Writing for nothing, text for free

People often say there are more bad trends than there are people in the world, and looking at fiction in particular, I couldn’t agree more. I had the dubious honor of watching Saint October a while back, and knew halfway through the first episode, that this was another one of these series lots of people are going to baww about, for no good reason except the three females looking cute and playing the “I’m so innocent -teeheehee” routine. Well, the same can be said for Britney, and look where she is now. Don’t worry though, the fans will take care of this even faster than Britney accepting to strip for some boring rock-magazine.

But before I completely drift off track, there are three really shitty trends which catapult this series out of orbit into the sun:

1) Don’t use amnesia for a plot device. Amnesia is the worst invention right after “honor”-revenge. It has to stop now. Amnesia plots always follow the same predictable storyline: Kid is warped into a world without memory, found, lives a normal life with some foster family, yadda yadda yadda, then some bad guys come pillaging and plundering, a lightning bolt or similar flash strikes the kid and he gets superpowers, the kid yells “Kamehameha”, which then leads to the bad guys looking stupid and flying into the sky, just like Team Rocket in every known episode of Pokemon.  Then the kid sits next to the dying village leader and gets the quest to go rescue some princess and/or defeat an evil warlord/dragon/drug dealer.

Just stop. Seriously.

2) No unexplainable superpowers. Already addressed in 1, but I still feel the need to point it out again. If you must use superpowers, make them a believable part of the world, not just reserved for one or two special characters. And holy hell, stop using white orbs shot out of the caster’s palms. The only exception to this rule is tentacles, and only in very special kinds of anime.

3) NO AMNESIA. Did I already mention I really despise amnesia plotlines?