tropes i like vol. 1
i've been trying to read more published longform sff (as opposed to brit lit, legal briefs, fanfic, etc.) over the past six months with mixed results, but i figured it'd be nice to compile some tropes and/or story elements i've found myself consistently enjoying on the off chance i want to revive my tails_gets_trolled.png children's novelist aspirations. i wish i'd been diligent enough to collect textual evidence in advance, but you'll just have to use your imagination in the absence of any immediate media references that come to mind. now, in no particular order:
friends to lovers - in regards to alternatives, rivals to lovers is acceptable (not preferable), but enemies to lovers is literally the bane of my existence because it frequently hinges on all parties involved being guilty of 1) miscommunication and/or 2) compromising deeply-held values/convictions, and i am not about that life. say what you mean and mean what you say! or better yet, keep your sorry excuse of a romantic subplot away from my all-seeing eye. the only configuration of this abomination to good romance writing that i accept is the fated enemies/star-crossed lovers variation, since it's mostly situational (aka minimal personal investment from all romantically-involved parties in the forces that are keeping our lovers as "enemies") and can be easily hypothetically resolved by refusing to continue Living In A Societyβa perfectly feasible option, considering we're talking sff here. just go frolicking on an abandoned mining planet or alternate dimension spiritual realm or something, god, it's not that hard.
now that that's out of the way, allow me to explain why starting off on friendly (or at the very least, familiar) terms is the superior choice when building the ideal fictional romance catered to my preferences only. starting out as strangers passing in the night, silent and unknowable in their parallel trajectories, requires the author to devote so much pagespace to simply fleshing out the platonic warming-up-to-e/o dynamic between their beloveds, which can get boring/repetitive quickly when poorly developed (as it so often is) and necessitates a level of effort most contemporary sff authors aren't willing or able to devote to a secondary plotline. i don't want a meetcute where the reader's interest in the fictional relationship relies entirely on a quirky premise that becomes stale in two chapters, i want the decades of unresolved tension and begrudgingly maintained ambivalence (for image-control purposes in the presence of mutual acquaintances) that can only result from moving in and around the same spaces for far too long, against both of your characters' wills.
in creating a shared neutral-to-positive history for our soon-to-be-romantically-entangled darlings, we're essentially imbuing every future interaction they have with 2x the meaning, no matter how short the dialogue or how miniscule the action. even better if they're no longer on good terms, since my personal preference is really childhood friends > possible lovers or unrequited love > awkward acquaintances > essentially strangers via the combined power of moving elsewhere + passage of time > budding friendship revival > possible lovers or unrequited love (but from the other side that did not initially have romantic feelings the first go around) > success! tl;dr estrangement is actually the most romantic thing ever and distance (both spatial and temporal) Does make the heart grow fonder...resurrection plant it-was-you-all-along-isms are so emotionally satisfying & will never not be my jamco-workers/classmates1 - what i said earlier about the casual yet potentially world-ending social friction of perpetually occupying the same spaces...yeah. this is highly reflective of my relative lack of real-world experience living as a grown, working adult + my tendency to romanticize objectively unromantic everyday occurrences, but the untapped narrative potential of passing someone by the water cooler at the same time every day or sitting across from the same person in the computer lab before class every wednesday is unreal to me. i deliberately wrote the previous sentence in a way that implied romantic connotations, but i actually think this functions so well as the start of a beautiful found family (mistborn, six of crows) or found siblings dynamic (& something that stories with post-apocalyptic settings like omniscient reader's viewpoint get so right, because being forced to reconfigure your comfortable mutual awareness into completely entrusting e/o with your lives in the wake of an extinction event is So Real). this also overlaps heavily with my affinity for elite academies (almost every shounen ever + ender's game, unfortunately), surveillance/recon organizations with questionable criminal underworld ties (kekkai sensen, bungou stray dogs), death games (hunger games...every other ya dystopian wants to eat your lunch so bad), and idol survival shows (pd101, idol producer)βwrite anything with overtones of assigned-project-group and i'm hooked.
time shenanigans - i love love LOVE a clock that does not tick the way it's supposed to. give me all the wacky timey-wimey tricks you have up your sleeve, absolutely drown me in the infinite branching possibilities of time travel fix-its (everything everywhere all at once, puella magi madoka magica) or conditional time loops (reset, erased), or warring futures fighting in the past to ensure their own creation/continuation (this is how you lose the time war, tenet). i appreciate a story that has the courage to tackle fate and agency head-on without training wheels! bonus points for an unreliable or unconfirmed-nonlinear narrative, daily doubles awarded for stories that manage to work in probabilistic fourth-wall-breaking narrative weight as a consequence of interfering with the sacred timeline (such as orv, pmmm, and the spiderverse series). the conceit of time manipulation doesn't have to be the central focus of the plot, though, as i do remember enjoying doctor who and molly moon quite a bit as a child. no, i have not seen back to the future or arrival, but i probably should!
rich bitches - i've been referring to this vaguely as silverspoon4silverspoon in my mind over the past few months, but i'm really over fictional protagonists and/or supporting characters being in their struggle era. it goes without saying that this has no bearing on my ability to empathize with real-world unhoused, orphaned refugees belonging to cultural/ethnic/religious minority groups, but the way fictional characters' tragic pasts + marginalized identities are often clumsily shoehorned in to add trauma-flavored window dressing to the story is so tired. also, can we stop co-opting class conflict for the sake of sprinkling political intrigue into lackluster romances? if i were to provide examples, we'd be here until the end of time. the underdogs are no longer underdog-ing, and frankly, i'm over it.
that being said, i've recently been on a rich bitch kick where i've been loving characters that would likely grind me to proletariat dust beneath their red-lacquered louboutin heel without a second glance (maybe subconsciously fueled by my resurgence of interest in kpop girl groups like ive and aespa lol). it's a nice change of pace to read about characters who know exactly what they want, have no delusions about what/who needs to be sacrificed in order to get it, and generally move through the world like a hot knife through butter. where one rich bitch runs, others will certainly follow, hence my renewed fascination with exclusive cliques a la heathers, the secret history, and bunny.
i got too in the weeds with these first few, so here's a speed round of other tropes i enjoy & may find the energy to elaborate on later:
- lawful and chaotic evil antagonists in the same space (hunter x hunter). make villainy fun again! in that same vein, i think villain dominoes (aka villain hierarchies) can also be lots of fun
- leader/2ic dynamics
- duty becoming unconditional devotion
- sublimation of yearning as jealousy/competitiveness (do i wanna date you or become you?)
- one-sided inferiority complexes
- unseen sacrifices on behalf of a loved one (mdzs aka brotherhood of the traveling self-sacrifices)
- sisters, mothers, basically any group of women who are legally and/or blood-related
- girl-on-girl violence (lol)
- diligent hard-working talent meets seemingly effortless prodigy
- uncompromising ideals at the expense of personal gain i.e. the cause above all else
- accidentally falling in love while trying to cyrano others (set it up)
- deadly student council officers (revolutionary girl utena)
- lotus eater machine
- magical girls and their obligatory transformation sequences (sailor moon, tokyo mew mew, w.i.t.c.h.)
- memory loss/manipulation
- bodysnatching (strike the zither, the host) or bodyswapping (your name)
- humans with animal forms (spirited away, fruits basket)
- tournament/succession arcs, even better if it has flavors of θ-making
stay unpredictable,
t
01/03/25: talking through this with k made me realize that i really meant PROXIMITY aka overlapping circles that only converge via contrived divergences in routine↩