Cliches that make you squirm

@eleazzaar

Precisely what I meant before, but you said it much better.

@eleazzar
Great point. It’s all about the presentation.

One of the most annoying ones wich is really popular in anime is “Nakama Power!” basicly the protagonist gets beaten to a pulp but then his froend appear they don’t do anything but the mc gets up guves a asleach about the powernof friendship adn sends the othernguy flying

another similar one is when thr mc “levels up” as in he fights an enemy, loses badly, the bad guys spatee him because he thinks its funny (stupid sense of humour antagonist) then the mc dissapears for a few chapters/episodes and then reapears more powerfull then God. the worst part of this os that it repeats infinitely within the same game/book/show

@alexxo97
Sounds like most fantasy animes. xD

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Personally I try to stay clear of tvtropes, not just because it’s extemely addicting, but also because it’s downright depressing. To think that you’ll never be able to create something original, that everything has already been thought of a thousand times over… Ugh I feel it coming over me again. Anyways, steal, steal, steal, then steal some more and combine it in a new way so nobody notices, that’s the ticket.

Sounds like you need to stop watching shonen anime.

@ MutonElite That’s one way of looking at it, but also remember there are thousands upon thousands of tropes and they can be played in all sorts of ways.

How about someone makes a hero that is not afraid to get his hands dirty in a movie.

@MutonElite

Personally I try to stay clear of tvtropes, not just because it’s extemely addicting, but also because it’s downright depressing. To think that you’ll never be able to create something original, that everything has already been thought of a thousand times over…

I’m not really convinced that all the entries there are really tropes – some seem to me to be simply general descriptions with inclusive language. By now they pretty much have all possibilities covered (in a general way). It’s more a tribute to the power of generalization than the impossibility of originality.

The power of a story has much more to do with the execution than which trope you can describe it with.

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I absolutely despise the “learn to be a master _____ in three months” cliche. It’s everywhere, especially in fantasy. There is no possible way someone can become a master at something in a few months that usually takes a lifetime to accomplish. Argh! It annoys me so much.

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@VoiD THIS annoys me to no end. Kid with no experience as a ___ becomes a badass at it in a few months. Often single handedly defeating groups of people who have been doing it for much longer then them.

Also, the, Ten+ guys (who are supposed to experienced criminals/black ops) shooting at the Main character miss from point blank range. They also miss when they take the character by surprise and out of cover. The MC will then shoot a lame ass pistol at them from their position in THE OPEN and WITHOUT cover. Of course, as the hero, he has aimbot hacks, so every shot he fires is a headshot/incap. That **** drives me insane every time I see it happen.

@God_of_Demonz Well it would be a rather abrupt action movie if they just mowed the hero down. The end. :stuck_out_tongue:

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The hero could try not to constantly run across open spaces when they suspect hostiles are in the area.

@MutonElite It would be quite interesting though. Just imagine: Some kind of bigshot actor playing the hero, only to be shot down five minutes into the movie, after which the focus of the story goes to a gangly teenage boy with braces, an anti-social young woman and a three legged labrador retriever. :slight_smile:
I would most definetely watch it.

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@From_Beginnings It’s not that I dislike using brain over brawn, it’s just I don’t like heroes who have nothing else going for them except their sarcastic remarks, that’ll go into a fight totally unprepared and expect everyone else to bail them out.

Hate to say it but Tyrion Lannister is almost that kind. He actually fights, though, and has no qualms about violence, and has a lot more going on in his character, so he’s really good. And he’s not afraid to pick up an axe and go to war, even if he is a little guy. And he cares about more than only himself. But if he was just a jackass, and relied on only money and his friends, I wouldn’t like him.

So continuing the analogy, I think Varys the Eunich is a stupid, stupid character. He should be dead long ago, if only for barbarian eunich hate, let alone the amount of enemies he makes. But no, he’s just allowed to keep talking and guile his way to the center of every web.

Varys is allowed to live simply because he’s tremendously useful. To kill a man who can learn anything about anyone no matter where they are would be a waste.

@trollhunterthethird Nope! But that’s another bad one lool. Lot of bad werewolf stories, kinda sad really…I love werewolves.

If I had to chose a cliches it would be the villain tricking the naive hero/villagers/etc into doing there dirty work and then either killing them, their loves ones, etc/or leaving them wallowing in shame over what they done.

maybe it just me but I feel there are more creative way to go about getting what they want.

Edit: I also hate the whole villains hiring bounties hunter who have the hunting for honor code mentality which end with them letting there prey have a fair chance at killing them.

None of these make me squirm on their own. It’s mainly how they’re used. Bioware tends to use lots of them in horrible ways for example. Lol.

Really though, I don’t see what the problem is with the “evil race.” If they’re trying to kill you, it hardly matters if they’re good fathers to their orc children or not.

The orc probably sees the human in the same light. What does he care whether or not that human works for charities for orphans back home? They’re all the enemy and need to be killed. We’re just not playing it from the “evil” side most of the time so the enemy looks one dimension and there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless it’s actually important to the story in some way, not everyone has to have multilayered dimensions of characterization.

And while I like multidimensional villains as much as the next person, I’m sort of sick of this idea that every evil overlord has to have some complex reason for being evil. Can’t someone just get on with kicking puppies and throwing babies out of windows without them whining and crying about how they’re this way because they didn’t have hamburger helper as a child?

Really, most of the time I don’t want to hear the villain mastermind go on about how he didn’t get enough hugs as a kid (or too many hugs) I want him to be plotting the downfall of civilization and generally being drunk on the dark side.

(Okay, so an introspective moment of him thinking silently about his long lost childhood sweetheart before he commits global genocide is permitted. Lol)

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A situation where “they’re all the enemy and need to be killed” and where you can assume that even the nice-Dad orcs will attack you on sight doesn’t just happen. (A world where it does is the essence of the Evil Race cliche.)

There are plenty of things that could get you there. Is it a situation of sentient predator-sentient prey? Is it a war that’s gone on so long everyone takes it for granted? Does one side or both have a culture that glorifies violence to a ridiculously destructive degree?

Any of those would be more plausible than “they’re all Evil”. Individuals can be evil, and yeah, there doesn’t need to be a flashback demonstrating that it’s all down to poor toilet training. But species aren’t evil, except in the genocidal imagination

The only problem with the other options, I guess, is that they raise possibilities other than killing the enemy without remorse. That’s inconvenient for writers and readers who want fantasies of uncomplicated righteous violence. But not too inconvenient – as you note, all it takes is a scenario where the individuals you meet are trying to kill you. Self defense is so comfortable.

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