Have you ever used a trope you actively dislike?

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever used (either deliberately or unwittingly) tropes they actively dislike in their works? Let's try and not focus on why you dislike the trope, just how you used it.

Personally, I know that in my comics, I make far more use of the Rule of Index tropes then I normally approve of. I only consider it tolerable because of their non-serious nature, and even then, I still try and justify everything except the Rule of Funny as much as possible.

More seriously, my comics do make a fair amount of use of the "main characters/meaningless extras" divide that serves as a supertrope to things like Nominal Importance, A Million Is a Statistic, What Measure Is a Mook?, and so on. While those individual tropes certainly receive their fair share of parody or Take That!, the overall concept is very much present in a comic that divides between characters with some amount of unique detail and literal Faceless Masses. I still avoid callously slaughtering the latter, but it does bother me a bit whenever I rail against the aforesaid "only the main characters are people" tropes.

My current project also contains what is technically an example of Discount Lesbians, but it shouldn't count as an example, so that doesn't bother me.

Rape, Catgirls, a rapist catgirl . . . Basically, I give both my characters and my story a certain amount of dignity, violating either (in any sense of the word) only when I've constructed them or it in such a way that the violation won't destroy their or its dignity. In the case of rape, that meant openly and blatantly averting Defiled Forever even while I played other Rape Tropes straight. With catgirls, that meant finding some reasonable-sounding justification for how one could exist. (I've since used both in more than one story, with slightly different justifications each time.)

One of my novels contains a few tropes I don't like, such as Scarpia Ultimatum and (blatant and fanservice-y) Les Yay. I think I was partly trying to exorcise my own demons about various things, because I've stayed away from such sensationalistic stuff since then.

Stable Time Loop. It's actually a Hypocrisy- "Man, I hate that when this trope happens in other works. But in my work, it makes things so cool!"

edited 20th Oct '11 3:24:36 AM by dRoy

It's odd. I don't shy from killing off characters (most of my work involves military or paramilitary settings), but sometimes they way they die, anonymously, important enough to be named, speak a few lines, not enough to be described in detail. They didn't even truly rate Mauve Shirt despite being repeat characters often, they're closer to Spear Carrier than anything else. And they died without it being noticed, on a chaotic battlefield or alone and far from friends.

Something about that offends me rather deeply. I often linger on their deaths more than I did on their lives. I could, of course, answer these questions for myself. But I somehow feel I have no right to soften the blow. They remain as indistinct in death as they do in life, gone, a hole there, but never quite sure what shape it is.

edited 20th Oct '11 3:25:34 AM by Night

I've tried to use the Chosen One to varying levels of success, but I still can't bring myself to play it completely straight, I hate it so much.

That too.

Yes.

I also have the firm belief that a character has to earn it, instead of having something dictate their destiny—unless they're trying to break it.

After thinking it over some more, I've come to the conclusion that, while I avert the trope itself, I still use an awful lot of metaphors derived from Space Is an Ocean, so that's another one for the list.

Mauve Shirt, Redemption Equals Death, Death Is Cheap, White-Haired Pretty Boy, Heroic Sociopath, Dysfunction Junction, Jerk Justifications, This Loser Is You...

I tend to screw with them, though, so it's less annoying.

P.S. It must be noted that I don't actually hate any of those tropes per se, but I find them grossly over- and misused by people who think that using them as shortcuts instantly improves their story. This is a bad idea.

edited 20th Oct '11 3:48:17 PM by JHM

I've actually been delving deep into Unfortunate Implications lately for the sake of creating a world in which an Action Girl is apparently not allowed to exist storywise. Almost every woman has been subjected to destructive brainwashing and forced into a harem run by Complete Monsters who actively Mind Rape their victims just for the hell of it and if an Amazon Brigade is found the group is infiltrated, their leader seduced into betraying her own soldiers, and every female is enslaved or killed if they try to resist. The length of time an Amazon Brigade usually stays independent can be measured in days. With so few options, the smartest thing most girls can do is surrender themselves and live out their lives as Broken Birds. All this so I can reconstruct the Action Girl in the most awesome way! It actually forces me to think creatively. Whenever the heroine finds herself in a situation in which the rules of the story say she has to lose, she makes sure that the bad guy also loses forcing a draw.

One of my main characters has strong hints of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Unconventional appearance? Check. Fun loving and zany? Check. Comes from someplace strange? Check. Physically attractive? Check. Doesn't quite get Western culture? Sort of check. Comes into somebody's life and fills it with antics and joy? Thankfully, not exactly.

There's also a specific case of Redemption Equals Death, but since it's really more "redemption equals escaping a Fate Worse than Death", it shouldn't be too annoying.

edited 21st Oct '11 7:20:51 AM by KillerClowns

Element based magic. Something about it bothers me but I used it in an old comic idea. Earlier concepts had it start in a school setting so Element Based Magic School which is just about intolerable... which is why the school part, at least, did not last. I've given up writing it for a long time now (the ending was more or less a massive downer and I didn't like it) so I guess I didn't actually go through with it.

Probably a few. Mood Whiplash, Say My Name... It's kind of hard to recall from my 1st, most terrible fanfics.

My attitude towards Monologing is pretty much the same as The Incredibles'... A competent villain would probably Just Shoot Him, right? But I ended up doing it anyway in one of my works, because it made the villain more menacing. My personal view on villains is that they need to be either human enough that we understand them even as we loathe them, or despicable enough that we don't care, and this was an instance where I had to use the latter.

How, precisely, does engaging in Monologuing make a villain come across as more menacing? More of a 'classic' villain, maybe, but I for one would find a Genre Savvy villain much more menacing then the kind who monologues.

Like this.

"Do it? Dan, I'm not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

edited 22nd Oct '11 4:32:27 AM by OuthouseInferno

Missing Mom, although I probably don't like that due to that trope being absolutely abused in the Disney movies of my childhood.

Then I realized one of my characters didn't have a normal happy family with both parents after all, but that trope instead. Oh and the character also has to deal with the other part of the trope where the dad becomes more emotionally distant as a result.

edited 22nd Oct '11 6:11:29 AM by Hermiethefrog

Evil Gloating, for one, and also when they reveal in their plan how very screwed the main character was from the start.

Guide Dang It!, Fake Difficulty, No Plot? No Problem!