Your Most Hated Tropes

[xena]

I agree with everyone who says they can read any trope IF it's executed and written well....with the exception of the miscommunication trope. A small avoidable disagreement happens and now the next 20 chapters are pure pettiness and based on a misunderstanding. Next!

 

[CupofJoe]

I agree with everyone who says they can read any trope IF it's executed and written well....with the exception of the miscommunication trope. A small avoidable disagreement happens and now the next 20 chapters are pure pettiness and based on a misunderstanding. Next!

I find this happens too often in TV writing.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I agree with everyone who says they can read any trope IF it's executed and written well....with the exception of the miscommunication trope. A small avoidable disagreement happens and now the next 20 chapters are pure pettiness and based on a misunderstanding. Next!

I am a firm believer in that there's a time and place for any trope (Well , barring a few stereotypes that are products of their time, like the classic 'nerd' with pocket protectors etc you can easily portray a 'nerd' without those things.) but if you're gonna do it, do it well. Don't just throw it in there to meet a "quota" of character types, like so many netflix shows do.

I'm more than willing to enjoy a cartoon villain (For example doctor Eggman from sonic, or Hades from Kid Icarus uprising)
But they have to be done well. Either they're so comical that you wind up enjoying them anyway, or they're actually a threat to the protagonists despite their cartoony ness. (in the cartoon villains I mean)

I'm personally not fond of the 'The love interests act like complete 'dorks' around eachother and frequent misunderstandings ensue because of this' trope (whatever it's called) but when it's used well, I am amused by it. Which I believe is the intention of the trope to begin with.

 

[pmmg]

I find this happens too often in TV writing.

That was pretty much the plot of threes company every episode.

 

[LittleOwlbear]

I recently saw Battle Royal, and it was pretty good, but I never get used to watching women dying on screen. It still affects me. I would fail at that competition, cause some woman would kill me cause I did not have it in me to kill her.

But why tho? It kinda means you are not taking her serious as a threat. What it so different about a woman trying to kill you than a man or a non-binary person?
And a male character can't even know that his opponent is a woman and not a non-binary person or a closeted trans man, theoretically, if they don't know another, so... what is so special about a woman on a battlefield or in such a situation? That kinda is chauvinism, imo.

I have no issue with writing men battling women on the battle field.
That is completely different from domestic violence and patriarchal abuse against women, and I can't, or won't, write men, who think twice about their opponent being a woman. They wouldn't even think about it, because the world is pretty gender-egalitarian and they only see someone's motivation and a possible threat.
Also my men wouldn't survive this. ^^"

But I have seen people complaining about that one scene Ekko beat up Jinx on the bridge in Arcane and made it look like he's an abusive black man beating up a white woman and whatnot, without any context of the scene.
Then uhm... I quit online fandoms.


About trans people... fuck the "trans woman is a deranged serial murderer because she envies cis women"-trope.
Luckily I have never seen this in fantasy, or I think I didn't and can't recall it at the moment?

Another trope that can die are women, who are mainly motivated by sexual violence that happened to her.

Also the feminine guy, mostly a gay man, who is treated as the butt of the joke, not getting his own arc, the story doesn't treat him with grace and the same attention etc...

I won't say: I take every trope, if they are written well... there is imo no way to write some tropes well.

There is also no way I read about (almost) male-only main character groups anymore either, even if it's done well. ^^'
Exception is male sports anime.
But in fantasy, there better are various female characters and they better are not all cute healers or just supporters of the male characters.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Refusal of The Call
The Call Knows Where You Live
The Call is on Your Front Lawn Holding a Boom Box Playing "In Your Eyes" at Max Volume

More accepts the call because you want to go on an adventure, but after three chapter you find out this whole save the world thing is too much work and you just quit.

Or what if the call was put out by the actual bad guys. After all, why can only the powers of good (or whatever) have a chosen one. What if your destiny is to make the world burn?

I think a lot of fun can be had with those and it hasn't been much explored yet. All chosen one stories do is just give us wheel of time book 1 but with a different setting.

 

[pmmg]

But why tho? It kinda means you are not taking her serious as a threat.

I believe I wrote "I would fail at that competition, cause some woman would kill me", which looks to me like I assessed her threat and found it to be lethal. But I hope she would not be.

You are lamenting that I will not properly kill women?

How you choose to write women and men in battle is your choice, and good luck with it. Trans issues and definitions and all do not rise anywhere close to being most important to me, and I am unlikely to include them in my writing. I feel for their community. I am sure they have a lot of hardship. I wish much peace on them.

Trope, trope trope...hate, hate, hate...

I'd like to say, no one writes in tropes, but I have found a community where people literally do. That is not the writing I am after. Give the story what it needs, and if its stuff that might line up with a trope, then I guess its a match. But, since tropes are these pretend things that match everything, they are not worth considering. Everything under the sun and beyond can be written in a meaningful way, nothing is immune.

I think there's a fair bit of stretch left in that trope to be honest. Only issue is that most people never subvert it. You only really get straight up chosen one stories most of the time. No having the Chosen One dying halfway through the story. Or looking around and thinking it's all too much work and just returning to his farm. Or actually turning to the dark side.

Just like to say, I think the most prominent chosen ones I can think of did do just what you are asking about. Anakin turned the dark side, Aang tries very hard to be anything but who he is called to be, and Harry Potter hated his role and would have preferred returning to a normal life.

And, thinking more, Paul Atriedes does die in the middle of the story.

Anyway...I am sure a lot of chosen ones dont move off the well laid road. But then...if they did...what would be the story?

 

[skip.knox]

I have a couple of Chosen One tropes that has never even made it to sketch stage.

One is, Wrong Guy stumbles into a place or finds a thing that marks him as the Chosen One. He doesn't want it, but everyone around him keeps relying on him and then getting pissed when things don't work out. It's a take on Being There (love that movie).

Another is, Destiny by Committee. That is, there are competing opinions as to what constitutes the Foretold Destiny and each faction has its Chosen One. Which some of them will change out at need.

In both cases, the subversion relies on looking at who is doing the choosing. Who says there's a chosen one? Where's their proof? What if it looks like they've got it wrong? What if the whole idea is wrong? What if the Chosen One is a really terrible person?

I am instinctively repelled by the idea of destiny and chosen ones. I'll do my own choosing, thank you very much. And destiny takes the wind right out of plot sails. It's all been settled beforehand and we're just meat puppets. I don't hate the trope, but on my list of preferred reads, it's down in the 40s somewhere.

 

[LittleOwlbear]

pmmg

That was more of a theoretical thought of mine: you can't know who the person really is, if you don't know them well, so you don't even know for sure: is my opponent a woman or not?

 

[Queshire]

Let's not start digging too deep into that and just content ourselves with the fact that pmmg isn't making it out of the Mythic Scribes Hunger Games.

 

[pmmg]

Y'all placing bets???

There are many ways to win.