Tropes I Don't Like

Dystopia

This part will not be me bashing about me hating the Dystopian genre. I actually love certain books in this genre, but there are certain tropes that drive me mad (and even make the story predictable).

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Let's first define what the word dystopia means.
A dystopian world is a fictional world (which usually takes place in the future) where everything seems unpleasant and bad. Especially when it comes to the environment and government within the world.

This is a simple definition of a dystopian world. All dystopian worlds will have terrible events going on — it's what the genre is all about so you really can't count the unpleasant events as tropes. However, there are certain elements within dystopias that are often overused.

Let's throwback to a trope I have already discussed in the past: a girl fighting or standing against the corrupt government.
We often see in dystopian books that the main protagonist is a female fighting against (or rebelling somehow) against the government (the Legend trilogy and the Divergent trilogy just to name two).
This female character often has something different about her that makes her "perfect" for the role (take Divergent for example).

Perhaps she is unnaturally great at fighting and other forms of combat when she has not had experience with said forms of combat in the past. I find this bothersome to read because the character ends up understanding how to fight in the matter of days or weeks somehow with minimum training. Now, this doesn't always occur, but whenever it does, it gets annoying.

Or, instead of having unnatural fighting skills, maybe this girl possesses a superior intellect and is even working for a high government while she is still a teen (take Legend for example). Now, this characteristic does not bother me as much as the unnatural fighting does. Whenever there is a good reason to the character's exceptional intellect, it is cool to see in books and movies (as many dystopian main female protagonists tend to be foolish and make poor decisions). However, these intellectually gifted girls end up falling for a boy (most of the time) and start to become naive and foolish.

We now have female characters done; we shall now talk about the male characters in dystopian stories.

In most dystopian series I have seen or read, male characters fall into one of two general categories.

I: You have the unnatural badass (who may or may not be a soldier) who is the main love interest (or one of them). Despite being a badass, he may be seen as whiny and foolish. Sometimes this character is seen as a bad boy. Once in a while, one of these characters does seem to possess a logical mind that is helpful in the story.

II: You have the character who is considered a genius (typically with anything technology related). This character is not considered to be a badass in fighting usually, though you have your exceptions to this sometimes. This character is treated as a helpful member to their friend group, but once in a while, they might be teased for their gifted talents and intellect that some don't appreciate.

This does not say all male dystopian characters fall into one of these general categories. These are just two kinds of characters I see a lot in this genre.
Both general categories have their pros and cons. For example: the badass male is often considered to be a leader, but may become whiny. Yes, this is indeed a character flaw that may help this character feel real. But when you think about it, most people would not want a leader known to be whiny in unnecessary situations.

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Let's now begin talking about the settings.

It seems that in many dystopian books you read nowadays, they take place in a futuristic America. This isn't something that bothers me a lot, I just wish more dystopian novels and tv shows/movies could be primarily centered in different countries, other than in western parts of the world.

Corrupt governments are a prime characteristic we see in dystopian stories. Though there are some things that are overdone with these governments and the characters associated with these governments.

One notable example is the idea that their style of government is absolutely perfect, despite that fact that this government might be going out of their way to make the society based on classifications. Sometimes these governments don't bother to recognize the flaws in the authority and just do whatever they want without bothering to listen to the citizens.
While this is a notable feature in dystopian worlds, this may be overdone in some ways to the point where it feels unrealistic (notably with how sadistic and narcissistic some characters in the government are — but this still does reflect how certain people we see in our governments behave).
Sometimes I wonder how it would work for a dystopian world if it was not the government that was completely corrupted, but another authority or group of people that was corrupt and causing the world to be in chaos. It sounds different to the average dystopia (as government corruption is very common in the genre), I think it would be an interesting concept to experiment with someday and make it still to be considered dystopian.

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These are the notable things that may seem annoying in the Dystopian genre. There are not many things to rant about because the genre has its distinct characteristics that make it dystopian. While I do mention these things, I try to be specific on what within it I find often overused and/or how the concept can be executed in a more original way.
If requested, I could make another part focusing on dystopian-based tropes; or perhaps some would like to see me discussing common tropes in the Utopian genre.

This part was done sort of last minute on the go, so I do apologize for grammatical errors. I will someday go through these parts and fix the errors and make each part sound more thorough.