#bad tropes

[pruneunfair]

Tropes in manhwa are awful yet people still defend them

I'm in a bad mood right now so what better way to release all that pent up anger by ranting on what can ruin a good story.

1: Slavery being inserted only for cheap plot and slaves being demonized as obsessive/greedy monsters for "not knowing their place"

Theres nothing wrong with wanting to insert slavery in your story AS LONG as it's not just cheap plot to make your MC look "better" by buying from a single to all of the slaves because let me tell you this: there is no such thing as a good slave owner, you cannot morally own another human being. A lot of manhwa like to have slavery be a part of their plot completely ignoring that just because the MC goes "wow this is terrible" doesn't make them a good person after they buy a slave.

Remarried empress does this with its villian Rashta by pushing the notion that she's being greedy for not wanting to stay in poverty so Navier won't suffer because apparently a slave wanting what the silver spoon mouthed nobles were born into is so terrible not to mention they justify slave owners and slavery in general as a punishment for criminals (neglecting the fact that children can be sold by their parents)

The villainess has fun again justifies a child slave being bought by the lead and he becomes an obsessive shouta love interest, fans continously justify by using the ancient lolicon excuse "he may look young but he's actually 99182823 years old!"

In divorcing my tyrant husband, Robelia buys 30 slaves and the only 2 that consistently show up have no other personality other then "we love you FL we will worship you till the end of time!"

There's a damn manhwa out there literally called the order of slave breeding and even when a story tries to do this correctly such as VADTD with Penelope being portrayed as a bad person for what she did to Eckles, fans have been so deluded by the idea that FL's buying slaves is "girlboss" that they think Eckles should be grateful to be Penelopes "pet"

2: ML's murdering innocent people after one guy hurts the FL

I already made a specific post about it before and I'll say it again: all this does is make your male lead/father figure look like a horrific monster. While you could say it's because its a medieval kingdom (objectively that is true that they would do this) manhwa and OI is the same place where despite in those times taking a mistress was considered normal they still view it as cheating and "how could you pick that slut when you have such a perfect wife!? 🤬" in most stories. So yes, modern morality is still inserted within these tropes. While I can get it's a way to show that the man in questions loves the FL so much he's willing to go to such lengths to protect her I think just mutilating the guy that actually did the sin would be enough because try imagining yourself as a faithful servant who was amazing at your job getting brutally slaughtered by the Emperor because your boss attacked his daughter or lover.

Into the light once again does this with Aishas dad murdering all the relatives and close friends of a count that tried to kill Ysis and Aisha, Aisha doesn't seem to care despite being in a situation where she was wrongfully executed in her past life.

Remarried empress does this too. After Navier is nearly killed by Krista's brother, Heinrey tortures and kills the dad and slaughters the servants of the zemensias. I can't remember if he also murdered the remaining family members but I wouldn't put it past him.

3: protagonist centered morality

Protagonist centered morality is the biggest indicator that a piece of media is dealing with a mary sue FL. Whatever the protagonist says is right is immediately morally correct. This is actually used to justify the last 2 examples with "it was for the FL!" Things like slavery, murder, workplace abuse, union busting, pedophilia, and being a POS to your loved ones are all justified if the protagonist finds a cheap way to justify it and you HAVE to agree with her because her backstory is very tragic 🥺. Protagonist centered morality also ruins the chance for good characters since the FL herself never has to grow as a person so she stays the same exact thing as she was just with more enablers and random characters will be treated as villains even if they aren't actually wrong about being suspicious of the Protagonist or calling out her behavior. It twists the narrative in such incomprehensible ways that you don't even know what your reading anymore. I can't even list all of the manhwas that do this given how many there actually are so I'll just list some that are at least self aware there Protagonist is awful/morally grey or isn't even a bad person but they still have flaws that can be pointed out

Villains are destined to die

My in laws are obsessed with me

Not sew wicked step mom

Depths of malice

The villainess turns the hourglass

Beware of the villainess.

4: villains being dumbed down to make the lead look smarter

This is unfortunately another common staple often used as a quick way to make the FL look smart and witty but is that really hard to look smarter when everyone else around you is an idiot? Not only does the FL not have to put in actual effort to best her enemies but you just start to pity the villain for basically being a punching bag. Dimwitted villains aren't always bad in fact they can be some of those most entertaining characters no matter much they lose but that only works when they are meant to be seen as a goofy character that your not supposed to take seriously. Villains that are written as extremely childish and stupid but your still supposed to treat them as serious antagonists on the other hand are just annoying since you wonder how the protagonist even got killed by them in the first life if they're so stupid.

Isabella de Mare while admitly having a good reason for being dumbed down (she's a teenager in the 2nd life so it's reasonable she wouldnt be as smart as her adult counterpart) is still a joke of a villainess who keeps flipping back and fourth from a snot nosed whiny brat to a mastermind only at convenient opportunities when the plot needs conflict.

Mielle from the villainess turns the hourglass was first portrayed as extremely conniving as she arranged for Arias downfall in the shadows but in the second life she fails at every scheme she has even though she has Emma and Isis to help her out.

Ragibach is a literal demon possessing the body of another woman with the goal of setting demons loose on the word to start another human vs demon war and she succeeded in that the first time, the devastation was all there so clearly she has to be a formidable antagonist right? Well no, she's another case of being dumbed down further and further so Keira can succeed and while they do understand some plot holes such as Ludwig not trusting her as much in the second life it doesn't change the drastic character change from evil genius to bumbling idiot.

In short: dumbing down your villains so your lead can look smarter is essentially going to give the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb vs a coughing baby.

5: feminine women being demonized as basic "other girls" sluts

Okay this one isn't nearly as terrible as the others on this list because we all love the good old "a demon makes itself look beautiful to deceive humans" kind of villain, in fact as you probably know by me by now, white lotuses are my favorite kinds of character and even in media outside of manhwa I always find myself drawn to angelic villains but it seems like this is less of that and more of "Oh those are all the other girls who just want a man to save them, look at how much better my badass rich boss babe is for working for herself while taking all of their men at the time 😎" in manhwa. As soon as a traditionally feminine girl shows up, comments are already calling her a two faced bitch and half the time protagonist is already skeptical of her. This is the opposite of what being a feminist really is, a real feminist wouldn't be putting down other women just because they dress with more pink with bows and skirts and while I do think for most manhwa this is unintentional I do wish that we could have more characters like Psyche, Helena, Athy, and Jennette that prove that being overly feminine doesn't make you a backpedal on feminism. This doesn't make the badass or sexy fl's bad either, it just means they can co-exist.

An angelic villain should be treated as evil for being a well calculated schemer, not because they have a light colored color scheme

6: toxic relationships being romanticized as good

You know for a large community that claims to be about girl code a good chunk sure likes to look the other way when it comes to toxic relationships as long as the abuser is "hot" and theres always the terrible excuse such as "he has trauma!" Or "he doesn't know how to show his love normally!" No just no we aren't doing that here. Cry or better yet beg has this problem with not only the narrative claiming that Matthias graping Layla is okay because she actually loves him and doesn't know it but a large part of the fanbase also defends it, the same goes with try begging, a manhwa written by Solche who also wrote cry or better yet beg and once again despite Leon being an abuser everyone's ready to justify his actions because he's just a soft little boy who ends up falling in love with Grace awww 😍 (what the hell?) Everyones all about not justifying abusers because they had a sad past until it's the "sexy" male leads with daddy issues.

7: maid slapping

This shit isn't asserting your dominance as a boss bitch it's just work place abuse. This trope has gotten so out of hand of being justified by narratives and readers that there is an entire webtoon called this isekai maid is forming a union that's all about criticizing twisted manhwa tropes that get brushed off with maid absuer being at the biggest one. It's funny because a lot of people complain that Isekai maid union villainizes the nobles too much but they never ask the same questions when a OI is demonizing maids as greedy and lazy in order to deserve a beating. This doesn't just stop at hands either it can escalate to threats of mutilation just to assert dominice which is absolutely sick. Most of the time these leads used to be office workers or terminally ill patients, they know how terrible it is to be treated like garbage by their superiors yet they continue to absue every maid who isn't getting on their knees for them. Most maids in real history would not mistreat a noble even if they were the most hated in the house and even if they did they'd be fired without a letter of recommendation so why can't the FL's just fire the rude maid if they care about dignity so much because I'm pretty sure getting violent with a maid isn't very dignified either.

8: disgusting age gaps

Very similar to #6 but in this case while the ML/FL isn't a cruel monster to their partner it doesn't change the fact that grooming and pedophilia is still a crime worthy of life in prison. You'd think "oh no way, this can't be justified can it?" You'd be wrong. Now I belong to house of Castillo thankfully has a larger fanbase of people who think that a relationship between a girl who got groomed by her knight is bad but in cases like into the light once again a lot of people like to say "Well Aisha is technically 28 so it's fine!" When it really isn't since Aisha is still mentally 14. Taming my ex husbands mad dog is another one that does this with Reinhardt grooming a 16 year old boy and its apparently meant to be "cute".

9: claiming a character as unattractive yet giving them a perfect body and appreance

I just think this is a major cop-out since there's time where they want to make a realistic story yet also wanting a fantasy fufilment. I don't think its a coincidence that the only woman in tears of a withered flower that yout supposed to support is a Victoria's secret model body type. Even though she's meant to be an overworked exhausted 33 year old woman being mocked for losing her beauty she sure as hell isn't drawn that way, the only other women around hae soo are all women with smaller boob's and in general more common body types that are either classed as stupid or jealous that Hae soo is so beautiful that all the attractive men want her

how about we don't pit all the women against each other for once? And let's especially not villainize other women because their jealous they could never be have large boob's and tiny arms+waist at the same time?

10: the commoner protagonist actually being a noble rich person all along

Look I know most of us had loved those "the hated child is the lost princess" GLMM but we need to drop it because it's kinda disappointing that the nobody who had to work their way to the top is actually a secret magical princess who had royal blood in them all along. While I did think the villainess turns the hourglass was a pretty decent read I was super disappointed finding out that Aria was of noble descent all along. I liked seeing a commoner protagonist for once and it really felt like it was critiquing the idea that all commoners and poor people who want nice things like the nobility are greedy animals. Something similar can also happen with certain saintess manhwas that decide to twist itself into "the villainess was the true saintess all along!" And I'm just sitting here thinking "well there goes the hope that you didn't need the super duper rare power to be a strong character"

I feel way better now after writing all this.

[fakekillernerd]

2 WORST CHARACTER THINGS in my opinion that would make me IMMEDIATELY hate a character

1. An irredeemable (and possibly manipulative) asshole that you are supposed to feel bad for!! you are supposed to love them!!

2. A perverted loser, most of their personality and/or talk revolve around SEX and nothing else (and TO THE POINT THEY HARASS OTHER CHARACTERS.)

if you managed to get both of them in one character... WELL CONGRATS!! THEY ARE NOW IN MY PERSONAL WORST CHARACTERS EVER LIST!!

and guess what. one of the characters ive seen fall into BOTH of these. congratulations vivziepop.

[i-am-trans-gwender]

May yall help me with some character ideas?

I'm trying make two characters who are the personifications of my trans girl gender dysphoria and gender euphoria.

I was going to make euphoria look like what it tells me I look and dysphoria look like what it tells me I look like.

Then I realized that's a bad idea because I hate the "beauty=good and ugly=bad" trope.

Also I DON'T want to imply trans people have to pass.

Also Also I know that some of you would call dysphoria "goals" which is valid but not what I was going for.

[artsy-writy]

When I say I don't like romance in stories, I mean that I don't like romance that has the female character as a mere accessory to the male character with no significant personality or contribution to the story.

[itneedsmoregays]

Shin Hati: Only scenes with Sabine involve running her through with a lightsaber, trying to kill her and taking her hostage.

Star Wars fans: aWwW tHeY iN lOvE

[lieutenant-teach]

I’m really getting outraged seeing an exhausted trope ‘Obi-Wan is a whore’. Been seeing these jokes since I entered the fandom, and –  that’s fine to joke stupidly, ok? – but sometimes it’s treated not as a joke, but as a canon fact! ‘Why do we love Obi? He’s a whore, that’s why!’. I don’t get it. Yes, Obi-Wan ‘flirts’ (aka infuriates his opponents so they lose focus and make it easier for him to defeat them), but it doesn’t make him ‘a canonical whore’. Canonically, he has only one love interest – Satine Kryze (two, if we count Siri Tachi from the Legends). And he has been proven to be ace, anyway.

I know it takes its roots from Ewan McGregor’s notorious choice of projects – naked, gay, you name it. But he and Obi-Wan are two completely different personalities! Yes, it’s fun to take some of the actor’s features to enrich the character – but seriously, in Obi-Wan’s case it just too… much, I’d say. As it’s not supported by anything in movies\series\books and outright contradicts canon (ace, remember?).

And one more thing why I feel repulsed when seeing these stupid overused takes about his ‘promiscuous’ ways. Were he a woman, would the same people call her ‘slut’ (even lovingly)? No, it would be misogyny.

[an-autistic-dweeb]

You know a trope I don’t get in a zombie setting? The whole “I’m gonna hide that I’m infected from my friends” one. Like, I get it. You don’t wanna die. But it’s still going to happen one way or the other, and you’re just putting your friends at risk by keeping it secret. It’s just selfish.

[coolishfoolishness]

Fuck the "humans, when removed from society, become evil monsters because humans are inherently evil" trope. I want the "actually, society is what makes people evil and we'd be better off without it" trope. I want a story in which, when civilization falls, humans realize that tribalism, gender norms, conformity, government, and the economy are all harmful to humanity, and people live happier and healthier lives without them.

[thediamondarcher]

What writing trope do you just despise? (mine is forced amnesia to force discourse between main characters. It shows that the author didn't know what to do to make conflict)

yours is so real tbh. mine would probably be that type of romance books where one of them is clearly manipulative and that character is constantly being victimized (especially when the other character who's being manipulated is mentally ill, that's why i think heartstopper is a great example of a relationship where one of them is struggling with a mental disorder). the whole "love is blind" thing doesn't exist, if love is making you not see those bad things it isn't love, it's abuse (as an example i can say Effy and Freddie from skins)

[cepheusgalaxy]

Worst Isekai tropes, drop.

me first:

when the MC Guy, instead of dismanlting the slavery system in their Fantasy World, buys a slave (*looking specially mad at tate no yuusha and mushoku tensei*).

[aromanticduck]

Noooo don't become a cop after a time skip your so sexy aha

[massiveladycat]

me getting my ass beat after saying that obsession and abusing your partner because of jealousy, and also doing something to them when they obviously say 'no' is not cute or healthy

[leo-fie]

Just once, once, I want a disaster movie that doesn't have all humans except the main cast turn into monsters instantly. It's just not how humans work. Quite the opposite in fact, in a survival situation, where the normal pressures of capitalism no longer apply, humans revert to their natural form of CARING FOR EACH OTHER! Not saying that violence and looting and stuff won't happen, but it won't be the norm.

What will happen is that the police state and the people in power will panic and assert themselves with brute force. For them it's about control, not the benefit of as many people as possible.

Listen to the Elite Panic episode of Behind the Bastards

Read Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built In Hell

Humans are at their core a social species. That's how we made it into the dominant species on earth. Anyone who wants to tell you that man is man's wolf or something is either someone in power afrait of loosing that power, or mistakes a situation with external preassures (like war) for human's nature.

[stalltherain]

I figured out where I've gone wrong in my media consumption. If there's a MMW love triangle that involves a pretty, blond white boy, I need to just assume that he'll have the happy ending. The other guy will get screwed (but definitely not literally), and the woman's ending will be whatever serves to make pretty, blond white boy happy.

[memento-mariii]

Speaking of the fae, what gets me about those "dark fae romances" that seem to be so "in" right now is that they don't do anything interesting with the fae lore. Like. Why even call your MC a fae if he never speaks in riddles and can just straight up lie all the time. Why call him a fae and make him impervious to cold iron.

Look. I know that "fae lore" is actually just a disjointed and often self-contradicting collection of completely individual folk tales and mythologies and that no such thing as the Definitive Fae Lore™️ exists, but c'mon. At that point he's just a guy with pointy ears. He's a tolkien elf with an attitude problem. You're allowed to write a yandere legolas fic if you want to write a yandere legolas fic.

[outlawssweetheart]

Irritating fanfiction trope: Borderline vilifying (or straight-up vilifying) a character for being angry about something they have every right and reason to be angry about.

This happens in canons, too (looking at you, Strangers Things 4 and Avengers: AOU), and fandoms do this all the time with canon (looking at you, Jason Carver haters and Maximoff haters), but it is especially prominent in fanfiction. 🙄