That’s interesting. Usually when I see this complaint it aims the other way – MCs that act immature (usually described as “teen or early 20s”) despite you getting to choose an older age.
What are the signs that someone’s in their thirties? Especially in a fantasy context, I’m not sure I can think of anything that would give me that reaction, rather than e.g. assuming I’m working with a remarkably worldly-wise 19 year old (who do exist…especially in fantasies). 
I picture the age as I see it. Most of the time between 18 and 25.
I seen immature above 40 and more mature below 18. Depends on their life or other factors.
Unless author is very specific about age. Lots can happen before 30.
Nephew is 21. He seems to be like in his 30s due to so much hardship.
Oh don’t get me wrong, the other way 'round also bothers me. Whenever the age you imagine the MC to be at clashes with the age the author imagines the MC to be at just irks me in general, whether older or younger.
What are the signs that someone’s in their thirties? Especially in a fantasy context, I’m not sure I can think of anything that would give me that reaction, rather than e.g. assuming I’m working with a remarkably worldly-wise 19 year old (who do exist…especially in fantasies).
A good sign (for me at least) is if other characters have canonical ages, and how the narration reacts to them. I don’t necessarily mean all other characters, mind, especially ROs, as they tend to also have vague ages if the MC has a vague age. I’m thinking more like characters in minor roles, the ones who show up for like a chapter or two and then never again.
As for an example (that I should’ve provided in the first place 
), say the MC meets a character that is explicitly state in text to be 20 years old. The narration proceeds to go on about how young said character is. Not just in experience (or lack of), but in how youthful the character looks. It can be a bit jarring when, if you were imagining the MC to be 24 year old, to read the narration go on about how young a 20 year old is when the MC is imagined to be only a few years older.
So I guess for me it’s less on how an MC acts, and more to do with how the narration acts, when the author is on record saying that the MC can be of any age over 18.
Sympathetic villains with tragic back stories.
I understand why writers create villains with tragic pasts or utopian ambitions, but I miss the traditional villains who are simply bad people. Harlan Wade, Rudolf Wernicke, Tywin Lannister, all these guys who know what they are and don’t give a damn. They’re not here to change the world, nor are they interested in the moral nuances of Thanos’s snap. They’re here for themselves, whether in the pursuit of power, money, their ego, and so on. In short, fewer villains who burn down orphanages because “it hurts them more than it hurts you”, and more villains who burn down orphanages because their company is the one who will rebuild them with overpriced contracts.
I love the moral dilemmas gray characters can give us, but I also like it when the villain twirls his mustache from time to time too, and I think they’re in short supply these days.
Yessssss! if they cannot burn down a church full of people, they are not a bad-ass, just someone who is morally grey and might have a soft streak for their fellow humans, fae or whatever, or heavens help us, the MC, and hesitate before trying to kill them!
Before anyone screams, a medieval French king did exactly that! nasty piece of work in anyone’s book. French history can turn up some really bad betrayal and torture and unpleasant and downright evil characters to use as character models.
When games have multiple endings with one being the true ending but the true ending is a huge downer compared to some other endings. Not sure which is worse, canonizing a terrible outcome for the sequel bc you have no idea how to continue from a hard-earned happy ending or labeling one ending the true ending even though there IS NO CONTINUATION and thus no reason not to leave it up to the audience. Especially common in RPGMaker games and Visual Novels.
I digress. If the true ending is the canonical ending, is a happy ending, and everything gets wrapped up nicely, there can be still room for a sequel starring an entirely different set of characters and set in the same world, with the protagonist still joining in the action. For example, there’s nothing stopping you from recruiting Tir McDohl (from Suikoden I) in Riou’s New State Army in Suikoden II, the direct sequel, even though he has already achieved his own best ending.
Another thing that bugs me is actually a big reason why a lot of zombie apocalypse stories turn me off. I love the premise but the execution very often has EVERY character failing to notice an obvious survival tactic purely so there can be drama later. Namely, KILL THE ZOMBIES FIRST CHANCE YOU GET.
Walking Dead is the first example that comes to mind, though not the only one by any stretch. So many episodes have the characters, who have like, years of experience with these things by now, ducking and hiding from one or two zombies that are in complete isolation, with there being a lot of tense atmosphere as they wait for it to wander off. And sometimes it comes back later to be a problem. My siblings in Christ, kill that thing! You have the drop on it! Stab it in the head or something!
In fact, kill as many zombies as you can! Don’t wait for them to form hordes, send out hunting parties. The fewer zombies there are, the fewer can attack you later. The Walking Dead has everyone who dies rise from the dead but most stories have you need to get bitten. So every dead zombie is potentially an exponential decrease in the number of zombies in the area.
Speaking of, TWD really loves having characters die and then have everyone reel from the tension of the fight (if the person was evil) or immediately go into mourning (if not) and then have the person rise as a zombie to ramp up tension. I understand that earlier on, it’s difficult to stab your dead loved ones in the head. Everyone’s adapting, they’re not hardened and desensitized. But at some point people have to adapt. In a situation like that, people eventually adjust to the situation and unconsciously do it before even processing that your friend is dead. I don’t mean in a “the violence has cost us our humanity and we all become more ruthless and uncaring” sense (see below), I mean it’s just muscle memory. Even if you don’t get desensitized to losing people, this will apply. No loss of compassion necessary.
Speaking of, I HATE when they try to do the “people have given up their humanity to survive” trope and a) portray it as something that is ALWAYS necessary for survival in those circumstances. There are many real life cases where people need to do terrible things to survive but adopting that as something EVERYONE has to do and as the ONLY way to survive is extremely disingenuous. The people with the highest survival rates tend to be more compassionate, group oriented people. “Every man for himself” is more likely to get you killed.
But more specifically, I hate when an increased willingness to kill the zombies and/or no longer seeing them as people is seen as a sign someone is losing their humanity. Even if they’re like, expressing concerning bloodlust. The zombies ARE objectively no longer human and they DO need to be killed to survive. Being able to accept that doesn’t mean you’re losing yourself. That’s DUMB.
Tbf, the people who lived years into the apocalypse are probably… cowards? With all the people and groups who went actively zombie hunting constantly at risk and being attritted down. Even if they do have an outsized impact on the zombie population.
Putting yourself in unnecessary danger just to get the drop on a zombie or 2 seems reasonable until your doing it day in and day out because statistically your going to run out of luck eventually.
Although yea, TWD characters allowing a massive hoard to gather on their walls when they can do stuff like have their guards poke through/over fences to keep the local population down is always stupid.
I’d say its more to do with the story telling of the series then anything else, the massed hoards put a timer on the group staying in any one location, and when a break-in does occur you can kill of characters and give yourself a reason to change scenery and obstacles of the group.
It’s not a matter of luck in TWD. Doing this is tricky in settings like Zombie Exodus, because those zombies are suped-up mofos and they’ll single-handedly tear you a new one or five. But a TWD zombie is a nothingburger. Two, three, four of them are nothingburgers. You duct tape a combat knife to the end of a broom and it’s a done deal, zero danger. But if you skip on killing a group of four of them ten times, suddenly you have FORTY of the things and THAT is a problem.
Not killing them seems worse, then. If you get the drop on one or two at least you can choose a scenario where you can stack your advantages against theirs. If they flood you with 40 superzeds your odds seem mich worse than if you hunt them down one by one
Yes, but killing a ZE zombie is actually dangerous, because those things are super fast, super strong, and come packaged with claws and fangs.
How do people deal with packs of them if they don’t ambush individual stragglers before they group up?
By getting overrun and nommed on.
By spending a ridiculous amount of scarce ammo and losing a bunch of people, mostly.
Big oof
Another pet peeve of mine is fantasy races that resemble animals being horrified at the idea of people eating at best, distant relatives of their species.
Like, if an eagle person found the idea of eating an eagle upsetting, yeah I get that, a lot of people (though not all) find the prospect of eating primates similarly troubling. But if they find eating say, chicken horrifying despite not being chickens*? That’s kinda dumb. Was watching an SF Debris review of Howard The Duck and Howard reacted to being served eggs by asking if they thought he was a cannibal to which SF replied “it’s a chicken egg you fucking idiot”. Birds are a whole class of animals. This is like if someone accused you of being a cannibal for eating venison. We’re both mammals after all.
Even dumber if it’s plant people with fruits and vegetables. That’s a whole KINGDOM. I kind of want a twist where the horrified plant person is the species’s equivalent of a vegan. Eat EXCLUSIVELY animal and fungus products!
*Of course, chickens are known cannibals so they might not have an issue with it either.
And eagles are predators, so they might be okay with it too…
But really, plant people having problem with people eating the part of plant that is built to be eaten? Wow.
This direction that post-apocalyptic stories tend to take is inevitable when the antagonists, the zombies in your example, can be contained to a certain extent when the humans organize themselves. Once the chaos of the first few days and months has passed, it becomes impossible to justify the characters’ incompetence against them, and as a consequence, the “humans are the real monsters” trope comes into play. If you think about it, the only zombies that never really lose the limelight are either the runners (28 Days and Weeks Later, World War Z, Day of the Dead, Black Summer), or zombies with mutations and variations (The Last of Us, Dying Light, Left 4 Dead, Dead State).
Romero-style zombies, slow as a tortoise, are bound to lose their leading role to humans at some point in the story. The very collapse of civilization because of this style of zombie is illogical in itself.
yea TWD are uninteresting as antagonists, WWZ zombies (book not movie) are similar – in that they’re just normal corpses – yet remain threating because they always operate at 100% strength, going so far as to tear limbs off by bashing into doors for hours on end, it means they break themselves down quickly but can clobber any ‘normal’ zombie apocalypse barricade.
I’d also say most early survivors are focused on staying alive, and by the time they gain the knowledge and skill necessary to take on zombies comfortably the zombie population is already well into the horde stage.
WWZ (book not movies) explains this away with human over-confidence, a fake vaccine is developed that gives rich countries a sense of security, people get ‘zombie psychosis’ and pretend to be zombies, which leds to media stories of zombies fighting each other, and tactics and equipment that is useful against a human enemy being rendered ineffective against zombies* means that by the time humans learn to fight back something like 9/10ths of the world are dead.
*the US military invites a bunch of news crews to watch them have a pitched battle against a zombie horde out of NY and makes a bunch of logistical mistakes that leads to them being overrun, I cant do the story justice but if you look up the battle of yonkers you can probably find it online.