Top 3 TV Tropes I Can't Stand
1. The vampire double standard:
I don't mean treating the horrific crimes of vampires as acceptable (it's not easy to get right, but it's possible), but the double standard applied to the crimes of Obvious Romantic Lead Vampire vs. The Inevitable Sexy Evil With Possible Heart of Gold Vamp. Just because the ORLV happens to be not murdering humans at the time we (and the inevitably super special yet unreasonably young female love interest) meet him, does not automatically absolve him of all he's done before he grew a conscience, or of the stuff he will inevitably do later on, supposedly for love. Conversely, the Sexy Evil One isn't any more ev0l than his counterpart simply because he's snarky/not immediately in love with FLI/doesn't hide who he is and what he's done. Personally, I prefer the more truthful, less hypocritical, and harder to get to know one, be it Eric, Damon, Spike, or any of the bazillion others that fit the mold, but regardless of personal preference, and really, to each his/her own, the morality of dating/sleeping with/loving a mass murderer is tenuous at best, and any attempt to sell me one as nobler or more morally acceptable than the other is doomed to not only fail miserably, but to annoy the hell out of me in the process.
2. Unresolved Sexual Tension:
Anticipation can be hot and sexy and lovely and all sorts of good things, but if you keep it up too long, I'm bound to, at best, lose interest, and more likely just want to punch both parties in the face. Sexually active (or potentially so) adults don't sniff each other's bums for years without doing anything about it, unless they're seriously deficient in some way. Mutual attraction resolves itself reasonably quickly, because lustful or enamored people are not generally paragons of self control and/or rational thinking, and someone, some time, will make a move, and then it either works out or it doesn't. If you wait too long for that to happen, you've lost me, because even my fantasy and sci-fi loving levels of suspension of disbelief crumble in the face of contrived human behavior.
3. Contrived Misunderstandings:
That's kinda like #2, only not specific to UST (though it is often used as one of the many, many ploys to maintain the UST U'd). The point is, people talk to each other. Friends talk to each other a lot. Close friends talk to each other even more. If someone tells you something about your friend, or you think you heard your friend say something, or do something, that is unreasonable/out of character/annoying to the extent that it could change the very nature of your relationship, the sane thing to do is to talk to them. Making huge life and relationship altering decisions without even bothering to find out wtf is going on is fucked up behavior on a scale that is rarely seen in the wild unless there is a very good reason for it, and sadly, it's the rare writer who bothers to provide the appropriate level of reasoning for such extreme behavior. What's wrong with allowing the characters to have a fight in which they actually talk (or yell) things out? Seriously, if you need to get to a certain outcome, it's not that hard to do just using anger and stubbornness and pride and other similarly common and believable human traits and behaviors. Leaving the decision making point at the suspicion stage without bothering with some form of confrontation is lazy and stupid.
I don't mean treating the horrific crimes of vampires as acceptable (it's not easy to get right, but it's possible), but the double standard applied to the crimes of Obvious Romantic Lead Vampire vs. The Inevitable Sexy Evil With Possible Heart of Gold Vamp. Just because the ORLV happens to be not murdering humans at the time we (and the inevitably super special yet unreasonably young female love interest) meet him, does not automatically absolve him of all he's done before he grew a conscience, or of the stuff he will inevitably do later on, supposedly for love. Conversely, the Sexy Evil One isn't any more ev0l than his counterpart simply because he's snarky/not immediately in love with FLI/doesn't hide who he is and what he's done. Personally, I prefer the more truthful, less hypocritical, and harder to get to know one, be it Eric, Damon, Spike, or any of the bazillion others that fit the mold, but regardless of personal preference, and really, to each his/her own, the morality of dating/sleeping with/loving a mass murderer is tenuous at best, and any attempt to sell me one as nobler or more morally acceptable than the other is doomed to not only fail miserably, but to annoy the hell out of me in the process.
2. Unresolved Sexual Tension:
Anticipation can be hot and sexy and lovely and all sorts of good things, but if you keep it up too long, I'm bound to, at best, lose interest, and more likely just want to punch both parties in the face. Sexually active (or potentially so) adults don't sniff each other's bums for years without doing anything about it, unless they're seriously deficient in some way. Mutual attraction resolves itself reasonably quickly, because lustful or enamored people are not generally paragons of self control and/or rational thinking, and someone, some time, will make a move, and then it either works out or it doesn't. If you wait too long for that to happen, you've lost me, because even my fantasy and sci-fi loving levels of suspension of disbelief crumble in the face of contrived human behavior.
3. Contrived Misunderstandings:
That's kinda like #2, only not specific to UST (though it is often used as one of the many, many ploys to maintain the UST U'd). The point is, people talk to each other. Friends talk to each other a lot. Close friends talk to each other even more. If someone tells you something about your friend, or you think you heard your friend say something, or do something, that is unreasonable/out of character/annoying to the extent that it could change the very nature of your relationship, the sane thing to do is to talk to them. Making huge life and relationship altering decisions without even bothering to find out wtf is going on is fucked up behavior on a scale that is rarely seen in the wild unless there is a very good reason for it, and sadly, it's the rare writer who bothers to provide the appropriate level of reasoning for such extreme behavior. What's wrong with allowing the characters to have a fight in which they actually talk (or yell) things out? Seriously, if you need to get to a certain outcome, it's not that hard to do just using anger and stubbornness and pride and other similarly common and believable human traits and behaviors. Leaving the decision making point at the suspicion stage without bothering with some form of confrontation is lazy and stupid.