this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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I have a few:

  • Chosen ones, fate, destiny, &c. When you get down to it, a story with these themes is one where a single person or handful of people is ontologically, cosmically better and more important than everyone else. It's eerily similar to that right-wing meme about how "most people are just NPCs" (though I disliked the trope before that meme ever took off).
  • Way too much importance being given to bloodlines by the narrative (note, this is different from them being given importance by characters or societies in the story).
  • All of the good characters are handsome and beautiful, while all of the evil characters are ugly and disfigured (with the possible exception of a femme fatale or two).
  • Races that are inherently, unchangeably evil down to the last individual regardless of upbringing, society, or material circumstances.
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[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 44 points 5 months ago (3 children)

My least favorite trope is more of a universal one

It's the "If we beat the bad guys using their own tactics, we're no better than them" trope and it's been pissing me off since I was five years old

Like, it's one thing to have a character who is extremely optimistic about rehabilitation and redemption, it's another one entirely to just pull the old "We'll figure out a better way" and the better way is an absolute pulled-it-out-of-my-ass thing that only happened because otherwise the hero is fucked

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

To piggyback on your first point: when the hero witnesses the evil bad guy do something personal to them and they still refuse to kill them and then the bad guy tries to stab them in the back and dies by mishap.

Example: bad guy just triggered the Innocence Bomb and blew up seventy orphanages of kids with cockney accents. He then stabs the loveable side kick/mentor. Hero screams in slow motion. Cradles their dying friend. Swears vengeance. Hero fights the bad guy. Epic swords and guns. Gains the upper hand. Has a knife to the throat, a gun to the head, and is standing on both of the bad guy's balls. Hero says "this isn't what Comedic Uncle Mentor would have wanted me to do." Hero lets the bad guy live. Hero turns around. Bad guy leaps up with a poisoned Doom Blade of Death, the same one he used to kill the hero's godparents in the flashback or intro! Bad guy slips on a skateboard and falls backwards over a rail into the giant magma-acid pit-reactor.

I hate that shit.

[–] StalinStan@hexbear.net 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I honestly think that is part of a general psy op to discourage the poors from getting revenge on thr people that have wronged them as capitalism is based on wronging the poors. Pretty much every society had Norms around not harming your social superiors. We just try to hide it so it feels weird.

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 18 points 5 months ago

Honestly I can kinda see it. Even if it's not a psy op it seems that there is a bias against full revolution in a lot of media. Like the authors are afraid they won't get published if they go too far.

[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That can be expanded to any "the hero nobly denies doing something 'unethical' to get what they want/decides to sacrifice their own desires for the sake of someone else, only for reality itself to turn around and reward them with exactly what they wanted/were going to sacrifice as a special good boy treat for doing the right thing" situation, I think.

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A lot of YA fiction seems to take that route. Then the kids who read it grow up and turn into adults who cry about the unfairness of Marie Antoinette getting owned.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 20 points 5 months ago (2 children)

One of the reasons i liked Enders Game as a weird outsider kid was that Ender, the weird outsider kid, just straight up killed his bullies and then they never bullied him again and I thought that was a very sensible way to handle matters compared to the saccharine bullshit in the other kids books i was reading.

[–] Formerlyfarman@hexbear.net 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

One of the things i like about wuxia is that they seldom bother with that nonsense. Wuxia morality is more of an eye for an eye.

[–] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think one of the common sayings from that genre is "pay those who do right by you back tenfold, pay those who wrong you back a thousandfold"

[–] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Man that almost sounds like philosophy from the trenches; break bread with the real ones, get it back in blood from the opps

[–] D61@hexbear.net 12 points 5 months ago

There's literally people who interpreted the "shower scene" as him just beating the kid up and them being kicked out of battle school.

I think the most recent movie adaptation takes this route (though it might still be vague enough to be interpreted as the adult trying to keep Ender from knowing he murdered a kid.)

[–] TechnoUnionTypeBeat@hexbear.net 11 points 5 months ago

"If we beat the bad guys using their own tactics, we're no better than them"

The related trope of the hero not killing the villain after the villain has spent a whole story possibly killing, and the hero themselves just probably killed a ton of nameless goons to get to the villain, drives me up a wall

[–] Sickos@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Tying onto that, having to do the "honorable thing" and fight battles symmetrically. Indy shooting the swordsman is peak cinema.

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago

Always fuckin loved that one scene in Escape from LA where Snake is up against three guys and goes, "We'll shoot when this can hits the ground"

He tosses the can into the air and then just wastes all three guys before it even starts coming down

[–] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 9 points 5 months ago

If your hero can win fighting honorably, the odds aren't against them enough.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 8 points 5 months ago

Sun Tzu very specifically says to never fight an even battle unless you have absolutely no other chooice. oooooo