Least Favorite but Common Tropes?

Myrane66

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Shoujo with male characters that has a train thought of "anything i do to you will be seen as romantic, and you will be forced to like it whether you want to or not, be it rape or humiliation", and the main girl protagonist SOLELY EXISTS just to get fucked by the males, with no mind of her own, and her tendency to bend under people easily. Like, "Gyah, he just raped me and took my virginity, but the look he gave me after is so cold and sad.. He must've been through something awful. I need to change him."

Care about yourself too, woman. You just got raped by your so-called "love". And what, he suddenly seemed interesting to you just because he gave you that look? What if it's that's his face 24/7?

Now that I think about it, I fucking hate about Renta! Ads popping all over. It's just, it's very not to my taste. Blatant romantification of rape in shoujo and yaoi seems very severe amongst them. Makes me sick, man.
 

Myrane66

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when straight male turned into a girl and get forced to love a guy because of plot.

no matter how well done it is, i will drop it in a heartbeat.

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.
When a male lead who never cared about women, with a simple glimpse, suddenly get interested in the female lead.

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.
 

YuriDoggo

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I also hate the ice-cold "huehuehue everything is within my plans" main characters that never mess up, and even if they do, its actually "within their plans."

Boring. And annoying.
 

MrTiemos

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Fuck my phone, it deleted my whole message without saving... REWRITE IT ALL

Most tropes are bad because they are overused. Not to say that they aren’t bad for other reasons as well, but the main reason is overuse (Harem). I will list some of those tropes that I think are overused and done poorly after a rant of my most hated trope:

Indecisive lover, aka the ‘I love more than one person so I’ll love both of them despite the fact that I can barely make one happy.’
-Rant inspired by ‘My Joy’, a Yuri Manhua that traumatized me to this day.-

It’s not uncommon to love more than one person, namely when you first start realizing you have romantic feelings for others (middle school and high school). Lots of people have been in that position.
You know what they haven’t done? DATE TWO PEOPLE AT THE SAME TIME. We all thought we could pull it off at one point in our youth, but let me enlighten you: Don’t

Love blinds, makes you stupid, and has you wanting to make the people you love happy. What it doesn’t do is make you two-time, which will hurt every party involved 99.999999% of the time. That remaining 00.000001%? That’s for the exceptionally rare case where all parties involved talk things out BEFOREHAND and the two love interests are at least good friends, if not romantically interested in each other as well.

So how do you deal with that feeling like a regular Human being? Picking one, that’s how. Love can be difficult enough one-on-one, you don’t need skeletons in your closet or a third person to make things difficult. That is, unless you don’t actually care for the other person’s feelings and just want to use them to satisfy your own feelings (coughcoughProtagonistOfMyJoyCough)
Rant Over

Now, as for a list of tropes I think is overused or done poorly:
  • Indecisive lover: Explained in the rant
  • Mary Sue or Gary Stu can’t win: So you’re telling me, that the perfect MC can’t defeat some secondary villain?
  • Mary Sue becomes a Stupid Sally or Klutzy Kelly after meeting Gary Stu: Chinese novels and manhua.
  • Cure-It-All: I have a pill or tonic for that! Even though it’s incurable to every other medically proficient person out there
  • Rapist becomes lover: That whole sentence is a problem.
  • Harem with Beta or Cold love interest: So the women want a person who can’t voice their own opinion because they either are too scared to say so or don’t care enough? Love!
  • Beautiful/Handsome transfer student: Makes all the non-models like myself look like rubbish. Also, why do all these beautiful/handsome people have to switch schools in the first place?
  • ‘The Moment’ gets interrupted: You know EXACTLY what I’m talking about, don’t lie! We always wanted them to kiss
  • Dense love interest: Universally hated.
  • Clingy Tsundere childhood friend: This just need to stop. It’d be one thing if they were Yandere (makes much more sense), but these bitches just... ugh
  • Loli with ’Plot’: Stop sexualizing children like this. Actually, stop sexualizing children overall. Girls do develop breasts early on, but no way would they ever have a DD cup size unless they were in high school at the earliest.
  • Comatose? Let’s run!: Asuna, Asuna, Asuna. Every comatose person will experience some level of muscle atrophy, so how come they always look the same and don’t really need physical therapy?
  • Vampire? Hah! Bite me!: Vampire bites neck. Vampire sucks blood. Result? You either die, turn into a ghoul/slave, or maybe, just maybe, they capture you to use you as a blood bag. Why do people seem so keen on letting vampires suck their blood? (Then suddenly ROMANCE! Nani!)
  • Villain has mind control/hypnotic powers: Really? Is that how you have to give them what they want? Please try again authors
  • (Last one) Genderbender accepts new love: I don’t know about you, but if I suddenly woke up as a girl I wouldn’t chase men without batting an eye. It would take at least a few years before I can accept such an abruptly huge change as swapping genders. It would be another thing if the person was already interested in men (homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, etc), but that’s rarely the case in novels
 

SilentApproval

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Villains who have absolutely no character traits other than being evil.

The MC getting a power upgrade after a friend dies or is grievously injured in the fight against the big bad.

The female MC falling in love with the creepily obsessive male romantic leads.

Dense and/or OP main character who is a chick magnetic and has girls fawning over him yet doesn't get laid.

The "I hate everything", super deep and/or emotionally scared romantic lead who falls in love after speaking the MC for three seconds.
 

Qonok

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I actually like Harem. The problem is that the guy is usually denser than lead.

Tropes I generally can't read are:
-Dense protag (male or female)
-Constant face-slapping like in Chinese novels where they can't even go get dinner without making 212 enemies and getting into 16 battles.
-A romance tag where you read the story and don't even have a hand holding moment in 200 chapters.
-Overly lucky protag where the most powerful thing in the world drops into their lap within the first 2 chapters.

Has anyone noticed the odd trend with novels that come from certain countries in relation to romance or male/female interaction?
--Chinese novels will go a thousand chapters where the protag ignores all women but the bad guys all have wife(s) and kids. Bad guys get the women in Chinese novels I guess?
--Japanese novels the protag are dense and doesn't think any women like him and won't even believe it if they tell him.
--Korean novels have the protag stiff arm any love interest that comes close to them. They at least understand that the women may like them but they'll ignore them and you won't see them for 100 chapters after.
 

Luosiuwu

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I don't like harem at all, I'm just one of those people who don't enjoy seeing multiple girls fawn over a guy who barely has a good enough personality to gush over.

I do enjoy dense protagonists to a certain degree, but over time if they continue to ignore and not see the obvious affection that the person is giving them I will get frustrated and most likely drop the series. If it has a comedic undertone I could possibly read it a bit more and enjoy the interactions they have.

It is also a big factor if the dense protagonist has any development and finally realize what's in front of them, that's what I usually look for, it adds growth and rids of the obvious flaw.

  • I dislike revenge, doesn't get anywhere, revenge itself just turns the protagonist into a conniving person which obviously I can't support.

  • The plain jane and Mr.Handsome know-it-all falling for each other used to be a favorite, but now it seems unrealistic and boring.

  • The girls hitting the male lead every five minutes because it’s “funny” and because they are “embarrassed” it’s not cute to hit the guy you like...so chill

    Overly clever female or male protagonist that gets reborn into a new world and is suddenly good at everything. Please tell me why they suddenly understand every single thing about the new world when it’s only been two chapters?

I usually don’t mind reading any of these type of tropes, as long as they are well done I would probably enjoy them!
 

Myewphi

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I don't like harem at all, I'm just one of those people who don't enjoy seeing multiple girls fawn over a guy who barely has a good enough personality to gush over.

I do enjoy dense protagonists to a certain degree, but over time if they continue to ignore and not see the obvious affection that the person is giving them I will get frustrated and most likely drop the series. If it has a comedic undertone I could possibly read it a bit more and enjoy the interactions they have.

It is also a big factor if the dense protagonist has any development and finally realize what's in front of them, that's what I usually look for, it adds growth and rids of the obvious flaw.

  • I dislike revenge, doesn't get anywhere, revenge itself just turns the protagonist into a conniving person which obviously I can't support.

  • The plain jane and Mr.Handsome know-it-all falling for each other used to be a favorite, but now it seems unrealistic and boring.

  • The girls hitting the male lead every five minutes because it’s “funny” and because they are “embarrassed” it’s not cute to hit the guy you like...so chill

    Overly clever female or male protagonist that gets reborn into a new world and is suddenly good at everything. Please tell me why they suddenly understand every single thing about the new world when it’s only been two chapters?

I usually don’t mind reading any of these type of tropes, as long as they are well done I would probably enjoy them!
I think a lot of bad tropes can be done kinda well, and a lot of good tropes can be done awfully tbh. Not only that, but I think most people will forgive even tropes they hate if the story includes tropes they love.

Like despite the fact I hate a lot of tropes that go along with isekai, I always come back to read more lol
 

DaoFox

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harem, smut, dense characters, naive protag, yaoi (common enough xD)

I dislike harem because its "fictional harem" that has no relation to what a harem is in reality and the complexities of maintaining one.
 

queenofthefuzzybugs

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-A romance tag where you read the story and don't even have a hand holding moment in 200 chapters.

Oh man, I totally agree with this one right here. I think the tag is called "slow romance" or something. I wouldn't mind the slow-burn but usually the translation is a chapter a week and they've only just reached chapter 20 out of 450 chapters. Basically, I won't get to the actual romance for another 15 years (if I'm doing the math right lol).
 

queenofthefuzzybugs

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I don't like harem at all, I'm just one of those people who don't enjoy seeing multiple girls fawn over a guy who barely has a good enough personality to gush over.

I think that's my major issue with harems too. The guys don't have a personality worthy to attract 2+ hot chicks, much less one. Those chicks could legit walk down the street and pick up a better guy, one who won't flirt/sleep around with other women. Why settle for a mediocre guy who relegates you to a the "third wheel" in your own relationship when you can find someone better who will love only you? (This goes for reverse harems too, btw)

  • The girls hitting the male lead every five minutes because it’s “funny” and because they are “embarrassed” it’s not cute to hit the guy you like...so chill​

I really don't understand the attraction guys have to girl character who physically abuses the MC either. But then I think about how there are men in the real world who put up with physical abuse from women because they're so desperate for love or to prove they've got some value socially. It seems like that trope is just an fetishizing of a real-world problem. (There's a female equivalent of this too, so I'm not trying to pick on guys here.)
 

MrTiemos

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harem, smut, dense characters, naive protag, yaoi (common enough xD)

I dislike harem because its "fictional harem" that has no relation to what a harem is in reality and the complexities of maintaining one.
Smut? Why?
Is it because they tend to not have an actual story and is basically written sex?
 

DaoFox

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Smut? Why?
Is it because they tend to not have an actual story and is basically written sex?
bingo, not a fan of the romance genre for similar-ish reasons. I prefer stories with plot and content that contain romance, as compared to a story where the plot and content is solely the romance itself.
 

Myewphi

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Smut? Why?
Is it because they tend to not have an actual story and is basically written sex?
bingo, not a fan of the romance genre for similar-ish reasons. I prefer stories with plot and content that contain romance, as compared to a story where the plot and content is solely the romance itself.
Not a fan of smut as I dont read for those reasons, but I do enjoy romance a lot as its pretty much my favorite genre.
I do agree though that stories that have plots that arent solely focused on romance can be a lot better than stories that are purely about romance.
 

Qonok

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I do like a good story that includes a well written romance. Not a fan of the stories where the main character is so poor that they can't even afford ramen. Then the story is about how pathetic their life is and how they have to work at some extremely low paying job with a dick of a boss that likes to make the protag's life horrible.
 

Myewphi

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I do like a good story that includes a well written romance. Not a fan of the stories where the main character is so poor that they can't even afford ramen. Then the story is about how pathetic their life is and how they have to work at some extremely low paying job with a dick of a boss that likes to make the protag's life horrible.
Oh dang I dont think ive read a story with that trope in it but that does sound kinda slow and meh
 

Arexio

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Most BL. At least how Eastern authors write it. The dynamic is so different from the West, but I understand that typically it's written by females for females. So I understand the need to create a much more feminine character than plausible to allow for readers to project onto the character.

Also, it's not THAT common of a trope but flashbacks. Don't get me wrong, flashbacks can be used as a strong storytelling device, but more often than not it ends up disrupting the pacing or destroys the narrative.

An example of one of the worse flashbacks I've read was in
The Reincarnated Lord. The initial 30 chapters was a flashback sequence AKA excuse for the author to just info-dump; very lazy writing tbh.

:blobspearpeek:
 

Myewphi

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Most BL. At least how Eastern authors write it. The dynamic is so different from the West, but I understand that typically it's written by females for females. So I understand the need to create a much more feminine character than plausible to allow for readers to project onto the character.

Also, it's not THAT common of a trope but flashbacks. Don't get me wrong, flashbacks can be used as a strong storytelling device, but more often than not it ends up disrupting the pacing or destroys the narrative.

An example of one of the worse flashbacks I've read was in
The Reincarnated Lord. The initial 30 chapters was a flashback sequence AKA excuse for the author to just info-dump; very lazy writing tbh.

:blobspearpeek:
I think the reason the BL comes out feeling, like, wrong is because in a lot of stories its treated as a fetish rather than a sexuality. So you end up getting this weird fetishized version of a relationship rather than what would actually happen in real life
 

Arexio

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I think the reason the BL comes out feeling, like, wrong is because in a lot of stories its treated as a fetish rather than a sexuality. So you end up getting this weird fetishized version of a relationship rather than what would actually happen in real life
Agreed.

It also doesn't help that many BL stories are translated from Chinese, and technically it's illegal to be homosexual there. So I'm assuming, please correct me if I'm wrong because this is quite the assumption, not too many Chinese authors understand what a homosexual relationship actually looks like.
 
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