Tropes in comic that are way oversaturated?

Chocolate 2023-07-23 01:06:06 UTC #1

Which tropes are you just done with lmaooooooooo 🤣🤣🤣

HGohwell 2023-07-23 01:12:17 UTC #2

Not just comics but villainess in general. It's up there with isekai in the whole "you're all looking exactly the same now" and hopefully it will soon go the way isekai is an start coming up with some interesting new spins, but I think we're reaching saturation.

Also, I've noticed particularly in Korean comics I've flicked through, there seems to be a lot of the old "look how ugly and plain they are" while drawing them as beautifully and without blemish because you can't actually have an ugly, or even average, main character, in the same way Hollywood sometimes tries to convince you someone like Anne Hathaway isn't attractive and no one would date her in romcoms. At least when books do it it's up to my imagination.

Chocolate 2023-07-23 01:13:25 UTC #3

Ohmygod the ugly duckling trope is so stupid lmaooooooo thanks for pointing that out!!!

allenT 2023-07-23 01:16:54 UTC #4

Character closeup smiles with eyes and mouth closed or grined. Looks cute in comics/manga/animes but not natural and feels awkward in real life.

kalmia 2023-07-23 04:43:17 UTC #5

The Kind, soft spoken, overly forgiving, clumsy, innocent, “I can fix him” FL. Don’t get me wrong, i’m a sucker for a Tohru Honda character, but usually these characters don’t have the charm that Tohru does. They get walked all over and usually take straight up abuse from the ML and everyone around them because they are “kind” and forgiving and “he truly loves me”. Like BS. And usually their positive traits are what becomes their negative traits which is just a way for writers to cop out on actually giving her flaws, such as “too forgiving” or “too happy”. Like what??

And on the other side of the spectrum, the FL who is such a biotch that it’s hard to believe she has anyone who wants to be with her or that even wants to be around here. These two extremes are unrealistic and just annoying. I understand that these are just tropes, but that’s the point. Tropes are meant to be built off of, not copy and pasted directly onto your script.

darthmongoose 2023-07-23 07:41:37 UTC #6

Systems. I'm sorry, I'm just really tired of comics and novels where "Systems" are the main selling point. If you're scratching your head, it's where the protagonist has the ability to call up something similar to videogame or app UI floating in the world, and press buttons that do things, like, I dunno, gives them a certain object, or information.

Half of them don't even make sense. It started as an element of specifically Isekai stories where the protagonist is in a videogame and then somehow became this really lazy device that gets put into Fantasy, or even just modern-setting stories where it doesn't make sense for holographic UI to just be in the world with no obvious source. It's even somehow the core selling point of some, like they proudly proclaim "System!" as if it's a genre.

They mostly just do things a person in the story could do either through an app on their phone or through cooler looking magic, so it's like... choosing the most boring way to have magic-like or technical support things happen, and then hailing it like it's a cool genre or something to me.

thepenmonster 2023-07-23 10:07:30 UTC #7

I remember them trying to do that back in the day with Rachel Leigh Cook in a couple of movies and every guy I knew was like, "Yeah, no. Keep the glasses."

thepenmonster 2023-07-23 10:08:20 UTC #8

I use this to indicate someone is thinking of ways to ruin the rest of your day.

DokiDokiTsuna 2023-07-23 11:23:05 UTC #9

1) ...Should "extremely common facial expression" really be considered a trope...? ._.
2) The fact that a certain form of visual language doesn't work in real life shouldn't be considered a argument against it. Yeah, people don't smile like that in real life, but mirroring real life isn't the point. There are lots of visual techniques used in comics/animation that don't work in live action; it's a natural consequence of having stylistically different mediums.

...I had no idea this trope existed, and I kinda really want to use it now. ^^ THIS is why I keep coming back to these threads~

ThunderChicken 2023-07-23 11:55:41 UTC #10

On the LGBTQ/BL side of things, one I'd say is very over used is the gay guy hopelessly in love with his straight friend, and after a bunch of angst and awkward moments or maybe a night of drinking they finally "do it". Invariably the straight friend suddenly realizes that, hey, he likes it, and so now they are a couple but they take it reaaaaally slow because the previously straight friend isn't quite sure exactly how far he wants to go. Naturally, the relationship must be kept a secret from all the other friends, who know anyway.

I mean, yes, I can see the appeal of this kind of story. It gives hope and sunshine to the millions of gay people who have had crushes on their straight friends. But it also perpetuates two dangerous myths: First, that gay people are trying to "turn" straight people, and second, that those straight people can be "turned" (IE it makes it seem like being gay is a choice and you can turn it on or off).

I should point out that I do NOT mean stories in which a character confesses to another and discovers that the character is also secretly gay himself. That is something that actually happens. What I'm talking about is when a gay character kisses a straight character and suddenly that straight character isn't so straight anymore.

aqua03 2023-07-23 16:35:44 UTC #11

Honestly that just makes me want a fantasy series where wizards have smartphones instead of wands with their apps as quick fire spells prepared.

darthmongoose 2023-07-23 17:37:04 UTC #12

@DokiDokiTsuna & @aqua03 , okay, so to be fair, if somebody takes this concept and does something actually cool and interesting with it, I'm down. I am dyed-in-the-wool Homestuck trash after all, and loved all the "sylladex" shenanigans in that comic, where characters have an inventory system in real life and constantly cause problems accidentally launching objects out of it.

Maybe it's less the concept of having a menu system in the real world and more the lazy way it's implemented in a lot of stuff that uses the term "system". Wizards with smartphones sound kind of amazing.

DokiDokiTsuna 2023-07-23 18:12:33 UTC #13

...I actually wrote a story like this once, and I'm happy to report that it's as much fun as it sounds. ^^ Damn, now I kinda want to finish it...

powerplantanimations 2023-07-23 21:50:35 UTC #14

I want to say the multiverse but like... my comic talks about that so I guess I'm more like "if you hate something then why don't you go try it yourself?". Also one of the reasons why I did an Isekai :v

I remember someone telling a director off who criticized superhero movies. Like how he should "make one himself if he hates them so much" just to show the general public how filmmaking is done and that REALLY stuck with me for whatever reason. Like yeah, the filmmaker obviously doesn't want to be part of the problem but at the same time, he could create a new standard and make people notice they're watching trash. The possibility is always there. It's been happening ever since the Spider-Verse films came out and people are looking at the MCU like "Do better".

I don't think people should be cynical though when doing the tropes you hate otherwise you'd end up with a "I'M NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS" mentality.

TheLemmaLlama 2023-07-25 06:01:09 UTC #15

~~(I feel this way about twintails on anyone over the age of 12 ^^; )~~

I plan to write a sort of "I can fix him" type, but she's far from innocent and naive; she's well aware that he's abusive and doesn't really love her but chooses to stick with him anyway to protect others :'D

Literally the only reason why anyone hates any trope ever

HGohwell 2023-07-25 06:13:50 UTC #16

I feel like this is a really modern idea to be like "well if you dislike something, justify yourself". You see it all over comment section of reviews and in places like twitter. If you don't like something, don't talk about and or do it better and prove it. And I'm always thinking: no. It falls into the same place as "if you don't like something, justify why it's morally not ok to like it" because you clearly can't just dislike something. You have to have a moral reason. You can just dislike something. It doesn't make you "I'm not like other girls" it just means you dislike something (and to be picky, we're not talking about dislike, we're talking about oversaturation, which is about market share and trends, not about like or dislike, its like when every horror movie was a Paranormal Activity style thing, the market was flooded with them and then died down and moved on).But, I feel like this idea of "do a genre you dislike so you can justify or virtue signal your dislike" is really saying "you're not allowed to dislike this genre, so make one you like". I don't like romcoms as a whole, for instance, and that doesn't mean I'm not like other girls, it means I have personal tastes and don't have to like every genre, and someone telling me "if you don't like it, do better," is not going to make me like it, it's going to make me write a spiteful piece in a genre I don't like, and who exactly does that benefit. The idea that criticism should always be met with "well you do better" is a sign that people don't know how to handle criticism and don't have any decent rebuttals.

TheLemmaLlama 2023-07-25 06:31:10 UTC #17

Well, I mean there's dislike and there's criticism; I do kind of agree that criticism should have some substance behind it? Like, you can dislike something, but if you just go out of your way to say 'I don't like X', refuse to elaborate, and leave, then ... what's the point?

I personally can't see myself making the effort to criticize something that's just not to my taste; I just can't be bothered to spend any mental energy on it. If I actually make the effort to criticize something, it's not actually a matter of "I just inherently don't like X", but rather "X could be done so much better; I'm frustrated that X these days aren't living up to their full potential".

And yeah ... I can see that being a drive for someone to do a "hatewrite" on the genre they're dunking on? Like, I do this with messages/morals in stories I've gone through that I disagree with. And @powerplantanimations did say we shouldn't be cynical when doing those tropes/themes/etc we hate (or in my case, not strawmanning the morals I disagree with), so who does that benefit? The same people who would benefit from a straightforward critique of the trope/moral/etc - because it's essentially that, but in a more fun, creative format

HGohwell 2023-07-25 06:47:53 UTC #18

Sure, but that's then constantly met with "well you do better then!!!!" to people like book reviewers, or film critics or food critics. It's not hard to find places where perfectly justifiable criticism from people like book reviewers are met with "you do better then!"

To say I didn't like it is the point. To voice my opinion. Even offhandedly. If someone says "what did you think of this?" and I reply "yeah, wasn't a big fan" I don't then need to justify myself. Same with "did you watch this?" and saying "no it's not a genre I'm into". I am allowed to stop there without having to answer the on going barrage of question about why not and what's wrong with it and what problematic elements are there that I somehow morally disagree with. I am allowed to just not enjoy romcoms as a genre and not have to justify that with essays about some problematic element with a genre/show. I just don't enjoy them and that's allowed but modern culture seems to think you need some grand reason or moral standing for everything. But I'm not actually obliged to justify my every like or dislike or be told to shut up and not voice any kind of opinion because I don't have a complex reason.

But that is an important difference. Being frustrated by something's potential not being fulfilled is different to just not liking it. And so is hatewriting vs being forced to because you should write the things you hate. If you decide to write something because you either want to make fun of or raise the standards of a trope/plot/genre, cool. But if people insist that you have to write a genre/trope/plot because you don't like it, that's going to lead to meanspirited work (in a similar vein say Sherlock making fun of its own fans in a meanspirited way, essentially calling them stupid for trying to solve a mystery that said was solvable) or shody work, because why would you have passion for something you didn't want to write but are being forced to to morally justify a dislike.

TheLemmaLlama 2023-07-25 09:12:21 UTC #19

Right; I guess your points are:

criticism shouldn't come with an obligation to 'do it better yourself'
a statement of dislike shouldn't come with an obligation of criticism

I probably didn't word it very well, but I agree with those statements I just think they're different issues; I feel like the 'you must have a reason for disliking stuff' people are different from them 'you're not allowed to criticize things unless you can do better' people (and I'm not sure if the former is a modern issue either; if anything, I feel like we've been moving away from that compared to the past? :0)

smokesalty 2023-07-25 09:33:44 UTC #20

I am gonna be so generic with this but: love triangles in stories whose focus isn't romance.

Like there's a difference between starting a romance where a love triangle can be expected, and reading something for the story and a love triangle coming out of the blue. It can be done well, but sometimes I'm just like uhhh this again? I end up asking "do people seriously like this?" I feel like love triangles tend to mess up relationships you actually wanna root for because it's so flip floppy. like OMFG decide so I can get invested in your possible relationship.

This is worse when there's one person in the triangle that the mc clearly isn't gonna end up with so I'm like STOP WASTING MY TIME .