I get why this bothers people, but tbh I’m a lot more annoyed by a game describing people as UN-attractive. I also don’t really wanna call out specifics but I’ve seen games describe characters as like, I mean I’m paraphrasing, but “alright to look at” or “a bit homely but kind of cute I guess” or “basically 6 outta 10” and that rubs me the wrong way much harder than the game pushing a character as attractive. When the game tells me another character is nice to look at I can read it like, “so this character is conventionally or classically attractive, this character has a lot of focus on looks, this description will inform/explain some of how other characters will interact with this character, etc,” but when a game tells me “this character is not someone you find particularly attractive,” that feels way more to me like the game assuming what my tastes are. And way more insulting to that character, too
Were only human after all.
Oh, please, don’t remind me. That was a bad way to introduce a LI. First, I don’t have any favourites among celebrities and wouldn’t like my character to be one of these fans who obsess over people they don’t personally know… Second, there was a choice of names - and I had to google who the hell all those people were and what they looked like. And then I had to think real hard about who among the celebrities I do know would look most like the BM I’d like my character to be attracted to… That was ridiculous.
The only way to not get the BM romance scene is to refuse attraction at the start. Heroes Rise series is a big offender of forcing romance, friendship, and politics on the reader
I don’t mind being told a character is conventionally attractive or conventionally unattractive for the time period. That’s ok by me! Or show it with other people’s reactions, but I don’t see any need to beat around the bush. I think sometimes people get overly cute with their personal taste in that way, in that like, ok even if you personally find Ronald McDonald more attractive than Chris Hemsworth you are almost certainly able to perceive Chris is the far more conventionally attractive…
That being said I also really dislike anything that’s like “YOU find this person attractive” though I’m OK with it if it’s magic. I do find it mildly creepy when the author is trying way way too hard to make a particular character sound hot.
I do have issues personally with works that tell me what I’m attracted to.
General example IF: “She’s the most beautiful girl, you ever laid eyes on.”
Me: “Ok.”
General example IF: "With her long blond hai-
Me: “Wrong!”
It just drives my crazy when games and even tv just naturally assumes I would be attracted to whatever guy or girl.
Very true. If you followed the author’s narrative, you’d end up with a different love interest every damn book, ending with being romantically involved with the sociopath who tried to kill you, only to watch her die.
Also, I’m confused. I was fairly sure Black Magic’s power was reality manipulation (At the cost of consuming souls). Her “Description” was purely the author’s choice to skimp on an actual character idea and just go with what he thought would be the MC’s fantasy.
Another no no is a useless MC that never really develops no matter what you do.
Heroes Rise author has an issue of creating god-like characters without really realising just how powerful they are. Black Magic can straight up change the rules of reality, Prodigal can generate anything if the intent of it is violence, the MC can deconstruct, re-arrange, and destroy at an atomic level, and also has both gross and acute gravity control. In Open Season there’s no reason the MC couldn’t simply obliterate the big bad, or crush them into themselves with gravity, none of this ever occurs to the character, who instead decides to try to blow them up
B- But I love “taking the third option”!
Especially when you build your character as a badass cunning type who isn’t the strongest or fastest in the band, but always behind the curtain of every crucial decision.
Of course, you have to be badass cunning to be able to pick the 3rd option.
Anime comes in mind, and the champion is Sora NGNL. Other will be the MC from “The Great Tale of Alderamin” (or something. I kinda forgot the title).
I have noticed in a lot of these games, the characters are…kind of oblivious. The CCH Series, for example. Your character is supposed to be strong, smart and fast enough for a normie to be recognized among thousands of candidates to get a scholarship. Five minutes in, the character can’t figure out how to win at capture the flag unless they picked a very specific class.
I don’t hate it, but I’ve never seen the third option go awry, or end up being costly in a story. It almost always goes off without a hitch. The idea of being able to see an alternate route through the current predicament isn’t bad, that’s just the protagonist being good at thinking outside the box. It’s the idea that said alternate route is always right, or always comes with the lowest cost-to-benefit ratio.
It’s usually because the third option is the most thought out and well planned. Of course, if Superman is given the choice to save GF A or GF B, and then he said out of nowhere “Well, I’ll save them both!” and flies off to save them both safely, it’ll be unsatisfying.
Someone cherishing his nostalgia
It's been a while since I watched No Game No Life, but in Sora's case, he got the war into the position where he's face 2 face with the leader of the enemy faction.
The conflict drags on too long to the point where Sora proposed to decide the winner in a coin flip. Yep, friggin coin flip for the fate of your boundaries!
The leader, which is basically a busty female kitsune with superhuman ability, accepted it. With her power, she can basically slows down time and do the crazy calculus analysis of 100% probability in her head once the coin is flipped.
So Sora flips the coin, the coin reaches its max height, falls down to the level of both party’s eyes, and the Kitsune girl declares a side (let’s call it tail for now. I rly forgot the stuff). Guess what, the coin didn’t land on either the head or tail.
It got stuck between two tile-floors. The coin is standing on its edge.
With his usual sarcastic way of speaking, Sora said, “Oh no! No one is winning, no one is losing! So how it’ll be? Should both of us be defeated and dismantle our own nation, or be the winner and join in a mutual alliance?”
In anime style, the kitsune basically, “huh, you planned this all along?” And the narration rolls into the flashback moments a la detective movies where Sora knows he can’t win the conflict in any form of physical feats or something that requires immense brain power planning (chess), thus the conflict drags on too long; he can only win with tricks and wits. He already examined the floor to find the one where he can slide the tile with his foot right at the last moment to make the coin stuck to it, enough to deny the kitsune’s pick.
Oh, damn you madhouse. I need S2.
Just like tvtropes.org described it, “A third option can only be made if these 3 are fulfilled: a) time, b) resource, c) knowledge.”
A third option can also be made out of foolishness however, a belief that you can do it without having any of what you need to get it done
Stories that end with the revelation that it was all a dream…
I can agree to this one
Traditional love triangle is also a big NO.Unless the competitors ends up together like Korrasami
Protagonist falling in love with someone else but go back to their family because family above everything.Like Brief Encounter
Old wise mentor trope,aka ObiWan Kenobi
Cute flawed characters growing too strong too good.I don’t want to list names,but there’s a cog game where my sarcastic jerk gf became a mature leader in the epilogue.
Kill off minor love interests of the hero/heroine(or make them A-holes) so the OTP of the author can end up together while staying at moral highground.David Copperfield
This is only for COG games:the protagonist gets beaten up repeatedly
The evils aren’t really evil ,you just have to grow out of your shell to see the real world
Affected ethical dilemma when the author pretentiously thinks they’re coming up with a really important or realistic issue
Oh, what an interesting topic. A bunch of mine have been mentioned already, but here goes.
- Purple prose drives me up the wall. I have read really excellent description, but some people go faaaaar overboard with it. I start editing it with red pen in my head.
- Vocabulary pulled out from a thesaurus (or who knows where) that doesn’t fit or isn’t anything that anyone actually says. Don’t really read romance per say, but specifically in those cases terms for human body parts that are laughable. (In other words, anyone who calls it a honeybox wouldn’t get close to my honeybox). Also, a mishmash of 78 ways to say “said” shoehorned in when said would have been better.
3)Unhealthy relationships paraded as “love.” Not respecting boundaries, extreme jealously, abuse, etc. pushed as romance. (Not that a story can’t have abusive relationships or has to be all light and fluffy, but don’t sell it as true love nonsense.)
4)No real stakes and the main character is gonna end up fine no matter what. It something is dangerous, let it be dangerous. The protagonist gets outcof the scrape? Great. The 2nd time, too? Alright. The 43rd and still no real consequence? Nope. (I admit to being the girl who bored of Nancy Drew books because after so many books - past the originals, though - I thought her brakes were tampered with too often without her getting hurt. )
5)Mary Sues who have no real character of their own at all. Also flat supporting characters. Sometimes an extremely well-written secondary or tertiary character becomes a favorite, but those aren’t always fleshed out.
6)Plot that is completely illogical and wouldn’t happen but is pushed along by some event or circumstance x that still doesn’t explain it. Not to say people are always rational in real life, but that the event doesn’t flow or is at odds with other things. I remember reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle in 6th grade (god, that was like 2 decades ago, but it’s stuck with me) and detested it. I just don’t see a fairly well-off girl at that time period being shipped off alone across the sea at all, so couldn’t like what I saw as inherently ridiculous given that it wouldn’t happen. Also, she gets involved in conflicts aboard and a “nice mutiny”. I’m not saying that the mutiny/fight should have been more violent and her thrown overboard (but it would have been a better book in that something could have theoretically happened).
7)Soapbox. Any agenda-shoving of politics or ideologies.
8)Extreme violence or twisted stuff that is done just to seem edgy or provocative. That’s more film, though, but still. I will read pretty much any mature content - violence, rapes, etc - in novels given that it is an integral part of a real plot. Can only think of 1 play where it just struck me as obscene solely for the sake of being obscene.
Just how bad? This woman I babysat for ages ago lent me a book (was a history major and read a bunch of historical fic stuff) that took place in Spain just prior to and during their civil war. It is one of the worst books I have ever read (I must have some masochistic streak to have finished it). It was called The Sound of Thunder I think. Main character a total Mary Sue, but no peraonality, charisma, or stunning looks, yet nearly all the guys are driven to bang her despite being a virtual cardboard cut-out. Also, no matter how improbable, people close to her are put into all major events of the war even though it’s completely far-fetched. Characters die right and left, but it seems many were killed off based on the fact that the author didn’t know what to so with them, so killing them off fixed all those problems. Also, extremely simplified viewpoints presented of the political factions in the war. It was sooooooo bad.
-Time travel. I’ve read too much time travel where the entire arc of the story is either reset at the end or some version of “Switched” after the final confrontation. It’s great that the protagonist now has a new lease on life, but they conveniently miss out on the good and bad consequences of how they got there.
-Trickster mentors. Keeping you on your toes is cool. But “Betraying” you in the end is not.
-COG specific, but whenever I’m asked what I (the character) am thinking. Unless it’s for the benefit of some sort of telepathic communication, it serves no purpose for propelling the story. What I say and what I do are more important, the characterization of my character’s inner monologue should be my responsibility. It feels like unnecessary padding.
-Echoing the one above me, but ideology. I am very firmly a specific, oftentimes unpopular slanted-stanced person with regards to things like politics and religion. An attempt at changing my mind is always welcomed, but when this is done it is done very bluntly, usually with no attempt at properly fitting it into the story.
-Killing characters purely for the sake of killing them. It’s part of why I’ve never bothered to watch Game of Thrones. I heard “Characters die, it’s so realistic!”, and immediately turned away from it. To quote the good JRR Tolkien: “It [The Fantasy Genre, Fiction in general] is meant to be unrealistic, you myopic manatee.”
Sounds like my kind of trashy novel, any other “recommendations”?
Preferably political, the more ham fisted the better
I know a lot of people like it, but I just think it’s extremely predictable at this point. We’re all waiting to see how the protagonist will get out of it with no great loss, and it feels a lot like “fake threat” - they build up the anticipation of the hero having to make A Decision but instead gets to cop out of it and just be unambiguously correct and heroic in all ways. I don’t mind stories where there’s a hero like that, though they aren’t usually my favourite - I just don’t like when it’s set up to try to seem like it’ll be different.
Surprisingly, it is the better examples that stick in my mind. So, I’ll be happy to share these, instead of “bad” examples that I don’t tend to remember. Most of these are historical fantasies or alternative universes types of authors.
1: Katherine Kurtz - her writing is what I hope to approach one day.
2: Kate Elliot - she is a brilliant historical fantasy writer and she shared her research sources!
3: Harry Turtledove - his expertise of everything Byzantium and his ability to hold an alternative time-line together is simply amazing.
4: Jerry Pournelle - brings modern military themes into fantasy quite well.
5: David Drake - same
6: Michael Moorcock
and one of the Grand Masters: Andre Norton.
These are just off the top of my head and I could spend hours thinking of different elements from many more authors that worked really well but these should be enough to inspire most people.