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Tropers / Master N

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Howdy!

Just call me Master N. I am a Troper and aspiring developer who wants to give this site a thank you for introducing me to so many great works of art.

    Some of my Favorite Tropes 
  • Action Girl: While I do not mind male protagonists, I also enjoy women kicking ass. As long as both are written well and not a Mary Sue or Marty Stu, that is.
    • Dark Action Girl: And villainesses in general. I love them, especially the ones that are pure evil badasses.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: It just looks pretty, what can I say?
  • Boss Battle: Bosses are my favorite part of a video game (assuming it has them). They serve as a nice test of the skill of the player, and it is also fun to create designs for them and see designs for them.
  • Complete Monster and Hate Sink: Hence why I participate in the cleanup threads. Villains fascinate me, especially the worst of the worst. This goes double if, as mentioned above, the CM is female. There has also been a trend of encouraging sympathetic villains and deriding unsympathetic ones as cliche, so I applaud any writer who ignores this (as long as the CM is well written, of course). That being said, there are other CMs that I find woefully generic and boring.
  • Cute Is Evil: I love villains who invert traditional expectations of what a villain is supposed to look like, and cute villains are the best at doing this.
  • Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good: I love to see inversions of traditional hero and villain designs. Batman and The Joker are a classic, famous, and still-enduring example of this.
  • Deconstruction and subtropes: Taking a well-known trope/cliche and examining the implications can bring a fresh new perspective to an old story. At least, when done well, with an understanding of what you are taking apart and replacing it with something even more interesting.
  • The Dog Was the Mastermind: When done well, ie the character is a surprise but someone who you could legitimately have suspected if you were as paranoid as I am- I mean, if you pay enough attention, then it can be a great twist.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: I love it when, after characters go through really tough times, they manage to achieve a good ending.
  • Eldritch Abomination and subtropes: These can be really interesting and scary antagonists, and it is nice to see each writer’s unique take on them, from the Trope Codifier Cthulhu Mythos to more modern takes.
  • Engineered Public Confession: I love seeing a Villain with Good Publicity be publicly exposed as a scumbag, and the resulting reactions from the people who praised them realizing the truth.
  • Explorer Horror: Ever since I was introduced to the genre by Ib, I have loved this little sub-genre of games for its unique approach to horror and combining the cute with the macabre.
  • Fanservice: When done well (ie, the show does not take itself too seriously and/or the serious parts are clearly distinct from the fan-service parts), it appeals to my inner Covert Pervert. I also prefer Fanservice series that avert Nipple and Dimed, being unafraid to show nipples in their full glory. Examples of this include Queen's Blade, High School DXD, and especially Kill la Kill for the balancing of goofiness and seriousness. However, it can be done badly- see Fetish Retardant in the pet peeve section below.
  • Lovecraft Lite and Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Going on from the Eldritch Abomination section, fighting and beating down these seemingly-invincible creatures can be a joy as well, especially in video games where the abominations can serve as intimidating boss fights.
  • Magnificent Bastard: For obvious reasons, these characters are some of the best villains ever made. Though I have a particular soft spot for Anti-Hero and protagonist variants, myself.
  • Mental World: Naturally, a world made in someone’s mind is a prime chance to get creative and go all out creating a world that does not conform to the laws of nature or physics, and symbolism is one of my favorite tools in storytelling.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: Not sure what it is about it, but it is really pleasing to the ears.
  • Scenery Porn: Environments that look pretty are always a joy.
  • Science Hero: As a counterpoint to Science Is Bad, the science hero promotes the awesomeness of science.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: The contrast between the villain’s good public image and the wicked things the villain does behind doors can be fascinating, and it makes for a great underdog story when the Hero with Bad Publicity must face off against the villain while trying to get the Gullible Lemmings to see the truth.
  • World of Action Girls: Again, I love women being awesome.

    Some of my personal Pet Peeve Tropes 
  • All Just a Prank/Friendly Scheming: Where the seemingly serious plot of the episode of movie turns out to have been all a prank or surprise party or whatever. I despise this for two reasons: 1) It's an Anti-Climax and Writer Cop Out that completely robs the story of any real meaning, since it was all fake anyway, and 2) it often presents the warped moral that traumatizing and psychologically tormenting your friends is perfectly okay as long as it's all a prank.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Lazy writing- I find it far more fascinating when a species has the capacity to choose their morality- and can sometimes have Unfortunate Implications (though other times it's just Extra Credits reading too much into things).
  • Ass Pull: While Cliché Storm is on here, something I have come to detest just as much is "shock value storytelling" full of half-assed attempts at playing with cliches and "subverting expectations" that come out of nowhere, make no narrative sense, and prioritize surprising the audience over telling a satisfying story. Sometimes a cliche is a cliche for a reason, and the more predictable outcome is the more satisfying one. See the Terrible Writing Advice episodes on Plot Twists and Deconstruction for how not to do this.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: When done without rhyme or reason. For instance, if the main character is a Villain Protagonist, then it makes sense for them to win. But when done for shock value, it just feels mean-spirited (see Ass Pull above).
  • Cliché Storm: It can be done well, such as the Tales Series which deconstructs the cliches, but when played fully straight because the writers were lazy and/or uncreative, I can't stand it. Cliches in general are something I abhor.
  • Cliffhanger: Not so much in ongoing series, because you can expect that there will be a follow-up. But when a purportedly standalone work feels the need to cut off the story or rip away a satisfying resolution from the characters just to get people interested in a sequel, it comes off as cheap and unsatisfying. As Zero Punctuation once said, a story is only really satisfying once it's ended, and so a story that ends without actually ending just leaves a hollow feeling. This is also bad because it assumes that the creator will be able to finish the sequel in question, which can very well not happen.
  • Clueless Chick-Magnet/Oblivious to Love: Tends to be used alongside Unresolved Sexual Tension to drag out a Romance Arc for far longer than it needs to be, and often involves the dense character acting unrealistically and irritatingly oblivious to a blatant display of affection. It doesn't help that many Harem Genre protagonists tend to have this and Nice Guy be their sole distinguishing characteristics, leaving them feeling bland and uninteresting.
  • Cry for the Devil: Not automatically bad, as there are a few examples done right (Mister Freeze, for example). However, more often than not, the backstory fails and just makes the villain Unintentionally Unsympathetic, especially when the villain has done nothing but gleefully commit atrocities.
  • Dear Negative Reader/Take That, Audience!/Take That, Critics!: When intended as serious, scathing criticism. If it's a light, playful jab with no real animosity, then it can be pretty funny. But one of the absolute worst things a creator can do, if not the worst, is to viciously attack the very people supporting their work. A creator who does this comes off as an immature egotist who Can't Take Criticism, and it is a very good way to make me vote with my wallet and support creators who listen to their fans instead. There are instances when it is justified for an author to respond to critics when their criticisms are unsupported by the work (for example, Moral Guardians attacking a work for promoting something it actually condemns just because it depicts it at all, like drug use or villains doing bad things), but that is the exception.
  • Designated Hero and Designated Villain: When only the author thinks their hero is heroic and their villain is villainous, but anyone with common sense can see that it is the other way around, the author needs to do some self-reflection.
  • Any Double Standard trope that is played straight. As a proud egalitarian who believes that your genitals do not define who you are, it gets on my nerves. This is especially the case for double standards involving rape- in general, treating rape flippantly is an outright Berserk Button for me, and any work that does such will get my condemnation.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Self-explanatory, but I will briefly summarize anyway. Basically, to borrow from above, when only the author thinks their ending is happy, but anyone with common sense can see that it would be considered a Downer Ending in any other story, the author needs to do some self-reflection.
  • The Extremist Was Right: When played not as if the extremist has a point, which is fair, but when the extremist is portrayed as right about everything. Extremists are never correct in their methods- that is why they are called extremists. Also tends to result in an Esoteric Happy Ending.
  • Females Are More Innocent: As mentioned above, I love villainesses, especially the cruel and pure evil ones because of how badass they can be. Unfortunately, they are rather rare, and the vast majority of female villains are either uninteresting Alpha Bitch Smug Snake types, henchwomen, or sympathetic Anti Villains misled by a male villain. This sometimes crosses over with Cry for the Devil, when the previously badass female villain gets all her agency stripped away in favor of blaming everything on a male villain. It is especially grating when done in a Girls' Love story. This is why I personally prefer Yuri where the heroine and villain are both female, like Devilman Lady, Iczer, and Kill la Kill (and don’t tell me that last one isn’t Yuri when two of the three main girls hug naked after the Final Battle and all three of them go on a date afterwards).
  • Fetish Retardant: AKA badly done Fanservice. Basically, when the fanservice clashes with any seriousness intended in the story, then it can create a dissonance that renders the dramatic scene impossible to take seriously- which is a major problem if you are trying to tell an actual dramatic story. Liberally adding Nipple and Dimed and especially Barbie Doll Anatomy also causes the Fanservice to become unappealing and enter Fetish Retardant territory instead.
  • High-Heel–Face Turn: For the same reasons as Females Are More Innocent above.
  • Hollywood Autism: As an Aspie (surprise), being stereotyped is naturally a Berserk Button for me. Among other things, the idea that autistic = asexual is something I personally know to be false (again, Queen's Blade fan here). Because of this, I cannot stand Atypical and The Good Doctor, which thrive on these stereotypes (except the asexual part, but still).
  • Invincible Hero: Heroes do typically win in the end, but that win should not be handed to them with little effort. A win feels more complete when the heroes struggle greatly for it, and it allows the heroes to develop more as we see how they react to adversity. A hero who never really struggles is a boring one, and the work itself tends to suffer as any situation where the hero is in danger loses all tension because we know they will pull something out of their ass to survive.
  • Invincible Villain: Conversely, while a villain should present a credible threat to the heroes, it should avoid getting to the point that they never lose. As with the invincible hero, if every confrontation with the villain ends in defeat for their opponent, then any scene with them loses its tension as we know the villain will win somehow, save for the final battle in which they will almost certainly lose due to a Deus ex Machina or just suddenly becoming weaker and stupider than they were previously. And if they win in the end too? Well, that's called a Villain Sue.
  • Love Triangle: For similar reasons as Unresolved Sexual Tension- it tends to drag out for too long, results in artificial conflict, and often makes it really obvious who the winner is gonna be so there's no real tension. Plus, there have been so many of these that just about every variation has been done already. And even if the triangle is "balanced", the nature of it, and of shipping, means that resolving it will (almost) always leave at least some fans unsatisfied and/or pissed off- which is not what an ending should be shooting for (looking at you, The Devil is a Part-Timer! Volume 21). And leaving it with No Romantic Resolution just makes no one happy. There's a reason that the primary Running Gag of Terrible Writing Advice is mocking love triangles and how they tend to be shoehorned into everything. Bottom line, writers should stop using these for romantic drama and instead learn to actually write a romantic relationship, deriving conflict from the characters dealing with the issues that couples deal with (without resorting to making them dysfunctional).
    • Death of the Hypotenuse: By far the laziest way to have the characters resolve a love triangle is to have The Plot Reaper resolve it for them, so they never actually have to talk it out like human beings.
  • Made of Evil: Partly because I regularly participate in the Complete Monster cleanup thread, where this trope is frowned upon because it instantly disqualifies a potential candidate even if they fit every other criteria; however, I also just find it lazy to do this rather than give the villain an interesting backstory or keeping them mysterious. It does not help that villains of this nature tend to be Generic Doomsday Villains. That being said, there are examples of this done well.
  • Permanently Missable Content: I really hate it when, after going through all the hard work to beat a game, you get locked out of the best ending or something because you didn't find a super secret item the game gave no indication of existing, forcing you to have to do everything all over again.
  • "Ray of Hope" Ending: When done badly, it comes off as more insulting than a straight up Downer Ending- like the story is expecting us to feel positivity after they just shows the characters losing absolutely everything and crushed their spirits. More so when it is basically a Cliffhanger to set up a sequel that, as mentioned above, almost inevitably never happens. If you are going to do a Downer Ending, I prefer you go all the way. That being said, I am okay with cases where the promised sequel was actually followed up on, when it happens in a prequel so you know everything is gonna be alright, or when good writing manages to pull it off otherwise- but it is not easy to do.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story/Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Because the number one thing I want to see from a story is it ending in a way that makes me feel like I wasted my time with it. This goes double if it's a video game, because the player has to actually invest time and effort into beating it, and rewarding that with a giant middle finger makes me not want to play any more of your games if that's how you treat the customer.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: When it's dragged out too long. A bit of it can go a long way in making the audience interested in a potential couple, but if it goes on and on and on with no actual get together in sight, then to me it signals a writer who is unable to actually write a romantic relationship yet is using shipping to string fans along, especially if the series revolves around said relationship. Peter Paltridge put it best:
    Whenever I hear another TV producer say that he has to keep the fan-favorite couple apart from each other for yet another season because he's afraid everybody will lose interest if he doesn't, I always think "Then you're a terrible writer who has to resort to unfair gimmicks because you don't know how to make the couple interesting on their own."

    Complete Monsters I have proposed 
See here.

    Complete Monster To-Do List 
A list of characters I am considering but have yet to get to. If you want, feel free to do a proposal on them yourself.

    Magnificent Bastards I have proposed 

    Magnificent Bastard To-Do List 
Same as the CM To-Do List, and you can also nab these for yourself if you want.

    Hate Sinks I have proposed (before the thread abandoned the EP format) 

    Tropes I Launched 

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