Least Favorite but Common Tropes?

Eleven_M.A.

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An introverted character meets an energetic, extroverted romantic interest who 'cures' their introversion and teaches them to enjoy life (in the way extroverted people do).

Love at the first sight done wrong.
 

Schwab

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the worst part is, it seems like most people agree that those genres are bad, at least everyone I have spoken with has. So the question is, what large group of people are these tropes being eaten up by?

Having a bit of wish fulfillment is all well and good, but when a story becomes an authors wet dream, i cri
it's because there are more people that like it. why do you think anime is the way that it is? it has an audience and so it is made.
 

Schwab

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When a male lead who never cared about women, with a simple glimpse, suddenly get interested in the female lead.
YEEEEEEEEEES! I stopped reading a great bike webtoon because of THIS EXACT reason!
 

Schwab

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First, I'm annoyed with asshole MCs in fics which lack self awareness. Like, they just come across as unlikable, and then they get pretentious and look down on people with different values even though everyone's values are equally subjective. The use of strawmans is also pretty transparent.

Another two tropes annoy me a ton and are pretty frequent in WNs. First, the underestimated protagonist trope just feels contrived/stupid and just get it over with already. Like, in a Japanese WN there'll be some dumb shit about how people think the MC's trash because they think the MC's op class is weak or because their magic detector failed because the MC's too OP or they don't know how their magic/litrpg system works because they're dumb. And in Chinese WN people don't realize the MC has some cheat from winning the lottery or they just assume the MC is as weak or dumb as possible because they want to win a Darwin award. Like, at this point, it has just been played to death and it's just annoying to read people who sound so dumb.

Next, there's the trope where all the good guys are actually the bad guys. Uh, so what's their motive? Like, either they're just dicks because they're dicks, or they actually think they're good, but they're just really really stupid. Any attempts at depth just fall flat with all the enemies being so 1-dimensional.
YEEEEES. I can't stand butthole MCs. the lack of self-awareness is REAL with them.
 

Ral

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How about Protagonist-Centered Morality? It is when the morality of the story/narrative bend to accommodate the protagonist. It is like the protagonist can do no wrong and are easily forgiven while the other characters (that is, the non-protagonist character, especially the antagonists) are met with great scorn even for minor violations. Heck, even a character just disagreeing with the protagonist results to the character being labeled as a bad/evil character and be met with intense scorn.

The very common outcome is the protagonist/narrative giving out disproportionate distribution, like say a character would met horrible luck and brought to destitution because the romantic interest choose them over the protagonist.

The protagonist's horrible actions are always downplayed or just glossed over or even presented as good. Did the protagonist just stolen from someone? Well, that person has horrible personality anyway so they just got what they deserved. Did the protagonist just sexually assault someone? Well they would fall in love with the protagonist anyway so it is okay. Did the protagonist just killed innocent people?… We don't talk about it.

This is so common especially in web novels (like all these "nationalism" in Chinese novels) and the authors are often so incredibly blind to it.
 
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thedude3445

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I got one: That trope where the hero lets the bad guy live, and then the bad guy refuses to take the path and the hero is "forced" to kill them anyway. It happens with such amazing commonness that it's even in stuff I really like, but it's just annoyingly trite when you think of the idea that it's trying to make the hero a sympathetic person who forgives and shows mercy, but still kills the villain anyway! It's clearly not displaying the intended moral message!
 

FlyingPirateCat

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Novel that has racist / too much nationalism in it...
I found that in a lot of CN novels.
 
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tarreb

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Slave harem, slave love-interest, and slave-owner MC in general. It just feels kind of off-putting and tends to whitewash how bad actual slavery was and still is. I still read some stories with this, but it's just something I don't really feel like I want to support. The excuse MC's give of how "I don't treat my slaves bad," or, "I can't release them because they're <insert marginalized group here> and will be abused, recaptured, or killed if found wandering free," read pretty similar to the some of the dialogue that groups of racists and historical revisionists use to explain why they think slavery wasn't that bad. American slave owners often 'claimed' excuses of how they were protecting, educating, or improving the lives of their slaves as a justification for continued abuse.

Another consideration is that this trope seems common in Japanese LN, which seems to inspire some English language works. Japan has a history of enforcing sexual slavery on civilian populations captured during war as recent as World War Two, with some such persons still alive who demand acknowledgement and apology from Japan. Generally speaking, Japan tries ignore, minimize, or decline to acknowledge these former sexual slaves (or their descendants on their behalf), and thinks it's generally fine to put out novels glorifying sexual slavery. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Discount_Blade

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Sexualized Loli's. I don't get it. Their is nothing attractive about them. They have no curves. It's freaky. How is that sexy unless you have a fetish for women who lack any feminine physical features? (This is actually a thing though. I knew a guy who had it and he eventually married an Asian women who had the flat-bod of a dude. Only thing feminine about her was her face and long hair. He liked that sort of thing too.)

Dense protags. I want to shoot them in the face. They don't deserve life.

Beta-Male MC's. I hate them. I've known real life people like this and I have no respect for them. I openly ridicule them when and if they ask for my opinion. If she's acting like a bitch, tell her she's a bitch. Nuff said. I've never understood men being unable to say no to a woman because she has certain genitalia between her thighs.

Those "you should never kill" type protags. Goddamn I hate them. The first time I read an MC saying this, i immediately drop no questions asked. This is bullshit. If you come at me with the intent to kill, I'm going to cut their throat if I get the chance, no questions asked. To hell with the "morals". I utterly despise it also when someone says "don't stoop to their level". Yeah fuck you dude.

Powah of Friendship. Basically, screw 90% of the entire Shounen genre on this one. Friendship doesn't grant power boosts. iF you couldn't beat them before, your probably not going to do it even after your friends started cheering you on. The only difference is that you now have an audience to watch you get your arse kicked.

Reincarnated as a... I've seen so many of these. They are awful. If you are reincarnated as a battleship, then go get sunk. If you are reincarnated as a spider, let me find my boot.
 

ForestDweller

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Beta-Male MC's. I hate them. I've known real life people like this and I have no respect for them. I openly ridicule them when and if they ask for my opinion. If she's acting like a bitch, tell her she's a bitch. Nuff said. I've never understood men being unable to say no to a woman because she has certain genitalia between her thighs.

Why do you like my story then? :p
 

Aaky

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You guys are not the norm. Harem, gender bender and Lolis are extremely popular along with revenge plots.
 

PieCoNsUmEr

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Romance is my all time favorite genre so I strongly agree on how awful dense protags are. Like, its honestly just lazy writing at that point for the sake of dragging out the plot.

I havent seen the reincarnate to get revenge trope often, then again I haven't read any non isekai reincarnation novels nor do I really read any novels where revenge is a main focus of the plot, but what you describe does sound very painful.
I sorta disagree about dense characters, BAD written dense characters are just bothersome plot trains, realistically dense characters can still be annoying, but are way better. (I defend this as a sometimes dense person myself,)
 

PieCoNsUmEr

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Correct. The only way this can be done right is if the genderbent mc ends up with a girl. Goodness, if that's not the greatest manga, I don't know what is. MC doesn't need to cater to the trope of "oh, I'm a girl, so I must like dicks now." Technically, it's not gay. But technically, it's not straight, but hey, 2 girls are better than one.


Well, not touching the fact that he's a male, you can't resist the fact that the female body is irresistable. Like, they can either be softies or muscular, but one thing they will over men in that aspect: boobs. Boobs rule over the world. You just can't resist boobs, man.
Eh, some people’s brains are wired a bit different, others are able to appreciate boobs, but aren’t controlled by them.
 

Aaqil

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In terms of tropes I hate, I really dislike the reincarnation to get revenge deal. It's so forced in my opinion and the entire story either just focuses on that part of story (the revenge) or it shifts and the story is completely something else. That's just bad.

Tropes that I hate when executed poorly is a dense protagonist. Like denser than black hole dense. They could literally be having sex with their love interest and still not think that the love interest likes them back.
I haven’t seen those but my god are dense protagonists the type that should just die in the 1st 5 chapters
 
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