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Cliches you can't stand

Morphic Tide said:
Personally, when it comes to explaining how supernatural shit works in-setting, I usually default to "because magic" and "because {insert old-ass disproven pseudoscience/superstition about how things work}"

Like, my internal logic tends towards magic being subjective reality, unless very specifically stated otherwise. In Warcraft, for example, I see only Arcane magic as something you can truly science the shit out of, because in-universe, it's the only form of magic that has universities for it. Holy magic is canonically based on one's belief, and Shadow magic is literally made of insanity. All the other forms of magic relate to belief, emotion or willpower, which are all subjective things that can't be scienced.
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Manic Dogma said:
My personal method is somewhere between the two. I am extremely fond of the idea of Magic as another branch of science, though one closer to psychology than the more solidly mathematical disciplines. So, i tend to establish that there are rules, elaborate on the plot important ones and leave the rest to vague allusions from characters who theoretically know what they're doing. Who I will never write from the First person perspective of.
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My current goto definition for magic is basically "certain logical paradigms not based on material empiricism". I often see the wrongheaded presentation of "magic doesn't have rules" or "magic is mysterious", but just look at any fairy tale or classical supernatural creature and there are tones of rules... they're just strange and arbitrary rules based on symbols and metaphors and concepts and ideas, rather than concrete Newtonian mechanics.

To use one example, take the paradigm of story narratives. We know that the investigator never catches the right crook 5 minutes in, not because the laws of physics mandate it, but because the laws of storytelling mandate that they do not. If you had a fictional world that openly runs on narrative causality 'cough' discworld 'cough', it would be very much rule-based, just not rules like "an object in motion stays in motion". Granted I probably wouldn't put narrative causality as magic, hence "certain paradigms" not all paradigms. If the magic is totally material and empirical, then its science wrapped in fantasy, much like Star Wars is fantasy wrapped in sci fi.
 
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You know, I think I've said it before, but it would be interesting to have a setting where nothing more than, at most, the practical rules have been discovered. I mean, if we imagine 'earth' as a strange fantasy world, in which a magic system based on the manipulation of materials and an arcane art known as 'physics' and 'chemistry' (among other arcane magical methods) has led to doing extraordinary things, then for literally most of human history we didn't understand why it worked...we just did it. We had rules, note, but those rules were, you know, sometimes wrong, and other times practical rules whose answer to why is, "I don't fucking know, God did it, but it works."
 
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"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."

Good way to convey the idea but the line itself is so hackneyed at this point.

The Archon saying it in Mass Effect: Andromeda just made me roll my eyes. Or, someone said it in ME:A. I think it was him. The point is, that game's use of this line brought me here. I'm tired of hearing it. Think of a new way to convey sacrifices are necessary.
 
Nikkolas said:
"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."

Good way to convey the idea but the line itself is so hackneyed at this point.

The Archon saying it in Mass Effect: Andromeda just made me roll my eyes. Or, someone said it in ME:A. I think it was him. The point is, that game's use of this line brought me here. I'm tired of hearing it. Think of a new way to convey sacrifices are necessary.
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"Sacrifices are neccessary" would be one alternative.
 
Nikkolas said:
"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."

Good way to convey the idea but the line itself is so hackneyed at this point.

The Archon saying it in Mass Effect: Andromeda just made me roll my eyes. Or, someone said it in ME:A. I think it was him. The point is, that game's use of this line brought me here. I'm tired of hearing it. Think of a new way to convey sacrifices are necessary.
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As an aside, I believe it is,in fact, possible to make an omelette without breaking the eggs.

All you have to do is carefully poke two holes on opposite sides of the egg. Then you just blow into one of the holes until the edible bit comes out.
 
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PotentialPlateau said:
As an aside, I believe it is,in fact, possible to make an omelette without breaking the eggs.

All you have to do is carefully poke two holes on opposite sides of the egg. Then you just blow into one of the holes until the edible bit comes out.
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However, what is an egg? In a sense, are you not breaking the egg by removing what defines the egg? An egg is a thing that holds an embryo, or what could have been one. Remove what could have been a chicken baby, and though it is physically intact, have you not broken its eggness?
 
I really hate faux anti villains who are doing clearly evil shit and need to be stopped, but they have some sob story or noble goal they're working towards anyway.

Either give me an antagonist who can arguably not even be called a villain, or just give me a villain who doing it for asshole reasons. Don't go half-assed trying to do both.
 
Reveen said:
I really hate faux anti villains who are doing clearly evil shit and need to be stopped, but they have some sob story or noble goal they're working towards anyway.

Either give me an antagonist who can arguably not even be called a villain, or just give me a villain who doing it for asshole reasons. Don't go half-assed trying to do both.
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That's kind of...incredibly boring?

I mean, one of the reasons why I liked Zod better than most of the villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was because while his goals were being built atop the genocide of the human race, and while it's clear that he needed to be stopped, Zod felt like an actual, living person with his reasonings and his flaws. He's a vengeful prick with a raging ego and a massive messiah complex, but he also holds a genuine need to save his people who at times visibly tries to suppress his guilt about killing his best friend. People, including antagonists, are complex. In fact, most of the villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe I liked best - such as Helmut Zemo - were characters with comprehensible motivations that actually made them interesting to watch on-screen. This is compared to the majority of the MCU's villains, a collection of cartoonishly evil paper-cutouts (the Red Skull, HYDRA, Aldrich Killian, Malekith, Ronan, etc.) that...really makes the films to be "more of the same": Snarky heroes have Whedon-esque conversations to defeat superhero versions of how the American far right interprets "America's evil enemies in the evil Axis of Evil". I really can have less of that.
 
The important thing of having a evil villain without a sob story or being a antivillain is they need to be memorable and enjoyable in their own right or strike a impact on the audience ideally both.
 
Kei said:
That's kind of...incredibly boring?

I mean, one of the reasons why I liked Zod better than most of the villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was because while his goals were being built atop the genocide of the human race, and while it's clear that he needed to be stopped, Zod felt like an actual, living person with his reasonings and his flaws. He's a vengeful prick with a raging ego and a massive messiah complex, but he also holds a genuine need to save his people who at times visibly tries to suppress his guilt about killing his best friend. People, including antagonists, are complex. In fact, most of the villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe I liked best - such as Helmut Zemo - were characters with comprehensible motivations that actually made them interesting to watch on-screen. This is compared to the majority of the MCU's villains, a collection of cartoonishly evil paper-cutouts (the Red Skull, HYDRA, Aldrich Killian, Malekith, Ronan, etc.) that...really makes the films to be "more of the same": Snarky heroes have Whedon-esque conversations to defeat superhero versions of how the American far right interprets "America's evil enemies in the evil Axis of Evil". I really can have less of that.
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You would think Marvel would understand this fact given that the only MCU villain anybody gives a fuck about is Loki.
 
I like Kysillius (or however you spell it). He wanted to create a world where nobody had to die, and was too arrogant to realise he'd been duped.
 
Nikkolas said:
You would think Marvel would understand this fact given that the only MCU villain anybody gives a fuck about is Loki.
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Agents of Shield does better in that count. Hive was IMO one if not the best of their villains in part because of his death scene and Ward before his villain decay was decent and a lot better now with FrameWard.
 
Scientist is under a lot of pressure from his boss/government and is thus cutting corners and knowingly doing unsafe experiments which inevitably backfire in a spectacular way.

Is it too much to ask for a scientist to go:
"Look, either wait a month or deal with the inevitable fallout when experimental tech is rushed. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm busy preventing the tech from blowing up my lab."
 
Pidl said:
Scientist is under a lot of pressure from his boss/government and is thus cutting corners and knowingly doing unsafe experiments which inevitably backfire in a spectacular way.

Is it too much to ask for a scientist to go:
"Look, either wait a month or deal with the inevitable fallout when experimental tech is rushed. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm busy preventing the tech from blowing up my lab."
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Kinda? I don't remember every instance of this, but the feeling I get from this trope is that the project or whatever has already been delayed at least once before. The implication (and sometimes statement) is that the employer is fed up with delays and is no longer sure the scientist can deliver on the promised end result. If the scientist can't deliver in X amount of time, the employer will cut their losses, what ever that means in any individual case. Could just mean cutting funding, could mean scrapping the project or giving it to another scientist, could even mean death if the arrangement is particularly unscrupulous. Also taking into account that most movie scientists aren't exactly good with people or under pressure, is it really a stretch that they would fail to get an extension if they even ask for one.

Having said all that, I'm sure there are plenty of movies in which the employer knows for a fact that the scientist is the only one who can give them what they want but are still unreasonable about the timeframe and the whole thing plays out exactly the same. I can see how it could get annoying.

Me personally, I hate the unspoken plan guarantee. It attempts to create false tension by not telling us the plan. Often part of the plan is pretending to lose, only because we don't know the plan as far as we can tell the heroes are just losing. The problem is, it kills all tension as soon as you recognize it. Cut as soon as someone says, "Here's the plan..."? Well now I know everything is going to work out. The hero planned to get captured, if that's the hero at all.
 
"Oh no, the Monster is after us! Run for your life!"
The actors proceed to fucking jog away, while the camera just monotonously pans to the left or just follows them.

Director, if they're running from what the film is hyping as a threat, have them run.
 
"I will resurrect this ancient, all powerful monster and surely it will all turn out well for me. It could NEVER kill me or possess me or anything."
 
Nikkolas said:
"I will resurrect this ancient, all powerful monster and surely it will all turn out well for me. It could NEVER kill me or possess me or anything."
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Yeah, we definitely would be interesting to see more plots where it turns out well, so long as it happens in an appropriate setting and genre (i.e. when the work either presents the facts in a level-headed manner, or signals in advance that it's of a different genre - not trying to deceive the audience into thinking A, eventually showing B and going 'muahaha, foolish viewers, you got everything wrong' with no foreshadowing).
 
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Unless it's a comedy, then the bait and switch could be incredible if pulled off.

In my head I see a circle of black robed men, chanting ominously in sanskrit. They make the blood sacrifice and "TEN THOUSAND YEEEAAAAAARRRRRSSS will give you such a crick in the neck, OW"
 
Nikkolas said:
"I will resurrect this ancient, all powerful monster and surely it will all turn out well for me. It could NEVER kill me or possess me or anything."
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He didn't resurrect or summon him, but in Dragons Dogma there's this two-bit cultist antagonist who's dick is just rock hard for the impending apocalypse by dragon and... well...

 
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The Laurent said:
You know, I think I've said it before, but it would be interesting to have a setting where nothing more than, at most, the practical rules have been discovered. I mean, if we imagine 'earth' as a strange fantasy world, in which a magic system based on the manipulation of materials and an arcane art known as 'physics' and 'chemistry' (among other arcane magical methods) has led to doing extraordinary things, then for literally most of human history we didn't understand why it worked...we just did it. We had rules, note, but those rules were, you know, sometimes wrong, and other times practical rules whose answer to why is, "I don't fucking know, God did it, but it works."
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I totally agree.

And a corollary to that- during the story they never make giant leaps that let them suddenly understand vast swaths of stuff. Like, they can learn and advance *some* more, but make it clear that it's not like, "Of course! Once you realize that [X], the rest falls into place!". That crud takes time, centuries-millennia time.

Like, a new advance is made, people go, "Awesome! And now that we do this, then if my theory is right..." and then watch logical hypothesizes not work out because their guesses really lack the sufficient information to move forward and will continue to lack that until there's many years greater work and understanding of the new advance.

And the person who says 'you're all hidebound and afraid to experiment'? They go and try anyway and... they don't succeed! They don't blow themselves up either, it's not a story of hubris, it's just their radical stuff turns out to not be right and the more cautious people really are trying to research too and they all go back to having to try blind groping and practicing what they have.
 
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