What Sterotypes do you hate?

[Geoff Watson]

Only "White Men" can be villians.

Anyone else being a villian gets calls of racism or sexism, but white men are fair game.

Geoff.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Professionals that are outsmarted by teens. They are always escaping, kicking their asses, and so forth, it does not matter is it is the police, the CIA, the army, navy, marines, or killers and spys, those young adults just make them look like fools. Oh, and they can't shoot!

 

[Technomancer]

Not really a stereotype, more of a convention, but when the bad guy, who has burned villages, killed women and children, and wears boots made from endangered animals, is beaten and the good guys finally have him at gunpoint at their mercy, they don't kill him because that would be stooping to his level and would make them just as bad as him.

Whatever.

 

[RangerWickett]

Not really a stereotype, more of a convention, but when the bad guy, who has burned villages, killed women and children, and wears boots made from endangered animals, is beaten and the good guys finally have him at gunpoint at their mercy, they don't kill him because that would be stooping to his level and would make them just as bad as him.

Whatever.

This is immediately followed by said villain attempting to take advantage of the hero's mercy in order to kill the hero. The hero is allowed, in the face of such immediate peril, to shoot and kill the villain in self defense.

On the other hand, I personally agree with not stooping to the bad guy's level. I wouldn't even want to bend over a little bit. I'm an optimist when it comes to rehabilitating people.

 

[Huw]

Only "White Men" can be villians.

Anyone else being a villian gets calls of racism or sexism, but white men are fair game.

Geoff.

Especially if they're British.

On a related note, it's less of a problem now, but there used to be a cliche I call "Token black character got promoted". Instead of being the cleaner or comms officer, they're suddenly the police chief, mayor or president. They still have very little to do, but the character has a more impressive title and better clothes.

 

[Psion]

I don't know if this counts, but caterwauling as the crew/team/heroes get into a fix of "ohmygawdwe'regonnadie"!!! Which imediately gets me thinking "you have how many more shows in this season." Yeah, I know, it's a necessary evil that you know most characters have virtual script immunity, but by belaboring it, you just draw attention to it.

 

[Mark Chance]

Stepping away from anime, I have been trained to hate "tough chicks."

This is bad when it's combined with a "message," like in the inexcusable waste of film that was G.I. Jane. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who was a Navy SEAL, summarized G.I. Jane (I paraphrase): Yeah, I saw that. Demi Moore had nice breasts.

Quite commonly used: Christians are either deviant hypocrites or ignorant rednecks, unless, of course, they're religious beliefs are so watered down as to be essentially indistinguishable from a Miss Manners column. This is right up there with all Muslims being wild-eyed fanatics (although, admittedly, this one seems to be going out of vogue).

 

[delericho]

3) Reset button episodes. So, Janeway crashes Voyager into the time ship, and suddenly we're back where we started. Hurrah! So, why did I just bother watching again? (Voyager was particularly bad for this - I started to wonder if anything actually happened on their journey home.)

2) Mirror Universes. Not so much because I dislike the universe (I generally think they're pretty cool), but often I think I would much rather watch that show instead. Besides, it's just another way to say "this didn't really happen".

1) Characters coming back from the dead. It worked with Spock, and it almost worked with Buffy (sadly, season 6 as a whole didn't quite work), but in general it just sucks. If death is supposed to mean something then it has to hurt. Which means it really should be final. These days, I'll pretty much only accept a character returning if the cost to get the character back was extremely high, and the consequences of that return are significant and far-reaching. At the very least, the character should be forever changed by the experience. (Or, you know, just don't kill them in the first place. Is that maybe too radical a concept?)

 

[Villano]

Villano, I'll add heroes going to check on the body of the monster and the monster suddenly jumping up to get shot down by another character before killing the hero. How many times do we have to see that???

It doesn't even have to be a monster, just any old killer will do.

Also, I'll add some things from Jabootu's website:

Designated Hero : A character who we know the film regards as its ‘hero,’ even though he or she is not, in any objective sense, all that heroic. Designated Heroes usually get a ‘free from responsibility’ pass from the filmmakers, even when their actions result in mass deaths. Take, for example, Ally Sheedy’s reporter character in Man’s Best Friend. The movie ‘blames’ its generic Mad Scientist for the film’s mayhem. Yet it was the film’s ‘heroine’ who illegally broke into the guy’s lab and, in fact, loosed the killer dog upon the world. She then hides the dog at home, over the objections of her boyfriend, who is later horribly killed by it. Yet the film never explores (or even mentions) her culpability in the resultant carnage, pretty much just because she’s ‘the hero.’

The idiot "hero" of the Planet of the Apes remake falls into this category. He disobeyed orders, which led to the ship (or space station or whatever it was) crashing.

Hero’s Death Battle Exemption : This rule stipulates that a monster or murderer will have to spend at least ten times the amount of time and effort killing a hero/heroine (or his/her significant other) than anyone else in the picture. EXAMPLE: In Prophecy, the killer mutant bear instantly kills folks throughout the movie with one swipe of its claw. Yet it ‘chooses’ to pick up the hero and hold him up to its face long enough to allow him to repeatedly stab it in the head with an arrow, eventually killing it. This despite the fact that the hero’s attack takes well over ten times the amount of time that it took the bear to kill any other person in the film. Even then, the hero emerges from the bear’s claws unscathed.

I hate this. Everyone else who gets hit once by something dies, except the hero. I'm reminded of the old Buck Rodgers series. Only the heroes' ships can just be damaged by a direct hit, everyone else explodes.

And this next one is something I've always thought about in Friday the 13th films...

The Avoid the Limbs Rule : This stipulates that when confronting a monster who can be damaged by gunfire (i.e., we can see chunks blown off) but not killed, that the shooter will never try to blow the creature’s legs off, so as to disable it or at least slow down pursuit.

 

[werk]

Hate it with a passion. Makes the whole thing into a non-story for me.

A related issue is the fight in which the hero gets beaten to a pulp and hardly touches the other guy... and then suddenly gets his second wind and comes back to beat the villain.

Isn't that Hulk Hogan Syndrome? The more beat up the hero gets, the tougher he is once he 'gets mad'.



The STEREOTYPE that I dislike is liars or the lying hero. So many sitcoms and movies entire plot is caused by a single lie of convenience, or the witholding of information. They lie to stay out of trouble or to cover something up that is innocuous but could be misconstrued, and that invariably balloons out of their control...and hilarity ensues.