What's Your Pet Peeve Trope?

I say Four Eyes, Zero Soul. I have to wear glasses because I have myopia. So, to me, the idea that people wearing glasses are Jerkasses at best and Complete Monsters at worst is just loaded with Unfortunate Implications.

Sudden Musical Ending, Rule of Sexy, Fetish Retardant, Cat Smile, Cat Girl, Evil Costume Switch, TV Teen, and more.

When writers fail to realise physics doesn't work like that and when Writers Cannot Do Math.

A more recent one: reading the entire Honor Harrington series (twice) has led me loathe Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale.

Double Standards goes without saying.

edited 10th Aug '12 5:35:41 AM by arrowstorm

Double Standard tropes, of course. I don't think "Pet Peeve" is a strong enough term to describe how much we all dislike those tropes, but yeah.

Het Is Ew is a trope I dislike. Not that I'm a big reader of slash fiction but I've come across a few stories that feature it and it never fails to make me roll my eyes.

Straw Vulcan (and its relatives). Ever since early elementary school, I've been pissed off by this one. In part because it reflects the beliefs of way too many people in reality, and in part because these beliefs are so harmful.

Also, ones brought up by others in this thread:

Poor Communication Kills. Again, it reminds me too much of reality.

Black and White Morality. Bah.

Protagonist-Centered Morality and A Million is a Statistic. Bah and more bah.

Who Wants to Live Forever. Okay, so yes, eternal life I can expect would suck if you look at it in terms of "outliving the existence of this rock we know of as "Earth"", but within the scope of "outliving all of our loved ones, over and over again"... until we have a proper statistically significant sample of immortals in our population, I'm not accepting assumptions regarding how a human psychology will necessarily and unquestionably adapt to such a situation after a few hundred/thousand years.

edited 13th Aug '12 1:37:36 AM by Garbeld

Hollywood Atheist, Okay our standard deal. in exchange for your brother average intelligence you shall no longer be able to tolerate the idea of religion or that people will have different opinions about it than you do. Have a nice day.

Badass Decay

It is one thign to establish a character as a badass, it is another thing to give him character development and derail said badass to the point wher ehe is just a shadow of his former self.

The Dark Side. For me, Star Wars has essentially shown some major problems with this trope.

1. The Force is essentially like taking drugs. Indeed, Sith Lords act very much like The Aggressive Drug Dealer - Emperor Palpatine being the most obvious example - and when a Force user goes to the Dark Side, they are essentially acting like they're on drugs - like Anakin Skywalker. While a person on drugs can be dangerous, it just doesn't seem like a convincing definition of evil. After all, Palpatine in the Dark Empire series was acting very much like that drug dealer who sampled too much of his own product. Yeah, he's evil, no question, but acting like he's on drugs just killed my ability to take him seriously.
2. A number of times, there's the question of evil being necessary, and if becoming this ever has good results - short-term and long-term. Unfortunately, since the Dark Side is essentially being on crack, it turns into a question of why would anyone think getting hooked on addictive drugs is a good idea to begin with. It destroys story-telling possibilities before they even get off the ground.
3. The Dark Side is a product of Black-and-White Morality. BAWM has been shown to be very flawed, because gray areas have to set in at some point. In fact, Star Wars needs to do a better job of showing that it is possible to use the Force and stay firmly in the gray zone, and not have a "stay 100% light, or you become 100% dark" mentality all the time.
4. The Dark Side has been played up like it's very cool, but evidence has shown that it's never cool.

Do you see what I'm trying to get at here?

edited 21st Aug '12 6:31:27 AM by TiggersAreGreat

As a life-long Trekkie, I admit The Worf Effect does get kinda irritating. And further on the topic of Worf, while I actually like the Proud Warrior Race Guy as a trope, a little variety would be nice, as in, they're not always black or exotic and they have other interests besides glorious battle.

edited 21st Aug '12 7:17:57 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

That is the main thing, that sort of irritates me with the series. Why odes everything need to be in black and white? Why can't there be any grey areas? Why can't the Star Wars fandom accept that there are some grey areas?

I hate that trope to especially since it only exists so that the Hero can takeover beat the bad guy who defeated his Lancer.

In my opinion, Knights Of The Old Republic II did a great job of adding greyer morality to Star Wars.

I don't get the hate for The Worf Effect. I think it's a necessary trope, other wise the villains just end up looking pathetic.

That's right! It's one thing to claim that a villain is so dangerous, but it's another thing to actually see the villain be dangerous!

The Worf Effect is a good way to achieve this, as long as it's handled properly. I mean, if you have TWE happen in a way that comes off as contrived or unbelievable, then it's going to irritate viewers/gamers/readers. For example, the most Badass character loses to the villain, but a scrawny kid-like character wins against the villain because the author wants him to win. Also, it could lead to Badass Decay or Villain Decay if TWE gets used many times on a character.

TWE is necessary, but mishandling it is a possibility!

Yeah, just another example of Tropes Are Tools.

General Ripper is a trope that makes me feel peeved.

Why? Well, when you think about it, you have a military general in charge, he can do just about whatever he wants, and he's also out of his mind. Everyone seems to cheerfully ignore the fact that they have a loose cannon on their hands, and that this loose cannon could possibly destroy everything. It makes me sit there and wonder why they don't do something about it.

In fact, I hope to one day see a story doing a Deconstruction of General Ripper. I'd like to know what sort of people and government would want a guy like that in charge.

Also, it needs to be pointed out that in Real Life, both the USA and Russia were careful to avert General Ripper when it came to atomic bombs. Would you want a GR in charge of the atomic bombs of your country?

I'm going to be unoriginal, but I don't like Writer on Board. Suspicion of ideological influences can spoil the work for me, luckily not every time and not necessarily the whole of it.

You Bastard!

Alas, Poor Villain; I guess it's not a bad trope, but almost every attempt at it goes over like a lead balloon with me because I have a fundamental Lack of Empathy for characters I don't like. Rip van Winkle's death was a Crowning Moment Of Awesome. So was that sergeant getting his brains turned to slushy in Inglourious Basterds.

I want to snap the necks of most Tsunderes. (Yes, I do have antisocial personality disorder, why do you ask?)

Sadist Show. I don't know about you, but the idea of enjoying the suffering of characters just sounds appalling! Hey, maybe it is funny the first couple of times, but it can really break the Suspension of Disbelief if it gets cranked up too high, and then you might feel an urge to vomit instead of an urge to laugh.

World of Snark: Please write a different type of character. Constant snark isn't cute.

Humans Are Bastards: No, we're not. Shut up.

Shipping Goggles. SO MUCH HATE FOR THIS. Just because two characters said "hi" to each other in a scene doesn't mean that they're secretly in love with each other. It's impossible to try writing any kind of relationship between characters of the same sex (friendship, parent/child, sibling, mentor/student) without people screaming "Ho Yay" all over the work's page on the wiki.

I know, the fact that a number of fans seem to see sex in everything tells me more about their sex life than I ever wanted to know!

There's also Fan Dumb. I don't mind criticism, it's part of the game or whatever you like to call it. But when criticism comes from fans who are being rather stupid or throwing a sense of entitlement around, then it becomes peeve material. It's just so satisfying when the creators do a Take That! at the FD!

@Purple Dalek

Agreed mostly. I cannot deal with snark but rapid fire wit seems to drive by my mind immensely. With that said, I cannot stand the Deadpan Snarker or characters like Huey Freeman.

Accidental Pervert in manga and anime.

Once or twice in the whole season or series, fine.

Once or twice every episode/volume? Shame on you.

Eh, Deadpan Snarker is an alright trope. But when EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. is snarky it gets annoying fast.

True.