What are your favorite and least favorite character types and/or story ideas?

tahutoa

tahutoa

Has "it." Fragile musician. Odd, means well.
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I, for example, love characters that are really good sweethearts, but like, they get asked to act like a villain and they're ridiculously good at it, making you wonder who exactly you're dealing with. Conversely, I HAAAAAATE characters who ACT like sweethearts and are ACTUALLY just vile rotting hay bales that need a match thrown into them, like Little Suzy on Phineas and Ferb. Smug little bastards like that need the Waluigi assist trophy to be sicced on them
As for story ideas, I dislike whatever trope is displayed in these bits: SpongeBob, where Squidward makes the Statue of David and misses out on billions because he gave the responsibility to the janitor; Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, where Homer ditches the supposed ideal future because it didn't have donuts, which would've been funny if they didn't immediately make a joke where it rains donuts T_T
I also dislike stupid misunderstandings, especially when it gets combined with that Little Suzy trope: take Tamami's The Lock from DIU. Koichi's family is so brain-dead it makes me seethe.
hey koichi cathc this knife i just stabbed myself with
wat--
:woahalt:OMG KOPPy WHAT THE F L I P
oh what the fuck :imontoyou:
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It's like Good God woman you BIRTHED THIS MAN AND YOU ACTUALLY BELIIIIEEEVE THAT HE ACTUALLY WOULD STAB SOMEONE ajhrasjhfnmnaf WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU BESIDES A BAD ONE
Did I mention I hate dishonesty and dullards?

In other news, I like some good ol' slice-of-life happenings. Like Konosuba. Love the interactions between the main four, and I find Kazuma pretty relatable. Good show.
I also like characters that make you feel good to be exposed to, like that one grey haired boy on uhhh Oregai(?). he can even make 8man smile and is just all-around rather precious I think :gwatchkissy:
Same goes for Kotaro's older bro on School Babysitters-- Kenyatta I think his name was? Haven't seen the actual show there but I've seen in clips that everyone likes him for a good reason-- to the point where people dislike that one girl for being tsundere towards him, because that attitude makes absolutely no sense.
Didn't mean to mention so many anime but it's all I could really think of-- oh yeah! I also really like Mr. Flynn-Fletcher on the aforementioned Phineas and Ferb, and uhh. I like Joseph Joestar (aaand we're back), and his ilk-- they're dicks but they're lovable dicks who in the end are still good people.

But yeah give me your thoughts on character and storytelling tropes that you love (and hate), it's always nice to get fresh perspectives on stuff.
 
tahutoa said:
I, for example, love characters that are really good sweethearts, but like, they get asked to act like a villain and they're ridiculously good at it, making you wonder who exactly you're dealing with. Conversely, I HAAAAAATE characters who ACT like sweethearts and are ACTUALLY just vile rotting hay bales that need a match thrown into them, like Little Suzy on Phineas and Ferb. Smug little bastards like that need the Waluigi assist trophy to be sicced on them
As for story ideas, I dislike whatever trope is displayed in these bits: SpongeBob, where Squidward makes the Statue of David and misses out on billions because he gave the responsibility to the janitor; Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, where Homer ditches the supposed ideal future because it didn't have donuts, which would've been funny if they didn't immediately make a joke where it rains donuts T_T
I also dislike stupid misunderstandings, especially when it gets combined with that Little Suzy trope: take Tamami's The Lock from DIU. Koichi's family is so brain-dead it makes me seethe.

It's like Good God woman you BIRTHED THIS MAN AND YOU ACTUALLY BELIIIIEEEVE THAT HE ACTUALLY WOULD STAB SOMEONE ajhrasjhfnmnaf WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU BESIDES A BAD ONE
Did I mention I hate dishonesty and dullards?

In other news, I like some good ol' slice-of-life happenings. Like Konosuba. Love the interactions between the main four, and I find Kazuma pretty relatable. Good show.
I also like characters that make you feel good to be exposed to, like that one grey haired boy on uhhh Oregai(?). he can even make 8man smile and is just all-around rather precious I think :gwatchkissy:
Same goes for Kotaro's older bro on School Babysitters-- Kenyatta I think his name was? Haven't seen the actual show there but I've seen in clips that everyone likes him for a good reason-- to the point where people dislike that one girl for being tsundere towards him, because that attitude makes absolutely no sense.
Didn't mean to mention so many anime but it's all I could really think of-- oh yeah! I also really like Mr. Flynn-Fletcher on the aforementioned Phineas and Ferb, and uhh. I like Joseph Joestar (aaand we're back), and his ilk-- they're dicks but they're lovable dicks who in the end are still good people.

But yeah give me your thoughts on character and storytelling tropes that you love (and hate), it's always nice to get fresh perspectives on stuff.
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I also love whatever the hell Okuyasu is to bits. He's just got so many good qualities and characteristics that I like. "What?! I wanna look too!" "It's like, exquisite or some shit!" And then there's that plot he hatched to lure Shigechi over and snatch the lottery paper from him with Za Hando: that was rather clever for a drunk man.
 
I love plots with an ancient evil that has been sealed away for a long time, and is let loose. Or when a lost civilization is discovered, that hides some kind of malicious secret. Throw in some kind of apocalypse (either in the past or potential future) and I'm sold.

Pretty generic, but whatever.
 
i really like it when media frames exposition through new reports or documentaries (think robocop or surrogates)

ultraviolence in gritty sci-fi is a big plus



i like buddy cop media. my tastes are normie as fuck

one aesthetic I particularly appreciate is "heavily armored millitary man staring intensely at the viewer"

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I love the whole fantasy nations at war with one another, where like a super power empire is attacking a smaller, more rural nation, and you play the unexpected hero in the story.

Rival nations and like political intrigue often get my attention : p Its usually pretty fun when the villians in the game are like decorated army generals and junk.

I love stories where like the main character has a close friend, but the friend eventually betrays him. But I like it better when the betrayer believes they are doing the right thing, over just betrayimg for their own personal gain.

I also often like it when the villian of a game or story has some crooked logic to what their doing over mere personal gain as well.

I love the whole "power of friendship" thats so common with jrpgs : p If you think that stuff is lame, you can eat dirt : p I love it when the characters Im so invested in have a real bond and affection for one another.

I like love stories. In one jrp I liked, the main male and female characters had a relationship delevoping, but there was also a villian couple going through the same thing. I really liked that, thought it was awesome.

The one thing I often dont like about jrpgs is how preachy they can be. Some are great, and are just focused on the story of over coming evil. But many of them usually focus on some silly belief the creators must have had that usually annoy me and make me roll my eyes. Theyre almost always something generic, like "religion is bad" kinda nonsense. I wish these developers would stop feeling some gross need to push a lesson on their customers.
 
Favourite/least favourite character types and story ideas? Oh boy, pull up a chair, this could be kinda long:

Character Types:

Villains that are written well tend to be favourites of mine, though I have to be honest and say that deep motives can also be ignored if the character design looks cool or their plans are interesting enough. On the other hand, if the villain looks terrible, has no personality and mostly exists to fill space (see Bellum and Malladus from the DS Zelda games for example), then they become some of my least favourites.

Same goes for the heroes too. Don't mind if a hero is nigh invincible, looks uninteresting or has no real personality, but if a character doesn't meet at least two out of three conditions, then I'll dislike them based on that.

Honestly though, if I had to say I disliked any character type in particular, it'd probably be the 'flat earth atheist' one. Always felt the trope was a lazy way for writers to attack science and sceptism by comparing them to a religion, as if the only reason people don't believe in gods or ghosts or mythical beings is because they hate the idea of them and don't want them to be real. If a character (especially a scientist) lives and works in a world where the supernatural is real, then they should believe in its existence, especially if they've seen/heard/interacted with it on a regular basis.

Finally, I dislike what I consider 'character point design'. What's that? It's when contrasts between characters are made on the assumption that humans are like Dungeons and Dragons characters and have a limited number of skill points to work with. For example, you've got the nice but dumb guy and the smart jerk, as if being good at something means having no social skills and being a misanthrope that others should tolerate because of your innate brilliance. Or popular vs unpopular kids at school, with the latter being smart but socially clueless and the former being dumb jocks and alpha bitches (TV Tropes wording), with the assumption that popular people are always moronic jackasses and unpopular people are nice and smart. Were tons of TV writers and cartoonists bullied at school or something?

Story Ideas:

For ones I like, well I like 'mystery' esque stories that don't involve crimes or other mundane things, but alien invasions and fantasty tricks. In other words, the kind of set found out in Doctor Who stories like the God Complex, Extremis or Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. Always liked the weird mystery box set up of trying to figure out why something strange is going on, and it turning out that the small things that don't seem quite right are all because reality is fake or something is trying to trick you.

I've also got a fondness for meta humour/jokes (see the Paper Mario series and Banjo-Kazooie series for example), though I'm also the kind of person who acknowledges it can be done very poorly as an excuse for bad writing (see perhaps much of Nuts and Bolts, and the Paper Mario games from Sticker Star onwards).

Finally, I also like works that don't take place on Earth or an alternate version of it, but in an entirely different world with its own rules and history. That's one reason I really like both the Mario and Zelda franchises, because they're not just 'Earth with magic, except there's a masquerade keeping normal people unaware', but entirely constructed worlds which function independently of it, and whose inhabitants are aware of/affected by its goings on.

As for least favourite story ideas and concepts... well I dislike the whole 'masquerade' concept in general to be honest with you. The whole 'good and evil are fighting in real life with magic and super science, but have to keep all of humanity unaware that they're not really living in boring old 21st century Earth' idea is really overdone in fiction nowadays, and always struck me as a trope which raises more questions than answers. Why should people be unaware of fantasy elements or super science? Why keep these things from society as a whole? Why pass off a much more interesting setting as yet another boring version of Earth which mostly seems to function like our world?

It doesn't make much sense really, and is why I'm glad the three major Nintendo franchises (Mario, Zelda and Pokemon) don't have a masquerade at all. The characters know their worlds are wacky places filled with monsters and alien invasions and weird technology and magic around every corner, and (when done well), it can be interesting to see how they cope with such a world overall. Like how in Breath of the Wild, you see Hylians going on holiday to places like Rito Village, Zora's Domain or Goron City, or how travellers come prepared with weapons, shields and healing food to fight off the regular monster attacks they'll encounter between towns/stables. How they avoided Guardian attacks at the last second, or how their fishing spots have been taken over by monsters/their livestock taken by them/etc. Same with Mario Odyssey, where you see NPCs from all over the world exploring each kingdom and taking part in local celebrations and what not. Or with Pokemon, where everything uses them, from crime to law enforcement to wars and building construction and electrical power and what not.



Also don't like the whole 'hollywood tactics' concept in general, or how easily humanity seems to lose to attacks by aliens/zombies/robots whatever. No, real life tactics do not come down to 'see enemy in open field, charge at it and fight hand to hand like in Braveheart'. The fact that's how fights seem to work in World War Z, Doctor Who (whenever UNIT is involved), The Matrix (especially the Animatrix Second Renaissance prequel) and others is embarassing, and only seems to be the case because writers need a cheap way to kill off the police/military so the hero can swoop in and save the day.

It also does intelligent enemies a disfavour too, since I'm sure an alien invasion/robot uprising would involve the other side using actual tactics in the same way as real life human armies do. Having them come up with plans to counter human forces and outwitting their foes instead of just blindly using force would make them feel genuinely threatening. To some degree, I think the Doctor Who episode Extremis did this well, since in that one the Monks had actually simulating Earth/Earth's history in their computer systems a few million times to figure out all the ways humanity could fight back, and the episode itself takes place in one of those simulations. It makes them feel like actual evil masterminds, and (at least til the next two episodes killed their credibility) made them seem like interesting villains.

But yeah, those are just my thoughts on the matter.
 
CM30 said:
Character Types:

1 Honestly though, if I had to say I disliked any character type in particular, it'd probably be the 'flat earth atheist' one. Always felt the trope was a lazy way for writers to attack science and sceptism by comparing them to a religion, as if the only reason people don't believe in gods or ghosts or mythical beings is because they hate the idea of them and don't want them to be real. If a character (especially a scientist) lives and works in a world where the supernatural is real, then they should believe in its existence, especially if they've seen/heard/interacted with it on a regular basis.

2 Finally, I dislike what I consider 'character point design'. What's that? It's when contrasts between characters are made on the assumption that humans are like Dungeons and Dragons characters and have a limited number of skill points to work with. For example, you've got the nice but dumb guy and the smart jerk, as if being good at something means having no social skills and being a misanthrope that others should tolerate because of your innate brilliance. Or popular vs unpopular kids at school, with the latter being smart but socially clueless and the former being dumb jocks and alpha bitches (TV Tropes wording), with the assumption that popular people are always moronic jackasses and unpopular people are nice and smart. Were tons of TV writers and cartoonists bullied at school or something?

Story Ideas:

3 For ones I like, well I like 'mystery' esque stories that don't involve crimes or other mundane things, but alien invasions and fantasty tricks. In other words, the kind of set found out in Doctor Who stories like the God Complex, Extremis or Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. Always liked the weird mystery box set up of trying to figure out why something strange is going on, and it turning out that the small things that don't seem quite right are all because reality is fake or something is trying to trick you.

4 I've also got a fondness for meta humour/jokes (see the Paper Mario series and Banjo-Kazooie series for example), though I'm also the kind of person who acknowledges it can be done very poorly as an excuse for bad writing (see perhaps much of Nuts and Bolts, and the Paper Mario games from Sticker Star onwards).

5 Finally, I also like works that don't take place on Earth or an alternate version of it, but in an entirely different world with its own rules and history. That's one reason I really like both the Mario and Zelda franchises, because they're not just 'Earth with magic, except there's a masquerade keeping normal people unaware', but entirely constructed worlds which function independently of it, and whose inhabitants are aware of/affected by its goings on.

6 As for least favourite story ideas and concepts... well I dislike the whole 'masquerade' concept in general to be honest with you. The whole 'good and evil are fighting in real life with magic and super science, but have to keep all of humanity unaware that they're not really living in boring old 21st century Earth' idea is really overdone in fiction nowadays, and always struck me as a trope which raises more questions than answers. Why should people be unaware of fantasy elements or super science? Why keep these things from society as a whole? Why pass off a much more interesting setting as yet another boring version of Earth which mostly seems to function like our world?
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1: Jesus Christ, that is so fucking idiotic I can't believe that's a thing-- *remembers the younger brother from Halloweentown* Oh God you're right. Ooooo, tha-- mmmm, ooh I'm angry! "EUHHH, IT's PAPER MACHE" No you dipshit it's a living breathing skeleton have some respect
2: Yeah, that is pretty stupid, but I'm pretty sure the reason this one persists is because actual people aren't like that, so by default it almost falls into a sort of "romanticization" or "idealization" territory
3 Dude, I regularly think about "Praise... him." God Complex is such a good story. I also really liked the one where find "The Beast" in that asteroid, that was really cool, and I think also falls under this category you're talking about.
4: How true
5 mm. yeah-- I think Konosuba falls under this category-- Overlord too, perhaps
6 Harry Potter I think is the only example I can think of where this doesn't piss me off, because it actually makes complete sense-- Witch Hunts were literally A Thing, and on top of that Muggles can't use magic anyway, so what's the point in letting a bunch of nosy less-than-squibs bother them? Those who didn't fear them-- old people, knackers, middle-aged women, etc.-- would act like three-year-old children with all the questions and the why why how why bla bla bla, much too much trouble, I don't blame the Ministry and whoever else at all for thinking this. (By this line of thinking I suppose Wizards of Waverly Place also falls under this category... buuut it still leaves a bit to be desired in this regard.)
 
tahutoa said:
1: Jesus Christ, that is so fucking idiotic I can't believe that's a thing-- *remembers the younger brother from Halloweentown* Oh God you're right. Ooooo, tha-- mmmm, ooh I'm angry! "EUHHH, IT's PAPER MACHE" No you dipshit it's a living breathing skeleton have some respect
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Immediately felt the need to draw how this scene should have gone. Rather proud of the fist in panel 3
 

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Favorite character types: As corny and pretentious as I may be for saying it, characters that are deeply flawed yet still manage to communicate brilliant moral messages to the audience and/or be just plain hilarious; just to name a few examples:
  • Luigi in Luigi's Mansion; acts like a complete pussy-willow all throughout the entire game but still faces his fears all the while due to his dearly beloved brother's life being at stake (to be honest, the game itself was just okay at best, but the THEME of it was just plain incredible)
  • Courage from Courage The Cowardly Dog, for basically the same reason as Luigi in LM (just replace "brother" with "adoptive owners")
  • The Joker from Batman (manages to completely embody the classic "we're not so different after all, are we" cliche without ever actually making said statement outright to Batman, being every bit as insane as Batman himself comes across as being to the general populace of Gotham except that Batman has good intentions while he has bad ones; for the record, Batman himself does not count, since he might as well literally refer to his Bat Suit as his "Plot Armor" at this point for all I care about his essentially non-existent personality)
  • Derek Vinyard from American History X, as he is a deeply, violently racist psychopath who is deliberately written to make the audience utterly despise him as much as possible for at least 60 if not 70 percent of the entire film, yet still makes you feel immensely bad for him in the film's ending nevertheless, when it turns out that everything his prison time has taught him about the error of his former ways was for naught all along
  • Joseph Joestar in the Battle Tendency saga of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure; despite being cocky, narcissistic and generally obnoxious, he is still way beyond smart and clever enough to back said attitude up, basically embodying the series' otherwise largely empty message of having characters use their actual brains to defeat each other as opposed to just pure brawn like in most other stereotypical shounen anime
  • Wario himself, for largely similar reasons to those of Joseph (in addition to him also being fat, greedy and lazy)
Least favorite character types: Any character who is a blatant, bland-as-butter Mary Sue / Gary Stu, especially ones that are incredibly overrated and/or designed purely to promote political agendas...that, or just an obnoxiously stereotypical villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever; for example:
  • Rey from the Star Wars sequels, as she makes Luke Skywalker's Gary Stu status in the original Star Wars trilogy look subtle by comparison and, just to make matters even worse, doesn't even have to actually earn her Mary Sue status through actual, oh I don't know, training in the arts of Lightsaber wielding and the Force the way that Luke did in Episodes IV and V; granted, Star Wars fanboys can pretend all they want that the reason for this was to show that she was "naturally talented", but come on: we all know it was just another product of Disney's blatant obsession with "female empowerment", combined with the writers being far too lazy to write a properly developed or even remotely original plot for the film
  • Superman and Batman, who are both ridiculously overpowered (almost beyond belief, in fact) and pretty much completely devoid of any sort of actually interesting personality whatsoever; I can technically forgive it a little bit more with Superman, however, since I happen to know a lot more people that actually do acknowledge Superman's blandness when compared to that of Batman, and also because Superman's overpowered-ness comes from actual superpowers (not counting super-strength, super-intelligence and automatic mastery of every possible gadget type on the face of the Earth) rather than just *cough* insultingly blatant plot armor that his writers use as a cheap substitute for superpowers *cough*
  • Eustace from Courage The Cowardly Dog, for while I will gladly admit that he is easily one of the funniest characters (if not the funniest character) in the entire series, his personality literally amounts solely to "grumpy, sniveling old coot that hates everything and everyone, and also gets off to torturing his dog"; also, like every other character in the series apart from Courage himself, he never gets any actual development whatsoever, making him objectively a complete waste of a character (hell, even Di Lung, the show's "pretentious Chinese douchebag" stock character whose only purpose for ever even being included in the show's cast in the first place was so that he could arrogantly insult other people for not being as rich and smart as he was, at least redeemed himself at the end of the series after his Evil Empress aunt was converted into a Good Empress aunt)
  • Fassad (Yokuba) from Mother 3, as he is basically just Wario without the charm (or the soul); that's not even mentioning his animal abuse fetish
  • Steppenwolf in Justice League 2017, as basically everything that was fantastic about Thanos in Infinity War was downright atrocious about him
LEAST FAVORITE STORY TYPES:

Anything that is mindless pseudo-intellectual schlock (looking at you two in particular, Zack Snyder and Black Panther 2018) or just a potentially ingenious idea wasted on unimaginative and shitty writing (The Buzz On Maggie, for example, which had the understatedly brilliant concept of being about a secret society of anthropomorphic flies who lived in garbage dumps that they had personally refashioned into post-apocalyptic Nuke-Towns...unfortunately, however, rather than being written by the types of people that make surrealist black-comedy masterpieces like Courage TCD, Invader Zim, Rocko's Modern Life, and what remarkably few genuinely good episodes there actually are, in retrospect, of Ren & Stimpy, it was instead written by the exact same types of idiotic hacks that you normally see writing shows for Disney Channel, meaning that it turned out as one of the most ridiculously generic and cliched tween girl sitcoms in existence; an utterly perfect example of a show with completely the wrong target audience)

FAVORITE STORY TYPES:

Basically anything that is the opposite of what I just mentioned, as in something that seems stupid at first glance but is actually incredibly smart and nuanced once you actually take the time to properly delve into all of the nitty-gritty details of it; also, as I mentioned before, satire and black comedy
 
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The 'oh, I thought YOU were evil, you look just like shadow [INSERT NAME OF PROTAGONIST]'.
One, it's lazy and overused.
Two, oftentimes the two share a silhouette, but look TOTALLY DIFFERENT if you see in MORE THAN ONE COLOUR
 
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