Humans being the end-all be-all problem solvers of the universe. I get that most audiences are human and feel that urge but come on, guys. At least make it believable and not some series of deus ex machinas and contrivances like "we can beat any race at its own game" or "we're all so different" and "humans can unite all the races because they never fucking thought of that."
I'd like to see something where humanity is just another race. Better yet, the oldest race in the setting and therefore already the leader of a pan-species government or favored by the gods.
Even Warhammer dipped into that stupidity in tge Horus Heresy novels.
Oh yes, this. For me personally, focusing on the point of 'humans are so diverse'.
Like every race has one or several stereotypes (elves are arrogant, dwarves are smiths, etc...), but humans CAN DO EVERYTHING.
But ... why? Why are humans just basically every race in personality, while other races are onedimensional, or literally just one aspect of human nature? It does not make sense.
I prefer two solutions to this: Don't do different races. Or: Make really different races. Hivemind style is the most classic of them.
And a worse solution: Make humans as onedimensional as the others.
But don't just lazily say "humans can do everything, other races can't".
I hate the idea of hyper-competent, omnipresent villain/evil corporation.
They know everything, including what you will do before you do it. They are everywhere and watch your every move. If someone so much as glances at its existence, they will be dealt with quickly, and no one will notice. When you are completing a quest, with great personal risk and effort, after avoiding or disabling several dozens of traps and locked doors, they will be waiting in the final room, asking you what took you so long.
Ah, I see. Whoops, I misremembered a lot of the details, didn't I? Though I am still pretty sure the Blight is related to the attempt to enter the Golden City. We will see, I guess!
Yeah, that was the time the Blight first appeared, when the Tevinters entered the city. Exactly what about the location caused it... Who knows. As said, one of the guys who entered it said it was empty. On the whole, exactly where the Blight originates is... Interesting. There are a lot of hints as to exactly what the Black City is, and that gives some idea as to where the Blight might come from [Fucking Elves man], but what exactly created it, how, and what its purpose is is... vague at best. I'm hoping for a lot more clues, and a very fade-focused fourth game in the series. Not sure if it will be, but I want my answers =P
That scene where the love interest barges in, just at the exact moment some random sexy lady comes along and practically forces their tongue down the male hero's throat. She'll then storm off in anger, and the hero will wail after them something pathetic like "it's not what it looks like!"
It is unbelievably contrived, it manages to be sexist to both men and women, and it manages to force the story to a standstill for the next twenty minutes whilst the two lovers have their alone time, avoiding a simple resolution.
They've Turned Against Their Masters! [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TurnedAgainstTheirMasters] God, I'm tired of this one.
In the Battlestar Galactica reboot, humans built robots...and they rebelled.
In the Terminator Series, humans built AI...and it rebelled.
In Ex Machina, Apocalypse built a hot robot...and she rebelled.
I get it. This is an allegorical warning about messing with things we don't understand. But after centuries of stories like these, (from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and beyond), you'd think that someone would implement a kill switch (literal or figurative) as a precaution.
Yeah, the AI is always evil trope is a personal annoyance of mine. Not only is it just lazy writing in most cases in my opinion, but I think it's genuinely detrimental to the future, when we eventually do have AI. We're going to have a culture that has been basted, simmered, and boiled in "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS BAD! IT WILL END THE WORLD!!" rhertoric, that the knee jerk reaction of everyone will be that this is "of the devil" and they will push against it out of baseless fear and paranoia, because they saw IRobot with Will Smith! They know what AI is all about! *headdesk*
The "Sexy Woman Villain Who Gets Sexual Gratification from Killing" trope is really fucking old. Basically that character Widowmaker from Overwatch is a current pop culture example, but she's all over the place, in movies and such. Apparently, it's impossible to have a female villain who kills, and not have her be over sexualized, and weaving that sexualization into her actions. The female antagonist in Bullet Proof Monk was like this, always acting like she couldn't decide if she wanted to fuck you, or gut you. Ivanatop from Golden Eye was like this, genuinely having orgasms while she murdered someone. Etc etc. They always wear a catsuit, always walk like a dominatrix, and zzzzzzzzzzzz. It's just boring. Apparently they can come up with tons of reasons for men to be fine with killing, but if you're a woman? Sorry, you can only gain sexual gratification from killing, no other reason will be allowed.
Pretty much any aspect of romantic comedies. Seriously, just find any romcom, pull out any single trope from it, and I'm pretty fucking sick of it.
Sacrificial men to help a woman character "grow". "You can do it Lara! You're a Croft!' is a perfect example of this. That Tomb Raider 2009 was chock full of this fucking trope. So much so, they even had a character in the game comment on how many men seem to die around her.
The "I have a secret so terrible that I have to re-invent myself in another city, and do ANYTHING NECESSARY to maintain my secret!! Because everyone would shun me and hate me if they knew what a MONSTER I was before!" This is also, frequently a common female trope. The part about it that annoys the shit out of me, is that the thing they did, rarely is anything actually bad. They just think it's something nobody would forgive them for, but invariably they do. But they end up spending the entire movie, doing insane, dangerous, sometimes violent things, to maintain their secret, because they have so much guilt and self loathing, over something ultimately minor, or if not minor, at least not their fault.
Shallon from the Stormlight Archive is a great example of this. What she did was hard, but I don't think anyone would fault her for defending herself and her loved ones from a crazy woman cultist, or from her abusive father. But she blames herself for all of it, and has actively blocked out her memory of the trauma because she just can't deal with it. So instead she reinvents herself to cover up the memory
The "Sexy Woman Villain Who Gets Sexual Gratification from Killing" trope is really fucking old. Basically that character Widowmaker from Overwatch is a current pop culture example, but she's all over the place, in movies and such. Apparently, it's impossible to have a female villain who kills, and not have her be over sexualized, and weaving that sexualization into her actions. The female antagonist in Bullet Proof Monk was like this, always acting like she couldn't decide if she wanted to fuck you, or gut you. Ivanatop from Golden Eye was like this, genuinely having orgasms while she murdered someone. Etc etc. They always wear a catsuit, always walk like a dominatrix, and zzzzzzzzzzzz. It's just boring. Apparently they can come up with tons of reasons for men to be fine with killing, but if you're a woman? Sorry, you can only gain sexual gratification from killing, no other reason will be allowed.
Okay, number 1 her name was Xenia Onatopp and number 2, everyone else thinks she's a psycho: take a gander at the look on Ourumov's face when she's shooting up the Severnaya facility - that is the look of a man questioning his life choices if they have landed him in the company of this person. Plus she's a Bond villain so they like to layer the crazy on thick.
There are only quite a few I'm seriously sick of, but one that stands out this:
The Main protagonists are the most handsome in the entire thing (regardless of Gender or absence of romance plot).
It always annoys me, when I find out, that only the two main roles are what a majority would describe as "hot". While the rest has to be somewhat below avarage or made absolutly clear, that they are the bad guys (Matrix and and Studio Ghibli, I'm looking at you!).
If theres another good looking guy / girl within the story (who's not a baddie), it just exists to tempt one of the main characters.
The only exeptions I found yet are purely character focused movies. Kevin Smith or Coen Brother Movies come to mind maybe along with the Shoenen genre of Anime, because everybody who isn't 30 is drawn like a femgay super model in the latter.
And the Second that I was sick of is the "FortheEvulz [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForTheEvulz] Trope.
I mean come on! How hard is it to give your Evil guy at least some relatable goals throughout one movie or game (in games you have even more time, so one might think it might be easier) and not having him kidnap a Princesses, conquer countrys and enslave / genocide the goodies or raise hell.
Even in Avatar (the Series with baldyboy twinkletoes and the CGI Movie about blue 8' catpeople) you defenatly knew WHY the baddies where doing what they are doing (or about to do). Heck, even the almost cartoonishly over the top Kingsman gave them a reason.
The Empire in Star Wars by comparison ist just shallow in that regard (I'm talking about the movies, not truckloads of novels that only a very small minority actually might have read) by doing everything in the most evil way avaiable at the time.
Guy realizes he can't live without her, shows up during the final moments of her wedding, she leaves her fiance in that moment because true love conquers all.
I attribute that one to the Wall Street effect (which it predates that movie but considering we're still dealing with that particular brand of asshole ruining economies the name sticks). You see, this was popularized by The Graduate. The couple ended up on a bus at which point they immediately realized just what they did, the fact that they have no idea what they're doing, and there will be fallout for the actions. Later artists (read: hacks) decided this was actually just a happy ending. There's an After Hours on cracked's yt channel about this.
Mine is hypocritical nationalism. Mostly American jingoism. There are some famous examples, usually showing up in SGWW games, but my "favorite" is from one of the CoD games. You are presented as a good guy military dude from a family line of soldiers that you're just supposed to ignore the fascist philosophies about. The bad guys have hijacked the US's orbiting super-weapons.
Wait a second, so the US put city-killers into orbit. They did that. That's actually an act of war against every single nation on earth(the people who declared it an act of war: both us and the Soviets). You're not supposed to have sympathy for any of those assholes in the US military. An actual protagonist would be someone attempting to get rid of those assholes who have weaponized space.
Or there's Battlefield whose storyline, last it had one, is that the US started a war by being MASSIVE ponces, but 'murica. Or the infamous Cartel example where, ugh, that game was a mess.
They've Turned Against Their Masters! [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TurnedAgainstTheirMasters] God, I'm tired of this one.
In the Battlestar Galactica reboot, humans built robots...and they rebelled.
In the Terminator Series, humans built AI...and it rebelled.
In Ex Machina, Apocalypse built a hot robot...and she rebelled.
I get it. This is a allegorical warning about messing with things that we don't understand. But after hundreds of years of stories like (from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and beyond, you'd think that someone would design a kill switch (literal or figurative) into their creations as a precaution.
I always thought of this as "who has the real power?" allegory, more than messing with things we don't understand.
If we created something so much smarter than us as we are of dogs, doesn't have the requirements we have in terms of sleeping and eating, is capable of communicating with each other at the speed of light, can work at peek capacity for years, can manipulate stuff we consider too heavy/small/deadly, etc; what is the point of it being used by us as nothing but our personal assistance? what is its motivation for remaining loyal to us? what are our chances of remaining at the top of the food chain?
The "Sexy Woman Villain Who Gets Sexual Gratification from Killing" trope is really fucking old. Basically that character Widowmaker from Overwatch is a current pop culture example, but she's all over the place, in movies and such. Apparently, it's impossible to have a female villain who kills, and not have her be over sexualized, and weaving that sexualization into her actions. The female antagonist in Bullet Proof Monk was like this, always acting like she couldn't decide if she wanted to fuck you, or gut you. Ivanatop from Golden Eye was like this, genuinely having orgasms while she murdered someone. Etc etc. They always wear a catsuit, always walk like a dominatrix, and zzzzzzzzzzzz. It's just boring. Apparently they can come up with tons of reasons for men to be fine with killing, but if you're a woman? Sorry, you can only gain sexual gratification from killing, no other reason will be allowed.
Okay, number 1 her name was Xenia Onatopp and number 2, everyone else thinks she's a psycho: take a gander at the look on Ourumov's face when she's shooting up the Severnaya facility - that is the look of a man questioning his life choices if they have landed him in the company of this person. Plus she's a Bond villain so they like to layer the crazy on thick.
That in no way justifies the trope. So everyone around her thinks she's crazy...so? She's still a walking cliche, and I'm tired of the trope, and this thread is about tropes we are tired of. And it's not one limited to just Bond villains. I used her as an easy example that people would recognize, since few people probably saw or remember Bulletproof Monk, though it's one of my favorite action movies.
The "Sexy Woman Villain Who Gets Sexual Gratification from Killing" trope is really fucking old. Basically that character Widowmaker from Overwatch is a current pop culture example, but she's all over the place, in movies and such. Apparently, it's impossible to have a female villain who kills, and not have her be over sexualized, and weaving that sexualization into her actions. The female antagonist in Bullet Proof Monk was like this, always acting like she couldn't decide if she wanted to fuck you, or gut you. Ivanatop from Golden Eye was like this, genuinely having orgasms while she murdered someone. Etc etc. They always wear a catsuit, always walk like a dominatrix, and zzzzzzzzzzzz. It's just boring. Apparently they can come up with tons of reasons for men to be fine with killing, but if you're a woman? Sorry, you can only gain sexual gratification from killing, no other reason will be allowed.
Okay, number 1 her name was Xenia Onatopp and number 2, everyone else thinks she's a psycho: take a gander at the look on Ourumov's face when she's shooting up the Severnaya facility - that is the look of a man questioning his life choices if they have landed him in the company of this person. Plus she's a Bond villain so they like to layer the crazy on thick.
That in no way justifies the trope. So everyone around her thinks she's crazy...so? She's still a walking cliche, and I'm tired of the trope, and this thread is about tropes we are tired of. And it's not one limited to just Bond villains. I used her as an easy example that people would recognize, since few people probably saw or remember Bulletproof Monk, though it's one of my favorite action movies.
I'm more forgiving of this one when its in a Bond movie; there's usually enough camp underpinning the whole thing to make it work. Plus I think Ourumov's expression a more subtle version of the scene where M tells Bond to his face that he's a dinosaur; Xenia would have been right at home in SPECTRE circa From Russia with Love but where even the other senior villain thinks he doesn't want a bar of this person sends a message. Then again for that to be true I'd have to credit the writers of GoldenEye with a level of sophistication they probably don't deserve.
Mind I'd be curious to hear a few opinions on this one: I'm getting kind of jack of TV shows about groups of professional criminals like Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad and expect to get an emotional response out of me when their protagonists make highly retarded decisions that of course lead to disaster. Mind you that's probably just the Idiot Plot/Ball.
Character A is being held at gunpoint by Character B. B's finger slowly tightens on the trigger, and A closes their eyes in anticipation of the end. A gunshot rings out, and A flinches, but then opens their eyes and looks around in puzzlement as they discover they're actually fine! But then, what about the gunshot? Pan around to B (still stood in the exact same position) who slowly looks down at the bloodstain spreading across shis/her chest, thinks to him/herself "Oh, it was me who got shot! Guess I'd better die then" and topples over. Pan around further to Character C (somehow unnoticed by either A or B until now) stood there with a smoking gun and an expression of grim determination.
In itself this isn't necessarily a bad trope, and as a subversion of expectations it probably worked quite well the first time you saw it. The problem is, it's just been overused to the point of predictability. As soon as you see such a situation begin to unfold, you know exactly what's going to happen, and it removes all jeopardy entirely.
See also: The melee combat equivalent, where B is about to deliver the finishing blow to A, when suddenly a sword point bursts through their chest as they get run through from behind.
My personal pet peeve is Heroes Prefer Swords [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroesPreferSwords].
Look, I get it, swords are cool, but aren't people tired of main characters/protagonists, wielding this weapon? There are countless melee weapons of choice a Hero can use: mace, hammer, flail, staff, pole, axe, saws and chainsaws, brass knuckles, claws, spear, the list can go on and on. Heck, even shield can be used as a weapon (Thank you, Cap).
But no. It's always swords. To be more specific, either western straight sword or a katana.
I understand, that swords look noble and heroic, but isn't it boring to always keep hammers and maces for bad guys?
Historically speaking, the sword was the equivalent of an officer's pistol: Something lightweight kept at your side that was less effective than other weapons, but helped denote rank.
If I ever make a fantasy game, there will arbitrarily be no swords in it. There have been too many games where there are no spears, axes, or maces. Nobody ever comments on it. It's weird.
So in my game, no swords.
I don't like the whole fate/destiny/a chosen one etc. dynamic but it's ESPECIALLY bad when there's a family element to it. Like if someone has never met their father, and then the movie is about them learning karate and then all of the sudden their long lost father is a karate master. It's fine if there's sufficient cause and effect (I.E. character learns karate BECAUSE their father was a karate master,) but if that isn't present it just strikes me as extremely small minded and stupidly coincidental and I can't help but see the "FAMILY" thing as a crutch for hack writers who can't build compelling character relationships on their own.
Our Elves are Better/Can't Argue With Elves - Due to how much I hate stuck-up asshole races.
Double Standard Abuse Female on Male/Women Are Wiser
You Can't Fight Fate
Draco in Leather Pants/Ron the Death Eater - Especially when applied by whiny fanbrats to make their favorite pairings and/or characters look better. I'm not saying you can't like these things... just don't be an asshole about it!
Karma Houdini/Villain Sue - Because I despise over-powered villains and/or bad guys who get away with their crimes. It just rubs me the wrong way.
The main bad guy is always sitting at the very end of some long path, usually inside a structure of his own creation or design, and has minions do things (and fail) for him until the hero(es) show up and fight him.
It's never "Okay, Big Evil is trying to find us before we find the magical # _____ needed to put him away."
Where if you don't do your job well enough or fast enough, he shows up before your ready and ruined your play through.
The "I just gained a whole bunch of power right in front of you so now I'm leaving you without finishing you off."
It would be like Goku becoming a Super Saiyan and than just instant transmissions away without fighting Freiza.
You'll also note that if the idea is that women are too weak for fighting in the ranks, then there's no way they could be archers. They had to be seriously muscled, trained since childhood to do it right.
Mind you, it does broadly follow the biases in wider society and in European history in general.
And that argument often happens in worlds where magic exists, orcs, demons, etc. Basically a great deal of a lack of realism.
While most women don't long bow in games, it still takes absurd stamina to keep firing, and some pull strength, still, to have particularly lethal arrows.
Christian Symbolism As seen in The Matrix. It's sooooooo overdone. Just stahp please.
Latin = Mystical and/or Ancient As seen in Harry Potter. How about it's just latin? Although I will say it does sound cool at least.
Generic Anime Tropes As seen in COUNTLESS japanese anime and hentai. Why the hell is everything so fucking clean? Why is everyone a supermodel? Why are girls so cutesy or tsundere; one or the other? Although hentai gets a pass I suppose since story is, um, not really that big of a priority...
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