I ban universe-threatening/saving McGuffins--what plot devices do *you* want to ban? OPEN SPOILERS

Cafe Society
81

I’ve played video games too long to hate McGuffin plots.

Depending on the setting there’s not much difference between saving a town, the country, or the world. The bigger the stakes the more abstract it is. It’s hard to care about the world, or the whole friggin’ galaxy. You need to make the audience care about the characters in the world first so there’s some connection. That’s easier to do in a video game, book, or TV show. Way harder in a two hour movie, since you’ll probably just meet the main characters and maybe their boring family members.

I don’t care for prophecy plots, but I assume people like them because they want the world to make some sort of sense instead of being random things happening. Or maybe it’s the fantasy that their lives could be cosmically important. Similar to the cliche where it’s revealed the poor farm girl is actually a princess! Ugh. I hate that one. Obviously the protagonists can’t be some schlub, no, they need royal blood.

This is a popular view nowadays but I kinda disagree, depending on what sort of villain or story we’re talking about. I assume you mean straight up bad guy type of villains, not anti-villains or a gray and gray setting where everyone is a mix of both (like, say, Game of Thrones).

For sci-fi/fantasy/adventure, to me a good villain is 90% presentation. They gotta look cool, have the best lines, have interesting powers or influence, and as a bonus have a solid villain laugh.

Most real life villains are one dimensional and have straight forward goals or are delusional, mentally unstable, or religious fundamentalists. So to me, overly complex villain motivations with angsty back stories is kinda phony. And if it’s revealed the evil warlord has mommy issues he’s a lot less intimidating. Like how the prequels ruined Vader. He was a dude in black with a cool robot voice (even his breathing was badass), a laser sword, and he wore a freaking cape. Cliche as hell but still awesome and everyone still quotes him.

Or what about the Joker? What’s his super deep motivation? Guy fell in some chemicals and went bonkers. One of the best villains ever.

Or Annie Wilkes from Misery. It’s all in the little details, like hating profanity despite killing people and breaking legs or seeming to be kind and helpful until you realize she’s a complete psycho.

Anti-villains like Magneto (or other knight templar trope antagonists) are probably the most interesting, but the problem is if they’re done right you end up thinking the heroes are fighting on the wrong side.

82

My problem with the Chosen One/Prophecy thing isn’t that those don’t exist in real life (who cares? it’s made up). I hate it because it’s inorganic. It means (as a rule; of course there are exceptions) that the characters’ actions and journeys don’t spring from within them, from their personalities and flaws and desires; they’re dictated by some nebulous outside force. The action could have happened to anyone, including a trained chimp, if the Chooser of the Chosen One had picked them instead. That’s weaker, lazier and much less interesting than a story where the action springs from the protagonist’s personality and could only happen to him or her.

83

If I had me druthers, I’d ban the plot development where an ensemble group that exists to perform some elite function ceases to focus on that function and starts to become all about internal division and mistrust (is there a traitor in their midst?), or else some event has them all being investigated/arrested by external groups that may or may not be being used by villains.

Classic example is NCIS, where instead of having an outward focus investigating murders of varying degrees of exoticness, they seemed constantly to become distracted by possible internal division, doubts about who Ziva was really loyal to, etc. It got worse when there were endless external existential threats to the unit posed by external investigations, Gibbs getting investigated/arrested, members of their group getting captured, criminals turning the tables and making members of the team targets, etc.

IRL, a team as prone as Gibbs’s is to internal investigation and general disruptive and distracting crap is going to get the Restructure Hammer administered, no matter how often they turn out to be Innocent After All.

I get that internal dynamics are the driver of the whole concept of the ensemble cast: their internal relationships are developed against the backdrop of their work.

But the work has to be meaningful, in the sense that it produces outcomes that have external value.

Once the whole purpose of the unit’s existence becomes ensuring that the Unit continues to exist, the show’s head has disappeared up its arse. Indeed this phenomenon may be definitional of shark-jumping. It means that the writers have hit the wall coming up with plots about the actual job the heroes are supposed to perform and have become as thoroughly inward obssessed as the Bold and the Beautiful

84

The Chosen one.
I usually don’t mind even the most clishe tropes, but I was reading “The Fionavar Tapestry” and everyone and their dog in that bloody book is the chosen one/special something.
It got ridiculous.

Of the five main characters, one scrifices himself to a god, nailed to a tree to be reborn, another sacrifices himself to a godess, ending an unnatural winter, another one, the least special, is one of few to see a goddess of the hunt and also becomes an expert warrior in almost no time, one of the women is a super special prophesied seer, and the final woman is the reincarnation of Queen Guinevere from the arthurian mythos.
There are also other super special, unique characters.
I can appreciate an epic story, but this got really tiresome after a while.

A device I don’t particularly like in books goes something like this:

  • I was worried. Have you learned anything about the super important thing we have been hammering over the reader’s head?
  • Yes, but you should prepare yourself. It is really big news. Earth-shattering.
  • Well, ok, I am ready.
    And so she told him.

For god’s sake, we saw the whole dialogue up until that moment, but now it’s suddenly a secret? It is a really cheap way of generating suspence in the reader. And really, really irritating when overused.

85

(bolding mine)

Did you just say that? Tell me you didn’t just say that.

86

Is it February already?

87

Trouble because someone’s developed/discovered an inexhaustible source of virtually free energy and business interests will have none of that hippie crap. It’s gotten to be lazy writing.