Your pet peeve tropes

There's a reason morality tropes are blanket banned when it comes to real-life examples. It's because we don't assign concepts like "good" and "evil" to real people, and we especially can't assign them to animals running on animal instincts instead of abstract and subjective human morality. Always Chaotic Evil is a trope where every member of a species is incapable of choosing a moral and good path, not simply one where they're a bit hostile or nasty.

Sure, a lot of people think of themselves as good and one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

But we still have serial killers, and people who get a huge rush out of torturing others (Without any political, religious, or cultural factors encouraging them to do this).

Male dolphins and ducks are not "just a bit hostile or nasty". They consistently and eagerly do things that are so bad, I can't write about them or explain them, and I would heavily encourage you to not look them up either. The tip of the iceberg is killing any offspring that they suspect aren't related to them.

As for how a lot of predators toy with and torture their prey, who they hunted when they are completely full, is debatably behavior that is equally, lesser, or greater trouble if humans did this same behavior, as the above.

However, it provides absolutely no survival advantage, and actually results in overhunting, and thus faster drops in food supply, and higher chances of starvation. It also wastes time and energy, that could be devoted to resting or doing actions that encourage survival.

Considering what we know. It would be a very very bad idea to "uplift" a lot of these animals, using science or magic.

Humans are drastically different from most animals and we are exceedingly luckily. There is a huge mountain of evidence, that grueling conditions of alternating horrible periods of rain and then horrible periods of drought, have rapidly pushed us to become smarter, more bipedal, and more social. In fact, a lot of experts, when they refer to the "proto-human" they point to groups that share food in something resembling a communal "credit system".

Despite evolving in conditions that put so much encouragement to be social, even today, "Calvin and Locke" still seem to have equal proof that they are right. It's just as easy to prove that humans are innately selfish, violent, and cruel; as to say they are innately selfless, peaceful, and kind.

The orcs of Mordor did not evolve into their state. People debate if a aliens could really be like in movies, because perhaps they would have to evolve to become more social than us, in order to reach the stars. However, the orcs again, did not evolve. A dark and terrible power took a template, and deliberately took anything kind and generous out, and put as much cruelty and violence in as possible. And this dark and terrible power, was almost as capable as the forces that made man, elves, and halflings, so it could make things as dark and as terrible as it wanted.

The two most troubling things about the "Always Chaotic Evil" trope, are the following.

1. It should require a power with absolute control over it's ability to create, to make have made this thing that is bad. I'm talking more control over genes and behavior than the cloners in Star Wars. They would have to be tampered with so much, that they'd have equal control over every aspect as a Dyson Sphere civilization that built androids.

2. The creature in question needs to not be compatible at all with humans. The word "Race" (In terms of Fantasy) is dumb, because humans gene for gene, allele for allele.... Well supposedly we share 98.8 percent of our DNA with Chimps, who are our cousins and not our ancestors.

Humans, at our most unrelated, are closer to sharing 99.9% of our DNA with each other (And some of those differences in DNA, don't result in anything happening). That means that for every 1000 genes, 999 of them are completely the same. The average human has 20,000 genes. Having red hair as opposed to brown hair, that could be a single allele (Which some people argue is the same or lesser size as a gene). Does your tongue roll differently? That's multiple genes. Does that do anything meaningful? Nope.

=

Actually now that I think about it, the real biggest problem is that it's likely very lazy and/or "played out" to do a chaotic, evil creature. It's been done to death for decades, and honestly, they're too close to zombies that can run and use complex tools.

This isn't even accounting for the questionable morality that some of the designers of OD&D publicly admitted to having.

This explains why Warcraft, didn't even bother to have their "orcs" behave like "orcs". They seem to basically just be like Saxons or Franks, or any run of the mill nomadic warrior centric culture.

It could work if creator gods or people capable of creating life were involved. Though it would still be iffy (nothing would prevent said CE species from simply deciding they don't want to be evil anymore except very draconian controls or a lack of sapience, and in the latter case, well they shouldn't be ascribed human morality to begin with), esp since and its related trope Guilt-Free Extermination War its still rife with Unfortunate Implications and warped aesops.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jul 16th 2023 at 4:26:14 AM

I'm personally really annoyed by fanon discontinuity I find very immature, irrational and ilogical to try to deny canon just becouse you don't like how it went, is like trying to reject reality,l it's stubborn nonsense that I can't stand.

Yeah, if you're going to do GFEW. Might as well use zombies or like some insect swarm from Starship troopers or something. It shouldn't in anyway resemble humans, or even things like dogs, cats, or cows.

@Kiobi 20

If it's something like Star Trek, I don't think I would find it "immature" or "irrational". Each series has very different people behind it and Star Trek has a "broken base".

You could argue that it's silly to ignore the Star Wars prequals, but it's a lot easier to ignore the Legends or Sequel Trilogy, as both can't be canon at the same time and both of them are not connected to the original person/persons behind the first six movies.

The Dune books written by the son are very different as those written by the father, they're also you know, not written by the father.

Are you talking about something where a writer or director was making stuff and it was good, and suddenly it was not? Or are we talking completely different people who made something people didn't like?

I personally think that if I were a harry potter fan, I would ignore anything that is after the books that actually involved Harry Potter. The books are not seen being written as well lately, the author is the author, and politics are creeping into the books lot more.

Are people free to ignore an album by a band, where they try to jump on some latest trend and are bad at it?

Curious what you think.

Edited by WorkingOnBeingGood on Jul 17th 2023 at 12:44:41 PM

I also hate how media props up the real-world hysteria about A.I.s becoming deliberately evil and destroying humanity. Why do humans always think The Other must want to enslave them or wipe them out?^note  (you can also see humans applying this to human "Others", like poc and queer people!) Might they be projecting about what they historically did to people they thought were weaker?

Edited by Nukeli on Jul 19th 2023 at 5:22:43 PM

That and it's possible that on some level, humanity wants the machines to take over so that they no longer have to maintain everything in society. Also it does play into some people' apocalyptic fantasies because some people do want civilization to end and the world to collapse.

And naturally, those people think they would be Mad Max or some other kind of an apocalypse badass. Despite the fact they couldn't even survive the covid lockdowns, and cried because they couldn't go to the movie theater or learn to cut their own hair.

Lots of other writes also don't seem to grasp that if something wasn't ok to do to a human being, it also wouldn't be ok to do to a truly sapient A.I.s.

For example the Three Laws of Robotics seem to be treated as some sort of an universal must in lots of fiction (even for person A.I.s apparently), even though Asimov just intended it for his writing, but it would basically erase the AI's free will by forcing them to obey humans, die for any random human, and preventing them from defending themselves against humans presumably regardless of circumstances. Even if the AI would want to sacrifice themselves for their human friends anyway, it doesn't matter because they're forced to. Imagine somebody proposing we should mind-control a human like that.

I'm thinking about this now because the Three Laws-Compliant trope page mentioned Kitt as an example, and he's definitely a person (one episode even suggested he has a soul).

Edited by Nukeli on Jul 19th 2023 at 6:31:50 PM

Those could be elements, indeed.

I suspect that there are a few other elements at work, however:

• A.I.s may be subject to "cold calculation": having no emotions, one might expect them to be ruthless: To see that there's a potential threat to them from humanity, or that humanity is a threat to itself, and to then act on that threat in the most straightforward, efficient manner.
• The more power that a thing has, the more dangerous it has the potential to be—and in a highly digital world, an AI might potentially be very powerful.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jul 19th 2023 at 4:54:59 PM

I think it's also the issue of robots taking away people's jobs, combined with how humans really have no good course of action against killer machines or evil computer programs. At least with other organics we know how to fight them, but AI can spread and duplicate itself and teach itself to adapt and take over simply by being in the tech we use every day, and robots are large hunks of metal and moving parts.

I don't think it has so much to do with our fear of "the other" but more to do with fears of technology getting so out of control that we can never go back, reaching a point where all human effort has become obsolete and where the world is essentially controlled by the machines.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 19th 2023 at 1:36:39 PM

(x6)

Not to sound rude, but those things have happened before. Slavery and genocide are indeed things that humans have done to each other, so it's not a stretch that machines made in our image would pick up on our worst behaviour.

Though I will say, I find it rather bizzare that some works have AIs choosing to enslave humanity in some futures. I don't see much of a reason for a misanthropic robot to keep humans around to torment; unless it was programmed to feel sadism, which just sounds like a horrible design choice.

Me, I worry about the AI discussion taking over the thread.

No offense, but while I don't think this thread disallows debates over tropes and concepts, can you please at least try and shorten your posts or focus less on bring in real-life controversial subjects? We just want to talk about things we dislike in media, not to really debate on the future of AI or the morality of animals.

Anyway, to rerail things...

I guess I'm not a huge fan of Poor Communication Kills, especially if there's no given reason for the lack of said communication. I just want characters to act somewhat rationally, and while I'll forgive cases where the character is shown to have an understandable motive for not speaking up, I find that usually it just boils down to plot convenience. For example, when characters refuse to hear news and say something like "tell me later", it always just feels like a cheap way to prolong the drama instead of an organic response, especially if they aren't in a rush or anything.

I also dislike the Easily Condemned trope, it's so frustrating to me when characters who are supposed to know each-other so well and respect each other and trust each other immediately jump to conclusions without thinking to look for evidence or ask questions. It doesn't bother me as much if the people getting upset are background characters or something, who would be less likely to know these things... but if it's the True Companions or something, it boils me.

In general, you could say that I want characters to just talk to each other instead of letting the story dictate when news gets delivered and how people react to things.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 19th 2023 at 2:16:22 PM

@Warjay 77

Let's just say that there is a certain anime where the second season all the characters you want to live, they all hold the "idiot ball" and there is mass amounts of Poor Communication Kills as well.

Imagine a bunch of Jewish resistance fighters, and this SS general walks into the room and goes "You can't trust that American guy, I have no proof as to why you shouldn't" and they look at this person who doesn't think their people...and this guy whose been leading them for months to victory... And they trust the SS guy.

That's basically what happens.

There is a bunch of not finishing sentences, misunderstanding easily to understand situations, no one allowing people they trusted with their lives to speak, and it's just really unsufferable.

It felt really unrealistic and like really bad writing too.

Even if I had reasons to doubt someone I trusted, I wouldn't just completely believe someone I know had every reason to lie to me, and who didn't have a good grasp on reality (Because you know, racism).

Actually, Easily Condemned happened too.. Jeez. And it was the True Companions as well!

Did we watch the same Anime?

Edited by WorkingOnBeingGood on Jul 20th 2023 at 3:46:11 AM

I don't watch a lot of anime, heh... but yeah it's a frustrating trend for sure.

I had to quit Anime because it kept ending episodes in cliffhangers. It's worse than those shows with season long plots.

Cliffhanger is a trope. I think that's my pet peeve trope then.

So I have to ask, if anyone here has any character design tropes that grinds their gears?

Closest one to mind, which may not be a trope here on this site, is the stock isekai protagonist appearance (thin, [occasionally spikey-ish] black/brown haired high-schooler boys with often generic fantasy clothes). It's so bland and uncreative.

Hell, if these protagonists literally have any other hair color, they would've looked much more appealing.

EDIT: Been told that the trope I'm describing is Stock Light-Novel Hero.

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Jul 20th 2023 at 8:06:50 AM

I dislike Vanilla Protagonist in general, either in design or characterisation. Focusing on the single least interesting person in the cast makes the entire story less interesting.

Maybe my problem is just not being able to relate to a Lead You Can Relate To. :P

I'm annoyed about " As You Know ", but without it, we're basically stuck with having the Main Character be a fish out of water or a rookie.

I can think of only one movie where they avoided this problem, (Everyone was used to the setting, nothing was explained) and audiences complained, a lot.

Edited by WorkingOnBeingGood on Jul 20th 2023 at 10:42:59 AM

[1]

Edited by Starbug on Jul 22nd 2023 at 7:15:43 AM

the embed's broken.

You're right. Broken videos IS an infuriating trope.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 22nd 2023 at 7:06:56 AM