That is a very interesting topic.
@Samuel_H_Young, I like the chosen one cliche at least when it comes to IF games. The fact that the MC is the chosen doesn’t prevent your choices from screwing up all prophecies. Or maybe I need to say shouldn’t prevent :).
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@Mayday
It’s not necessarily bad, I just prefer things on a smaller scale.
I’m with Havenstone on the evil bit. I can’t stand how there are good guys and then bad guys who can be killed with no remorse. What angers me more is how those bad guys typically have no good reason to be doing what they are doing, or at least it is never explored.
I don’t like chosen one stories either.
In regards to video games, I HATE the whole concept of “just in time, all the time”. Those games where you are LARPing around exploring and everyone just waits for you to continue the main quest.
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A cliche that I find to be disappointing is where there are no failures, and I find this annoying in all forms of entertainment. With these Classic Hollywood films the only ‘failure’ the Main Character faces is ‘someone dies’ - Not a character we love and find engaging, just ‘someone’ so it isn’t really set out as a ‘failure’.
I want the failures of the character to actually mean something, to shape the Main Character and allow them to develop as a result. But most important of all, when these failures occur - I want these characters to act human (In regarding to their persona of course). A series I felt did this really well is The Chaos Walking Trilogy, the author really blurs ‘good and evil’ characters to make us realize - They’re not just ‘good’ or ‘evil’, they’re people who are acting around the situation they’re in.
Anyways enough of my fan-rant about how amazing The Chaos Walking Trilogy is. Continue please!
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The cliché love concurs all that solves every problem without really explaining how the problem was solved.
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So would killing Victor off if you fail be considered good or bad?
Any kind of ‘male hero has to save female victim’ scenario. I get hives just thinking about it.
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When all the hardship the character has to go through doesn’t matter because even when bad things happen they don’t -really.- I’m thinking of a specific werewolf trilogy book (can’t recall its name).
Anyway, in this book the female character was born with wolf blood but she couldn’t shift unless she slept with a male werewolf (don’t ask me) because that’s how women worked…I guess. Anyway the wolves sucked. She didn’t want to be a werewolf, so she refused to do anything with any male wolf. Then the main male character gets attacked and becomes a wolf and they fall in love, so the rest of the series is them trying to find the cure.
By the end they get the cure but sacrifice it to save the world (which was like the third time they’ve done this…and people STILL don’t know werewolves exist even though they’d shown themselves like…tons of times). But in the very end they get together anyway and find a way around the cure with minimum effort. So I was like: 
@Nocturnal_Stillness Hey I didn’t say there shouldn’t be any successes! But what I meant in failures is that you’re not going to save the world every time.
As to your question: If lets say you send off Vic in a one liner ‘He got hit by a car accident end of story’ then it would be bad and I would have to send @RoslynSamalt after you! But being the brilliant writer that you are, if such a tragic event were to happen, I’m sure you would give the appropriate and bad-ass send off needed.
@FoxalypticWorld Are you talking about this? : http://maggiestiefvater.com/the-shiver-trilogy/
I’m sick of the cliche where the school bully gives me a wet willy and then takes my lunch money. I hate you, Greg, you stupid cliche!
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@trollhunterthethird
Absolutely; Patrick Ness did everything perfectly.
1.the “chosen one”
2.the “bad/good vibe”
MC doesn’t trust ___ surprise! ___betrays you! or MC “has a good feeling” about someone they CLEARLY shouldn’t trust (i.e. someone who just tried to kill them) and it works out great and they’re totally loyal.
3.the “physically unattractive/scarred person is evil”
this is especially bad when it’s a “surprise” betrayal because you see it from a mile away and it ruins the twist.
4.the “revived dead character” and “they’re totally dead(for three seconds)” unless the MC is a necromancer this shouldn’t happen
ps. i’d like to watch ONE (new) marvel movie where it doesn’t pretend to kill off a MC
5.the “evil race”
(usually Aliens, Goblins or Orcs) if they are capable of thought and reason then(even with low IQ) they shouldn’t ALL be evil
5.5 the “i never kill!..unless of course they aren’t human because in that case it’s fine”
6.the “heroes don’t kill”
now don’t get me wrong here, i’m not saying Batman and Spiderman should equip themselves with Uzi’s and chainsaws,i’m just saying that the whole “killing you would make me as bad as you” argument is VERY flawed.soldiers kill soldiers, cops kill criminals and people kill in self defence; that doesn’t make them evil.
furthermore people like the Joker, who will never A)stay in jail B)stop killing people or C)be redeemed, should probably be killed(IMO)
7.the “necessary romance”
again don’t get me wrong, I actually like romance in stories,it adds depth to the characters and plot as well as creating opportunities for subplots/story arcs. that being said MOVIES are awful at romance(at least when not the main focus)
can i please watch one movie where there isn’t a romance thrown haphazardly in there just because it’s viewed as necessary?
8.the “badass male in a mask(who is very clearly a female) unmasks them and is revealed to be…(you guessed it) female”
can’t a badass female just BE a badass female? do we really NEED a “shocking” reveal?
9.the “blind, warrior monk”
- the “asian with a katana”
if it’s a story about a samurai, a ninja, or an otaku then…fine, okay, whatever.
but seriously why is their a guy in Predators who uses a katana to fight? it’s a Sci-Fi!
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“The strong female character or Hollywood’s idea of a strong female character . you know the michelle rodriguez of female roles accompanied with them saying the line “stop acting like a girl”. Because you have to embody a man’s stereotypical traits to be seen as strong.”
This gets on my nerves too. Strong female characters aren’t strong because they are rude, aggressive bitches. Scrubs, I’m looking at you.
I also don’t like this notion that ALL women in a story have to be strong, since it doesn’t really reflect reality, where there are a great deal of weak, very flawed people - and these types have the potential to be the most interesting characters.
“Any time the story’s moral is bluntly and violently shoved into my face without any trace of subtly and tact. Don’t let your allegory be a strictly one to one affair.”
I don’t like this either. Soul Eater, anyone?
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@Xhandas_Antonidas How would that be any different if it was a female kissing a female in the end of a story? It would be the same thing as a male kissing a female… Just the genders of the kissers are different.
@AdamGoodtime Plenty of heroes kill. It’s just some don’t. I personally don’t see how that’s a problem, Spider-Man dosen’t kill because he has lost family members/friends, and he understands that it sucks when that happens. So, he dosen’t kill criminals because he knows that even though that person has done evil, they’re still the friend of someone, the son of someone, etc. Same thing with Batman, except with Bats it’s mostly just that he dosen’t want to snoop to thier level (plus, Gordon would have to haul him off to jail if he did :P). Overall, I think it’s great that some heroes kill and some don’t. It’s more realistic that way. In real life, if someone got powers, they would try not to kill the criminals they were fighting (at least I hope most people would).
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I still can’t get why all empires must be inherently evil.
Can’t the Empire be the protagonist for once?
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@Player
Most empires are empires BECAUSE they’re evil. 
You are talking to a lawful neutral you know.
Order above all else.
That sounds like lawful evil to me. 
(In real life ethics, not the weird D&D spectrum)
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I still can’t get why all empires must be inherently evil.
Um, where do you think empires come from? With very rare exceptions it is from forcibly conquering and subjugating adjacent nations. People very, very rarely want to be ruled by the nation next-door. So at best an empire is formed by evil coercion.
“Empire” also tends to imply a strong central authority over unwilling ethnicities, which also is not a hallmark of the moral high-road.
Which doesn’t mean they can’t be the protagonist. They just couldn’t be a particularly good protagonist.
There was a Margaret Weis series I read forever ago which was basically a Star Wars-Paradise Lost mashup. It was about the restoration of an imperial Monarchy to replace the corrupt galactic Republic – an inversion of the usual tropes, and specifically of Star Wars. Unfortunately, I don’t remember it being very good.
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