fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2346 ]

[ SECRET POST #2346 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2346 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #335.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Inspired by the Daria secret: what are some other tropes/concepts/trends/ideas that you think are genuinely awesome, but have been so overdone they annoy you nowadays?

"Cool guys don't look at explosions!"

Yeah, it's not really that exciting anymore. Of course, it doesn't help that there's so much CGI, etc these days, you know damn well the actor's nowhere NEAR a real explosion anyway.

Yeah, it's one of those things where the fourth wall has, by now, seeped into and colored the intended effect on the audience a bit too much.

Also, this comment reminds me of the Seventh Doctor serial The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, where they only had money for one explosion, and therefore Sylvester McCoy had to play his badass walk all nonchalant and without jumping on the first take even though the pyrotechnics went off too early while he was still unsafely close. That's how you do it '80s BBC style! :D

Mustaches. Loved them at first and how they were just so quirky being all over the place. Now they're too played out.

Anything related to zombies. It's over, guys. Let it rot.

LOL Agreed.

No argument here.

Bacon.

Yes, I get it, it's tasty. Does it have to be on everything? I think I hit that point when Cracked ran an article including mention of a bacon condom.

no you are a wrongasaurousrex sorry

The whole "deconstructing the superhero and showing the darker implications of superheroing" thing in comic books.

It was awesome in 1985. It was played out by 1990. And yet they're still doing it as though it's groundbreaking AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH.

Seriously, can we please get the motor going with the whole incorporating the darker implications into the genuinely heroic and idealistic original superheroing model to make a broader and more nuanced cohesive whole? I find that fascinating, and yet every writer who does it gets overshadowed by storylines pushed through by morons going "Chilly down dog, lets me and my homies do a Watchmen ripoff again even though it came out twenty five years ago, yo!"

Yeah, it's the weirdest thing because people have moved on from that and tried to take the next step and written awesome, interesting stories that take that for granted and move on from it and do attempt to return to idealism. It's just that for whatever reason there's also a lot of people out there who are never going to stop doing this, for whom the trope of investigating the dark side of superheroes apparently never gets old. It's strange.

Re: Awesome things that have been done to death

intrigueing - 2013-06-06 01:07 (UTC) - Expand

I think in general people still go "let's make things gritty and dark and that's edgy," with comics and other media. I tend to like happy, upbeat stuff, but no that's not serious enough for some people

+9000

I am so sick of all these hack writers acting like their (usually poorly written) grim-'n'-gritty bullshit is sooooo original and innovative.

Memo to all the comic book writers out there: If you want to write about grim-'n'-gritty superheroes, that's fine. But don't pretend you're the first person to come up with the idea! It makes you look like an ignorant twit.

Steampunk.

Along that line, the "Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie" or something. The trope that's to use an unlikely combination of different cool things in a way that works. Nowadays even when it's done so that it works, it lacks the charm of absurdity it used to.

Vampires.

Joker-type, insane 'anything could happen' villains.

Khan.

Feisty, young, pretty, white Doctor Who companions.

Feisty, young, pretty, white Doctor Who companions.

Add "female, human, and from current-day Earth" and I agree.

Edited 2013-06-06 02:16 (UTC)

Teenagers saving the world. I often wish the stakes need not be raised so drastically high to show that the youth are capable of heroism and courage.

reinventing/remaking fairy tales a la snow white and the huntsman, Alice in wonderland, I think there's a red riding hood one coming up, etc... at first I really liked the idea but now it's so boring and overdone to me.

Zombie apocalypses.

Well, it's not so much that it's overdone, but that despite how much it's done, no one manages to do it right.

Being upset about firefly being cancelled. I watched every episode as they aired. I saw a midnight showing of the movie. I'm over it.

Sassy women and minorities who always have a smart and funny quip handy to smack down anyone who implies they're inferior for being a woman/black/gay/whatever else.

I thought Death being handed his own hourglass in Terry Pratchett's "Mort" was pretty awesome.

Re: Awesome things that have been done to death

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-06 05:56 (UTC) - Expand

I actually think pretty much all tropes are salvageable if done correctly. There's always a new way of doing or looking at something, if you give it some thought.

The supernatural learning to work in concert and intermixing with modern law and authorities. It was really cool for awhile, especially all the ideas people came up with, but now every time I see a blurb for a supernatural story/show/movie involving real cops, the FBI, the government, or whatever, in more than a vague background capacity, I avoid like the plague. I don't care anymore and I want law and order to go back to those thing supernatural avoided, ignored, and sometimes ate.

Re: Awesome things that have been done to death

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-06 07:55 (UTC) - Expand

Grimdark fantasy.

Urban fantasy with smart-mouth heroines. (Let me explain this a little further. The urban fantasy subgenre is rife with heroines who have a comeback to everything, even when it could result in them being dead, and moreover, tend to have a hate-on for other women, and are almost always The Very Best in whatever it is that they do... but at some point in the story fuck up in very basic ways and need to be Rescued By The Hero. Because it's emasculating if the hero doesn't save the heroine's ass or something. I also don't want to suggest that this wasn't problematic in the early days of urban fantasy, but as it's become more popular, the pattern is so very prominent that it's hard not to see it. And I love the idea of shapeshifters and vampires and magical beings in our world, right under our nose, but goddamn the tropes that come along with this subgenre are awful.)

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