I agree with most of the things on this list. I’d also say:
Pointless friends. Like, the friends are there to encourage and support MC and their dramatic life (usually LI drama) but don’t have any real personalities, and you never see the MC encouraging, supporting, or even listening to their friends. Honestly, a lot of MCs are terrible friends and don’t offer anything in their friendships, which makes me unable to relate to them. Unless the point is to show the MC is self-absorbed and set up a path of honest character development, why bother? Granted, this is also related to having the stereotypical & loud BIPOC friend who’s there for “woke points” but contributes nothing to the story but poor representation. Also forces a point that romantic (and sexual) relationships are inherently more valuable than other kinds of relationships, which is patently false.
Substituting genuine connection between characters with supposed “sexual chemistry.” I have no idea what this means (I’m ace) to people & it would be particularly hard to show on episode, so it tends to be characters stating that they feel a connection they’ve never felt before & we should take their word for it. But WHY? Some jerk yelling at you isn’t sexual chemistry, and more importantly why not just build a relationship where characters get to know each other and connect about real stuff (whether they’re friends or LIs or whatever else).
(Cw for discussion of sexual assault & rape culture in next 2 paragraphs)
I have some things to add about SA as a subplot. Aside from the general yick factor of the LI saving Mc from sexual assault (it’s also usually a LI who generally doesn’t respect women or boundaries), the aftermath is never addressed. The MC is like “wow that wasn’t fun” and that’s it. When in reality the aftermath is what makes the experience so difficult to heal from. Some authors seem to think “well they didn’t actually get assaulted, it was just an attempted SA” is an excuse for a) using this trope and b) refusing to acknowledge how difficult it is to deal with SA experiences.
The other thing is that it’s almost always some random Ugly™️ guy that the MC doesn’t know spiking her drink. Which isn’t impossible and it’s not like it never happens, but the vast majority of SA are perpetrated by someone the victim knows. The narrative in these instances is so disingenuous. I’m a survivor and would never tell others they can’t write about dealing with SA (or any power-based violence) but the focus should be on how it affects the person, their ability to related & interact with others, and their understanding of the world. And if you feel the need to show the details, it should be clear characters are condemning the behaviour as well as why it’s important to have it in the story, and obviously a trigger warning & preferably an option to skip should be used.
Other quick things; descriptions about “delicious curves” / “curves in all the right places” etc, the word “intoxicating” lol, and in general any narration that tells us how we should feel about a character rather than showing us through scenes & dialogue with that character.
