Running the Asylum and Tropes Are Tools
This is not inherently a bad thing. The alternative, hiring people who are not fans, also has its issues, as you risk someone unfamiliar or even contemptuous of the source material completely missing what makes the genre good or expanding the mythology only the way a fan could. Don Rosa, for example, produced brilliant fanboy Continuity Porn based on the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics of Carl Barks. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman produced critically-acclaimed works by embracing the absurdity of the comic book superhero mythology; of Moore's best-known works, only V for Vendetta isn't any kind of adaptation of a previous franchise or character.These are signs of some of the problems that can result:
- Abuse of Armed with Canon.
- New characters who are obvious Author Avatars or ascended Original Characters, especially when they are blatantly overpowered by in-universe standards (especially when the source of their abilities breaks established story logic, or they have New Powers as the Plot Demands), have an improbably good fight record, or rapidly and uncharacteristically earn the trust and loyalty of everyone they meet.
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Character Derailment, especially when it involves whitewashing the actions of villains or demonizing flawed heroes or villains who aren't particularly evil. - Continuity Porn for even the most minor things. Writers will revisit old stories, instilling far more self-indulgent detail into the retellings than ever appeared in the original.
- Continuity Snarl when it wasn't part of the story before, and further entanglement of existing snarls.
- Darker and Edgier (and all its variants) on shows, even when it either doesn't fit or is already dark, or is done in an immature and puerile way.
- Die for Our Ship incorporated into canon.
- Dropping bridges on characters they don't like, and sometimes making up stuff about the characters to excuse why they did it.
- Fan Myopia dictates most of their choices.
- Flanderization happens to random canonical details that grow out of the original setting's proportions—whether it's compatible with the rest of the old Canon or not.
- Lighter and Softer
- Sneaking fanon into official sources.
- Fanservice increases exponentially to the point of the audience saying "No more", is done in an exceptionally creepy way, or flies in the face of established characterization.
- Moral Event Horizons and other irredeemably heinous acts being Easily Forgiven, especially by characters who would have every reason in the world to not forgive them, or because of retcons or justifications due to external factors that were made up on the spot.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten shoved on characters that were not canonically treated this way before.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands, particularly when they either don't make any sense, or somehow never manifested at any point prior to this even though the character has been through similar situations before, especially when their proficiency with them indicates that they are not new to the character in question.
- When they aren't Pandering to the Base, they're pandering to themselves.
- Popularity Power, as well as Power Creep, Power Seep.
- Loads and loads of retcons.
- Writers treat the characters they don't like as The Scrappy, even if those characters aren't thought that way by the fanbase.
- Writers make the characters they like into the Spotlight-Stealing Squad, even if those characters aren't as liked with the fanbase.
- Writer on Board to a degree far greater than happened to the show before.
Note that a lot of these tend to show up in fanfiction before this trope makes them Canon, hence the axiomnote at the top of the page.
On the plus side, Running the Asylum can be a cure for stagnation of a series, with the fans bringing in a fresh perspective.
