I’m a guy and my hair is maybe a couple inches shorter than yours it sounds like, The struggle to find a game (and even an IF game a lot of times) that lets the hair flow is very real.
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I’m one of those weirdos that genuinely likes playing female characters and I always have to settle for a ponytail when I really want luscious black waves that cascade down my back. But until recently even triple-A games have taken the easy route in texturing and animating hair (they don’t do it).
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Yeah, that’s where I was going with Mass Effect. At least there’s an in-universe reason for that - a marine can’t exactly do whatever they want with their hair (Lord knows, I know that much. I live very near a marine base, and every male marine is obvious on sight. Short and tight, boys. Short and tight).
Even Dragon Age, I can soooort of understand, because of the whole fighting thing.
But it’s like…I’m playing a fantasy game, right? Let me put myself in the fantasy, pls.
@JMH the struggle is soooo real, hahaha. I just wanna feel like a skinnier, prettier, Mary Sue version of myself, okay
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- Something that just tries to be everything at once… If you try to make a compelling thriller while also making it a comedy with a heavy romance influence while also making things wrapped up in an allegory about the nature of human greed vs nature with a massive cast of varied characters, well, you reading this at home probably had to reread some of that to even just wrap your head around it. It’s not impossible to make something that has a little bit of many genres, themes, and ideas, but it’s usually best to just try and focus on making your main draws really good.
This ties in with a similar problem of ‘Don’t have a pointless adventure.’ If there’s no lesson to be learned, then it probably wasn’t an exciting tale. People develop by learning, and plots develop through people. So if there’s no ideas, not matter how simple, being put out by the text, then it’s not likely an entertaining read.
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For the love of god space out your paragraphs and have decent syntax. Anything from a book to a webcomic, if you’re staring at nothing but a big chunk of text exposition it becomes a draining task to get through.
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Not having a decent voice. Seeing dry boring drawls of exposition with uninspired dialogue and narration that feels like it’s going through the motions is awful to get through. It’s not something that can really be easily learned, but it’s what separates good narratives from bad ones.
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don’t try to be everything at once
don’t have a pointless adventure
I’m really enjoying Stronghold (from the COG lineup) because it feels really focused on the trade-offs and compromises of running a little medieval town without skimping on the things that COG titles are known for (relationship management, character customisation, NB options, impactful choices, etc). I love how tightly woven the narrative is.
I also enjoy Stronghold for being what it is, but felt they’re missing a lot, speaking of “don’t try to be everything.” Especially the inheritance part, especially if you let Petta become your successor. I don’t mind if one of the arc revolves around Petta, but to my disappointment, she’s still nobody when she took charge of the town, and even I adore her!.
Speaking of which, nice Hollow Knight profpic you got there.
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I feel like Stronghold had a lot of good build up and potential, but the game felt quite railroady and in the end the problems never cultivated into a real definitive climax or true test of your planning or skill. It just felt like “Well this is a thing now, which one of my stats is the highest and can allow me to get by?”
It’s a shame for me personally, because I was quite invested in it when I felt like it was building up to something bigger.
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Let’s keep this discussion to general writing-related dislikes and tropes—discussion of Stronghold specifically should go in its thread or other related topics. 
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Two things that more often then not I don’t like are:
When the author wants the reader to be surprised by a face-heel turn. Don’t get me wrong I like stories with spies and traitors and stuff, but I’d prefer to know who they are early on for the dramatic irony and the tension that creates. A lot of the time it seems to me that in order to pull off shocking the reader with this sort of reveal, the author either:
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Makes the traitor some tertiary character you never would expect to be important, in which case the reveal just kind of feels flat (“really it’s the merchant they visited twice? Okay I guess?”)
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they make the character as likeable or interesting as possible to try and make the reveal hurt, and suddenly the character is a psychopath so you’re both hurt but can now feel good rooting against them. In this second case, I don’t end up mad at the character, I end up mad at the author for eliminating an interesting character for the sake of a twist. This can be handled well if the traitor character remains more or less the same as they were before the reveal, just they happen to be working for the other team, but this is rarely the case of how things play out.
The other thing is kind of specific to one book series, but it applies in smaller ways elsewhere, but it’s when an author makes you go through a whole lot of crap just so they can have a twist.
The more generic form of this is when a genre book wants to play with tropes of the genre, so for the first half of the book or so they play it totally straight, often intentionally making it extremely formulaic just so when the big trope busting twist occurs, it’s extra shocking. Please don’t hide all the awesome stuff about your book hundreds of pages in, you won’t get the kind of return on reader’s investment you think you’ll get.
So in general I think I just put a whole lot less value in and get a lot less value out of ‘twists.’
And as a general bonus: on the whole editors are an author’s friend and if they really feel like parts of the book are unneeded authors should please seriously consider cutting them or editing them to make them feel less extraneous.
EDIT - I’ll just edit in one more here: It would be nice if sometimes a character who died off screen actually is dead. I’m kind of tired of “No body on screen means they are probably alive” being the default (and usually correct) assumption.
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Hey thanks! I wasn’t sure if anyone would recognise the old boy.
I actually have no idea who Petta is! Does she show up after chapter six?
EDIT to get off the topic of Stronghold, I ONE HUNDRED PERCENT agree with not “hiding your premise” behind 100,000 words of misdirection. Tell me what I’m getting into!
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This is a slight pet peeve that I dislike whenever reading a book or IF, and yes, I’m also slightly guilty of doing this as well, but exposition that isn’t portrayed entertainingly or exposition dialogue without character is a no-no of writing that I hate.
I’m not saying that heavy exposition is inherently bad, at some points you need to inform the readers about important information that will help the world-building or explain a previous or later plot-point, however, the most important factor of entertainment is to be… entertaining!
The exposition doesn’t need to be portrayed as humorous or wacky, you can do serious exposition and still make it entertaining. Blend it with the plot, add character to the exposition with some of the character’s own traits or just do a physical example in the text. Make it enjoyable to read!
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Good idea for a topic, as for me…
When people write “It was almost like he was scared.” Problem is the character was actually scared, not almost.
So is it almost “X” or was it “X”. If it was, write that.
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Oh, y’all, I was just reading a fanfic, and I remembered my biggest no-no of them all.
I cannot stand when characters surprise themselves with their own attraction. This was such a huge, overplayed trope, from around 2007-2010, that I never want to see it again.
Example, not taken from anything real
Jessica grumbled under her breath about Nicholas. He was such a jerk!
He never listened to her, he always spoke over her, and he had the most kissable face.
Wait…
Kissable?
Note, during the Golden Age of Fanfiction 
- back when it was still taboo but definitely growing (some would argue that now is better, but there was something innocent about the late aughts and its “lemons”) - sometimes this would be written, for comedic effect, with a strike through. I still sometimes do it, myself, and hate myself for it.
It is literally just such a horrible reminder of the height of emo, and I was the biggest emo kid and???
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A thing I have been noticing a lot lately in non-published internet fiction, is when the writer will have the narration tell the reader something, and then have the character say it out loud, with pretty much the same wording.
It is driving me mad.
Why would you do this? What is the purpose of the repetition?
James yawned loudly. He was so very tired.
“I am so very tired.” James complained.
The readers are smart enough to get the point, without that extra line.
And sometimes a writer will do this multiple times in a short chapter, and it’s almost enough to make me stop reading the story instantly.
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whoops…
Guess its a description? Cose if you go ‘‘John: Yawn I’m so tired’’ out of the blue…kinda weird no?
I remember reading a long time ago that book readers tend to skim over descriptions, but readers never skip dialogue. So you should often go “John said, “I am so very tried.”” rather than “He was so very tired.”
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Imagine having exposition at the very start of the story.
Now imagine it telling you everything about about a prophecy.
That’s a no-no in a lot of people’s books, afaik.
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EDIT: Edited to say “Prequels” instead of “Prologues” because I used the wrong word and caused confusion.
Prequels
Stories that begin with prologues or stories with a lot of flashbacks are fine. But prequels of existing works or stories that use prequels as a massive framing device? I detest them mainly because of how inherently constricting they are; I don’t see the point of reading a story when I know that certain outcomes are inevitable.
Furthermore, and probably most importantly, I want to know what happens next, not what happened before. That’s one of the main reasons why I dropped critically acclaimed novels like The Name of the Wind. I just couldn’t get over how the entire story was framed as the hero’s prologue.
Pairings Based Off One-sided Attraction
It’s probably better if I use an example here.
- Zane has been in love with Carol for years.
- Everything in the story points towards Carol only seeing Zane as a friend.
- The story treats Zane like he’s “The One” for Carol or that he has “first dibs” at Carol just because he has feelings for her.
- Any romantic relationship Carol has independent from Zane is treated as a “complication.”
- The Zane/Carol pairing is based off the sole fact Zane has one-sided feelings for Carol. How Carol feels is completely irrelevant because it’s assumed she’ll eventually feel the same way.
I come across this way too often and I absolutely detest it. A romantic relationship requires mutual attraction. But this kind of development treats one person as an object or a prize to be won rather than an actual character.
You can’t have a convincing relationship when one person’s feelings are treated as unimportant.
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Totally agree with you on the second part but I’m not quite sure I understood what you meant about prologues. Would you mind giving some examples?
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I think what’s meant by that are books (or games I suppose) that serve as precursors to stories that are unfolding in the present, or whose ends set in motion the events of “now”, not “after”.
So The Name of the Wind’s first book is told by a guy who’s talking about the events that lead up to where he is now (essentially the story of “how he got there”); and his retelling comprises the entirety of the first book. No “present” or “current” action takes place; and the ending of the story is a foregone conclusion, because we know it ends with him sitting there in an inn, telling the story. It can’t end with him dying or being kidnapped or sent to hell: it must end with him telling the story, because it’s all a prologue, and therefore there’s not a ton of suspense or mystery. If that makes any sense! What I think distinguishes it from just “a story set in the past” is that it serves as a direct precursor to the story happening “now”. The Hobbit would be a “prologue story” if it were told by Bilbo after or during the events of LOTR. Like Frodo gets the ring and then Bilbo’s like “You might wonder how I got this ring!” and then tells a whole book about it, leading up to Frodo getting the ring. Instead, it goes in sequential order, where Bilbo gets the ring and then Frodo gets it, and there’s no going back to the past to prologue it?
Another example would be like if all 8(?) Harry Potter books were written, and then a book discussing the events surrounding Harry’s parents’ death came out, serving as a prologue to events we already know will take place!
Correct me if I’m wrong, of course haha, or if I made it more confusing! 
I can’t really think of a game where this happens, but I do tend to avoid “prologue stories” too, especially if I already know that the character dies in their “main story” later.
Oh! Oh! Solo is a prologue movie! We already know that Han meets Chewie and then the events of his life after, etc. The entire Solo movie is meant to be a prologue to the events of the original trilogy, which many people can find pointless, since they all lead to a foregone conclusion. Sometimes it can be an interesting “past character” study, but I agree that I tend to avoid those types of stories, too!
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