Tropes you dislike?

What are some tropes in media you don't like?

I honestly don't know if this is a trope, but I hate how most dogs are boys in media. I don't know why, but most, if not all stories about dogs, the dog is a male. Snoopy? male. Clifford? male. Bolt? male. Shiloh? male. Marmaduke? male. Scooby doo? Male.

There's only female dog I can even think of that's the protagonist, and it's that one PBS Kids show called Martha Speaks. I legit cannot think of any other female dog protagonists. I've never been a big fan of how a lot of dogs are male in media.

I also hate the bury your gay/bury your trans trope and first boy always wins that a lot of series used to do.

Same, Gay Guy Dies First / Bury Your Gays is sadly something I can think of several examples of -.- Recently, a Netflix show where they set a character up as very interesting and then killed her off to make her the motivation for the protag to carry on his quest. Sigh.

Dislikes the comic relief pervert. Rehashes the same bad Peeping Tom routine. Receives scorn and punishment very often in the moment. Tolerates them too much outside of that, though. Usually serves little story purpose as well.

Tires of people accidentally walking in on someone bathing (or some other vulnerable state), on a similar note. Does not mind this in a vacuum. Crops up too many times.

Hates how female characters hitting male characters is often played for laughs.

One of the ones I really don't care for is the whole main character(s) succeeding in scenarios they otherwise shouldn't via sheer willpower thing. Bonus points if there's screaming about the power of friendship or something similar.

I wish there could be more platonic friendships. So many main and subplots always push romance at every turn.

Also in real life the 9 dogs that played lassie were all male. On the show she was always portrayed as a girl.

I think there are a fair few female dog protags, for sure

My main gripe is defintiely the black/gay person dying first, like I'm not sure why that is still a thing producers etc follow...

lead male and lead female with no chemistry ending up together romantically. gag lmfao

Sydian said:

lead male and lead female with no chemistry ending up together romantically. gag lmfao

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straight people i s2g

It all depends on execution and the rest of the work, but outside of the usual tropes which are commonly badly executed (Bury your Gays, Sexual / Physical Assault is funny if a woman does it, etc.) the one trope I find myself most tired recently is "Minority Existence is Pain".

As a queer man of color myself, I do understand that there are plenty of people living in bad situations due to being in a given minority group and that it's important to raise awareness of those issues, but it's like, can I just have a story where people are just vibing and doing their own thing?

Like, I've read the "bad coming out" a lot of times, it sucks, it's heart wrenching and now I'm ready to see stories about queer characters that just ... are queer without having to deal with trauma associated with it.

I've seen some people refer to it as "trauma porn" and I kinda agree, it can definitely feel a bit fetishizing at times. Like minority existences are used as a bait for ally brownie points or something.

fake-out deaths aka every death in dragon ball super

Fight me if you want, but I'm not a big fan of enemies to lovers. I just don't see how this would work in real life- say if you were getting bullied by someone, why would you ever want to date them? I'll appreciate that the bully stopped picking on me, but that doesn't mean I immediately want to start hitting on them. Enemies to friends is okay for me, but I think going all the way to lovers is too drastic. (And yes, I know no one says "enemies to friends")

I don't really like the comic relief pervert trope. At one point I started watching Seven Deadly Sins, but the constant perversion being played for laughs got on my nerves and made me not want to watch it anymore. I also kind of don't like the power of friendship trope. As Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions says in her trope talk on the trope, it's like sugar; you have to either use it sparingly or incorporate it into something more complicated.

Romance subplot in a story that absolutely doesn't need it. Why can't the girl and boy character just be platonic friends for once?

Roni said:

Romance subplot in a story that absolutely doesn't need it. Why can't the girl and boy character just be platonic friends for once?

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As much as I love romance as a genre and the friends-to-lovers trope, I agree with this. If the leads have no romantic chemistry, it would be best if they stayed friends. And as much as we need healthy same-gender relationships/LGBT+ representation, this also applies to pairings of any gender combination, not just male and female.

If the story doesn't call for a romance arc, I would also prefer it if romantic relationships were already established. I'd like to see more of couples dealing with outside stuff and sticking through thick and thin together, not just developing as individuals separately so they can be slapped together with no build-up. This is a huge part of why I love biopics and historical fiction; they're usually more realistic in how relationships work outside of the initial stages.

RadEmpoleon said:

Fight me if you want, but I'm not a big fan of enemies to lovers. I just don't see how this would work in real life- say if you were getting bullied by someone, why would you ever want to date them? I'll appreciate that the bully stopped picking on me, but that doesn't mean I immediately want to start hitting on them. Enemies to friends is okay for me, but I think going all the way to lovers is too drastic. (And yes, I know no one says "enemies to friends")

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It really depends on what people mean by enemies. Say, something like Edgeworth x Wright from Ace Attorney.

They're enemies in the sense that Wright wants to prove his client is innocent (he's a defense attorney) and Edgeworth wants to prove Wright's client is guilty (he's a prosecutor), Edgeworth had like a victory streak that was ruined by Edgeworth iirc, and they get mildly miffed with each other's personalities sometimes. It's perfectly plausible that they'd get past all of that though because they don't have anything traumatic to fuel that enmity (and in fact, they also have some positive history that could fuel their relationship in a positive way).

On on some other case, you can just be enemies due to something like political or philosophical reasons, or some kind of disagreeing that can eventually be resolved in a neat way (like, one person changing sides, or one person realizing that their stance is too inflexible). Heck, you could even make an argument that Romeo and Juliet is Enemies to Lovers where the enmity is generational.

Of course something like the bullying example you gave would probably not be very realistic, there's too much trauma there to just sweep under the rug for most people (although given enough time and enough amending of the relationship, everything's possible, I guess. Some people are just more forgiving than others.) and I'd definitely agree that there is too much Enemies to Lovers written in a way that tries to ignore and justify abuse, and that's obviously not healthy and a perfectly valid reason to not like the trope, but I think that the trope is a bit more wider than you're giving it credit and you might even enjoy some of these other works that are really more like "Rivals to Lovers" or "People on different sides of an issue to Lovers", except these aren't as catchy and iconic terms as "Enemies to Lovers" so people don't call them that.

Enemies to lovers, in the context of actual hate.
Queerbaiting.
Only black character is a stereotype.
Only fat character's personality is food.
Kill the gays.
Mental health horror movies, usually involving Schizophrenia.

There's probably more, but these stick out.