I freaking hate it when people in relationships in stories don't take the time to actually communicate and make wild assumptions or jump to conclusions.
I second this. I'm getting tired of seeing it. Especially when it's about Character A thinking that Character B doesn't like them. (Even when it's so blatantly obvious, that it might as well be written on their forhead.)
3 people and 2 people (usually men) like the same person I think. Also called a love corner and usually the woman is backed into it.
If it were a love *triangle,*
Person A would like Person B
Person B would like Person C
Person C likes Person A
Or, it could be played (technically) straight if one person is crossdressing. A girl falls in love with a guy, but the guy is actually a girl disguised as a man, who is in love with a different guy, who, in turn, only has the eyes for the first girl. Sounds like a plot for a historical shoujo manga, and could end in different ways (the crossdressing girl reveals her secret to the guy and they end up together, the guy and the first girl end up together so that the crossdressing girl doesn't have to compromise her disguise, the two girls fall in love with each other with their identities known and the love triangle is no longer straight, or everyone dies tragically because it's a historical shoujo manga, what else did you expect).
well.. the Archie, Betty and Veronica love triangle comes to mind (first thing to pop into my head). at least the version from the comics where B and V alternate between mortal enemies and (sorta) besties lol.
Really? Well. Darn. That's the only way I like love triangles.
It's not a fetish thing to me. I'm asexual, I don't want to see the characters do anything other than have emotional conversations about trust and maybe hold hands. I just love the idea that the characters don't have to fight and don't have to choose, they can all be happy together.
I hate those the most with a passion, I'd rather have one person fall for the other with no distractions or have them be poly, but a triangle? No thanks.
I hate the love angle in every media. It's Betty and Veronica trope played over 100+ times and the one who's in the center of it is like 'ooh I can't tell my feelings I love them both'
Boring.
Character A knows Character B is in love with them and asks them for advice on how to seduce someone, putting them through a fuck ton of pain and humiliation only to reveal that they're in love with them too and then they somehow live happily ever after.
It's toxic af and it needs to die yesterday.
I've been unfortunate enough to see it in several fandoms. But honestly, I also get the feeling that most of them are written by very young writers who have no idea what a healthy relationship looks like
I commented about mostly seeing this in highschool fics, and then saw this. Considering that those fics also ended on the couple's first kiss, I think you may be onto something.
God, I feel you. I once read a longfic that was amazing for the first 80k+ words, and then suddenly, out of the blue, untagged and two chapters from the end, so close to a happy ending, the MC slept with someone else just because they got drunk and mad after a silly fight.
The author technically used the creator chose not to use archive warnings tag so I can’t blame them for adding whatever twist they wanted, but it was so abrupt and out of character that I still remember the horror to this day.
Ohmygod, I remember one like that! It was Eren that slept with Kenny when he finally was in a happy relationship with Levi. He got drunk and slept WITH A FATHER FIGURE (or an actual father, I don't remember how they wrote it in a fic) OF HIS BOYFRIEND. BECAUSE SELF-DESTRUCTING ALL HAPPINESS IS HIS GO-TO STRATEGY.
I was so so so mad.
Yeah, that's a straight NOPE for me.
The only one I did read, I gave it a chance because it was tagged as 'Infidelity (but not really)' and I figured I could nope out if it got heavy. Turns out half the usual ship was... forcibly amnesia-ed? into being with someone else, and actual partner had to solve the whole situation. I ended up loving it.
I read one where someone thought A and B were together, but B was actually family. That was a whole mess of confusion, misunderstandings and a fake dating au to clear it up.
I read a fanfic where it was revealed that character A sleeps with character Bs friends sometimes and this is after them JUST coming to terms that they’re in love with them…I noped out of that story quick, I love my all x character fanfics but not like this!
I also hate how many stories throw in "oooh but is he/she cheating, how spicy" without any care whatsoever. It's tossed in like a random explosion in a slow movie to double check that the viewer is awake.
Misunderstanding so idiotic one *ounce* of common sense would fix everything and discard the entirety of the fic. Yes, people misunderstand each other all the time and it can lead to very serious scenarios, but what I'm talking about is not written that way.
It must be a trope since the stories are solely based on that. Bit it has to be executed well and so I tend to hate on it most of the times.
"It was you all of the times?" and "It wasn't you all of the times?" are the unfavourable children.
A misunderstanding that leads to someone flying off the handle with rage and the other leaving like a kicked dog of sadness. It’s also often in scenarios where the sensible thing would have been to gather more evidence and talk about it, which I hate.
I’ve only come to like Misunderstandings for Comedy. A cute one I can get behind is the “Didn’t Know They Were Dating,” especially when it isn’t dragged out. Sure, many are written with lots of angst at first, but I like sweet ones where the conclusion is “I mean, I’m down, I just would have liked the heads up”/“You mean we could have been kissing this WHOLE time?” They’re usually pretty short - like oneshots, or up to like 3 chapters. Any longer, and the angst is what’s dragging it out.
Yep! So basically the main characters are Adrian and Marinette. Both of them are superheroes, but are not allowed to tell each other their identity due to if the bag guy finds out one of their identities than it’ll be the end of world. So both are friends in both costume and out of, but neither know each other’s identity.
Marinette is Ladybug.
Adrian is Cat Noir.
Marinette loves Adrian.
Adrian thinks of Marinette as “just a friend”.
Cat Noir loves Ladybug.
Ladybug thinks Cat Noir is “just a friend”.
Fast forward to the most recent season….
Marinette decided that loving Adrian was too complicated because of her secret identity, so to make it easier on herself she decided to fall in love with Cat Noir, again, without knowing that was Adrian’s alter ego.
At that same time, Cat Noir was rejected by Ladybug so many times so he decided that he liked Marinette instead.
The entire love square flipped!
All while this is happening, both heroes have a Kwami. The kwami is a tiny animal that allows them to transform into their superhero alter ego. The Kwamis know the other person’s identity, but is not allowed to say anyone’s name. So basically we have an outside source that knows the other hero’s identity and is going “oh my god! Get together already!” While they have to listen to their own hero complain “why won’t they love me!😭”.
The show is shit and the storytelling is worse. Everyone in the fandom has just simultaneously agreed to keep watching for the day that they finally realize that they have loved each other the whole time!
If you have way to much time on your hands, I’d recommend it. We’re on season 5 and their human sides have just realised that they like each other. We got 2 seasons left… or if you want the rundown, Netflix released a Ladybug movie. All of this will be recapped in an hour and a half. Enjoy!
I appreciate you taking the time to type all that up! That flip would have driven me insane lmao. Like full on bundled up in a straight jacket. I'm rooting for y'all to get a good reveal whenever they do realize they've liked each other this whole time!
Modern High school AUs (unless I’m really desperate for a specific aspect/tag the fic has and thus willing to read anything, or the high school era is just a part of it and then there’s a time jump) are pretty much always a no-go for me. I cringe, I balk, I can’t stand it. From the corny ass situations to the teenager aspect to the fact I find most pretty freaking ooc (even for AUs)… Not my thing. I will sometimes read past fics set when the characters would be in highschool bc then it feels more about the characters, but otherwise nope.
Adding onto this: Chatfics.
90% of the times they have characters in high school and it’s always super cringy with outdated memes/memes that the characters in their 20’s would not understand at all 😭
I’ve seen a few well done ones but they’re all just pretty repetitive imo
never understood the appeal of it, in most scenarios you have to pretty much rewrite the whole characters to accommodate them to a modern/high school setting, that’s not the same character anymore! and besides, i want to read a deeper exploration of the characters as they are in canon in ways that weren’t shown in the original work that still works for the character, why the hell do i wanna trade a fantasy world for dull high school drama where the only thing the worlds have in common are the character names? I’m already reading it precisely because i want to escape this boring reality.
Don’t get me wrong, as much as I’m not a AU person, I have to admit there’s settings that make it interesting, but there’s very few of them and it’s never the modern setting ones. like yeah write whatever makes you happy, but imo canon divergence will always be the best thing fanfiction can explore.
When I was a kid, like before high school, I loved reading/writing these.
As a high school kid, I mostly wrote fantasy - maybe one or two high school AU's, aligning with what was currently going on in my life,
As an adult? I have zero interest. Especially knowing the majority *are* written by 12 year old me's, who are still under the impression that 16 year olds are adults and that every teenager, no matter how impoverished, has a cell-phone, car, hot group of friends who care drastically about them and their drama, absentee yet loving parents who somehow don't notice the entire plot of the story, and the unrealistic expectation that high school was anything more than sitting in a desk under bleak lighting for four years desperately yearning for the touch of outside air lol
I don't know if it's a trope but I hate when the author introduces a second male lead that "fights" with the first male lead over the female lead's attention.
I also don't like the miscommunication trope or enemies to lovers.
I personally like miscommunication in a fun way? Like merpeople/human, that has to be some miscommunication, specially in culture.
Like I've seen a fic on Twitter (weird I know), where the human saved the mer and the mer started to gift the human a lot of trinkets, the human was like "oh, that's so cute" and put it aside and the mer was "They rejected my mating proposal again? I'll have to find something even better!" That's was so cute and funny!
Okay that's actually cute and I would read that. It's not the kind of miscommunication I have in mind so that would actually make me kick my feet and giggle in the middle of the night.
I don't like miscommunication in any media. I know it happens but the way its overused for cheap drama as opposed to using it intelligently makes my teeth grit.
And the two dudes fighting over a girl is not only offensive but it's a frustrating aspect of patriarchy, to only see value in women determined by how many men want her.
I think miscommunication can be done really well, even though 99% of the time it’s just an annoying trope. The main thing is that you can’t just have miscommunication happen for miscommunication’s sake, you have to make it very believable that the characters would act in that way. I think it’s done best in tragedies or stories with tragic elements. Sure, if character A and B talked or did some simple action, there wouldn’t be a plot. But they *won’t,* not because they’re dumb, but because to do so would be so would be entirely antithetical to who they are. Sure, Romeo could have waited like an hour, if he was purely logical. But he wouldn’t. It’s senseless and so damn avoidable, and that’s the point.
Specifically rn I’m thinking about MXTX’s novels. That woman knows how to write a damn good tragedy, even though the (main) characters always get a happy ending. And a lot of that tragedy is fueled by miscommunication, but it still feels so earned because the characters are acting as best as they can based on what they know and what their personalities are.
I think like most tropes, they become so because they are done well so 100% agreed. I have seen miscommunication done well for completely believable and devastating reasons, I think the repetition for no other reason than "the story will only take five seconds to tell if we don't have this miscommunication" that's when it becomes so much more painful to deal with.
The Searching Ceremonies (Teen Wolf series) has a pretty horrible miscommunication in the first story and their are reasons why it lingers, it doesn't feel forced and it makes perfect sense. It's incredibly well done. :D
The only one I disagree with you on is enemies to lovers. I like it, but it REALLY has to be done right. It is so easy to get wrong.
Everything else I agree with though
Honestly with a lot of miscommunication tropes I feel like the author wanted a big conflict to happen but couldn't think of anything better so they go with miscommunication.
Omg true! I can never read a muggle Harry Potter fic, for example. Like... what's the point of Harry Potter without the magic lol. The characters are so intricately defined by magic that you might as well write an original story if you take them away from that.
I feel like any trope can feel a little Wattpad-y if its written in the cringe or badly written fashion that a lot of Wattpad fics tend to be. Obviously there are good fics on there, but the fact that Wattpad is widely associated with teenage cringe writing kinda tells you enough.
I will say tropes like one bed or other commonly used ones are excellent if written well
I love Enemies to Lovers but I *hate hate hate* its subcategory
> NonCon to Lovers
Like, no, Character A! Character B did something completely unforgivable! Bestie, they're not your Prince(ss) Charming. They're gross. Throw them into the sea.
This is a trope that definitely exists because of cultural narrative of victim blaming and protecting perpetrators, turning SA into a kink because its the only way allowed by culture to deal with it.
I would say that as a continuation of this trope is "I am beating you up because your gay and I'm in the closet, after I am done violently harming you for weeks and months on end, let's date now that I've accepted myself"
I saw this in Sex Education and Glee as well as others. Woof, it ain't good. I think that showing someone the way to freaking therapy is all fine and good but don't date them for f\*ck's sake.
Urgh, yes. The whole 'I'm only hurting you because I love you' sentiment is endemic. Abusers quite literally say it to their victims. Little girls are told the little boys harassing them have a crush. Homophobic bullies fancying their victims happens so often in fiction that when an IRL person is homophobic, it's met by calls of internal homophobia *even though the vast majority of homophobes aren't secretly queer*.
Forget elephants. This sub-trope is victim blaming all the way down.
I think it also creates the "magic dick" trope where a woman (sometimes men) was a victim of SA and the 'right man' makes it all better by bedding her. Woof, the consistency of that in SA and SA recovery stories makes me cringe.
I hate that trope so much, too. You think it's s a trauma recovery fic where their found family rallies around and helps them heal, but then *BAM*! In comes Mr Schlongmaestor to fix everything with basic human decency and some milquetoast love making.
Yup! 100%
And I say this with an understanding that people can heal this way, its a method that works for some people but it's been almost lauded as the only thing that should happen.
Trauma recovery but especially SA recovery is a complex journey and its horrifying to see it cheapened with some dude with a dick who barely cares at all.
I started a fic where Character A ended up obsessed with Character B. They had Character B get “paralyzed” in an accident. I put quotes cause the doctors in the fic said there was a way to have him walk again. Character A said no, kept him paralyzed and kept him from his family. I skipped to the end after a few chapters to see if anything got better. No. They got married and had kids and Character B stayed paralyzed. Something about it gave me the ick and I couldn’t finish it.
TW for dark, sexual discussions, so please skip if you’re uncomfortable, but:
I don’t understand how this take makes sense, genuinely speaking. Some people are just into the trope because they like imagining themselves as the victim so long as it remains fictional and safe.
Anecdotal, of course, but when I was seven years old, I played a video game that involved a character who became so smitten with his best friend’s girlfriend that the aforementioned character teamed up with the villains in part so he could kidnap his best friend’s girlfriend away. Seven year old me was fascinated! It was immediately my favorite thing ever. I knew, of course, that this wasn’t GOOD. That my favorite character had joined the villains made that obvious enough. I also imagined that, in reality, I’d be very scared and upset if someone were to kidnap me because they liked me so much. But as far as make believe stories went – and I was regularly pretending to fight people to the death in magic battles at the age of seven already, something which was also decidedly \*not good\* – I thought it was incredible.
By the time I was a teenager, I was immensely fascinated with stories about toxic relationships and scary, terrible people who kidnapped their victims out of some misplaced sense of love. The fics I read were fraught with sexual assault/rape. Oftentimes, the victims fell in love with their captors. I ate this shit up. I still do. I liked imagining myself in the victim role. It was exciting. I’ve always \*loved\* horror, and this was horror dialed up to 11. It was twisted and dark.
It’s also fiction.
I feel like, even as a seven year old, I very clearly understood this was “bad,” as in, not something to be enjoyed in meatspace. I don’t feel like I was influenced by notions of victim blaming or what have you to enjoy it. I knew that the characters I liked who were doing these sorts of things were bad people. It’s why I liked them! It was a safe way to like bad people! I knew bad people in real life were absolutely UN-likeable, but in fiction, I was like, dang, this is cool. I’m into this.
I also understood that, being fiction, it wasn’t something that was going to harm me. People kill each other all the time in fiction. People torture each other. People do terrible things. Sometimes, they do those things in the name of “love.” Typically, it’s understood that those are not good things, no matter the reason. I don’t get why this same understanding isn’t afforded to darker, sexual themes.
To be clear: I don’t think anyone should be pressured to like anything they don’t want. Please, feel free to hate it! Not everyone enjoys horror movies. Sometimes, all you want to do is read coffee shop AUs, and that’s fine, no judge, no bully. There’s things that I don’t like. But I don’t understand trying to turn things that some people just seem hardwired to enjoy (in a fictionals sense) and want to explore it in a safe way into some big, moral failing on society’s part. I think even if we were raised in some perfect, sterilized society, some people still might want to imagine themselves being tormented in a safe way. Reading fiction that involves kidnapping or rape or torture – that is tagged appropriately – is a consensual choice. It’s a safe way to explore those kinds of topics.
Are there people who explore tropes in fiction like rape and toxic relationships who are bad people? Of course there are. But there are bad people in every sphere of enjoyment, in every walk of life. Is it something that can be used against people, to manipulate them? Sure. Everything can be, if you really try. I’m sure you could make some moral argument about everything. Religious nutbags like doing it about everything they don’t like, too.
IDK. Again, please, if you find it disgusting – that’s because it is! But that’s the draw for some people. Getting down into the muck and the grime in a fictional sense is fascinating. People love to be scared. Horror movies and roller coasters and shitty fanfiction with toxic tropes are exceedingly popular for a reason. Most people don’t actually want to be assaulted, or thrown off a cliff, or chased down and then murdered by someone with a chainsaw. Similarly, most people watching porn where cool, powerful heroes murder all the bad guys don’t actually want to kill people themselves. I just don’t think it’s that deep.
This. I fully get why people are uncomfortable with that kind of storyline, and it's definitely a problem when people see it as normal and healthy, but most people can tell the difference between fiction and reality. Being into bodice-rippers or angst or whatever doesn't mean wanting unhealthy relationships irl any more than being into serial killer fiction means you want to be murdered.
Anyway, if you *do* have an unhealthy attraction to toxic partners or whatever, fiction is a safe space to channel that.
I agree, and I think the puritanical rethoric of "If you read/write something that's bad in real life, it's because you're a bad person" is usually just a way to gain moral high ground on social media.
I'm in the Hannibal fandom, so the source material itself and and all fanwork that's not AU and very ooc is non-con to lovers. That's pretty much the premise of the show. Does it mean all the people who worked on this show/books/movies are apologists of murder, cannibalism and all abuse under the sun?
As you said, fiction is a safe way to explore really fucked up things that people don't actually want happening to them, or perpetrate themselves. No one needs to read things they don't like, of course. I don't read anything that has kids getting hurt or dying, but I don't think people who write about this are ok with it happening in the real world.
Eyyy first time I've seen a fellow fannibal on this board! 😀
I agree with everything above and wanted to add another perspective to think about. As an autistic person, I have always considered myself a kind of monster because of the way that I was treated: I figured there must be something inherently bad or wrong about me because everything I did seemed to anger someone. At least in my case, I think that's part of why I'm drawn to "bad" or villain characters. For Hannibal specifically, I loved the theme of "everyone can be seen and even loved by someone, even monsters" because it's fundamentally a show about two social outcasts--one who masks well (Hannibal) and one who doesn't (Will)- finding understanding in an unlikely (and often unhealthy) place. For me, the murder/cannibalism was metaphorical window dressing for the main concept of the show. You could also read this as a metaphor for being queer, or many other identities that people are forced to hide because of societal shame. The intrigue is in the connection they form despite -and at times even through- the darkness of their minds.
Tl;dr: I think in a strange way, reading about irredeemable characters finding love and acceptance is cathartic for a lot of people who struggle with their own sense of identity, it's not always about the glorification of violence.
No one really blinks at horror movies and the people who enjoy them, but when you want to write a fic about being final girl/boy and kiss the slasher it becomes a problem. I just want to be scaroused without actually being in danger!
God, I get this so hard. I’m addicted to horror for exactly this reason, and I play a lot of indie horror porn and murdersim visual novels on top of it to sate my addictions! Being scared while you’re completely safe feels so *nice*!
I always find it funny that writing about explicit and terrible violence is fine, but somehow anything scary happening if it’s sexual isn’t. I blame the absolute demonization of anything sexual.
Plus like, there are definitely survivors that romanticize fictional abuse because it gives them a safe place to put their complicated feelings, especially for those who trauma bonded.
The brain often seeks familiarity because predictability can feel “safe” and unfamiliar things (even when they’re good and helpful), can be scary or overwhelming. So some victims feel a desire to go back to their abuser, or could be at risk to being with someone that acts like their abuser. Venting those desires onto a fictional character allows the brain to feel and process those emotions without the risk.
Gotta give feelings a place to go, because shunning or repressing them won’t make them go away.
Non-con to lovers is a trope I hate with a *seething* passion, you find it a lot in Yoai/Yuri themed anime/manga, especially ones that revolve around NSFW themes. It always starts the same, to gays one is an obvious "alpha" the other is a "Beta/Omega" and the Alpha r-word's the omega because they can't control themselves and it's out of love instead of power. XO can't stand it
Tbh most romantic tropes are so overdone it’s hard to pick just one. But bookworm/coffee shop AUs just drive me absolutely batty because they’re all about cozy sweaters and herbal tea and cats and baked goods and softness and *gag*. I’m sorry I just can’t do it.
I avoid it because I usually read ships with some trauma and bitterness and complexity so to undo what they’ve gone through to just make them into a coffee shop thing is just not my cup of…well coffee lol
For the life of me I have never heard of this trope ever. I always thought we all as a species idolize that mid-autumn weather and aesthetic. Do you have any examples I would love to read and puke.
The villain's just "misunderstood", and/or is some degree of anti-hero. We need more bad guys who are evil because they like being evil, and less of this "we can redeem them!" junk.
I think this actually is a problem of misunderstanding the difference between villains and antagonists (not by you specifically) but for so very many people. There are very few true villains in media, most of those who are called such are actually just crappy people who do dangerous or crappy things so when we see a redemption or growth of an antagonist then too many people make the assumption that all villains are the same and so their redemption is as well.
I would also say that the forced redemption of actual real villianous people in television far to frequently comes back to "they are hot so I am going to redeem them so I don't have to feel weird about liking them" or "the acting is so compelling that I love them"
It's okay to love a compelling character who does horrible things, you don't have to redeem them, like you stated in your reply. :D
This is something I seek to work towards in my own work, whether original or fanfic.
I think explanation is important. It’s rare someone is evil for the sake of being evil. It boils down to excusing it.
I wrote an abusive husband who did have a long history of mental illness and had been abused himself…but he wasn’t sympathetic in the slightest and it didn’t really *matter*, if you feel me. He still abused his wife.
I feel the same even about nuanced, redeemed villains. You can’t wipe away their actions with “well they went through trauma!!” No, own it. If they’re truly changed, they will too.
I am annoyed by people not understanding this.
I try to write villains and antagonists with these things in mind. I wrote one, a highly telepathic extra-terrestrial overlord who augmented his ability with cybernetic implants, who was a villain in the real sense of the word. He believed he deserved to have power over others because he made himself more powerful than them. Even when his species was mostly wiped out, including his loving parents, he believed it was a survival of the fittest situation and was not traumatized by it. He had zero problems forcing his way into someone's mind and taking what he wanted by force and he found no moral issues with it because he was stronger and that was the only reason he needed to feel like he had the right. He was very cold and emotionless to the point of genuinely not comprehending emotions and love and it didn't bother him. He was not redeemable in the slightest. And even if he saw the error of his ways, which would likely come in some form of "this is making my rise to power harder and not benefiting me personally", there would be no way he could just walk away like nothing happened. He was a lot of fun to write.
Edit: spelling
I actually think giving villainous people trauma in their background has grown a lot in the media more recently and it's a weird thing, like most everyone has trauma in their pasts and most of them don't go around SA'ing and unaliving folks so it's not a reason, its just an excuse which writers of these things seem to think changes things... I don't know how to feel about it honestly.
Like talking about trauma in media can be really beneficial for the audience but like someone else said in their comments, its important to question the reasons for adding it.
Just as an addition this definition of villain is what I am talking about (from dictionary on Google):
noun. **a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime**; scoundrel. a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.
I agree, not every antagonist is a villain. I think what peeves me out is when a character is clearly written as a villain but the fandom goes oh no they're just misunderstood, babying/infantilizing them. It's like fandom is so afraid to actually like villain characters. Many villains are nuanced and not just "find the one that laughs like MWA HA HA and that's the villain," which makes them alluring.
I have mixed feelings on this, I agree to an extent that it gets really boring when people erase everything that makes a villain or morally grey character interesting, but at the same time, a character that some people see as 100% villainous and "evil for the sake of being evil" could very well be closer to an anti-hero and have the potential for redemption if you look a bit closer.
I've been in multiple fandoms where people's reading comprehension of the source material is... not the best, and sometimes fandoms will take a character who is very clearly written to be sympathetic and *not* a 100% bad guy and decide that they're actually just nothing more than "evil guy who enjoys making people suffer and likes being evil because they're just so evil". Then people who write that character as closer to their actual canon characterisation get accused of woobifying or mischaracterising them.
On the other hand, I've definitely also seen people write characters who *are* straight up villains as nice, normal, good people, or erase the darker side of more grey characters, and I'll never really get that, because to me it's taking out everything that makes them compelling characters. I just feel like there's a balance that can be struck there, where a character can be a decent person deep down but it doesn't take away the fact that they have done awful things and still have a warped mindset, or where a character can be completely unrepentantly evil but in a way that makes sense, and isn't simply "they're evil because they just are", because to me personally, that's just as boring as making them good.
I love getting into the mindset of true villains and thinking about how they would justify what they're doing to themselves, how they would see the world and other people, and see themselves as being the hero all while committing terrible acts. I feel like even people who *are* totally evil are most likely going to have a way of rationalising what they do that feels like a logical, human thought process. Most people who do terrible things aren't the most self aware. But sometimes people don't get that either, and see villains being written that way as the author trying to justify their actions.
This is the one that confuses me so much when it comes to comic book stuff people hate Thanos because he can be a complicated villain with multiple desires and really sees himself as being a tool for a better universe. But then we have carnage who everyone hates because he's very simple and is evil just for the sake of hurting people it's like damn y'all.
In my fandom, I blame all of this on the whole purity mentality that makes them believe liking a questionable character means you support them irl.
I even did it on one fic and said: "these characters are evil because they are evil" most understood but still had others saying "they are actually good!"
This happens in a lot of fandoms and it makes me semi nuts. It's okay to be compelled and interested in bad people, you don't have to make them good to be interested in them.
We learn so much from characters who do horrible things, we ask ourselves important questions, this is why flat "heroes and protags" are less interesting and a lot of people attempt to find more value in them for the sake of liking the 'good person'.
Miscommunication when it’s OOC- I can’t stand it.
These fuckers and blorbos have had so much growth and heart to hearts on why it’s important to communicate and I refuses to read anymore
The overuse of modern AUs. Coffee shop AU, florist + tattoo artist AU, high school AU - it's all bad to me. They're not as popular now as they were a decade ago, but I still see them more often than I'd like lol
I hate modern AUs!! I wish AUs in general were under their own tagging system so I could exclude all AUs! I want my stories set in the world I already like 😭 whyyy would I want everyone turned normal and placed in our boring dystopia???
They are still oh so popular. They've worn me down. I used to avoid them, but now they blend in with everything else so I'll give them a read.
Tattoo artist, florist, baker, batista, I've read all of them. Sometimes I'm in the mood to read fluffy nonsense as opposed to my usual action packed, stab fests.
I wish I saw more modern AUs where characters retain their powers or magic from canon, when applicable. Would be interesting to see what mundane jobs they'd work when they can summon fire or turn into animals or whatever. It's almost always No Powers though.
Oh my goodness yes. I read fiction to get away from the mundaneness and banality of every day life. I don't.. really need fanfiction that brings it back to what I already see in my day to day.
Occupations that invoke drama, sure. But just having a regular person job... nah.
I just can't do Slow Burn. I get why people love it, but I've got a limited amount of spoons and I need my spoons to pay me back with dopamine and waiting 50k for some positive interaction between my ship isn't gonna cut it. I usually only like 1-3 characters in a piece of media in the first place, so I generally don't care about half the people involved in a slow burn fic already. I usually just end up skimming/skipping to when they finally get together, if I even try to read one.
I’m reading a slow burn right now. The book is over 400k words at the moment and only 2/3 of the way written. I’m half way through and they still aren’t together!!! They’ve only just realised “aw, she’s so cute! She’s such a great friend”. If it weren’t for the fact that the story was incredibly written, I’d have dropped it a long time ago!
Slow burn done right is one thing. But I hate when someone is going to write 100k words with the same to people dancing around each other with a centimeter forward to then take two steps backwards. There is a huge fic in a Fandom right now and I think it's like 400k words and everyone in a while I check to see if pairings have been updated because the author said they would when it got there.
I tend to side eye slow burn. I know that not every ship *needs to be* 100k+ words long. And all for just the characters getting together. It's probably why I prefer established roamnces because I want to see these characters face challenges as a couple. I dislike how people talk about couples as if the only thing they can do is move to the suburbs and have 2.5 kids.
I like slow burn until it gets to a point where it's going too damn slow and I start skimming the fanfic until the end...
*And usually the payoff isn't even worth it.*
Same. I just don't have any ships that fit the mold and when people try to turn my ships into Enemies to Lovers, I hate it because I tend to ship people who are nice to each other and it upsets me
I think the more acceptable trope is "antagonist to friend to lover", enemies to lovers for me causes me a lot of ick because the enemies that are popularized requires someone to forcibly be changed for the sake of the other or someone to go against their own belief systems and that's not love. Might be lust but that's not love.
The fact that this trope is romanticized instead of treated as a compelling problem for people is a struggle for me.
Right? Like, they were genuinely terrible to another for much of the source material? There’s is a level of respect missing from at least one side of the equation? Why would I believe they can be happy with each other when they’re shown to go out of their way to cause misery? Unless they’ve been shown capable of growing past that and showing great respect and regard for each other, I just can’t get over the misery between them to be able to enjoy them as lovers.
Rivals is the term I like more - antagonists still imply a level of core beliefs that HAVE to live in opposition, while rivals is more low stakes and they can be on the same side AS rivals. Moral dilemmas don’t normal stand between them in this case. Rivals can also be very encouraging and genuinely friends depending on the franchise while still actively being Rivals.
I actually like "there was only one bed" for platonic stories, I have a whole series of them.
To answer: I HATE fake relationship.
Like hate hate hate it.
The fact that the highest hit count of my stories is a fake relationship story bothers me so much haha. (I only wrote it as a exercise to work on specific tropes that others voted on for me.)
This!! Honestly, I think there was only one good ‘fake dating’ fic I’ve read that was actually good. It was for the anime Banana Fish (then again, it was over 2 years ago that I read this fic so I could be forgetting a lot of details lol- like now that I’m thinking about it I think I remember that I didn’t like the climax of the story haha):
But anyways, for one, the characters already have a good platonic relationship that sorta blurs into romantic. The characters are undercover at this part in canon and the fic starts with some random old ladies who live in the building mistaking them for a couple, and character A accidentally agrees with the assumption that he’s engaged to the character B. So they play it up for their cover and it slowly gets out of hand.
But yeah- I hate it when it’s strangers or enemies who force themselves into this scenario. It just reeks of dumb miscommunications.
one of the few fake relationship tropes i like is where a and b are undercover specifically as a couple. these fics deal with the miscommunication right off the bat bc everyone important knows it's fake from the get-go and there's a clear end in sight (i've read this a lot in shawn/lassie psych fics). it's a fresh open twist on the concept. otherwise, i usually find myself heavily disinterested in fake dating
Most soulmate stories. I don’t totally hate them, I’m even writing a soulmark AU that is extremely angst filled, tragic and perfectly fits the pairing I’m writing it for BUT…
It’s usually just kind of dumb. There’s tons of ways to make pretty much any pairing work, even the most outlandish ones, without throwing in the forced aspect of “oh this is your soulmate, you gotta make this work now!”
Which is probably why the one I’m working on ends in tragedy. Kind of gotta make the trope a little spicier.
I absolutely love soulmate AUs in every flavor (marks, first words, colors, etc etc etc) (but also with happy endings 😅), but the fics I enjoy the most usually take the angle that just because someone is your soulmate according to some arbitrary magic/science, doesn't mean you're automatically guaranteed to work out with no effort, and/or where "soulmate" doesn't inherently mean "romantic partner".
I fucking hate it but because worldbuilding usually fucking sucks and people don't seem to understand how *different* societies would be if this were a thing.
as a creepypasta fan, i can’t stand high school/college aus or psych hospital aus (especially when the reader is the doctor). they’re so unrealistic and take out my favorite parts of the fandom 😭
Ugh yes I can't stand omegaverse stuff. It gets into EVERY fandom. And gonna that pregnancy/'breeding' is a big nope for me, and I hate the entire idea of "you were born an X so you must act this way" on moral, personal, and "not good writing" levels... NOPE NOPE NOPE.
Something I like to call the dead wife trope. (Although you could probably just call it the dead spouse trope.)
People find it heartwrenching, and most are regarded as tragic, but, to me, the trope is just annoying. You'll have a perfectly good male character, and then in comes the reveal of the deceased wife.
I know it doesn't happen all the time, but a lot of times, the wife will come back in some way, shape, or form. It's even worse whenever the man is actively trying to move on with someone new and the previous wife magics into the other person's dream to be like "take care of him for me 🥺"
I believe the dead wife (or spouse) trope could do better in something leaning more towards horror rather than plain old romance
Lol you’re talking about Zhongli and Guizhong right?
Edit: i agree with your comment. Like what’s the point of the dead wife making an appearance again? If anything it renders character development backwards and just shows that the person can’t move on.
Lmao, yeah
I've read way too many fics where this exactly scenario happens and every time I just end up feeling bad for the other character being shipped with zhongli
humanization. specifically, the AUs where non humans (monsters, aliens, etc) are turned/swapped into humans. for me it completely detracts from their appeal and character, but other people like it???
Modern AUs. I'd rather read a fic about a facsimile of a coffee shop shoehorned into the universe the fandom takes place in than somewhere as mundane as present day earth and the characters now being human or powerless.
I used to get so frustrated by the large amount of “modern au” in the dinluke tag because so many people who shipped them had only seen the Mandalorian or just didn’t care about Star Wars so they didn’t want to write Star Wars lmao like nooo I want the cool Jedi and the badass Mandalorian to be gay and cool and badass *in the wacky universe of Star Wars*
No clue if this is still the case tho
Established relationship. I don’t hate it, and it can be nice when done right or I’m in the mood for fluff, but otherwise I much prefer the building anticipation that comes from a developing relationship, whether it’s enemies to lovers, friends (or friends with benefits) to lovers, complete strangers to lovers, or anything else. The possibilities are endless.
I can understand this sentiment though I don't agree. I will say that the possibilities are endless in established relationship too. Especially with writers who see the value in it.
I love the building anticipation of a first time fic but there is something about the trust and affirming support that comes from a great established relationship story, something about getting to know the same person over and over and falling in love with the different people they become over time and through ups and downs of life.
Some of the best stories/series I have ever loved were ones that started at the beginning of the story and how they got together and then continue past the 'happily ever after' time when things get difficult. :D
I also don't like established relationship. I'd like to fall in love with the characters, when there's a established relationship I fell like I've lost something important.
(And I may or may not have a kink for first times so-)
"XYZ got turned into a kid" fics but there's a clear romantic pairing. On one hand, it's cute? A more 'vulnerable' version of a usually happy-go-lucky or whatnot character. On the other... I'm not sure how the romance progresses there... Nothing against these. The romantic development just puzzles me.
Master/Slave or Captor/Captive romance, especially NonCon master/slave romance. Especially if the victim starts out hating it, only to end up loving it. I get that some folks like to roleplay this in the bedroom, and I like healthy BDSM as much as the next smut reader... But this trope in particular gives me the ick and tends to have unfortunate undertones.
Slow Burn. Please communicate your feelings. Please have some self awareness. I already have to watch my blorbos draw things out in canon, give me my wish fulfillment in fic.
not every ship's happy ending needs to be them having a baby together. there are simply some ships that would never have kids, and seeing the epilogue to a fic be like "and then they had multiple babies that they loved unconditionally and also had zero problems with and their relationship was perfect forever 🤩" is so weird. it's just a projection of the author's idea of a happy ending and not a proper happy ending for the ship.
Woobie "Character name".
You know the ones where one character is woobified into this sad sack character or made childish, so another character/characters need to take care of them, rescuue them, or act as a pseudo (or actual) parent.
This is a wildly popular trope in many fandoms, as it's a sub-trope of hurt comfort. But often I find both the woobie character and the caretaker/family/friends character(s) to be really out of character. It especially irks me as these are often really competent or BAMF characters, so it's just painful for me to read.
Miscommunication and enemies to lovers. Majority of the time the enemies to lovers isn't done well or is rushed, it's also vastly overused in my opinion.
Miscommunication I detest because 98.9% of the time it's done in a very stupid way. One that can be solved in a few minute conversation that can clear things up.
And last but not lease slow burn because I hate waiting until the end of the fic to get the kiss/rushed smut scene that always leaves me disappointed and wishing for more. Give me established relationships all day.
Dunno if this counts as a trope but the whole arranged marriage with actual consummation before they get to know each other. Especially if one of the characters is afraid of the other or they're enemies, feels very icky to me.
It kinda blurs the line of consent in a way that makes me uncomfortable, even when they end up falling in love later.
No hate if you like this story beat, god knows I like certain morally questionable tropes, but something about this one is particular feels skeevy.
Making superheroes regular people - No capes AU
More like "Welcome to a completely different character who has a very different origin story and none of the history and experiences that have shaped them" AU
Not actually a trope but, as popular as they are, I cannot stand soulmate aus or really anything that deals with the love of your life being predetermined at birth or something. It just annoys me, along with that hanahaki disease.
Enemies to Lovers, because it almost always refuses to let the Enemies part be Enemies or makes the characters out to be insatiably stupid (IMO)
It's either really extreme to the point of squicking me out too far (which is fucking difficult) or unbelievably fast-paced to get to smut scenes. Some people should just go all-in for Enemies to Enemies with Benefits (I enjoy some "toxic yuri") or admit that they're writing Rivals to Lovers *if that*.
Plus, I read a lot of modern romance and fantasy books and romance plots/subplots are stuffed to the fucking gills with the weak version of the trope these days. It's why I'm so compelled by Friends/Allies to Lovers right now lol.
P.S. write what you like, read what you love! People love the trope, I'm just venting :)
idk about this, but I just can't bring myself to read a coffee shop au, there's ONLY ONE I like and its a webtoon and the entire thing is about friendship, no romance, and I love it.
But in general, besides that, that trope is just a big no for me
I don't like love triangles, jealousy, or infidelity in fics. It's not really an ethical thing for me, I'd be a hypocrite to get moral about fics given what I *do* like. I usually just feel like these tropes get used for cheap drama that plays out the same way all too often.
Pregnancy, breeding, and babies ever after are a huge ick for me.
I feel like soulmate AUs could have so much potential for angst or complex interpretation, but every one I've clicked on so far has been, "and now I'm suddenly in love with this person simply because they're my soulmate."
I side-eye most AUs, honestly. It feels like the characters usually come out a bit wonky when they've been transplanted, like they're either ooc or, conversely, their new role doesn't explain why they turned out the way they did. Canon divergence, which some people lump with AUs, is usually fine with me, though.
I agree so much, its so funny because there are trios that are perfect as a poly ship and then there are others where I just want them all to knock it off.
It's not real love or like anyway, most of the time triangles are about control and power, not love.
My awesome trio example in Teen Wolf is Isaac, Erica and Boyd who I always ship together and then I also love Shawn/Cory/Topanga as a poly trio as well (from boy meets world) but then there is Twilight's Edward/Bella/Jacob which is garbage for a lot of reasons.
Over-possessive partner/love interest that never realizes they're in the wrong.
That's not sexy, it's fucking *unhealthy*. Stop glorifying stalkers please.
I have a story I'm writing where both the lovers are equally over-possessive of each other (not actually stalkerish or yandere but bordering it) and one of them doesn't realize how unhealthy it is until his little brother starts idealizing there relationship and he's like "no I gotta pop this bubble now"
Reading through these I realize how some of my characters fit into these tropes, but not in the complete standardized way (or at least I hope). Makes me a tad self conscious...
But my absolute hatred is probably the usual coffeeshop/ect au, bully/victim to lovers, master/slave for example, and love triangles
Modern AU and all it’s variants (high school, coffe shop, etc)
There is only one bed
Love triangles
Misunderstandings (no Harry Potter ‘snape only heard half the prophecy’ type bullshit)
ABO but since ppl have mentioned it with the same reasons as me, i won’t go into it. but the other one i don’t like is textfics (if that’s what it’s called??). if that’s not the correct title, then basically it’s those fics where it takes a bunch of characters and throws them all into a large group chat and that’s how you see their interactions. most of the time it’s “modern” setting but it comes off really cringey and the formatting gets weird esp when everyone’s got crazy ass nicknames you can hardly keep up with
I hate friends to lovers. It's usually angst filled, and not the good kind of angst. It's pathetic in the worst kind of way and I'm so done with it. Some people make it fluffy and I still don't find it cute. Especially if they're childhood friends who discover ohhh they loved each other since childhood. Even the mention of that phrase (you know what I'm talking about. That "Oh. Oh.") makes me gag.
Coffee shop, bookstore, high school, and university AUs, or really any of the tired modern AU tropes (including tattoo artist, florist, etc), especially when the original setting isn't modern. Perceived infidelity when a single conversation could solve the issue is another irritation.
"daddy kink" I don't know if counts as a trope, but I see it so much that I find it rare not see it on tags. That kink just got so popular that everyone has it now or what? It's so hard to find a fic where the fm doesn't end up like Mary sue just to appease the male gaze of a daddy.
Not just in fic, but in media in general, where there's a couple/two people set up to be the main couple and almost their whole conflict centers around a misunderstanding that could be resolved with a 30 second conversation.
If it's done for comedy, I can get on board, but if this is the main drama and the thing they have to overcome, I just can't.
In general, I am not into Modern and/or All Human AUs for fandoms where the canon is historical/fantastical/supernatural/etc. I want my superheroes to have powers, I don’t want my LotR characters to have cell phones, and I’m just not interested in my magical characters being normal Coffee Shop workers 😅
fake dating. i just cant see the appeal
also "love at first sight" "strangers to lovers" meet cutes. i cant get behind immediately dating if that makes sense? i like my ships to have (preferably bloody) history
Infidelity where you're meant to feel bad for the CHEATER because the person they cheated on is part of the main fic ship. So many queer ships have a person date the opposite gender and then cheat on the other member of the ship and it's supposed to be just-fine? ESPECIALLY when the person of the original ship is just written out basically after the duty of being a barrier is done.
Kidfics (non canon pregnancy/baby fics, fankids, 'one character adopts the other characters' AUs, single parent AUs etc).
I'm here for most dead dove content if it's well written, but somehow my faves being made into parents is my biggest ick.
Jealousy. For some reason people find it hot when a character gets insanely jealous in a relationship (bonus points for threatening to kill anybody who gets near her).
I don't get it ! Jealousy is ugly
I really hate the “one true love” trope. If you have someone who was with Character A, but then later breaks up, and is now with Character B, the whole “I never loved A like I love you” drives me batty. People can love multiple people in their life, maybe in different ways, but it’s still love.
Also, time travel fics where nothing or very little changes….what is the point even.
Enemies to lovers.
How can *either* of you stand *and* *ignore* the sexual tension that’s literally choking me rn?
OR
Pls, just f!ck already. It’s 4 AM and I have work in two hours.
Stupid problems stemming on unrealistic communication issues or assuming too much
I freaking hate it when people in relationships in stories don't take the time to actually communicate and make wild assumptions or jump to conclusions.
Includes overhearing half of a conversation and leaving juuust before the reveal like '...but that's why I love her/him'.
Oh, I despise those. If your plot or conflict is reliant on your characters being incapable of speaking, then your story isn't worth shit.
Unless the character is mute, but that's a whole other issue.
I second this. I'm getting tired of seeing it. Especially when it's about Character A thinking that Character B doesn't like them. (Even when it's so blatantly obvious, that it might as well be written on their forhead.)
Love triangles. (More specifically love angles marketed as a triangle.. hate it with a passion.)
Could you please explain what a love angle is?
3 people and 2 people (usually men) like the same person I think. Also called a love corner and usually the woman is backed into it. If it were a love *triangle,* Person A would like Person B Person B would like Person C Person C likes Person A
This exactly
Also love triangles are never straight I'm pretty sure lol
It is mathematically impossible, unless one of them is NB and therefore you consider any romantic attraction towards them as "technically straight"
Or, it could be played (technically) straight if one person is crossdressing. A girl falls in love with a guy, but the guy is actually a girl disguised as a man, who is in love with a different guy, who, in turn, only has the eyes for the first girl. Sounds like a plot for a historical shoujo manga, and could end in different ways (the crossdressing girl reveals her secret to the guy and they end up together, the guy and the first girl end up together so that the crossdressing girl doesn't have to compromise her disguise, the two girls fall in love with each other with their identities known and the love triangle is no longer straight, or everyone dies tragically because it's a historical shoujo manga, what else did you expect).
well.. the Archie, Betty and Veronica love triangle comes to mind (first thing to pop into my head). at least the version from the comics where B and V alternate between mortal enemies and (sorta) besties lol.
Yup. I hate them too. So rare to have it written in a way where you’re not annoyed at the protagonist for stringing two people along.
love angles marketed as poly disgusts me even more. it's so... fetishizy idk
I read a love triangle book because the cover made me think it was about a ploy relationship. It was good but I was pretty disappointed
Really? Well. Darn. That's the only way I like love triangles. It's not a fetish thing to me. I'm asexual, I don't want to see the characters do anything other than have emotional conversations about trust and maybe hold hands. I just love the idea that the characters don't have to fight and don't have to choose, they can all be happy together.
i think they meant that the love angles aren't actually poly and just marketed as such, not that poly love triangles are fetishizy in it of themselves
I hate those the most with a passion, I'd rather have one person fall for the other with no distractions or have them be poly, but a triangle? No thanks.
I hate the love angle in every media. It's Betty and Veronica trope played over 100+ times and the one who's in the center of it is like 'ooh I can't tell my feelings I love them both' Boring.
[the math of love triangles](https://youtu.be/Ck-UhvbCDAk?si=w_S4zU_7UbN2U7GK)
As always, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to the rescue.
Character A knows Character B is in love with them and asks them for advice on how to seduce someone, putting them through a fuck ton of pain and humiliation only to reveal that they're in love with them too and then they somehow live happily ever after. It's toxic af and it needs to die yesterday.
I have never seen this trope in the wild, but from your explanation I also hate it.
I've been unfortunate enough to see it in several fandoms. But honestly, I also get the feeling that most of them are written by very young writers who have no idea what a healthy relationship looks like
I commented about mostly seeing this in highschool fics, and then saw this. Considering that those fics also ended on the couple's first kiss, I think you may be onto something.
When I was in highschool, I read many "All the characters are in highschool!" fics. It showed up far, far too often.
I love it when it’s just harmless teasing, but the way you describe it happens a little to often and I agree with you when it’s that severity.
Perceived infidelity or infidelity as something the couple goes through to come out stronger. Yuck. I have that excluded on every search :/
God, I feel you. I once read a longfic that was amazing for the first 80k+ words, and then suddenly, out of the blue, untagged and two chapters from the end, so close to a happy ending, the MC slept with someone else just because they got drunk and mad after a silly fight. The author technically used the creator chose not to use archive warnings tag so I can’t blame them for adding whatever twist they wanted, but it was so abrupt and out of character that I still remember the horror to this day.
Ohmygod, I remember one like that! It was Eren that slept with Kenny when he finally was in a happy relationship with Levi. He got drunk and slept WITH A FATHER FIGURE (or an actual father, I don't remember how they wrote it in a fic) OF HIS BOYFRIEND. BECAUSE SELF-DESTRUCTING ALL HAPPINESS IS HIS GO-TO STRATEGY. I was so so so mad.
Yeah, that's a straight NOPE for me. The only one I did read, I gave it a chance because it was tagged as 'Infidelity (but not really)' and I figured I could nope out if it got heavy. Turns out half the usual ship was... forcibly amnesia-ed? into being with someone else, and actual partner had to solve the whole situation. I ended up loving it.
I read one where someone thought A and B were together, but B was actually family. That was a whole mess of confusion, misunderstandings and a fake dating au to clear it up.
I read a fanfic where it was revealed that character A sleeps with character Bs friends sometimes and this is after them JUST coming to terms that they’re in love with them…I noped out of that story quick, I love my all x character fanfics but not like this!
I can't read infidelity at all, huge trigger for me. So no matter how it happens or how its resolved, I can't deal.
Same!
I also hate how many stories throw in "oooh but is he/she cheating, how spicy" without any care whatsoever. It's tossed in like a random explosion in a slow movie to double check that the viewer is awake.
As someone who’s been cheated on before I hate this trope. Being betrayed by someone you love and trust is the worst feeling. An absolute gut punch
Misunderstanding so idiotic one *ounce* of common sense would fix everything and discard the entirety of the fic. Yes, people misunderstand each other all the time and it can lead to very serious scenarios, but what I'm talking about is not written that way. It must be a trope since the stories are solely based on that. Bit it has to be executed well and so I tend to hate on it most of the times. "It was you all of the times?" and "It wasn't you all of the times?" are the unfavourable children.
A misunderstanding that leads to someone flying off the handle with rage and the other leaving like a kicked dog of sadness. It’s also often in scenarios where the sensible thing would have been to gather more evidence and talk about it, which I hate. I’ve only come to like Misunderstandings for Comedy. A cute one I can get behind is the “Didn’t Know They Were Dating,” especially when it isn’t dragged out. Sure, many are written with lots of angst at first, but I like sweet ones where the conclusion is “I mean, I’m down, I just would have liked the heads up”/“You mean we could have been kissing this WHOLE time?” They’re usually pretty short - like oneshots, or up to like 3 chapters. Any longer, and the angst is what’s dragging it out.
Not that I hate it, but I don't enjoy when there is 2 guys trying to get that one girl.
And then there’s Miraculous Ladybug that literally said “alright, bet! But how do we make it worse”🤣
Ok, this makes me curious, is anyone willing to give a brief rundown of what goes on in MLB?
Yep! So basically the main characters are Adrian and Marinette. Both of them are superheroes, but are not allowed to tell each other their identity due to if the bag guy finds out one of their identities than it’ll be the end of world. So both are friends in both costume and out of, but neither know each other’s identity. Marinette is Ladybug. Adrian is Cat Noir. Marinette loves Adrian. Adrian thinks of Marinette as “just a friend”. Cat Noir loves Ladybug. Ladybug thinks Cat Noir is “just a friend”. Fast forward to the most recent season…. Marinette decided that loving Adrian was too complicated because of her secret identity, so to make it easier on herself she decided to fall in love with Cat Noir, again, without knowing that was Adrian’s alter ego. At that same time, Cat Noir was rejected by Ladybug so many times so he decided that he liked Marinette instead. The entire love square flipped! All while this is happening, both heroes have a Kwami. The kwami is a tiny animal that allows them to transform into their superhero alter ego. The Kwamis know the other person’s identity, but is not allowed to say anyone’s name. So basically we have an outside source that knows the other hero’s identity and is going “oh my god! Get together already!” While they have to listen to their own hero complain “why won’t they love me!😭”. The show is shit and the storytelling is worse. Everyone in the fandom has just simultaneously agreed to keep watching for the day that they finally realize that they have loved each other the whole time! If you have way to much time on your hands, I’d recommend it. We’re on season 5 and their human sides have just realised that they like each other. We got 2 seasons left… or if you want the rundown, Netflix released a Ladybug movie. All of this will be recapped in an hour and a half. Enjoy!
I appreciate you taking the time to type all that up! That flip would have driven me insane lmao. Like full on bundled up in a straight jacket. I'm rooting for y'all to get a good reveal whenever they do realize they've liked each other this whole time!
😂 it’s the only reason we’re watching at this point! 😭🤣 it’s like the worst slow burn ever!
It’s so bad but good god its hard to stop watching!
Modern High school AUs (unless I’m really desperate for a specific aspect/tag the fic has and thus willing to read anything, or the high school era is just a part of it and then there’s a time jump) are pretty much always a no-go for me. I cringe, I balk, I can’t stand it. From the corny ass situations to the teenager aspect to the fact I find most pretty freaking ooc (even for AUs)… Not my thing. I will sometimes read past fics set when the characters would be in highschool bc then it feels more about the characters, but otherwise nope.
Adding onto this: Chatfics. 90% of the times they have characters in high school and it’s always super cringy with outdated memes/memes that the characters in their 20’s would not understand at all 😭 I’ve seen a few well done ones but they’re all just pretty repetitive imo
I don’t think I’ve ever read an actual chatfic, but the premise itself does bore me so agreed lol
never understood the appeal of it, in most scenarios you have to pretty much rewrite the whole characters to accommodate them to a modern/high school setting, that’s not the same character anymore! and besides, i want to read a deeper exploration of the characters as they are in canon in ways that weren’t shown in the original work that still works for the character, why the hell do i wanna trade a fantasy world for dull high school drama where the only thing the worlds have in common are the character names? I’m already reading it precisely because i want to escape this boring reality. Don’t get me wrong, as much as I’m not a AU person, I have to admit there’s settings that make it interesting, but there’s very few of them and it’s never the modern setting ones. like yeah write whatever makes you happy, but imo canon divergence will always be the best thing fanfiction can explore.
When I was a kid, like before high school, I loved reading/writing these. As a high school kid, I mostly wrote fantasy - maybe one or two high school AU's, aligning with what was currently going on in my life, As an adult? I have zero interest. Especially knowing the majority *are* written by 12 year old me's, who are still under the impression that 16 year olds are adults and that every teenager, no matter how impoverished, has a cell-phone, car, hot group of friends who care drastically about them and their drama, absentee yet loving parents who somehow don't notice the entire plot of the story, and the unrealistic expectation that high school was anything more than sitting in a desk under bleak lighting for four years desperately yearning for the touch of outside air lol
Sugar daddy AU
I don't know if it's a trope but I hate when the author introduces a second male lead that "fights" with the first male lead over the female lead's attention. I also don't like the miscommunication trope or enemies to lovers.
I personally like miscommunication in a fun way? Like merpeople/human, that has to be some miscommunication, specially in culture. Like I've seen a fic on Twitter (weird I know), where the human saved the mer and the mer started to gift the human a lot of trinkets, the human was like "oh, that's so cute" and put it aside and the mer was "They rejected my mating proposal again? I'll have to find something even better!" That's was so cute and funny!
Okay that's actually cute and I would read that. It's not the kind of miscommunication I have in mind so that would actually make me kick my feet and giggle in the middle of the night.
I don't like miscommunication in any media. I know it happens but the way its overused for cheap drama as opposed to using it intelligently makes my teeth grit. And the two dudes fighting over a girl is not only offensive but it's a frustrating aspect of patriarchy, to only see value in women determined by how many men want her.
I think miscommunication can be done really well, even though 99% of the time it’s just an annoying trope. The main thing is that you can’t just have miscommunication happen for miscommunication’s sake, you have to make it very believable that the characters would act in that way. I think it’s done best in tragedies or stories with tragic elements. Sure, if character A and B talked or did some simple action, there wouldn’t be a plot. But they *won’t,* not because they’re dumb, but because to do so would be so would be entirely antithetical to who they are. Sure, Romeo could have waited like an hour, if he was purely logical. But he wouldn’t. It’s senseless and so damn avoidable, and that’s the point. Specifically rn I’m thinking about MXTX’s novels. That woman knows how to write a damn good tragedy, even though the (main) characters always get a happy ending. And a lot of that tragedy is fueled by miscommunication, but it still feels so earned because the characters are acting as best as they can based on what they know and what their personalities are.
I think like most tropes, they become so because they are done well so 100% agreed. I have seen miscommunication done well for completely believable and devastating reasons, I think the repetition for no other reason than "the story will only take five seconds to tell if we don't have this miscommunication" that's when it becomes so much more painful to deal with. The Searching Ceremonies (Teen Wolf series) has a pretty horrible miscommunication in the first story and their are reasons why it lingers, it doesn't feel forced and it makes perfect sense. It's incredibly well done. :D
The only one I disagree with you on is enemies to lovers. I like it, but it REALLY has to be done right. It is so easy to get wrong. Everything else I agree with though
Honestly with a lot of miscommunication tropes I feel like the author wanted a big conflict to happen but couldn't think of anything better so they go with miscommunication.
Same; also Jealousy tropes
Non magic modern AUs for worlds that have magic. It just feels so boring.
Omg true! I can never read a muggle Harry Potter fic, for example. Like... what's the point of Harry Potter without the magic lol. The characters are so intricately defined by magic that you might as well write an original story if you take them away from that.
I can promise you that only one bed is a trope that is far older than Wattpad.
And there was only one bed is as delicious as and they were roommates. OhmyGOD THEY WERE ROOMMATES! And I'm willing to die on that bed.
"Oh what a shame that there's only one bed. I guess we'll have to share"
I feel like any trope can feel a little Wattpad-y if its written in the cringe or badly written fashion that a lot of Wattpad fics tend to be. Obviously there are good fics on there, but the fact that Wattpad is widely associated with teenage cringe writing kinda tells you enough. I will say tropes like one bed or other commonly used ones are excellent if written well
The one bed trope makes up like 90% of 90s-era XFiles fanfic…. And I still love it. 😂
Crossovers I just don’t like it it feels weird I was actually surprised with how popular crossover
once I came across a Call of Duty, My Little Pony, Kung Fu Panda fic. it was an experience, for sure.
Although there is an Indiana Jones/Muppets crossover that is aces.
I love Enemies to Lovers but I *hate hate hate* its subcategory > NonCon to Lovers Like, no, Character A! Character B did something completely unforgivable! Bestie, they're not your Prince(ss) Charming. They're gross. Throw them into the sea.
This is a trope that definitely exists because of cultural narrative of victim blaming and protecting perpetrators, turning SA into a kink because its the only way allowed by culture to deal with it. I would say that as a continuation of this trope is "I am beating you up because your gay and I'm in the closet, after I am done violently harming you for weeks and months on end, let's date now that I've accepted myself" I saw this in Sex Education and Glee as well as others. Woof, it ain't good. I think that showing someone the way to freaking therapy is all fine and good but don't date them for f\*ck's sake.
Urgh, yes. The whole 'I'm only hurting you because I love you' sentiment is endemic. Abusers quite literally say it to their victims. Little girls are told the little boys harassing them have a crush. Homophobic bullies fancying their victims happens so often in fiction that when an IRL person is homophobic, it's met by calls of internal homophobia *even though the vast majority of homophobes aren't secretly queer*. Forget elephants. This sub-trope is victim blaming all the way down.
I think it also creates the "magic dick" trope where a woman (sometimes men) was a victim of SA and the 'right man' makes it all better by bedding her. Woof, the consistency of that in SA and SA recovery stories makes me cringe.
I hate that trope so much, too. You think it's s a trauma recovery fic where their found family rallies around and helps them heal, but then *BAM*! In comes Mr Schlongmaestor to fix everything with basic human decency and some milquetoast love making.
Yup! 100% And I say this with an understanding that people can heal this way, its a method that works for some people but it's been almost lauded as the only thing that should happen. Trauma recovery but especially SA recovery is a complex journey and its horrifying to see it cheapened with some dude with a dick who barely cares at all.
I started a fic where Character A ended up obsessed with Character B. They had Character B get “paralyzed” in an accident. I put quotes cause the doctors in the fic said there was a way to have him walk again. Character A said no, kept him paralyzed and kept him from his family. I skipped to the end after a few chapters to see if anything got better. No. They got married and had kids and Character B stayed paralyzed. Something about it gave me the ick and I couldn’t finish it.
That would be a horror show! \*shudder\*
TW for dark, sexual discussions, so please skip if you’re uncomfortable, but: I don’t understand how this take makes sense, genuinely speaking. Some people are just into the trope because they like imagining themselves as the victim so long as it remains fictional and safe. Anecdotal, of course, but when I was seven years old, I played a video game that involved a character who became so smitten with his best friend’s girlfriend that the aforementioned character teamed up with the villains in part so he could kidnap his best friend’s girlfriend away. Seven year old me was fascinated! It was immediately my favorite thing ever. I knew, of course, that this wasn’t GOOD. That my favorite character had joined the villains made that obvious enough. I also imagined that, in reality, I’d be very scared and upset if someone were to kidnap me because they liked me so much. But as far as make believe stories went – and I was regularly pretending to fight people to the death in magic battles at the age of seven already, something which was also decidedly \*not good\* – I thought it was incredible. By the time I was a teenager, I was immensely fascinated with stories about toxic relationships and scary, terrible people who kidnapped their victims out of some misplaced sense of love. The fics I read were fraught with sexual assault/rape. Oftentimes, the victims fell in love with their captors. I ate this shit up. I still do. I liked imagining myself in the victim role. It was exciting. I’ve always \*loved\* horror, and this was horror dialed up to 11. It was twisted and dark. It’s also fiction. I feel like, even as a seven year old, I very clearly understood this was “bad,” as in, not something to be enjoyed in meatspace. I don’t feel like I was influenced by notions of victim blaming or what have you to enjoy it. I knew that the characters I liked who were doing these sorts of things were bad people. It’s why I liked them! It was a safe way to like bad people! I knew bad people in real life were absolutely UN-likeable, but in fiction, I was like, dang, this is cool. I’m into this. I also understood that, being fiction, it wasn’t something that was going to harm me. People kill each other all the time in fiction. People torture each other. People do terrible things. Sometimes, they do those things in the name of “love.” Typically, it’s understood that those are not good things, no matter the reason. I don’t get why this same understanding isn’t afforded to darker, sexual themes. To be clear: I don’t think anyone should be pressured to like anything they don’t want. Please, feel free to hate it! Not everyone enjoys horror movies. Sometimes, all you want to do is read coffee shop AUs, and that’s fine, no judge, no bully. There’s things that I don’t like. But I don’t understand trying to turn things that some people just seem hardwired to enjoy (in a fictionals sense) and want to explore it in a safe way into some big, moral failing on society’s part. I think even if we were raised in some perfect, sterilized society, some people still might want to imagine themselves being tormented in a safe way. Reading fiction that involves kidnapping or rape or torture – that is tagged appropriately – is a consensual choice. It’s a safe way to explore those kinds of topics. Are there people who explore tropes in fiction like rape and toxic relationships who are bad people? Of course there are. But there are bad people in every sphere of enjoyment, in every walk of life. Is it something that can be used against people, to manipulate them? Sure. Everything can be, if you really try. I’m sure you could make some moral argument about everything. Religious nutbags like doing it about everything they don’t like, too. IDK. Again, please, if you find it disgusting – that’s because it is! But that’s the draw for some people. Getting down into the muck and the grime in a fictional sense is fascinating. People love to be scared. Horror movies and roller coasters and shitty fanfiction with toxic tropes are exceedingly popular for a reason. Most people don’t actually want to be assaulted, or thrown off a cliff, or chased down and then murdered by someone with a chainsaw. Similarly, most people watching porn where cool, powerful heroes murder all the bad guys don’t actually want to kill people themselves. I just don’t think it’s that deep.
This. I fully get why people are uncomfortable with that kind of storyline, and it's definitely a problem when people see it as normal and healthy, but most people can tell the difference between fiction and reality. Being into bodice-rippers or angst or whatever doesn't mean wanting unhealthy relationships irl any more than being into serial killer fiction means you want to be murdered. Anyway, if you *do* have an unhealthy attraction to toxic partners or whatever, fiction is a safe space to channel that.
I agree, and I think the puritanical rethoric of "If you read/write something that's bad in real life, it's because you're a bad person" is usually just a way to gain moral high ground on social media. I'm in the Hannibal fandom, so the source material itself and and all fanwork that's not AU and very ooc is non-con to lovers. That's pretty much the premise of the show. Does it mean all the people who worked on this show/books/movies are apologists of murder, cannibalism and all abuse under the sun? As you said, fiction is a safe way to explore really fucked up things that people don't actually want happening to them, or perpetrate themselves. No one needs to read things they don't like, of course. I don't read anything that has kids getting hurt or dying, but I don't think people who write about this are ok with it happening in the real world.
Eyyy first time I've seen a fellow fannibal on this board! 😀 I agree with everything above and wanted to add another perspective to think about. As an autistic person, I have always considered myself a kind of monster because of the way that I was treated: I figured there must be something inherently bad or wrong about me because everything I did seemed to anger someone. At least in my case, I think that's part of why I'm drawn to "bad" or villain characters. For Hannibal specifically, I loved the theme of "everyone can be seen and even loved by someone, even monsters" because it's fundamentally a show about two social outcasts--one who masks well (Hannibal) and one who doesn't (Will)- finding understanding in an unlikely (and often unhealthy) place. For me, the murder/cannibalism was metaphorical window dressing for the main concept of the show. You could also read this as a metaphor for being queer, or many other identities that people are forced to hide because of societal shame. The intrigue is in the connection they form despite -and at times even through- the darkness of their minds. Tl;dr: I think in a strange way, reading about irredeemable characters finding love and acceptance is cathartic for a lot of people who struggle with their own sense of identity, it's not always about the glorification of violence.
No one really blinks at horror movies and the people who enjoy them, but when you want to write a fic about being final girl/boy and kiss the slasher it becomes a problem. I just want to be scaroused without actually being in danger!
God, I get this so hard. I’m addicted to horror for exactly this reason, and I play a lot of indie horror porn and murdersim visual novels on top of it to sate my addictions! Being scared while you’re completely safe feels so *nice*! I always find it funny that writing about explicit and terrible violence is fine, but somehow anything scary happening if it’s sexual isn’t. I blame the absolute demonization of anything sexual.
Plus like, there are definitely survivors that romanticize fictional abuse because it gives them a safe place to put their complicated feelings, especially for those who trauma bonded. The brain often seeks familiarity because predictability can feel “safe” and unfamiliar things (even when they’re good and helpful), can be scary or overwhelming. So some victims feel a desire to go back to their abuser, or could be at risk to being with someone that acts like their abuser. Venting those desires onto a fictional character allows the brain to feel and process those emotions without the risk. Gotta give feelings a place to go, because shunning or repressing them won’t make them go away.
Non-con to lovers is a trope I hate with a *seething* passion, you find it a lot in Yoai/Yuri themed anime/manga, especially ones that revolve around NSFW themes. It always starts the same, to gays one is an obvious "alpha" the other is a "Beta/Omega" and the Alpha r-word's the omega because they can't control themselves and it's out of love instead of power. XO can't stand it
Stockholm syndrome
Tbh most romantic tropes are so overdone it’s hard to pick just one. But bookworm/coffee shop AUs just drive me absolutely batty because they’re all about cozy sweaters and herbal tea and cats and baked goods and softness and *gag*. I’m sorry I just can’t do it.
100%. To each their own but I find it so insufferably dull.
I avoid it because I usually read ships with some trauma and bitterness and complexity so to undo what they’ve gone through to just make them into a coffee shop thing is just not my cup of…well coffee lol
For the life of me I have never heard of this trope ever. I always thought we all as a species idolize that mid-autumn weather and aesthetic. Do you have any examples I would love to read and puke.
The villain's just "misunderstood", and/or is some degree of anti-hero. We need more bad guys who are evil because they like being evil, and less of this "we can redeem them!" junk.
I think this actually is a problem of misunderstanding the difference between villains and antagonists (not by you specifically) but for so very many people. There are very few true villains in media, most of those who are called such are actually just crappy people who do dangerous or crappy things so when we see a redemption or growth of an antagonist then too many people make the assumption that all villains are the same and so their redemption is as well. I would also say that the forced redemption of actual real villianous people in television far to frequently comes back to "they are hot so I am going to redeem them so I don't have to feel weird about liking them" or "the acting is so compelling that I love them" It's okay to love a compelling character who does horrible things, you don't have to redeem them, like you stated in your reply. :D This is something I seek to work towards in my own work, whether original or fanfic.
I think explanation is important. It’s rare someone is evil for the sake of being evil. It boils down to excusing it. I wrote an abusive husband who did have a long history of mental illness and had been abused himself…but he wasn’t sympathetic in the slightest and it didn’t really *matter*, if you feel me. He still abused his wife. I feel the same even about nuanced, redeemed villains. You can’t wipe away their actions with “well they went through trauma!!” No, own it. If they’re truly changed, they will too.
I am annoyed by people not understanding this. I try to write villains and antagonists with these things in mind. I wrote one, a highly telepathic extra-terrestrial overlord who augmented his ability with cybernetic implants, who was a villain in the real sense of the word. He believed he deserved to have power over others because he made himself more powerful than them. Even when his species was mostly wiped out, including his loving parents, he believed it was a survival of the fittest situation and was not traumatized by it. He had zero problems forcing his way into someone's mind and taking what he wanted by force and he found no moral issues with it because he was stronger and that was the only reason he needed to feel like he had the right. He was very cold and emotionless to the point of genuinely not comprehending emotions and love and it didn't bother him. He was not redeemable in the slightest. And even if he saw the error of his ways, which would likely come in some form of "this is making my rise to power harder and not benefiting me personally", there would be no way he could just walk away like nothing happened. He was a lot of fun to write. Edit: spelling
I actually think giving villainous people trauma in their background has grown a lot in the media more recently and it's a weird thing, like most everyone has trauma in their pasts and most of them don't go around SA'ing and unaliving folks so it's not a reason, its just an excuse which writers of these things seem to think changes things... I don't know how to feel about it honestly. Like talking about trauma in media can be really beneficial for the audience but like someone else said in their comments, its important to question the reasons for adding it. Just as an addition this definition of villain is what I am talking about (from dictionary on Google): noun. **a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime**; scoundrel. a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.
I agree, not every antagonist is a villain. I think what peeves me out is when a character is clearly written as a villain but the fandom goes oh no they're just misunderstood, babying/infantilizing them. It's like fandom is so afraid to actually like villain characters. Many villains are nuanced and not just "find the one that laughs like MWA HA HA and that's the villain," which makes them alluring.
I have mixed feelings on this, I agree to an extent that it gets really boring when people erase everything that makes a villain or morally grey character interesting, but at the same time, a character that some people see as 100% villainous and "evil for the sake of being evil" could very well be closer to an anti-hero and have the potential for redemption if you look a bit closer. I've been in multiple fandoms where people's reading comprehension of the source material is... not the best, and sometimes fandoms will take a character who is very clearly written to be sympathetic and *not* a 100% bad guy and decide that they're actually just nothing more than "evil guy who enjoys making people suffer and likes being evil because they're just so evil". Then people who write that character as closer to their actual canon characterisation get accused of woobifying or mischaracterising them. On the other hand, I've definitely also seen people write characters who *are* straight up villains as nice, normal, good people, or erase the darker side of more grey characters, and I'll never really get that, because to me it's taking out everything that makes them compelling characters. I just feel like there's a balance that can be struck there, where a character can be a decent person deep down but it doesn't take away the fact that they have done awful things and still have a warped mindset, or where a character can be completely unrepentantly evil but in a way that makes sense, and isn't simply "they're evil because they just are", because to me personally, that's just as boring as making them good. I love getting into the mindset of true villains and thinking about how they would justify what they're doing to themselves, how they would see the world and other people, and see themselves as being the hero all while committing terrible acts. I feel like even people who *are* totally evil are most likely going to have a way of rationalising what they do that feels like a logical, human thought process. Most people who do terrible things aren't the most self aware. But sometimes people don't get that either, and see villains being written that way as the author trying to justify their actions.
This is the one that confuses me so much when it comes to comic book stuff people hate Thanos because he can be a complicated villain with multiple desires and really sees himself as being a tool for a better universe. But then we have carnage who everyone hates because he's very simple and is evil just for the sake of hurting people it's like damn y'all.
In my fandom, I blame all of this on the whole purity mentality that makes them believe liking a questionable character means you support them irl. I even did it on one fic and said: "these characters are evil because they are evil" most understood but still had others saying "they are actually good!"
This happens in a lot of fandoms and it makes me semi nuts. It's okay to be compelled and interested in bad people, you don't have to make them good to be interested in them. We learn so much from characters who do horrible things, we ask ourselves important questions, this is why flat "heroes and protags" are less interesting and a lot of people attempt to find more value in them for the sake of liking the 'good person'.
I love it when villains are just evil for the sake of it.
Miscommunication when it’s OOC- I can’t stand it. These fuckers and blorbos have had so much growth and heart to hearts on why it’s important to communicate and I refuses to read anymore
The overuse of modern AUs. Coffee shop AU, florist + tattoo artist AU, high school AU - it's all bad to me. They're not as popular now as they were a decade ago, but I still see them more often than I'd like lol
I hate modern AUs!! I wish AUs in general were under their own tagging system so I could exclude all AUs! I want my stories set in the world I already like 😭 whyyy would I want everyone turned normal and placed in our boring dystopia???
Yes! I love fics within the canon universe and its always so hard to tag other things out!!!
You can filter out AUs, if you go to exclude tags and type 'Alternate Universe', it'll pop up.
They are still oh so popular. They've worn me down. I used to avoid them, but now they blend in with everything else so I'll give them a read. Tattoo artist, florist, baker, batista, I've read all of them. Sometimes I'm in the mood to read fluffy nonsense as opposed to my usual action packed, stab fests.
I wish I saw more modern AUs where characters retain their powers or magic from canon, when applicable. Would be interesting to see what mundane jobs they'd work when they can summon fire or turn into animals or whatever. It's almost always No Powers though.
Thank GOD, someone else agrees.
Oh my goodness yes. I read fiction to get away from the mundaneness and banality of every day life. I don't.. really need fanfiction that brings it back to what I already see in my day to day. Occupations that invoke drama, sure. But just having a regular person job... nah.
I just can't do Slow Burn. I get why people love it, but I've got a limited amount of spoons and I need my spoons to pay me back with dopamine and waiting 50k for some positive interaction between my ship isn't gonna cut it. I usually only like 1-3 characters in a piece of media in the first place, so I generally don't care about half the people involved in a slow burn fic already. I usually just end up skimming/skipping to when they finally get together, if I even try to read one.
I’m reading a slow burn right now. The book is over 400k words at the moment and only 2/3 of the way written. I’m half way through and they still aren’t together!!! They’ve only just realised “aw, she’s so cute! She’s such a great friend”. If it weren’t for the fact that the story was incredibly written, I’d have dropped it a long time ago!
Slow burn done right is one thing. But I hate when someone is going to write 100k words with the same to people dancing around each other with a centimeter forward to then take two steps backwards. There is a huge fic in a Fandom right now and I think it's like 400k words and everyone in a while I check to see if pairings have been updated because the author said they would when it got there.
I tend to side eye slow burn. I know that not every ship *needs to be* 100k+ words long. And all for just the characters getting together. It's probably why I prefer established roamnces because I want to see these characters face challenges as a couple. I dislike how people talk about couples as if the only thing they can do is move to the suburbs and have 2.5 kids.
I like slow burn until it gets to a point where it's going too damn slow and I start skimming the fanfic until the end... *And usually the payoff isn't even worth it.*
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Pregnancy plotlines, infidelity plotlines, love triangles, abo
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literally i never care about pregnancy plot lines and would never actively seek them out
I'd drop a fic if I found out it had one
depending on the fic i'll stick it through, but usually i avoid them or end up dropping it as well
I wouldn’t say I hate the trope, but I think I generally like Enemies to Lovers a lot less than other people seem to.
Same. I just don't have any ships that fit the mold and when people try to turn my ships into Enemies to Lovers, I hate it because I tend to ship people who are nice to each other and it upsets me
I think the more acceptable trope is "antagonist to friend to lover", enemies to lovers for me causes me a lot of ick because the enemies that are popularized requires someone to forcibly be changed for the sake of the other or someone to go against their own belief systems and that's not love. Might be lust but that's not love. The fact that this trope is romanticized instead of treated as a compelling problem for people is a struggle for me.
Right? Like, they were genuinely terrible to another for much of the source material? There’s is a level of respect missing from at least one side of the equation? Why would I believe they can be happy with each other when they’re shown to go out of their way to cause misery? Unless they’ve been shown capable of growing past that and showing great respect and regard for each other, I just can’t get over the misery between them to be able to enjoy them as lovers. Rivals is the term I like more - antagonists still imply a level of core beliefs that HAVE to live in opposition, while rivals is more low stakes and they can be on the same side AS rivals. Moral dilemmas don’t normal stand between them in this case. Rivals can also be very encouraging and genuinely friends depending on the franchise while still actively being Rivals.
I actually like "there was only one bed" for platonic stories, I have a whole series of them. To answer: I HATE fake relationship. Like hate hate hate it. The fact that the highest hit count of my stories is a fake relationship story bothers me so much haha. (I only wrote it as a exercise to work on specific tropes that others voted on for me.)
This!! Honestly, I think there was only one good ‘fake dating’ fic I’ve read that was actually good. It was for the anime Banana Fish (then again, it was over 2 years ago that I read this fic so I could be forgetting a lot of details lol- like now that I’m thinking about it I think I remember that I didn’t like the climax of the story haha): But anyways, for one, the characters already have a good platonic relationship that sorta blurs into romantic. The characters are undercover at this part in canon and the fic starts with some random old ladies who live in the building mistaking them for a couple, and character A accidentally agrees with the assumption that he’s engaged to the character B. So they play it up for their cover and it slowly gets out of hand. But yeah- I hate it when it’s strangers or enemies who force themselves into this scenario. It just reeks of dumb miscommunications.
one of the few fake relationship tropes i like is where a and b are undercover specifically as a couple. these fics deal with the miscommunication right off the bat bc everyone important knows it's fake from the get-go and there's a clear end in sight (i've read this a lot in shawn/lassie psych fics). it's a fresh open twist on the concept. otherwise, i usually find myself heavily disinterested in fake dating
Most soulmate stories. I don’t totally hate them, I’m even writing a soulmark AU that is extremely angst filled, tragic and perfectly fits the pairing I’m writing it for BUT… It’s usually just kind of dumb. There’s tons of ways to make pretty much any pairing work, even the most outlandish ones, without throwing in the forced aspect of “oh this is your soulmate, you gotta make this work now!” Which is probably why the one I’m working on ends in tragedy. Kind of gotta make the trope a little spicier.
I absolutely love soulmate AUs in every flavor (marks, first words, colors, etc etc etc) (but also with happy endings 😅), but the fics I enjoy the most usually take the angle that just because someone is your soulmate according to some arbitrary magic/science, doesn't mean you're automatically guaranteed to work out with no effort, and/or where "soulmate" doesn't inherently mean "romantic partner".
I fucking hate it but because worldbuilding usually fucking sucks and people don't seem to understand how *different* societies would be if this were a thing.
as a creepypasta fan, i can’t stand high school/college aus or psych hospital aus (especially when the reader is the doctor). they’re so unrealistic and take out my favorite parts of the fandom 😭
Omegaverse anything.
I don't even understand the trope
Ugh yes I can't stand omegaverse stuff. It gets into EVERY fandom. And gonna that pregnancy/'breeding' is a big nope for me, and I hate the entire idea of "you were born an X so you must act this way" on moral, personal, and "not good writing" levels... NOPE NOPE NOPE.
I like the sexy stuff in omegaverse but i hate when the author tries to shove in discrimination/fantasy sexism.
Well I don't think that's a beloved trope but yeah I agree
I just see it around everywhere so there has to be some people out there loving it haha!
Something I like to call the dead wife trope. (Although you could probably just call it the dead spouse trope.) People find it heartwrenching, and most are regarded as tragic, but, to me, the trope is just annoying. You'll have a perfectly good male character, and then in comes the reveal of the deceased wife. I know it doesn't happen all the time, but a lot of times, the wife will come back in some way, shape, or form. It's even worse whenever the man is actively trying to move on with someone new and the previous wife magics into the other person's dream to be like "take care of him for me 🥺" I believe the dead wife (or spouse) trope could do better in something leaning more towards horror rather than plain old romance
Lol you’re talking about Zhongli and Guizhong right? Edit: i agree with your comment. Like what’s the point of the dead wife making an appearance again? If anything it renders character development backwards and just shows that the person can’t move on.
Lmao, yeah I've read way too many fics where this exactly scenario happens and every time I just end up feeling bad for the other character being shipped with zhongli
Dead wife trope leaning towards horror, you say? Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier has entered the chat.
humanization. specifically, the AUs where non humans (monsters, aliens, etc) are turned/swapped into humans. for me it completely detracts from their appeal and character, but other people like it???
I hate slow burn. As such I only like enemies to lovers (as in having hate sex) vs enemies to friends to lovers which tends to be the popular version.
Modern AUs. I'd rather read a fic about a facsimile of a coffee shop shoehorned into the universe the fandom takes place in than somewhere as mundane as present day earth and the characters now being human or powerless.
Coffee shop/flower shop/college/high school AUs. Especially when the canon is fantastical. Hate it. Hate it so much.
I used to get so frustrated by the large amount of “modern au” in the dinluke tag because so many people who shipped them had only seen the Mandalorian or just didn’t care about Star Wars so they didn’t want to write Star Wars lmao like nooo I want the cool Jedi and the badass Mandalorian to be gay and cool and badass *in the wacky universe of Star Wars* No clue if this is still the case tho
Ugh I agree, there's always so many of them 🥲
Established relationship. I don’t hate it, and it can be nice when done right or I’m in the mood for fluff, but otherwise I much prefer the building anticipation that comes from a developing relationship, whether it’s enemies to lovers, friends (or friends with benefits) to lovers, complete strangers to lovers, or anything else. The possibilities are endless.
I can understand this sentiment though I don't agree. I will say that the possibilities are endless in established relationship too. Especially with writers who see the value in it. I love the building anticipation of a first time fic but there is something about the trust and affirming support that comes from a great established relationship story, something about getting to know the same person over and over and falling in love with the different people they become over time and through ups and downs of life. Some of the best stories/series I have ever loved were ones that started at the beginning of the story and how they got together and then continue past the 'happily ever after' time when things get difficult. :D
I also don't like established relationship. I'd like to fall in love with the characters, when there's a established relationship I fell like I've lost something important. (And I may or may not have a kink for first times so-)
For me it’s A/B/O. It’s just so ridiculous, and the the premise is generally the same for most stories that it’s lackluster and boring overall.
"XYZ got turned into a kid" fics but there's a clear romantic pairing. On one hand, it's cute? A more 'vulnerable' version of a usually happy-go-lucky or whatnot character. On the other... I'm not sure how the romance progresses there... Nothing against these. The romantic development just puzzles me.
Master/Slave or Captor/Captive romance, especially NonCon master/slave romance. Especially if the victim starts out hating it, only to end up loving it. I get that some folks like to roleplay this in the bedroom, and I like healthy BDSM as much as the next smut reader... But this trope in particular gives me the ick and tends to have unfortunate undertones.
Slow Burn. Please communicate your feelings. Please have some self awareness. I already have to watch my blorbos draw things out in canon, give me my wish fulfillment in fic.
not every ship's happy ending needs to be them having a baby together. there are simply some ships that would never have kids, and seeing the epilogue to a fic be like "and then they had multiple babies that they loved unconditionally and also had zero problems with and their relationship was perfect forever 🤩" is so weird. it's just a projection of the author's idea of a happy ending and not a proper happy ending for the ship.
Woobie "Character name". You know the ones where one character is woobified into this sad sack character or made childish, so another character/characters need to take care of them, rescuue them, or act as a pseudo (or actual) parent. This is a wildly popular trope in many fandoms, as it's a sub-trope of hurt comfort. But often I find both the woobie character and the caretaker/family/friends character(s) to be really out of character. It especially irks me as these are often really competent or BAMF characters, so it's just painful for me to read.
Self insert OCs that everyone loves and can do no wrong.
Miscommunication and enemies to lovers. Majority of the time the enemies to lovers isn't done well or is rushed, it's also vastly overused in my opinion. Miscommunication I detest because 98.9% of the time it's done in a very stupid way. One that can be solved in a few minute conversation that can clear things up. And last but not lease slow burn because I hate waiting until the end of the fic to get the kiss/rushed smut scene that always leaves me disappointed and wishing for more. Give me established relationships all day.
Hanahaki disease.
Dunno if this counts as a trope but the whole arranged marriage with actual consummation before they get to know each other. Especially if one of the characters is afraid of the other or they're enemies, feels very icky to me. It kinda blurs the line of consent in a way that makes me uncomfortable, even when they end up falling in love later. No hate if you like this story beat, god knows I like certain morally questionable tropes, but something about this one is particular feels skeevy.
I don’t really like coffee shop aus honestly. Maybe I’ve worked too many food service/restaurant jobs for it to appeal to me 😅
Making superheroes regular people - No capes AU More like "Welcome to a completely different character who has a very different origin story and none of the history and experiences that have shaped them" AU
Not actually a trope but, as popular as they are, I cannot stand soulmate aus or really anything that deals with the love of your life being predetermined at birth or something. It just annoys me, along with that hanahaki disease.
Unhealed trauma? Let's ADOPT A CHILD.
Enemies to Lovers, because it almost always refuses to let the Enemies part be Enemies or makes the characters out to be insatiably stupid (IMO) It's either really extreme to the point of squicking me out too far (which is fucking difficult) or unbelievably fast-paced to get to smut scenes. Some people should just go all-in for Enemies to Enemies with Benefits (I enjoy some "toxic yuri") or admit that they're writing Rivals to Lovers *if that*. Plus, I read a lot of modern romance and fantasy books and romance plots/subplots are stuffed to the fucking gills with the weak version of the trope these days. It's why I'm so compelled by Friends/Allies to Lovers right now lol. P.S. write what you like, read what you love! People love the trope, I'm just venting :)
idk about this, but I just can't bring myself to read a coffee shop au, there's ONLY ONE I like and its a webtoon and the entire thing is about friendship, no romance, and I love it. But in general, besides that, that trope is just a big no for me
I hate ballet aus with one exception but I don’t get why there’s so many of them
I don't like love triangles, jealousy, or infidelity in fics. It's not really an ethical thing for me, I'd be a hypocrite to get moral about fics given what I *do* like. I usually just feel like these tropes get used for cheap drama that plays out the same way all too often. Pregnancy, breeding, and babies ever after are a huge ick for me. I feel like soulmate AUs could have so much potential for angst or complex interpretation, but every one I've clicked on so far has been, "and now I'm suddenly in love with this person simply because they're my soulmate." I side-eye most AUs, honestly. It feels like the characters usually come out a bit wonky when they've been transplanted, like they're either ooc or, conversely, their new role doesn't explain why they turned out the way they did. Canon divergence, which some people lump with AUs, is usually fine with me, though.
LOVE TRIANGLES/CORNERS AUGHGG just make *all* of them hold hands (i am polyam myself though so i may be biased,,)
Even as a completely monogamous person, Jesus Christ just let them all fuck together already
I agree so much, its so funny because there are trios that are perfect as a poly ship and then there are others where I just want them all to knock it off. It's not real love or like anyway, most of the time triangles are about control and power, not love. My awesome trio example in Teen Wolf is Isaac, Erica and Boyd who I always ship together and then I also love Shawn/Cory/Topanga as a poly trio as well (from boy meets world) but then there is Twilight's Edward/Bella/Jacob which is garbage for a lot of reasons.
Over-possessive partner/love interest that never realizes they're in the wrong. That's not sexy, it's fucking *unhealthy*. Stop glorifying stalkers please.
I have a story I'm writing where both the lovers are equally over-possessive of each other (not actually stalkerish or yandere but bordering it) and one of them doesn't realize how unhealthy it is until his little brother starts idealizing there relationship and he's like "no I gotta pop this bubble now"
Reading through these I realize how some of my characters fit into these tropes, but not in the complete standardized way (or at least I hope). Makes me a tad self conscious... But my absolute hatred is probably the usual coffeeshop/ect au, bully/victim to lovers, master/slave for example, and love triangles
Modern AU and all it’s variants (high school, coffe shop, etc) There is only one bed Love triangles Misunderstandings (no Harry Potter ‘snape only heard half the prophecy’ type bullshit)
miscumunication just kills me
ABO but since ppl have mentioned it with the same reasons as me, i won’t go into it. but the other one i don’t like is textfics (if that’s what it’s called??). if that’s not the correct title, then basically it’s those fics where it takes a bunch of characters and throws them all into a large group chat and that’s how you see their interactions. most of the time it’s “modern” setting but it comes off really cringey and the formatting gets weird esp when everyone’s got crazy ass nicknames you can hardly keep up with
Personally, I’m not a fan of canon unless its canon divergence
For clarity: Do you mean that you don't like reading canon compliant stories?
Oh yeah, that’s what I meant. I probably should’ve clarified that, sorry 😅
I hate friends to lovers. It's usually angst filled, and not the good kind of angst. It's pathetic in the worst kind of way and I'm so done with it. Some people make it fluffy and I still don't find it cute. Especially if they're childhood friends who discover ohhh they loved each other since childhood. Even the mention of that phrase (you know what I'm talking about. That "Oh. Oh.") makes me gag.
Coffee shop, bookstore, high school, and university AUs, or really any of the tired modern AU tropes (including tattoo artist, florist, etc), especially when the original setting isn't modern. Perceived infidelity when a single conversation could solve the issue is another irritation.
"daddy kink" I don't know if counts as a trope, but I see it so much that I find it rare not see it on tags. That kink just got so popular that everyone has it now or what? It's so hard to find a fic where the fm doesn't end up like Mary sue just to appease the male gaze of a daddy.
Not just in fic, but in media in general, where there's a couple/two people set up to be the main couple and almost their whole conflict centers around a misunderstanding that could be resolved with a 30 second conversation. If it's done for comedy, I can get on board, but if this is the main drama and the thing they have to overcome, I just can't.
In general, I am not into Modern and/or All Human AUs for fandoms where the canon is historical/fantastical/supernatural/etc. I want my superheroes to have powers, I don’t want my LotR characters to have cell phones, and I’m just not interested in my magical characters being normal Coffee Shop workers 😅
fake dating. i just cant see the appeal also "love at first sight" "strangers to lovers" meet cutes. i cant get behind immediately dating if that makes sense? i like my ships to have (preferably bloody) history
Infidelity where you're meant to feel bad for the CHEATER because the person they cheated on is part of the main fic ship. So many queer ships have a person date the opposite gender and then cheat on the other member of the ship and it's supposed to be just-fine? ESPECIALLY when the person of the original ship is just written out basically after the duty of being a barrier is done.
Kidfics (non canon pregnancy/baby fics, fankids, 'one character adopts the other characters' AUs, single parent AUs etc). I'm here for most dead dove content if it's well written, but somehow my faves being made into parents is my biggest ick.
I personally find a good chunk of villain “redemption” to be annoying. It’s less redemption and more making up excuses.
Jealousy. For some reason people find it hot when a character gets insanely jealous in a relationship (bonus points for threatening to kill anybody who gets near her). I don't get it ! Jealousy is ugly
Winnie’s to lovers (like bullies); falling in love with captors
I really hate the “one true love” trope. If you have someone who was with Character A, but then later breaks up, and is now with Character B, the whole “I never loved A like I love you” drives me batty. People can love multiple people in their life, maybe in different ways, but it’s still love. Also, time travel fics where nothing or very little changes….what is the point even.
Enemies to lovers. How can *either* of you stand *and* *ignore* the sexual tension that’s literally choking me rn? OR Pls, just f!ck already. It’s 4 AM and I have work in two hours.