Literary tropes that suck donkey balls

[Bedlam]

There's also the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko, which has the Light and the Dark, and they basically have an agreement to maintain a Balance, but this isn't because the Balance is inherently desirable, but because they're both basically forced into it by mutually assured destruction. Both the Light and the Dark would love nothing more but to erase the other from existence, but unless you can get truly overwhelming odds in your favor, the other side can strike back and you both end up being screwed.

So basically magical intervention to alter the Balance is of the "you have done this and this, and that now gives the other side the right to cast a miracle of an equivalent magical power". And you have an impartial Inquisition ready to stomp on you if you break the rules.

Its also suggested that the real reason for the truce is to keep things low key and thus prevent normals from finding out about magic and killing both the light and dark ones.

[The Dark]

The problem (and this is a very minor spoiler for the next book) is that the other two swordbearers are not of the same level of faith as him, to put it mildly. But they are only differentiated from him by their relative levels of experience, and their weapons are of the same caliber. It would be better and more consistent if they simply were blessed weapons rather than the implications associated with faith power.

That's what they are. Artifacts have power in Dresden's world. They don't even have to be blessed, persay(see the Noose). It's not even the swords themselves that are the power, given two of them have been reworked, possibly multiple times. It's the crucifix nails worked into the hilts.

That's what would be preferable, except for the indications that it's because of belief that are consistently brought up by Harry, and Harry is never really shown as wrong in this.

But each sword is also different. Michael's sword is the sword of Love, Shiro's is Faith, and Sanya's is Hope. Sanya's background clearly makes him an example of hope (I don't want to spoil it for Gaidin, but it should be obvious why for those that have read his background), and Shiro believed everything would work out despite seemingly being in hopeless situations.

Another interesting thing is that all the swordbearers are descended from royalty - Charlemagne for Michael, Saladin for Sanya, and the last king of Okinawa for Shiro.

Basically, the whole faith thing is Harry's theory. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. As of yet, there's really not evidence either way, and the descended from royalty thing (for permanent swordbearers, at least) holds up thus far.

[Todeswind]

How about everyone in the damn universe speaking english? It's not a literary trope per se, but honestly as a linguist it bugs the everliving hell out of me that every extraterrestrial villain in the damned universe is played off like an English Aristocrat. A lot of series toss the "universal translator" at us but that has always felt like a cop-out to me. Series like "Ender's Game" or anything written by Tolkien where they actually bother to consider language seem better than the series where they do not.

[Junghalli]

There is a series of books by the Russian writer Nick Perumov which are pretty much like that, complete with a metaphysical scale <snip>

Sounds cool.

----

As far as tropes that bug me personally:

I'm going to agree with Grif that I dislike the whole idea of an organized metaphysical good and evil side (light and dark, whatever). As he said, I find the whole notion childish in its simplification of how the world works. The villains in such settings are often also so blatantly repulsive that I have difficulty suspending disbelief for them amounting to anything more than some tiny fringe group.

In a somewhat related vein, black and grey morality. When the author begins with a morally ambiguous (grey and grey) setting, but then chickens out and decides to restore the old straightforward hero/villain dynamic by making the antagonists ridiculously over the top evil. So you have "ambiguity" in the sense that the protagonists are assholes, but this never translates into any actual doubt over who you're supposed to root for because the antagonists compensate by being moustache-twirlers who want to rape and eat everybody's babies. Warhammer 40K is probably the archetypal example of this (it gets some points for being borderline parody anyway so it probably shouldn't be taken too seriously, but still...). For a more subtle example, I thought one of the weaker points of Peter Watts's Rifters trilogy was he did a great job creating a highly morally ambiguous world, but then at the end decided to spring for a villain that was basically ridiculous evil.

YMMV as always in these matters.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Cliffhangers+Dues Ex Machina, or Sex Cliffhangers+cockblocking interuptions: ok this goes back almost 200 years, but it's been done to death.

[xt828]

Junghalli, I'm not totally up on the 40k background, but I was under the impression that the only gratuitously evil sides are Chaos and the Dark Eldar, with the Necrons being borderline since I can't remember their motivation. Everyone else isn't evil so much as totally self-centered. Even Chaos has its shades of dark grey with the fact that the viewpoint is usually that of the Imperium, which tends to argue that any humans who have had contact with the Imperium and not signed up by definition serve Chaos.

[Junghalli]

Junghalli, I'm not totally up on the 40k background, but I was under the impression that the only gratuitously evil sides are Chaos and the Dark Eldar, with the Necrons being borderline since I can't remember their motivation. Everyone else isn't evil so much as totally self-centered.

My point was less about that and more that there's little real ambiguity in the situation from the audience perspective because it's totally obvious which side you as a person who doesn't want to see everyone suffer horribly and/or die would want to win. The Imperium can be the biggest giant swinging dicks covered in dick sauce with dick filling that they want but as long as they remain a society where humans can exist in something other than 100% nightmarish suffering they'll still be an obviously better option than the guys that want to literally kill and eat everyone.

[xt828]

Again just going off my memory of the setting, but the Tau want to incorporate humans into their empire, in a position subservient to the Tau but in comfort. The Craftworld Eldar want us to stop getting in their way, more or less - stop fiddling with ancient relic, stop settling Maiden Worlds, stop arguing when they exterminate a tainted population - they don't want to outright exterminate us, but more take a position that they know better and we should stop arguing. The Exodite Eldar just want to not be invaded periodically. Now, yes, the Dark Eldar want to torture everyone to death over an extended period and the Necrons want to kill everyone and the Tyranids want to eat everyone and the Orks want endless war and Chaos want... well they have a wide variety of goals but they're pretty universal in being Bad News for everyone else, but by comparison the Tau and the two non-blatantly-evil Eldar are fairly reasonable, and you have to admit that the Imperium isn't exactly happiness and light.

[Zixinus]

A quick one then: Amnesia.

Few authors do manage to use it well, but usually it is the staple of lazy and unimaginative writers for easy exposition and trying to "cheat" the part about having to like the protagonist.

[Talhe]

Not quite sure if this is a trope, but whenever the writer/author decides that one character/side is Right, or that both sides are equal, no matter how un-redeeming or wrong-headed they are. I remember looking at Avatar and rolling my eyes at the Na'vi (and the humans for their stupidity), and wanting to murder several factions in the Wheel of Time for being so god damned dumb.

[pereZScoth]

There's also the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko, which has the Light and the Dark, and they basically have an agreement to maintain a Balance, but this isn't because the Balance is inherently desirable, but because they're both basically forced into it by mutually assured destruction. Both the Light and the Dark would love nothing more but to erase the other from existence, but unless you can get truly overwhelming odds in your favor, the other side can strike back and you both end up being screwed.

Well in that matter.
The light brings a power that could detonates the Dark forces but on the second thought the Dark also does the same. But in the real world that might not exist, but in the super natural part, well, it does on what others thought of.

And if the other would erase the existence of the other one that could bring an advantage as well as a disadvantage on the residue.

[Iroscato]

There's also the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko, which has the Light and the Dark, and they basically have an agreement to maintain a Balance, but this isn't because the Balance is inherently desirable, but because they're both basically forced into it by mutually assured destruction. Both the Light and the Dark would love nothing more but to erase the other from existence, but unless you can get truly overwhelming odds in your favor, the other side can strike back and you both end up being screwed.

Well in that matter.
The light brings a power that could detonates the Dark forces but on the second thought the Dark also does the same. But in the real world that might not exist, but in the super natural part, well, it does on what others thought of.

And if the other would erase the existence of the other one that could bring an advantage as well as a disadvantage on the residue.

Necro much?

[Dalton]

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