What are your most hated fanfic tropes

[Avernus]

..??????

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"If you give Frodo a lightsaber you should then give Sauron a Death Star" is an old, bad piece of writing advice.

 

[nivekvonbeldo]

"If you give Frodo a lightsaber you should then give Sauron a Death Star" is an old, bad piece of writing advice.

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I see just asking what's the celestial forge

 

[Tera Forma]

"If you give Frodo a lightsaber you should then give Sauron a Death Star" is an old, bad piece of writing advice.

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It's not like Frodo getting a lightsaber would change anything, given who Sauron is. Like, seriously, Sauron, lore-wise, would be more powerful than any Death Star.

 

[humon]

If you make a story about the scaling of numbers, you should make sure they all add up to 666. This number is the sum total of all things that can be counted using numbers. If you make all stats add up to 666, then you will have perfect betting odds for who will win between the hero and the villain.

Then, once the odds are set, and the bets are in, the teams can actually play the game and frustrate every gambler who thought they had a perfect system.

Because it turns out there's a huge part of life that can't be counted or quantified or compared using metrics. Much like how the circumference of a circle is not 6 radians, but 2π = 6.283(something irrational)... It's the irrational part of the number that will kick your ass every time if you try to ignore it or round it off.

 

[Povovanon]

Luv my stories
Hate your stories.
Simply...
No, no, I'm joking.

However, I don't like (hate is a big word)

Chad isn't Chad! He is simply a sociopath. I don't know if this trope exists, but it's when a writer tries to depict a male protagonist as a flawless Lawful Good Chad Thundercock surrounded by a harem. However, the protagonist's actions are those of an amoral sociopath. What's more, the entire harem and the secondary male drones are at his feet, accepting his every action and singing his praises.

From loser to Chad in two minutes. Loser gets isekai'ed by Truck-kun, and in just two minutes, his attitude and behavior completely change. He overcomes all his past traumas and flaws, becoming the ideal, perfect man. All the girls drop their panties at his sight and words.

The girl isn't a tomboy: this is simply your best-bro with big tits and a vagina. (However, it could be reduced to not knowing how to write a female character)

All the girls share a single brain cell and think only about the protagonist (which is even worse if he's a self-insert original character). They have no other interests, issues, or anything else not connected to protagonist. I can accept this in a quick smut fic, but seriously, not in a three-billion-word story.

The girls are sex dolls during the smut scenes.

I like crossovers and multiverses, but I hate the dull ones. I prefer "new-universe" stories where different franchises are merged and reconstructed into something new. And I love when this "new" has no-sense and offends the original franchises and fans.

In the first 500 words, there is no homage at the best The Simpsons seasons, all Family Guy seasons and the first four seasons of Futurama.

Bonus:

I don't understand gacha system/celestial forge/wiki-warriors/waifu system/gamer system so I remain away from them. (Don't judge, don't hate). I prefer a sort of script or diary of a RPG session or a solo RPG session that "litrpg".

The truth?
Hate my stories
Luv your stories.

 

[nivekvonbeldo]

If you make a story about the scaling of numbers, you should make sure they all add up to 666. This number is the sum total of all things that can be counted using numbers. If you make all stats add up to 666, then you will have perfect betting odds for who will win between the hero and the villain.

Then, once the odds are set, and the bets are in, the teams can actually play the game and frustrate every gambler who thought they had a perfect system.

Because it turns out there's a huge part of life that can't be counted or quantified or compared using metrics. Much like how the circumference of a circle is not 6 radians, but 2π = 6.283(something irrational)... It's the irrational part of the number that will kick your ass every time if you try to ignore it or round it off.

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22.2 axis

 

[humon]

Chad isn't Chad! He is simply a sociopath.

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More or less how James Bond is written. To some extent, a lot of the great men of history (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan) were like this. One can't blame amateur writers for wanting to be like these men. The power fantasy is always, "If I could do whatever I wanted and get away with it, and I can never lose a fight". The difference is always how convincing the writer can make it, whether he did any research or knows anything about how power works, or if he's just a kid in a sandbox arguing about how his powers beat your powers times infinity.

flawless Lawful Good Chad Thundercock surrounded by a harem.

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Would be fine if he wasn't Lawful Good but was instead Lawful Evil. People these days have a hard time separating good from evil, and often they default to: "It's good when I do it, and it's evil when someone I don't like does it". Or they just go by whether the guy wears white or wears black. That's because being a Lawful Good Chad is actually very difficult, and there are not many examples out there to follow. It takes a lot of self-discipline and empathy for how other people think. It's much easier to just be a selfish hedonist.

What's more, the entire harem and the secondary male drones are at his feet, accepting his every action and singing his praises.

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Goes back to the god emperors of the bronze age, who destroyed cities and slaughtered men, women, and children in great numbers, and had thousands of slaves singing their praises because they knew what would happen to them if they didn't. Power fantasies tap into ancient motivations long repressed by moral frameworks that were designed to prevent the destruction of cities and the great slaughter of men, women, and children.

From loser to Chad in two minutes.

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Sometimes all a guy needs is the right opportunities, and to get out from under modern society's thumb ^_^
Like in that Simpsons episode when Homer goes to an asylum and meets The Chief from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
- "Hi, Chief"
- "How's it going?"
(astonished doctors)
- "Well it's about time someone reached out to me"
(it wasn't even 500 words yet!)

it could be reduced to not knowing how to write a female character

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Yep. If a writer doesn't know how to write an MC who is not a shitbag, it's also likely that he doesn't know how to write women either, or really anyone who isn't himself.

All the girls share a single brain cell and think only about the protagonist

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The Bechdel test was invented for this exact reason.

the best The Simpsons seasons, all Family Guy seasons and the first four seasons of Futurama

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The millennial canon. Much as the Greeks had Homer's epics to frame their world view, and medieval Europeans had the Bible and Aristotle, modern millennials have these cartoon shows.

 

[Avernus]

That's because being a Lawful Good Chad is actually very difficult, and there are not many examples out there to follow. It takes a lot of self-discipline and empathy for how other people think. It's much easier to just be a selfish hedonist.

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More to the point for a thread like this, it's harder to write a "lawful good" character, at least well. It means you have to write with concern for the other characters, come up with reasonable solutions to problems and not just smash everything in your way. And since it is harder most writers end up either writing an amoral or evil character and calling them "good", or twist the plot so the protagonist is always right without ever having to actually worry about anyone else.

 

[Tera Forma]

More or less how James Bond is written.

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But James Bond doesn't pretend to be a moral paragon. He's a British intelligence agent. Women jump into his bed because he's courting them. Women don't just see his body and decide they want his penis. No, they interact, he jokes, finds a way to connect with these women, and ultimately wins.
To claim that James Bond is written this way is the most outright lie I have ever heard.

 

[Renko]

What's more, the entire harem and the secondary male drones are at his feet, accepting his every action and singing his praises.

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Speaking of harems, don't you also hate it when all of them are written as nothing more than "numbers" and characters to be thrown away and forgotten with no development and further roles after banging the "chad" MC?

Reasons why I mostly disliked Harem and Waifu Catalogue stories.

 

[humon]

More to the point for a thread like this, it's harder to write a "lawful good" character, at least well.

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I don't think it's that hard to write LG characters in general, but they are usually not seen as Chads because they put justice above personal power, so they lack the sort of ruthlessness that propels people into power and builds harems from the ground up. The more common sort of LG Chad is just a family man, maybe holds a position of influence and respect in a community, and is willing to lead men into battle if absolutely forced to... but would much prefer to live in peace. I'm thinking perhaps of someone like Faramir, who is quite virtuous, but not a Chad like his big brother Boromir, who is more corruptible. Though Aragorn seems to be both good and a Chad. No harem for any of them though.

To claim that James Bond is written this way is the most outright lie I have ever heard.

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I was referring only to the sociopath part, not the rest of it. Bond is a Chad and a sociopath, that's all.

 

[Avernus]

But James Bond doesn't pretend to be a moral paragon. He's a British intelligence agent. Women jump into his bed because he's courting them. Women don't just see his body and decide they want his penis. No, they interact, he jokes, finds a way to connect with these women, and ultimately wins.

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Yeah. The issue isn't really writing a male character with a "harem" or a Casanova type like Bond. The issue is writing those men in a way where people just don't buy that women would be interested in him in the first place. That requires good character writing, rather than just turning the female characters into effectively sex dolls.

 

[Daytripper]

I dislike Ron the Death Eater trope that is on several fanfics, because it makes a character eviler than they are in canon (usually) without any explanation.

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Late response, but I'm honestly less bothered by the opposite trope (Ron the Death Eater) than by this trope. The reason being is that there are plenty of examples of characters in fiction going from villain to anti-hero (or even straight up hero in some cases). Examples that come to mind are Godzilla, Kong, Vegeta, Venom, the Gotham Sirens (Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn), Black Cat, Emma Frost, Boba Fett, Shadow, etc). Even in the world of public domain we've had classic monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein being made into lovable goofballs in stuff like Hotel Transylvania or sympathetic portrayals of the Lucifer in stuff like Good Omens, Sandman and Hazbin Hotel.

But RDE is basically just glorified bashing.

 

[Smuthunter]

"If you give Frodo a lightsaber you should then give Sauron a Death Star" is an old, bad piece of writing advice.

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It's not bad but it is often misused or misunderstood, usually by taking it way too literally. It just means you need to maintain stakes and dramatic tension when you alter the characters, and one of the best ways to do that is to alter the story to provide more and better challenges for them.

For instance, assuming Frodo with a lightsaber, this implies that Frodo is a Jedi. Now if Jedi Frodo is just making the trip to Mount Doom but with more powers and changing nothing else then that's boring and the story is a foregone conclusion because we know he can succeed just fine without extra powers. The metaphorical Death Star in this equation could be, say, Frodo now wants to stop and help people along the way because that's part of his Jedi Code, but that means he's also drawing more attention from Sauron's armies and getting into fights and uh oh now the Ring isn't just tempting him to use it it's also tempting him to use the Dark Side to get himself and Sam out of the new predicaments that his extra heroism has gotten them into.

 

[Povovanon]

Just One More Thing...

I don't like when Self Insert / Original Character invades a franchise, especially a harem one, and replaces the main protagonist in the girls and boys heart. (And the original protagonist placed on the bench)
But maybe this itch is probably caused by my low self-esteem.
You know, self inserting in a Batman fic... Not as Batman and even as Robin. And I'm even talking about Tim Drake, not Dick Grayson. Able to self-inserting only in Alfred, the boring one, not tthe Bultering one.

So, add Scrubs to millennial canon... with Excel Saga.

However, in my mind, I have several archetypes of Lawful Good Chads: Caramon Majere from Dragonlance; Corgan from Septerra Core; Kyosuke Kasuga from KOR; Terry Bogard from SNK. But maybe I have a distorted idea of a Lawful Good and Chad archetypes.
Lawful Evil? Vult? Kurinou-Chads, we can put Vult in the Lawful Evil range?

I read the first Bond novel years ago, but I never thought him like a sociopath.
But maybe I am influenced only by a distorted memory of Goldeneye mixed with tons of memes about Pierce "Architect" Brosnan destroying gyms.

 

[Colonel "Bardak"]

However, in my mind, I have several archetypes of Lawful Good Chads: Caramon Majere from Dragonlance; Corgan from Septerra Core; Kyosuke Kasuga from KOR; Terry Bogard from SNK. But maybe I have a distorted idea of a Lawful Good and Chad archetypes.
Lawful Evil? Vult? Kurinou-Chads, we can put Vult in the Lawful Evil range?

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Karamon Majere is indeed Chad. Like.

 

[Stanley_Jeb]

I don't think it's that hard to write LG characters in general

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It's also hard to portray an LG character in a way most people can agree on. To go to the source of the whole alignment thing, in DnD, Bytopia and Arcadia are both planes containing Lawful-Good inhabitants, but they are fundamentally different from each other, and in turn are different from the people going to the "pure" LG plane, Mount Celestia. When do they prioritize law, when good? What if those ideals clash?

 

[Smuthunter]

Anyway I despise the use of game mechanics in stories, not as in quest mechanics but as something the characters actually interact with, like The Gamer or the majority of CYOA fanfics or most recently all this chaos gacha bullshit that's been sprouting up all over the place. It always feels artificial and forced in and never actually improves the story.