Captain Obvious Thinks About Cliché
Dec. 22nd, 2025 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kilroyAt least for me, saying a story is cliché isn't a knock on the plot. It isn't a declaration that said story is inherently uninteresting and should never be told again.
"Cliché" as a criticism from me means that the storytellers took shortcuts to present the story. They didn't develop the characters in a way that supports their decisions. They skipped foreshadowing and payoff. They relied on genre assumptions to fill in parts of the narrative they didn't bother to show. They told the story but they didn't do the work.
"Cliché" for me means this story/these characters didn't get a real chance to fly.
(Aside: I feel like I've been having that emotional reaction a lot in the streaming era, to movies as well as television. It's particularly galling for me in cases where there's something genuinely good for me to latch on to and it's just not enough. (I'm looking at you, Wednesday. And Willow TV.) In some ways it hurts me more than truly amazing things getting canceled too soon. I definitely obsess more.)
Anyway. I needed to crystallize that, even knowing it's nothing new or particularly insightful. Captain Obvious out.
"Cliché" as a criticism from me means that the storytellers took shortcuts to present the story. They didn't develop the characters in a way that supports their decisions. They skipped foreshadowing and payoff. They relied on genre assumptions to fill in parts of the narrative they didn't bother to show. They told the story but they didn't do the work.
"Cliché" for me means this story/these characters didn't get a real chance to fly.
(Aside: I feel like I've been having that emotional reaction a lot in the streaming era, to movies as well as television. It's particularly galling for me in cases where there's something genuinely good for me to latch on to and it's just not enough. (I'm looking at you, Wednesday. And Willow TV.) In some ways it hurts me more than truly amazing things getting canceled too soon. I definitely obsess more.)
Anyway. I needed to crystallize that, even knowing it's nothing new or particularly insightful. Captain Obvious out.