And at the very least, a love triangle can show that your MC is human. In another of my favorite books, the MC creates a love triangle between herself, her main love interest and a high school boyfriend. She feels foolish later on in the story when she learns that her exboyfriend had become a Catholic priest. They don't have to be overcomplicated and dramatic to be enjoyable.
This one came up for me a few days ago when I tried reading a comic I borrowed from the library:
I've seen this trope executed well in settings where that sort of environment was done consciously (like in Kameron Hurley's The Stars are Legion, which are set on a biopunk generation ship sci-fi world where all of the characters are of the female sex because they literally give birth to space ship parts to continue to maintain their weird fleshy generation ships), but half of the time it just reads like the author felt uncomfortable with the idea of male characters doing stuff and just... opted not to write them. Just like the often-missing women in other media, it feels weird and forced.
Isekai is definitely an overdone trope but I don't think people will really stop writing about it because in all truth it plays a big role in human history. You have classic stories like Coraline and Alice in Wonderland (to name a few from the west). Asia is the most influenced when it comes to isekai. This idea most likely rooted from religious beliefs of other worlds and in a way, I have respect for it's niche in this world as more and more people move away from religious beliefs.
So yeah, I do think isekai's an overused trope but I use it anyway because wanted to put my two cents into this transition in human history.
One trope I'm tired of as a reader is when a character gets teased about romance, the teasers are always right and the target always get flustered and go 'i-it's not like that', 'we're just friends!' etc.
For a change, I'd like to see situations where:
- the teasers are totally off the mark and the target is like "LOL you think we're an item?"
- the target (whether or not the teasing is accurate) actually sees the teasing coming and
-- gives a confident 'nope' or
-- straight-up tease the teasers back: 'ohhh yes, I'm totally into them, I dream of smooching them every night while I lie in bed and ...'
- or, you know, the target just admits they like the person XD
As a writer, an overused trope I nonetheless have a thing for is the 'well-intentioned extremist'. I think at some point we should just let villains be villains and write someone unequivocally hateable, and I also think the most impressive feats of writing is when you can make a villain feel 3-dimensional and human without making them in any way sympathetic.
But looking through my notes, I realized I have at least one character of this type in every story I have planned. (Yes, even my slice-of-life with no far-reaching stakes of any sort :P)
I know this is a little off topic, but I'm just so curious I have to ask: what about Encanto was...well, ^that?? ^^; You do mean the recent Disney movie, right...?
The only aspect of its story I can think of that might provoke such a reaction was the end of Isabela's character arc...but even that was pretty easy to see coming; it clearly wasn't meant to be a 'gotcha' moment.
I guess maybe there's Bruno...but again, I feel like his reveal was played far too straight to feel like a 'gotcha' moment. =/ To be honest, of all the animated content I've seen in the past few years, I feel like Encanto was one of the least obnoxious about its plot twists.
I'm not sure if I'm really sick of any popular tropes.
But I have seen miscommunication thrown in for no real reason.
I'll never forget when I went to a movie and this little kid who had otherwise been quiet the whole time groaned "they do this every movie!" when the big misunderstanding happened. If a child is tired of it, maybe it's a little overused.
For overused tropes I still like using, mentors beware because somehow they always die in my stories.
The one where the MC gets amnesia. Even if it’s my favorite manhwa or manga, I will literally stop reading it until they’re past it so I can just skim or skip.
Um, I am also curious what about Encanto is meta. Meta is more like a film making fun of itself, like a character addressing the audience, jokes about bad writing in the script, and making fun of how random people just start singing and dancing in musicals. Think of something like Lego Batman or Space Balls or that scene in Farris Bueller where he tells the audience to go home.
Subversions of Isekai where:
"I got reincarnated in a novel I read, but not as the protagonist! As the main villain / the main villain's kid/ an unimportant supporting character!"
I'm pretty sure these are so common now that there are actually more of them than there are of both isekai where the character becomes the protagonist AND the generic Fantasy Romance novels they rely on as their setting.
The only one of these I've liked so far was "Beware the Villainess", which actually did draw attention to the lazy writing tropes found in mass-produced Fantasy Romance, and to the really toxic nature of a lot of the male lead characters in reverse harem romance stories and the way female villains get disproportionately punished for their relatively minor misdeeds while really terrible male antagonists get easy redemption and forgiveness.
Most of them are just as lazy as the genre they're supposedly subverting, and often rely on basically insisting things are tropes in a genre that I've never actually seen or heard in that genre so that they can then subvert those tropes.
@darthmongoose ouch. haha, jk. If you put it "I got reincarnated in a novel I read, but not as the protagonist! As the main villain / the main villain's kid/ an unimportant supporting character!" then, my story is just like that. My main character has been isekai-d into her own book, but the story has yet to begin. The main characters of Talipandas are "new" and not part of the ogMC/ML "clique of friends and villains". My story is mainly slice of life, slow burn, and can be said as entirely different story than the ogstory where MC got isekai-ed.
@cherrystark @AlydaB
Love triangle. Funnily enough, now that I've seen your convo, I realized that I kinda also have that trope (and btw, I also hate this trope) but not really. Even before the my novel is published there's already two established characters, my MC and my Favorite Character (will now referred to as FC, not to be confused by the usual female lead abbreviation).
Now, the story is slow burn. It started on my MC's birth and goes on as she grows older with a couple of time skips. MC and FC, during childhood, will have a lot of bonding and whatnot. But FC is not MC's endgame, there will be someone else. MC's feelings and etc with FC will be "delivered and resolved" long before MC meets her endgame. But FC will not leave MC's life, but there will be no "secret love affair" between them. What do you think of this?
I honestly believe Isekai is a building block genre. Take this cube here, place the triangle on top, sprinkle some waifu and call it a day.
It's a genre that gathers a lot of either lazy creators (as you said) or people with skill that have no creativity. I feel bad for the second.
I come from the video-game side and there's a lot you can do you with videogame based isekai. My own comic actually falls in this category.
But creators choose to stay in that trash bubble of pay-to-win MMOs with bloated systems, overpowered characters compared to the world and shovelware plot. Hello Lost Ark!
Most of isekai's problems come from the videogames they are inspired by.
But people from other parts of the world lap it up (the stories and that type of videogames) so it might be a culture thing as well.
Meta isn't just making fun of people. For example; No Way Home being meta about the whole "Spider-Man shouldn't kill" situation argument which lead into a falling out between Ditko/Lee where Doctor Strange (the whole film was about what "makes a Spider-Man" hence other Spider-Men showing up). Stuff like that.
Bruno was meta with the whole villain plot twists that Disney's been doing. How they turned it into one big misunderstanding. I dunno, I'm cynical with Disney (unless with Marvel).
So that was what you were talking about...
Still, I don't think that the point was for it to be "OOH BIG PLOT TWIST VILLAIN-CODED CHARACTER WITH EVIL SONG IS ACTUALLY A GOOD GUY"
...Like, that's the surface-level takeaway. Within the context of the film and its themes, I think it was mostly meant to show how much the Madrigal family suffocates under the pressure to keep up a facade of perfection, to the point where someone who's basically just a little negative sometimes is shunned and villainized.
To the rest of the family, he really WAS a 'villain'. They didn't care that he might have legitimate reasons for the things he said or the choices he made; he wasn't playing along like everyone else and that automatically made him a bad person.
To be honest, I think realistically they should have cared a little more...the other characters are so flippant about him; before I watched the movie I thought Bruno was like a long-dead great-uncle or something, not literally in the same generation as half the cast. ^^; But I guess the message still came across.
Meta is using outside information that only the audience would know and using it in a plot.
"That's a huge volcano over there."
"well that's were a super villain would hide, lets go look."
Basically the people in the world are in on the joke that they are in a fake world. It's not reality to them. The new Spider-man was filled with meta stuff. making fun of Dr.Oc name is a meta joke. In real life you wouldn't laugh at a murderous crazy person's name. Aunt May asking if dr. Oc wanted salt water because he is an octopus even know he was never called that in the movie is meta humor. We get it, but in that reality it makes no sense.
I feel like Encanto was far less meta than there other recent films. Compared to Wreck it Ralph 2 with them criticizing all the old princess movies, a bit ironically because those old films were good and Wreck it Ralph 2 was not.
Not as new but their film Enchanted also did that, bit concerned that that is getting a sequel. I am a bit sick of Disney being meta.
A trope I am somewhat tired of is when the protagonist is in a tough fight and about to lose, but surprise! They have another special power/skill/trait they didn't know about yet that is just now appearing and allows them to win. I am guilty of missing parents, and angsty character with a dark back story :P. I only plan to complete a shorter version of my comic, but in the longer version there was miscommunication and misunderstandings too.
I'm just saying it doesn't have to be for jokes. You know what? I guess an overused trope I actually am getting sick of is meta humor. While I appreciate if a series does it right (the Disastrous Life of Saiki K is one of my favorite things ever), it's very easy to screw up. If you're going to take the meta route, I'd personally prefer if the person is commentating on the series's history or the genre as a whole or using tropes in a genre to make a point.
Another thing I'm sick of (now that we're bringing up in meta) is how people try to make meta stories in comic books and they always end up making an evil Superman.
Or how when someone tries to be meta they end up being "depressing" and "edgy" like how Star Trek is miserable or the Last Jedi was about the audience not getting what they want.
I think the term you might be looking for regarding that is either "decinstruction" or "subverting expectations"
And yes, I'm kinda sick of it for the most part as well.
closed Jun 12, '22
