I'm on a pile of corpses, I'm evil types of killers. One body is scary, a bunch is just meat; it is unsettling and grotesque but it lacks that personal touch. Not that you can't make a page that looks like a Cannibal Corpse album and have the villain still be horrifying, but you've got to establish the weight of death. If someone dies, people react. We're so used to the Crime Procedural way of dealing with death; where Rick Castle and Beckett find a kid glued into a werewolf costume and staked through the heart and we don't really get to see how often that kid's family is going to be in therapy. That and anyone who is going to sit on a pile of gore needs to really hammer in the appropriate type of psycho they are; doing it wrong can come across as the wrong sort of edgy. It is a hard issue to try to explain, but it always bothers me.
Men Can't be Masculine seems like a thing now, mostly in "college-age" comics which tend to not really allow for characters who are buff or traditionally masculine to be characterized deeply. We're usually stuck with a beta-male underdog, and the purpose of his story is not to try to become more alpha-male and self-confident. The muscular jock is either painted as dumb, a bully, or without much in the way of personality. They're masculine but there's no depth to it, they're a stock character out of a John Hughes film without any of the comedy. I've got just as much a beef with the male underdog, but I feel like the Jock issue isn't brought up enough. A character can be masculine without being on the cover of a rehashed FPS game. More of an issue in slice of life than anything else, and it kind of bugs me because there's plenty of great source material. The Thing is pretty much all masculine manly-men in various stages of decay, and a good flick to portray them heroically and villainous, without also making them a lunkhead. I don't think I've ever actually met a gym lunkhead.
Diversity Points which strives more to have "people" for the sake of greater appeal, than to simply have more people. In my personal experience, people can be terrible; namely because of failures in communication and inability to relate to one another due to differences in social conditioning. Tokenization, just having a character who is not-white/LGBTQA/mentally disabled; for the sake of having that, is kind of lame. They should cause problems, like all people do, and be held with that same sort of accountability. Maybe I just see too many comics where that's not the case. Probably due to the current venues and hosts for a lot of stuff. I think it is still a viable thing to point out in fantasy too; like there's a difference between "50% of my Nordic Fantasy population is black people" and doing Eaters of the Dead where we've got a single Arabic man fighting with Beowulf and such. Cohesion is an important factor to maintain.
I still feel like anyone who wants to include diverse characters ought to check out Extreme Ghostbusters; cripple-joke making asshole jock in a wheelchair, slacker Hispanic who wants to bang a goth and has an asshole cop brother, literally Carlton from Fresh-Prince but in a poor family who takes it all seriously; and a goth chick who makes a lot of mistakes and is adapting well to her aesthetic being her lifestyle. It did a good balance of tropes and making the group of college kids feel like college kids.
Offensively Inoffensive material bothers me. Especially if we're imitating real life in the writing. While it would be great in real life if people didn't get crapped on for being who they are in whatever various condition; that's clearly something that happens. Leaving it out in fiction, or leaving it only for the bad guys is kind of crappy in my book. Communication is a give-and-take; and while having a character who is, for example Gay (there are better examples, but I'll name my own situation), is great; having everyone they're friends with be totally happy and supportive just doesn't feel right. There are levels and factions to every group; I'd name up "Men who have sex with Men" as a strange-to-some but fully understandable group of people who deny the label because of how politicized it is. And that's great, because getting into that, having people disagree and trying to overcome it can lead to good writing. Everyone being perfectly understanding buddy-buddies because the author doesn't want to scare off readers who might be of a particular denomination always sort of bugs me. If you're going to take a risk, commit; eat squab and try harder if you fail.
A perfect cast of friends should have friction still. not all the time; but it does determine their hierarchy. Chandler and Joey fought all the time, despite being best friends; but Chandler and Ross were friends longer and Joey and Ross were never the greatest of pals; but they all could go through an episode with conflict beyond methodology. But if everyone is happy and hugging and best buddies all the time despite not addressing their differences; it'l look more like you're trying to avoid the discussion than treating it like it is normal and thus not needing to be discussed.
Flashbacks bug me sometimes; especially in comics where we're getting maybe a page or two a week. Start as close to the story as possible and keep progressing further; anything else should be supplemental material. A flashback when there's a time sensitive plot going on can ruin the tension.
Fakeout Deaths. If you kill someone, kill them so they can't come back unless heaven and earth get moved. And if they have to come back, show how; and show how horrific and "not at all your everyday scenario" this is. Nobody should be taking a spa day at the Lazarus pits; and Phoenix Downs shouldn't be something you can pick up in every town; unless that's a built in facit and then you better find a way to make the new situation interesting. Kingdom of Amalur had something about that; the inability for one to really die. Or maybe that was the failed MMO they tried to do?
Love is Easy and Forever is a terrible lie, and an amazing truth for that 0.00~1% of the population. If love is too good to be true, it probably is. And that can be crazy cool if you run with it. Take a romantic comedy, remove the third act where they realize they need to be together; and you generally get two compelling people who are romantic but don't belong together. You can run from there. Relationships take work, sacrifices and a lot of compromises; and characters should feel that weight and not break down after every disagreement. Communication is key and romantic characters always seem so bad at communication.
Prophecy. No. Don't tell us it was foretold, just show us it is happening. If we know it is supposed to happen, you're spoiling things. And removing character agency, or worse yet forcing us to watch a character fight for their character agency. Just show us our story.
Dead or Missing Parents. Can be fine, but account for things. Inheirtance, holdings, responsibilities, Child Protective Services, lack of authority growing up, and being forced into new roles. I'm guilty of doing this, the girls I write about have parents who walked out on them. They have their property, but their dynamic is quite skewed and broken because the oldest never got to really be herself, the middle child didn't have much of a chance to defy expectations, and the youngest doesn't know them or respect authority because it comes from a sister not from a parent. Watch or read The Outsiders, they cover this angle pretty damn well. Sadness is common; anger is far more common. Batman hating guns because they took his parents doesn't hit quite like the scene in Mask of the Phantasm where he is crying at their grave because he made them a promise but he never knew he was allowed to be happy and he just wants that to be okay. That's a far more acceptable gut-punch.
Juno-Speak kills me. People talk like people, not like a writer. Most of the time anyway. To get to good dialogue, one ought to talk to lots of various people and pick up on their mannerisms. Consume various media, see how people talk; see how comedians control the room---even and especially ones you hate. Watch dictators and politicians lie and command. Get a good balance for how people are with and without a script, and then try to make people sound natural. Kids swear, but they swear differently than adults swear due to a generational gap. People act and talk differently around different people.
I guess most of my complaints are about a lack of weight, and for writing for public appeal rather than writing for cohesive theme and story. But I come in from a weird angle anyway.
