What is the commonly used trope that irks you the most?

[mildlyaroused]

I think the sizzle is entirely gone once one gets to fifth cousins.

You mean the incest crowd isn't into that???

There goes my latest novel.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Now that we've established these tropes that irk people, how many of you authors are guilty of using one or more of them?

My porn is as pure as the driven meth crystals.

Emily

 

[Djmac1031]

My porn is as pure as the driven meth crystals.

Emily

https://imgur.com/a/WZexSJx

 

[Djmac1031]

Now that we've established these tropes that irk people, how many of you authors are guilty of using one or more of them?

Oh I'm totally guilty of at least a few.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Oh I'm totally guilty of at least a few.

You know what’s the worst trope. Gratuitous SW quotes in the middle of porn stories - what’s up with that shit?

Emily

 

[SimonDoom]

Now that we've established these tropes that irk people, how many of you authors are guilty of using one or more of them?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Again, with the caveat that I'm not a biologist, and others with more knowledge might make short work of my logic:

Suppose at some point X in the past a female primate is born that is essentially "human," whatever that means, in terms of her genetic makeup, the first homo sapiens.

"Homo sapiens" depends on the concept of "species", which is one of those fuzzy concepts that's useful for many purposes but starts to fall apart in discussions like this.

The outdated version I learned in school went like: two creatures are the same "species" if they can interbreed, otherwise they're not. (Ignoring complications of incompatible sexes, infertility etc.) It was presented as a kind of equivalence class, meaning that if creature A is the same species as B, and B is the same species as C, then A is the same species as C.

This mostly works for looking at creatures currently living, but there are exceptions. "Ring species" produce cases where population A interbreeds with B, and B interbreeds with C, but C can't interbreed with A. It can also be hard to distinguish between "can't interbreed" and "don't interbreed".

Modern biology has come up with a whole range of definitions for "species", and for practical purposes they're usually more or less in agreement. We have a bunch of fairly similar creatures we consider "humans", we have another bunch we consider as "chimpanzees". Any two humans are much more similar to one another than the chimp-iest human is to the human-est chimp.

But when we look back through time to the point where those species diverged... it usually isn't really a well-defined "point" so much as a great big fuzzy grey area. Homo sapiens shows up around 300,000 years ago, but were still interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans up to around 50,000 years ago.

It's a bit like, say, drawing a line between "child" and "adult" - we might need to make that distinction for legal reasons, and we might decide to set the line at midnight on their 18th birthday, but that's just a simplification of a gradual process. It doesn't reflect an actual transformation at midnight.

Even if we had a strictly objective definition of "human" that we were happy with - say, "anything that has Allele A and Allele B is human, anything else is not") - that doesn't guarantee us a single unique First Human. It may be that Allele A arises in one population, and Allele B in another, and then those interbreed creating a whole bunch of "humans" none of whom have "human" ancestors.

(Sorry, that went on a bit.)

She mates with several males who are not quite human, but close enough that mating is possible. She produces offspring from the union with these various males.

Her offspring mate with other members of the community that are "pre-human" but close enough to mate. I confess to not being mathematically sophisticated enough to know if this is right (I'm sure Bramblethorn will tell me soon enough) but it seems possible to me that the ultimate "human" population that results will all be descended from her ("Eve") but not necessarily all from any one of the multiple Adams with whom she produces offspring.

It's possible, but in the very long run, most people end up having no surviving descendants or being an ancestor of everybody alive. "Ancestor of half of all living humans" is a statistically unstable kind of status.

 

[Abbafan]

Big dicks = flooded pussies and waterfall orgasms.

Yeah. If I come across a story where a woman sees a man with an almost impossibly large dick and immediately turns into a single minded sex fiend I'm immediately moving on. I've had enough of those. If I wanted writing that lazy, I'd go over to the orange site and watch some videos.

 

[SimonDoom]

"Homo sapiens" depends on the concept of "species", which is one of those fuzzy concepts that's useful for many purposes but starts to fall apart in discussions like this.

The outdated version I learned in school went like: two creatures are the same "species" if they can interbreed, otherwise they're not. (Ignoring complications of incompatible sexes, infertility etc.) It was presented as a kind of equivalence class, meaning that if creature A is the same species as B, and B is the same species as C, then A is the same species as C.

This mostly works for looking at creatures currently living, but there are exceptions. "Ring species" produce cases where population A interbreeds with B, and B interbreeds with C, but C can't interbreed with A. It can also be hard to distinguish between "can't interbreed" and "don't interbreed".

Modern biology has come up with a whole range of definitions for "species", and for practical purposes they're usually more or less in agreement. We have a bunch of fairly similar creatures we consider "humans", we have another bunch we consider as "chimpanzees". Any two humans are much more similar to one another than the chimp-iest human is to the human-est chimp.

But when we look back through time to the point where those species diverged... it usually isn't really a well-defined "point" so much as a great big fuzzy grey area. Homo sapiens shows up around 300,000 years ago, but were still interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans up to around 50,000 years ago.

It's a bit like, say, drawing a line between "child" and "adult" - we might need to make that distinction for legal reasons, and we might decide to set the line at midnight on their 18th birthday, but that's just a simplification of a gradual process. It doesn't reflect an actual transformation at midnight.

Even if we had a strictly objective definition of "human" that we were happy with - say, "anything that has Allele A and Allele B is human, anything else is not") - that doesn't guarantee us a single unique First Human. It may be that Allele A arises in one population, and Allele B in another, and then those interbreed creating a whole bunch of "humans" none of whom have "human" ancestors.

(Sorry, that went on a bit.)

No apology necessary. I think it's incredibly interesting.

But for purposes of the discussion, it isn't really necessary to figure out the definition of species. Put aside the categories and definitions. There's still some individual, way, way back when, whatever you want to call that person, that we are all related to. That's the thing that's so interesting. All seven plus billion of us.

 

[alohadave]

No apology necessary. I think it's incredibly interesting.

But for purposes of the discussion, it isn't really necessary to figure out the definition of species. Put aside the categories and definitions. There's still some individual, way, way back when, whatever you want to call that person, that we are all related to. That's the thing that's so interesting. All seven plus billion of us.

The way I understand it, it was a population of cro-magnon people (anatomically the same as modern humans) who went through a bottleneck.

The Mitrochondral Eve didn't literally mother all humans, but her daughters had children with other survivors and the genes spread through them. When they did expand into other areas, they carried the mitochondrial genes with them.

The question of species isn't super important for this particular situation.

 

[Zootonius]

The way I understand it, it was a population of cro-magnon people (anatomically the same as modern humans) who went through a bottleneck.

The Mitrochondral Eve didn't literally mother all humans, but her daughters had children with other survivors and the genes spread through them. When they did expand into other areas, they carried the mitochondrial genes with them.

The question of species isn't super important for this particular situation.

Followed a thread on porn tropes and a paleoanthropology discussion broke out!

 

[AchtungNight]

I’ve definitely done the Star Wars thing. As for the rest, I invite people to read my stories and refresh my memory. Start wherever interests you most.

 

[HordHolm]

You have to just let it flow over you. It’s a B-movie. Just a very good B-movie.

Emily

Rather like how useless the entire Spanish army is when faced with Zorro's flashing blade, or the Sheriff's men when they encounter Robin in Sherwood. So bloody incompetent it makes you wonder how the Normans conquered Merrie Old England in the first place.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Rather like how useless the entire Spanish army is when faced with Zorro's flashing blade, or the Sheriff's men when they encounter Robin in Sherwood. So bloody incompetent it makes you wonder how the Normans conquered Merrie Old England in the first place.

Sounds like every old western movie ever made. The only difference the bad guys had from the good guys was bad aim.

 

[ElectricBlue]

(Sorry, that went on a bit.)

Bramble, as Simon notes, your going "on a bit" is always worth it. When you "go on a lot" I suspect my brain would melt!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Followed a thread on porn tropes and a paleoanthropology discussion broke out!

Lit's educational. Don't let the idle masturbators tell you otherwise.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Don't let the idle masturbators tell you otherwise.

I'm sorry but idle masturbators has me in stiches

It sounds like that's their default state. I'm picturing an army of them, robotic, hands in motion like clockwork.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm sorry but idle masturbators has me in stiches

It sounds like that's their default state. I'm picturing an army of them, robotic, hands in motion like clockwork.

Pretty much, I reckon .

 

[AchtungNight]

Sounds like every old western movie ever made. The only difference the bad guys had from the good guys was bad aim.

Don’t forget strike first and no mercy. All three rules of Cobra Kai are equally important.

 

[AlexBailey]

A lot of my sexual experience and background consists of irksome tropes.

 

[HordHolm]

I'm sorry but idle masturbators has me in stiches

It sounds like that's their default state. I'm picturing an army of them, robotic, hands in motion like clockwork.

Hook them up to the grid and power all the Lit servers. It'd be self-perpetuating.

 

[StillStunned]

Hook them up to the grid and power all the Lit servers. It'd be self-perpetuating.

A "Hot" rating would be a bad thing all of a sudden: your readers are overheating the servers.

 

[mildlyaroused]

A "Hot" rating would be a bad thing all of a sudden: your readers are overheating the servers.

Beware, though, it works both ways... if our stories aren't hot enough, the server shuts down.

We'd be like this little robot, trying to keep ourselves alive with our own writing. Always on the chase.

 

[StillStunned]

Beware, though, it works both ways... if our stories aren't hot enough, the server shuts down.

We'd be like this little robot, trying to keep ourselves alive with our own writing. Always on the chase.

"Did someone write a mother with a shaved pussy? We're getting dangerously low in I/T."
"It's even worse over in LW - we have two stories with HEA!"

 

[HordHolm]

"Did someone write a mother with a shaved pussy? We're getting dangerously low in I/T."
"It's even worse over in LW - we have two stories with HEA!"

Don't let @SimonDoom see this, or he'll have to add to his list of unwritten ideas...