This is a list of Minecraft Creepypasta clichés. These are overused tropes or features that will decrease the quality of your pasta substantially. Make sure to avoid them!
The List
- Foreign creepypastas. This has recently been overused dry, and it is not original or cool anymore. The most common country used here is Japan.
- Anything to do with Satanism. 666, 3 AM and the like. These are overused tropes, and are not creepy or even remotely scary at all.
- Anything to do with Herobrine, Entity 303 or Null. Unless done in an extremely creative way, these characters are uncreative and should preferably be avoided. Bonus cliché points if these characters are the good guys.
- Any skins featuring the following: pitch black bodies or eyes, red glowing eyes, white eyes and related.
- Any of the following "signs" of an entity being present: trees with no leaves, sand pyramids, upside-down crosses. Bonus cliché points if all three at once!
- Edgy edgy pastas that wanna kill others for no freaking reason.
- Not being able to exit a game, due to some magical pasta powers. This is probably the laziest way to explain why the protagonist does not leave the obviously haunted/creepy game.
- Related cliché: destroying a game/removing it, but it magically reappears.
- Any "-color- Steve" or "-brine" pastas. Just no. Stop. They are not creative or unique in any way.
- Protagonist downloads a haunted game/mod from a shady website. Like, why would you even do that? Why would anyone download a game from an obvious shady website?
- Not knowing when to end your series. This is a more technical one, but still belongs here. It is fine for your pasta to have sequels, as long as they are decent and add to the story. But, do not make 72 sequels, 41 prequels, 18 side-stories, 24 shorts and 9 behind-the-scenes articles just for one story. Seriously, if you have to stretch out the story to accommodate your next 20 sequels, you should just end the series.
- Skins that are just one color. It's nice to have a skin, but make it creative, having it just one color is just boring.
- Protagonist getting sucked into the game by absurd or other means. Everything is understood. Period.
- Zalgo/Glitched text. It’s honestly not creepy at this point. Besides, it’s hard to read anyway.
- The World you were playing in with the entity gets deleted. Happens too much and is used as a lazy way to conclude the haunting of the player.
Feel free to complete the list!
SCP-Deadlock's List of Creepypasta Clichés
- Satanism. Just stop with the satanic symbolism. 666, 3AM and the like are way too overused in creepypastas in general.
- Bland skins, AKA black figures with red eyes. I used to do this when I couldn't be asked to think of a decent skin. Now it's just boring.
- Spinoff pastas. These have been really common here, and they draw attention due to the fact that they are 'inspired' (or copied with tweaks) by a popular pasta. Entity pastas are an example. Entity 404 was a terrible pasta which at one point became the most visited page on the wiki.
- This also includes Steve pastas. Blue Steve was an OK creepypasta, but the others are generally just fucking terrible.
- Computer tweaking. Also known as 'creepypastas messing with your computer'.
- (+6.) Edgy pastas. Edgy pastas, which I call 'pasta nationiums', are ridiculously overpowered creepypastas who do what they do for no apparent reason. It's even worse is if they tell the protagonists their backstory just at the end. They're even worse than prequels, which are overused in their own right with GREEN overloading on prequels *coughs* Batwing4 Beckons Me (0.1) Null's Choice *coughs*
- Terrible endings. Pastas which have a bad ending which doesn't tie up any loose ends and/or leaves more questions than answers (the latter may not apply in a series). A good example of this is ending the pasta by vowing that you'll never play the game ever again.
- Another one is deleting Minecraft to explain why you have no evidence proving your phenomenon. That's just lazy writing.
- Illogical pastas. These are essentially creepypastas which have supernatural powers beyond what Minecraft can handle.
- Song generally regarded as "creepy" plays on repeat or backwards (HELLO, LAVENDER TOWN THEME!). Most video game background music is on repeat anyway.
- Not being able to exit the game. One of the most well-known instances of this is in the old creepypasta HellCraft. Rather than doing this in order to explain why you didn't just turn off the game when it started getting creepy, simple human curiosity is a much more believable explanation.
- Destroying, deleting or removing the game, but it mysteriously reappears.
- Even more cliché points if this happens more than once.
- Protagonist dies or goes insane. Just...no. This is way too overused in normal creepypastas, so in a Minecraft pasta, where the strength of a cliché is literally raised logarithmically, it's even worse. Furthermore, if the protagonist dies and the pasta is in the first person, who's telling the story?
- This includes instances where the protagonist passes out and wakes up in a hospital some time later (usually with a coma) with injuries or some sort of mental illness.
- Hidden content found in the game. I don't know what to say. Just don't even think about it.
- Downloading a video game mod from some strange website which has creepy effects. This has been overused to the point of being its own category of video game creepypasta. The logical explanation would be that they couldn't find it anywhere. However, why would you download it from a shady website?
- Having your main antagonist have a depressing life, make them get killed and then revived as an undead spirit bent on vengeance. Seriously. This sounds more like a creepypasta RP OC than a creepypasta category.
Finalcutter55's List of Creepypasta Clichés
- 3AM, 666 or any other satanic theme. Even though 3AM has been primarily used in clickbait and moneyfarming videos, it, along with other satanic symbols, appear in creepypastas too. Don't do it.
- (color) Steve, -brine or Entity (number) pastas. Unoriginality can appear in names too. Give your creepypasta a good name that signifies the story (It can even be gibberish), don't resort to names like Magenta Steve, Carpetbrine or Entity 666. That has been pretty much done to death.
- Lacking endings. By "lacking endings", I mean endings that just end off at one part of the story and never continue on. Imagine if midway through reading, it said "A sound filled my headphones" and the story just ended. That's about as entertaining as a DCV (Disguised Compilation Video, a term I named myself) Cliffhangers are the only exception.
- "I never played Minecraft again" or "I quit the game and never played it since". That just signifies a lack of creativity. Simply leaving the game and never playing it, no rhyme or reason as to why, doesn't make much sense. What if I told you "I never ate a single piece of candy again" without explaining why?
- Bad grammar. This isn't really as much of a cliché as it is bad writing, but I have seen it often. Run your story through Grammarly if you have to - it won't be 100% perfect, but it will be better than reading "i wask playing through minecraf annd i sa this sing".
- Protagonist/Antagonist lives a life of pity, dies, and gets revived as an entity bent on destruction. Irony aside, please visit SCP-Deadlock's list for more information.
- Shady websites. 95% of people know that you should be wary of what you download online. There can be some creativity to this cliché, like when your computer suddenly crashes, blacks out and starts making some strange noises while it boots up onto an ominous website that can't be escaped. Even if you think you know what you're doing when it comes to cliché, it's best to keep a distance from the lion.
- Aggressive pastas. literally more than 99% of every Creepypasta on this website has the main antagonist be aggressive or have him/her start the main conflict first. Maybe instead of the entity haunting the player for no reason, make it so that the player (un)intentionally does something that aggravates the entity and have the entity start the haunting.