Things you hate in fiction

[Gorefiend]

I'd be willing to, though I can't guarantee I'd do the greatest job ever.

And, let's see...

Rambling 3rd person narrators are hateful. Kills 90% of Spanish fiction for me, including celebrated works like A Hundred Years of Solitude. If you're gonna go 3rd person, show, don't fucking tell. Heck, even 1st person narrators need to learn to keep to the story, unless the whole point is that they're unreliable and rambly and it adds to the story and all.

Also, when you can tell a writer came up with his/her theme before the story was ever planned out. Even good writers are plagued by this; when you can visibly tell the theme is this great, awesome thing you're meant to think/talk about, but the story was rather weak. The best example I can think of, though, is the movie There Will Be Blood. Awesome themes to that, and I'm considering re-watching it to see if it'll change my mind about it, but most of the people I've spoken to agree the story was weak.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Sure theing Praetor. PM it to me.

[PraetorZorak]

EDIT: You know what, I'm just going to start my own thread instead of hijacking poor fifthfiend's thread.

[Mirai Gen]

or 'sex' (as in, her sex, his sex, etc., referring to genitalia).

I don't know where this trend started but god damn I want it to stop now.

Darkness = peril/unknown = evil is a psychological association with fairly obvious origins. It's been done a lot, but it's not silly in itself. Not that the metaphor has never been extended to race, but I don't think it's there to to begin with.

Well the idea behind the darkness=evil thing is because it's human nature. At night we're not able to see as well, we imagine the wildest stuff. We see a shuffle of bushes - Maybe it's an attacker? We run to stay safe.

Stretching that out to mean that the darkness is somehow deadly itself is cool at first but lately it's becoming rather trite.

And yeah, I don't see the racist thing, though I suppose it certainly could be.

Oh, and that's another thing! More black people in fiction. Come on, you have a character who's a cop in New York, why is he white? It doesn't change nearly enough to matter except to whittle away at the stereotypes and the fact that we take the white-character thought process down a notch.

[Azisien]

Well I don't know about you guys, but the past five or so books I've read have been far more multicultural, one even had the protagonist as a black guy.

In fact, you should all read Richard Morgan, his books even have lots of clumsy sex!

[Bells]

Silly Mirai... keeps forgetting about the "rule"

Black guys ALWAYS die first... hell, even the First Final Fantasy movie was faulty of that...

AH! it reminds me!! Stop killing the Black guy first!

[BitVyper]

Really "good" evil characters don't necessarily consider themselves to be evil.

Not all bad guys have to be misguided either. There are actually people out there who are proud to be bad.

Angelus kicks the shit out of most villains for well written villainy, and he never had any motivation beyond the fact that he's a fucking bastard. He knows it, and he loves it.

[Amake]

Professor Desty Nova in Battle Angel Alita is the best villain evar I think. As a genius without equal in the world, he considers it his right to abuse people for the sake of his scientific research and personal pleasure, and mutilates some thousands of innocents over the course of several years, destroys a city when losing control of an experiment he only chooses to perform because it's bold and exciting.

In short he's an utter bastard and manages to live with himself because he considers himself a higher order of being than other people. Which is hard to argue against as one of those other people. >_>

And in the end, despite subjecting both his own son and the protagonist and her mentor to the most awful of horrors, gaining a measure of sympathy and getting his head cut off, he manages to make peace with the hero, resolving his own antagonist status. Truly a transcendent bad guy.

Just had to throw that out there.

[Dauntasa]

Originally Posted by Bellsouth Minion

Silly Mirai... keeps forgetting about the "rule"

Black guys ALWAYS die first... hell, even the First Final Fantasy movie was faulty of that...

AH! it reminds me!! Stop killing the Black guy first!

Black protagonists are exempt from that rule. Whenever the protagonist is black, they'll be another, less important, black guy who dies first.

[Bells]

Originally Posted by Dauntasa

Black protagonists are exempt from that rule. Whenever the protagonist is black, they'll be another, less important, black guy who dies first.

Unless when there isnt. Then, the Black Protagonist will automaticly pair up with a white protagonist and assume the role of comic relief.

If Fictional Black Human is not First to die, or Comic relief to a White Protagonist, he is a pimp.