Crime and Punishment in Emo Love Stories

By Star LaBranche

Unfortunately, I have completely run out of ideas regarding what to write about for ICB and my lack of inspiration has gone to such extremes that the only writing I can manage these days is the occasional MiST [MiST = humorous literary criticism] of the horrendous emo love stories that I discovered on the Myspace Quizzaz application. But these "love stories" actually contain very little love and enough legal problems to tie up a small community's court system for several years.

I was hunting for MiSTing fodder one day and I started to recognize consistent patterns in the writing. Today's average emo love story is always set in a bizarre lawless society where romanticized teenage boys serve as the ultimate protection and child abuse is as common as skinny jeans.

Here are some of the common themes that I've discovered:

1. One parent is dead while the other is abusive. While the gender of the dead parent and the status of the living parent (step-parent, biological, adoptive, etc) varies, the heroine always lives in a one-parent home with an abusive caretaker.

2. No one ever notices or reports the victim's abuse to the proper authorities. Ever. Even the heroine's love interest and friends who strive to do nothing but protect her never seem to figure out that calling the police would be a good way to do so.