Guilty Pleasure Tropes?

[ThisAdamGuy]

What are some tropes you know are bad, or at least overused, but you love to read or write about them anyway?

I love dark lord villains, but only when they're done right. The thing about dark lords is that they usually don't make actual physical appearances in the story much, if at all. They're essentially background characters. When they're done right, they feel like a force of nature. Like stormclouds, you can see them coming and there's nothing you can do about it except get out of the way or hunker down and hope you don't get blown away. But if they're done wrong, they come across more like boogeymen for the hero to impotently shake their fists at and scream their names into the sky whenever something bad happens. Good examples: Sauron (Lord of the Rings), The Dark One (Wheel of Time), The Lord Ruler (Mistborn). Bad examples: Galbatorix (Eragon).

I also love last second dramatic entrances, especially when the entrancee gets to make a cool one liner. I know it usually makes no sense that they would know what was being said when they're usually in a completely different room, or that they always manage to make their entrance at the exact moment when it's most dramatic, but it always makes me smile anyway.

Villain: "So much for the power of friendship, Hero! Now you will die alone!"
(Door gets kicked open)
Friend #1: "Don't be so sure about that, Villain!"
Villain: "Ha! One friend will never be able to stop me!"
Friend #1: "Sorry I'm late, Hero! I had to make a detour on my way here."
Hero: "What kind of detour?"
(Friends #2 - #99 pile into the room)
Friend #2: "To get us!"

 

[Nolff]

What are some tropes you know are bad, or at least overused, but you love to read or write about them anyway?

I love dark lord villains, but only when they're done right. The thing about dark lords is that they usually don't make actual physical appearances in the story much, if at all. They're essentially background characters. When they're done right, they feel like a force of nature. Like stormclouds, you can see them coming and there's nothing you can do about it except get out of the way or hunker down and hope you don't get blown away. But if they're done wrong, they come across more like boogeymen for the hero to impotently shake their fists at and scream their names into the sky whenever something bad happens. Good examples: Sauron (Lord of the Rings), The Dark One (Wheel of Time), The Lord Ruler (Mistborn). Bad examples: Galbatorix (Eragon).

I also love last second dramatic entrances, especially when the entrancee gets to make a cool one liner. I know it usually makes no sense that they would know what was being said when they're usually in a completely different room, or that they always manage to make their entrance at the exact moment when it's most dramatic, but it always makes me smile anyway.

Admit it, all of us, at one point, had a love-hate relationship with Harem and Smut genres.

 

[Kenjona]

Harems, very rarely are they actually any good. But once in awhile....

 

[SPS4]

Admit it, all of us, at one point, had a love-hate relationship with Harem and Smut genres.

At one point? Hate? Who's this "us" you speak of? That stuff is still my jam.

 

[Gray_Mann]

I occasionally liked to read those VERY BADLY written translated stories where MC is All-Powerful. Often, they are Xianxia....and I for the most part hate Xianxia, not because it's Xianxia, but because they ALMOST NEVER follow their own power-scaling rules. MC breaks them every few chpters practically. Usually, this means Chinese authors, but Koreans seem to enjoy this trope too and of the Big 3, meaning Japanese, Korean, or Chinese....Koreans have always been my favorite. Korean Wuxia has been....amazing. Legend of the Northern Blade is a damn masterpiece example of Korean Wuxia.

Also:

The Dark One (Wheel of Time)

Will always be my favorite series. On 4th read-through now.
Always wished for a story about the War of Power with Lews Therin as the MC. Of course the ending would be....well tragedy would be an understatement...but still. So many little tidbits given, but never enough to give an entire whole.
Or hell, one from Demandred's POV. His turning to the Shadow was called "tragic". Supposedly he was the last of the Chosen/Forsaken that defected to the Shadow. War of Power lasted for 10 years, and he only turned during the 3rd or 4th year.

 

[Nolff]

At one point? Hate? Who's this "us" you speak of? That's tuff is still my jam.

Us ScribbleHubbers, stinky cold penguin.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Will always be my favorite series. On 4th read-through now.
Always wished for a story about the War of Power with Lews Therin as the MC. Of course the ending would be....well tragedy would be an understatement...but still. So many little tidbits given, but never enough to give an entire whole.
Or hell, one from Demandred's POV. His turning to the Shadow was called "tragic". Supposedly he was the last of the Chosen that defected to the Shadow. War of Power lasted for 10 years, and he only turned during the 3rd or 4th year.

Loved the first three books, especially Jordan's ability to describe everything but his characters in minute detail (characters, though, usually had nothing more than a single personality trait and a physical descriptor - Nynaeve (sp.?) tugging at her brown braid; Rand with his temper and his red hair, Matrim with his sneakiness and dark coloring, Perrin who was pretty much a blank cypher until he, ah, found his Wolf, etc.)... I wished I had his descriptive powers... until about book four where I started wishing he had MINE... and around six it felt like the characters and story had grown beyond his ability to control them (which was, to an extent, true as the illness that led to him handing the reins over to Sanderson was just starting to take hold then), and I stopped at, I think, 8 - the shortest and least coherent book to that point.
But those ideas would have been pretty awesome - especially seeing Therin's story.

 

[SPS4]

Us ScribbleHubbers, stinky cold penguin.

Watch yo profanity you knockoff detective Conan look alike.

I'm a smut writer. I can write you prego

 

[Cipiteca396]

Meh. Why should I feel guilty.

There are plenty of bad examples of 'good' tropes, so I don't feel bad for liking good examples of 'bad' tropes.

 

[Nolff]

Watch yo profanity you knockoff detective Conan look alike.

I'm a smut writer. I can write you prego

Do I look like that child? Oh wait, guess my pfp did. Too bad, that was a fake interpretation.

You? Writing me? Ohoh, I'll be flattered instead, you know? People rarely notice me so good to know you spent a damn hour writing about my smut version.

Harems, very rarely are they actually any good. But once in awhile....

???

Thank you for your cooperation, this would help a lot in the local debates.

 

[JayMark]

There is no such thing as a bad trope and cliche is a word that makes me want to chew on aluminum foil. There are however, degrees of competency in execution of tropes and plot types.

Bad premises exist, for example: I Was Reincarnated As A Magical Toilet Brush And Everyone In This World Has Explosive Diarrhea.

 

[Anonjohn20]

What are some tropes you know are bad, or at least overused, but you love to read or write about them anyway?

Smut. I used to never read Smut, but nowadays I just want to turn my brain off. There is no complexity in about 75% of what I read online. Nothing I've bought IRL in print is smut though.

 

[Kenjona]

Speaking of Tropes and genres I have issues with but read anyway. It is not so much a Genre or Trope but setting. The ones that are set in another country that the Author is not very familiar with and it shows up in their writing.

Some Examples.
Story: Kid is going to University in New York City. Comes into his money and so he goes to Beverly Hills to buy a house as it is near his School. Buys a twenty five million dollar mansion that sits on an island in a lake. That is cheap for being even in whistling distance of New York City.
Realtors for luxury developments work like Timeshare salesmen.
You can walk up and buy a house with just a credit card and no other paperwork to go through. God I wish that was true, damn contracts take about 20+ pages of legalese and require 5-40 signatures/initials on each page to acknowledge that you understood certain sections and if you do not, they own your first born kid.

The local Starbucks that serves college kids is a classy high end shop with waiters. McDonalds/Burger King/Kentucky Fried Chicken is for rich people only and you need a reservation. High end Italian restaurants only serve Spaghetti and Pizza. High end French restaurants its Baguettes and Caviar.
the US Marines patrol the high seas in their Super Carriers and Submarines.

I am pretty sure most American Authors get a lot wrong when their stories set in foreign countries too. I wonder if it can be as jarring for those readers.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Speaking of Tropes and genres I have issues with but read anyway. It is not so much a Genre or Trope but setting. The ones that are set in another country that the Author is not very familiar with and it shows up in their writing.

Some Examples.
Story: Kid is going to University in New York City. Comes into his money and so he goes to Beverly Hills to buy a house as it is near his School. Buys a twenty five million dollar mansion that sits on an island in a lake. That is cheap for being even in whistling distance of New York City.
Realtors for luxury developments work like Timeshare salesmen.
You can walk up and buy a house with just a credit card and no other paperwork to go through. God I wish that was true, damn contracts take about 20+ pages of legalese and require 5-40 signatures/initials on each page to acknowledge that you understood certain sections and if you do not, they own your first born kid.

The local Starbucks that serves college kids is a classy high end shop with waiters. McDonalds/Burger King/Kentucky Fried Chicken is for rich people only and you need a reservation. High end Italian restaurants only serve Spaghetti and Pizza. High end French restaurants its Baguettes and Caviar.
the US Marines patrol the high seas in their Super Carriers and Submarines.

I am pretty sure most American Authors get a lot wrong when their stories set in foreign countries too. I wonder if it can be as jarring for those readers.

One of the audionovels my wife followed on PocketFM had a character traveling from New York to California and back in three hours - and taking four hours to go to London and come back to New York (and I think only three to go from NY to Germany too, or that may have been a different one). It was too amusing to be too upset with actually.

 

[aattss]

Sometimes I'll search for fics with the harem tag, just to make sure I find stories that don't take themselves too seriously.

 

[HungrySheep]

"Like a puppet with its strings cut."