You're looking for opinions? I got opinions.
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The Chosen One who gets dragged around like a sack of potatoes until they Come Into Their Own and go on to Turn The Tide.
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The Wise Yet Enigmatic Sage.
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The Sharp-Tongued Princess.
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The Rogue With A Heart of Gold.
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Plots based on misunderstanding ancient prophecies that are so vaguely written they could be cookie recipes.
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Gods that slot into neat roles on a godly table of elements.
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Magic systems so detailed and prosaic you may as well call them technology.
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Elves that are exactly like every other elf character you've ever read about except for one glaring but superficial difference which is there to make you think the author's not plagiarising their own favourite author.
Now I want to read a fantasy comedy where someone trying to make cookies from an ancient recipe is whisked off on an adventure to fulfill the prophecy, but they just want snickerdoodles dammit.
That sounds amazing. OMG I would so read that
as a reward they get one magical wish and they wish for snickerdoodles
I want the ancient recipe to be formatted like a modern blog post. You have to read the entire Silmarillion before you get to the list of ingredients and the instructions.
Me reading the wheel of time:
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The Chosen One ✓ the main male characters, but definitely Rand
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The Wise Yet Enigmatic Sage ✓Moiraine
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The Sharp-Tongued Princess. ✓Nynaeve
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The Rogue With A Heart of Gold. ✓Mat
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Plots based on misunderstanding ancient prophecies that are so vaguely written they could be cookie recipes. ✓All the prophecies
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Gods that slot into neat roles on a godly table of elements. ✓The forsaken all having distinct methods to get to the top
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Magic systems so detailed and prosaic you may as well call them technology. ✓The one power
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Elves ✓Warders
All that said, I'm still enjoying the series thus far.
Sorta star wars too.
that's what I have been thinking
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I think ypu just don't like wheel of time lmao
Elves that are exactly like every other elf character you’ve ever read about except for one glaring but superficial difference which is there to make you think the author’s not plagiarising their own favourite author.
For real. There has to be a better use of elves other than "they live in the woods and appreciate nature and hate dark elves or night elves or whatever your story calls them"
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Urban_Elf_(5e_Subrace)
Well they tried....
The Chosen One who gets dragged around like a sack of potatoes until they Come Into Their Own and go on to Turn The Tide.
The Wise Yet Enigmatic Sage.
The Sharp-Tongued Princess.
The Rogue With A Heart of Gold.
I was expecting a joke about Star Wars: A New Hope later in the post!
Yeah, those have all been done to death in novels and I'm sick of the reluctant chosen one the most.
You may as well be describing The Matrix.
Magic systems so detailed and prosaic you may as well call them technology.
I'm just the opposite. I like magic systems that are basically alternative physics. Gimme some of that inherent plausibility Brandon Sanderson.
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So far I’ve discovered in this thread:
-People don’t like traditional fantasy that takes itself seriously.
-People don’t like lighthearted fantasy that plays with the themes.
-People don’t like hard magical systems.
-People don’t like soft magical systems.
-People don’t like dragons being involved.
-People don’t like an absence of dragons.
-People don’t like character archetypes.
-People don’t like counterarchetypes.
-People don’t like when characters speak an understandable language.
-People don’t like characters meeting each other in common social meeting areas.All good here? Great.
Just write whatever the fuck you want. There’s always an audience.
That's just lemmy being too god damn stupid to differentiate between "this is my preference" and "this is bad", as usual.
"I don't like dragons": preference.
"I don't like Mary Sue characters": bad writing.
My brother in Christ, that's not just lemmy. That's the whole god damned world.
To be fair the OP question says both "bad writing tropes" and "[that] you hate", so subjective answers were inevitable.
I guess it should have just not said "bad", since that implies an objective standard.
That’s just you arbitrarily putting dragons and mary sues into different bins
I like all those things. Well I guess I prefer rigid / hard magic systems, but either can be done well.
"And you should win things by watching!"
That’s why you’re still kids, ‘cuz you’re stupid!
Zero consistency to magic systems. I get it, having all sorts of spells in the story is fun and gives a lot of creative ways to make fights more interesting, but...
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If teleportation magic exists, why don't people who own it teleport everywhere?
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If time travel magic exists, why isn't everyone doing everything in their power to get it and use it? Looking at you, harry potter.
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The villains usually have spells that are supposed to be ultra powerful and can kill anyone quickly but somehow it doesn't work against main characters and there's no excuse for why fights drag on for so long. Imagine seeing the villain introduced by vaporizing someone but never seeing them do it again.
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Main character(s) breaking the rules of magic just because...
I'm a fan of stories like Avatar the last airbender or Witch Hat Atelier because their magic is very consistent. It makes things way more interesting when a character can't just pull something out of their ass to save them in the middle of a fight.
Shoutout to every story that alludes to the fact that mages can run out of mana but is insanely inconsistent how and when it happens. Sometimes they spam spells for hours and sometimes it's just "Oh no, I can't use [spell] anymore because... Um... The plot says I can't!"
One of the things I enjoy most about Sanderson's work is his attention to detail in his numerous magic systems.
And the imaginative variety. The magic system in the Mistborn series was fantastic and unlike anything I had ever read or even imagined. And then he adapted it consistently to an industrial age, and somehow made it work. Respect to Sanderson.
Same reasons I find extended comic universes to be appalling. Why don't superheroes just use all of their powers all the time? Why isn't the more powerful superhero conveniently here right now? Why do we have to pretend there is a struggle?
The minute 2 or more superheroes are put together, it's basically ruined cause all their powers are only used as convenient for the story.
I think the web novel Worm does this really well. I recently got it recommended to me and am enjoying it immensely! :)
There's a thing I heard somewhere about how your magical system needs to have a balance between how well it's understood vs. how useful it is, or else it will break the plot.
If a magic system is extremely useful, then it must also be extremely mysterious, so that you can say "Well, it can't immediately fix all problems because the gods work in mysterious ways." Gandalf or Tom Bombadil seem incredibly powerful, but they don't solve all of the problems in Middle Earth, and that's okay because they're terribly mysterious.
If a magic system is extremely well understood in-universe, then it has to have hard limits on how useful it is, so you can say something like "Well, the Law of Equivalent Exchange says that to solve all our problems would require a blood sacrifice of the entire population, so that's not an option."
If your magic is pretty well-understood AND very useful, then by all rights it OUGHT to solve all your problems, and when it doesn't then readers rightly begin to question why any of the plot needs to happen at all (see, for example, the time turners in Harry Potter).
Shoutout to every story that alludes to the fact that mages can run out of mana but is insanely inconsistent how and when it happens. Sometimes they spam spells for hours and sometimes it’s just “Oh no, I can’t use [spell] anymore because… Um… The plot says I can’t!”
hhahahaa, just like reload when dramatically appropriate.
If teleportation magic exists, why don’t people who own it teleport everywhere?
Another wizard and I absolutely wrecked our DM's in game economy just teleporting everywhere. Wizard Instant Shipping Inc.
Checks out lol, it's a busted ability
If teleportation magic exists, why don't people who own it teleport everywhere?
Because you die and a copy of you is created.
If time travel magic exists, why isn't everyone doing everything in their power to get it and use it? Looking at you, harry potter.
It can only be used by women who have borne children, to travel to a point before they bore children. Obviously, this means their child disappears from existence.
The villains usually have spells that are supposed to be ultra powerful and can kill anyone quickly but somehow it doesn't work against main characters and there's no excuse for why fights drag on for so long. Imagine seeing the villain introduced by vaporizing someone but never seeing them do it again.
The main character leaves his normal life when a villain’s casual disappearing spell actually “doubles” him, resulting in the origin of his heroic power.
Main character(s) breaking the rules of magic just because...
Because schizophrenia. Main character hears voices and they occasionally meld into a chorus in a way that produces unique magical outcomes.
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More than 17 apostrophes on the first page with every name of a person, place, or thing having one.
I remember seeing some sort of graph, where the number of made up words on the first page of a fantasy novel can be charted to a skewed bell curve of that novel’s average rating. One or two made up words tends to boost ratings slightly, but more than that and the ratings quickly decline. Because if an author is immediately dependent on introducing new words as a crutch for worldbuilding, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the book.
Also kennings. No, you do not sound mysterious using "younglings" instead of children.
Treating wands like guns in fights instead of using spells creatively
Oh yes....this is SO lazy. There's this immense potential for creative choreography that's left untapped. Directors should really consult dungeon masters for this kind of stuff
There's a meme floating around that suggests taking inspiration for wand using from conductors and I cannot stress how amazing every fight in Harry potter would have been if this was the standard.
Bringing Harry Potter into this, the fact that they showed they do know how to do this, when Dumbledore and Voldemort fought in the 5th movie, makes it all the more annoying that almost every other fight in the series was just shooting blasts and energy beams at each other
Except, of all people, those idiots Crabbe and Goyle busting out a living dragon made of fire. I mean, they shouldn't have, but they managed it.
Nothing but direct strikes from aurors and death eaters.
They actually pull this off well in Frieren. There are tons of different and unique spells but the one the MC always uses is the basic magic attack spell because she is stupidly overpowered she doesn’t need to be creative.
I absolutely hate the trope where they start out with something interesting and have to do a flashback to the parts that led up to it. Like I just had that happen with a sequel to a book I was reading, and I'm really struggling to get started. I fucking hate the
*cold open to something dramatic happening*
Record scritch "I bet you're wondering how I got here. Well, it all started...."
bullshit trope and its really hard for me to look past some times.
The dark side of in medias res.
I dunno if it's considered "bad", but I personally hate when one of the characters gets amnesia, or the group meets a character that has amnesia. It just feels like a laziness by the author who can't think of any other way to make a storyline interesting.
By modern standards this is pretty bad, and it boils down to an exposition problem.
The author needs to explain certain basic information up front (or at least pretty early on). A good way to do this is to have one character be a novice who needs to be told basic details, thereby informing the audience. In fact the "new guy" angle to exposition delivery is so good that it itself is becoming cliche.
In the example you brought up the author wanted to take advantage of the "new guy" trope but for whatever could not do that. Maybe the character needed social status or standing that a rookie would not have in order to make the plot work. Rather than find a creative workaround that made sense in their story they pulled out the old amnesia trick to eat their cake and have it, too.
One book that did it well was Nine Princes in Amber. It worked because the readers got to discover the "real world" along with the main character. Without it there would've been a shit ton of exposition of a detailed setting that didn't rely on Tolkien at all, one that the MC was already familiar with. Although it might have been fresh in 1970 and overdone since then.
Women and girls usually end up in a relationship by the end of the story and/or are the ones needing to be rescued. Its formulaic, boring and sexist due to the comparative lack of the opposite occurring. eg. men needing to be rescued.
Like... even if you did not give a single shit about sexism, its the same tired plot points over and over again. It has Hallmark channel writer energy. Create a second plot I beg you.
I agree with you on principle, but i feel it has reached a point where the circumvention of the classic tropes has created a new and also very formulaic stereotype: the “empowering“ woman. Must be strong, butch, evidently better than men in something typically associated with men, and if by any chance she is permitted to be classically feminine she must either be a lesbian or emotionally fucked up somehow. Bonus points for leather jacket and shades.
It is probably the better trope but i find it similarly boring at this point. Very performative and often with little relevance to the story being told.
Must be strong, butch, evidently better than men
And this writing style often results in complete lack of character development. Because how would you develop a character that is ideal from the start?
Literally has to force in their own "I am no man" line.
That one is worse in my mind as baring steroids men will be physically larger and stronger than women. women should have motivetions other than marry a strong man (nothing wrong with wanting a good husband, I know many young girls looking for one - but please don't be the cardboard that is all I want)
I recently read a collection of novels by a prominent 1960s science fiction writer. In three novels and 400 pages, I don't think there was a single female character who advanced the plot other than by sexually entertaining a male character (Despite one of the books having a female title character, and another had a lot of minor female characters.) I know it's a product of its era, but even then, there were more woman PhDs than men who'd been to space, so I think a good science fiction author ought to be able to at least imagine the possibility. I have nothing against female sexuality, but the most interesting women supplement it with some other talent.
It was the 1960s dude, if he'd written a novel with an empowered woman he probably would have been arrested and sent to Vietnam
Elves always being like the bottom rung of society or them being the outcasts. It's insane to think that elves wouldn't be the rulers of dam near any government or at the very least not be the power and influence behind a puppet government. Who wouldn't want the help of a race of people who, depending on the lore, can live for thousands of years.
I mean, there could be an elf that has been a friend of your family for like 5 or more generations. That sounds dope as fuck for us but kinda shitty for them.
I like what Tolkien did with the elves. They went from a warmongering bloodthirsty species to ancient and wise and they decided to gtfo and live on a secluded island out of reach from pretty much everyone.
Well there’s also the whole “The One Ring is the only thing still keeping the elves’ magic alive, so they know that destroying the One Ring will inevitably lead to the end of the elves” side of things. That’s why all the elves in LOTR are so fucking morbid about everything. The elves rely on magic, and while it did a lot of damage and was undoubtedly evil, the One Ring bound that magic to Middle Earth because it was the same magic Sauron used to appear in Middle Earth. So by helping to destroy the One Ring (and breaking Sauron’s tether to Middle Earth) they’re also destroying the only thing keeping their magic from drying up over time. They’re inadvertently starting a ticking time bomb for themselves.
At least, that’s what I remember off the top of my head. It could be completely wrong, but I’m too lazy to google it.
Vulcans really are space elves
All things Deus Ex Machina. I get it, endings are hard. Climaxes are hard to write. But the payoff feels cheap as hell when your protagonist just "digs a little deeper" and suddenly finds just enough power to save the day. When it comes out of nowhere, it feels unearned by the hero and is not only unsatisfying, it's also a good way to give you hero power creep until there's nothing on earth that can believably challenge them. See: Superman.
I get what you're saying, and I agree, but I think Superman is a bad example. Superman is meant to be infinitely powerful (with only a few examples like kryptonite to aid in storytelling). It's a bit like the premise of One Punch Man. His story is meant to be about what one SHOULD do with infinite power, and the nature of morality, rather than overcoming adversity as with most superheroes.
In the early days of Superman comics, dude couldn't, e.g. fly. He could just jump really high. He didn't have laser vision. Over time, the writers kept adding new powers until the only story they could tell was about Supes vs his own conscience. Nothing else (okay, besides Mr Mxyzptlk) can actually stand in his way.
Which is why I love enders game. Motherfucker was so brutal, the only thing slowing him down was exhaustion from killing EVERYTHING. The climax was about him realizing what he'd done
Yup. And that's a great example of not relying on Deus Ex Machina - we watch Ender go through all his brutal training, learning to be the best and becomes a truly terrifying weapon of war. By the time Ender is, well, ending things, we've seen his growth and understand why he can do the things he does.
girls falling in love with the main character and wanting to stay with him for the rest of the story just because they have met random.
I think that's the plot of Thumbalina. And yes, it's stupid.
Its for the reader/watcher to decide what is canon it maybe good if done subtly but if its some important or core lore, well then i should've just imagined the whole thing why are you needed ?
Elves and Dwarves done like every other Elf and Dwarf. Especially when they go out of their way to give the Dwarf that overdone Irish/Scottish accent written out in damn near unreadable text.
Also when the worldbuilding and plot basically is "here's some not so thinly veiled racism between groups who will set that aside to fight a common enemy." Series ends on a high note, but you know this world will fall into disarray again cause people suck, so like, what was the point.
Elves and dwarves being monolithic cultures. I'd be fine the the standard stereotype if that was only one kind. There are so many kinds of humans, it's hard to believe that there is only one kind of dwarf. Make Irish vs Scottish dwarves or something, cmon. Make dwarves Mongolian, idk.
The Scottish accent is baffling. "Dwarves originate from Scandinavian mythology, so let's give them a Scottish accent!" Elves (the human-sized kind) originate from Scandinavian mythology as well, why not give them Scottish accents?
This is specific to the videogame-ish sub-genre, mostly Isakeis…
But you go out of the way to include RPG mechanics into your story… but the only real influence it has on the storytelling is spending an inordinate amount of time grinding… a mechanic explicitly added to RPGs to pad the game.
There are good video game based stories, Survival Story of a Sword King and Dungeon Reset both immediately come to mind… but I feel like this is a widespread problem.
The Wandering Inn handles this well, where to hit large milestones you need not just xp but self development.
Is The Wandering Inn this one https://wanderinginn.com/ ? Can't find anything else .
You meet your party at the tavern...
A tavern is a perfect place to meet strangers. It is a social hangout where new things are bound to be found!
The problem is always starting an adventure by interacting with a mysterious stranger they have no reason to trust. Why isn't Aunt Elovynn sending them on their way from a family get together? Or the religious leader that the characters know and trust giving them a start?
Tavern is a perfect place to meet, though it's neutral ground and it's public. Most people won't start shit in public.
Dragons are cool, but god am I sick of them. The worst part is they are either evil and directly attack people or good and completely missing for 90% of the story.
Problem is, that they easily turn into the nuke equivalent in fantasy. It's challenging to incorporate them into a world where they are not completely OP
They could still be selfish or not engaged with less powerful creatures instead of evil or benevolent.
GRRM stories have made dragons really boring
I'm so sick of exceptionalism. Every damn thing seems to center around some shitty thinly veiled oligarch, their kids as some hero, or unhappenable origins and an impossible hero. Everything is geared towards cultural acceptance of some authoritarian neo feudal dystopian future.
Stories can be interesting in other spaces. We all exist within those real spaces. We can fantasize about better places and times within similar realities as our own. I view all this exceptionalism like collective narcissism. I can't tell if it is an universal writing bias or a publishing bias, but I don't like it.
The dresden files are pretty good and everyone in those books are flawed as fuck. Same goes with expeditionary force by Craig Alanson. Joe Bishop and skippy are both royal fuck ups and assholes.
Do you have a good example of a story which doesn't fall into this trope at all? One which perfectly encapsulates not doing this?
The Expanse in the first couple of seasons did a decent job of showing that the characters were flawed and not at the center of the world while struggling against a system that is a more realistic portrayal of what monsters exceptionalism really creates.
This aspect of Star Trek the next generation did a pretty good job of contextualizing the fact that the events on the Enterprise were the stories of one of many such vessels.
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That is why I like Dune and Asimov's universe as well.
In Dune there is a ton of exceptionalism, and it is outright shown to be awful for the average person. I would argue that every form of exceptionalism throughout the books is always met with an equally negative outcome and flaw.
In Asimov's stuff there is exceptional altruism in Daneel. The most exceptional characters like The Mule is shown as a tyrant. Hari Seldon is unexceptional in his exceptional idea, but is dead for the exceptional events that followed and his exceptionalism is constantly in question.
Lost in Translation comes to mind. A peek into the intersection of two people’s lives for a few days
There was some brouhaha a while ago in some DND spaces where some people were like "can we stop doing stories about kings and 'rightful heirs'? It's all very regressive and not fun anymore" and some people just lost their mind.
"Don't make this all PoLitIcAL , this conversation about political systems".
Anyway. I'm super done with basic fantasy monarchy. My pandemic DND game had
- a Republic city-state. The players lead a recall effort against the shitty mayor
- an anarchist collective. The players helped stop counter-revolutionaries from restoring the (now undead) king to the throne
- an oligarchy of awful wizards in conflict with the surrounding town, with agents from neighboring states trying to shift the balance of power. At this point the players got tired of political intrigue, sadly.
Lots of options.
The Chosen One somehow discovering some new thing at the climax of any big conflict.
I'm looking at you, Sword of Truth.
The series is so long, which part are you referring to? Lmao it is one of my favorites still though.
(I'm pretty sure in a bunch of cases he uses magic to resolve stuff but never understands what he's doing and most of the time can't replicate it)
Also have you read sword of justice series?
Most of the series past the first book is what I was referring to. It seemed like, for at least several books, there's some big climax and he suddenly rediscovers some lost aspect of War Magic that saves the day, mostly unrelated to the rest of the book. It's been over a decade since I read them though, so I might not be remembering it right.
Still enjoyed the series as a whole, despite a few things. Haven't read sword of justice, but I might give it a try.
I started off really enjoying the series, but eventually had to abandon it as he kept adding increasingly over the strawmen who's sole purpose was to be blown away by the might of Randian Objectivism.
Yeah, I always felt like the series would have been better as a single book (maybe the first and part of the second?). Playing with ideas of truth and perceived truth was cool, but it wasn't enough to sustain such a long series.
Being forbidden doesn't make a relationship interesting. The Romeo and Juliet thing has been spun a million times, and every one of them is shit including the original.
I think I've just reached peak edge Lemmy, where Romeo and Juliet is referred to as "shit."
It gets edgier
Fucking teenagers
Not to mention Romeo was a pedophile.
Romeo was 16 and Juliet 13. Kind of a big gap for that age but nowhere near being a pedo wtf
Not necessarily a writing trope, but a casting trope in fantasy TV/film that always annoyed me: British accent = fantasy accent. It's not so bad these days, but a lot of 2000s-era fantasy would just have all the actors speak in awfully fake British accents.
Also, not to mention the more poor and stupid people get, the less posh the accent gets. That's a very classest thing that I'm sick of.
That is kind of accurate though if you're basing the story on history. Like if it's Robin Hood or King Arthur then the nobles will sound posh and the peasants won't.
Less of an excuse for it in high fantasy; I guess it's a quick way to telegraph to the audience who's who, but you're definitely right that it reinforces traditional class stereotypes.
Everyone is speaking english. Even when the story says they is more than one language, the story is full of puns that dependion english, wsear words from english (swearing is realistict in real life but in books exceccs that shold be cut with no harm to the story)
Isn't this just a necessity of the storytelling medium? If the audience is English-speaking then they will appreciate a pun in English a lot more than a sign saying "this is an excellent pun in my made-up language, you wouldn't get it though". Even Tolkien basically says "this whole story has been translated into English"!
The plot is discovery and progressive revealment of big weird thing. The climax is flashback-heavy explanation of big weird thing.
Just finished watching The 100 on Netflix. The writing was pretty terrible.
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Literally every bad action performed by a character (up to and including genocide) was justified as "I had no choice". They should have called it, "The no choice show". I would have loved to have seen a counter in the corner of the screen that ticked up every time that was said, which was at least once per episode.
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Seconds before any kind of solution that would have solved major problems was enacted, a character (different each time)- previously rational, but now for some reason completely chaotic- would jump in and destroy the McGuffin and fuck everyone over because it was in their personal interest. Every single fucking time, even in the final episode. It's no longer a plot twist, it's just lazy AF writing. It also meant that the characters had no consistency or predictability of motive, which meant their believability went down the toilet.
I'm going to stop there but believe me, that's the tip of the iceberg.
That show was proof that Netflix will greenlight just about anything.
The motto of corporations is: money over quality & people
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"I am not [well known character archetype]"
does literally everything possible to follow that archetype
cough cough one piece cough cough
For one thing, too many works of fiction involve a romance. I don't judge the romances itself, I would never get between even multiple people in love when on a screen, but these things don't always have to be in the boundaries of the story. Even works like DC Comics which promote themselves on a realism basis give romances out like a token. Which is why the ending to Battleship saved that movie in my eyes.
The way GOT ended with making the storyteller (the writer) become an important part of the story. The writers self insert is a problem in a lot of media but particular in fantasy.
Yep!
The main character is given so much buff.
I still looking fiction where main character is ordinary person.
- No godly fast learning/growthing speed.
- No extraordinary willpower that train day and night with bare minimum on food and housing
- No hack-like device/weapon/...
The "Deckbuilder" litrpgs where the words card and deck dont mean anything and its just skills
Multiple simultaneous plot threads. So weak.
