>>7998334
I don't think it's meant to be "clever" or even subtle, it's simply to help drive the point home desu and I think your desire to paint it as a pretention to wit only serves to highlight your insecurity in your own intelligence.

What alternative do you suggest, OP, other than simply coming out and saying in boldface exactly what the author is trying to convey?

If you think metaphors are so stupid why not just be an essayist?

Yeh, I hate this shit too. See it in tv shows as well. When the guy is doing something bad he wears a black shirt and it's white when he's doing good


Smh so hard

>>7998351
>>7998345

My issue is that's it's so disgustingly familiar at this point. It's a contrivance of fiction that writers need to move past. The plot, and the people in it, can invite discussion and analysis, and use symbolism, just fine without it.

It's just plain lazy, too. "The meaning of the story I've written isn't very clear, so here's a conspicuously included description of a sculpture in someone's garden just for funzies :o)" It's a crutch. It's hack. It's sleazy. It's inhuman. It's trite.

People barely read books and think superhero movies are the height of contemporary art. There are only a couple ways to make them think they're watching something deep with little effort.

>>7998385
Yea I hate it when authors put humans in their stories. I mean common, how many of those have we had? It's just a cheap trick to get the reader to be interested in what's happening. As for me I'm working on a novel without characters. The main 'character' is a river, and the novel follows all the twists and bends it takes.

give me a specific example of this

identifying "tropes" is the lowest form of literary appreciation