I know this is probably a common topic. For me, I’m not sure if it’s a “trope” or just totally misinformed writing, but it’s how many authors approach alcoholism. Some examples are Girl on the Train and The House Across the Lake, among HUNDREDS. If anyone else here has struggled with alcoholism, you know it’s not just "i woke up after downing an entire bottle of whiskey but was able to shower, down a cup of coffee, and solve a murder. "
My absolute favorite twist on this garbage was by Riley Sagar (who used to be a good writer before diving into supernatural shit).
The female MC inherited some massive haunted mansion and there was a big horror / murder mystery plot. You know the deal: one of those “is the whole town in on it” kind of plots where you suspect everyone at one point or another.
So as the plot dictates, our female MC (newly-single but still hot ofc) and the hunky hot neighbor guy who is handy start to make eyes at each other. She bakes him a pie; he fixes her ceiling. Will they or won’t they?
But also as the plot dictates, Hunky becomes the main suspect briefly. “Wait… you mean, you knew about this secret tunnel this whole time?” Hunky of course didn’t do it and the MC finds the real culprit.
In the aftermath, MC goes over to Hunky like “Okay this is where we fuck now”. In a wonderful little twist, Hunky snarls “Fuck you, a day ago you accused me of murder. Not only are we not getting together at the end of this story, but I am moving away. You’re insane.”
I finished this book three days ago!
My roommate and I watch a lot of cop shows, and they’d be way different if the family and friends of the victims remembered how the cops behaved between story beats.
I’m surprised there aren’t supercuts out there of the CSI people screaming horrific shit into the faces of people they later prove innocent.
When CSI: Miami was a thing, we used to joke about David Caruso’s character not being able to function in his job or frankly his personal life, because he was too busy carrying out the eternal vigilance and harassment that he swore on all the suspects!
Well, cops don’t apologize for anything, and they are allowed to accuse or lie to anyone in order to get evidence.
Apologizing is showing guilt, and is even recognized as so by the courts. Cops will not apologize for this reason.
How…convenient for them.
God I hate most of those shows, between SVU and Blue Bloods etc, most of the cops should be fired or in jail after the first season
lol, do you think real life cops are not acting 100x worse than the ones in those shows?
Seriously, I almost feel like they are police propaganda sometimes. They want us all to believe that it is a-okay to go full vengeful street gang when a cop is hurt, or to ignore all procedure and evidence and just go with your gut (aka lean into your personal prejudices), or cover up each other’s crimes because cop-to-cop loyalty is the ultimate virtue. It genuinely pisses me off sometimes (I want to yell at the screen “you are not the good guys here!”)
Not for nothing but, at least in the law & order vein, they are actually legitimately police propaganda. People who routinely watch those shows will skew towards a positive opinion of the police because they’ll imagine that any interaction with the policy is actually them working with Olivia Benson, SVU detective-extraordinaire.