Narrative devices you hate

[GamerAddict7796]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who rages when a villain kills their own henchmen.

Yeah, I'm sure that after getting a group loyal to you, killing them all will get the applications rolling in. Best villain ever!

Also, when the hero is made to look bad for killing the villain. You've been fine with him mowing down the henchmen who are probably just trying to scratch out a living but when it gets to the evil overlord trying to nuke the world, why is killing him bad? Put a bullet in his head and go home for cake not try and paint the hero in a bad light for this.

When a hero refuses to kill someone even if it'll save hundreds of lives. Yes BATMAN I'm looking at you! Kill the Joker already!

 

[Luminous_Umbra]

Fate. I cannot stand the concept of Fate in fiction. Instead of a character's predicaments being caused by his own shortcomings or choices, it's always something out of his hands. The narrator makes the character his cosmic plaything, just because.

A particular bit of this I hate more than most is "fated love." I especially hate it when they pull "these characters are fated to be in love, but initially hate each other. Oh, through some contrived events, they now love each other." I could maybe understand (except for the fate part) if it actually took some time, but most that I have seen have no patience for it.

 

[CloudAtlas]

In movies - Femme Fatale: every movie apparently has a woman who fights alongside his male counter part...even those supposedly based based in historic events, in historic periods where women were never in the front line (in most cultures). They have even go as far as taken female characters that are supposed to be guides, or mentors. I am not against the idea, but sometimes is forced (King Arthur comes to mind here) and adds nothing to the plot.

From what I recall female warriors weren't exactly uncommon with the Celts. And I have the impression that King Arthur's Guinevere was heavily inspired by one particular female celtic warrior - or rather warrior queen - who definitely existed: Boudicca.

So forgive me if I find this particular complaint a bit questionable.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Time travel and deus ex machina's through time travel. Freaking hate it because everyone just twists and shapes the idea to suit their needs, but it never makes any sense whatsoever.
I can stand time travel or time-related stuff when it's done in a smart way, but the examples are few and far between.

Dragonball style introductions of increasingly more powerful villains, together with an increasing "power level" of the hero. There are a few exceptions to this, notably Dragonball itself, but usually it just pisses me off.

"Monster of the week" style storylines. Those are why 90% of the western animation series suck balls imho.

Withholding info from the audience in thriller series. Especially when "the detective" is constantly belittling the audience because everything should be obvious, but at the same time important information is held back from the viewers / readers.

 

[Evonisia]

Multiverses come to mind. There are no plot holes in this piece of fiction! Something in a different universe explains why it makes sense.

Also I don't typically like the "of the week" stories, as changing the status quo suddenly becomes harder to do and it becomes stagnant fast.

Oh and wise figures. Some person will always know everything but either get ignored or they'll be used as what is essentially a deus ex machina.

 

[Vivi22]

Godzilla spoiler/exhample:

Spoiler

Like for example in the recent Godzilla film, wouldn't it have made more sense for the monster to gone straight to the Japanese mainland in search of nuclear radiation rather than swim all the way across the pacific ocean to specifically target America when there are bountiful supplies of radioactive nuclear power stations in Japan already?

This was explained quite clearly in the movie.

Spoiler

They'd moved the mate of the monster which awoke in Japan to the US thinking it was dead. It was not, so the one in Japan went to find it. Which also happened to be easier for it to do since it was actually capable of flying. It's also why the one in the US leaves the plentiful stockpile of radioactive material it woke up next to and went to meet it. It was time to make some babies.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Tired of heroes and the protagonist being "good". I want to see some cunning, ruthless and smart villains as the main protagonist and WIN. There are a few of those lately like game of thrones and to a certain extend, maleficient. Some I'm quite happy where the trend is heading.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

The end result of every person's "personal journey" being to bang the local hot guy/girl. In my opinion (which is dumb and stupid) it shows the current 'society's' fixation with sexual relations which is just too much, making a huge thing out of basically a natural and either very frequent or very infrequent experience.

It's just immature and really, romantic subplots are almost never a good addition to a piece of fiction.
Most other ones have been said, but I want to echo how prophecies, 'fate' and contrived happenings that only serve to advance the plot. If something happens, give me reasons as to why it's happening!

Also villains.
Just.
Vilains.
I get that bad boys are the new sexy, but having Moriarty and Loki being basically the same person has springboarded a lot of "suave yet dangerous", all of whom have lineages going back to Heathcliff. Seriously, Wuthering Heights was basically a teenage love story in it's complexity and we still haven't advanced at al since then.
Mockingbird series and that shitty Divergent book kinda hammer this home.
Teenage fiction hasn't advanced at all since the 19th century.

 

[ForumSafari]

[i/]once upon a time there was a rebpublic that was really cool untill EVERYONE WENT ON THE DOLE FOR SOME REASON then they weren't cool anymore[/i] <-Flag in exile

[sub/]I know that "show don't tell" is a hard thing to grasp but still, getting tired of your shit David Weber[/sub]

I'm reading those at the moment. I actually like the information disconnect between characters, he's good at keeping track of what a character should know. There's a bit in a previous book where a Peep taskforce drops out of hyperspace atop a Mantie SD and gets pwnt, the Manties think nothing of it but a significant portion of the rest of the books is heavily affected by the fact that the Peeps didn't seem to consider that it could just have been a coincidence. I think he has to tell quite a lot because so many characters and groups have different opinions of what really happened.

Politically the PRH is stupid but it's the kind of stupid I can see someone trying and for a few decades it'd work OK.

The thing I hated was actually in the first book, I was chatting with my girlfriend about the book and she'd just met Young. I turned to her and just asked 'he raped her didn't he?' because rape is easy and God forbid a villain might have a reasonable foundation for their actions.

Spoiler

As it happened I wasn't 100% right but was on the right track.

Why is it always rape? Why couldn't he have been her enemy because she just thought he was an arrogant shit or because he was a petty shit and she broke his record or something?

 

[Auron225]

The villain giving a "you're the same as me" speech to the hero

Okay, now like most of these other examples, this one can be done well. I just don't see it done well that often. If the protagonist is genuinely ruthless, manipulating and killing random people left and right, or if the villain is going out of their way to help people, then sure, I can get that. Or some other similar circumstance. But usually, the justification boils down to, "You kill people! Therefore you are just as evil as me and should give up fighting MUAHAHAHAHA!" Conveniently forgetting that the people the villain is killing are nuns and babies, whereas the ones the hero is killing are the brainwashed mooks who are trying to burn down an orphanage. AND THE HERO USUALLY AGREES and/or angsts about it until someone else comes along and points out why the villain's argument is patently absurd. Unless the agree with the villain too.

I agree wholeheartedly with this one. The vast majority of the time it's;

Villain: You're just the same as me!
Me: No he isn't.
Hero: *existential crisis*

I can see why it is an interesting plot device but far too many stories try to use it and it very rarely applies. I can't actually think of one at the moment that worked well but I'm sick of seeing it.

 

[ForumSafari]

I can see why it is an interesting plot device but far too many stories try to use it and it very rarely applies. I can't actually think of one at the moment that worked well but I'm sick of seeing it.

I liked the version of this used in Dalek, that new series Doctor Who episode. The villain calls the hero the same as them, the hero violently refutes it and uses the difference as an excuse to sink to their level and by the end of the episode other people are pointing the similarity out.

 

[hermes]

The female character sees something that could be interpreted as an accident under most circumstances or kinky under some circumstances, so of course she will take it the wrong way and storm out/kick his ass without giving the male character the chance to say one word: Many animes use this trope, to the point some base their entire run on this "running joke" as the only way to create drama, even in situations when it makes no sense. That doesn't work as comedy; it only helps to make the female character look like a douche and the male character look like a wimp.

The bad guys are hyper-competent, except when dealing with the heroes: Recently I saw White House Down. In it, a group of terrorists take the white house with precognitive levels of competency. They kill everyone, everywhere, and the entire defense grid falls with no terrorist ever being shot. Not only the secret service and security guards never kill a single terrorist, they don't even get to fire a single bullet. It is one thing to consider a terrorist group being able to take the most secure house in the world, it is another to believe they can do it without a single bullet being shot on the other side. Of course, they later encounter the president and a security guard with a family to protect and they are demoted to regular grunts. Related to the good guys are hyper-competent, with examples of heroes fighting with martial arts against armies of people and never even being touched. Sorry, but no matter if he is the best martial artist in the world, the idea that he can fight dozens of people at the same time and no one is even able to grab his shoulder is ridiculous.

 

[sageoftruth]

When a character is granted amazing, story-breaking powers but lacks the imagination to use those powers for a swift and easy solution to the conflict.

 

[MCerberus]

Specific to games: Cut-scene narcolepsy!

When your character faints/is rendered unconscious in a cutscene after doing something that would have easily been survivable through normal play. Named so as an inside joke with my friends due to CoD: World at War, where all the levels seem to progress as Get Rescued -> War Crime -> Nap Time

It's an incredibly lame way of taking away all your guns and/or forcing a time skip

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I'm tired of seeing that one character that basically says "You can't trust anyone but me" ending up being the one character the hero trusts but shouldn't have because, surprise, they were behind everything all along.

 

[spacemutant IV]

Works of fiction messing with their own history. For example, in Supernatural, when it was revealed (season 4 or so I guess) that their mother was the hunter first, and their father only got into it after she died. We need a frame that the story is being told in, it is what gives meaning to everything we see. I think that this is the result of the writers being unable to come up with something new, so they go for a kind of sensationalism.

Also, and this is a bit philosophical I guess, I dislike prequels in general. They don't necessarily mess with the works history, but they pretend to know which causes are being followed by what effects, in a way that just doesn't sit right with me. Pick any story and any beginning to it that you want, and from there proceed in a manner you see fit, but when you go full circle and pretend to know which in-universe causes it were that led to your starting point, I think you are pretending to know the world and how it works in a way you should not.

 

[Frezz]

The female character sees something that could be interpreted as an accident under most circumstances or kinky under some circumstances, so of course she will take it the wrong way and storm out/kick his ass without giving the male character the chance to say one word: Many animes use this trope, to the point some base their entire run on this "running joke" as the only way to create drama, even in situations when it makes no sense. That doesn't work as comedy; it only helps to make the female character look like a douche and the male character look like a wimp.

[snip]

Ah, yes. Some people have mentioned "THE MISUNDERSTANDING" before but this is by far my least-favorite variant,because it's so common and so contrived.

It points to the larger problem of popular fictional romance being completely broken relative to actual human relationships, to the point of being absolutely preposterous. Characters in relationships either have insane blind trust or insane paranoia. Sometimes characters switch between these two modes, but it often happens in one episode or one scene with some sort of bullshit epiphany (I should really make a post just for epiphanies, but I'm not up for that rant right now). There's so little genuine trust and communication.

In general I'm frustrated with treating romantic love (and sex, similarly) like some kind of mysterious magical connection completely separate from normal human interaction. Yeah, plenty of people can and do get really weird and/or stupid in romantic situations, fair enough, it's confusing and not always ideal for forming a complete line of reasoning. But unless you've already established that a character is nuts, having them fly completely off the handle gets pretty nonsensical.

I do really like romance. Done well it's a fertile ground for drama. It's got all of the usual challenges of human interaction (trust, acceptance, communication, etc.) complicated by involuntary base physical desires. Those are some powerful tools to work with, so it's always depressing to see writers falling back on lame cliches. Especially the ones reinforcing all the outdated views about gender and sexuality that continue to make all our lives needlessly complicated and stressful.

 

[Vegosiux]

The female character sees something that could be interpreted as an accident under most circumstances or kinky under some circumstances, so of course she will take it the wrong way and storm out/kick his ass without giving the male character the chance to say one word: Many animes use this trope, to the point some base their entire run on this "running joke" as the only way to create drama, even in situations when it makes no sense. That doesn't work as comedy; it only helps to make the female character look like a douche and the male character look like a wimp.

As someone who wasn't single all his life, I can say I know at least one woman who actually acts like that, so it's still Truth in Television >.>

Agreed on it being overdone, overused and in most cases, completely contrived for the sake of conflict, though.