Narrative devices you hate

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

As an aspiring writer...

1) Romance for no other reason than to say "we haz a romance in this game!"

Seriously, if it add nothing tangible to the story, don't add it! Seeing awkward, or stupidly done romance shoehorned into so many movies games and books just gets annoying after a while!

2) Villains in "serious/Mature" stories with no other motivation than "for teh evuls/For teh lulz".

I mean, it works for Kirby, Sonic, and games that aren't super serious. That's fine.

But when I'm intaking "mature" media and the villain is sounding like some stupid Joker knock off, I'm going to roll my eyes and stop taking him seriously. At least The Dark Knight made it pretty clear the Joker had some serious psychological compulsion to cause as much mayhem as possible with no ability or will to restrain himself.

But really, we don't need more villains like this. They're shallow and boring. REAL villains are people. People have some kind of motivation, some kind of overall goal and morality and story beyond just "I'm doing it because I'm evil".

3) "We need to raise the stakes...Quick! Kill off a beloved character in a contrived manner with no foreshadowing or reasonable explanation!" (bonus points of hate if they just revive them later at marginal cost)

I think everyone know what game I'm talking about when I say "Dude, look behind you! Also, why the hell did your shield unit not block that?!". That one part of that game made me roll my eyes and go "really? REALLY? Was that freakin' necessary? You just made that character look stupid as hell and I have no respect for him now that he died that way". Seriously, that took a moment that was actually serious already and then made it totally ridiculous.

If they competently foreshadow the character's fate and you can go "Oh God I should have seen this coming" or their death makes sense, it's ok. (IE "Oh...Since she no longer feels isolated and afraid, she got cocky, got taken by surprise, and then showed us just how DANGEROUS the situation is") (Cookie to you if you know who I am talking about here).

I just hate pointless character deaths when they do nothing but try to ratchet up the "Stakes", especially if they make a character suddenly look totally incompetent, and ESPECIALLY if they can just bring the character back later.

At least the SNES game that basically codified this made a point to use a character's death to show "hey, the villain you've been trying to fight this entire time? You are STILL so not ready for it". So it had SOME point beyond "OMG CHARACTER DEATH SRS BUSINESS TIME!"

4) Prophecies that go off EXACTLY as planned, with no twist at all.

Thanks for spoiling the plot for me, plot!

At least if the prophesy turns out to be a sham, or the prophecy is totally misunderstood, or is breakable, it can still be interesting.

Hell, characters struggling with fate and trying to overcome it, or at least embrace it on their own terms makes for a way better story than "I am the hero because the rhyming scroll said it was so, so I will save the world and I did".

5) Angsty or Angry-at-everything characters who have no good reason to be.

If a character hates everything or just angsts all day about their life, I want a damn good reason for that. I want to eventually find out what's making them like that and then be able to go "Oh damn...Yeah, ok, I can see why they turned out like that".

Also, if you're going to make their main defining trait be "I hate everything", at least make them entertaining. It's not that hard. I'm making a not-so-serious story for a game right now, and my "I hate everything character" not only has a legit reason for being the way she is, but I'm trying to make her rants amusing to listen to.

The villain giving a "you're the same as me" speech to the hero

This, only because I hate seeing heroes go "nooooo he's riiiiiight!!!! ;_;"

At least Advance Wars Days of Ruin

Spoiler

had the balls to have the practical member of the hero's faction go "huh, you're right" and SHOOT THE FUCKER ANYWAY

You know, I really want to see a game or movie or book where the villain pulls this on the hero, the hero blinks, rolls his eyes and goes "yeah, I think we both know that's bullshit *BANG*"


Oh, and it would be VERY nice to see a few villains who have actually read (or at least SKIMMED) the evil overlord's list. I see so many stupid mistakes in so many villains...it would be nice to see one or two who are actually prepared for trouble!

 

[Relish in Chaos]

When the hero refuses to kill the villain because ?if I kill you, then I?d be just as bad as you?. No, sorry, that?s bullshit. If you kill someone who murders others in cold blood for little to no justifiable reason, you?ll never be ?just as bad as them?. It means you saved multiple would-be victims of this villain. I recently finished watching the Trigun anime, and it just pissed me off how much Vash would show mercy to his enemies, only for them to just destroy an entire town full of innocent civilians because Vash didn?t want to go against the flawed ideals of his idealistic dead mother figure.

Tsundere. I hate those types of characters so much. Probably one of the most famous examples is Akane from Ranma ½, who is borderline abusive to Ranma, often due to the two?s astonishing lack of communication, despite apparently being in love with each other. Akane beating the shit out of Ranma for some flimsy reason happened so often that it wasn't even funny anymore (if it was ever funny in the first place). It was just annoying.

the pyramid guy in Xmen

I died a little inside when I read that. Apocalypse is hardly a "nobody" and the fact that so many people did not recognize who he was when he was shown at the end of the credits blows me away.

Why would you expect them to, when most people know the film versions of these characters and franchises more than the comic books, which haven't been relevant to pop culture in, like, ten years? Not to mention, comic continuity is FUCKED.

No, Apocalypse isn't a "nobody" (not that the OP said; he just didn't know who he was), but most people still only know of Magneto as X-Men's main antagonist.

 

[K12]

You know a year ago I might have said having a character talk directly to the audience was something that really irritated me but both "House of Cards" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" did it so well that I think I may have been cured of this irritation.

 

[Childe]

Overly flamboyant villians with little or no motivation beyond personal amusement or just toying with the hero.

So essentially The Joker.

I don't actually hate this, just getting sick of seeing it everywhere. Audiences seem to love these kinds of villians, I suppose because they're "unpredictable" and you just never know what they're going to do next... Personally though I'm finding it increasingly tiresome seeing villians whose only distinguishing characteristic is their obsession with the hero and who every action is determined by that. Isn't it sometimes better to have a villian who actually has motivations and goals of their own whose conflict with the villian is only brought about by differing viewpoints and not just because they wanted to get their attention?

Moriarty from BBCs Sherlock is another example of this kind of villian.

If that's how Sherlock has portrayed Moriarty then I'm so glad I don't watch the show because that ruins one of my all time favorite villains.

OT: I don't like villains who's reasons for being bad rest solely upon some bad thing that has happened to them, or someone who uses real issues to push his own agenda. The villain from the first season of Legend of Korra is a good example of a villain I dislike. To be fair i stopped watching soon after we meet him, but I really hate that kind of villain. In my mind that's not a real reason to be evil, it's succumbing to weakness. Yes I understand the reasons why this type of villain exists, and I can sympathize with them but I just can't get behind them and almost always drop whatever book/show/game has this kind of villain.