What are some tropes/clich?s to avoid as a Touhou writer?

[Leon゠Helsing]

I've been thinking, so let's say that your player character is an OC in this game, and you're this close to beating X Touhou character, only for either her to "stop playing around" and turn the fight around effortlessly or a Diabolus ex Machina to straight up ruin your crap. Would that just be a bad cop-out? Slightly relevant because story reasons might be involved.

[Iced Fairy]

More like, the self-insert ends up in Gensokyo, and the author's waifu falls madly in love/lust with them. But it's rare to find such a story in the wild.

There's also the "waifu falls into self insert's lap and must be protected in real world" fic variant.  And they're a dime a dozen on FF.net.

Very true. Yukari has become something of a reverse deus ex machina for a lot of Touhou fan fiction.

Yukari's kinda like Gensoukyo immigration enforcement really.  Except her rules seem to be mostly "Mooninites and Celestials should suffer."

Re : Games

Games are different stylistically because of player control.  If your design a touhou danmaku game where your OC flies about shooting other Touhou characters with danmaku, then most of the problems are gone, because you've kept narrative consistency and you avoid making the characters look too weak by giving them appropriate danmaku.

RPGs and text adventures on the other hand have more issues.  Especially if "cutscenes" are involved.  Then you have to deal with loss of agency.  That's more of a game design thing though.

[Colticide]

Re : Games

Games are different stylistically because of player control.  If your design a touhou danmaku game where your OC flies about shooting other Touhou characters with danmaku, then most of the problems are gone, because you've kept narrative consistency and you avoid making the characters look too weak by giving them appropriate danmaku.

RPGs and text adventures on the other hand have more issues.  Especially if "cutscenes" are involved.  Then you have to deal with loss of agency.  That's more of a game design thing though.

The danmaku games seem the easiest to be able to avoid those problems, it's still fall into the spell card rules after all. The RPG part is something I've been brainstorming for months on how to best go about it, the best way I could think of is that if all the OG Touhou characters are bosses that give a good degree of challenge and are actually difficult to beat... but that could depend on who the main character is too. Ehh... there are many ways it could go I guess, I think I'm just trying to organize my own thoughts on how to tackle by typing it out or I'm slowly losing my sanity finally.

[Tengukami]

I've been thinking, so let's say that your player character is an OC in this game, and you're this close to beating X Touhou character, only for either her to "stop playing around" and turn the fight around effortlessly or a Diabolus ex Machina to straight up ruin your crap. Would that just be a bad cop-out? Slightly relevant because story reasons might be involved.

Two things:

1. Have you ever watched a boxing match? Some of the most exciting fights have consisted of one guy getting pummelled mercilessly for multiple rounds, only to find his second wind and come back swinging to victory in later rounds. So this much is totally plausible anyway. In my opinion, though, it would make for a more exciting read if both characters were internally struggling throughout the match, and the victory X Touhou Character achieved was solid, but still a close call.

2. I noticed you linked to TVT when referring to this part of your story. My advice would be to ignore what TVT has to say about different parts of your story and just ... write an engaging and entertaining story. I think it's counterproductive to check for what parts of your story fall under which categories of plot devices and templates, first of all, but more importantly, even the most established devices can be magic in the hands of a skilled creator. It's unavoidable that parts of your story may have been done before. It doesn't matter. What matters is doing it well.

[Colticide]

It's unavoidable that parts of your story may have been done before. It doesn't matter. What matters is doing it well.

I highly agree! One thing I hear a lot about youtube is that nothing is original, someone's done it before. Just cause it's been done before doesn't mean it can still be told in a different way.

[Leon゠Helsing]

Well, sometimes I just like to check examples of certain tropes either done well or badly just so I have notes to compare to, and if I start seeing something in my concepts that are approaching one of the disastrous examples I can either preemptively cancel that shit or try thinking of something that can fix it. After all, first thing they tell you is that tropes are tools of the trade.

[Tengukami]

After all, first thing they tell you is that tropes are tools of the trade.

Whoever "they" are, "they" should stop dispensing writing advice.

Certainly there are plot devices and character types which writers can and do use. But it is a mistake to try to write through the lens of what tropes you are using. You are not writing a series of tropes; you are writing a story. So write it. It will either work or not work. If you break your story down into being just a series of tropes, and examine those tropes individually for whether or not they work, you are ignoring the story as a whole - maybe each trope works but the story sucks.

Most important, who cares if you're using devices or templates that have been used before? The real question is: does your story as a whole work to engage the reader, whether you are using timeless devices or some innovative plot construction? Your story is more than the sum of its parts.

[Iced Fairy]

After all, first thing they tell you is that tropes are tools of the trade.

And that is TVTropes biggest flaw.

At its heart TVTropes is a literary critique site.  I would argue it's a very bad one, that ignores vast amounts of the historical literary critique surrounding it, but it's still a critique site.  You cannot use trope like legos and create something.  Rather when you rip the heart and soul and everything good out of your work, tropes are what is left.  What you can use tropes for is looking at your work after and seeing if anything you don't want has crept into your work without you realizing it.  And even then only so much.  It's easy to be blind to your own faults.

Now what do you do if you do see a trope you don't like in your work?  Well if its something simple, like "Crap, I described the evil nation as being darker skinned then the good nation.  That's got shitty implications," then you can simply cut it out or revise it.  But if your problem is "my MC is a Mary Sue," then you may need to look at your work as a whole.  Because it's likely the core of your story is "look at how awesome my OC is," and that kinda story only flies with your buds at RPG night.  Those kind of issues require fundamental alterations to the core story, not looking at the trope checklist and trying to "subvert" things.

[Leon゠Helsing]

Huh, I'm actually glad I threw that out, I'm getting even more insight on this. So basically just try to go for something that flows well and makes sense as a whole instead of concentrating too hard on individual parts? I suppose that's a problem of mine, I've been making concepts in parts with only a vague image for the whole. It may be an issue of having a wrong mindset, as I viewed creating story concepts for games I'm planning to make similarly to tackling problems, and I've been too used to breaking down problems into parts first.

[Tengukami]

Huh, I'm actually glad I threw that out, I'm getting even more insight on this. So basically just try to go for something that flows well and makes sense as a whole instead of concentrating too hard on individual parts?

Yeah, that's pretty much how I approach writing. I take it as a given that I'll be using certain devices or character types that have been used before, whether I'm aware of it or not. What matters to me is whether or not the reader engages with the story. Doing that has little to do with how well I use tropes, and more to do with bringing the story to life in the mind of the reader, which involves creating a coherent whole.

Like Iced points out, if you want to deconstruct your story through the lens of tropes after the fact, that's a different story, but even that will only get you so far in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your story.

[Leon゠Helsing]

I suppose right now I need to work on my tendency to backpedal upon seeing a risk.