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Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
Hmmm, nah. Bastila is still the best. I mean, your actual romance dialogue with her is weird and annoying towards her as shit. But whatever.
 
thesevenwielder said:
On Overwatch: it's the online shooter equivalent of Street Fighter when it comes to characters being National stereotypes. Nothing new to see here, move along.
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That's... a pretty good analogy. Do you know how many fighting games have big rosters of fighters not nearly as memorable as the Street Fighter gang? Most of 'em!

They do hit a pretty similar sweet spot where on the one hand, they're stereotypes, on the other hand, they're also very memorable individuals. On the one hand Guile is generic US soldier good guy... but on the other hand he's Guile and you will never mistake him for anyone else in your entire life and his theme goes with everything.

How many Chinese martial arts women are there? A ton! And they often blur together. But Chun-Li stands out for some reason.

On Rey: while she doesn't meet the requirements for being a Mary Sue, that doesn't excuse her being a poor character. She actively sucked the life out of any scene she was in. She was like a much worse done version of Luke Skywalker. Things come way too easy to her, but not to the extent that she's a Mary Sue.
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You know, I really disagree. I liked her a lot, felt her 'someone clearly waiting for parents who will never come back,' angle was great, and her interactions with Finn were enjoyable.

Milage varies and all that!
 
Q99 said:
They do hit a pretty similar sweet spot where on the one hand, they're stereotypes, on the other hand, they're also very memorable individuals. On the one hand Guile is generic US soldier good guy... but on the other hand he's Guile and you will never mistake him for anyone else in your entire life and his theme goes with everything.
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Plus he was played by John Claude Van Dam and if you see that movie you will never forget it.
 
Edited in heading: Note that this is the Unpopular Opinions We Have thread.

Protagonists need to be killed more often in general. To someone familiar with fiction at all, tension is basically nonexistent in non-interactive media because the protagonist never dies until the end, and almost never dies then, either. A way to assuredly get fans to not fixate on "protagonists" is to have a series that frequently kills off such characters to avert long-runners getting arbitrary power levels and to make it so that people actually care about the fights as a serious threat, because any character can die, no matter how popular.

Sure, this probably results in ratings dropping like a rocket-assisted comet, but it forces people to confront the fact that these characters aren't always winning. You can lower the gut-punch by having the series focus on the group rather than the specific people in it, averting the idea of a "protagonist" altogether by making it so that the characters are of similar prominence and are clearly not more important than others.

Also, poison. Poisoned weapons ought to actually mean something. Getting hit by anything used by a renowned poisoner should be treated with immediate panic by everyone present other than the poisoner, because anything they get a wound in with can carry a nasty poison. Which should make a showing of actually being a serious threat that kills someone plot-important. Probably not a major character, but a plot-important side or temporary character in a good position to end up part of the persistent cast of characters is a good target for making the audience consider that long-term characters are truly threatened. Which falls under the sort of false tension I hate about narrative conventions.

Is our civilization still caught up on the idea of Great Men and Legendary Heroes to the point we can't stand to see the path of people who fail to accomplish the resolution of the events? Can we not stand to see a story focusing on the people who die to pave the path for the one person who actually finishes it with us only seeing that person as they set out to finish what that trail of corpses started?

It wouldn't change the way stories are written, because people hate seeing major characters die. But we don't have any stories that escaped obscurity about the trail of corpses that pave the way for the ones who get into history. We don't get stories about the series of people who fought and died to make the ending happen. The closest major recent case is Rogue One, which focuses on one small group going after a long-forgone conclusion. And the tension isn't quite real because it's very much a case of being worked into a corner where it'd be more bizarre for them to get out of the situation alive than for them to die there. Because their mission is finished by then, and they are in a position where it'd be a plot hole for someone to even bother trying to pick them up.

Granted, it gets very close to the sort of thing I'm talking about. What I'm looking for is where the entire cast is turned over more than once. Nobody from the starting cast living to see the thing they set out to do done is what I'm talking about. Why don't we get any major stories like that? There's a lot of place for them in interactive media, being able to be integrated as a pseudo-lives-system where there's a limited number of people to work with and actual writing for characters dying in certain broad orders. Like Fire Emblem, only with more narrative focus on the deaths and the entire primary cast being able to die with one random nobody being the one to finish it.
 
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MaHaL said:
Wrong. Morrigan best waifu fite me.

Merrill a cute tho.
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fite u merrill still best waifu

morrigan pretty good tho

AKuz said:
*Plants Flag on the hill of Merrill best girl*

Honourable mention to Vetra for being best Tol-urian

Honourable mention to Liara for actually being a long term relationship where things don't end with "And then they fucked and you won Romance fivever" due to the whole trilogy thing.

[...]

Honourable mention to Leiliana for remaining in a long term long distance relationship with my Warden despite it being two games later and the Warden being halfway across the continent in a pre industrial society without electronic messaging.
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Comrade~
 
Merrill wasn't even the best romance in the game she was in, much less in Bioware in general.
 
Morphic Tide said:
Edited in heading: Note that this is the Unpopular Opinions We Have thread.

Protagonists need to be killed more often in general. To someone familiar with fiction at all, tension is basically nonexistent in non-interactive media because the protagonist never dies until the end, and almost never dies then, either. A way to assuredly get fans to not fixate on "protagonists" is to have a series that frequently kills off such characters to avert long-runners getting arbitrary power levels and to make it so that people actually care about the fights as a serious threat, because any character can die, no matter how popular.

Sure, this probably results in ratings dropping like a rocket-assisted comet, but it forces people to confront the fact that these characters aren't always winning. You can lower the gut-punch by having the series focus on the group rather than the specific people in it, averting the idea of a "protagonist" altogether by making it so that the characters are of similar prominence and are clearly not more important than others.
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It is true that more stories could do with diversifying and reducing the absolute prominence of any one member of the cast. But on the whole, killing off characters in droves just to maintain tension is an incredibly bad way to do it. There are techniques to maintain tension and excitement in a story where you know the hero will, probably, make it out alive. There are few ways for people to retain interest in a story where the characters they care about keep getting slaughtered. Eventually people just leave in disgust.

It's not like 'nobody gets out alive' is particularly true even in brutal conflicts either. So unless your story only follows one particular military unit, the idea that every major character will die is even less plausible than most of them surviving.
 
Triggerhappy said:
killing off characters in droves just to maintain tension is an incredibly bad way to do it.
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While I disagree about that aspect of his plan, artists trying to instill fear for the characters personal safety does often feel phony. You don't need to kill everyone, but if there were enough works where protagonists died, maybe I would sometimes have some worry over the fate of the protagonist. Because as it stands, unless the genre is thriller/horror, I don't care how grim the situation looks because I know the protagonist is getting out of there somehow.

That's not to say I don't enjoy watching protagonists escape grim situations, but it's limiting when you can't construct a story where there's legitimate worry about the protagonist's survival.
 
Dark Lord Bob said:
While I disagree about that aspect of his plan, artists trying to instill fear for the characters personal safety does often feel phony. You don't need to kill everyone, but if there were enough works where protagonists died, maybe I would sometimes have some worry over the fate of the protagonist. Because as it stands, unless the genre is thriller/horror, I don't care how grim the situation looks because I know the protagonist is getting out of there somehow.
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Dark Lord Bob said:
While I disagree about that aspect of his plan, artists trying to instill fear for the characters personal safety does often feel phony. You don't need to kill everyone, but if there were enough works where protagonists died, maybe I would sometimes have some worry over the fate of the protagonist. Because as it stands, unless the genre is thriller/horror, I don't care how grim the situation looks because I know the protagonist is getting out of there somehow.
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While I agree with this sentiment in general, its not actually a pet peeve for me. Sometimes you just wanna watch a plot-armoured clad protagonist open a can of whoop-ass on those baddies.

That said, I do appreciate it when a story manages to do the entire "killing characters off" thing well, its half the reason I'm such a big fan of AoT
 
Dynasty Warriors is the best beat 'em up for the whole family. Mostly.

Fire Emblem did the whole killing off main characters before it became popular.
 
Dark Lord Bob said:
While I disagree about that aspect of his plan, artists trying to instill fear for the characters personal safety does often feel phony. You don't need to kill everyone, but if there were enough works where protagonists died, maybe I would sometimes have some worry over the fate of the protagonist. Because as it stands, unless the genre is thriller/horror, I don't care how grim the situation looks because I know the protagonist is getting out of there somehow.

That's not to say I don't enjoy watching protagonists escape grim situations, but it's limiting when you can't construct a story where there's legitimate worry about the protagonist's survival.
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I think a major problem is the protagonist by necessity is going to be one you care a lot about, and if you get rid of them, that will make it very hard to keep people attached to the story. So you see the odd protag death in finales, or early on ('decoy protagonists') but midway is very tricky.

I view two main ways of handling it.

One, a true ensemble story. If you have multiple, then you can lose a key character or two and the audience caring is distributed among the rest. Sentai shows have done this on a number of occasions.

Two, make the stakes something about other than the survival of the protagonist. Lotta options here.


Oh, and sidenote, the genre I can think of that does kill off protagonists the most? Superhero comics. And I don't even mean the revolving door ones, there have been main characters (often main characters of minor books, but sometimes of major ones) who've died a decade+ ago and remain dead. Think on that.
 
Dark Lord Bob said:
While I disagree about that aspect of his plan, artists trying to instill fear for the characters personal safety does often feel phony. You don't need to kill everyone, but if there were enough works where protagonists died, maybe I would sometimes have some worry over the fate of the protagonist. Because as it stands, unless the genre is thriller/horror, I don't care how grim the situation looks because I know the protagonist is getting out of there somehow.

That's not to say I don't enjoy watching protagonists escape grim situations, but it's limiting when you can't construct a story where there's legitimate worry about the protagonist's survival.
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You could try raising your suspension of disbelief? You need to ignore the fact that protags don't really die without any buid-up, because randomly murdering your protags makes for a lack of emotional investment and is thus terrible writing. (see ASOIAF, I don't give a shit about anyone). You need to just accept this fact and try to believe that the protag is in danger to enjoy the story.
 
I don't like cyberpunk that skimps out on the punk elements; it tends to lose a lot of punch and energy doing that, and it's getting rid of the core of the genre.
 
For me killing off characters always a more shitty idea than not. Unless the body count is done well I'd rather have most of the cast make it out intact so we can see the full measure of their development over the story. Some of my favorite stories would have been hampered or outright ruined by needless death for the sake of tensions or shock value.

I mean, I'm overwhelmingly biased towards character driven narratives over plot driven. So not feeling the tension that killing off characters is supposedly essential for doesn't bother.

VolantRedX said:
Merrill wasn't even the best romance in the game she was in, much less in Bioware in general.
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I thought Merrill's romance was kind of weird and creepy. Because she genuinely came off to me like she was either a teenager, or had some early childhood mental condition. Possibly both.
 
Super popular opinion: I wish I could have romanced Aveline instead.
 
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Hykal94 said:
Unpopular opinion: I wish I could have romanced Aveline instead.
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Don't think that's unpopular. The only DA2 characters everyone loves are Varric and Aveline. Everyone else has many a vocal hater.

Speaking of which, I don't really care about Varric. I don't hate him but the love for him never made sense to me. I guess it might if I hated Anders, Fenris, Isabela and Merrill but...well, I don't. I love the DA2 cast.

And @VolantRedX

Isabela is good, too! I love all the romances. Merrill is just more my type.

Oddly, while BW uses very similar overall character types - which explains why I love Dawn Star and Merrill - the most popular member of this "family" is Tali. And I hate Tali.
 
Hykal94 said:
Unpopular opinion: I wish I could have romanced Aveline instead.
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I think her character is better off without one. But it would have been nice to have one BioWare romance who was, just, like a normal ass person who was clearly a fully fledged adult, where the romance didnt have some elements of wounded puppy hurt comfort stuff.

That's probably why I like the Andronikos Revel relationship in TOR so much.
 
foamy said:
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Problem with Rogue One's approach is that it was never in any doubt that they were all gonna die - everything about the film screamed an everyone dies scenario, so there wasn't a great deal of tension in that either. The trick is that you need to make people unsure, to wonder if a given character will die.
 
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