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What are your most hated fanfic tropes

You are writing a gamer story with charisma, why? How many times have we seen gamer stories with the MC having a high charisma stat, but they are written as the most edge lordy teenager ever? The MC isn't charismatic. Isn't written in any way to show off his charisma. Just remove the charisma stat from the list of stats.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer fics that make Buffy dumb or kill Angel in the most half-assed methods. Old man sneaks up on Angel and stabs him in the back was the stupidest one I've ever seen.
 
Marauder_Barriers said:
Whats so funny about these Charisma Stats is that these MCs arent actually Charismatic. They act like neurodivergent babies having a tantrum but the stat causes a brainwashing effect.
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Writing someone as being extremely charismatic suffers from the same problem that writing somebody as extremely intelligent; it's hard to write somebody with more of it than the writer themselves has. And most writers aren't silver-tongued devils any more than they are geniuses.

So trying to write someone as highly charismatic tends to come across as either mind control or the target being really gullible, just as writing genius characters tends to come across as either everyone else being stupid or the MC being psychic.
 
Marauder_Barriers said:
They act like neurodivergent babies having a tantrum but the stat causes a brainwashing effect.
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Does it even need a brainwashing effect? Given the kinda people who are supposedly charismatic, such as people getting voted into power, actors who frankly ought to be shunned by society at best, and whatever the hell people's obsession with serial killers is, "being a neurodivergent baby having a tantrum" evidently seems to be taking people by storm somehow. So in a weird way? That's believable. It shouldn't be, but for some reason society seems to gravitate towards people like that.
 
Stanley_Jeb said:
Does it even need a brainwashing effect? Given the kinda people who are supposedly charismatic, such as people getting voted into power, actors who frankly ought to be shunned by society at best, and whatever the hell people's obsession with serial killers is, "being a neurodivergent baby having a tantrum" evidently seems to be taking people by storm somehow. So in a weird way? That's believable. It shouldn't be, but for some reason society seems to gravitate towards people like that.
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It's a "reality is unrealistic" thing. It happens in real life, but in a story it would be denounced as absurd.
 
The moral/ ethical enemies in the story offer no actual significant argument, even among military or governmental leaders. For once, I'd like to see the opposing sides of whatever issues the fic is approaching properly represented. Be it magical mechanics, religion, ethics, economics, or policy, regardless of their validity.

So many I've read are just the most cartoonishly evil or/and stupid people when, realistically, yes, the Galactic Emperor, haughty Noble, or Religious zealot likely has strong and well-researched convictions even if wrong and would not fold at an admonishment or being accused of racism/zealotry/discrimination, or whatever crime.
 
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Cariannis said:
You are writing a gamer story with charisma, why? How many times have we seen gamer stories with the MC having a high charisma stat, but they are written as the most edge lordy teenager ever? The MC isn't charismatic. Isn't written in any way to show off his charisma. Just remove the charisma stat from the list of stats.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer fics that make Buffy dumb or kill Angel in the most half-assed methods. Old man sneaks up on Angel and stabs him in the back was the stupidest one I've ever seen.
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Charisma in litrpg should really be a mind compulsion effect instead of a personality change.

Dungeon Crawler Carl uses Charisma that way. When a cat has high charisma, she gets perceived as incredibly cute. When a woman has high charisma, she gets perceived as incredibly hot (MC got an instant erection when he got bewitched by one).
 
Stimpak Medic said:
The moral/ ethical enemies in the story offer no actual significant argument, even among military or governmental leaders. For once, I'd like to see the opposing sides of whatever issues the fic is approaching properly represented. Be it magical mechanics, religion, ethics, economics, or policy, regardless of their validity.

So many I've read are just the most cartoonishly evil or/and stupid people when, realistically, yes, the Galactic Emperor, haughty Noble, or Religious zealot likely has strong and well-researched convictions even if wrong and would not fold at an admonishment or being accused of racism/zealotry/discrimination, or whatever crime.
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Morons and evil people don't have strong convictions. They lie about what they have, but saying that people are cartoonishly evil is nothing more than an attempt to whitewash various idiots.
 
ForestDweller said:
It's the opposite. More often than not, the ignorant is convinced that their opinion is always right while the wise is always full of doubt.
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Don't bother. You'd just be talking past them given they brought up evil and stuffed a ton of words into my mouth when that was never mentioned in my comment. Gradients and nuance don't exist to people like that.
 
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V1.0 said:
Uhh. I would like to contest this considering how fanatics exist in both religious, political, and racial terms. Christ. They have some convictions.
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Yes, I'd assume the Christian mass shooter, Islamic suicide bomber, Buddhist monk that immoliates themselves, and other brands of religious extremists to make religious points have very deep convictions so much that they are willing to kill and die for their causes.
 
Stimpak Medic said:
Yes, I'd assume the Christian mass shooter, Islamic suicide bomber, Buddhist monk that immoliates themselves, and other brands of religious extremists to make religious points have very deep convictions so much that they are willing to kill and die for their causes.
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Not to mention the more fanatical Nazis and Communists in history.
 
Late to this and its probably already been mentioned. Gamer system, Gacha and anything else similar to those. Putting modern views in a Medieval setting in characters who shouldn't have such thoughts. Fanon being treated like its canon in most fanfiction.
 
Back to fanfic tropes. The Adaptional Transexuality. But nit for the reasons one might think.

Not homophobic but I do feel annoyed that when I try to go find a M/F ship on AO3. I find a fic that has one of the characters turned into a Transexual even though its tagged as M/F. Christ, Ao3 needs a dedicated section for that beyond just using the Mutil category.
 
V1.0 said:
Back to fanfic tropes. The Adaptional Transexuality. But nit for the reasons one might think.

Not homophobic but I do feel annoyed that when I try to go find a M/F ship on AO3. I find a fic that has one of the characters turned into a Transexual even though its tagged as M/F. Christ, Ao3 needs a dedicated section for that beyond just using the Mutil category.
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Randomly turning characters trans is like the new "randomly turning characters gay".
 
Abyss Trinity said:
Late to this and its probably already been mentioned. Gamer system, Gacha and anything else similar to those. Putting modern views in a Medieval setting in characters who shouldn't have such thoughts. Fanon being treated like its canon in most fanfiction.
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To further this point about modern things in medieval settings, I instantly drop a story if modern terms and lingo is being spoken by a 12th century French peasant.

Edit: Ideally, when writing about a time period/Culture, doing the bare minimum of research goes a long way. Even if it's just learning about the clothes, names of political powers, and terms used around that time.
 
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Stimpak Medic said:
Yes, I'd assume the Christian mass shooter, Islamic suicide bomber, Buddhist monk that immoliates themselves, and other brands of religious extremists to make religious points have very deep convictions so much that they are willing to kill and die for their causes.
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Yes. Psychopaths lack convictions, but not all evil people are psychopaths.

Speaking of psychopaths, a "fanfic trope I hate" would be the one where a protagonist being "rational" or "intelligent" is equated with them being psychopathic. Whether it's by the author, or commentators who scream at the author about how the protagonist is stupid because they aren't backstabbing and murdering people at every opportunity.
 
Avernus said:
Yes. Psychopaths lack convictions, but not all evil people are psychopaths.

Speaking of psychopaths, a "fanfic trope I hate" would be the one where a protagonist being "rational" or "intelligent" is equated with them being psychopathic. Whether it's by the author, or commentators who scream at the author about how the protagonist is stupid because they aren't backstabbing and murdering people at every opportunity.
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Yes, its incredibly disheartening to see that trend. Take a look at any manwha with a male mc and there's a hundred comments about how the guy should go on a murder spree cause someone looked at him wrong.

Even granting that if that would be a smart decision, a smart person would pick planning for their battles and where to have those battles instead of just willy nilly cutting people down.
 
V1.0 said:
Uhh. I would like to contest this considering how fanatics exist in both religious, political, and racial terms. Christ. They have some convictions.
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Fanaticism isn't a belief, it's literally a mental illness. Fanaticism is literally what makes people cartoonishly evil.
 
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