Tropes you've always wanted to avert or subvert...

I was under the impression that the sword fight was a matter of honor as well, so even of the sword guy went straight for the attack, the crowd would've still shamed him for being unfair. Was it supposed to be a fight to the death?

He likely didn't expect a gun to get pulled out, either. Did he even know about guns?

Sympathetic combat pragmatism, from what I can tell, is a subversion/aversion of heroes having honor in combat when not holding back would've solved entire plots in seconds. And when said honor stretches Suspension of Disbelief, so the honor comes off as existing purely to keep the plot.

edited 28th Apr '16 4:13:10 AM by hellomoto

I know, the issue with Pragmatist in this case come more as genre savy "and suddenly the hero do the smart thing and kill the bastard with one shot" but I feel it have devold into "the hero show of who cool he is", many Avatar hater kept saying "just blow the whole place" which it make realize that "make X look cool" is the only thing pragmatist have devold into "how cool it is"

In my case something I want to subvert if only to be funny is Talk to the fist: where the big bad start talking, the hero try to atack him in middle of speech...only for big bag to doge and kick the living hell of it saying "never interrupt somone when you speak, did you grow up in a farm"

Or even better, having the entire team atack him and he just keep doging AND talking, not giving a shit that they start earlier

Yeah,Blone guy being evil,dumb have become a form of prejudice and it seen a steriotype against White people

indeed. I always wanted at least make them people first then hair Color second.

I mentioned it on other threads, so I might as well talk about it here: heroic sacrifices are rare. I don't really know why, but I find a character facing the possibility of death and their luck running out more dramatic than a character facing the certainty of death; maybe because Hope Is Scary.

Can you explain better? I dont get you but sound intersting

If the character and audience know the former will die trying to do something, then it's completely expected when they do. If both see a possibility for survival, then it personally hits me harder when that possibility is unrealized.

edited 29th Apr '16 12:20:39 AM by Novis

I always wanted to avert Pair the Spares and make sure any pairing will consist of people who are into each other or are already together, with no major character left behind. If characters are single, they stay single. So is Satellite Love Interest, because any character that has a name will be introduced because they have an impact on the plot or a role to serve, but never to serve as a character's love interest. I will sooner make a character with the sole purpose is to be The Medic with zero development than do the former.

Heroic sacrifices are rare because one generally does not want to kill off heroes, often the protagonists of the plot. Or at least useful characters who push the plot forward by doing stuff.

edited 29th Apr '16 3:38:35 AM by hellomoto

What Measure Is a Mook?

I don't care what your noble goal is. If you're gunning down dozens of people without even a hint of remorse, you've got issues.

I meant rare in my own work rather than just in general, for the reasons I gave. (You did partially explain why I'm so cautious of killing characters at all though.)

edited 29th Apr '16 5:24:10 PM by Novis

I agree; one of the most important things that comes up in warfare is that killing a human being is a very big deal (even someone with no empathy for other people will have a pragmatic fear response), it's also physically difficult enough to always be a deliberate act. We're social creatures after all.

Speaking of, I'd love to see Made of Plasticine and Made of Iron subverted to avert Critical Existence Failure; a video game where both the PC and enemies (not necessarily humans; robots and aliens can make for better gameplay balance) suffer realistic damage (e.g. tracking damage not just to limbs, but organs and systems) and players having to rely on In-Universe signs instead of a Life Meter. With Save Points giving you a list of all the ways you've been beaten up since the last one.

edited 2nd Jun '16 8:01:53 AM by Bisected8

Shorter Means Smarter

This trope destroyed my self esteem as a kid. I was really tall and broad for my age, and it was miserable for someone as shy as me. I was so self conscious. And it did not help everyone I saw on TV or read in books that looked like me was a dumb bully. The good, smart characters we always short. Being the "smart kid" was the only thing I had going for me, so this hurt. I felt like a dumb oaf

edited 6th Jun '16 3:57:20 PM by Cailleach

The Worf Effect.

A lot of good characters have been ruined by being designated as the guy who gets beaten in order to hype up a new character.

However, when you need to establish the threat of a villain or hero, you need them to do something.

That's why I think it'd be better to avert it by simply not always having it be one person. Make the Worf fit the situation rather than always using the same character(s). Also, make sure the character who loses have a number of victories before hand so that it doesn't just seem like all they do is Worf.

Not sure if this really works as well as other examples, but it's what I'd do.

Police Are Useless and Redshirt Army: I'm trying to demonstrate in the game I'm creating that the police are actually fairly competent, even if they are having a bit of trouble with the situation the hero's dealing with. I am having trouble figuring out exactly how to get this across, though...

I, being someone who writes a horrifying amount of OCS, try to avoid anything relating to Mary Sue tropes like the plague.

Another trope I hate is Ron the Death Eater . Holy hell I hate that trope, it makes me beat my head on my desk every time I come across it.

Het is Ew also is something I try to run from, seeing as I have a Tumblr account (that I try not to use, but sadly it's one of the only places I can try to get exposure for my art/writing) and I see enough of that crap scrolling through my feed there.

I guess this isn't an aversion or even a subversion (since the protagonists and the player will know this from the get-go, though it might be seen as a subversion from the antagonist's standpoint. Perhaps a mild deconstruction?): God Is Evil and Rage Against the Heavens. The antagonists believe that the setting's YHWH-expy is evil, and are trying to defeat him by any means necessary. However, they do not exist in a setting where this is the case, and are causing some pretty massive problems for humanity at large by trying to fight against him.

Isn't what you're describing the basic premise of Gnosticism, give or take some of the finer details?

Now, as far as what I'd like to do personally if I ever got together sufficient dedication to produce a creative work? Well, I'm generally against the idea of thinking in terms of particular tropes, while good storytelling certainly adheres to certain conventions, it does so organically. That said, there is one thing in particular I'd love to do away with, namely certain aspects of the Hollywood Autism portrayal of individuals on the autistic spectrum. I'm not sure how effective I would be at this however, as, as my posting history will probably attest, I am somewhat prone to Beige Prose. That works out quite well in my field*, but even modern hard science fiction isn't particularly compatible with that particular sort of writing style.

* medical research, currently in the "looking for a job" holding pattern, hence the free time.

edited 7th Jun '16 10:53:28 PM by CaptainCapsase

Correct: In Gnosticism there's a being known as the Demiurge who's sometimes compared to Yahweh and is also often considered evil. In fact, the being's name in-universe used to be "Yaltabaoth" (he currently goes by Metatron). Having said that, he's less of a creator and more of a "law deity" (he's also associated with wisdom and technology). He didn't make the human race, he just found a planet with some really primitive humans on it and decided to "adopt" them. So, arguably he isn't very much like the Gnostic Demiurge.

edited 8th Jun '16 5:07:32 PM by Protagonist506

X3 and

Right on friend. I've been wanting to see a subversion of Rage Against the Heavens and God Is Evil for a pretty long time.

I've always felt it was a bit too predictable.

Thanks! If you like, I can send you more info on my project.

A lot of those stories just turn God into a generic Dark Overlord, which feels like wasted potential.

Anyway: "In English, please?" This is just annoying more often than not, especially if the character who's asking just comes of as incompetent. (I don't buy that a cyborg who investigates aliens and superhumans for a living wouldn't recognize the word "transhumanism" for example.)

Particularly ironic is that the Bible seems to portray Satan as an egotistical Knight Templar, similar to how we might think to portray an evil version of God.

What I'm going for is more akin to a Reconstruction of the "Old Testament God"-he's Good Is Not Soft to be sure (which is why the villains want to rebel against him), but he also falls frequently into the category of the Extremist Was Right.

edited 11th Jun '16 2:24:10 PM by Protagonist506

I've been working on an idea for a while now that plays with Sealed Evil in a Can. The twist/subversion revolves around the fact that the villains count on being sealed . In fact, can unknown to the world at large, they designed the system by which they're supposedly sealed for a generation, only to eventually rise again even the seal weakens (or is broken by their followers).

Their motivation is that, after conquering the world originally, they found Victory Is Boring and realized they had more fun conquering than ruling.

edited 15th Jun '16 8:08:16 PM by sgamer82

Red Shirt Army and similar tropes. Also if characters can end up recovering from near-fatal circumstances then have it apply to everyone, not just the protagonists. Perhaps to deconstruct this would be to have the majority of combatants to recover through being rebuilt or using cybernetics to maintain a population for an army. They could also end up being a patchwork of reattached limbs and prosthetics because of this instead of making a full recovery with little or no scarring. This may be inversion of We Have Reserves as well.

Almost every story based around a war contains lots of expendable Cannon Fodder with little thought of the preservation of soldiers so the other extreme might be interesting to see in action

edited 25th Jun '16 2:40:14 PM by Spartan125

TV Genius

I want to destroy it. I'm "profoundly gifted" and I can tell you that gifted people are a diverse bunch, but there are a few more common traits the media couldn't possibly get more wrong if they wanted to. The one that bugs me the most is the Straw Vulcan portrayal. And not just because straw characters are awful (Which they are), but because a very common trait of giftedness is hypersensitivity and hyperactivity, and generally being even more emotional than your peers. My gifted classroom as a kid had several holes punched in its walls. There's also a tendency for academic under-achievement, not over-achievement (though there are exceptions, like there are for everything, a profoundly gifted kid being the straight-A, studious teacher's pet is far from the norm) I just someone to do a portrayal of a gifted child (or adult) as the over-emotional problem child who cries over everything, gets straight D's, and won't sit still, for a change

And it really does a disservice to gifted children who never get identified as gifted, and never get the services they need, because they don't fit the media's warped model.