we’ll get to that) who are jealous and scheme against him).
His internal conflict is being too tough, essentially. Having too many walls, not letting anyone in. Also, the whole being evil and killing people thing (the author often justifies this later by illustrating the LI only kill those who “deserve” it, but I have seen cases where the LI was just a monster and this wasn’t justified and it was ignored) This sort of thing is usually caused by his whole family being killed or something similar.
What about the MC? Let’s just call her Mary cuz if she’s not a Mary Sue she’s almost always close to one…
The MC doesn’t really have any internal conflicts… At least from what I’ve seen. If there is something going on internal then it’s caused by an external conflict–such as: running from an ab~sive family, running from an ab~sive ex… you get the picture. I have seen MCs have nightmares or anxiety from this but it is never explored… It’s seen as something for the LI to protect her from, even if there is that feminist stance of her saving herself or defeating the evil person, it still doesn’t explore the anxiety and kinda misuses the tr@uma, in my opinion. Its seen as something to get over with the help of love or vanquishing of the evildoers.
There are definitely stories where the MC “proves” herself (especially in m@fia stories) but then she ends up getting kidnapped so ofc that kind of overrides all the turning points.
The internal conflicts are either never there or never get explored… and are usually more so seen as “flaws”. And when you run out of internal conflict or it just isn’t there… you have to keep coming up with external conflict to keep the story and suspense running long enough for you to “solve” the initial problem and wrap things up. This is why these stories usually have the same formula.
I really hate this because I either like a balance of both or a greater exploration of internal conflicts and flaws. IMO, you can run on internal conflicts alone, but you can’t do the same with external. It often turns into a cliche… And when you put in worthless internal conflicts and do not actually give them enough light and justice you end up misrepresenting a lot of issues.
In almost all these stories, it reads as true love will solve all your problems! No. I also hate how they make the characters have really traumatic stuff happen to them, and then just kinda ignore that or make that something the LI or MC can solve for either. I’ve gone through minor trauma and it’s gotten a lot better but it still affects me a lot…
It’s also kind of lazy because I mean… these plots are reused again and again. Are these good writers? Often times yes. These stories are arguably well written (most times), have good pacing and keep one interested but do it in all the wrong ways… Do they know how to craft a story? Yes, but they only know how to craft one type of story. You could give me a short description and the genre and I could probably figure out what would happen in the story.
For me personally, I don’t want to be the type of writer to run to kidnapping a character or k**ing someone off to add conflict and drama. To me, that just shows that you can’t have an interesting scene without this constant chase and conflict, your characters are boring with no internal worlds. What do they think about the world? What are their philosophies? I understand this is Episode, but this doesn’t just happen with Episode! I wish stories wouldn’t follow this pattern. I understand why but I wish they didn’t.
ok I was gonna talk about fantasy stories but it’s basically the same thing except with Werewolf stories you have the toxic Alpha trope and that struggling romance between mated wolves and such
