Fiction clichés you like and dislike

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Which fiction clichés do you like and dislike? This applies to any fiction (books, stageplays, films, TV series, musicals, operas or whatever).

I dislike

*In seafaring adventure films, it's always pirates who have hookarms and wooden legs. Why can't it be a seaman from a merchant ship seriously wounded in fight against pirates? Also dislike pirates using ships with broken sails.

*Science fiction:

Spacecraft flying like aeroplanes through outer space.

Spaceflight terms being indentical to water transport (spacecraft called spaceships or ships, spacefleets, space pirates to much based on stereotypical seafaring pirates).

Short distances between minor-planets and planetoids, sometimes called "asteroids", (like Star Wars).

Extraterrestrials in disguise having already been on Earth for a long time, and speed up evolution (don't care if it's just some years like Utroms not doing anything such, worse with all time the Kraang claim to have been on Earth).

Early-humans coexisting with dinosaurs. There are no scientific proof for that.

Wrong animal and nature at wrong place (tigers in African countries, lions in India or penguins in the Arctic and polar bears in Antarctica)

Second World War: Fascists from Germany and Italy escape to the Moon or Mars in a spacecraft

Alternate history: CSA successfully breaks away during the mid-or late-1860's, still in 2017 slaveships cross the oceans (slavery would probably be over by 1880, then just some discrimination like what we saw in the southern USA).

[TurtleWA]

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

Which fiction clichés do you like and dislike? This applies to any fiction (books, stageplays, films, TV series, musicals, operas or whatever).

I dislike

*In seafaring adventure films, it's always pirates who have hookarms and wooden legs. Why can't it be a seaman from a merchant ship seriously wounded in fight against pirates? Also dislike pirates using ships with broken sails.

*Science fiction:

Spacecraft flying like aeroplanes through outer space.

Spaceflight terms being indentical to water transport (spacecraft called spaceships or ships, fleets, space pirates to much based on stereotypical seafaring pirates).

Short distances between minor-planets and planetoids.

Extraterrestrials in disguise having already been on Earth for a long time, and speed up evolution (don't care if it's just some years like Utroms not doing anything such, worse with all time the Kraang claim to have been on Earth).

Early-humans coexisting with dinosaurs. There are no scientific proof for that.

Wrong animal and nature at wrong place (tigers in African countries, lions in India or penguins in the Arctic and polar bears in Antarctica)

Second World War: Fascists from Germany and Italy escape to the Moon or Mars in a spacecraft

Alternate history: CSA wins, still in 2017 slaveships cross the oceans (slavery would probably be over by 1880, then just some discrimination like what we saw in the southern USA).

I don't have examples specific to movies or books. But words and phrases in general that are annoying to me. Even if I have used them in the past. So they might apply to your "whatever" category.

Dislike:
-Epic
-Ominous
-Disrupt the market
-When you have lemons, make lemonade
-Transparent
-game changer

Like:
-a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
-the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence
-wicked good
-cool (it's classic and will always work)

If I think about it I'm sure I could come up with several more in both "like" and "dislike" sections.

[DestronMirage22]

I find it a bit annoying when the dark-haired protagonist is oblivious to the fact that he has multiple girls fawning over him. That happens way too often in anime.

Also having an American flag behind someone as they’re doing something heroic.

[Utrommaniac]

It's become a bit of a cliche to call out cliches for me.

Especially where Disney is concerned. And I've realized that a lot of the time, even when there's "Love At First Sight™", they don't really get married right away. We don't know how much time there was between Cinderella marrying her Prince. Or Ariel and Eric getting married. Heck, Cinderella was happy just to have a One Dance Stand with a dude that she found handsome and nice and was good to leave it at that, and was dumbfounded when she learned she was dancing with the Prince.

Though, I can understand Aurora and Phillip getting married pretty quickly since they were already betrothed from the time that they were very tiny.

So, I call bull on the "you can't marry someone you just met, Anna!" situation in Frozen because except for some very few exceptions, it doesn't seem that was something that happened in most Disney films.

However, I do love the "If you start singing, I'm going to throw up" line in Moana . A Call Out Cliche cliche that I like.

I've expressed in earlier that I really don't like the "goody-goody peaceful species" that comes up in science fiction and fantasy a lot. Specifically, the Neutrinos and Mirage/4Kids Utroms, suffering from the same problem of "non-violence unless in extreme danger". Which was why the Illuminated and South American waste dumping were such a huge relief, and why I am eagerly anticipating King Zenter's great "oh god, what have I done?".

I think having a "peaceful" race could work to some extent. It works pretty darn well with Hobbits now that I think of it, since they're basically clueless to the world outside of the Shire and thus end up cut off from a violent world, where the most bloodshed they'd see would either be from a horrible farming accident or a birth ending badly. Or butchering meat. A bit like how Dodos or penguins were/are so cut off from large land predators that they didn't recognize the danger in the things that would kill them, and wipe them out in the former example.
However, when they're actively being [Nixon Voice]Bleeding Heart Hippies[/Nixon Voice], it gets a little grating. Come on guys, get the skeletons out of the closet and shed your Dark Violent Secrets. You know they're there.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Cliches I dislike- villains who want to destroy the world/universe for whatever reason. Makes no sense. Any "good" villain would be too much of a narcissist to ever do something that would harm themselves. It only really works for some nihilistic "God is dead and life isn't worth living" type of character, and those are usually just suicidal anyway as opposed to wanting to take out the entire world with them. An extension of this is the "if I can't have her NO ONE can!" villain who tries to kill the object of his lust after being rejected. It is more realistic maybe, but still a bit over the top.

Cliches I do like- heroes having an "evil twin" or duplicate who wants to take their place, never mind the fact that they missed the obvious consequence that by doing so they would reap whatever karma or legal repercussions would ensue from the change in persona. IE, if Evil Kirk had taken over the ship and disposed of his double without being discovered, sooner or later when his crew realized he was drastically different they would have had him locked up and he'd be stuck in a cell the rest of his life. Same goes for any evil doppleganger of superheroes. If they try to ACT like the hero in question, they would either end up literally being them, or would revert to true persona and get busted. But they are so caught up in the IDEA that they never grasp how complicated it would be!

[ProactiveMan]

Witty characters who only succeed at being so because other characters are written to set them up all the time. I could be a regular Quippy Magee if everyone around me kept throwing out feeder lines.

It's much like characters who seem extraordinarily capable because they are surrounded by unreasonable levels of incompetence. The Murder She Wrote phenomenon. You buy that a folksy mystery novelist can solve a murder every week, because she operates in a world devoid of competent law enforcement.

[Allio]

I always like the one where "the character that is innocent/looking for innocence is the one that gets curroptef