What are your most hated fanfic tropes

[fnfr]

It's like "No jimmy, your drinking buddy James you met at the bar last month does not want to wake up as Rias Gremory in the World of Naruto, why would you even think that?"

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At least the fact that it's a friend and you're subjecting them to it adds a bit of irony to the whole idea
Imagine your example with Rias in Naruto but it's some SI who's just cosplaying Rias badly without adding anything interesting.
I once tried to read SI with Gojo Satoru's looks and powers into Worm. Who proceded to call himself Gojo and act like (edgier) Gojo. Then why the f*ck he's even SI?
In friend insert, at least in theory, said friend can be oblivious to the world and powers, they act in new surprising ways more often. SIs with powers/into characters are much worse, because they always basically cosplay said characters, invalidating the only interesting part of the idea.

I hate popular stories.

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I get you, and I have my own brand of hating something popular - I hate MCs
Not all of them, not everytime - but more often than not, especially if it's a male MC of a big, popular franchise. Like, well, your Narutos and Dekus. For some reason, reading about them getting their new powerups and their shitty harems just... rubs me all the wrong ways squared. I can forgive much more stupid wish-fulfillment wank to fics with rare and surprising MCs.

I hate corrupted text.

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Same. Coming from Worm... yeah.
Digging a bit deeper, with Worm and certain other stories with background forces (for a quick and shitty example something like GATE with it's gods), I hate "cryptic" ""interludes"" where such corrupted text along with various ??? and other quirky designs are prevalent.
No, I don't want to read vague 'corrupted' riddles and ooh and ahh in the comments like it's some cool creative design. I don't care about "Queenie" or "Shaper" ""halping"" and ""getting angy"" at ""stoopid/bestest host". It's childish and cheap. In better stories such background processes stay in the background in the mind of the author, adding them to the story improves nothing, it's just indulgent.

 

[Stimpak Medic]

At least the fact that it's a friend and you're subjecting them to it adds a bit of irony to the whole idea
Imagine your example with Rias in Naruto but it's some SI who's just cosplaying Rias badly without adding anything interesting.
I once tried to read SI with Gojo Satoru's looks and powers into Worm. Who proceded to call himself Gojo and act like (edgier) Gojo. Then why the f*ck he's even SI?
In friend insert, at least in theory, said friend can be oblivious to the world and powers, they act in new surprising ways more often. SIs with powers/into characters are much worse, because they always basically cosplay said characters, invalidating the only interesting part of the idea.


I get you, and I have my own brand of hating something popular - I hate MCs
Not all of them, not everytime - but more often than not, especially if it's a male MC of a big, popular franchise. Like, well, your Narutos and Dekus. For some reason, reading about them getting their new powerups and their shitty harems just... rubs me all the wrong ways squared. I can forgive much more stupid wish-fulfillment wank to fics with rare and surprising MCs.


Same. Coming from Worm... yeah.

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Sure, there is some irony I guess. As for that Gojo thing, yeah, it's always some weird uncanny facsimile of fannon and cannon. The whole point of SI personalities is that you're not the cannon character, no? As for popular MCs, yeah. I'm so sick of Goku, Batman, Superman, Issei, Deku, Naruto and the like to the point I won't even read a story with those characters if it's not really high quality writing.

Give me The Androids as MXCs. Android 17 or 18 as a crossover mc is much more interesting than Goku or even Vegeta to me at this point. Give me Raven, Starfire, or Zatanna or even John Constantine instead of Bruce, Clark, or Hal Jordan.

 

[Avernus]

I hate adventurers guilds being in EVERY fantasy story. Same fucking guild receptionist, same ranks, and always some easy copout like 'we don't get involved in kingdom politics' THEN when the MC, an adventurer gets involved in kingdom politics, it's not his fault, because he rescued some Duke/King's daughter on a mission. Man, I want to read a fiction about the Adventurers Guild leader. About how much BULLSHIT he must have to put up with when handling all these egos. Like, so many pre-Madonas amongst this class of people. "Nobles" always get a bad rap because poor people (yes I'm poor too), ahem, because poor people are like crabs in a bucket happy to see those higher up in the bucket suffer. But how many times are adventurers depicted as part time bandits/scum of the earth? Yeah, I could go for a western fantasy without this uninspired slop.

I hate corrupted text. (I think I said this before?) The corrupted text from some eldritch thing. ESPECIALLY those fics that spam it. Once is a mystery, but every other time after that, it's like, dude, you already revealed God is real, should we be surprised the thrid, fourth or fifth time? But the people seem to get off on this ig. Sigh. I hate people.

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I agree that zalgotext (what I think you are referring to) generally gets irritating when overused. Like a lot of gimmicks it can be cool once but gets old fast.

As for adventurers guilds being everywhere, that's not so. It's endemic to things inspired by Japanese light novels (think they are called that), but outright rare in Western fantasy.

It really is always so uninspired. I'd like to some day see an adventurer's guild dealing with some repercussions, or at least being treated as it is by either nobility and nations, a force that can turn hostile at any moment and become a real threat. Like they're in almost every city for some reason and have consolidated power of thousands of superhumans, yet the king/queen/parliament is just cool with it?

There's a reason PMCs and companies are heavily regulated when forming forces. Like yes, I get monsters and dragons and what not are out there, but some originality would go a long way.

Heck, make it be a competition between other guilds and the adventurer's guilds. Information and crafting guilds might buy more items than the adventurer's guilds thus causing less of a monopoly. Heck, have multiple different adventurer's guilds in different cities all vying for dominance with their own local and regional politics.

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That was one reason why I liked the Salvos books; competition between adventurers guilds (including violent competition) was a major plotline early on. One got the general impression that most Guild politics was fairly similar what you'd see in organized crime.

I also agree that it's nice to see a focus on other people and guilds than just individuals, including crafters.

As for the government not having control of the adventurers, historically it was quite common for the government to not actually control the majority of the soldiers in their territory. Yes, governments try to keep PMCs under control now, but in the past they often just weren't strong enough. Standing armies are very expensive, and your standard medievalish kingdom is relatively poor.

Everyone moved away from mercenary armies when they could afford it because that's terrible for stability. Both in the sense that the mercenaries might decide to pressure or overthrow the government, decide to take employment with the other side of a war, or just decide they aren't paid enough and loot a city.

 

[Stimpak Medic]

Everyone moved away from mercenary armies when they could afford it because that's terrible for stability. Both in the sense that the mercenaries might decide to pressure or overthrow the government, decide to take employment with the other side of a war, or just decide they aren't paid enough and loot a city.

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Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. Adventurers are pretty much superpowered mercenaries. They and the adventurer's guild should (Rightfully) be treated with suspicion at best and the guild should be treated not with 100% acceptance, but instead how any other neutral/self interested external force inside your country should be.

Also, Medieval kingdoms didn't have much money or manpower, but we're talking about worlds where magicians can create gold with alchemy, plants make amazing potions, magic is sufficiently advanced, and there is far less scarcity than your average medieval kingdom.

Remember, this is fantasy world with dragons and magic, and magic stones and stuff. It's an entirely different situation in terms of scarcity.

 

[Avernus]

Also, Medieval kingdoms didn't have much money or manpower, but we're talking about worlds where magicians can create gold with alchemy, plants make amazing potions, magic is sufficiently advanced, and there is far less scarcity than your average medieval kingdom.

Remember, this is fantasy world with dragons and magic, and magic stones and stuff. It's an entirely different situation in terms of scarcity.

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There should be. But most fantasy settings ignore that and just graft magic onto a standardish medieval society and ignore how magic would change that society (because then it wouldn't look very medieval anymore).

 

[Stimpak Medic]

There should be. But most fantasy settings ignore that and just graft magic onto a standardish medieval society and ignore how magic would change that society (because then it wouldn't look very medieval anymore).

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The only thing I can say to that is that would be up to the author I guess.

 

[Avernus]

The only thing I can say to that is that would be up to the author I guess.

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Well, sure; sometimes it's necessary for the story they want to tell. Still, I like the occasional story that shows societies that have been shaped by the existence of the magic of the setting; especially when the result is something unlikely to exist otherwise.