(Discussion) Tropes that live rent free in your head, for better or worse?
For me? It's DEAD PARENTS.
Fellas, I'm gonna flip. I'm so close being in shambles. Just kidding, I already am. 🙂
This is what I notice, but most of the time when I play an IF where the player is part of the nobility: princess, count, destitute fallen twat or the sorts, well, guess what? DEAD PARENTS, and if they ain't DEAD, well, my dearest, they're either abusive AF or will in-fact be dead at some point! Heck, sometimes even both!
It's like authors have this vendetta against fictional parents of nobillity to the point it feels as if there's this an unspoken pact amongst IF authors where if the PC is part of the nobility that's an automatic dead parent for them.
This isn't even a Hosted Games exclusive kind of thing. It feels like whenever I go to other places, itch.io for example, there's like a fifty percent chance of the IF involving a nobility PC that I picked having mandatory dead parents in them, with a 45% chance them having a neglectful parents instead, and a 5% chance the PC's parents actually being sane, decent & NOT being unalive at the start or later on.
Heck, the only games popping in my head where you're nobility with not-unalived parents are CC Hill's games, and in those games noble titles are more of a backdrop with the responsibility of nobility taking a back seat in the course of the story with your player character constantly too busy locking in on ROs like a blood-hound in heat. Beyond that, other HG-Games I could think of where having a dead parent are optional is Turncoat Chronicle, and your family from Tale of Two Cranes who are decent folks & alive at the ending (correct me if I'm wrong tho).
It's not solely because of how common it is either, it's also because most of the time they're executed poorly! It can be due to a variety of reasons, but the most prevalent reason I found is a lack of screen time often given to them that cheapens their death.
Take the dragoon MC's dad as an example, bro's entire character throughout the story is basically asking you to give them money and then dying. That's it, that's their entire character arc—you're given two scenes with them and both interactions are done by letters. As much as I stan for Infinity this was one of its weakest highlights.
For a more recent example, Scale of Justice suffers from this issue too. If I had to describe the MC's mother it would be... they 'exist' and that's about it. She died off-screen and before the plot even starts being less of a person and more of a plot device to justify the PC's circumstance.
I hate it, I hate, hate, hate this trope so much!
Some of you might say I'm overexagerating, to which I say... fair enough. I was born a hater, I ain't gonna deny it. It's like 3 a.m as I'm writing this, that's how much of a hater I am. Mark my words, the next author who drops a dead parent in their IF? Imma bust into their home, and straight up eat their internet wires.
Perchance. 🙏😇
Rant over, thanks for reading.
(This post was made to entertain, most of the statements provided are mostly exaggerated for comical purposes. No, I have no intention of ever breaking into people's houses and eating their internet wires, and I'm honestly not THAT pissed.)
>>What about you guys? Is there any specific tropes found in IFs that ticks you off?<<
For me? It's DEAD PARENTS.
Fellas, I'm gonna flip. I'm so close being in shambles. Just kidding, I already am. 🙂
This is what I notice, but most of the time when I play an IF where the player is part of the nobility: princess, count, destitute fallen twat or the sorts, well, guess what? DEAD PARENTS, and if they ain't DEAD, well, my dearest, they're either abusive AF or will in-fact be dead at some point! Heck, sometimes even both!
It's like authors have this vendetta against fictional parents of nobillity to the point it feels as if there's this an unspoken pact amongst IF authors where if the PC is part of the nobility that's an automatic dead parent for them.
This isn't even a Hosted Games exclusive kind of thing. It feels like whenever I go to other places, itch.io for example, there's like a fifty percent chance of the IF involving a nobility PC that I picked having mandatory dead parents in them, with a 45% chance them having a neglectful parents instead, and a 5% chance the PC's parents actually being sane, decent & NOT being unalive at the start or later on.
Heck, the only games popping in my head where you're nobility with not-unalived parents are CC Hill's games, and in those games noble titles are more of a backdrop with the responsibility of nobility taking a back seat in the course of the story with your player character constantly too busy locking in on ROs like a blood-hound in heat. Beyond that, other HG-Games I could think of where having a dead parent are optional is Turncoat Chronicle, and your family from Tale of Two Cranes who are decent folks & alive at the ending (correct me if I'm wrong tho).
It's not solely because of how common it is either, it's also because most of the time they're executed poorly! It can be due to a variety of reasons, but the most prevalent reason I found is a lack of screen time often given to them that cheapens their death.
Take the dragoon MC's dad as an example, bro's entire character throughout the story is basically asking you to give them money and then dying. That's it, that's their entire character arc—you're given two scenes with them and both interactions are done by letters. As much as I stan for Infinity this was one of its weakest highlights.
For a more recent example, Scale of Justice suffers from this issue too. If I had to describe the MC's mother it would be... they 'exist' and that's about it. She died off-screen and before the plot even starts being less of a person and more of a plot device to justify the PC's circumstance.
I hate it, I hate, hate, hate this trope so much!
Some of you might say I'm overexagerating, to which I say... fair enough. I was born a hater, I ain't gonna deny it. It's like 3 a.m as I'm writing this, that's how much of a hater I am. Mark my words, the next author who drops a dead parent in their IF? Imma bust into their home, and straight up eat their internet wires.
Perchance. 🙏😇
Rant over, thanks for reading.
(This post was made to entertain, most of the statements provided are mostly exaggerated for comical purposes. No, I have no intention of ever breaking into people's houses and eating their internet wires, and I'm honestly not THAT pissed.)
>>What about you guys? Is there any specific tropes found in IFs that ticks you off?<<