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Tropes: Favorite/Least Favorite?

What are some of your favorite tropes, and what are some that you just can't stand? Can be broad or small, popular or obscure. Doesn't have to be specific to fantasy (also I'd like to avoid discussing tropes regarding racial/sexist stereotypes because I feel that is a whole other thread).

I think the popular one everyone likes to rag on is the Tolkien elf that gets repeated over and over in fantasy, and I have to agree that it's one of my least favorite tropes in the genre. I do however a have big soft spot of the classic wise Wizard archetype as long as the writer builds an interesting enough character.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
Favorite: Leatherclad, colorfully haired bikers in post-apocalyptic settings.

I don't use them in my own post-apocalyptic world because I like to keep my worldbuilding strongly within the realm of reason, but I love the aesthetic of this. If a post-apocalyptic setting has these Mad Max ripoffs I am more than willing to forgive the fact that motor oil has an average shelf life of less than 2 digits. I'm also more than willing to accept that the post-apocalyptic world somehow has enough hair gel and hair dye for entire civilizations, yet not enough other resources to keep small groups moderately satisfied.

Least Favorite: The prophecy foretold of an annoying manchild or actual child with no intresting traits who would inexplicably be loved by many and who was somehow good at everything he did despite lacking any experience or skill. (No idea why people still write these)
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
And what if this annoying manchild lives in a post-apocalyptic car crashing world with spiked green and purple hair and a completely over the top razor-wire dog collar? heh heh.

Favorite: Leatherclad, colorfully haired bikers in post-apocalyptic settings.

I don't use them in my own post-apocalyptic world because I like to keep my worldbuilding strongly within the realm of reason, but I love the aesthetic of this. If a post-apocalyptic setting has these Mad Max ripoffs I am more than willing to forgive the fact that motor oil has an average shelf life of less than 2 digits. I'm also more than willing to accept that the post-apocalyptic world somehow has enough hair gel and hair dye for entire civilizations, yet not enough other resources to keep small groups moderately satisfied.

Least Favorite: The prophecy foretold of an annoying manchild or actual child with no intresting traits who would inexplicably be loved by many and who was somehow good at everything he did despite lacking any experience or skill. (No idea why people still write these)
 
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Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
And what if this annoying manchild lives in a post-apocalyptic car crashing world with spiked green and purple hair and a completely over the top razor-wire dog collar? heh heh.

As long as he's not bafflingly good at riding a motorcycle on his first try, I'm willing to live with it. But he better have some really funky hair color or else I'm done! :p
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Like Night's Domain, I think tropes are nonsense. There is good writing and bad writing. Period.

I get a little irked by the whole notion of tropes. I smells a bit of smugness. Not from the many people here who refer to and worry over them. That's just earnestness. But the literary types who "discover" them and write about them (I'm looking at you, TV tropes) have an air of superiority and condescension that rubs me the wrong way.

BTW, @Banten might be glad to learn that in my queue of novels is one entitled Tuck the Unchosen. I intend to have some good fun with the whole business of prophecies.
 
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glutton

Inkling
Favorite: Ultra badass female warrior, often covered in scars, who is more physically formidable than most guys and performs over the top feats in battle

Least favorite: The character set up as a badass female warrior being relegated to a damsel in distress or passive character in favor of a male MC
 
So what's the official trope title of that character, buddy/friend/offspring of the MC, who always does the wrong thing, typically for selfish reasons but sometimes with good intentions, that exists only to keep conflict, twists of fortune (for the worse), etc. in the story?

I'm looking at you, Jack Bauer's daughter. And you, Julia Wicker in The Magicians.

Hate that trope. If indeed trope it is.

Also: World is falling apart in real time, but let's stop for a few minutes to have a heart-to-heart chat, come clean, reassure each other of our undying love. Again, trope? Or simply device?

Perhaps a bit more on topic...I'm in agreement. Tropes probably aren't inherently good or bad; it's the execution. That said, some tropes apparently come so quickly to the writer's mind, and many writers so naturally choose what comes immediately to mind (so it seems), and this combo leads to oversaturation. I do hate the easiness, when I see it.

I recently watched some "reaction" videos on Youtube, which can be a good practice if you are ever interested in how various people will react to particular things. The Flash S3E17 episode "Duet" had some mixed reactions...

One reviewer believed that the true-love kiss saving the day might be sappy but he loved it anyway because, duh, "It's a musical." Others groaned. Some hated it.

—There might be a fine line between purposeful campiness and accidental campiness, with respect to using lots of familiar tropes, in examples like this, although I think the creators of The Flash and Supergirl did okay here. But some people like that sort of thing and others hate it.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
So what's the official trope title of that character, buddy/friend/offspring of the MC, who always does the wrong thing, typically for selfish reasons but sometimes with good intentions, that exists only to keep conflict, twists of fortune (for the worse), etc. in the story?

I'm looking at you, Jack Bauer's daughter. And you, Julia Wicker in The Magicians.

Hate that trope. If indeed trope it is.

Seems like either the Bumbling Sidekick or The Load.
 
Seems like either the Bumbling Sidekick or The Load.

The Load comes closer to describing this character role, of the two. In The Americans, one of my favorite shows, the daughter is coming perilously close to being this type of character for me. Come to think of it, this is often the case with teenage characters in action or high stakes types of stories, where they are always running off and getting into trouble or sometimes believing they are being helpful but always, always cause more trouble for the other main characters. Julia in The Magicians is a YA version, although she's a little different from the other examples—still, about 98% of every decision she makes and every action she takes is the wrong one. Super annoying. These characters almost always get a free pass from the MCs, or are going to be loved nonetheless.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
I live for the moments when a character says the name of the movie in the movie. That's my favourite trope, hands down.

Omg! I love this, too! In one of my historical novels, the heroine says the book's name lol. But I see this more as a cliche than a trope, since it's not an actual plot device.

Fave tropes:
-arranged marriage
-marriage of convenience
-black widows/ black magic woman
-anti-heroes
-ice queen
-fling to forever relationships
-stranded
-magical items

These are but a few...I do love tropes. :)
 
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La Volpe

Sage
I live for the moments when a character says the name of the movie in the movie. That's my favourite trope, hands down.

"Roll credits." (for those who know what that's from)

--

As for mine, it's a bit muddled. And I'm not sure I'm staying on the 'trope' line here, but whatever.

I enjoy a good "stupid weakling who becomes badass" character, but the first part of that person is usually really annoying, so it's a win-lose situation. I also quite like the Beserker trope, but I've never been able to fit one into any of my stories.

My least favourite: Characters that make selfish decisions and then somehow get seen as good people for doing so. E.g. if a guy (let's call him A) tries to sacrifice his life to stop an evil whatnot from getting free, but then another guy (B) stops him because he doesn't want A to die. Then the evil gets free, and B is seen as being noble for having saved A's life.
 
I live for the moments when a character says the name of the movie in the movie. That's my favourite trope, hands down.
I love this when done properly, but often it's not. For example, I saw the trailer for the upcoming War of the Planet of the Apes and Woody Harrelson says something along the lines of 'or this will become the Planet of the Apes' and I just busted out laughing.
 
Ooh! Nice topic.

Fave tropes...hmm.

I'm an absolute sucker for dragon riders, as overdone as they are. Super hot/handsome villains...uhh yaaasss. Anything where characters who hate each other are forced to work together. Also, anything where a tough/asshole character is forced to display their soft side and turns out to be a complete marshmallow.

Sarcastic narrators. Animal sidekicks (especially if it's a dragon.) Arranged marriages...And I sometimes say girl-disguises-as-boy stories are annoying, but i've really loved a lot of them and I still am very attracted to the concept so...

Any story that's about a magical/mythical/fantastical creatures naturalist.

I find myself becoming enamored of totally-mundane-character-plunged-into-magical-world.

I love sympathetic villains, especially if I sympathize with them even though they're really evil. I also love egregiously sadistic villains if they are given depth and dimension (Dolores Umbridge and Count Rugen are a couple of my favorite ever characters, lol.)

Winged beings of any kind. (Unless they're fairies.)

Hey, are we talking about tropes we like to write, or tropes we like to read?

Hmm. Least favorite?

Fantasy based on medieval Europe. Elves and dwarves bore me. Rebellions that are rebelling against an ambiguous government that's supposed to be oppressive but actually isn't, and is just headed by a supposedly evil guy. Love triangles. Black and white morality (especially villains that are just pure evil with no depth or personality.) Heroes whose only character flaw is being short-tempered and headstrong.

Killing a character early in the story, before we get to know them, and then expecting readers to care...?

Last but not least, FLASHBACKS! Loathe them. Especially in the first chapter...

(I'm a hypocrite though. I have an entire-chapter-long flashback in my WIP. It's necessary though, and I made it obvious so as not to be confusing.)
 

La Volpe

Sage
Also, anything where a tough/asshole character is forced to display their soft side and turns out to be a complete marshmallow.

This feels like a trope that I don't like, but it's okay if it's not too smeared on, I guess. But even then, I avoid it where possible.

I find myself becoming enamored of totally-mundane-character-plunged-into-magical-world.

Ah, yes, I like this as well. Portal fantasy, it's called, if I recall correctly.

I love sympathetic villains, especially if I sympathize with them even though they're really evil. I also love egregiously sadistic villains if they are given depth and dimension (Dolores Umbridge and Count Rugen are a couple of my favorite ever characters, lol.)

I find myself sometimes liking the pure evil kind of villains. I.e. the kind that you can't understand. It's all the rage these days to have your villains have moral conflicts and stuff (which is generally a good thing), but I sometimes like a villain that is just so completely alien in behaviour and morals that it becomes less than human and more terrifying.

Hey, are we talking about tropes we like to write, or tropes we like to read?

Well, I generally don't want to write tropes that I don't want to read, and vice versa, so both lists would probably be identical.

Rebellions that are rebelling against an ambiguous government that's supposed to be oppressive but actually isn't, and is just headed by a supposedly evil guy.

How do you feel about rebellions against an oppressive government which eventually turns out to have oppressed the people in order to save them?
 
The tropes I like the most are: kickass female action heroine (Dark Angel would be my favorite television version of this); sentient swords that have a mind of their own (e.g., Stormbringer); and well-defined, internally-consistent magic systems (as in Mistborn).

The tropes I like the least include a lot of the ones already mentioned by others (especially evil for the sake of evil). But the absolute worst one for me is one that's used in Star Trek a lot, where something horribly-horribly-horribly bad happens, and time travel is used to create a paradox, thus erasing history and undoing the horribly-horribly-horribly bad thing. These writers don't get it that if time travel were used, the results of what happened during the time travel stint would already be a part of history.
 
The tropes I like the most are: kickass female action heroine (Dark Angel would be my favorite television version of this); sentient swords that have a mind of their own (e.g., Stormbringer); and well-defined, internally-consistent magic systems (as in Mistborn).

The tropes I like the least include a lot of the ones already mentioned by others (especially evil for the sake of evil). But the absolute worst one for me is one that's used in Star Trek a lot, where something horribly-horribly-horribly bad happens, and time travel is used to create a paradox, thus erasing history and undoing the horribly-horribly-horribly bad thing. These writers don't get it that if time travel were used, the results of what happened during the time travel stint would already be a part of history.

I typically hate time travel of any kind, period.
 
Hey, are we talking about tropes we like to write, or tropes we like to read?
Both.

I made this thread because I've been researching tropes a lot recently because I've that knowing them is incredibly helpful for building stories. They're tools more than anything, if you know one you can use it or subvert it. They're like little Lego blocks that when compiled together create a story.
 
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