What tropes get on your nerves, fellow writers?

Sounds simple enough. Here's my list!

• Abusive Parents: As common as it is in the real world, reading about them a lot can get really depressing, really fast. It's best to have at least one or two in a given work. Any more than that, you could possibly cause Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy.
• Anvilicious: "Fiction" does not equal "lecture".
• The Chris Carter Effect: Don't leave too many questions unanswered, or else the audience/readers/whoever are going to be raising their fists in frustration.
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Every story needs a reason for me to give a damn about the characters and plot. If everything is so vile and nihilistic from the word "go", odds are I'm not going to be too happy.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: When writing a supposedly happy ending, please make sure it makes sense on some level.
• Humans Are Bastards: Similar reasons to Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. Having every human being on the planet being a scumbag is quite absurd, in my opinion.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: I'm okay with this trope, as long as the creator doesn't go out of his way to reinforce the story's pointlessness.

I'm going to have to go with Executive Meddling (particularly Focus Group Ending), I Just Write the Thing (characters should take on lives of their own, but if you're not putting any thought into what direction things are going in, then you're more of a daydream-recorder than an artist), The Good Guys Always Win, Never Say "Die", and Word-Salad Humor (this is an entire school of comedy that is ever-growing in popularity and needs to die, hard).

• I like Word-Salad Humor when it's done well or with context, like a Non Sequitur, *Thud*, but I agree. Randomly throwing out words =/= humor and gets annoying fast.
• Bury Your Gays: For god's sake, not every non-straight/non-cisgender person is going to be murdered or kill themselves because of it. Especially when there's a Teens Are Monsters or other anti-bullying aesop involved.
• Diabolus ex Machina: When a bad thing happens in the story, it shouldn't just be a random piece of bad luck. Give it some context.
• I can't remember the name of the trope off the top of my head (or even if it has a name), but the hero/heroine who has no friends and parents who are never there or whatever really gets my goat for some reason. It crops up a lot in Urban Fantasy (and in Mary Sues), and it just feels like an excuse for the author to send them on an adventure and not feel guilty about it.

edited 16th Jul '13 9:35:07 PM by CaptchaTheFlag

Reluctant Hero. It's oh-soø-fashionable for the hero to be reluctant to grab his sword and go out and do that which needs doing. He has to be talked into it. He has to be convinced. Because if he is confident that he can determine on his own what is right, what needs doing, then it's getting politically incorrect, which is uncomfortable.

My current work kind of stretches Reluctant Hero to its limit, and uses it for tragedy instead of for a moral cop-out. The hero is pretty much dragged into the story kicking and screaming, and is just as much a victim of the plot as he is an agent in it.

edited 17th Jul '13 2:52:00 PM by DAStudent

I absolutely cannot stand "complete monsters". Conversely, anti-villains are my favorite archetype.

I don't like an overload of Complete Monsters, but denying that they exist gets on my nerves far more.

Based on past experience in Trope Talk, I think these threads are, if not "banned", at least strongly discouraged.

If they contain more content than just "Ew ick, I don't like this trope" they are allowed to live. But this one looks a lot like it's pure complaining. Most of the posts have no content beyond "I don't like this trope." Put some thought into explaining why you don't like the tropes and it may survive.

By the way, does it count as Bury Your Gays if the character's death has nothing to do with being gay?

Paragraph four of the trope page seems to answer that. Even if you don't explicitly make the death due to your character's sexuality, it's notable if there's a disparity between the deaths of gay people and straight people—because, as usual, it contributes to a rather uncomfortable trend.

I have a monumental hatred for Kid Hero and young heroes/villains in general. I don't necessairly hate stories with them, but I Always loathe the chracters. This is because I place value on experience (which caused the remarkable irony of my teenage self complaining about "Those goddamned teenagers ruining the movie").

edited 17th Jul '13 6:12:37 PM by Gaon

The Main Characters Do Everything, particularly in military settings.

A military is a vast machine composed of innumerable specialists and people in the rear who will train for years for a specific role. Personal focus is good. A small group in the right place, especially at the initial point of contact, can change the course of a battle or a war. But to push it to the end is going to take a lot more than that, and if you compose a book of nothing but small unit actions A: it's been done to death and B: that'll look nothing like an actual war in most cases.

If nothing else a scene where everything just clicks, where everybody works together just so, is much more impressive when a lot of them are people without names, because it gives a much greater sense of the scale of that success.

Err, you can't exactly blame Kid Heroes for being kids, can you?

My complaint is more directed at the writer, as in "Why isn't this story about the far more interesting wise mentor?" or "Why isn't the hero older?". Though I will admit it borders on irrational hatred sometimes.

My current story is about a Kid Hero, but it's more a character study in how much his life sucks than a heroic fantasy. It has a Kid Villain, too, but he's The Antichrist, so it's understandable.

As far as the Kid Hero discussion goes, as I may have mentioned once or twice in the past, I strongly dislike the use of teenage protagonists. But while there are some "actual" reasons for it, a lot of it is just exhaustion (rather similar to why I'm boycotting all vampire-centric media, actually). So I actually wouldn't say I have a problem with Kid Hero as a trope; I'm just kind of tired of seeing it.

A exploration of the concept is fine for me. It oculd be said that it's just the usual execution of the trope that annoys me, but like I said once: Good writing moves mountains.

I suppose that you are correct, saturation is a large part of it.

It seems that most people here has a very strong hatred for Kid/Teen protagonist and it's getting to the point where I'm super uncomfortable about sharing my work here at all.

edited 17th Jul '13 7:04:51 PM by Masterofchaos

It's okay; I don't think you'll find any unanimous opinions around these parts.

I detest the Chosen One trope. It's too often used as an excuse as to why everyone loves the hero, and is used as a replacement for character development, for the chosen character or the people around him/her.

edited 17th Jul '13 7:52:38 PM by VincentQuill

My work has a Chosen One... but he's chosen by a panel of magical statisticians, not prophecy, and new events and developments regularly change the identity of the Chosen One. The protagonist spends some time as the Chosen One, but he is not the Chosen One when he first learns of the position, and he has lost the title by the climax of the story.

Armies Are Evil:

As this very wiki points out, the movies that cast the US military as Nazi Stormtroopers have bombed at the box office.

Real people serve in the military. Some have committed crimes. Those criminals went to jail.

I don't want Mary Tzu. Michael Bay does that and his hook of 'splosions and cheeze has gone stale. But showing the real US military as either "shoot anything that moves" or A Nazi by Any Other Name...that's insulting.

Yes some of you might point to the Vietnam War. So? I'm in the military and I can tell you that the war crimes committed there aren't celebrated.

As soldiers (DOD wide really) we're told consistently about "Civilians on the battlefield". How to deal with time (not More Dakka as Hollywood would have moviegoers believe), but with rules.

The Private Military Contractor as villain is getting old. as Yahtzee points out:

The "US miltiary" or "PMC" is teh evilis!!11!! is insulting because it's lazy. The author wants you to hate the villains so they're faceless mooks (uniforms and helmets make them blend in) and it's okay to see them die. Motivation? They're evil!

A real world example: General Edwin Walker was an Army commander who lost his command because he tired to make his troops read silly John Birch society propaganda. When he resigned his commission and attempted to get into the media spotlight, he quickly be-clowned himself. More Small Name, Big Ego than Hitler.

Air Force General Curtis LeMay....oh boy.

Yes he was the AF Chief Of Staff who said "bomb them back to the stoneage". He came up during WWII. All of Europe was his target. He was a fish out of water, fighting the last war. He was a nice guy, but also an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy and he had an ego. When he went into politics he didn't like either party. Sadly he chose to run for president with George Wallace and got tarred with the same brush as him. Le May looks like a General Ripper, but not really. Read his wiki article, it's way cooler than this paragraph.

Sadly LeMay will never get a good bio-pic because Hollywood has an obsession with modern military=evil.

edited 17th Jul '13 9:17:07 PM by TairaMai

You shouldn't be. I admit that I will criticize anyone who "defaults" to a teenage protagonist, but other than that I consider it purely a matter of personal taste. I probably won't read your work, but I won't go around attacking you because "teen protags are teh evil" either. And as far as feedback goes, there's only a few cases where I can see it making a difference.

On an unrelated note, that's a bit of a whitewash of Curtis LeMay. He wasn't literally the crazy man that it's become popular to paint him as, but he really wasn't a man who should have been entrusted with nuclear weapons either. Of course, that was partially the times.

edited 17th Jul '13 10:06:23 PM by nrjxll

LeMay was a product of WWII, not a Kill Em All villain, so much as in the wrong era. He viewed Nukes as just another bomb. Everyone back then did really. Harsher in Hindsight.

A kid/teen protag...is good in a kid/teen story. Teens/Kids outfoxing adults...kinda a stretch there. It gets worse when they're shown as more adult that the adults. Witchblade was called out on this by Jesu Otaku. The little girl is a Mary Sue to the point that she (5yrs old) takes care of her mother, does the shopping and escapes from captivity by herself. While their relationship was charming, a 5 year old taking care of an adult derailed those scenes.

Just as an evil for evil's sake villain is lazy, so is a teen/kid acting adult. Or running on cuteness. Or just being "Children Are Innocent" incarnate.

Isaac Asimov wrote about one of his Berserk Buttons: "runs after"

What does the kid do? Runs after something (or away from the monster)

What does the parent or the friend do? Runs after the kid.

What does the Love Interest do? Runs after the kid and parent/friend in jeopardy.

What does the hero do? Runs after the characters above...

All the more cliched if the hero is a kid him/herself.

Given that there are juvenile delinquents who commit serious crimes and the problem with bulling, having cute innocent children is a sign of lazy writers.

edited 17th Jul '13 11:13:54 PM by TairaMai