Nosy Questions: Tropes Edition

[VySaika]

So I watched the new Captain America movie this morning, and while at lunch afterwards was talking to jenna about use of tropes and cliches in media(stemmed from talking about face-heel turns and the reverse). And I started wondering what other people think of them! So here we are.

Warning: this post will do a whole lot of linking to TV Tropes, since it's a good way to explain what I mean by things.

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Tropes Specific Section

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceHeelTurn

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? (before my link here, anyway)
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand

5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?

6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?

7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

General Creativity Section

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)

9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!

10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?

[Captain K.]

Eh tvtropes annoys me in general.  With the amount of writing that's been done before it's nearly impossible to create something that's truly original.  Assigning tropes to everything only detracts from what otherwise would be enjoyable stories.

[074]

1: Tropes and cliches aren't necessarily bad or good in my opinion.  It's more about execution to me--better not to actively think about them in regards to writing than anything else.  The second you start thinking of tropes or of deliberately trying to subvert/avert them, you're going to start having trouble.

2, 3: Agh.  Can't think of any off the top of my head.  I know they exist, but...yeah.

4: Hi Kain.  Fancy seeing you here.  But generally speaking, mind control setups frequently come off as forced.

5: Quite familiar with the concept.  First exposure to that, I believe, was Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors and Sailor Moon.  Also the varied Gatchaman adaptations.

5b: Lancer.  Definitely the Lancer.

6: Quirky Miniboss Squad for sure.  Furthermore, anything to do with the sciencing-up of magic, as well as artificial humans with certain plot treatments.

7: CHILDHOOD FRIEND ROMANCE (and by extension, Victorious Childhood Friend).  I have nonstop vitriol for that sort of thing, as everyone has probably heard.  Several times.  Others I tend not to like include Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards, as well as anticlimax in general. 

8: Yes, though the quality tends to not be as good as I'd like and I have a bad tendency to abandon projects for varying reasons.

9: As a creator, I largely stick to the fantasy/sci-fi angle.  As a consumer, add comedy to that.  I'm not good at being funny, so I don't try to.

10: Horror.  I'm fine with some things having disturbing imagery or the trappings of it, but I have no interest in it, be it slasher flicks or the supernatural horror stuff.  Anything involving a zombie apocalypse is on my "Not even interested in thinking about looking at" list--with an exception for Shaun of the Dead.  I can't not like Shaun of the Dead.

[Grefter]

I started to respond to Cap K and realised it was my answer to the first question.

Tropes Specific Section

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with identifying patterns that you see in literary works and examining what that means.  Things like the Hero's Journey are interesting and really useful from an anthropological perspective in seeing how there has been this universal in human history so as to date back to even the epic of Gilgamesh and still being so powerful today.

Pointing out patterns and attributing meaning, connection and treating that as whoamgmazing is missing the point and what we are seeing now.  There isn't anything inherently wrong with tropes "existing" or exploring them but it should be remembered that they are a broad examination that you can use as a tool to inform more focused examination.  TV tropes is really suffering from over exposure in that the definition of the tropes has expanded with its user base (just on user interpretation) and the net is so wide that it is catching absolutely everything (even if it involves brute forcing unconnected concepts together to cobble together a trope) without any push to go further with the analysis than THIS THING IS LIKE THAT THING.  In a big enough sample of data you can find similarities between all kinds of things, mindlessly reporting these things as causally related creates a lot of false conclusions.  This is so very blatantly apparent when people subverted or inverted tropes.  Do you really need to document how amazingly something actively didn't do a thing if it isn't a central point of the work (You would talk about the wave Evangelion subverts Super Robot tropes, but you probably don't need to mention that Time of Eve doesn't turn into a Harem anime even though it is centered around a maid going to a cafe).

So in short, I think they are an interesting tool for analysis that like any tool can be incorrectly used.  Like most tools now that it is released into the wild there is a lot of people that use it incorrectly.


2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!
Darth Vader because it gave use Darth Vader instead of Anakin Skywalker.

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?
Edgeworth I guess?  I dunno.

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?
Not really.  I had trouble thinking of either of them to be honest.

5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? (before my link here, anyway)
Yes.  It is a good simple template (and much like Power Rangers codified it for a generation is easy to go up or down one as necessary).

5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?
Voltron obviously.

6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?
Pistol Whipping.

7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?
Ones that don't have any actual depth or analysis to them "THERE IS THINGS THAT HAPPEN".  Like This would be an example.  Oh there is Benevolent dictators and wizards?  Must be its own trope all on its own because unique and interesting not just an overlap of two existing archetypes.

General Creativity Section

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)
Not really.

9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!
Fantasy, sci fi.  I really want to make a stronger push into Noir fiction.

10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?
Real crime.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Eh tvtropes annoys me in general.  With the amount of writing that's been done before it's nearly impossible to create something that's truly original.  Assigning tropes to everything only detracts from what otherwise would be enjoyable stories.

Tv tropes is for people who sit right on the bubble of cognition, where they can identify things but aren't able to understand that why they are used is what's important.

And people with autism.

[Ranmilia]

Tropes Specific Section

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

This question baffles me and pings my annoying terminology correction instincts.  Everything in fiction can be codified as a trope!  There is nothing that is not a trope.  Writing something that is not a trope makes it become a new trope.  Trope just means, essentially, "idea or concept in fiction."  I think the question here is actually asking how concerned people should be about making use of common or "cliche" tropes as opposed to less common ones?  In which case... I don't think that's something to worry about as a metric by itself.  A work that is 100% the most common and obvious trope in every respect is probably not going to be very good, but that's correlative rather than causative.  Also see Grefter, because I spent too long thinking of answers.

2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceHeelTurn

Honestly?  No, not really.  I feel like this is more of a failure subtrope of a Tragic Fall that is carried out too abruptly and without sufficient development.  A good tragic fall leaves me able to sympathize with both sides and see why the character turned to "evil."  Sudden betrayal is good for popcorn stories to inject some drama, but never going on my favorite anythings lists.  Like... if you really stretch the definition, maybe there's one in The Usual Suspects, but even that doesn't reaaallly count as a Face Heel Turn as commonly used.  Oh, maybe episode 12 of Madoka...  and there are some in NieR that I suppose would count, ish, sort of, from a certain point of view.

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn

These on the other hand tend to be better developed?  Sometimes.  Love seeing former (or current!) antagonists take the focus.  Mark in the Vorkosigan Saga is great.  Magus in Chrono Trigger is one of the formative examples in video games.  Ugh, why is coming up with examples on the spot so hard?

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

Most of them. 

5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? (before my link here, anyway)
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand

I may have spent some time reading TVTropes on occasion.  It might have been a lot of time.  Possibly.  So, yes.

5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?

Ender's crew in Ender's Game, highlighting how the group is manipulated together.  I'm not a big fan of the trope generally, so seeing it intentionally created is interesting.

6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?

A Large Ham is always fun!  Grey and Grey Morality, eudaimonic future societies (can't recall offhand what TVTropes calls them), ummm... The Dev Team/Writers Think of Everything, Xanatos Gambits that aren't too farfetched, stuff like that.  Examinations of mental illness and alienation from society that aren't tokenized or easily resolved.  Probably many more that don't come to mind immediately.

7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

Leaned-on role dynamics like Five Man Band tend to strike me as lazy excuses to not characterize, if not outright dehumanizing.  Probably many more that don't come to mind immediately.

General Creativity Section

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)

Eyep.  Don't put as much of it to text as I should, but it's constantly happening.

9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!

Speculative and "hard" science fiction/fantasy, horror, noir, some mystery, things that are heavy on atmosphere and characterization.  I enjoy consuming character comedy, but creating it completely eludes me.

10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?

Modern realist drama and slice of life can largely get stuffed, though there are exceptions.  Romance (as in chick-flick social drama romance, not female-targeted pornography called "romance novels.")

[Meiousei]

Hmmm. Let's see. I can try to answer these. Warning, my opinions may be... "jerkish". Also, I will be changing and updating this when I remember stuff.

1) What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely? I really don't like always falling to tropes in writing. I look at tropes and then, when I can, I go out my way to avoid them, which is harder for me to do when writing in my wrting notebook. However, I do like to use certain tropes that not more often used, so that it's more interesting. Personally, I don't think tropes are bad, but they are overused. And a lot of fanfiction/movies/tv shows/more recent books use the overused tropes to...interesting effects.

2) Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine! Last one that was done WELL? *sighs* That's a hard one. The problem is, a lot of the series I watched had more of the bad guys go good than the latter.  That being said, I really can't come up with any. Mostly because a lot that do are just...eh. So I'll leave this blank and update when I can remember any memorable ones.

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn? Currently, Regina from "Once Upon a Time". Yes, I know the way she is now she's an anti-hero, but she's so complex that I actually enjoy seeing her struggle between everything (especially with Cora in the picture, because it makes her look nice in comparison). To be fair though...that family is all sorts of messed up. It's surprising that Regina's not more screwed up in the head.

4) And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such? I really hate mind control, but the ones I hate? Look at P3 and P4. The Chairman and Adachi. Now while I DO like good guys going bad, the former is just so cheesy that I just hated it. I played P3 and I STILL hate the way it was revealed. The few hints to that is just, ugh. Adachi's heel turn sounds a bit better in the P4G, but from what I observed in P4 original, it's an out of left field like Chairman. It doesn't make much sense. At least P4G gave Adachi his reasons, so it's not as bad, but P3P doesn't even give Chairman SHIT.

Edit: I need to clarify. I do not mean Chairman and Adachi were mind controlled. I meant that they were horrible Face-Heel Turns PERIOD. The plot turning them evil served a purpose, but there was not much in the way or even CLUES that they are evil (well until P4G for Adachi).

5) Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? Nama said two of my old time favorite shows! The first two (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors and Sailor Moon) were my favorites. I'll add another one as well (and I know I'm going to get shot): W.I.T.C.H. The comics/novels are pretty dark. Then again, it is from Europe. And from video games? (I'm going to be shot) but both the P2 (excuding the 1 that replaces in the first one and the 2 you pick between in the second one).

5b) Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most? I'll get back to you on that.

6) On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing? I don't have any in particular. I'll update this when I do, but I am partial to ones with dark themes behind the heroes. Since I like the grey rather than not. I do like Original Character, but it depends squarely on how the character is written.

7) Any that just irritate you on principle? ...Oh boy. Um. The Yaoi/Yuri Genre. I also GREATLY hate the Harem Genre. Mary Sues? Utterly hate them and a LOT of fanfiction writers seem to LOVE making CANON characters into Mary Sue - like characters, which makes me normally turn off of reading the series.

8) Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count) I do writing in my notebook, dream up story ideas, and I RP ed with Magic (keyword being used to, he's got a new group and I'm still trying to get back into the game after my meltdown several years ago.) I do RP still, but I have a big problem with godmoding (both from myself and the RPers themselves), and (back when I was doing freestyle RP writing) I would have plans that I would use. It got to the point I would sadistically try to screw over the story with last minute story changes that were not discussed.

9) What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things! Fantasy, Horror, Supernatural, Sci-Fi, Adventure, Action, Parody. Yes, I actually like a lot of stuff...I'm trying to work on writing better on action scenes, but I have a problem figuring out how to write it without problems....

10) Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer? Hate Drama (even if I do write it. I just don't "GET" Drama.) Romance is another I don't like. I mean I can do it, but I HATEHATEHATE it.

[Cotigo]

Tropes Specific Section

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

This question baffles me and pings my annoying terminology correction instincts.  Everything in fiction can be codified as a trope!  There is nothing that is not a trope.  Writing something that is not a trope makes it become a new trope.  Trope just means, essentially, "idea or concept in fiction."  I think the question here is actually asking how concerned people should be about making use of common or "cliche" tropes as opposed to less common ones?  In which case... I don't think that's something to worry about as a metric by itself.  A work that is 100% the most common and obvious trope in every respect is probably not going to be very good, but that's correlative rather than causative.  Also see Grefter, because I spent too long thinking of answers.

Alex and Grefter both sums it up my thoughts on the issue pretty succinctly. Nothing creative is actually original but more an amalgam of ideas the artist or author has been exposed to put together in a creative way. The only "bad" tropes are ones that try to fit square pegs into round holes.

2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!

I'll be more generous than Alex and assume tragic falls from grace are acceptable. Not to be "that guy" but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are pretty fantastic, though it took me several literature courses and being an adult to understand why. In more recent literature, I read a really convincing analysis (that I can't find at the moment >_<) of A Dance of Dragons that depicted the Daenerys chapters in that book as setting up her own sort of turn, so I guess that.

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?

Eh, Jaime Lannister, I guess? I hate to keep using A Song of Ice and Fire for this but if there's one thing the series does well it is getting you to sympathize with the characters once you get their point of vice.

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

Basically any time the trope shows up in a video game. Blizzard is fucking terrible about this. Basically every character in Warcraft 3 falls victim to it.

5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it?

Yeah.

5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?

I disagree with Alex a little here, in that I don't see relying on the archetypes set up here as dehumanizing (well, except for "the girl", because seriously that's not an archetype that's lazy) in as much as when well done they can provide the foundation for deeper characterization, particularly in fluffier works. Don't really have a favorite, though... it's not something that's gotten used a lot in the media I've consumed recently.

6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?

Grey morality, tragic falls... basically I like reading about people who are terrible human beings but sympathetic in spite of that, and I'm sure there's a whole host of tropes describing that.

7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

See Grefter. Also, ubiquitous fanservice has really started to wear thin.

General Creativity Section

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)

Not as much as I should, but yes.

9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!

Creation: Character driven "literature" mostly, though I do like speculative sci-fi on occasion. Surrealism is pretty cool too but in literature is too often an excuse for the causality of the stories to be poorly thought out. 

10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?

As a creator, most genre fiction is pretty trashy (Horror, Romance, Mystery... even Sci-fi and Fantasy, though I consume plenty of both of those). As a consumer though I guess I don't actively avoid much except for Japanese TV. Japanese TV is garbage.

[VySaika]

I'll put my own thoughts here.

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

I phrased this vaguely, or "bafflingly" as Alex put it for a reason. I kinda wanted to see what the very words "tropes" and "cliches" meant to different folks. Enjoying the responses thus far, even the ones that are basically "fuck TV Tropes".

For me...I enjoy thinking about them, and TV Tropes is something I like as a resource or a place to read over things and go "huh, I never thought about that". But at the same time....I dislike how everything is so forcibly shoehorned into fitting into the designated tropes. The examples pages for the Five Man Band are particularly bad about that. IMO a large number of the ones listed don't really fit...but that's the nature of the beast. When anyone can input information, you get input from a lot of people who you disagree with.

For my own writing, I do analyze it after the fact with "hmm, what tropes/cliches might this easily and clearly fall under", but I don't worry about it. I just write what I want to write. Sometimes I will want a char to fill a specific role, and tropes are helpful there, but that's about the most thought I give them while I'm actively creating.

2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!

I really meant any sort of "good guy becomes bad" not just a sudden flip. So fall from grace types are perfectly acceptable!

For me, Orstead from Live a Live is one of my favorites. Extremely well done, especially for a silent main. How every last little thing his character was built on got shattered and his reaction to it just...worked for me.

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?

Pro wrestling gets this one for me. I was big into watching WCW as a kid, and got super hyped when Billy Kidman went from this grungy member of Raven's Flock to shaking it off, cleaning up, and turning into a pretty dominant face in the cruiserweight division. He was my favorite wrestler for years.

Anubis from Ronin Warriors is another one I liked. Largely it was the moment where after he had gone face, the Ancient One gave him the helmet to his old armor back, and Anubis's line of "must I become that ogre again"(or something like it, it's been a long time) really stuck with me. The idea of the reformed villain picking his old power back up and this time having to fight against being corrupted by it. It was a powerful moment for the young me.

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

Nice to see someone else pointed out the chairman from P3 before I got there. That was just bad. Jessie and James in the pokemon anime also...well, they never do full face turns, but every now and again they would do a temporary one. And suddenly become competent. And then go back to being bumbling goons again. Because Status Quo Is God. Which is terrible.

Honorable mention to Kain, of course.

5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? (before my link here, anyway)

Of course~ Ronin Warriors was the first anime I ever saw. Followed by Voltron. And Sailor Moon. It's a formative trope for me. However, see my above comment on how NOT EVERYTHING WITH FIVE OR MORE CHARS IS A FREAKING FIVE MAN BAND.

5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?

Sailor Moon is a fun one, because in my opinion, the leader and main character...isn't the Hero. It's the Chick. Venus is the Hero, but shows up last. Before that, the scouts are being led by probably the least competent one to lead, which amuses me.
Disclaimer: I am only familiar with the dub which I am told is bad and should feel bad.

6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?

A few spring to mind. I do enjoy The Godzilla Threshold when it's well done. When something has just crossed that line into "everything we can do to stop this is now justified", if I can buy it and it doesn't feel contrived, it really pulls me into the "shit is now real" territory.

I also like Find Me That Third Option. Again, when it's not contrived or dumb, when the hero can manage to avoid the lose-lose scenario by just doing something completely unexpected or drastic, I really enjoy it. I'm a sucker for the good guys winning in the end, but I do want it to be believable. Maybe not realistic, but believable.

And what shouldn't surprise anyone is that I'm a sucker for a LARGE HAM!

Thematically, SHOUTED ATTACK NAMES! is randomly something I really enjoy for no real reason. Spell quotes, badass one-liners in combat, etc. All great fun.

7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

Status Quo Is God grates on me. I don't like things that don't change, I don't like series with no continuity. Episodic content where each episode is self contained is fine, but don't have character growth happen....then revert it by the end of the episode, or just ignore it next week, because you don't want to change anything. So much hate.

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)

Of course. I do a ton of GMing and a fair amount of attempts at writing.

9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!

As a creator, I stick largely to DnD style fantasy, or science-fantasy. I do better with arcanobabble then I do with technobabble. I have been told I could give Nasu a run for his money when it comes to making weird arcane shit up.

As a consumer, I enjoy fantasy of most stripes, softer sci-fi and martial-arts stuff of all kinds. Also giant robots. Part of why I love G Gundam so much, it's kung fu giant robots with shouted attack names and generally crazy amounts of over the top-ness.

10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?

If it can be described by "gritty" or "grimdark" I will usually shy away. I am secretly a 12 year old girl who likes happy ending and does not care for bad things happening to characters that I like. Bad things that get better or get resolved, that's cool. Lol another character dead because character death is so edgy and realistic guyz is poison to me(not arguing that it's not realistic. I'm saying I don't give a flying fuck about realism and keep it out of my fantasy plz).

Otherwise, I can enjoy hard sci-fi but if I need to actually understand the science or military stuff to "get" the fiction, I'm out.

And horror of most sorts is not my cup of tea.

[superaielman]

Tropes Specific Section

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

Every story and storytelling element can be broken down into 'tropes', but that doesn't tell us anything. Certain specific tropes tend to piss me off quickly (Anime has a bunch) nowadays though.


2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceHeelTurn

Adachi. I saw the twist coming, but I love the whole murder mystery feel of the game and just how screwed up it got.   For face/heel to work, it has to either be a surprise or extremely effective. Hard for me to think of a ton here that don't end in a last second redemption for the character.  Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight Rises and Batman: the Animated Series also work.  Books... gosh. Harold Lauder in The Stand. King has his issues as a writer, but he knocked the Harold character out of the park. 

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn

Hrathen, Elantris. He owns some scrubs big time. I also am partial to Rashek in Mistborn and Asmodean in WoT. For VG? Mmm.  Beatrix. Another random one: Rozalin from Calvin and Hobbes. I knew CnH was winding down when Calvin made peace with her and played Calvinball. Really thought that was cool.

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

Kevin and Albedo in XS for heel-face. Just... oh my god, no. Face-heel there are a bunch of choices, but let's single out Kachua in TO and Adele in VH2.


7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

LOLIS. DEATH TO LOLIS. Also a laundry list of things in anime that were funny once as a teenager but aren't funny 20 years ago (Tsundre stuff, etc).

E: For this I didn't think of TV shows or movies outside of the Harvey Dent example.

[Grefter]

I didn't really want to chime in but it has been bugging me a bit.

Really need to second you Gate on more than 5 people being jammed into 5 Man Band being stupid.  That is exactly the kind of shit I am talking about being dumb.  It is an ensemble cast if it is more or it is a different trope (or not one at all!) if it is less than 5.  It is specifically 5 Man Band with those 5 character archetypes.  An ensemble cast of 9 characters might have 5 of those character archetypes, that doesn't make it a 5 man band.  It makes it an ensemble cast that uses the same archetypes that 5 man band does!  The group dynamics with those archetypes + others is different than the 5 man band.  When Power Rangers for example introduces a sixth Ranger as a permanent fixture it stops being 5 man band!  Some seasons do this and some don't.  The group dynamics are different for those seasons because of this.  It is a good thing!

Edit - Fuck me they even had to put that in the main article on TV Tropes?  People so bad at this critical analysis thing.  It is like they don't try to teach it at school or something (THEY DO.  SHUT UP.)

[VySaika]

A five man band can remain such even with 6 or 7 chars....so long as the other characters aren't a) equal members of the cast, or b) permanent fixtures in the cast. You get the classic Five Man Band plus a Tagalong Kid or something and it can work. Or the Sixth Ranger who shows up periodically to help out and/or be annoying, and it can work. But when the Sixth Ranger becomes a permanent cast member, or when the tagalong kid gets his own superpowers and starts fighting alongside the heroes long term...it really stops working. It changes the character dynamic.

[AndrewRogue]

1 - Worrying too much about tropes/cliches is a horrible thing to do. Ultimately, everything is a trope/cliche. Everything. Worry about execution first and foremost. You'll make way more progress going "What can I do to best fit the story I'm writing here" than "Oh man, I wrote in a Meet Cute here! I should totally subvert that to play with the reader expectations."

2 - Mulligan

3 - Mulligan

4 - Mulligan

5 - Yes

5b - Mulligan

6 - Crowning Moments of Awesome are always good. I also have a soft spot for Meet Cute.

7 - Obvious ploys to twist the nature of tropes/cliches just for the sake of doing it bug me.

General Creativity Section

8 - I do.

9 - Fantasy.

10 - Eh... I dunno. I think, given the right circumstances, I'm up to most genres. I do tend to stay away from sadder stuff, though.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I overall think tropes and cliches have their purpose, but TVtropes, particularly in its current form, feels more like a nerdy crossover wikipedia than anything resembling the critical literary analyses collection that it set out to be when it was first formed. I remember first reading a LOT of TVtropes when it was still quite new and much less bloated, and it was actually a pretty interesting catalog of cliches (still predominantly anime-based, but then anime tropes are easy to catalog since the Japanese think 'labelability' is a desirable quality).

The point being, I feel like since I haven't really sat down and perused TVTropes as extensively since that time, I may have a skewed perspective of TVTropes, since I don't find it as obnoxious as most of the rest of the posters, it seems.

[Cmdr_King]

Tropes Specific Section

1 - What are your general thoughts on tropes and cliches in writing? Always bad? Can be used for good? Don't worry about them and write whatever you want to write anyway? Something else entirely?

Originality is the enemy of quality.

2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!

The trouble with the trope as used by TV Tropes is that it's more of a supertrope.  There's multiple sorts of arcs covered by it, and it stays in use because it's easy to type and the name came up early.  I mean, the actual term comes from pro wrestling, basically the stupidest form of the overall trope is the assumption.

So that in mind I honestly can't, off the cuff, think of any examples that I really enjoy.  There's some neat "villain who was a hero in the backstory" examples, but usually in most stuff I can think of heroes switching side in-story tends to be lame and poorly justified and exists just so the viewer feels betrayed, and that sort of obvious emotional manipulation tends to kick me out of a story.

3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?

In the sense of becoming an actual, honest to god 'good guy'... not off hand.  Cases like, as Alex said, Magus are alright.

4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

I am bad at examples today.  Any face turn where there's clearly no change in personality and they're just randomly on the hero's side because reasons and the heroes just put up with overtly villainous behavior is grating.  Vegeta works there, or anything remotely resembling that.  Heel turns are hard to pull off without being soap opera to start with so most of them suck.

5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? (before my link here, anyway)

GO GO POWER RANGERS

5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?

I don't find I prefer characters based on role really, no.  At least not in five man versions. 

6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?

World of Cardboard Speech.

7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

I'm sure there's a couple tropes I have just never seen done well and ... oh.  OH.  Poor Communication Kills.  THat is just the worst worst WORST trope.  You can technically have situations that fall under it that are okay, but the common version is fucking TERRIBLE and should not exist.

General Creativity Section

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)

I lack the will to put ideas to paper I'm afraid.

9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!

Reality is boring.

10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?

As above.  Additionally I tend to strongly dislike what I think of as "zombie fiction".  Zombies as an element in a story is fine, but once they get the top billing it all goes to hell.

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 -

Tropes/cliches are unavoidable, which is fine; trying to avert or subvert every one of them is an exercise in futility and likely impossible to reconcile with writing something actually good. That said, if your story leans way too much on them having every character feel predictable, I'm probably going to lose interest, so in that regard as a writer it is worth being aware of them. You need to do something different to hook me. That said it doesn't have to be much, and overall the actual quality of the plot and characters is going to be worth more, of course.


2 - Do you have a favorite Face Heel Turn? Or just one you thought was particularly effective? More than one you think worth pointing out as good is fine!

Several! I love this trope. They're mostly major spoilers, for obvious reasons.

Suikoden 2 has Jowy, who is given a very convincing reason not to believe in your side, and makes for a fascinating antagonist the rest of the way, while S5 has Sialeeds, whose reason is a bit more crazy but still one I was able to swallow, and she gets some fun scenes post-turn.

The Last Story has Dagran, your affable friend who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Learning that he had some even darker motives was a punch to the gut, though.

Bravely Default has a recent favourite, that being that the little helper-fairy you implictly trust for genre-related reasons turns out to be a world-destroying supervillain! Why were you trusting her again? Great case of playing with the player's expectations.

The Phoenix Wright series has some beautiful ones (no seriously don't read this without playing the whole series, I don't even want to say which games they're in) such as Matt Engarge in PW2, which is ingenious because it subverts your expectation of the client always being innocent. Also the villain of PWDD, which is a great case of "hiding in plain sight" because he's just too zany to be true... but you're playing Ace Attorney, so you figure that's normal. Then it turns out he's zany because he's faking all his emotions and thus goes too far. Unlike Engarde, you really like this guy before his betrayal, too, or I certainly did, which makes it more chillingly effective.

Away from video games...

Grefter mentioned Darth Vader, and he's fine (I find his turn pretty believable, surprising that the prequal trilogy sold me on this), but I'm more a sucker for Palpatine. Yes, we all knew it was coming. It's still fun to watch that smug snake at work until he eventually drops the act.

Macbeth is an excellent one; you have this pretty cool dude who descends into a raving tyrant and every step os his journey is chronicled and justified. I don't think Lady Macbeth qualifies, though? She's pretty much bad from the getgo. She's not a static character for other reasons, but I don't think she's in this trope.

Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, yes.

The main villain of CS Friedman's Feast of Souls qualifies as well. I think a lot of us would have done the same in that situation.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch, but that will do for now.


3 - How about a Heel Face Turn?

I can think of fewer of these I'm fond of. In theory I feel like I should like them more! They just aren't pulled off as well on average.

In Suikoden Tierkreis, Diadora goes from being Valfred's top lieutenant to one of your most useful allies, for the simple reason that she found his callous mass murder too much. I dunno what it says about video game plots that the "normal" plotline in that situation is for the lieutenant to remain loyal.

For non-games, Super's vote of Hrathen is pretty excellent.

I'm probably forgetting some.


4 - And for the reverse, any egregiously bad examples of either of those you want to call out as being such?

I think everyone here knows that Kain and Catiua are bad. In honour of finishing Xenogears, there's also Krelian.


5 - Another favorite of mine is the Five Man Band. Familiar with it? (before my link here, anyway)

Kiiinda. In that I knew it was a thing from browsing TVTropes but I haven't actually consumed much media that features it. I think more broadly speaking it seems to be tapping into the fact that a band of heroes will often have at least one character who is a foil to the main ("lancer"), a character noted for brains, a character noted for brawn, and a character noted for compassion. This remains true if the cast goes beyond five, though, and tends to be true for smaller groups as well (e.g. WA3: Jet is the foil, Clive is the brains, Gallows is the "brawn", the leader doubles as the compassionate one).


5b - Do you have a favorite example of one? Or a role within it you tend to like characters of the most?

I think the only "Five-Man Band" from something I'm familiar with is Power Rangers. But like I said there's a few groups of different sizes with obvious parallels to the trope.


6 - On the subject of favorite tropes, do you have any you tend to like seeing?

Large hams, obviously. White Knight Leo, Joachim, Pyrrhon, Gordon, etc.

There are probably a few others.


7 - Any that just irritate you on principle?

*shrug* Are self-insert/silent mains a trope? Like everyone else (it's kind of built into the trope) I'm not a big fan of Gary Stus/Mary Sues either (for all that despite the fact that the latter name is more common, they're almost uniformly male outside of fanfic, at least in my experience). They are vaguely excusable if their purpose in the story is to justify other characters' motivations (SO4's Crowe worked okay for this; Trails Cassius somewhat as well, although he definitely rubbed me the wrong way anyway).


General Creativity Section

8 - Do you do any writing or creating of your own? Even if it's stuff you don't let people really see is fine. (I'd consider something like GMing for roleplaying games to count)

Yes, plenty. I've written some stuff which I basically don't share with anyone, and have that video game I'm working on as well. Maybe one day I'll get something finished and share it, but you know how it is.


9 - What genres do you enjoy the most, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer of media? These can end up as very different things!

Genres? Fantasy of course. Sci-fi's cool. I'm pretty fine with both comedy and drama, although medium matters here: I don't care for comedy books, for instance, and drama in episodic TV is also something that doesn't engage me. I am fine with romance but not so much that I want it to be the sole focus of a work. Uh...


10 - Any genres you actively avoid? Again, both as a creator(if you are one) and consumer?

Horror. Usually doesn't do anything for me, and when it does it just makes me uncomfortable. As mentioned, no interest in pure romance either.

[Cotigo]

Macbeth is an excellent one; you have this pretty cool dude who descends into a raving tyrant and every step os his journey is chronicled and justified. I don't think Lady Macbeth qualifies, though? She's pretty much bad from the getgo. She's not a static character for other reasons, but I don't think she's in this trope.

Yeah, Lady Macbeth is bad news from the beginning, you're right. I suppose when answering the question I was thinking more about falls from grace than good characters turning bad, and while LB still doesn't qualify for that I suppose I was thinking about how enjoyable it was to watch her completely lose her mind by Act 5. But you're right, that's still something entirely different.