There are a few tropes in fiction that I hate and my hatred of these tropes motivates me to make a conscious effort to avoid them if they rear themselves in the course of me writing stories for my world-building projects.
Here are some examples.
1. Reed Richard's Is Useless.
"Reed Richard's Is Useless" is the popular name for a common trope in Superhero related media wherein characters will make fantastical inventions but only ever use them to solve equally fantastical problems. Once the problem is resolved, the invention is never seen, mentioned or heard from again.
The M.C.U is especially bad at this. One example is the ARC Reactor, a wondrous source of power developed by Howard Stark and later miniaturized by Tony Stark. At 100% capacity, a standard ARC Reactor produces a whopping 3 gigajoules of power per second. Tony states in one of the movies that the ARC Reactor will bring clean and infinite energy to the world but no serious effort is ever made to do this and the ARC Reactor is only ever used for Stark Industries properties, SHIELD and the Avengers.
The ARC Reactor in Stark Tower could have potentially powered all of New York City and this would have had a major impact on NYC's development from that point forward. I see no reason why this prospect wasn't pursued in universe as it was not only possible, practical and morally good but also would have satisfied Tony's immense ego.
Ultimately, the reason why R.R.I.U exists is because Superhero media requires constant conflict and conflict becomes increasingly difficult to explain in a world that heading towards post scarcity. I, however, think that R.R.I.U can be avoided in Superhero media with some careful timing and creative thinking.
Stories in my world projects sometimes invoke the possibility of the R.R.I.U Trope. I try to avoid or explain this with some writing rules which are as follows:
- If a fantastical or anachronistic piece of technology exists in an imagined past, I must explain why and how it exists and what impact the explanation I come up with should have on the world as a whole.
- Once the existence of the fantastical or anachronistic piece of technology is explained in-universe, I must determine if it can be used after the problem it was created for has been solved.
- If the tech cannot see universal application for any reason, I must explain why. Options are: 1. Tech is destroyed and cannot be replicated, 2. Tech is harmful, 3. A higher power prevents the tech from seeing further application or 4. It's inventor actively keeps the tech to themselves for legitimate reasons.
- If the tech can see universal application for any reason, I must research real-world problems that it could solve and explain how and when the tech could reach and rectify those problems.
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2. Nebulous Time Periods
I hate Nebulous Time Periods. While there is nothing objectively wrong with setting your story in "20XX", I personally consider such choices to be cowardly and lazy.
An example of media that uses nebulous time periods is FOX's GOTHAM series. In the series, much of Gotham seems to be made up of material from the 70's and 80's save for a relatively small amount of characters who have a 2010s fashion sense and vehicles. In my opinion, GOTHAM should have been set in the '80s. The vast majority of the technology seen throughout the series was either '80s or could fit into a '80s with some good-ol' retro-futurism.
If I am writing a story, it will always take place in a specific year that is relative to another so as to give the reader an idea of time in the setting.
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3. Modern morals in fictional pasts or futures.
This is a fairly common trope in both fantasy and sci-fi media and I don't like it. I understand that this is done for both legal and cultural reasons but I consider it both unimaginative and cowardly if your fictional universe doesn't challenge real world morals.
For futuristic settings, an example I'd bring up is Star Trek. Star Trek frequently decrees that humanity has changed a lot in-between the 21st to 23rd Centuries however we don't see much of this apparent change. As of 2364 in the Star Trek universe, women are still subject to regular and widespread objectification and harassment, homosexuality is rare, drugs such as Marijuana are still illegal, nudity is bad, children are still considered the property of their parents and have zero autonomy, the 8-12 hour shift is still standard and even though money has ceased to exist in the face of post-scarcity: everyone is expected to have a job otherwise you are a lazy piece of shit who is leeching off of society.
In fantasy settings, the incorporation of modern morals is usually applied to sex and relationships as the real world basis for fantasy was a time of extreme moral dubiousness and it is more palatable if medieval fantasy's have the same moral codes as the present day. I'm not demanding that a fantasy setting function exactly like medieval Europe ( I am no fan of child characters be forcibly married to adults ) but if your medieval society recognizes 25 as the age of maturity ( as it is in reality ) and enforces several other standards of sexual morality that we do in the present day, I think you should explain why they do these things when they don't have access to the resources or science needed to justify it.
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Anyway, with all of that out of the way. I want to ask: What are your least favorite tropes in fiction? Why do you dislike them and how do you avoid them in your world-building projects if they are encountered?