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Young Kubrick

Member Since 05 Oct 2016
Offline Last Active Jan 13 2020 03:35 AM

Topics I've Started

Most hated tropes?

30 March 2019 - 12:21 AM

I was just thinking about common tropes that are often in fiction, in many different mediums. Obviously tropes aren't inherently bad; they've been proven to work. But there are some that get on people's nerves, either because they've seen it done so many times, or just are opposed to the idea itself, or for whatever else. So I was wondering what are some tropes that you really don't like? I'll start off

 

Tournament Arcs: Specifically for anime and manga, this is something I honestly really don't like. I feel like the only reason to write a tournament arc is to just give characters a reason to fight each other. It's such a contrived way to try to create conflict, and any character motivation that may drive their will to fight against their closest allies could easily be channeled into writing a conflict that's much better, more fulfilling, and explores the character more and tests their true goals and moral limits. Like imagine if the team of protagonists captured a villain, but one of them was searching for their family, and only the villain had information and/or skills that would help finding them, but the villain is set to be imprisoned. That right there creates conflict, and opens the door for more character examination then just pitting a couple people against each other and getting barbaric pleasure at watching them savage each other for no reason

 

The Monster Is All In The Protag's Head: This is more specifically for horror fiction, but the reveal that the monster or killer or ghost or whatever supernatural presence was all just a character's delusion or hallucination is so overdone. I'm not too mad whenever something does this, but it's just so annoying that even in something I like I still get a bad taste in my mouth and just groan and roll my eyes. It's one thing if the supernatural elements are meant to be a metaphor but it's all actually happening; that's entertaining on both a plot standpoint and a thematic standpoint. And I'm ok with it being ambiguous if it's real or not, but please lay off of the whole "it was in their head all along" thing

 

Magic Is Science, Actually: This one I hate the most. I get it, what many people used to believe was magic had a scientific explanation. But Jesus Christ, if a character is appearing to use magic, there is no need to have it turn out to actually be something science based. If a character has magic like powers, let them be magic. It shouldn't be that hard