Are there any sort of tropes or generally common story choices that make perfect sense but you just don't like?

[VanVeleca]

For one reason or another, wheter it be your morals your own experience with a similar situation or even just you not being able to understand how tf the characters are able to just do or say a certain thing, what sort of story beat/trope do you frequently roll your eyes at whenever it happens? Even if it was objectively a good choice for the story overall and is such a common choice that authors have, maybe even you use yourself.

I cannot for the life of me get when a character is suddenly able to just forgive and forget. I don't get it, I just don't understand. Whenever someone wrongs me or hurts me it stays with me for literal years, sometimes I quite literally cannot bring myself to forgive at all because the memory still feels so fresh even if it happened years in the past. Hell even with people where I don't remember why I suddenly grew to fear/hate them, the feeling still remains and it takes FOREVER for it to leave. If it ever leaves at all that is.

Objectively however, it makes sense for characters to forgive because staying angry or being afraid of someone forever is highly irrational. Still, during first reads it always just irks me.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

A lot of times, I get mildly annoyed by the time factor - some stuff (like "moving on/forgiving") is often presented as far too fast to be realistic - but that is often done because it is needed for plot purposes, and a realistic timing would just add a dozen chapters of soul searching and the person being forgiven working to earn it. I have a character who will eventually confess to why he did everything he did, and it should neither be expected nor convince anyone that he deserves forgiveness, just that he wants to be understood. It will be very difficult to pull off, I suspect.
This time factor issue also crops up in other situations, like working with computers, dealing with medical issues, etc. Intellectually, I understand that things move at the speed of plot, but sometimes, emotionally, I want them to move in real-time and feel a little betrayed when they don't.

 

[worldismyne]

Someone falling into insta love with an unconscious person they never talked to before, especially if the person falling in love is in a healer/doctor/nurse role.

I get that attraction is something some people can't control, but so often the narrator/POV doesn't address the ethical implications and goes straight for the romantic short hand used in any other insta love plot. It just makes the problem worse, depicting their lead as a bad caretaker (and one that would get fired) or even worse, predatory. Especially since for these opening scenes we're following the inner thoughts of the caretaker meeting this unconscious person. (Movies this isn't as big of an issue for me, since you can decide what the lead is thinking, instead of reading how the lead is only thinking about how hot a vulnerable person is)

 

[LiteraryWho]

For one reason or another, wheter it be your morals your own experience with a similar situation or even just you not being able to understand how tf the characters are able to just do or say a certain thing, what sort of story beat/trope do you frequently roll your eyes at whenever it happens? Even if it was objectively a good choice for the story overall and is such a common choice that authors have, maybe even you use yourself.

I cannot for the life of me get when a character is suddenly able to just forgive and forget. I don't get it, I just don't understand. Whenever someone wrongs me or hurts me it stays with me for literal years, sometimes I quite literally cannot bring myself to forgive at all because the memory still feels so fresh even if it happened years in the past. Hell even with people where I don't remember why I suddenly grew to fear/hate them, the feeling still remains and it takes FOREVER for it to leave. If it ever leaves at all that is.

Objectively however, it makes sense for characters to forgive because staying angry or being afraid of someone forever is highly irrational. Still, during first reads it always just irks me.

Sounds like a you problem, tbh

And on that subject, I dislike both the modern notion, and the trope, that love is a feeling and not a thing you chose to do.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

And on that subject, I dislike both the modern notion, and the trope, that love is a feeling and not a thing you chose to do.

But love being a feeling is not a modern notion at all? What did I miss?
I'm aromantic – last I checked, I didn't get to just "choose" to fall in love with someone.

Objectively however, it makes sense for characters to forgive because staying angry or being afraid of someone forever is highly irrational. Still, during first reads it always just irks me.

I do understand that feeling in certain stories tho. On the other hand, I also roll my eyes at (mostly female lead stories) where people haven't done stuff or did them while being controlled, but the character don't differentiate at all and pretend they are all evil. Or the female lead was wronged, but she herself wronged others as well – yet only one part has to apologize.

 

[LiteraryWho]

But love being a feeling is not a modern notion at all? What did I miss?

I should have put modern in scare quotes, because I'm counting modern as Victorian+ (blame the poets, and mass media). As for what I mean, sorry, but "last I checked, I didn't get to just 'choose' to fall in love with someone" is big, "I want not to understand" energy, so I won't be wasting my time. You can think about it, if you'd like. It isn't actually complicated, and I'm not the only one to point it out.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

I should have put modern in scare quotes, because I'm counting modern as Victorian+ (blame the poets, and mass media). As for what I mean, sorry, but "last I checked, I didn't get to just 'choose' to fall in love with someone" is big, "I want not to understand" energy, so I won't be wasting my time. You can think about it, if you'd like. It isn't actually complicated, and I'm not the only one to point it out.

What does one thing have to do with the other tho? The idea of love being something you "choose" is, in essence, you just growing to like someone on a life sharing basis, not actual love. If love is not a feeling, I wouldn't know what is, especially since I personally find it gard to grasp as a concept, since I'm aromantic.
Forcing myself to be by someone else's side and growing accustomed to them until they are important to me in one way or another is not the same as what "love" is meant to be.
You mean it's "modern" – I know now what you are referring to – but it's more like we started making this difference when we were free to do so. Once upon a time, like animals, we just had to make sure we had offspring and kept the species alive. Once upon a time, we also didn't play games an entire day of the week, but now we have the leisure to do so.
That doesn't mean we were never meant to just roll around at any point in time, we simply didn't have the freedom to do so. It's indeed a very modern thing.
EDIT because I just remembered due to the next post: Sure, love in fiction is not realistic in a lot of aspects; it's literally romanticized. Stories have to be based in realism and make logical sense, so we can get immersed, then have our expansion of disbelief stretched slightly in those departments we want to be sold a fantasy, not bleak reality.
Still, saying that love is not, in fact, a feeling, is plain silly. You don't even get to make a decision on whether you like ananas on pizza, yet you believe you can freely choose who you love? Getting used to someone or finding companionship in someone you shared a life with is not the idea of love - it's a mere fraction of what one would wish to share with the one they love, that's all. And I do know people who have found someone they truly loved. That's nice and seriously hard to put your finger on, if you can't really grasp the concept altogether, as I do. Still, again, we're extremely fickle and superficial creatures; we decide if we find someone agreeable or not in less time than it takes us to blink - and getting rid of that first impression is super hard and takes a lot of time. That's also not a conscious decision to make. Again, I just find the whole notion of something that is, by definition, a feeling, not being a feeling but a choice, pretty silly.
Obviously, you can handle that in your life however you like, man, I'm just talking about the general matter.

 

[MFontana]

Unrealistic depictions of basically anything between characters. Romance/Love is just the most common and frequent for unrealistic depictions.
Also, unrealistic depictions of a wide array of typical genre elements (Isekai being a common one here).
As for the Isekai side in particular, there is far too often an unrealistic presentation of the alternate world, or the weight and psychological trauma involved in suddenly being ripped out of the life you knew, and dropped into a world you only thought you knew (best case) or a completely alien world (typical case).
Language barriers, psychological stress from the transition, in some cases NDE (Near-Death Experience) trauma, confusion and distress from the isekai event. All of that is generally completely overlooked, or lightly skimmed over, in favor for rapid-growth power-fantasy and wish-fulfillment where everything else is just automatically works out for the subject. This is the trend shown by just about every Isekai out there (with a few rare exceptions), and is one that I find quite distasteful, and an example of poor narrative development and storytelling.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Sounds like a you problem, tbh

And on that subject, I dislike both the modern notion, and the trope, that love is a feeling and not a thing you chose to do.

All "feelings" are electrochemical reactions to stimuli. Love IS one of them. What is NOT a feeling is how a person reacts to those feelings.

Unrealistic depictions of basically anything between characters. Romance/Love is just the most common and frequent for unrealistic depictions.
Also, unrealistic depictions of a wide array of typical genre elements (Isekai being a common one here).
As for the Isekai side in particular, there is far too often an unrealistic presentation of the alternate world, or the weight and psychological trauma involved in suddenly being ripped out of the life you knew, and dropped into a world you only thought you knew (best case) or a completely alien world (typical case).
Language barriers, psychological stress from the transition, in some cases NDE (Near-Death Experience) trauma, confusion and distress from the isekai event. All of that is generally completely overlooked, or lightly skimmed over, in favor for rapid-growth power-fantasy and wish-fulfillment where everything else is just automatically works out for the subject. This is the trend shown by just about every Isekai out there (with a few rare exceptions), and is one that I find quite distasteful, and an example of poor narrative development and storytelling.

The problem with focusing on realistic reactions is that you're catering to a very small niche group within an already small group - AND, unless really, really good, likely to drive away most of the rest of said niche. It is usually COMPLETELY overlooked, I'll agree, and that is wrong, missing a lot of opportunities for character development and interesting moments, but making it a focus of the story would be worse than just ignoring it altogether, at least from a general readership perspective.

 

[MFontana]

The problem with focusing on realistic reactions is that you're catering to a very small niche group within an already small group - AND, unless really, really good, likely to drive away most of the rest of said niche. It is usually COMPLETELY overlooked, I'll agree, and that is wrong, missing a lot of opportunities for character development and interesting moments, but making it a focus of the story would be worse than just ignoring it altogether, at least from a general readership perspective.

At no point did I say it should be the entire focus of a narrative. It's not a matter of All (being the focus of the narrative) or Nothing (being omitted or skimmed over lightly) either.

I simply stated that ignoring it completely, or skimming over it lightly (which for example would be a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages at most) without actually addressing it within the narrative is a trope that I find quite distasteful, and an example of poor narrative development and storytelling, and that it is a trope that I despise, as per OP's topic and question.

Personally, though, I do feel that dedicating a full narrative to exploring those themes and traumas would be refreshingly creative, and worth the undertaking (even though I don't actively have the time to do so with my own active projects, since their themes and conflicts are already well-established), and it certainly can be done well if the author is skilled enough, and willing enough to do the deep-dive, and while we could certainly engage in a debate over the merits and shortcomings of both approaches (There are certainly many), I doubt this is the appropriate place for such a debate since we'd be hijacking the thread if we did so, so I'll leave it on this note, and get back to work on my books.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

People seem to forget that there are people that are literally better than them in certain aspects.

 

[laccoff_mawning]

All "feelings" are electrochemical reactions to stimuli. Love IS one of them.

I was thinking about this when I read the argument earlier. But then I thought to myself: "yeah, but do you actually feel love?"

Like, you can feel excitement, or fear, or sorrow, but can you feel love? Or do you feel other emotions and then attribute them to love from context?

In other words, do we feel love, or do we feel excitement due to love? And do we feel love, or happiness due to love. If the former, we can define love as a singular, consistent emotion that activates upon, idk, seeing a loved one or something?

But if multiple emotions can be invoked by love, and invoked independently, then that suggests love can't be defined as an emotion because it is not a singular feeling.

what sort of story beat/trope do you frequently roll your eyes at whenever it happens?

Stupid, selfish characters that only exist to be disliked by the readers. Yes, surely such people exist in real life, but in most cases I'd rather not read about them.

 

[LiteraryWho]

What does one thing have to do with the other tho? The idea of love being something you "choose" is, in essence, you just growing to like someone on a life sharing basis, not actual love. If love is not a feeling, I wouldn't know what is, especially since I personally find it gard to grasp as a concept, since I'm aromantic.
Forcing myself to be by someone else's side and growing accustomed to them until they are important to me in one way or another is not the same as what "love" is meant to be.
You mean it's "modern" – I know now what you are referring to – but it's more like we started making this difference when we were free to do so. Once upon a time, like animals, we just had to make sure we had offspring and kept the species alive. Once upon a time, we also didn't play games an entire day of the week, but now we have the leisure to do so.
That doesn't mean we were never meant to just roll around at any point in time, we simply didn't have the freedom to do so. It's indeed a very modern thing.
EDIT because I just remembered due to the next post: Sure, love in fiction is not realistic in a lot of aspects; it's literally romanticized. Stories have to be based in realism and make logical sense, so we can get immersed, then have our expansion of disbelief stretched slightly in those departments we want to be sold a fantasy, not bleak reality.
Still, saying that love is not, in fact, a feeling, is plain silly. You don't even get to make a decision on whether you like ananas on pizza, yet you believe you can freely choose who you love? Getting used to someone or finding companionship in someone you shared a life with is not the idea of love - it's a mere fraction of what one would wish to share with the one they love, that's all. And I do know people who have found someone they truly loved. That's nice and seriously hard to put your finger on, if you can't really grasp the concept altogether, as I do. Still, again, we're extremely fickle and superficial creatures; we decide if we find someone agreeable or not in less time than it takes us to blink - and getting rid of that first impression is super hard and takes a lot of time. That's also not a conscious decision to make. Again, I just find the whole notion of something that is, by definition, a feeling, not being a feeling but a choice, pretty silly.
Obviously, you can handle that in your life however you like, man, I'm just talking about the general matter.

It's amazing how much work people will put into not understanding something.

All "feelings" are electrochemical reactions to stimuli. Love IS one of them. What is NOT a feeling is how a person reacts to those feelings.

Did you have a specific purpose in mind when you restated the mainstream view which I've already explicitly said I disagree with? I know that's what people think love is. Those people are in error.

Thanks for being an example? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[TheKillingAlice]

It's amazing how much work people will put into not understanding something.

The thing is, you made a point with no argument. And the point is an oxymoron.
I see there's people who put in very little effort, while trying to look smart.

 

[LiteraryWho]

The thing is, you made a point with no argument. And the point is an oxymoron.
I see there's people who put in very little effort, while trying to look smart.

At no point have I indicated that I felt a conversation with you was a worthwhile endeavor, so I'm not sure why you expected me to make an argument. If you'd like, I could explain why.

I made a statement, "love isn't a feeling, it's an act, a thing you chose to do," and your "rebuttal" was on the caliber of, "oh yeah, if love isn't a feeling, then why can't I feel it? Checkmate, athiests."

I get that my dismissal of you is very off putting. Nevertheless it says very little about my character. Indifference is the default state. I'm sorry (truly) that your contributions have not warranted any elevation from that state.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

"love isn't a feeling, it's an act, a thing you chose to do," and your "rebuttal" was on the caliber of, "oh yeah, if love isn't a feeling, then why can't I feel it? Checkmate, athiests."

No, that's bullshit. The whole atheist-thing doesn't belong here either, because it literally isn't comparable. And it's true - love really isn't a feeling, by scientific definition, I apologize. But "feelings" and "emotions" aren't terms anybody uses with their scientific meaning in mind, so it's more of a force of habit. What we experience is usually a neurological process, with chemicals reacting and causing other internal activity, which is why people like aromantics exist, who don't function regularly. That part I mentioned, sure.
But that doesn't mean it's an "act" or that we have a choice.
Here, maybe Harvard helps out here: “We know that primitive areas of the brain are involved in romantic love,” said Olds, an HMS associate professor of psychiatry at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, “and that these areas light up on brain scans when talking about a loved one. These areas can stay lit up for a long time for some couples.”
But no, I'm sure you are very much capable of doing that by choice. Just needs a few chemicals to help, amirite? I would love to hear how, I mean, it would actually help me in life.

I get that my dismissal of you is very off putting.

I don't know why I would care about that. I cared about how the fuck you came to such a stupid assumption, because I was genuinely flabbergasted and curious at the same time, that's all.

 

[LiteraryWho]

I would love to hear how, I mean, it would actually help me in life

The rest of your response was frankly not worth the bits it is encoded in, but in the minuscule chance this was a genuine request, it's simple (in concept, hard in execution). You choose to value another person's interests the same as your own.

The feelings might follow (a happy little reward from evolution) or they might not.

Also, I'd appreciate if you'd stop insulting me. I freely admit I don't value your thoughts or opinions on any subject I am yet aware of (indifference is the default state, ofc), but it is profoundly unfriendly to call me arrogant and stupid. Please also refrain from immediately lying about doing so.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

You choose to value another person's interests the same as your own.

That isn't romantic love. It's interest and getting used to someone.
That is exactly what I was talking about a bit above. Getting used to someone isn't love.
Sure, there might have been cases where you "learned to love" someone or actually fell in love, but that's not how it usually goes (and you sure as hell can't force or "decide" on it).

The rest of your response was frankly not worth the bits it is encoded in

Bro, Love is a chemical process literally visible on brain scans. Just because you believe that's not how it is, doesn't mean that's not how it is.
That's basically all I needed to know. You're like a toddler who covers his eyes and thinks he's invisible now.

 

[Kurayami]

Classic internet...The thread asks a question and devolves into retards arguing the definition of words. Love is not any of these things. Love is the taste of energy drink from mana crystals.

To answer the OP's question, yes there are story decisions that make sense but I don't like. One of them is when characters argue definitions of words.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

The rest of your response was frankly not worth the bits it is encoded in, but in the minuscule chance this was a genuine request, it's simple (in concept, hard in execution). You choose to value another person's interests the same as your own.

The feelings might follow (a happy little reward from evolution) or they might not.

Also, I'd appreciate if you'd stop insulting me. I freely admit I don't value your thoughts or opinions on any subject I am yet aware of (indifference is the default state, ofc), but it is profoundly unfriendly to call me arrogant and stupid. Please also refrain from immediately lying about doing so.

I'm pretty sure you're trolling, which is funny. But if you weren't, you probably would of been better off explaining your point from your first message to avoid this long, drawn out rage bait that sadly became less funny.

You’re pretty much slapping two different things together and then telling everyone else they're retarded for being confused.

I'm of the opinion that love involves choice. Long term, nobody sustains a relationship on feelings alone, but there’s also a reason those choices exist in the first place. Because last I checked, real world people don’t just decide out of nowhere: “I’m going to love this person.” There’s usually attraction, attachment, emotional bonding, stuff you don’t consciously choose.

Without that, love is just a weird obligation or habit. So, rather than love not being a feeling, it's a hybrid of a part you can't control in how you feel, then a part you do control when it comes to choice.

When you ignore one component or the other, it stops making sense.

--

Also, I hate tropes where characters act older or younger than they are.
I don't like seeing cars driving in the bike lane, much as I don't like seeing bikes driving in the car lanes.