What tropes are YOU breaking/keeping?

[Rodimus13]

Just a fun little exercise for us to think about as we head into the new year. In any kind of entertainment there are certain tropes that are followed and others we try to take or subvert.

I started thinking about this when I realized that hardly any comics out there tell a story with robots that has NO organic intelligent life at ALL. It hit my husband and I hard when my father in law and my husband's conversation went a bit like this:

"So in the story all the robots don't have any humans in charge of them-"

FIL: "So there's only a few humans?"

Hubby: "No... no humans at all."

FIL: "So the humans are hiding?"

Hubby: "Dad no.. there's no humans. Anywhere on the planet. There MIGHT be some deep in space but for this story, no humans ever."

FIL: "....." Obviously slightly confused and surprised

I've also had it said having a female robot lead is odd as well. Meanwhile, we seem to have the ongoing robot war and everything is ruined, and let's fix the world kinda tropes going.

Anyhoo... I figure we can have some fun figuring out what we are doing that's different than the norm. Maybe we can even have some fun pointing out what we feel others are doing in their work that's in or out of the norm.

And yeah, you can link your work!

Hue Are You? | Tapas

[nathanKmcwilliams]

One trope I hope to break is not having extremely tiresome exposition, especially when it comes down to characters talking about their powers.
(Mine is a battle shonen so there will be plenty of opportunities to avoid this one)
Another one is talking during a fight or right before a fight begins.
However a trope that I WILL embrace is having opponents for my main character that outclass him that he will then have to overcome. However I don't want that to be the case with every new "boss" bad guy.

[Rodimus13]

It would be funny to have one boss show up and your character just one shots him and it's like "Huh... that was a short adventure."

[Luminosophy]

This is my personal preference. :v

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Keeping:

All heroes use swords.

All characters are conventionally attractive.

Big bang exploding fighting hotdog fun time.

Fantasy creatures are almost human anyways.

The cute pet sympathy thing.

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Discarding:

Rewards were never achieved through hard work, some omnipotent being or unexplained force just gave the protag a giant silver spoon.

Protags have to be teenagers.

The swords are always katanas, cuz katanas r cool.

Stories can't have adult elements without trying to be edgy.

Wimmenz have to be (Pick one: [homemakers / buttkickers] ) to prove they have value to the audience.

"It werks cauz maguic"

Pirate robot ninja zombie clown politicians.

[Rodimus13]

I don't mind "it works cause magic" if there is sufficient laws of magic at play. Some sort of rule or cost. My fav was the idea magic caused calorie burn- which was why mages charges so dang much but lived in trashy places- because they needed the money to buy food afterwards.

[Luminosophy]

I'm talking about the long fantasy series that want to have complex magic systems but then also want to pretend they don't need to explain anything about it where you literally have characters say something along those lines and then everything starts falling apart logically from there on. The equivalent for Sci-Fi is "it works cause dark matter", like in the Captain Harlock CGI movie thing. "How did he win and escape the battle?" "I dunno, ship farts." It always grates me because I really love in-depth fantasy systems.

[Rodimus13]

Ahhh fair enough then! That I can get behind.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

At some point this will happen. I also want my character to have a complete disregard for "fair fighting"

[nathanKmcwilliams]

What?! No zombie pirate clown politicians?! That's outrageous!

[TheNiceZombie]

In my comic Lotta I have a trope that I explicitly broke. You know how cavemen characters always talk i third person? So like "Hulk angry, Hulk smash".
Well I have a charater that does the same thing but the twist is that he does it because in his culture it's extremely rude to forget someones name! So as a resulte it became a thing to repeat ones name so as to help other remember it ~

Mort himself as you can see is an intellectual

[Rodimus13]

OoooI like that! it's pretty neat

[dawgofdawgness]

Keeping:

• main character has crazy dyed hair
• The supporting character is the polar opposite of the MC
• The mentor is some washed up, has-been guy
• "Dumb but diligent" (i saw this on the front page of TV tropes lol what do you know!)
• The drummer is very very swole
• THE STORY STARTS OFF WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER WAKING UP TO AN ALARM CLOCK (this I didn't mean to do. I was just a terrible storyteller)
• Too many beat panels

Breaking:

• strong female protagonist
• Rock band
• The female MC MUST have a love interest!
• Depression creature
• Love triangle within the band

[vfinnigan]

Nonfiction doesn't lend itself well to tropes, but I've noticed a few crop up.

Keeping: Heroines break gender barriers.

What I'm steadfastly avoiding like the plague:

Calling these women "plucky" or "feisty." I also refuse to avoid these seemingly contradictory tropes regarding female characters: the "leading lady has to have a love interest" and the "Strong Female Characters can't fall in love and remain strong" tropes.

I'd say what else I'm avoiding or discarding, but that would involve spoilers.

[KoreanTacos]

Ivolice and the Emissaries:

Breaking:
- American high school teenager as the main protagonist of a magical school girl story
- Main character can actually drive a vehicle (learners permit)
- Parents are not one dimensional characters
- Characters get weapons that are actually used

Keeping:
- Cute animal side kick
- Transformation scenes
- Enemies summon out of world creatures
- Powers based around elements

[unknown_user]

@vfinnigan
Heh, in real life everything is possible. Strong female can have a love interest and can have not. If she have, it can make her weaker, but also can make her stronger, as well as can not affect very much her personality at all.
I'm curious to ask why calling women "plucky" or "feisty" is bad? Is it cliche of some sort?

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Mine

Keeping:

• Damsel in distress ( piquant nuance: THIS damsel is a distress herself )
• Bandits as a cannon fodder

Breaking:

• I'm trying to avoid the trope where one of MC have a rich personality, while other is empty, by all means. I'd like to make both MC memorable.
• I'm trying to avoid empty cardboard figurants at all, because they seems too boring to me. Even is character is going to die a few minutes after appearing in the plot, I like them to have some individuality instead of being just empty shells.

There are much more both kept and broken tropes coming, but they are spoilers.

[HGohwell]

Some of the ones I'm keeping:

• Daddy issues (and other family issues)
• Reasonable authority figures (some)
• Authority equals asskicking (they built a society on this trope tbh)
• Royals that do stuff (and they have the most asskicking power)
• The "I know you're in there somewhere" bit (always emotional when done well)(hope I do it well)
• Black is not evil/Light is not good/Grey and grey morality (everyone is a bit iffy, because that's life)
• Everyone is bi (and not as an excuse to just make "straight" characters suddenly gay, or just to say it but not actually show it like certain series I can think of. And tbh not everyone. Default belief in the world is everyone is bi, people who are hetero/homosexual are the oddity and generally get the "you just think that because you've never found the right (insert gender here)" speech.)

Some of the ones I'm avoiding:

• Adults are useless (majority of the cast is adult)
• AI is evil (it's all grey)
• There are no therapists (there are lots of them and everyone is encouraged/ordered to seek help when necessary)
• Orphans (most of them have living parents and many of them are seen and have personalities and roles)
• Female characters hating on each other for pathetic reasons (seriously idk why this is a thing, but it is and it's almost always over a boy, so the "I'm not like other girls" girl slut shaming anyone who even looks at a man or assuming girls who wear make up and dresses are fake and plain. Most the women get along and when they don't its for legit reasons like villainy or being a bad person or personality clashes, not because make up)
• Defeat the evil queen and the empire crumbles and suddenly the world will be fixed (nope)

[TheNiceZombie]

I feel like strong female protagonist is pretty standard now-a-days, it would be more out of the ordinary to have a weak one. Frances might just be the best of both worlds though with how she toughs through all her mishaps : >

[TheNiceZombie]

HAahaha, Yeah bland parents is a trope. Nice to see someone breaking it. It's either that or the main characters are orphans or something.
I made my main character 30 because then their more independent and you can kind of forget the parents exist ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[Merle]

The one trope I really want to break is the one of the female lead in Romances.

You know the "insanely pretty", "obnoxious", "outright stupid" character that lives to find a romantic interest, lets herself be treated like trash for months on ends, and all the while falls in love with her counterpart, then safrifices herself for the "bad boy" (yeah, I am talking about sex) to finally become a happy housewife. HHHHHHRG. or some of the endless variation of this.

I remember hating that one all the way growing up, and made a lot of romances unbearable to even read. Guess I am generally working on how women are potraited in media. But that´s my main hate-trope for now. Excuse my rant.

[ForLackOfStars]

For the record, I have also accidentally written stories where the main character wakes up to an alarm clock, and did not realize until a friend pointed it out and gently informed me of what I had done.

It's such an easy way to start a story, and it's always so tempting...