These Are a Few of My Favorite Tropes!

Oh my gosh helloooo beautiful readers! Fancy meeting you here!

I’ve been getting a TON of new readers, and so I’d like to first say WELCOME to all of you lovely new people! Thank you for liking, sharing, reading, and following this blog, which has become an outlet for me when I need a break from other things in my life or just want to discuss different topics and share my thoughts.

I’m currently working on the first rewrite of my first completed novel, an extensive analysis of a particularly negative book experience from my childhood, and of course worldbuilding. Always worldbuilding.

The melancholy of winter is finally dying down, but she’s difficult to shake, so my mood has been down for the past couple of weeks.

Being the most dramatic person to ever live, sometimes I like tapping into that sad mood and using it to produce beautiful, dramatic things. But sometimes I decide it is time to cheer up, and so I’ve decided to do more of a lighthearted post this time.

I thought I would gush today about a few of my favorite tropes!

Tropes are defined as common or overused themes or devices. A cliché if you will. If you’ve read my rant on tropes that I did back in May of last year, you know that I don’t believe tropes are a bad thing in the slightest. However, everyone has favorites, and today I’d like to share some of mine.

Enemies to Lovers

This is a popular one, and to some people it is a tired old cliché that is neither believable nor enjoyed by them. I always giggle when people call enemies to lovers “too unlikely” or “jarring” because my own marriage is an enemies to lovers story. As with all tropes, this one relies heavily on the slow burn transition from hating each other, to being confused about strong feelings, to falling in love (depending on the genre you enjoy of course).

Slow Burn Romance

I am a SUCKER for a slow burn romance. I can still appreciate romance portrayed on screen that’s more “love at first sight” or gets physical quickly, but it just doesn’t get my heart racing like tons of titillating, tense moments between two characters who have walls up, or who are unable to admit their feelings.

The Berserker

This is the character who is just an unstoppable, uncaring badass who throws themselves into the thick of battle with absolutely zero regard for their own safety. They fight with all the feral savagery of a cornered wildcat. I love watching this trope on the big screen. It really ups the tension and if they’re not a villain, it often gives that cathartic reckoning for the baddies you may have been waiting for the entire time.

Extended Disarming

This trope consists of a character being told to disarm themselves before entering somewhere or meeting for communications, and we get a laughably enormous and increasingly ridiculous pile of their weapons being put on the table or taken off of them. Impossibly huge guns, bombs, strange or obscure weapons like a piece of jewelry or a hair ornament, and all other manner of destructive finery. The beautiful combination of badassery and hilarity improve any movie, show, or book for me. We see this in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End with Elizabeth, and Shadow and Bone season 1 with Inej.

Huddling for Warmth/Intimate Healing

You know this one. It’s in Twilight. Your characters are trapped in a snow storm and there’s nothing left to do but huddle together for warmth. This trope can be used for several different outcomes. It can create jealousy for another character, such as in Twilight. It can bring two characters closer together like Nina and Matthias in Shadow and Bone. Or we can integrate the intimate healing trope here and see a character keep another character warm or monitor their condition or help them in some way to promote healing. This very trope is in my own book because it is one of my favorites.

Vampires/Kiss of the Vampire

Why do humans love vampires so damn much? While I did research for this post I realized just how popular any tropes involving vampires really are. And I’m no exception to loving them. But specifically the kiss of the vampire trope stems from vampire feeding being an intensely intimate, euphoric, and/or sensual experience. This trope is SO prevalent in media that I’m forced to wonder what is wrong with us… Shadowhunters quite tickles my fancy with this particular trope.

There are so many tropes out there, and there are many more that I like, but I thought I’d start out with a few. I started making a list a few weeks ago and these are the ones that came to me the quickest.

I did the majority of my research using this site, and I highly recommend it if you’re curious what some of your favorite tropes are called or what tropes are in your favorite media.

Thank you for reading! Next week we might be doing a movie or tv show review, so stick around for that if it interests you. I’ve got a lot of unresolved feelings about Disney’s Lightyear, which came out last year, and I’ve already got a script written up for a review. I also binged season 2 of Shadow and Bone which came out recently and I have a lot of confusing thoughts but I think I should rewatch it before giving any of them on the blog. If I get a wild hair and decide to tackle that one, next week’s post may be a tad late.

With that said, I’ll see you next week, and thank you again!

Happy reading!