Current Events > most annoying story trope

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Game, film, book, etc.

Voted silent protagonist, but amnesia is a close second.

Other: I can't kill the murder-happy bad guy that causes devastation because then I'll be just as bad as theyy arreeee

Liar revealed

Mary Sues... Ugh...

The man who lived a troubled past moved to a small town to settle down must take down some circus cartel because they killed his goldfish is also played the fuck out.

I went with chosen ones and mary sues.
If I could pick the Deadpool 4th wall meta thing, medium awareness or whatever, I'd pick that. I'd take it all being a dream over that.

Kill all male enemies, but the females join my ever-expanding Harem, I've never seen it done... well.

Vote Other:

When a situation could be solved if people just spoke with each other. There are literal shows when people have secrets for no reason. The one that I like to go back to is Under the Dome. These people get their city put under a dome and no one knows what is going. And the first thing that happens is people start keeping secrets. And the show the runnaways. Everything about was built on that.

epik_fail1 posted...

I don't remember "it was all a dream" being done well. I guess Super Mario bros 2 was ok, but that's not a story heavy game is it?

They were in dreamland, so presumably it did happen. Well not dream land but something like it.

In videogames its definitely always your character being the chosen one for me. Ive always wished more games just have you playing as a normal person who goes on to do great things through their strength and perseverance rather than it always being told by fate or chosen by the Gods or destined to do blah blah blah

From those, I picked the Chosen One. It can be done well, I think, but when they're just good at everything instantly cause that's just how it is, or know exactly what to do with zero clues because fate/destiny just instinctively guided them, it feels kind of lazy and lame.

The one where nobody believes the protagonist when something weird is suddenly going on.

It's so infuriating that it makes you root for the villain to kill them.

Did you intentionally pick all Zelda tropes or was that just a weird coincidence

"go collect X of these stupid MacGuffins, then have the villain steal all of them at the end"

Shotgunnova posted...

"go collect X of these stupid MacGuffins, then have the villain steal all of them at the end"

Bonus points if the villain even says "thanks for getting all of these, saved me a lot of trouble"

"it was all just a dream" is kind of meant to be infuriating and unsatisfying by design so I'm going to go with multiverse for a more personal answer.

"i'd be as bad as the evil guy if i kill them" and the "they were pretending to like you the whole time but along the way it became real" things are both really annoying and overdone
an episode drawing a ton of focus on a random hobby or personality trait a character has only for it to obviously come to the rescue in the end is also super overdone

"Sealed evil" is my most annoying. Look an evil god from hundreds of years ago is about to be released and you have to do something whole armies couldn't do and destroy it.

Vicious_Dios posted...

The man who lived a troubled past moved to a small town to settle down must take down some circus cartel because they killed his goldfish is also played the fuck out.

Mmm I don't remember that one. Maybe I have amnesia.

HylianFox posted...

Did you intentionally pick all Zelda tropes or was that just a weird coincidence

Huh, I didn't realize that at first. You may have just uncovered that inexplicable feeling of why the Zelda series has never clicked with me.

NTR

Leanaunfurled posted...

Other: I can't kill the murder-happy bad guy that causes devastation because then I'll be just as bad as theyy arreeee

This.

"Excuse me, did I go around massacring whole towns and raping babies? No? Then fuck off."

Out of those the dream one. I also hate:

-Characters being secretly related.

-Comedies where couple or friends break up 3/4ths through the movie and split off from each other until they reconcile. There's always the scene of them being sad and stuff.

HylianFox posted...

Did you intentionally pick all Zelda tropes or was that just a weird coincidence

Link don't get no love. Just a few fish girl likes him. And he isn't a scalie.

Some kid knows what going on, but none of the adults will listen.

Dream is the only one that makes me rage, pointless bullshit

All those tropes can be good in the right circumstances. I think Mary Sue / Chosen One is the most difficult to pull off though.

YellowSUV posted...

I think Mary Sue / Chosen One is the most difficult to pull off though.

It's already been perfected, tho.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/8/AAEhCpAAD4ee.jpg

Dream. It's sucks all life out of the story imo.

It's hard to describe story is already fake/fictional but they gonna make it even faker?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


This. Any plot that can be resolved if the characters actually fucking talked to each other is painful.
Of course, rom-coms couldn't exist without it

HylianFox posted...

This. Any plot that can be resolved if the characters actually fucking talked to each other is painful.
Of course, rom-coms couldn't exist without it

Shit happens in real life though. Even I've been guilty in the past of being too prideful to have a simple discussion with someone that would likely end the bad blood between us.

In my case it may have worked out to my benefit though. I'm fairly certain he's the one who went running to our boss to say ibsmelled of booze which fortunately my boss instead of doing things by the book she gave me a chance to fix my problem so I went to rehab. Coulda went a lot worse though and all cause I refused to have a simple man to man discussion to put aside our differences

bigtiggie23 posted...

"Sealed evil" is my most annoying. Look an evil god from hundreds of years ago is about to be released and you have to do something whole armies couldn't do and destroy it.

I really wish there was a jrpg where at the end of the game the party seals the evil entity away and makes it someone else's problem.

ForsakenHermit posted...

I really wish there was a jrpg where at the end of the game the party seals the evil entity away and makes it someone else's problem.

Zelda, sorta.

You can't keep a good Ganon down.
>_>

ForsakenHermit posted...

I really wish there was a jrpg where at the end of the game the party seals the evil entity away and makes it someone else's problem.

This is pretty much the running gag of Lufia.

Other: The bad guy is actually a good guy and was being mind controlled by an even badder guy

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Yeah I like multiverse cause it's a easy tool to reimagine characters without changing the original. You can have all sorts of stories that would otherwise cause plotholes

I kinda dislike time travel cause if you ever dare to really start analyzing things it gets confusing. It's one of those things you have to "shut your brain off" and just enjoy it.

Legend of zelda as brought up here. Ocarina of time end game spoilers zelda sends link back to his childhood years after he beats ganon..feel good ending and all that but did she not send him back to a time that Ganondorf was still alive and well? Best case scenario she created a time loop. Worst case alternate timeline where Ganondorf wins

I think the "surprise, the masked badass was a woman the whole time" thing is super played out, too.

strong and independent-but-not-really science lady

Nowadays its between silent protagonists (this is just one of those things that does not really click with me anymore in the modern era of gaming. Shin megami tensei games aside) and multiverse stuff. (Persona 2 did the multiverse or different reality thing well, but with star ocean its something that I still don't like even damn near 2 decades later).

Normally I don't like the chosen one thing either, but I do really like the twist where the main character actually wasn't a chosen one but ended up beating the big bad anyway. Its actually my favorite thing about cloud, being some below average soldier grunt starting out but still end up stabbing the hell out of sephiroth, lol. Sora also had those same vibes when kingdom hearts was first starting out, but I believe birth by sleep kind of retconned this one a good bit.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Other: The bad guy is actually a good guy and was being mind controlled by an even badder guy

Final fantasy 4.

Not mind control but I loved one game where the "bad guys" where not bad guys but people trying to save their village and the world but because their village was gonna be one of the first to go they where taking a no prisoners take no chances approach. If someone or something even seemed like it would hinder them they dealt with it no matter the horrible things they had to Do. So in the end (of the first game) its two parties both after the same goal duking it out and you only realize the truth after you've killed them (actually I don't think the truth is discovered until the next game) and now you've made a enemy of some in that village that simply want revenge at this point.

Here is another usually bad trope: the main character has amnesia.

Something that actually makes good use of the trope : Disco Elysium.

I loathe love triangles & have never seen it done well. It's a prototypical female wish fulfillment fantasy to have two hot guys fighting for her attention.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Normally I don't like the chosen one thing either, but I do really like the twist where the main character actually wasn't a chosen one but ended up beating the big bad anyway. Its actually my favorite thing about cloud, being some below average soldier grunt starting out but still end up stabbing the hell out of sephiroth, lol. Sora also had those same vibes when kingdom hearts was first starting out, but I believe birth by sleep kind of retconned this one a good bit.

Chosen Ones who aren't Mary Sues and are even doubted by the other characters usually work well enough

This also happens in Zelda a lot. How many times has Link been called a scrawny wimp by his detractors? More than a few...

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Yeah just seemed a dumb decision on zeldas part is what I was getting at. She's supposed to be wise and all that.

Sufferedphoneix posted...

Legend of zelda as brought up here. Ocarina of time end game spoilers zelda sends link back to his childhood years after he beats ganon..feel good ending and all that but did she not send him back to a time that Ganondorf was still alive and well? Best case scenario she created a time loop. Worst case alternate timeline where Ganondorf wins

Link gets sent back in time befor he meets Zelda, he tells her everything, and she tells her father everything. Ganon gets banished or arrested or whatever and this eventually leads into Twilight Princess.

Meanwhile the Zelda that sent Link back in time still exists on a separate timeline, so when Ganon comes back there was no Link to stop him, and this leads into Wind Waker.