Everyone has their own trope bugbears which have more to do with personal taste than anything else, and that's fine. The dragons are no different. However there are some tropes which just fundamentally don't work - at least not if you're going to cut corners. Either they result in shoddy worldbuilding or poor story structure or they're just so ick that they knock the reader out of the story. That's not to say that they can never work but you do have to be careful how you handle them. This week, Jules and Madeleine take a look at some of the worst offenders and best examples of the same trope done right, in sci-fi and fantasy. On the slab this week - Star Trek Discovery, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Virtual Sexuality and many more.
Title Music: Ecstasy by Smiling Cynic
Episode 413: Dragon riders & wolf speakers - the Animal Soul Bond in Speculative Fiction
Episode 412: By the Blade - the Evolution of Heroic Fantasy
Episode 411: Kitchen Heroes - Humble Protagonists who get Things Done in Speculative Fiction
Episode 410: In a Rural Dream - The Rise of Cottagecore
Episode 409: Pitched Perfectly - The Film was Better than the Book
Episode 408: There’s good news and...more good news - 2023 in review
Episode 407: Jingle Bell Rock - Storytelling through the medium of songs the Christmas edition
Episode 406: A Picture Says a Thousand Words - The Rise of the Graphic Novel
Episode 405: The Fairest of Them All - The Pursuit of Beauty as a Literary Device
Episode 404: It was Great Apart from the Ending - Beloved Fiction that Wobbled on the Dismount
Episode 403: The Old Family Business - Gangster Witches and Legacy Monster Hunters
Episode: 402 Of Gold and Hubris - Tracing the Origins of Rumpelstiltskin
Episode 401: Girls on Ice - a History of the Fridging Trope
Episode 400: Strange Fruit in the Gallant South - Exploring the Southern Gothic
Episode 399: This Set is Cursed - Strange Events Behind the Scenes at Horror Films
DD Episode 398: Joyous Companions Forever - examining the queerness of the vampire genre
Episode 397: The Beautiful and the Damned - examining the Queerness of the Vampire Genre
Ep 396: It Came from Out of the closet - The Queer Relationship with Horror
Ep 395: Weirdstones and Magic Keys - What makes a Children’s book a classic?
Ep 394: Divas Debutantes and Girls next door - the best and worst female main characters
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