Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Tropers / Maths Angelic Version

Go To
MathsAngelicVersion's Edits Avatar Gallery Send Message

Hello and welcome to my userpage. I'm just a Troper that discovered TV Tropes because of a coincidence. I quickly became addicted and lurked around for a pretty long time, always imagining what edits I'd make if I were a member. Then I thought that if I joined TV Tropes, I could make those edits and get done with the site. You can probably guess how well that plan worked.

    About me 
  • Name: Maths ~Angelic Version~ note 
  • Age: 28
  • Gender: Female
  • Nationality: Norwegian
  • Languages: Norwegian (native)note on Norwegian note on other Scandinavian languages, English (fluent)
  • Interests: Mathematics (huge shocker), TV Tropes (another huge shocker), gaming, programming, origami, languages, science, reading about pseudoscience, random subreddits
  • Troper Type: Trope Creator, Trope Editor, Namespacer, Casual Example Adder, Advertiser (sometimes), TLP Midwife (occasionally), Eclectic Troper (formerly), Trope Browser (formerly and when I'm too lazy to edit)
  • Main niches on TV Tropes: Touhou Fan Music, board games
  • Notable troper collaborators: A Nonagon 9, Cyto Zytokine, Peppermint Twist
  • Favourite game genres: Platform, Rhythm, Shoot 'Em Up, Bullet Hell, Mascot Racer
  • Favourite music genres: Pop, Rock, J-Pop, eurobeat, Symphonic Metal, Country
  • Favourite story genres: comedy, action
  • Least favourite story genres: drama, horror
  • I tend to prefer animation over live-action

Personality Tests and Sorting Systems Not that I put a lot of stock into these things, but I still think they're fun.

    Pages that I've started and/or made significant contributions to 
This list may be incomplete because I went about seven years without updating it. To everyone who has helped improve these pages: Thank you.

Trope

Comic Strip

Live-Action TV

Music

Tabletop Game

Video Game

Webcomics

  • Cardboard Crack (Initially created by someone else, then deleted for being too reliant on links. Later recreated by me.)
  • Spiked Math (I didn't start the page, but I added most of the examples)

Web Video

Western Animation

Other Stuff

  • A lot of Playing With pages, a few Drinking Games, some YMMV, Trivia, WMG and Laconic subpages, and some haiku. I don't feel like listing them...

    My favourite stuff 
Anime

Creators

Film - Animated

Music

  • ABBA
  • Ava Max: A pop singer I consider a guilty pleasure. Some of her lyrics are cheesy, but I find her music style pretty pleasant.
  • Vazelina Bilopphøggers: A Norwegian band with a lot of parody songs. I'd only suggest them to other Norwegians.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic
  • Øystein Sunde: A Norwegian comedy musician who writes catchy songs with clever lyrics. I'd recommend him to other Norwegians.
  • Touhou Fan Music. My favourite circles are A-One, AdamKadmon, BUTAOTOME, CrazyBeats, Crest, GET IN THE RING, R-note, Shoujo Fractal, SOUND HOLIC, SYNC.ART'S, TUMENECO, Yellow Zebra and Yuuhei Satellite.
  • A lot of Disney music. Listing every song I like would take too long.

Newspaper Comics

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Webcomics

Web Video

Western Animation

    Former favourites 
Works I no longer like and have abandoned entirely
  • The Katzenjammer Kids: As a kid, I loved the characters' antics. Now I just think it's annoying when the wrong person is punished, and the perpetrator gets away.
  • Vocaloid: After I started listening to more Japanese music with human vocalists (mostly Touhou Fan Music), I started to enjoy their artificial, robotic voices significantly less. (While I'm fine with that if it's relevant to the content of a song, most of the time that's not the case.)
  • Evillious Chronicles: For a while I was fascinated by the story even though I tend to dislike dark stories and overly complicated stories, but these problems eventually caught up to the series and turned me off it. And now that I have stopped listening to Vocaloid anyway, there's next to no chance that I will return to this.
  • Hell's Kitchen: I simply got tired of watching people fail at cooking and watching Ramsay being so harsh on them.
  • The Irate Gamer: I enjoyed his videos as a young teenager, but when I rewatched the show a bit as an adult, it did not hold up at all.
  • Candy Crush Saga: I enjoyed it a bit at the start, but it quickly became more annoying and frustrating than fun. Unfortunately I got a bit addicted, and kept on playing hoping it would get fun again... but around level 300, I went to the wiki and discovered that it'd be a very, very long time until something potentially interesting would happen, so I quit the game and never looked back. I'm just glad that I never spent real money on it, and that the experience pretty much turned me off Allegedly Free Games for good.
  • The doujin music circle Ariabl'eyeS. I used to like them because their music sounded cool... and then I read their lyrics and found out that most of them amount to relentless misery. Needless to say, it led to a case of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. Shuugeki no Romanesque in particular was so cruel and pointless that it turned me off the band for good. Summary: A witch makes a girl possessed by a demon so that her lover is forced to kill her. (Worse, she seems to do it For the Evulz in the album itself, and the predecessor showing that she's motivated by spite doesn't make it much better). There's interesting or meaningful tragedy, and there's the narrative raining misery on its characters for the sake of it. This is the latter.
  • Professor Layton: I was alienated by the excessively depressing ending of Professor Layton and the Unwound Future and have refused to touch the series ever since. Considering the titular character's Woobie entry on the series' YMMV page, it seems like later entries in the series double down on saddling him with misery, which doesn't exactly make me want to give it a second chance. Why does he have to have dramatic plots and a tragic backstory? Why can't he just be a likable gentleman solving puzzles?

Works I have lost interest in, but retain some fondness for

  • BeForU: This was the first J-pop group I liked. I discovered it thanks to DDR, and used to enjoy their music a lot. The main reason I stopped listening to them was that I got tired of listening to the same songs over and over after they broke up. I have a similar relationship with fellow former BEMANI group TËЯRA.
  • Chuggaaconroy and The Runaway Guys: I just don't feel like watching Let's Plays now... most of the time I'd rather just play the game myself.
  • MythBusters: I got tired of the concept and annoyed by the repetitive format, but still have fond memories.
  • NateWantsToBattle
  • The Suite Life of Zack & Cody
  • Top Gear (the Hammond/Clarkson/May era): Got tired of the edgier jokes, but can't fully dislike it because there are still a lot of good funny moments.

Works I still like, but no longer consider favourites

  • Cars: I still think it has some merit, but... can't call it a favourite as an adult.
  • Frozen: There's a lot to like about it, and it has a lot of great concepts, but upon rewatch I definitely feel that it was let down by the writing.

    Tropes that apply to me 
  • Accentuate the Negative: Compare the length of the "Favourite Tropes" folder to that of the "Pet-Peeve Tropes" folder. I have 38 favourites and 121 pet peeves (130 if we count the ones that aren't really tropes). Then again, a lot of the tropes I hate are Cynicism Tropes, so... Zig-Zagged Accentuate the Negative?
  • Afraid of Needles: Needles tend to make me come close to fainting.
  • All Women Love Shoes: Inverted. I can enjoy shopping for clothes, but I find shoes completely uninteresting.
  • Apologises a Lot: Sorry about this! (In all seriousness: I'd rather apologize too often than not often enough.)
  • Artifact Name: My username is kind of outdated.
    • My username was derived from the song title "Healing Vision (Angelic Mix)" (the banner writes it with tildes and not parentheses) from DanceDanceRevolution. I chose it many years ago because I wanted to join a DDR forum and needed a username. However, I never joined because I was too shy. I decided to return later because I thought the forum and the community would still be there. I was wrong. However, I kept the username to remind myself to join the fun before it's too late.note 
    • However, "Maths" is still right because I like mathematics, and "Angelic Version" refers to the fact that I try to be polite and positive on the Internet. You can say that while the structure of the name is an artifact, the individual components are still relevant.
  • Author Appeal: A lot of the stuff I make (including some of the stuff I write on TV Tropes) would not exist if I didn't find at least some aspect of it fascinating. That doesn't necessarily mean that I enjoy the works themselves, just that I find them interesting to talk about — I had more fun writing the Roll-and-Move page than I've ever had with a roll-and-move game.
  • Buffy Speak: I sometimes talk this way.
  • Captain Obvious: I sometimes state the obvious.
  • Deadpan Snarker: I have tried to be a snarker at times, but most of the time I instead try to be understanding and give the benefit of the doubt.
  • Doing It for the Art: It feels pretentious to say this about the relatively simple stuff I've made, but I didn't sell it, so I definitely didn't do it for the money...
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: As someone that isn't too fond of swearing, I usually end up using these or Unusual Euphemisms.
  • Grammar Nazi: I used to be a little too fond of pointing out typos, misspellings and grammatical mistakes. Sometimes I'll still point them out, but I try to be tasteful about it, so I mostly limit it to situations like the following:
    • The person being corrected wanted to be corrected.note 
    • There's a blatant mistake in a place where you'd expect it to get caught before it was too late (e.g. a Tyop on the Cover).
    • The mistake led to unintentional humour, and I have no reason to believe the person who made the mistake would be sensitive about someone pointing it out.
    • Pointing out a mistake that makes a bragging or derogatory comment look foolish (e.g. pointing out the mistake after someone wrote "you're English sucks").
  • Hair Decorations: I like to wear a hair band to look cute and keep my hair away from my eyes.
  • Learnt English from Watching Television: I did take English classes too, but I feel that I learnt more from watching TV, playing games, and reading stuff on the Internet.
  • No Sense of Direction: I have a really bad sense of direction.
  • Not a Morning Person: I'd probably be nocturnal if I could.
  • Picky Eater: I'm sensitive to unfamiliar tastes, unfamiliar textures, unfamiliar combinations of taste and texture, and bitter flavours.
  • Ridiculous Procrastinator: I have procrastinated a lot on some TV Tropes stuff. For instance, some of my TLP drafts stalled in the TLP for embarrassingly long times, and this page went almost seven years without any major updates.
  • Self-Deprecation: I've used some of this page to poke fun at myself.
  • Spoiler Hound: I will often read spoilers in advance - if I hate the plot, it'll make me regret ever getting into the work, and if I like it, I'll enjoy it even though I know what's going to happen.
  • Sweet Tooth: Sweets taste so good!
  • The Teetotaler: I don't find alcohol appealing at all, and it's safer (and cheaper) to stay away from it.
  • Third-Person Person: Averted, even for this page. I tried, but it felt strange and pretentious.
  • TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: I have got stuck on this site for hours.
  • Understatement: I sometimes use these because there's something really appealing about referring to a total disaster as "not ideal".

    My reactions to media 
Note that I'm talking about my personal reactions here, even though Audience Reactions are normally supposed to be about the (vocal) audience as a whole, or at least significant subsets of it.

  • Angst Aversion: I tend to be seriously put off by works with a lot of angst. I just find them too painful to watch. Especially if they have a Downer Ending. If I consider checking out a work, I'll often read spoilers advance because I don't want to get invested in a work that will just leave me sad in the end.
  • Audience-Alienating Ending: I'm firmly in the "a terrible ending sours the whole experience" camp, so I often read spoilers in advance because I don't want to waste time on something that will ultimately leave me feeling that way.
  • Commitment Anxiety: I get this a lot. I don't want to invest countless hours into a work just to end up being unsatisfied by it, or even hating it. This is one of the main reasons I'm a Spoiler Hound — if I'm going to get invested in a work, I want to make sure it won't leave me upset or disappointed.
  • Critical Backlash: It is far from uncommon that I try a heavily criticized work and end up thinking it's flawed, but not that bad.
  • Damsel Scrappy: I tend to dislike characters who primarily exist to need to be rescued. Princess Peach is one of the worst offenders.
  • Guilty Pleasures: About half of the media I enjoy.
  • Hype Aversion: Too much hype has occsaionally made me reluctant to check out various works. This was one of the reasons I was reluctant to play Undertale (the other was that if I did end up liking it, I'd risk being associated with a fandom that had a terrible reputation).
  • Hype Backlash: My reaction to WALL•E and Star Wars was pretty much "meh" and "why is this so beloved?" While this video made me respect what the former was going for,note  I still remember it as a pretty boring watch.
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: I tend to be put off by high difficulty - most of the time I don't feel like dedicating a lot of time and effort to a video game. I can still respect these games as long as they're well-designed, but they're not something I want to spend my time on.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: While I tend to be tolerant when it comes to sequels recycling elements, I did have this reaction to the New Super Mario Bros. series. Would it really have been too hard to change up the Video Game Settings a bit?
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: This is a tricky one... It's a bit frustrating to finish a work and wish it were longer. On the other hand, the prevalence of this reaction may lead creators to fill their works with Padding, which is not desirable either. In a game, I probably won't mind optional Fake Longevity, but obligatory padding is bad.
  • Nostalgia Filter: In some cases I have noticed myself favouring works I have good memories of while being more critical of new stuff. I try to be aware of it and figure out when it really is worse (maybe because of Sequelitis or Seasonal Rot), and when it's just my Nostalgia Filter talking.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: I don't mind romance in general, but I'd rather consume a work that focuses on it than waste time on a pointless romance subplot in a work whose main plot is far more important and interesting.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks!: I think I'm more forgiving of this than most. It's not a copy or a clone just because it borrows a few ideas. And even if it is a clone, I'd rather you just use the solid formula without throwing in a gimmick that tries to make the work stands out, but ends up just distracting from the core appeal. Also, I think people putting too much weight on "originality" leads to mediocre or bad subversions getting praise solely because of the surprise factor and novelty.
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This is another reason I'm often put off by dark works. If both sides in a conflict are equally horrible, or it's obvious that the sympathetic characters will end up dead or miserable, why should I care what happens?note 

    Favourite Tropes 

     Pet-Peeve Tropes 
  • Abduction Is Love: Creepy.
  • Abusive Parents
  • Allegedly Free Game
  • All for Nothing: It's just frustrating to watch.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys
  • Anyone Can Die: It's often a sign of a story that tries too hard to be edgy, and it tends to lead to Too Bleak, Stopped Caring (why should I get invested in any of these characters if they're probably going to bite the dust soon anyway?). I also believe that even from a Rule of Drama perspective, killing too many characters is often a mistake because it cuts off other interesting story possibilities (for instance, "Bob survives the war and now has to deal with Survivor Guilt" is more interesting than "Bob died in the war").
  • Appeal to Novelty: Specifically the idea that novel writing choices are good because they're novel. I feel like quite a few otherwise meh story beats and even some bad ones got a pass because they were "fresh". (Bonus points if the thing wasn't even novel.)
  • Arranged Marriage: This tends to lead to conflicts I don't find enjoyable at all.
  • Auto-Scrolling Level: I'd rather explore the levels at my own pace.
  • Balance Between Good and Evil: Why would you want a balance between them? Just promote Good.
  • Because Destiny Says So: Because it's an invoked form of You Can't Fight Fate, which I dislike.
  • Big Boo's Haunt: For the New Super Mario Bros. games specifically. I don't enjoy the atmosphere of these levels, and the level design often relies on tricks and gimmicks that are more annoying than fun. It doesn't help that they appear in nearly every world for some reason, breaking up a series of levels with more enjoyable settings and usually feeling out of place.
  • Black-and-Grey Morality: While not as bad as flat-out Evil Versus Evil, these works are also prone to being excessively cynical to the point of inducing Too Bleak, Stopped Caring.
  • Blamed for Being Railroaded: Obnoxious.
  • Boss Battle: Specifically, boss battles shoehorned into games that really have no business featuring them, such as puzzle games. Offenders include Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and Koloro, whose mechanics don't make for good battles and seem to have them just because "it's a game, so we have to have boss battles!". More controversially, I believe something similar applies to quite a few platform games, where the battles feel mostly like an unwelcome pause from the fun exploration.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory
  • Break the Cutie: Unless the cutie ends up recovering, I find it too cruel.
  • Brought Down to Normal: When it happens to a protagonist that had cool and/or useful powers, I tend find it too sad.
  • Bury Your Gays: Not that gay characters need to be immortal, but considering the ugly history of killing off LGBTQ characters and the low amount of good gay representation, I definitely think writers should think twice before killing off gay characters.
  • Butterfly of Doom: I hate its use in stories about accepting things as they are, as if trying to improve a bad situation were inherently misguided. It doesn't help that the unintended horrible consequences may be something stupidly improbable.
  • Chainmail Bikini: At this point, why bother wearing armour at all? If the character has to be sexualized, a normal bikini looks better and makes about as much sense. (Unless it's purely ornamental armour, and even then I'm not a fan.)
  • Chickification
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Randomly getting rid of characters with no explanation is bad.
  • Cleavage Window: If you insist on sexualizing the character, at least choose a less stupid-looking costume.
  • Collateral Angst: Killing off a character just to generate cheap angst for another? Ew.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: To be honest, this comes off as an excuse to be cruel, and not a genuine desire to help.
  • Cute and Psycho: I think this is a stupid way to make a "quirky" or "interesting" character who will probably just end up being unpleasant. Not helping are a few examples of super overrated characters who fit this trope, with Flandre Scarlet and Tinkaton coming to mind.
  • Damsel in Distress: Specifically, the Excuse Plot that revolves around saving a damsel who only exists to need to be saved. I don't mind most Excuse Plots, but this one irks me. It irks me a bit more if the damsel also happens to be a princess. It irks me a lot more if The Smurfette Principle is also in play.
  • Darker and Edgier: I dislike dark and edgy works, so I won't appreciate it if you change a work/series to become darker and edgier.
  • Death by Childbirth
  • Deconstruction:
    • On the trope itself: I usually dislike dark deconstructions unless they deconstruct something I don't like. I enjoy the optimistic and escapist aspects of fiction, so I don't exactly appreciate it when a work more or less tells me that my fantasies are stupid because they would for whatever reason have negative consequences in Real Life. Even if there's a reconstruction to soften the blow, or the deconstruction wasn't really dark in the first place, I might still not like it.
    • On the use of the word: Some tropers seem to think that dark uses of a trope are automatically smarter and more realistic, so they keep saying "deconstructed" when Played for Drama or Played for Horror would have been more appropriate. This hasn't exactly made me feel better about the term.
    • In the words of Cliché: "Lol, tropes are stupid. I'm so edgy."
  • Decoy Protagonist
  • Designated Victim: I usually end up disliking these characters because it's pretty annoying to have a character who primarily exists to need to be rescued over and over. That these characters tend to be female doesn't help.
  • Diabolus ex Machina
  • Disguised Horror Story: If I get into a work that seems light-hearted, it's because I wanted to see something lighthearted! It's so irritating that the mere existence of this trope means I have to look up every lighthearted-seeming work I'm considering just to make sure it's not one of these.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Especially when used in unpleasant morality tales that just end up making me feel bad for the "bad person" who supposedly deserved it.
  • Double Standard
  • Downer Ending: You can tell a tragic story that I find moving, but most of the time, I'll feel that you wasted my time with pointless, depressing crap. I can enjoy, or even love, Downer Endings if written well, but I am much harsher on them compared to Happy Endings (and to a lesser degree Bittersweet Endings) — I will usually dislike them unless they make perfect sense, were properly foreshadowed, and preferably serve a purpose that goes beyond just "I just wanted to make the audience cry." (Of course, it also shouldn't have a purpose I dislike. So please don't have a character randomly die in a car accident at the end because "that sometimes happens in real life" or "it illustrates the fragility of life" or whatever.)
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him
  • Dumb Is Good
  • Education Mama
  • Evil All Along: It usually results in underdeveloped villains who kind of come of out nowhere, and rarely adds anything to the narrative beyond "that was a surprise, and therefore good, right?"
  • Evil Is Petty: I tend to hate villains with petty motivations - and not in a Love to Hate way. I just plain hate them and wish they'd go away.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Four words: Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. Bonus points if it's also clumsily executed. (glances at Wily Beast and Weakest Creature)
  • Face Heel Door Slam
  • Fake Difficulty in most, if not all, of its forms.
  • Fake Longevity: Don't ask me to beat the game again with a different character. If I enjoy the game and think it's worth doing, I'll replay it anyway.
  • Fantasy-Forbidding Father
  • Fanwork Ban: As someone who values Fan Works, I very much dislike this unless it's something obviously reasonable like "don't make fan works to promote a political agenda" or "don't make Rule 34 content featuring minors". If the ban is particularly strict, I will avoid the associated franchise on principle even if I wasn't planning to create or consume fan works myself.
  • Faux Action Girl
  • Follow in My Footsteps: When the parents try to force the child to follow in their footsteps and don't care about the child's wishes. It's infuriating.
  • Freemium Timer: It's just an annoying way to squeeze money out of players. I don't believe the "it's an Anti Poop-Socking mechanic" excuse at all — if that were the motivation, why allow the players to circumvent it if they have enough money to blow?
  • Gaia's Vengeance: If the vengeance is motivated by something like Science Is Bad or "progress is bad".
  • Gainax Ending
  • Gift of the Magi Plot: The characters try to make a sacrifice to get their loved one a nice gift, but all they accomplish is leaving themselves worse off. Honestly that feels more like the author playing a stupid, cruel joke on the characters than something heartwarming. I don't even think deliberately comedic variations are funny.
  • Gut Punch
  • Hard Truth Aesop: Bonus points if the "hard truth" itself is bad.
  • Heroic Mime: To me it's just an excuse to make a boring protagonist and not even bother to write dialogue for them. It doesn't even help increase immersion because, y'know, I talk in real life. In fact, if the character is inexplicably silent (i.e. they don't even have speech you don't get to see/hear, and don't suffer from muteness in-universe), all this trope accomplishes is hurting my immersion. If you want me to imagine I'm the character, let me pick dialogue options that reflect me instead.
  • Hidden Trackable Information: Memorization is a tedious skill that just reminds me of the most boring parts of school. It's not fun when I feel like I have to either do it or compromise my performance in a game. It's also frustrating if there's too much to keep track of, and the game wants to force me to make an educated guess instead of just letting me have the information.
  • Hope Spot
  • Hysterical Woman
  • Kill the Cutie
  • Kill the Ones You Love
  • Lampshade Hanging: Specifically lampshading something I consider an actual flaw of the work. It just comes across as "I know there's a problem, but I'm too lazy to fix it".
  • Life Isn't Fair: Then we should strive to make it fairer, not just accept it! (This phrase is also infuriating if used in Evil Gloating, but at least then the work probably condemns the attitude.)
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: Often leads to sexual harassment being Played for Laughs. Ew, no thanks.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Some randomness can be fun, but games with an excessive amount of it or even based purely on randomness do not interest me at all. The closest I have to an exception is Fluxx, and that one (1) gets away with it because it's wacky and chaotic enough to be fun, and (2) even that is something I need to be in a specific mood to enjoy.
  • Ludd Was Right
  • Lyrical Dissonance: It can be used well for comedic effect, and it sometimes works well for drama (e.g. an upbeat song about a Stepford Smiler), but a lot of the time it feels like they simply didn't bother to make sure the music fit the lyrics.
  • Mary Sue:
    • Not the "trope" itself, but the overuse of the term. Some critics seem to use this label as a weapon against characters they dislike, and some are too eager to use it on characters who just turn out to be more than boring losers. The Double Standard with female characters getting this more often than male characters certainly doesn't help.
    • I do dislike some overly perfect characters, but usually only very egregious examples and characters in a work I dislike anyway.
  • Moment of Awesome: Not an awesome moment itself, obviously, but an awesome moment that is negated later (for instance a so-called Determinator giving a speech about how they'll never give up, only to give up five minutes later for a stupid reason). Once I've seen the invalidation(s), knowing that it's coming ruins the awesome moment.
  • A Match Made in Stockholm: Creepy.
  • Might Makes Right
  • Minimalism: It can be done well, but a lot of the time I think it's unnecessarily limiting, and I think a lot of attempts at minimalism just end up looking boring and forgettable.
  • Misery Builds Character: A lot of the time it just leads to more misery, and even if it may "build character" in some cases, is it really worth it? I especially hate it when it's implied (or outright stated) that allowing some misery is a good thing because of this trope — even if it does, we should strive to find alternative, less miserable ways to "build character."
  • The Mockbuster: Most of these don't even reach So Bad, It's Good.
  • New Media Are Evil
  • No Ending: I got into this thing because I wanted a resolution! (Though I will say that no ending is better than a terrible one - at least the former allows you to imagine something good without having to resort to Fanon Discontinuity.)
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
  • The One Guy
  • Overprotective Dad
  • Padding: I don't mind taking a few breaks to let the story and audience breathe, but when it gets excessive, it's pretty annoying.
  • Player Punch: Most of these are just unnecessarily cruel and not enjoyable at all. I don't even think it's good for catharsis — it's more likely to make me go, "screw this work" than "screw the villain", and if the damage cannot be undone, the punch just makes a victory against the villain feel more empty, not more satisfying, because it makes the ending less happy. Interestingly, the Analysis subpage describes exactly how to use this trope so I would hate it as much as possible.
  • Predation Is Natural: I obviously know it is in real life, but in works featuring sapient talking animals, this mostly comes off as unnecessary and disturbing realism.
  • The Problem with Fighting Death: It's tied to themes of accepting death and that You Can't Fight Fate, both of which I dislike.
  • "Reading Is Cool" Aesop: Mostly because I find it so annoying that books get put on a pedestal by people who disparage other forms of media. In fact, this attitude is a big factor in why I don't have much interest in reading fiction — I don't want to be on the "same side" as book snobs.
  • Revenge by Proxy: It's so disgusting to kill or harm an innocent person just to hurt someone else.
  • Roll-and-Move: Most games that use this have minimal player agency and bland designs that amount to "roll the dice, move as the dice says, then do what the space you land on says". They're really boring and unsatisfying to play, and worse, they're so common that they gave me a poor impression of the Board Game medium as a whole.
  • Romanticized Abuse: It's so creepy and off-putting.
  • Rubik's Cube: International Genius Symbol: A lazy and inaccurate way to say "hey, this character is smart!" instead of actually having them do something smart. Smart People Play Chess has similar problems.
  • Save the Princess: See Damsel in Distress, and add the disdain I have because of my antiroyalist views, and my annoyance at the Super Mario Bros. series' overuses of this trope.
  • Science Is Bad
  • Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: As if rendering the characters' accomplishments moot weren't cruel enough, the author makes them die senselessly for good measure. Ugh.
  • Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!
  • Sins of Our Fathers: Punishing a child for an ancestor's crimes is such a gross, twisted form of "justice".
  • The Smurfette Principle
  • Staking the Loved One
  • Stalking is Love
  • Straw Vegetarian: Vegans and vegetarians get enough bile as it is. (This is coming from someone who is neither.)
  • Stuffed into the Fridge
  • Sudden Downer Ending: See Downer Ending and add the frustration of the tragic ending being abrupt and probably only done for the shock value.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome
  • Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: When overdone, it makes the soundtrack repetitive and monotonous. In particular, I really dislike its use in Yoshi's Crafted World, whose soundtrack had too many boring remixes of the main theme (which wasn't even that good in the first place), and used it in level themes where it felt out of place. This was especially disappointing because Yoshi's Woolly World had much more varied and fun music. And no, the fact that this stupid trope was apparently used in earlier Yoshi games doesn't make it any better! A repetitive soundtrack shouldn't be a staple of a series!
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks!: I think some people are too quick to bash works over similarities to other works. A work that was heavily inspired by another work can still be worthwhile. And in some cases, the "rip-off" isn't even that similar to the "original", or couldn't have been inspired by the "original".
  • This Is Reality: Both because it's often combined with annoying forms of realism (or "realism") and because someone in a work of fiction insisting that they live in reality is instant Narm.
  • Tough Love
  • Tragic Dream
  • Tragic Monster: I find the idea of an innocent character being turned into a monster through no fault of their own too cruel. While I would accept this trope if the character gets cured, it all too often ends with Staking the Loved One instead.
  • True Art Is Angsty
  • Under the Sea: While I like the idea of exploring these places, most of the time I just end up getting annoyed by the swimming controls and/or the air mechanics.
  • Unstable Powered Woman: Because of its connection to Hysterical Woman.
  • Upsetting the Balance
  • Vain Sorceress: When "I want to look pretty" is the motivation for her crimes.
  • Villain Protagonist: It's especially off-putting in games - it's one thing to passively watch a villain commit crimes, but I really don't want to actively make the fictional world a worse place. (Though I'm probably fine with it if I'm playing as a villain fighting an even worse villain, playing as a villain in a Go-Karting with Bowser scenario, or if the whole thing is Played for Laughs and not too tasteless.)
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: I dislike this mockery of idealism.
  • Writer Revolt: This often just comes off as a writer making the work worse for petty and/or spiteful reasons.
  • Yandere: Why would you want such an insane person around? What's the appeal?
  • Yank the Dog's Chain
  • You Can't Fight Fate
  • Insisting that everything happens for a reason:
    • So "fate" (or some other power) caused everything bad that has ever happened in the service of some questionable (and often unclear) goal? I don't find that comforting. I find it horrifying that "fate" is so happy to sacrifice countless innocent lives and cause extreme amounts of misery...
    • I also dislike this for its implication that trying to improve the past will just make things worse.
  • Related to the above: Stories about accepting things as they are, as if trying to improve a bad situation were inherently misguided.
  • Glorification of monarchy.
  • Pretty much anything that relies on shock value.
  • Characters with an "I'm smart/competent, so I can get away with acting like a Jerkass" attitude. I just find them insufferable. It's especially bad if this is done to make the character "cool".
  • Most conflicts involving abuse of power/authority. They just infuriate me too much. Even if the authority figure is supposed to be sympathetic, there's a good chance I'll hate them if they're being unreasonable.
  • Very difficult or punishing games. I don't enjoy being frustrated, and I don't find any satisfaction in overcoming this kind of excessively difficult and/or punishing challenge when the "reward" for doing it amounts to "I wasted my time and effort on a game I didn't enjoy just so I could say I beat it".
  • Edginess, i.e. gratuitous dark elements that mostly serve as an attention grab. Common examples:
    • Randomly killing off characters just to shock you. Bonus points if it happens to a beloved character or is done multiple times.
    • Shoving in dark elements that don't fit the setting or characters. Shadow the Hedgehog is a notorious example.
    • Bad uses of Surprise Creepy/Disguised Horror Story that amount to "You thought you were getting something fun and lighthearted? Nope! Here, have a parade of graphic death scenes!". Bonus points if that's the whole reason the work exists, such as the song "MopeMope" by LeaF and Optie, which has absolutely nothing to offer if you take away the gimmick.
    • A shallow Dystopian setting that serves no purpose other than being bleak for the sake of it, such as the Animal Realm in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.note 
    • The worst cases of edginess incorporate real-life issues in insensitive, thoughtless or flat-out offensive ways. Examples: "let's shove in lots of pointless rape scenes that serve no purpose other than to show how evil the villain is", "let's reveal that our villain orchestrated 9/11", or even "let's have you play as a school shooter".note 
  • "Interesting moral dilemmas" that amount to glorified trolley problems.

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top