# Tired Tropes



## PandorasParanormalBox (Aug 10, 2014)

What trope have you seen in your reading that has just full on driven you crazy with its overuse? I'm not talking like how NO ONE understands the word "irony" but like the sudden glut of "Teenagers fighting an oppressive government with weird elaborate punishments" that seem to be where Hollywood is getting their ideas these days (if they aren't getting them from comic books)

What is the one thing that will make you chuck a book across the room, or delete the file, or just plain write a nasty review?

Mine is the sci-fi "twist ending" where the man and the woman from different cultures learn to co-exist, and the final words of the books are "And, his name was Adam and her's was Eve."

You'd think that wouldn't be so common, but OH PRUNELLA, I have read at least 15 stories in various forms, be it published or working drafts  or, worst of all, writing courses, where the author thought they were the first person to come up with that. Drives me crazy every time. There was a Twilight Zone with that story, and I believe we all saw it when we were 5, during the Thanksgiving Day marathon, and it just stuck in our brains. It's so tired, and so trite! Argh!

Ok, rant over... maybe, haha.

Anyhow, let's hear it. I KNOW there are others of you out there who can relate.


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## bobbic (Apr 4, 2011)

Oh yeah. How about the "it was all a dream" scenario? Admittedly, I sort of did that once. But mine was different. LOL

bobbi c.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

How about the teenage girl in a new school who meets a "special" boy who turns out to be a vampire/werewolf/wizard... or she turns out to be a "special" girl, and learns she is descended of a vampire/a werewolf/ a witch... or she is bullied by the bad girls in her new school, but it turns out she is special.... or...


YAWN!


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

Not sure if this is a trope, per se, but I'm getting numb to anti-government, anti-corporation dystopian-futures. For once, I'd like to see societal downfall that's not the fault of immoral bureaucrats or greedy plutocrats, or a utopian future where society is happier despite evil 'winning', and the moral consequences of the hero knowing as much. 

I also want to see more creativity of stories that depict the contextually amorality in science as scientists constantly "mess with forces of which they have no control!".


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

A trope can never be tired, only the execution.

My special hates though:

- Zombies. Just in general, I hate ghouls zombies and wish they would go away. But more than that, I hate the whole 'humanity is the real monster' thing, especially when it turns out that way purely because the writer only cast jerkasses as main characters.

- Standard Romance Misunderstanding Fight. Need drama at the midpoint of your love story? Just make one character massively unreasonable and therefore unlikable and the other stunningly incompetent at conveying information. Make sure this leads to a fight in which hurtful things are said for no reason.

- Kill the Mentor. No, the hero can never improve beyond their master just by dint of learning and growing. the master must die so we don't need to mess with any of that nasty character development.

- I Am Neurotic and You Are In My Head. First Person character who never EVER shuts up about their insecurities and gnaws their lip into hamburger at the drop of a hat. Bonus points if when viewed from the outside, they have none of the flaws they think they do.

- Actually Superior (Bella Syndrome). Character thinks they're better than everyone--and so does the narrative. Oh yeah, they will tell you that they have flaws, but that's a dirty, dirty lie because their flaw is plot-activated and always lands them in a better situation than they started. Clumsiness turns into some kind of Gladstone Gander luck superpower.


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## PandorasParanormalBox (Aug 10, 2014)

Vaalingrade, extra points to you for dropping Gladstone Gander!


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## maryjf45 (Apr 24, 2011)

What about overused title conventions? How many books are named The _______'s Daughter or Wife? Please, just... no.


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

That a HEA must always = Marriage and kids.

Not enough stories where the "couple" don't do either of those things (or even just one).


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> How about the teenage girl in a new school who meets a "special" boy who turns out to be a vampire/werewolf/wizard... or she turns out to be a "special" girl, and learns she is descended of a vampire/a werewolf/ a witch... or she is bullied by the bad girls in her new school, but it turns out she is special.... or...
> 
> YAWN!


See, I think that one has its place, though I tend to prefer variants where the girl knows from the get-go that she's special. I have one character who lets the bullies push her around because she doesn't care enough to retaliate. (She also has made herself a social outcast on purpose, so she technically encouraged the bullies to pick on her.) What's a little verbal harassment when she's used to folks trying to kill her?



Vaalingrade said:


> A trope can never be tired, only the execution.


I agree. I can put up with any trope-even love triangles-if they are organic to the story. I cringe at love triangles that feel forced on the story, particularly ones where I have no clue why any of the characters put up with the MC. If the triangle is organic to the situation-like the tangles in the _Wicked Lovely_ series-then I don't mind them (and I actually REALLY like what Melissa Marr did in the last book).


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## Robert Dahlen (Apr 27, 2014)

With a nod towards the idea that there are no tired tropes, I'm a bit tired of dystopian/end of civilization as we know it future settings. I know there's some great work that comes out of those, but I'd like to think that humanity will someday, somehow, work its way through all its problems instead of surrendering to them. For example, I'll take the original Star Trek, flawed as it was, over Divergent or The Walking Dead.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

The liberal arts serial killers. You know, the ones who kill for the beauty...and the art.

And stories with women on the run from serial killers who, through some miracle of focus or estrogen, find time to fall in love _while everyone around her dies_.


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## Deke (May 18, 2013)

Teenage girl discovers she has some mental power and that there is a dark family secret.  I think this trope covers about 10% of every book on Amazon.


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## Lexi Revellian (May 31, 2010)

MrAzzatagoestotheinternet said:


> The thriller hero with a mysterious past who used to do nasty things for the government, but now he lives near a body of water with no visible means of support. All he wants to do is live in peace, but the government/damsel in distress/national emergency that he just happens to be in the middle of keeps pulling him back in. He hesitates at first, but once he starts killing again, the old skills resurface because everyone knows that once you learn gymkata (or whatever mysterious martial art he practices) your skills never rust from disuse. Even though he hasn't done dirty work in years, all his old contacts are still in the same locations under the same names, as though they were waiting for him to return just so they can sell (or give) him weapons or vehicles, and that one piece of information he needs to put the big picture together. And no matter how many dead bodies he leaves in his wake, he's never branded a serial killer and the woman (there's always a woman) can't help but fall in love with him, but they don't stay together for long (the speech is given or implied, "You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel").


I love it! Brilliant summary. (Hint of Jack Reacher at the end.)


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## Max Sebastian (Aug 10, 2014)

The billionaire who falls inexplicably for an ordinary fairly dull and talentless heroine, is obsessed with possessing her, is hopeless at communicating with her despite his genius at everything else, showers her with gifts and wows her with everything about his lifestyle, but then one little misunderstanding makes her run screaming and pouting and sulking to some inane friend or other before she realizes he and his bank account were destined to be hers forever more. Oh, and he has some kind of childhood trauma to deal with along the way.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2014)

Yeah I have to agree with the "teen vamp, werewolf, witch" and "teen possesses powers" ones. Too many of the romances that have the super rich guy and the girl he needs to have. Just no... why can't we have a regular guy who actually wants a partnership with the girl and doesnt want to use her as an object.

In zombie fiction (That I am currently writing) I hate the standard "the hero has the cure" "The hero finds someone with the cure" "The hero treks across the barren landscape to reach the lab which has the cure in the nick of time"...  come on now. The interest and excitment comes from knowing that everything is screwed up...


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

DTW said:


> There are no tired tropes; only poor writing. Everything's been done, over and over and over. There's only how you dress it up, what you pair it with, and how you show it off. The cleverness comes in the execution, not in the finding of a unique thing no one's ever seen.


Yeah, this sums up my feelings, too. Execution and writing can make the stalest tropes fresh.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I agree about the "coming of age, young person--usually an orphan--discovers he/she has some special powers or ability or family secret/trait/destiny to save the world" thing.  Maybe it wasn't tired or overused before (i.e., a decade or two ago) but it definitely is now.

Also, someone mentioned the ubiquitous Big Misunderstanding in a lot of romantic fiction.  I wrote a review of one a while back about how the H and h weren't speaking, avoided each other, etc., for chapters at a time.  And yet if they'd only be in the same room with each other for five minutes it would have all been cleared right up.  (But of course the novel would then have been a novelette, and the author can't have that, right??) 

And I agree with the thing about dystopian settings.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

Absolutely true about execution. Some types of stories just seem invite lazy execution, though. It used to be time-travel stories, but authors are getting better with them.


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Historical fiction that has commercialized sex-every-20-pages,
or stale gimmicks like "time travel" or "Tudor poisoning mystery" or fantasy elements.

A bold assertion: there is no _fresh_ way to do something that _doesn't belong there_.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2014)

DTW said:


> "I am become Death, the destroyer of world' - Robert Oppenheimer. SF and mil-SF writers trot this out all-the-time. Oh my God, dig deeper!


Actually, Oppenheimer got that from the Bhagavad Gita.


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

Yes on dystopian!!! I think dystopian is a great genre, but good grief it's getting old . . .


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

Something I've seen a lot of recently in contemp romance is the situation where the stumbling block to the happy ever after is the heroine's insecurities and not feeling 'good enough' for the hero. She has a troubled past/abusive ex/unhappy relationship and has to Get Over It. The hero, of course, is both perfect and perfect for her - she just has to Trust Herself and See It. (Oh, and he's usually a billionaire.) Sigh.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

It's easy to avoid many of these tropes by not reading the genres defined by them. I've become stuck in a rut as a reader before, too, and then realized "Oh yeah! I could stop reading Dystopian/Paranormal/Thriller/Whathaveyou books for awhile!"

Just a thought.


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## Erin Satie (Mar 21, 2014)

AdrianC said:


> a utopian future where society is happier despite evil 'winning', and the moral consequences of the hero knowing as much.


This series exists in at least one form--Scott Westerfield's UGLIES series & it's amazing.

Personally, even knowing the cost, I'd absolutely sign up to live in that evil utopia. Take me there yesterday, please.


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## Erin Satie (Mar 21, 2014)

SevenDays said:


> Yeah, this sums up my feelings, too. Execution and writing can make the stalest tropes fresh.


I definitely agree with this. A good trope, no matter how stale, is a DELIGHT when well done. And I love being surprised--I love having my expectations exceeded--I love being reminded why I fell in love with a trope in the first place.

That being said--I absolutely believe that there are great dystopias still being written & published, with neat twists and fresh takes, and I don't care because...I'm just not in the market anymore. I exhausted myself on the topic & I need a break & that's too bad for me but there you go.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Jena H said:


> Also, someone mentioned the ubiquitous Big Misunderstanding in a lot of romantic fiction. I wrote a review of one a while back about how the H and h weren't speaking, avoided each other, etc., for chapters at a time. And yet if they'd only be in the same room with each other for five minutes it would have all been cleared right up. (But of course the novel would then have been a novelette, and the author can't have that, right??)


That's what pissed me right off about Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Hero returns to Greece after the war to marry his lover, only to spot her in the distance holding a baby (which she just happens to have rescued from an earthquake). He immediately assumes the baby is hers and that she's married someone else, and despite presumably having spent a lot of money travelling from Italy to Greece and WITHOUT BLOODY STOPPING TO ASK THE WOMAN WHAT'S GOING ON, buggers off for the next fifty years.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

I used to read a lot of spy type books and the below is SO accurate.
Also, hardboiled detectives with a drinking/drug problem and a tortured past. Those tropes started to drive me crazy - to the point I no longer read spy or crime novels.



MrAzzatagoestotheinternet said:


> The thriller hero with a mysterious past who used to do nasty things for the government, but now he lives near a body of water with no visible means of support. All he wants to do is live in peace, but the government/damsel in distress/national emergency that he just happens to be in the middle of keeps pulling him back in. He hesitates at first, but once he starts killing again, the old skills resurface because everyone knows that once you learn gymkata (or whatever mysterious martial art he practices) your skills never rust from disuse. Even though he hasn't done dirty work in years, all his old contacts are still in the same locations under the same names, as though they were waiting for him to return just so they can sell (or give) him weapons or vehicles, and that one piece of information he needs to put the big picture together. And no matter how many dead bodies he leaves in his wake, he's never branded a serial killer and the woman (there's always a woman) can't help but fall in love with him, but they don't stay together for long (the speech is given or implied, "You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel").


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Lydniz said:


> That's what p*ssed me right off about Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Hero returns to Greece after the war to marry his lover, only to spot her in the distance holding a baby (which she just happens to have rescued from an earthquake). He immediately assumes the baby is hers and that she's married someone else, and despite presumably having spent a lot of money travelling from Italy to Greece and WITHOUT BLOODY STOPPING TO ASK THE WOMAN WHAT'S GOING ON, buggers off for the next fifty years.


Yeah, I don't like the "assumes the worst and storms off refusing to clarify" trope, either. It happens near the end of _Gone with the Wind_, too. He assumes she didn't ask for him all that time, when in reality she was too ill, so he storms off, never to return. Barf! It's an internationally acclaimed film, though, so what do we know? LOL!


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## geekgrrl (Oct 14, 2013)

Cryptic Fawn said:


> That a HEA must always = Marriage and kids.
> 
> Not enough stories where the "couple" don't do either of those things (or even just one).


^THIS^ I'm married, I have a kid. Neither of these fulfill me wholly as a person. They are lovely nice things that I wouldn't trade for anything, but OMG I'm so sick of the "now let's get married and make tiny people" HEAs.


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## Ampersand_56 (Mar 12, 2014)

Cherise Kelley said:


> It's easy to avoid many of these tropes by not reading the genres defined by them. I've become stuck in a rut as a reader before, too, and then realized "Oh yeah! I could stop reading Dystopian/Paranormal/Thriller/Whathaveyou books for awhile!"
> 
> Just a thought.


This. So very true. I just put down yet another NA novel about twenty somethings who are misunderstanding their way through an awkward romance. Uugh. But, the book was actually pretty well written. I'm just done with the whole thing myself. In this case, the blurb did not make it clear that the book was NA and I had the impression that plot was about more than just the awkward romance and misunderstandings. So that was $2.99 I wasted. But I agree with the idea that it isn't the trope at fault, just either the writer, or the reader. In this case, the writing was fine, but the reader was misinformed. I should have read more reviews.

But, all that said, please no more books where the entire plot would have been solved by a two line conversation. Misunderstanding based stories drive me nuts. Probably because it falls under the heading of characters TSTL.


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## KMA (Mar 11, 2009)

I have a particular aversion to characters who are too stupid to live. 

"No, we can't call the police to report a crime. Well, no we have no good reason for this stance, but we're still not going to call." 

"I know a serial killer is stalking me, but I'm still going to go for a pointless walk all by myself. What could go wrong?"

It is possible to put characters in interesting and dangerous situations without requiring them to be idiots.


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## Lehane (Apr 7, 2014)

The thing with the "teenage girl (sometimes orphan) discovers she has some special power" or "discovers she is surrounded by witches/vampires/werewolves/etc." trope is that I suspect those who dislike it aren't exactly the target audience. I would go as far as to say it's not so much a trope as a subgenre. There are definitely VERY bad examples of it, but plenty of decent ones. And for a 15 year old girl who feels out of place (as most 15 year old girls do!), devouring that sort of story can be just what she needs. My suggestion would be staying out of the Teen Paranormal Romance section, because cripes, that shelf is getting big!

I have to agree that HEA = Marriage and Kids drives me bonkers. Why can't they just have lots of happy nookie and maybe go on some vacations? But again, it seems to be a demand by many readers, which I just find terribly...traditionalist.


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## Writerly Writer (Jul 19, 2012)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> How about the teenage girl in a new school who meets a "special" boy who turns out to be a vampire/werewolf/wizard... or she turns out to be a "special" girl, and learns she is descended of a vampire/a werewolf/ a witch... or she is bullied by the bad girls in her new school, but it turns out she is special.... or...
> 
> YAWN!


I understand your annoyance, but it's pretty hard to have a fantasy story without SOMEONE being special


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## Redacted1111 (Oct 26, 2013)

People buy tropes. They don't want a non-trope story. Sad but true. The trick is to twist them enough to make them seem fresh.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Nice Guys Finish Last and The Author Shall Enforce This: The heroine walks all over a perfectly awesome dude in order to 'change' a sociopathic abusive jerkass. The decent guy will be totally okay with this. Because he's decent. That's... not how even a good plurality of 'love triangles' work. Usually they're both decent or both awful because that's the kind of person the central person is attracted to.

Related: You Can Totally Change Sociopathic Abusive Jerkasses -- just soften his hard demeanor by letting it slam into your crumbling sense of self-worth again and again until the author throws in something completely unrelated (usually you being put in danger) that inspires entirely unearned character development in him.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

I had a whole list of them for romance once, but can't find it right now. Two that apply have already been mentioned: TSTL, which in romance is almost always the heroine, but you see it in thrillers and mysteries with men too when having them do something truly dumb is necessary to provoke some action. And the Big Misunderstanding. IMO the Big Misunderstanding can be done well enough to take away some of the eye-roll factor, but nothing can save TSTL.

In historical romance an even more irritating subset of the Big Misunderstanding is when the heroine runs away because he didn't say, "I love you," in exactly those words. It doesn't matter if he's half-killed himself for her, proposed marriage, etc., etc., if he didn't say it and say it like that, she's going to live on potato peels and starve for the rest of her life. In historical romance, an even stupider subset of TSTL is when she's pregnant and still behaves like that. Single and pg in historical times was not like it is today and what the selfish, intellectually challenged witch would be doing to the kid is never even taken into account.

P.S. I agree with Vaal about the jerks who change. What I often see is some guy who has a total personality transplant the minute he falls in love. From jerk to nice guy with 3 little words.


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## S.A. Mulraney (May 20, 2011)

I don't don't think anyone sets out to write a trope that feels like cliche. But, I think that can come from someone not knowing the genre enough to know what's been done a hundred thousand times before. I think we all write certain tropes because that's the kind of story we want to tell, but with our own twist. But, if your writing isn't informed, then perhaps you unknowingly fall into cliche.


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## bobbic (Apr 4, 2011)

I love this website. It lists every trope in the book. I actually use it to inspire story ideas sometimes.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

bobbi c.


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## Lehane (Apr 7, 2014)

bobbic said:


> I love this website. It lists every trope in the book. I actually use it to inspire story ideas sometimes.
> 
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
> 
> bobbi c.


WARNING: Once you fall down this rabbit hole, you will never get out. Hope you don't have anything to do for the next four hours...


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Lehane said:


> WARNING: Once you fall down this rabbit hole, you will never get out. Hope you don't have anything to do for the next four hours...


LOL, I've seen the site and know better than to wander in by accident. It's one of those places I go only to look up a specific work, not just to browse.  Otherwise, it's  .


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## Moist_Tissue (Dec 6, 2013)

When it comes to YA, I'm really tired of the forbidden love triangle. The one that involves the heroine, her childhood best friend who has secretly loved her for years, and the hunky, mysterious bad boy who will show the girl who she really is.


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## Victoria J (Jul 5, 2011)

I've been to that site a few years ago. The first time I found it i was there all night long and the next morning.   fun site to read if you have nothing else to do for a while.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

The charmingly sassy Ma, Mama, AuntMaMa, or GrannyMama who serves no purpose other than to be charming and sassy while they irritate or embarrass the heroine and challenge her views of sexuality and commitment.

The charmingly sassy black or gay best friend who serves no purpose other than to be charming and sassy while they irritate or embarrass the hero/heroine and challenge his/her views of sexuality and commitment. .

And as an addendum to what's just been talked about: the character who suddenly changes his/her mind about the lifelong, take-charge, loner jerk who suddenly becomes a softie in the presence of kids or with the promise of immediate parenthood. Because if there's one thing we all know, it's that true dbags always become better people when faced with the lifelong burden and responsibility of parenthood.


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## Ampersand_56 (Mar 12, 2014)

Vaalingrade said:


> Nice Guys Finish Last and The Author Shall Enforce This: The heroine walks all over a perfectly awesome dude in order to 'change' a sociopathic abusive jerkass. The decent guy will be totally okay with this. Because he's decent. That's... not how even a good plurality of 'love triangles' work. Usually they're both decent or both awful because that's the kind of person the central person is attracted to.
> 
> Related: You Can Totally Change Sociopathic Abusive Jerkasses -- just soften his hard demeanor by letting it slam into your crumbling sense of self-worth again and again until the author throws in something completely unrelated (usually you being put in danger) that inspires entirely unearned character development in him.


This too. A man can be alpha and also be a considerate, good guy. I know, I'm married to one. And a man can also be a decent, sweet guy and not the total loser in love. One of my best friends is like this and he always has a cool girlfriend b/c he's a cool, sweet guy. Thoughtful, attentive. Not a doormat. A sociopathic, abusive, jerkass is not going to change because they realize they're in love. And why is your heroine in love with a sociopathic, abusive jerkass in the first place? I can't get behind this kind of heroine. Again, TSTL.

And yes, the love triangle trope is one I could do without for a long time.


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## R. H. Books (Aug 2, 2014)

I'll rage-close the window of whatever blurb I'm reading if it's something along the lines of "in a post-apocalyptic world, Teenage Girl and a bunch of other Teenagers live somewhere dangerous and have to escape/fight in order to survive, and their time is running out. BUT Teenage Girl falls in love with the handsome Teenage Boy who is the leader of the rebel group she is part of and that turns out to be the most important thing about the whole story." because really, having a relationship is definitely their biggest priority instead of, you know, fighting for their lives.

Also, all the sexism in straight Romance/Erotica. To be fair, I don't read the genre, but I do read blurbs, and it's bad enough living in an actual misogynistic world, so it kind of annoys me that the Not Good Enough For Him and He Owns Me tropes are so popular.


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

Erin Satie said:


> This series exists in at least one form--Scott Westerfield's UGLIES series & it's amazing.
> 
> Personally, even knowing the cost, I'd absolutely sign up to live in that evil utopia. Take me there yesterday, please.


I love that series! I'd also would happily go live there. 



KJCOLT said:


> I understand your annoyance, but it's pretty hard to have a fantasy story without SOMEONE being special


How about a story where everyone is "special" in same way? Hehe.


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## legion (Mar 1, 2013)

maryjf45 said:


> What about overused title conventions? How many books are named _______'s daughter or wife? Please, just... no.


This trend has been driving me crazy.


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## abishop (May 22, 2014)

I'm not quite sure if this would be counted as a "trope", but I'm so thoroughly tired of plot twists that involve a pivotal character actually being related to the main character in some previously unrevealed way.  "Luke, I am your father" is the most obvious example of this trope. It's almost always a lazy way to attempt to create unexpected drama, but for me it usually falls flat and it's often wildly implausible.

I suppose you could expand this to include any important person from the main character's past who turns out to have a big role to play in their life at a pivotal plot point.  So in a thriller you might have an old war buddy who appears out of the blue near the end as an unexpected additional antagonist or something along those lines.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Nice Guys Finish Last and The Author Shall Enforce This: The heroine walks all over a perfectly awesome dude in order to 'change' a sociopathic abusive jerkass. The decent guy will be totally okay with this. Because he's decent. That's... not how even a good plurality of 'love triangles' work. Usually they're both decent or both awful because that's the kind of person the central person is attracted to.
> 
> Related: You Can Totally Change Sociopathic Abusive Jerkasses -- just soften his hard demeanor by letting it slam into your crumbling sense of self-worth again and again until the author throws in something completely unrelated (usually you being put in danger) that inspires entirely unearned character development in him.


Years ago, I used to hang out at a couple of large men's pick-up forums - because it was entertaining (and because I'm weird). I kept seeing men report that that they had better success with women when they acted like super-confident, cocky, arrogant arseholes. I didn't believe it. But then I wondered if they could all be lying. Now, I'm not so sure. The word 'alpha' used to come up a LOT. They were all aiming to be alpha males.

To me, there is no such thing as an alpha or beta male. If a man had ever described himself to me as an 'alpha' in my single days, I would have run the other way. I have 4 boys, and find the whole concept of alpha and beta insulting. I just want them to be good people and have happy lives and happy relationships.

I understand the 'alpha male' or 'bad boy' concept in books - it's just fantasy and entertainment after all  I don't read those books myself - I think those pick-up forums have forever ingrained themselves in my head lol


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

abishop said:


> I'm not quite sure if this would be counted as a "trope", but I'm so thoroughly tired of plot twists that involve a pivotal character actually being related to the main character in some previously unrevealed way.


It's definitely a trope in Regency romances. What you often get is the penniless "commoner" who turns out to be a duke's something or other. For that matter I read a mystery the other day where the abusive, rotten mother turns out not to be the mother of the protag. Daddy had an affair and brought the kid home. Small wonder the evil mother didn't like the kid. I think you see that a lot too - it keeps the protag from having a blood relationship to a bad person.


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## bobbic (Apr 4, 2011)

Jena H said:


> LOL, I've seen the site and know better than to wander in by accident. It's one of those places I go only to look up a specific work, not just to browse.  Otherwise, it's  .


Oh yes, I forgot. WARNING, you will fall into this site and can't get out! LOL
bobbi c.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

A big one in Regency (I think even Heyer herself used it several times) is the Final Complication after all the adventures and the hero and heroine are now in love with one another and don't realize yet that it's reciprocal - and the hero proposes to the heroine and she's sure that he's only proposing out of a sense of honor because all this running around having adventures has Compromised her reputation and he feels duty bound to make it right by marrying her, so she rejects his proposal and runs off and he has to convince her that no no no, he really loves her. It was cute the first time...


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## Ceinwen (Feb 25, 2014)

I've read quite a few books where every single main (and many supporting) character is painstakingly described as being super attractive. Except one or two villains, of course.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

Contemp romance and brand-name dropping. Every scarf is a Hermes, every last one.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Ceinwen L. said:


> I've read quite a few books where every single main (and many supporting) character is painstakingly described as being super attractive. Except one or two villains, of course.


I'd rather have a good looking villain than a good looking hero. Good looking villains are much more interesting. I love the inner conflict it creates when I know I should hate him, but he's just so darn attractive...


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

I think about 90% of my plots have been thoroughly trashed in this thread.

Oh, well... off to check sales.


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## stumbley (Feb 14, 2014)

Romantic vampires. There's nothing romantic about blood-suckers.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

I'm tired of anything that could be made into a Lifetime movie. Especially if it involves a woman who fakes her own death to escape her monster of a husband, then immediately gets involved with a new man.


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

As I've continued reading, I've found myself utterly angered and generally annoyed by the same little urban fantasy twit female protagonist. I actually really enjoy good urban fantasy novels or mythology novels with an urban spin, but the more I try to read, the more I run into literally the same girl over and over and over again. It's the H.P. Mallory/Kim Harrison/Seanan McGuire/Laurell K. Hamilton type girl. She always has most, if not all of the following traits:

-An absurdly well-paying job that allows her to have an amazing closet full of trendy clothes
-A huge or impressive apartment/house for whatever excuse 
-Is ridiculously beautiful, or has rare hair/eye combination, or killer body type
-Lives in a major metropolitan area and name-drops clubs, museums, restaurants, bars
-Is always "witty" and "clever"
-Is beloved by literally everyone except the villain, who conversely is usually just a horrid person with no redeeming qualities so the heroine seems even more spe-schul
-Has magic powers coming out of her butt and has mastered them to the point where it always impresses other people
-Is so devastatingly sexy that her love interest (and there almost ALWAYS is one) is immediately smitten on sight and marks his calendar for the days when he can be lucky enough to play bouncy castles with her
-Is totally fearless and brave 
-Is portrayed as always being right when arguing with another character, even if she is way off base (Anita Blake is PARTICULARLY horrendous at this one, Good Lord, you have no idea; she is the poster girl for what NOT to do with your urban fantasy series)
-Can flirt at a moment's notice and never forgets her line, or what to say, or says something awkward 
-Is almost always 100% white and has few, if any, people of color in her life (this is purely my pet peeve as a black nerd girl, though, so understand that above all; this is not an insult, but rather a frustration at the lack of spotlight on diverse characters)
-Has a reputation that precedes her and causes bad guys to tremble in their boots when she shows up unannounced, or sends them into fits of jealousy over her rampant awesomeness

Yeah, this girl needs to go. Stop it. Just stop. The entire urban fantasy market is flooded with this same chick over and over and over again. I want a female Harry Dresden, dammit: someone who is awkward, terrible with the opposite sex, rarely gets laid, isn't rolling in cash, fumbles with their powers, has clear doubts and fears, and has definable character flaws that get them into trouble constantly. Hell, it's why my series sprang to life after a certain point. We need diversity in this genre, but we also need to stop copy/pasting that Mary Sue woman and write characters with quirks and depth and realism, rather than the golden idol flawless chick who can stop any monster with little to no effort and then ride off into the sunset snogging her man-muffin.

...*cough* That was very snarky and I apologize. It's late and I have insomnia. Off I go.


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I think about 90% of my plots have been thoroughly trashed in this thread.
> 
> Oh, well... off to check sales.


I expected to find some of my own sins in this thread, so it's one of those "Kanye Shrug" moments. Just don't suck at writing any of these tropes and we might be forgiven. Emphasis on might. I shamefully admit that if you throw just the right vampire my way, I'll turn my head and look. Alucard did that to me and I am so not okay with how okay I am with him. And he's a straight up mass murderer. Sigh. Oh, to be a woman (with horrible taste in fictonal men).


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

bobbic said:


> I love this website. It lists every trope in the book. I actually use it to inspire story ideas sometimes.
> 
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
> 
> bobbi c.


Tvtropes.org is crack. I'm addicted. They got me so bad I made my own tropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheBlackParade. Not because marketing, but because it's just so blasted fun to run around the website going, "Oh, snap, I totally wrote that trope without even realizing it! *adds to page*"


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

bobbic said:


> Oh yeah. How about the "it was all a dream" scenario? Admittedly, I sort of did that once. But mine was different. LOL
> 
> bobbi c.


There is a right and wrong way to use this, and it's the reason why I am going to whack Jim Butcher on the head with his own book if I get to meet him at Dragon*Con this year. He did it not with a major plotpoint, but with a scene we fans were DYING to finally see, and then he jerked the rug out from under us and pointed and laughed. (If you're curious someday, it's the end of Chapter 14 of Skin Game) I literally threw a temper tantrum at three in the morning when I read it. It's just plain mean. That's why I refuse to use that trope. So few times do people get it right.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

kyokominamino said:


> As I've continued reading, I've found myself utterly angered and generally annoyed by the same little urban fantasy twit female protagonist. I actually really enjoy good urban fantasy novels or mythology novels with an urban spin, but the more I try to read, the more I run into literally the same girl over and over and over again. It's the H.P. Mallory/Kim Harrison/Seanan McGuire/Laurell K. Hamilton type girl. She always has most, if not all of the following traits:
> 
> -An absurdly well-paying job that allows her to have an amazing closet full of trendy clothes
> -A huge or impressive apartment/house for whatever excuse
> ...


I agree with this post. But honestly, this whole thread really makes me remember that readers are HARD on female protagonists. I hear just as many complaints when I read books about female characters who ARE flawed and have those flaws you mention. As I write scenes in which my female MC shows weakness, gets emotional, makes stupid decisions etc, I definitely hesitate and comb over those scenes, wondering how readers will react. I am obsessed with making motivations clear, but I still know that people are going to hate her. It's hard to find a female character that people don't hate for being "too perfect" or "too stupid/annoying/slutty/flighty/etc." it's not easy to find a balance of strong yet vulnerable that people are okay with seeing in a female protagonist.

But more on topic - readers like tropes. They loooove them. That's why they're tropes!


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

DianaGabriel said:


> I agree with this post. But honestly, this whole thread really makes me remember that readers are HARD on female protagonists. I hear just as many complaints when I read books about female characters who ARE flawed and have those flaws you mention. As I write scenes in which my female MC shows weakness, gets emotional, makes stupid decisions etc, I definitely hesitate and comb over those scenes, wondering how readers will react. I am obsessed with making motivations clear, but I still know that people are going to hate her. It's hard to find a female character that people don't hate for being "too perfect" or "too stupid/annoying/slutty/flighty/etc." it's not easy to find a balance of strong yet vulnerable that people are okay with seeing in a female protagonist.
> 
> But more on topic - readers like tropes. They loooove them. That's why they're tropes!


Agreed wholeheartedly. I actually had a rant on Tumblr a couple years ago about how people are WAY harder on female characters than male characters for some reason. I love flawed, layered female characters, so I'm harsh on the Mary Sues, but I am the same way with my girl. I've poured over her scenes for twice as long as I have her love interest's in my second novel because I know people are more ready to pick her apart than her husband. I try to be fair, though. I give a pretty big area of leniency before I quit a book and label the protagonist a Mary Sue because people do tend to throw that term left and right. The struggle is real.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

kyokominamino said:


> As I've continued reading, I've found myself utterly angered and generally annoyed by the same little urban fantasy twit female protagonist. I actually really enjoy good urban fantasy novels or mythology novels with an urban spin, but the more I try to read, the more I run into literally the same girl over and over and over again. It's the H.P. Mallory/Kim Harrison/Seanan McGuire/Laurell K. Hamilton type girl. She always has most, if not all of the following traits:
> 
> -An absurdly well-paying job that allows her to have an amazing closet full of trendy clothes
> -A huge or impressive apartment/house for whatever excuse
> ...


I'm pretty much using this whole subject thread as a checklist for "writing what readers buy" 

But your list is pretty good. Let's see how many I'm guilty of:

1) Yes and no. She runs a game/comic store which is not profitable at all, but she translates business documents and websites on the side, which is how she keeps the store going.
2) Nope. One bedroom above her store. Very basic.
3) Yep. Is totally beautiful, though not sure black hair and dark brown eyes are unusual combination. She keeps in shape, too, because people trying to kill you all the time will make you want to work out.
4) Nope. Lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that I made up.
5) Is usually witty and clever, because who wants to write a boring, tongue-tied character? 
6) Yes and no. The villain kind of loves her, in a "want to eat your heart" kind of way. Does that count?
7) Yes. She's a sorceress. If she didn't have magical powers, she'd sort of be...not a sorceress.
 Her love interest at first thought she was a murderer and later got mad at her for being a coward. It took some life-saving and soul-searching for him to come around. So... no? He did find her instantly hot though, because that's often how attraction works.
9) Nope. Prefers to run from problems, at least at the beginning. Not so much with the facing stuff down until later (it's the central internal issue in the first book, her running away all the time).
10) Nope. She's wrong plenty and even admits it sometimes.
11) I don't know. She says awkward things sometimes, because it is funny or in character. She is not that great at flirting, she's too direct.
12) Is 100% NOT white. She's Native American, many of her friends are Native also (the town is right near a reservation). I tend to write a lot of non-white characters, because the world is diverse.
13) No reputation yet. It's something that will build through the books probably. Like it should.

So... guilty? Not guilty? Aw, who cares? The series is selling! Readers seem happy with it so far. It is fun as heck to write. That's what matters to me.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

A lot of what we're calling tropes here could be more accurately defined as entire subgenres (YA paranormal romance and YA dystopian, for example.) Whenever I find myself annoyed by some overused trope, once I stop and think about it, I usually realize that trope is so closely tied to its subgenre that if the author wrote it any other way, her target readership would reject it. That author was smart enough to know what her market wanted and to give it to them. If I rolled my eyes at it, that's probably because I'm not her target audience. 

For example, I hate the Big Misunderstanding in romance. I'm not a fan of love triangles. I dislike overly alpha males whose emotionally abusive, stalker ways can be changed overnight by falling in love. But that doesn't mean authors who write those tropes are making a mistake. It means they've measured the wants of a substantial segment of their audience, and chosen to give the people what they want. And more than likely, they had fun doing it, because they're part of the audience that enjoys those tropes as well. 

Long story short (I know, too late), I may not like those tropes. But the genres I enjoy have their own mock-worthy clichés and if those clichés were stripped out of them, my reading pleasure would be diminished. I like fantasy novels with prophecies and "chosen ones." With naïve village kids venturing into the wide world on desperate missions. Wizardly mentors who impart their knowledge, before conveniently dying. Cruel rulers obsessed with doing evil for no apparent reason, other than to give the heroes someone to fight against. Mages and dragons, elves, and a million other totally overused creatures and concepts. Take a few of those things away or put a new twist on them and I'll be intrigued. Take all of them away or twist them beyond recognition and I'll feel cheated and confused.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

kyokominamino said:


> -Is ridiculously beautiful, or has rare hair/eye combination, or killer body type


Argh! Violet eyes! How MANY heroines have those damn violet eyes?!

And know what? Nobody really has violet eyes, nobody except some albinos. I used to think violet eyes were very very rare, but of course we all knew about Elizabeth Taylor's violet eyes. Nope. Her eyes were a very deep blue that could LOOK violet depending on what she was wearing. And of course she knew what to wear. But for your average non-albino heroine, in a non-magical story set on planet earth, please, can we deep-six the violet eyes?


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

I wholeheartedly agree on the brand names. Please add women (and lots of male studs) who are sexily happy only with lots of lingerie, lace, corsets and bras.

I'd love to see again dystopias which aren't including any apocalypses or zombies. How about actually doing intelligent SciFi and projecting current trends. Max Headroom anyone?


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## sarahdalton (Mar 15, 2011)

These kinds of threads are always terrifying, because they inevitably end up dragging up themes in your own novels! 

But yes, even though my bestsellers are all my YA dystopian books, I can't read YA dystopia anymore. I'm just sick of it. 

Cutsey virgin quirk characters are my pet hate. Ones with some sort of artistic talent like illustrators, painters or writers. YA contemporary is annoying for this. They usually have a friend who drinks too much and ends up in hospital, and of course they are there to pick up the pieces, fall in love, end up doing badly on an exam but then ace all the finals at the end of the book and win a prize.


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## von19 (Feb 20, 2013)

I'm tired of female protagonist in my fantasy. Period. 
And God, I can't agree more with the characters that are too stupid to live. It makes me want to throw books in fire. You're going to leave the safe confines of a police station to wonder the streets aimlessly even though you know a murderer is after you? Really?! How could you be that stupid?!

Another pet-peeve and less of a trope is not asking the right questions. Or characters who just have zero critical thinking ability whatsoever. A good 2/3 of a book could have been avoided if the main character realized 1+1=2


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## sarahdalton (Mar 15, 2011)

DianaGabriel said:


> I agree with this post. But honestly, this whole thread really makes me remember that readers are HARD on female protagonists. I hear just as many complaints when I read books about female characters who ARE flawed and have those flaws you mention. As I write scenes in which my female MC shows weakness, gets emotional, makes stupid decisions etc, I definitely hesitate and comb over those scenes, wondering how readers will react. I am obsessed with making motivations clear, but I still know that people are going to hate her. It's hard to find a female character that people don't hate for being "too perfect" or "too stupid/annoying/slutty/flighty/etc." it's not easy to find a balance of strong yet vulnerable that people are okay with seeing in a female protagonist.
> 
> But more on topic - readers like tropes. They loooove them. That's why they're tropes!


Yep, I've had my female characters trashed for being flawed. But they never seem to trash the male characters for being flawed. Funny that.

In my last book, I really wanted my MC to have a passionate fling with a guy on holiday, but with her being seventeen and it being YA, I figured she'd end up getting slut shamed by the reviewers so toned it down to kissing. Next time I think I might stick to my guns and go for it.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

sarahdalton said:


> Yep, I've had my female characters trashed for being flawed. But they never seem to trash the male characters for being flawed. Funny that.


My male characters are cowards, betrayers, murderers, implied cannibals... I've yet to receive a single complaint about any them. I wrote a female character who was smart-mouthed on two occasions and selfish in one scene. I haven't stopped hearing about her since. 

To be fair, negative personalities are more grating in main characters though. Background characters can get away with more because we don't spend as much time following them.


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## Ceinwen (Feb 25, 2014)

Carol (was Dara) said:


> My male characters are cowards, betrayers, murderers, implied cannibals... I've yet to receive a single complaint about any them. I wrote a female character who was smart-mouthed on two occasions and selfish in one scene. I haven't stopped hearing about her since.


Well yeah, eating people is WAY more forgivable than a woman acting in her own best interest


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## Lexi Revellian (May 31, 2010)

Moist_Tissue said:


> I'm really tired of the forbidden love triangle. The one that involves the heroine, her childhood best friend who has secretly loved her for years, and the hunky, mysterious bad boy who will show the girl who she really is.


Hey, I've written this one! And very good it is too.

*glares*

On second thoughts, my heroine didn't need showing who she really was. Does that make all the difference?


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

HELP I AM TRAPPED IN TV TROPES AND CAN'T GET OUT. SEND MONEY AND GUNS.


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## AngryGames (Jul 28, 2013)

The trope I'm absolutely tired of is the one where authors put words down on a page / in an electronic document and publish it. 

My second most hated trope has to do with threads about an author's most hated tropes.


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## sarahdalton (Mar 15, 2011)

Carol (was Dara) said:


> To be fair, negative personalities are more grating in main characters though. Background characters can get away with more because we don't spend as much time following them.


It's true. Especially in first person. Sometimes when I read reviews stating that they didn't like/engage/relate to the main character it makes me wonder whether the reader doesn't like first person but doesn't realise they don't like first person. Not always, but sometimes it seems that way.


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## Spinneyhead (Nov 4, 2010)

I'm steering clear of TVtropes- I have work I should be doing. But this thread is quite addictive in itself.

A few years ago, I drew up a list of the presumptions of techno-thrillers- America is always right, the American military is always more right than the politicians, certain branches of the military (depending upon the author's affiliation) are more right than others, etc.

I don't know if it qualifies as a trope, but the way people's discoveries or actions are too often said to have "changed history" annoys me. Unless the Doctor was involved, no-one changed history. They made history, or changed the course of events, but to them, everything was happening in the present. It just annoys me


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## jcthatsme (Mar 19, 2014)

Carol (was Dara) said:


> Long story short (I know, too late), I may not like those tropes. But the genres I enjoy have their own mock-worthy cliches and if those cliches were stripped out of them, my reading pleasure would be diminished. I like fantasy novels with prophecies and "chosen ones." With naïve village kids venturing into the wide world on desperate missions. Wizardly mentors who impart their knowledge, before conveniently dying. Cruel rulers obsessed with doing evil for no apparent reason, other than to give the heroes someone to fight against. Mages and dragons, elves, and a million other totally overused creatures and concepts. Take a few of those things away or put a new twist on them and I'll be intrigued. Take all of them away or twist them beyond recognition and I'll feel cheated and confused.


Totally agree. And it's a relief too. Who can possibly be 100% original 100% of the time?

I write the books I want to read, and that often involves some of the tropes I like done the way I like them. Instead of tired, I prefer to call them 'tried and true'


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## Lexi Revellian (May 31, 2010)

Is it a trope where the hero/heroine in historical fiction holds anachronistic views from our own time (women are as intelligent as men, black people should be treated the same as white, hanging people for sheep stealing is a bad idea) thus making him/her seem a lot cleverer and more sympathetic than everyone else?


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## Paul Huxley (Feb 27, 2014)

I'm definitely in the 'good writing can make cliches work' camp. 

Except for dragons. They can piss off.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)




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## Annette_g (Nov 27, 2012)

bobbic said:


> I love this website. It lists every trope in the book. I actually use it to inspire story ideas sometimes.
> 
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
> 
> bobbi c.


I spend hours on there sometimes  Must resist clicking that link today, LOL!

I don't mind tropes, in fact I actively go out of my way to find ones I like. Fantasy with orphan who ends up being special in some way? Sign me up! Secret conspiracy theories about templar treasure et al? I blame Dan Brown for that one. I loved, loved the Da Vinci Code when I had never read anything in that sort of genre before, and now it's one of my faves.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere on another thread a while back, so excuse me if I repeat, but kyokominamino's list brought it all rushing back.  Years (decades?) ago there used to be a sub-genre of women's fiction called 'glitz and glamour.'  I read a number of them at the time, and this is what the story inevitably was.

- heroine is devastatingly beautiful, and, much like the sun in our solar system, every man who wanders within range is captured by gravity and falls into her orbit of worshipers.  Every. Single. One.
- she's married to an obscenely wealthy older man who gives her everything she ever wanted.
- thanks to her husband she is able to embark on her career (which inevitably seems to be interior design).
- because of the exalted circles in which this woman moves , there was constant name-dropping of fancy products:  every carpet was Aubusson, and all the dinnerware, tea-sets, etc., were either Limoges or Sevres.  (I'd never heard of any of these until reading these books.)
- There is always the 'other man.'  He is young, much nearer the heroine's own age, always handsome, maybe not rich, but self-made and determined to be successful on his own terms, etc.
- Heroine loves this Other Man, but feels affection and loyalty toward Elderly Husband, whom she truly cares for, almost like a father.
- Heroine and Other Man are doomed to be apart, an idea to which both become stoically resigned.
- Finally, Elderly Husband has the good manners to drop dead, leaving an extremely wealthy and beautiful widow who we know will grieve the appropriate amount of time before snagging handsome Other Man as Hubby #2, because, after all, Elderly Husband would "want her to be happy."  So just like always, this woman gets everything she ever wanted and more than she ever dreamed of.

Just like in real life, right??


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## bobbic (Apr 4, 2011)

Lydniz said:


> HELP I AM TRAPPED IN TV TROPES AND CAN'T GET OUT. SEND MONEY AND GUNS.


Oh dear, now look what I've done <evil grin>. Oh well, you can always call is research.
bobbi c.


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

Lexi Revellian said:


> Is it a trope where the hero/heroine in historical fiction holds anachronistic views from our own time (women are as intelligent as men, black people should be treated the same as white, hanging people for sheep stealing is a bad idea) thus making him/her seem a lot cleverer and more sympathetic than everyone else?


Yeah.
If it's not a trope, it should be.


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## abishop (May 22, 2014)

Lexi Revellian said:


> Is it a trope where the hero/heroine in historical fiction holds anachronistic views from our own time (women are as intelligent as men, black people should be treated the same as white, hanging people for sheep stealing is a bad idea) thus making him/her seem a lot cleverer and more sympathetic than everyone else?


There were people fighting for better treatment of black people during the height of the slave trade, there were people fighting for better rights for women long before the 20th century (Plato argued women should be allowed to do anything men can do 2500 years ago), etc. It's anachronistic if a character holds those views and everyone thinks it's normal, but it's not necessarily anachronistic for a character to have them at all.


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

I like tropes. There, I've admitted it. 
I like them because I know what to expect from the book (and I hope they will deliver it in a new and unexpected way).

But I read the bits about female protagonists with interest because they expressed pretty clearly my own frustrations and aggravations. If I read about one more heroine with red hair and green eyes, or a heroine with "violet" eyes (I'm assuming that means the woman drinks so much that her normally blue eyes are completely blood-shot and therefore "violet") I'll puke. I *hate* perfect heroines. Give me the fat, the homely, the insecure, the snotty, the smart-mouthed and even the selfish, and I'm yours. ha, ha. Give me a gorgeous babe and I won't get beyond the page where she's described.

But I have found that if I write my own heroines with flaws, readers complain.
Personally, I think its because they want to identify with the heroine and they want to find their flaws instantly rubbed away through the magic of the story. The reader *wants* to be that insanely beautiful, successful woman.

Although I find that physical imperfections are more easily slipped in without complaint (e.g., she's pudgy) while character flaws like selfishness or perceived wimpiness are not. There's an interesting bit of psychology in that, I think. I, personally, love shy, wimpy women in stories because they tend to have more interesting internal lives and views. Or maybe they're just more like me. There used to be a lot of them in fiction, but I'm afraid they are pretty much gone and I miss them.

Male heroes on the other hand went through a period (think: James Bond) when they were all handsome, rich, smart, etc, too. But that has changed to a great degree, although in romances, the guy still tends to be the James Bond type. Now, they tend to be more like "real people" more or less.

What this says about the psychology of readers (and me both as an author and as a reader) is fascinating to me. I'd speculate further, but I don't want to aggravate too many people. Ha, ha....


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

I think there will always be a hate-love relationship with tropes    Sometimes they're over played so much they're just plain annoying. But then again, tropes are what help form genres, so there always has to be some kind of trope in there. I think when it comes to tropes (for me, the apocalypse/terrible future dystopian fiction is one), I find it good just to take a break from it, then come back later.

Honestly, there will always be criticism on characters that are deemed a minority. People are so concerned about how the minorities are represented, and women are so often the main characters now a days, they get really criticized. Women characters are expected to be strong, but if they're too perfect, they're unrelatable. I think all we can do is the best we can forming our characters... people are probably going to complain either way lol


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

Very true. As a reader, and a minority, I appreciate the presence of strong, underrepresented characters. But sometimes  it feels like, in the genres I read,  EVERY character from an underrepresented group has to be, above all else, strong and not prone to taking any gruff.  Always a chip on a shoulder. I don't expect every main character to be strong and independent and clever, just interesting at first, and if he or she gains strength and independence and cleverness as the story progresses...great. It doesn't have to be a prerequisite, not even with characters from the underrepresented. 

But, I don't know if that's so much a trope as it is lazy character building. And even if it is a trope, well, as has been said, tropes exist for a reason. They're comfortable, ready-made templates from which something something better can be built.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

One person's tired trope is another person's dope!


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

AdrianC said:


> Very true. As a reader, and a minority, I appreciate the presence of strong, underrepresented characters. But sometimes it feels like, in the genres I read, EVERY character from an underrepresented group has to be, above all else, strong and not prone to taking any gruff. Always a chip on a shoulder. I don't expect every main character to be strong and independent and clever, just interesting at first, and if he or she gains strength and independence and cleverness as the story progresses...great. It doesn't have to be a prerequisite, not even with characters from the underrepresented.


Agreed. As long as the character is relatable and interesting in some way, I will probably like them. Although if weakness is one of their faults, I do expect them to get stronger throughout their journey. If they don't, I will probably end up disliking them... that's just me though


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

stumbley said:


> Romantic vampires. There's nothing romantic about blood-suckers.


I read this in my head as "robotic vampires." I thought to myself, hmnn, sentient robots that run on human blood and kill to replenish their energy... has that really been overdone?


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## Lexi Revellian (May 31, 2010)

Amy Corwin said:


> I, personally, love shy, wimpy women in stories because they tend to have more interesting internal lives and views. Or maybe they're just more like me. There used to be a lot of them in fiction, but I'm afraid they are pretty much gone and I miss them.


In _Replica _my heroine is a bit of a doormat with low self-esteem, and to my surprise readers tend not to like her though she's nice. They much prefer her clone, who starts as identical in every way, but is forced to become assertive when she goes on the run.

I think in real life people prefer confident people. Doormats are convenient, because they can be pushed around, but they're not respected.

Do you like the second Mrs de Winter, or want to give her a slap?


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

On the historical fiction protags with modern sensibilities-*yes*. So often that feels forced. Now, if the characters have _reason_ for that, fine, but for it to just be treated as common sense and to exist for no apparent reason other than the author shoehorned it in&#8230; Ulgh.

I find it interesting that y'all have had folks complain about your flawed female protags. My other-world fantasy series admittedly is only popular on Wattpad atm, not yet getting many sales-I'm 4 books in on Wattpad and only 2 books in on vendors-but each book has a different flawed female narrator. One's even angry and bitter and ends up the "other" woman in a relationship.

General consensus has been gracious, forgiving-but some readers have mentioned that I've built their trust from how I've built the series, where the narrator will at least become more self-aware by the end of it. (Book 1's narrator is a paranoid coward who ends up pushed into bravery because if she isn't, others will die. By the end, she's still paranoid and prefers fleeing from problems, but she's at least admitting that she can't run from everything and that she has friends.)


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

ㅈㅈ said:


> I'm pretty much using this whole subject thread as a checklist for "writing what readers buy"
> 
> But your list is pretty good. Let's see how many I'm guilty of:
> 
> ...


Hey, it's no problem if you use traits from this girl as long as you do them WELL. That, to me, is most important. I'm just tired of people making the same paper-thin girl instead of bothering to write a three-dimensional character. And what I meant by "witty" and "clever" are the types of girls who think they are oh-so-witty and it's mostly the author trying to show off. I am a sarcasm MACHINE and so is my main character, but people don't compliment her on it, and sometimes it gets on their nerves because she's constantly trying to distance herself from them with one-liners.

So what books do you write, anyhow? I didn't see them in your signature. Unless my laptop's acting up and not loading...


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

joyceharmon said:


> Argh! Violet eyes! How MANY heroines have those d*mn violet eyes?!
> 
> And know what? Nobody really has violet eyes, nobody except some albinos. I used to think violet eyes were very very rare, but of course we all knew about Elizabeth Taylor's violet eyes. Nope. Her eyes were a very deep blue that could LOOK violet depending on what she was wearing. And of course she knew what to wear. But for your average non-albino heroine, in a non-magical story set on planet earth, please, can we deep-six the violet eyes?


Seconded.


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

Amy Corwin said:


> I like tropes. There, I've admitted it.
> I like them because I know what to expect from the book (and I hope they will deliver it in a new and unexpected way).
> 
> But I read the bits about female protagonists with interest because they expressed pretty clearly my own frustrations and aggravations. If I read about one more heroine with red hair and green eyes, or a heroine with "violet" eyes (I'm assuming that means the woman drinks so much that her normally blue eyes are completely blood-shot and therefore "violet") I'll puke. I *hate* perfect heroines. Give me the fat, the homely, the insecure, the snotty, the smart-mouthed and even the selfish, and I'm yours. ha, ha. Give me a gorgeous babe and I won't get beyond the page where she's described.
> ...


Agreed! I like flawed women. My one true love right now is a tie between Karrin Murphy from The Dresden Files and Kate Beckett from ABC's crime dramedy Castle. I like Murphy because she's 5'0'', but she's a former cop with a sharp eye for detail, a truly awesome arsenal at home, and is genuinely a good person even though she has trust issues and has overcome some serious trauma being Harry Dresden's best friend (and girlfriend-in-denial). Kate Beckett looks flawless on the outside (but that's mostly because Stana Katic is the most gorgeous women on network television, imo) but she has even MORE trust issues, can get so wrapped up in revenge that she alienates everyone in her life, and has shown all kinds of relationship insecurities even though she's finally with the man of her dreams. I'm fine with pretty women as the protagonist, but they need to be just like real women, and real women have flaws. That's what makes us human. I also agree that not every woman has to be the brave butt-kicker. I've seen plenty of characters who are intelligent and non-action-centric who are just as interesting to read about. I hope we see more ladies of this caliber.


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

stumbley said:


> Romantic vampires. There's nothing romantic about blood-suckers.


I think of it as a fetish.

That a lot of people like.


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## Lehane (Apr 7, 2014)

Lydniz said:


> HELP I AM TRAPPED IN TV TROPES AND CAN'T GET OUT. SEND MONEY AND GUNS.


FOOL. WE WARNED YOU. Guns won't save you now.

Re: readers ripping into flawed female characters but not male ones: holy yes. I don't see quite as many male-targeted hated tropes here, or in general. Heck, the "teenage girl is all alone and/or downtrodden until she finds out she's special" trope? Change that gender and you have pretty much every male-targeted comic book written in the last few decades. Funny, no one complains about those.

I learned this back when I first became a massive fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For the longest time, I didn't like Buffy herself all that much. Then I stopped being twelve and rewatched it in high school. I almost fell over myself falling in love with her flaws and strengths, but apparently that's not something that always happens. My least favorite male character? Obviously, he's everyone's favorite. Blagh.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

A.A said:


> Years ago, I used to hang out at a couple of large men's pick-up forums - because it was entertaining (and because I'm weird). I kept seeing men report that that they had better success with women when they acted like super-confident, cocky, arrogant arseholes. I didn't believe it. But then I wondered if they could all be lying. Now, I'm not so sure. The word 'alpha' used to come up a LOT. They were all aiming to be alpha males.
> 
> To me, there is no such thing as an alpha or beta male. If a man had ever described himself to me as an 'alpha' in my single days, I would have run the other way. I have 4 boys, and find the whole concept of alpha and beta insulting. I just want them to be good people and have happy lives and happy relationships.
> 
> I understand the 'alpha male' or 'bad boy' concept in books - it's just fantasy and entertainment after all  I don't read those books myself - I think those pick-up forums have forever ingrained themselves in my head lol


Yeah, those guys are the what better classes of scum look down on.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

von19 said:


> I'm tired of female protagonist in my fantasy. Period.


Wait. What?


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

The only two things that really bug me, in my own genre, are

1) The guy to whom, in real life, the only sane response would be a restraining order. The idea that his obsession and jealousy are proof of his love--yeah, ask any woman in the Battered Women's Shelter about that one. Maybe it seems "romantic" when you're 17. Why it would be romantic to any woman who's lived in the world more than 25 years, though, is a mystery to me. As my friend and beta reader who's a judge said, after she read the first 40 pages or so of a famous book of this nature: "These are the men about whom I'd tell a woman in my courtroom, 'Run, don't walk.'" I just can't suspend disbelief to that extent. I know what those guys are like. My sister was married to one. The marriage doesn't tend to work out too well.

2) The forced, ridiculous misunderstanding that could have been solved by a quick conversation. If you can't discuss your issues, how am I supposed to believe you can have a happy life together? To be fair, I know why authors do this. You need a story arc. You need a Relationship Iceberg for the couple to overcome. It's a lot harder to think up a nice big juicy one that arises organically from the individuals', and thus the couple's, real issues, something realistic but still worthy of a Climactic Moment. This is one reason that Romantic Suspense is attractive--although you still need to have internal issues for the couple to overcome, or it wouldn't be a romance, you can have the Big Threatening Thing arising from outside. 

That's my KBoards musing for the day! Back to work! Fun thread though.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

kyokominamino said:


> Hey, it's no problem if you use traits from this girl as long as you do them WELL. That, to me, is most important. I'm just tired of people making the same paper-thin girl instead of bothering to write a three-dimensional character. And what I meant by "witty" and "clever" are the types of girls who think they are oh-so-witty and it's mostly the author trying to show off. I am a sarcasm MACHINE and so is my main character, but people don't compliment her on it, and sometimes it gets on their nerves because she's constantly trying to distance herself from them with one-liners.
> 
> So what books do you write, anyhow? I didn't see them in your signature. Unless my laptop's acting up and not loading...


They aren't in my sig. I'm not a fan of getting my negative reviews upvoted and my good ones downvoted when I post things on Kboards people don't want to hear. Sigh.


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

ㅈㅈ said:


> They aren't in my sig. I'm not a fan of getting my negative reviews upvoted and my good ones downvoted when I post things on Kboards people don't want to hear. Sigh.


Oh. Sorry to hear that, then. Well, if you feel up to it, I'd love you to shoot me a PM with a link to your books. Sounds interesting enough for me to at least add to my TBR shelf. But that's up to you.


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## Flopstick (Jul 19, 2011)

joyceharmon said:


> Argh! Violet eyes! How MANY heroines have those d*mn violet eyes?!


n'thing this, and let's add grey eyes while we're about it. Nobody has grey eyes, and weird eye colours aren't a decent substitute for character or motivation.



A.A said:


> They were all aiming to be alpha males.


As someone on my Twitter timeline put it: if approached by an alpha male, tell them you're waiting for the release version with all the bugs fixed.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

Rosalind James said:


> 2) The forced, ridiculous misunderstanding that could have been solved by a quick conversation.


Heh - that's the plot set-up for just about every Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie ever made. I like it in that context, but unless you're doing period screwball comedy with tuxedos and lots of dancing, nuh-uh.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

joyceharmon said:


> Heh - that's the plot set-up for just about every Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie ever made. I like it in that context, but unless you're doing period screwball comedy with tuxedos and lots of dancing, nuh-uh.


LOL, yes, the amazing dancing and Fred's charm made up for a lot!


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

ㅈㅈ said:


> They aren't in my sig. I'm not a fan of getting my negative reviews upvoted and my good ones downvoted when I post things on Kboards people don't want to hear. Sigh.


Isn't it lovely when they do that? -_-


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## EmmaS (Jul 15, 2014)

> I'm not quite sure if this would be counted as a "trope", but I'm so thoroughly tired of plot twists that involve a pivotal character actually being related to the main character in some previously unrevealed way.
> 
> 
> 
> > It's definitely a trope in Regency romances.


It was apparently a trope back in the actual Regency, too... Jane Austen spoofed something similar in Love and Freindship (it's in "LETTER 11th LAURA in continuation"). Not quite the same situation -- this one is the main character suddenly and improbably discovering a wealthy relative who could save the day, no questions asked -- but in the same territory.

This thread is making me laugh so hard. I used to work in a library book drop, handling several thousand books in a day. I skimmed a lot of trope-y jacket covers in those years and this thread is nailing them.


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## von19 (Feb 20, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Wait. What?


What? I just am. I don't mean to sound harsh or anything. Lately it just seems increasingly difficult to find male protagonist. I've read so many female protags it gets tiring.

Oh, and I'm currently reading We Could Be Heroes. Cheers.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

von19 said:


> What? I just am. I don't mean to sound harsh or anything. Lately it just seems increasingly difficult to find male protagonist. I've read so many female protags it gets tiring.
> 
> Oh, and I'm currently reading We Could Be Heroes. Cheers.


Huh. Well, if I didn't like reading about or (by extension) identifying with men/male characters, I'd have stopped consuming media around the age of, like, 2.

So if you really can't find books with male characters, I'm glad the tides are somewhat shifting, then.

Totally agree with what pretty much everyone's said in this thread, but especially this:



Lehane said:


> Re: readers ripping into flawed female characters but not male ones: holy yes. I don't see quite as many male-targeted hated tropes here, or in general. Heck, the "teenage girl is all alone and/or downtrodden until she finds out she's special" trope? Change that gender and you have pretty much every male-targeted comic book written in the last few decades. Funny, no one complains about those.


And this:



AdrianC said:


> Very true. As a reader, and a minority, I appreciate the presence of strong, underrepresented characters. But sometimes it feels like, in the genres I read, EVERY character from an underrepresented group has to be, above all else, strong and not prone to taking any gruff. Always a chip on a shoulder. I don't expect every main character to be strong and independent and clever, just interesting at first, and if he or she gains strength and independence and cleverness as the story progresses...great. It doesn't have to be a prerequisite, not even with characters from the underrepresented.
> 
> But, I don't know if that's so much a trope as it is lazy character building. And even if it is a trope, well, as has been said, tropes exist for a reason. They're comfortable, ready-made templates from which something something better can be built.


Well said!!


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> I think about 90% of my plots have been thoroughly trashed in this thread.
> 
> Oh, well... off to check sales.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Tattooed whatevers (the usual tropes are hot male heroes, sexy heroines, risk-taking women, potential lovers), I dislike tattoos and they signal skid row, chav and not really intelligent for me. The abundance of tattooed characters I'm supposed to root for, though they are dumb enough to have colour injected into their skin capable of poisoning them which by the year looks less attractive and not even in the beginning anywhere close to as good as paint on a canvas is grating. As if these days a tattoo still represented a rebellious person instead of someone who runs with great desperation after a fashion trend having happened.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

Nic said:


> Tattooed whatevers (the usual tropes are hot male heroes, sexy heroines, risk-taking women, potential lovers), I dislike tattoos and they signal skid row, chav and not really intelligent for me. The abundance of tattooed characters I'm supposed to root for, though they are dumb enough to have colour injected into their skin capable of poisoning them which by the year looks less attractive and not even in the beginning anywhere close to as good as paint on a canvas is grating. As if these days a tattoo still represented a rebellious person instead of someone who runs with great desperation after a fashion trend having happened.


I have trouble with a heroine in a historical finding an unshaven male attractive BECAUSE of the stubble. Hey, stubble only became a Thing in my life time! Before that, stubble would signify lower class and slovenly, and give off signals of unemployed, probably a drinker, lazy and perhaps violent - not attractive attributes! The idea that Lady Whoever back in the 19th Century is going to be turned on by an unshaven man is just ludicrous.


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

BRONZEAGE said:


> Historical fiction that has commercialized sex-every-20-pages,
> or stale gimmicks like "time travel" or "Tudor poisoning mystery" or fantasy elements.
> 
> A bold assertion: there is no _fresh_ way to do something that _doesn't belong there_.


Oh yes! And to add to that, anachronistic sex in historical settings where our lusty medieval hero -- knight, etc -- performs skillful oral sex right out of Masters and Johnson on the virginal heroine and gallantly brings her to the big O before finishing his own business. Seriously?

Edited to add -- and yes to all those ridiculous quasi-mystical tattoos... Enough with the magical tats on hot guys, already.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Nic said:


> Tattooed whatevers (the usual tropes are hot male heroes, sexy heroines, risk-taking women, potential lovers), I dislike tattoos and they signal skid row, chav and not really intelligent for me. The abundance of tattooed characters I'm supposed to root for, though they are dumb enough to have colour injected into their skin capable of poisoning them which by the year looks less attractive and not even in the beginning anywhere close to as good as paint on a canvas is grating. As if these days a tattoo still represented a rebellious person instead of someone who runs with great desperation after a fashion trend having happened.


Wow. Could you be more judgmental? I'm covered in tattoos and I love them. I'm not rebellious, I just enjoy decorating my skin. I have multiple college degrees, thanks. So really, you are just making random assumptions about people based on appearance. That says a lot more about you than it does about anything else, don't you think? Just because you don't like something doesn't make it awful, it just means you don't like it. Get over yourself.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

von19 said:


> What? I just am. I don't mean to sound harsh or anything. Lately it just seems increasingly difficult to find male protagonist. I've read so many female protags it gets tiring.
> 
> Oh, and I'm currently reading We Could Be Heroes. Cheers.


I don't get why it's just females in general and not something specific about them.

And I really hope you enjoy the Descendants series, but it's like 4:3 female to male in the cast so...


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Nic said:


> Tattooed whatevers (the usual tropes are hot male heroes, sexy heroines, risk-taking women, potential lovers), I dislike tattoos and they signal skid row, chav and not really intelligent for me. The abundance of tattooed characters I'm supposed to root for, though they are dumb enough to have colour injected into their skin capable of poisoning them which by the year looks less attractive and not even in the beginning anywhere close to as good as paint on a canvas is grating. As if these days a tattoo still represented a rebellious person instead of someone who runs with great desperation after a fashion trend having happened.


Man, I live on skid row and I didn't even know it. Man, it must be because I'm stupid.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Flopstick said:


> As someone on my Twitter timeline put it: if approached by an alpha male, tell them you're waiting for the release version with all the bugs fixed.


Bwahahahaha indeed


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

ㅈㅈ said:


> Wow. Could you be more judgmental? I'm covered in tattoos and I love them. I'm not rebellious, I just enjoy decorating my skin. I have multiple college degrees, thanks. So really, you are just making random assumptions about people based on appearance. That says a lot more about you than it does about anything else, don't you think? Just because you don't like something doesn't make it awful, it just means you don't like it. Get over yourself.


Judgement is what happens when you present yourself. Whether positive or negative depends on where the other stands. I'm aware tattoos (and body modification) have become a fashion, but just as you said it, that's not to everyone's liking. I dislike, quite thoroughly. I've yet to meet with someone who had a truly genuine or intelligent reason to get a tattoo, or to see a single tattoo which is aesthetically pleasing. Most of them are less attractive than your average mole or wart, and few have any artistic value, and if it's rather low. So you have to explain to me why anyone would "decorate" their body with something that ugly and so sub-par on its artistic value.

That's however only one side of what I stated. The other is that currently every single hero/ine in erotica and eroms allegedly being a sexy, hot or liberated person is covered in tattoos. As if tattoos bore any relation to that anymore. I just have to look at the vast arse antlers and "super-edgy" halfsleeves populating the bars and beaches to decide that it's massively not that. Edgy and rebellious was 2-3 if not more decades ago.


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## Sock Runner (Jul 15, 2014)

Love at first sight is the only trope I can think of that simply cannot be done in a way that pleases me. I don't mean lust at first sight, which is completely understandable considering what some of the characters in the books I read (and to be honest, write) look like.

In a romance focused book it undermines the entire story by making it's central premise, the relationship, unbelievable. In a non-romance book, it makes the romantic element look like icing that someone's tried to apply to a cake with a water ballon based delivery system.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Nic said:


> Judgement is what happens when you present yourself. Whether positive or negative depends on where the other stands. I'm aware tattoos (and body modification) have become a fashion, but just as you said it, that's not to everyone's liking. I dislike, quite thoroughly. I've yet to meet with someone who had a truly genuine or intelligent reason to get a tattoo, or to see a single tattoo which is aesthetically pleasing. Most of them are less attractive than your average mole or wart, and few have any artistic value, and if it's rather low. So you have to explain to me why anyone would "decorate" their body with something that ugly and so sub-par on its artistic value.
> 
> That's however only one side of what I stated. The other is that currently every single hero/ine in erotica and eroms allegedly being a sexy, hot or liberated person is covered in tattoos. As if tattoos bore any relation to that anymore. I just have to look at the vast arse antlers and "super-edgy" halfsleeves populating the bars and beaches to decide that it's massively not that. Edgy and rebellious was 2-3 if not more decades ago.


Maybe you should educate yourself about tattoos then and look at a wider range. Good tattoos are very much art, and if well taken care of they last decades. Most of the people I know have tats for deeply personal reasons ranging from marking important events to overcoming addictions to loss of loved ones to wanting to feel beautiful in their own skin. The reasons are as varied as the tattoos. No need to decide someone is somehow less/stupid/ugly because they made a choice you wouldn't make for yourself...

For myself, my tattoos are there for many reasons, but mainly because I've struggled with an eating disorder and severe depression since I was 13. They represent things I love, people I love (and have lost in some cases), and places I've traveled. Every time I look in the mirror or look down at my arms etc, instead of seeing someone who thinks she is worthless and ugly and dull, I see beautiful reminders that I have lived.

When I write a character with tattoos, I give them reasons for them as well. Because body art is a part of characterization (not having it says one thing, having it says another, etc) and I like my characters to be fully realized people, which means some will have tattoos. It's hardly a trope...


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

ㅈㅈ said:


> For myself, my tattoos are there for many reasons, but mainly because I've struggled with an eating disorder and severe depression since I was 13. They represent things I love, people I love (and have lost in some cases), and places I've traveled. Every time I look in the mirror or look down at my arms etc, instead of seeing someone who thinks she is worthless and ugly and dull, I see beautiful reminders that I have lived.
> 
> When I write a character with tattoos, I give them reasons for them as well. Because body art is a part of characterization (not having it says one thing, having it says another, etc) and I like my characters to be fully realized people, which means some will have tattoos. It's hardly a trope...


Your reasons are better than those of most people.

The majority of people I meet and talk with (and with that I mean nearly every single one) got their tattoos drunk, because some mate also got one, to ape a male or a female star or starlet, because "all have them, so I have to have one too", because it's oh so transgressive (usually these are those horrid hearts, roses, dolphins or butterflies on ankles, butts or boobs), or to fit in with a specific clique. But at least 95% are a stupidity engaged in when completely pi**ed. Ever noticed a lot of tattoo shops are close to bars in holiday resorts or red light districts?

That some tattoos are better than others doesn't change the fact for me that I consider tattoos as a rule being ugly and of low artistic workmanship and value. I've seen a very broad range of tattoos by the way, including some of the allegedly best Japanese ones, and no, not a single one was up to a relatable artistic standard. It gets particularly grating when actual artwork is inked. I then tend to break out in aesthetic hives just looking at that. For me it is much on the same ground as docking dogs tails or bobbing their ears, on top of the other reasons. I dislike needless cosmetic surgery for the same reason.

As to tropes, do you read much contemporary erotic romance, erotica and NA? These days you have to hunt hard for anything *not* featuring a tattooed character.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Nic said:


> Your reasons are better than those of most people.
> 
> The majority of people I meet and talk with (and with that I mean nearly every single one) got their tattoos drunk, because some mate also got one, to ape a male or a female star or starlet, because "all have them, so I have to have one too", because it's oh so transgressive (usually these are those horrid hearts, roses, dolphins or butterflies on ankles, butts or boobs), or to fit in with a specific clique. But at least 95% are a stupidity engaged in when completely pi**ed. Ever noticed a lot of tattoo shops are close to bars in holiday resorts or red light districts?
> 
> ...


Just FYI, it's illegal to get tattoos while drunk (there are bleeding issues to deal with). So, that's kind of an urban myth.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

yodaoneforme said:


> Just FYI, it's illegal to get tattoos while drunk (there are bleeding issues to deal with). So, that's kind of an urban myth.


I've watched it happen, more than once. In the UK, in Greece, in Spain and in France, with people at times not being able to stay upright anymore. I financed uni working in holiday resorts.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Nic said:


> I've watched it happen, more than once. In the UK, in Greece, in Spain and in France, with people at times not being able to stay upright anymore. I financed uni working in holiday resorts.


It's illegal in the U.S, although they're state laws. There are blood-thinning issues and excessive blood going into the ink. Any artist worth anything doesn't do a tattoo when the individual is drunk.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Tattoos are pretty common these days. Like piercings, or short hair. So if you write modern books and choose to have characters have a tattoo or three, that's hardly a trope in my mind. I mean, my MOM has a huge tattoo (over her masectomy scars, she's almost 70). They are mainstream now.  It's almost weird in some parts of the country to see people who don't have one. So I see characters having them in modern fiction as writers noticing that hey, times have changed and this is pretty normal. Guess that doesn't seem tropish to me.

Magical tattoos, those are sort of a trope. That I can totally see. Just regular old tats though? Pretty usual.

I would say if everyone you know has a bad tattoo they got while drunk... maybe you should find some different people to hang out with.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

ㅈㅈ said:


> For myself, my tattoos are there for many reasons, but mainly because I've struggled with an eating disorder and severe depression since I was 13. They represent things I love, people I love (and have lost in some cases), and places I've traveled. Every time I look in the mirror or look down at my arms etc, instead of seeing someone who thinks she is worthless and ugly and dull, I see beautiful reminders that I have lived.


Thank you for sharing that. Like you, most everyone I know who has a tattoo has a story about it. I believe they are deeply personal for a lot of people.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

YodaRead said:


> It's illegal in the U.S, although they're state laws. There are blood-thinning issues and excessive blood going into the ink. Any artist worth anything doesn't do a tattoo when the individual is drunk.


As I said, I've seen it happen, very regularly. A dozen or more drunken people into the tattoo studio, egging each other on to get one, and then out with a new one, showing off. In a variety of countries too. It's the opposite of intelligent behaviour in my (quite personal) opinion and I stand by that.



ㅈㅈ said:


> Tattoos are pretty common these days. ...
> Magical tattoos, those are sort of a trope. That I can totally see. Just regular old tats though? Pretty usual.
> I would say if everyone you know has a bad tattoo they got while drunk... maybe you should find some different people to hang out with.


.

Unfortunately yes. I find few things artificially done to the human body uglier than that. As I said, a personal and an aesthetic opinion right there. They didn't all do it drunk or tipsy. Some - see earlier posts - did it for equally as stupid reasons. Like wanting to look like some movie star and not noticing that a lot of these lately have them lasered off again. Or because it's "cool" or the pain "a rite of passage". You can have the latter without disfiguring yourself, which I consider the smarter decision.

I'm not talking of magical tattoos, haven't met with a lot of those. I meant the typical descriptions of girls having arse antlers, tattoos on ankles, bum or shoulders, "bad boys" with sleeves or whole body tattoos, and the proverbial biker who apparently doesn't exist anymore without tattoos. If you don't at all find tattoos sexy or if you get turned off by them like I do, then it's hard finding erotica/e-roms at the moment which allow for that.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

Well, if you want historical to be "accurate" we would totally do away with historical romance. Women were treated like slaves or cattle; as possessions. They weren't romanced nor did their feelings matter. Plus, anyone with any social standing or money married to increase wealth. Love didn't enter the picture. So historical romance in general bugs me. That's a bigger fantasy than fantasy or sci fi.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

MrAzzatagoestotheinternet said:


> Yes, because everyone knows the female orgasm is a myth.
> 
> Seriously, though, considering the state of hygiene during medieval times, your average hero and heroine probably had rotten teeth, breath like sewer gas, fleas, and I don't even want to speculate was to what was growing in their woolen underpants.


So true!! For a while, every medieval romance I read mentioned that the heroine, "contrary to popular custom," decided to bathe and wash her hair regularly. Everyone thought she was strange, of course, because it was actually considered "unhealthy" to wash ones' self that often, but she did it and of course smelled so fresh and clean and her hair shone like silk.  Yeah, right.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

But to be fair, it IS fiction. If you are a romance reader, do you really want to read about stinking breath, flea invested clothes, and body odor? Hair that hasn't been washed in months? (Lice were considered good things to have during some periods of history). Even if you're not reading romance, but just general historical fiction, do you really want everyone in the book accurate according to the hygiene of the time? There's a point where "artistic license" becomes a good thing. Historical fiction is fiction, not complete historical fact.

_He looked at her through his greasy, tangled hair. Lice crawled from the top of his head to his forehead, and he brushed them away. Her lips looked like something he'd like to ravage. Strong odor wafted from her trembling mouth. The taste of sewer and rotting food had always made the fire burn in his loins. As he drew closer, he could smell her time of month. The rank smell of body odor combined with her female smell, making his heart beat even faster. God, the woman was a minx!

"Come here, woman!"

She smiled, and he noticed most of her teeth were missing. A sure sign of wealth, as that meant she could afford sugar. Women of her tender age only lost teeth if they were indulging in the sweet delights of the rich. He knew then she was his soulmate._


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Caddy said:


> But to be fair, it IS fiction. If you are a romance reader, do you really want to read about stinking breath, flea invested clothes, and body odor? Hair that hasn't been washed in months? (Lice were considered good things to have during some periods of history). Even if you're not reading romance, but just general historical fiction, do you really want everyone in the book accurate according to the hygiene of the time? *There's a point where "artistic license" becomes a good thing. Historical fiction is fiction, not complete historical fact.*


True. But it's 'tired' or cliche'd if _only_ the hero or heroine act that way, being very revolutionary and 'original.' Plus, it's possible to have a happy medium.... maybe she can wash her hair every two weeks instead of only twice a year.


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## Whiskey_Tango (May 5, 2014)

MrAzzatagoestotheinternet said:


> and I don't even want to speculate was to what was growing in their woolen underpants.


Sootikins. That's a real thing, and it's nasty.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Caddy said:


> Well, if you want historical to be "accurate" we would totally do away with historical romance. Women were treated like slaves or cattle; as possessions. They weren't romanced nor did their feelings matter. Plus, anyone with any social standing or money married to increase wealth. Love didn't enter the picture. So historical romance in general bugs me. That's a bigger fantasy than fantasy or sci fi.


Who, what, when, where, and most especially, which class? I know from Jane Austin and Shakespeare and The Cantebury Tales that romance did play into the equation. There were so many exceptions running about that these tales accepted the situations as normal-enough. If nothing else, all those mistresses and courtesans have to come from somewhere.

The historical truth is always wackier than our supposed understanding of truth. I ran into a reference where lower class Victorian women in the cities often didn't marry because they would lose too many rights. If the bastard cheated on you, you just kicked him out. In the countryside, there's always been the infamous gunshot wedding. Even in the repressive middle east, it was the job of the First Wife to find and approve lovers for the younger wives.

On the other hand, we today still have men who regard women as their property. Look at poor Christy Mac.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> If nothing else, all those mistresses and courtesans have to come from somewhere.


Ah, yes. Mistresses and courtesans. Please remember, romance has a strict formula. Along with HEA or HFN, the vast majority of romance readers expect monogamy. Forget the mistresses and courtesans, which were indeed treated much better than wives. And the reason? For sex. Not love. We can't have the male lead fooling around in romance, even if in real life that usually happened, and those women were the ones treated at least half decently. But in most cultures, only behind closed doors. On the street, he avoided her eyes.

Jane Austin, Shakespeare, etc were writing plays and stories. They played on emotions, like any good writer does. Who would go to a play where reality was shown? "I'll trade you six horses for the wench with the blonde hair." Not exactly awe-inspiring or a turn on. 

Let's also remember that 18 was considered an old maid. So most of these men would be choosing girls, as long as they had bled and could have children. More years of reproduction if they are younger. And, yes, you can say everyone lived a shorter life but let's remember that's averaging all humans. The wealthy tended to live longer, so we had men in their thirties marrying 14 year olds. Very romantic, isn't it?


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## Huldra (Nov 7, 2013)

I _really_ wish I hadn't read this last page as the final procrastination before finishing off my WiP that needs to go to editing tomorrow. 

That's what I get for being on Kboards instead of writing.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I think about 90% of my plots have been thoroughly trashed in this thread.
> 
> Oh, well... off to check sales.


Haha... cliches get that way because they are VERY popular. Same with tropes. They were all new once.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

ㅈㅈ said:


>


Me too! Dragons are NOT tropes or cliches, they are very rare and misunderstood creatures. I want MORE dragon shifter stories. Talking dragons are cool.


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

Caddy said:


> Ah, yes. Mistresses and courtesans. Please remember, romance has a strict formula. Along with HEA or HFN, the vast majority of romance readers expect monogamy. Forget the mistresses and courtesans, which were indeed treated much better than wives. And the reason? For sex. Not love. We can't have the male lead fooling around in romance, even if in real life that usually happened, and those women were the ones treated at least half decently. But in most cultures, only behind closed doors. On the street, he avoided her eyes.
> 
> Jane Austin, Shakespeare, etc were writing plays and stories. They played on emotions, like any good writer does. Who would go to a play where reality was shown? "I'll trade you six horses for the wench with the blonde hair." Not exactly awe-inspiring or a turn on.
> 
> Let's also remember that 18 was considered an old maid. So most of these men would be choosing girls, as long as they had bled and could have children. More years of reproduction if they are younger. And, yes, you can say everyone lived a shorter life but let's remember that's averaging all humans. The wealthy tended to live longer, so we had men in their thirties marrying 14 year olds. Very romantic, isn't it?


It's true, romance wasn't abundant throughout most of history, but it was there. There were men who loved their wives and vice versa... It just didn't happen often. I mean, love poems, Jane Austen, Shakespeare; what they wrote came from real life experiences, whether personal or not. There's plenty of historical proof through love letters, and other pieces of writing. I agree, it was rare. But it happened, and love was desired by people. 
As for the fourteen year old reference, depends on what point of history you're talking about. Not all the people getting married were that young, but I agree it did happen a lot... Well, except in Sparta, where women couldn't marry til they were 19 for child bearing purposes


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> Me too! Dragons are NOT tropes or cliches, they are very rare and misunderstood creatures. I want MORE dragon shifter stories. Talking dragons are cool.


Agreed! I hope to write a dragon story one day. They're awesome!


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I don't read fantasy, but there do seem to be a lot of dragons in books these days.  Seems as if dragons are the new vampires, which at one time were the new witch/wizards.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> It's true, romance wasn't abundant throughout most of history, but it was there. There were men who loved their wives and vice versa... It just didn't happen often. I mean, love poems, Jane Austen, Shakespeare; what they wrote came from real life experiences, whether personal or not. There's plenty of historical proof through love letters, and other pieces of writing. I agree, it was rare. But it happened, and love was desired by people.
> As for the fourteen year old reference, depends on what point of history you're talking about. Not all the people getting married were that young, but I agree it did happen a lot... Well, except in Sparta, where women couldn't marry til they were 19 for child bearing purposes


Yup. I've also read that people didn't stink as bad as we would now if we quit washing our hair, brushing our teeth, and bathing. They had a lot more "good" bacteria that took care of some of that stink, which we have killed with all of our cleanliness. Not saying cleanliness is bad, mind you. Just saying they maybe could stand to be by each other.


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

Caddy said:


> Yup. I've also read that people didn't stink as bad as we would now if we quit washing our hair, brushing our teeth, and bathing. They had a lot more "good" bacteria that took care of some of that stink, which we have killed with all of our cleanliness. Not saying cleanliness is bad, mind you. Just saying they maybe could stand to be by each other.


Yup! I always figured they wouldn't care that the person they loved stank because... well, everyone stank. lol. It was just the way of life!


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

While dragons used well are awesome, dragons are also easymode shapeshifters with magic power, so they pop up a lot where they really shouldn't. My friend and I constantly send each other links to bad books with blurbs ending with 'also, he is a dragon'..


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

kjbryen said:


> Agreed! I hope to write a dragon story one day. They're awesome!


My latest WIP started as a desire to write a young adult dragon rider book. I found my main character too boring, and almost shelved it, when I realized that the girl's mentor was really cool. Then, I imagined what the same book from the mentor's point of view would look like, and I just about fell over from sheer awesomeness, so ditched my schedule and wrote that book and the one that follows. I HAD A WHOOPING GREAT TIME WRITING THOSE BOOKS. (Yes, I intended to shout that out.) Even the revisions have been fun.

Myself, I don't think that any tropes are tired, I think that readers get tired of tropes. After a few years, a new generation shows up for a new take on the old warhorses and the tropes get new again.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

In general, the wizard, witch, or magical being who's built up to be super cool, super wise, and super powerful, yet when he's needed most in battle he inexplicably disappears because...well...he can't be bothered or because his interference would go against the cosmic grain or some bullcrap. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that he's been present and has interfered with matters the entire story prior to the battle. 

Marvel is especially guilty of this, which is why I wander how they're going to bring Dr. Strange into the movie universe (and what kind of power Scarlet Witch really has).  The Harry Potter novels were pretty bad about it too. It's soooooo annoying.


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## kjbryen (Jul 3, 2014)

AdrianC said:


> In general, the wizard, witch, or magical being who's built up to be super cool, super wise, and super powerful, yet when he's needed most in battle he inexplicably disappears because...well...he can't be bothered or because his interference would go against the cosmic grain or some bullcrap. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that he's been present and has interfered with matters the entire story prior to the battle.
> 
> Marvel is especially guilty of this, which is why I wander how they're going to bring Dr. Strange into the movie universe (and what kind of power Scarlet Witch really has). The Harry Potter novels were pretty bad about it too. It's soooooo annoying.


Yes!!!! Gandalf did this all the time too. Ugh. Of course they always had to be gone when the heroes needed them. So frustrating


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## Twizzlers (Feb 6, 2014)

Vaalingrade said:


> While dragons used well are awesome, dragons are also easymode shapeshifters with magic power, so they pop up a lot where they really shouldn't. My friend and I constantly send each other links to bad books with blurbs ending with 'also, he is a dragon'..


I have an idea for a high-fantasy/romance epic about warring kingdoms in the sky. Like they live on floating islands and use airships to get back and forth. There's an industrialized human nation at war with a nation of shapeshifters (thing Laguz from Fire Emblem). Anyway the humans are winning until dragons with dragon knights show up from somewhere higher in the sky and turn the tide of the war. 
Anyway I'm getting off track. I was going to make it seem at first like the brave dragon knights were controlling the dragons and riding them and in the end you find out they're just mindless slaves that are controlled by the dragons who are actually the ones pulling the strings.

Why did I tell you this idea? I don't know. I just felt like throwing it out there while people are talking about tired dragon tropes.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Speaking of dragon tropes: fire breath

I'm okay with fire breath, but there are so many more awesome breath weapons. I've got one set that hits you with a spore cloud, then doses you with life magic, so the spores grow into fungus and eat you alive.


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

Caddy said:


> But to be fair, it IS fiction. If you are a romance reader, do you really want to read about stinking breath, flea invested clothes, and body odor? Hair that hasn't been washed in months? (Lice were considered good things to have during some periods of history). Even if you're not reading romance, but just general historical fiction, do you really want everyone in the book accurate according to the hygiene of the time? There's a point where "artistic license" becomes a good thing. Historical fiction is fiction, not complete historical fact.
> 
> _He looked at her through his greasy, tangled hair. Lice crawled from the top of his head to his forehead, and he brushed them away. Her lips looked like something he'd like to ravage. Strong odor wafted from her trembling mouth. The taste of sewer and rotting food had always made the fire burn in his loins. As he drew closer, he could smell her time of month. The rank smell of body odor combined with her female smell, making his heart beat even faster. God, the woman was a minx!
> 
> ...


LOL! Great descriptions, there! 

But without having to go to this other naturalism extreme, it is still an anachronistic annoyance to see modern-style sex described in pre-19th century historical works.

I don't know about other historicals readers, but I get completely thrown out of historical context by that more than other details that might be wrong.

It's like if the knight had a battery operated vibrator next to the marriage bed that he suddenly pulled out to pleasure his bride. That would be a WTF! Men did not go down on women, and oral sex would have been considered a "sin" by most churches and religious institutions. In general, women were just not given that kind of sexual attention in those days (think, missionary position, and at best, doggie style alternative), and there are plenty of elegant ways of portraying verisimilitude and love and sexiness that's more true to the time period instead of our cliche modern fantasy.

So yeah, oral sex (performed on women) is a mega-annoyance and pet peeve of mine in reading historical romance.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> Men did not go down on women, and oral sex would have been considered a "sin" by most churches and religious institutions. In general, women were just not given that kind of sexual attention in those days (think, missionary position, and at best, doggie style alternative)


While true in USA and in lots of other areas, the drawings from past civilizations suggest otherwise. I was also going to mention what was going on in France, but then remembered you said pre-19th century. I remember reading an article about sexual attractiveness through history some years ago. In it, there was mention of a letter from Napoleon to Cleopatra. He would be home in about 40 nights, and he asked her not to bathe after her bleeding time so he could taste and smell her womanliness. Sounds like going down to me.  But the French were more progressive than most countries in regard to sexual variety.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

People bathed in history. They had oral sex. They fell in love.  There are some eras (1700s France and England for the upper class, for example) where people decided they didn't like bathing or bathed in things like milk for whatever reason. But it wasn't normal through a lot of history.  Full immersion baths weren't a thing in most places in Europe (though there were quite a few places it was, since they had Roman baths left over from Roman occupation), but scrubbing down with a rag and a jug of water wasn't unusual.

Also, that marriage at 14 thing? A myth.  Royalty often made early unions, but the kids would live with the family of the male party and the union wouldn't be consumated until the girl was considered mature enough.  For example, according to Stephanie Coontz, who wrote in the 2005 bestseller Marriage: A History, "In England between 1500 and 1700 the median age of first marriage for women was twenty-six."

I realize using Google is tough, but a lot of things people believe about history are kind of wrong and crazy (like how people think swords all weigh 10lbs or more, haha), which  I guess is a trope itself maybe? I don't know.  You don't need to spend years and years in school to check out this stuff for yourself. I did, but these days we have Google


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

http://www.bettersexnetwork.com/content/history-oral-sex

Cant' get much older than 200 B.C. There are many cultures besides the USA


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Also, the Church said a lot of things were sins. Like adultery. And murder.  People still engaged in both quite often. Oral sex isn't some magical exception


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

Caddy said:


> While true in USA and in lots of other areas, the drawings from past civilizations suggest otherwise. I was also going to mention what was going on in France, but then remembered you said pre-19th century. I remember reading an article about sexual attractiveness through history some years ago. In it, there was mention of a letter from Napoleon to Cleopatra. He would be home in about 40 nights, and he asked her not to bathe after her bleeding time so he could taste and smell her womanliness. Sounds like going down to me.  But the French were more progressive than most countries in regard to sexual variety.


I did say "in general" because I absolutely agree there are exceptions. But such practices were far more likely in ancient times and places other than in medieval Europe where most of the historicals I am talking about take place. In other words, your average European knight, or Scottish Highlander -- not Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine (or, for that matter, Antony and Cleopatra) who, by virtue of their power and access to more exotic practices and options in life, would no doubt have indulged in more "exotic" things than the average person.

The key notion is verisimilitude.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

BRONZEAGE said:


> Historical fiction that has commercialized sex-every-20-pages,
> or stale gimmicks like "time travel" or "Tudor poisoning mystery" or fantasy elements.
> 
> A bold assertion: there is no _fresh_ way to do something that _doesn't belong there_.


Oh man, I love a good historical time-travel romance! They were huge in the 90s and I looked specifically for them at the bookstore. I haven't found a good one in a long time though. I tried to write one last year, but I hated it and quit.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

ㅈㅈ said:


> Also, that marriage at 14 thing? A myth. Royalty often made early unions, but the kids would live with the family of the male party and the union wouldn't be consumated until the girl was considered mature enough. For example, according to Stephanie Coontz, who wrote in the 2005 bestseller Marriage: A History, "In England between 1500 and 1700 the median age of first marriage for women was twenty-six."


Edward III of England married Philippa of Hainault when he was sixteen and she was fourteen.
She gave birth to Edward (a.k.a. the Black Prince) when she was sixteen.
The marriage lasted for forty years until her death at age fifty-five, after having given birth to fourteen children.
Edward was inconsolable.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> Also, the Church said a lot of things were sins. Like adultery. And murder. People still engaged in both quite often. Oral sex isn't some magical exception


So true! I doubt it took long for humans to discover every possible way to pleasure each other. Life was hard, finding pleasure would be a plus.



> Edward III of England married Philippa of Hainault when he was sixteen and she was fourteen.
> She gave birth to Edward (a.k.a. the Black Prince) when she was sixteen.
> The marriage lasted for forty year until her death at age fifty-five, after having given birth to fourteen children
> Edward was inconsolable.


Yes. There were others, too.



> did say "in general" because I absolutely agree there are exceptions. But such practices were far more likely in ancient times and places other than in medieval Europe where most of the historicals I am talking about take place. In other words, your average European knight, or Scottish Highlander -- not Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine (or, for that matter, Antony and Cleopatra) who, by virtue of their power and access to more exotic practices and options in life, would no doubt have indulged in more "exotic" things than the average person.


Yes. Sorry I got the partners mixed up!   It was Josephine he wrote to. (And who must have really smelled wonderful after 40 days)


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Caddy said:


> Yes. There were others, too.


Actually there were a lot, and the nobility married probably later than commoners.

Just one more example. Margaret Beaufort was 12 when she married Edmund Tudor, who was twenty-four. This was her second marriage. She gave birth to the future Henry VII when she was fourteen.

The age ranges of Romeo and Juliet weren't considered all that exceptional, though they were young, even for the times. Which added to the tragedy.


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## Lehane (Apr 7, 2014)

Vaalingrade said:


> While dragons used well are awesome, dragons are also easymode shapeshifters with magic power, so they pop up a lot where they really shouldn't. My friend and I constantly send each other links to bad books with blurbs ending with 'also, he is a dragon'..


I burst out laughing at "easy mode shapeshifters".


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

1. Mentioning food they buy is organic. 
2. Knowing how a romance is going to end. Always. Yes, I know it's required. I wish it would change is all I'm saying, but it won't. And this is my list, I understand there are others who enjoy that. 
3. I am sick to death of werewolves, zombies, and vampires that are nice and fall in love. Again, that's me. 
4. Women who work 80 hours a week and still have time to fall in love, look great, exercise, etc.


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## SA_Soule (Sep 8, 2011)

Vaalingrade said:


> A trope can never be tired, only the execution.
> 
> My special hates though:
> 
> - Zombies. Just in general, I hate ghouls zombies and wish they would go away.


Gasp! What? No way. I love all the zombie books and movies being made recently. *Die-hard THE WALKING DEAD fan*


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Andrew Ashling said:


> Actually there were a lot, and the nobility married probably later than commoners.
> 
> Just one more example. Margaret Beaufort was 12 when she married Edmund Tudor, who was twenty-four. This was her second marriage. She gave birth to the future Henry VII when she was fourteen.
> 
> The age ranges of Romeo and Juliet weren't considered all that exceptional, though they were young, even for the times. Which added to the tragedy.


The nobility married earlier than commoners. Not later. Most of the examples of early marriage in Western European Medieval history are from royalty and nobility.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> The nobility married earlier than commoners. Not later. Most of the examples of early marriage in history are from royalty and nobility.


Then again, how many commoners have history recording their age at marriages? History doesn't follow the seamtress or the farmer from birth to death like it does the wealthy and the famous. Thank God. I'd hate my every move written down for future generations.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Caddy said:


> Then again, how many commoners have history recording their age at marriages? History doesn't follow the seamtress or the farmer from birth to death like it does the wealthy and the famous. Thank God. I'd hate my every move written down for future generations.


Depending on the era and location, we actually have quite a lot of information like this about commoner life, thanks to the Church. Births, deaths, and marriages were recorded. There are some excellent books about commoner life that also deal with marriage, one of which I quoted above (http://smile.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered-ebook/dp/B002I1XRZY/ she covers a wide era as you can see) as well as more specific Medieval texts. This list has a few that we used in some of my classes at university: http://historymedren.about.com/od/dailylifesociety/tp/dailylife.htm


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

ㅈㅈ said:


> Depending on the era and location, we actually have quite a lot of information like this about commoner life, thanks to the Church. Births, deaths, and marriages were recorded. There are some excellent books about commoner life that also deal with marriage, one of which I quoted above (http://smile.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered-ebook/dp/B002I1XRZY/ she covers a wide era as you can see) as well as more specific Medieval texts. This list has a few that we used in some of my classes at university: http://historymedren.about.com/od/dailylifesociety/tp/dailylife.htm


Thanks!


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

Caddy said:


> Yes. Sorry I got the partners mixed up!   It was Josephine he wrote to. (And who must have really smelled wonderful after 40 days)


LOL! Yeah, after 40 days of reek, would not want to know!


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## AngryGames (Jul 28, 2013)

> Men did not go down on women, and oral sex would have been considered a "sin" by most churches and religious institutions. In general, women were just not given that kind of sexual attention in those days (think, missionary position, and at best, doggie style alternative)


This is so wrong I don't even know where to begin. You can't place American puritanism upon all peoples of history. Seriously. Go do some actual research on sex throughout history.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

ㅈㅈ said:


> The nobility married earlier than commoners. Not later. Most of the examples of early marriage in Western European Medieval history are from royalty and nobility.


Not sure why this would be true. Poor farmers and common serfs would want to marry off and get rid of their 'girl-children' as they were extra mouths to feed, and not as useful around the farm as the sons. And if the chosen spouse would move in with the family and be an extra pair of hands after the marriage, all the better to marry them off early.


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## Sylvia Volk (Jul 22, 2014)

I get thrown out of any fantasy story where the women drink a special tea or whatever that prevents pregnancy. Paksenarrion tea. Widows shroud. A total eyeroller for me.

It usually pops up in the fantasies that have battle parity between the sexes - the women are equally represented in the army, the city guard, ship crews, prison-guard crews, etc etc, gender parity is ordinary - but though that is enough of a trope to make my eyes roll too, it also makes for story fun.

Oh - ha ha - and historicals and fantasies where the writer carefully writes it in that, whatever the culture, once a character becomes pregnant, she abstains from alcohol. Bwahhah! Total trope.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Didn't the Romans drive a birth control herb to extinction?


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

J Ryan said:


> I have an idea for a high-fantasy/romance epic about warring kingdoms in the sky. Like they live on floating islands and use airships to get back and forth. There's an industrialized human nation at war with a nation of shapeshifters (thing Laguz from Fire Emblem). Anyway the humans are winning until dragons with dragon knights show up from somewhere higher in the sky and turn the tide of the war.
> Anyway I'm getting off track. I was going to make it seem at first like the brave dragon knights were controlling the dragons and riding them and in the end you find out they're just mindless slaves that are controlled by the dragons who are actually the ones pulling the strings.
> 
> Why did I tell you this idea? I don't know. I just felt like throwing it out there while people are talking about tired dragon tropes.


Please write this so I can read it.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Re birth control herb: It's speculated this is one of the things Silphium was used for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

Jena- you might think that, but it wasn't the case. Girls were useful (they did farm work, made items for sale, etc). Check out myth number two in this article: http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes_p2.html Depending on the culture, women were as useful or more useful than the men. A body that could work was a body that could work. 

(in fact, that Cracked article does a pretty good job of dealing with a lot the complaints in this thread re: middle ages and a lot of the misinformation being bandied about here  )


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

A LOT of people really, really want to think people in the Middle Ages were just absolutely caked in feces and ignorance at all times.


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## Vera Nazarian (Jul 1, 2011)

AngryGames said:


> This is so wrong I don't even know where to begin. You can't place American puritanism upon all peoples of history. Seriously. Go do some actual research on sex throughout history.


American Puritanism in Medieval Europe? 

Believe me, I have done my research.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Jena H said:


> Not sure why this would be true. Poor farmers and common serfs would want to marry off and get rid of their 'girl-children' as they were extra mouths to feed, and not as useful around the farm as the sons. And if the chosen spouse would move in with the family and be an extra pair of hands after the marriage, all the better to marry them off early.


Actually, you can't generalize. A lot depended on the specific region, the era, and the social class. And just like today, there were always the outliers who either married late or early in life.

Sometimes is was simply a matter of not having to split up the family property (dowry). Sometimes it was a matter of life expectancy.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Sylvia Volk said:


> I get thrown out of any fantasy story where the women drink a special tea or whatever that prevents pregnancy. Paksenarrion tea. Widows shroud. A total eyeroller for me.





Vaalingrade said:


> Didn't the Romans drive a birth control herb to extinction?


Yep. I don't remember the name of it. It grew in a small area, and it was so effective that it was harvested to extinction many centuries ago.

But even today, I could trigger a miscarriage with tea. One of the herbs I take regularly for some of my health issues is documented to have a side effect of triggering miscarriages.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

That's sort of different than preventing implantation because that prevent the initial unpleasant physiological changes of early pregnancy.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Vaalingrade said:


> That's sort of different than preventing implantation because that prevent the initial unpleasant physiological changes of early pregnancy.


I can name one herb that can, in at least some women, prevent implantation. I take it regularly, because it works better than hormone therapy for me. (I have a hormone disorder.)

Some herbs can even lead to sterility.


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## von19 (Feb 20, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Speaking of dragon tropes: fire breath
> 
> I'm okay with fire breath, but there are so many more awesome breath weapons. I've got one set that hits you with a spore cloud, then doses you with life magic, so the spores grow into fungus and eat you alive.


That... is... incredibly bad***!

Oh, and I guess because female protags are all pretty much the same. "I have to be a strong, independent, amazing woman in this male world so let me set out to kill this dragon alone and empty-handed."


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

It's Fantasy, there's no reason for it to be a 'male world' in the first place.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

So you don't like women who kick butt and kill dragons. Which is your choice, but there are many of us who like reading about a variety of female characters, including those who kick dragon butt.


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

Lydniz said:


> That's what p*ssed me right off about Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Hero returns to Greece after the war to marry his lover, only to spot her in the distance holding a baby (which she just happens to have rescued from an earthquake). He immediately assumes the baby is hers and that she's married someone else, and despite presumably having spent a lot of money travelling from Italy to Greece and WITHOUT BLOODY STOPPING TO ASK THE WOMAN WHAT'S GOING ON, buggers off for the next fifty years.


So true! I found it so odd, unreal and can now see that some of the changes they made for the film were... good. I laughed when I read your perception of this, I now feel vindicated.

So what tropes hack me off?

1) *America - centre of the universe.*

Yup. So there's an alien invasion. These highly intelligent life-forms have a whole planet to choose from, but they land - on the White House lawn. Somewhere about 250 pages in there's a fleeting reference, maybe, to Beijing or Moscow or some other far flung minor settlement; typically that it's been bailed out of the pooh-pooh by the good ole US of A - or gone under. The climax approaches. There are hundreds of top rate fighter-aces world wide. Russia, China, the UK, France, Israel, Argentina... the list could go on. But nope the only thing that's going to save the world is the doddery old American President in a US fighter jet. Oh give us a break and get real . This (you probably recognize it) may be one of the worst examples, but it is far too prevalent. Fortunately Hollywood can redeem itself at times with things like Mars Attacks! and MIB.

2) *Morality is for wimps.*

There are rules and laws and morals and ethics. Our highly respectable hero may be a law man or a really successful businessman. This is a man of integrity, someone to be respected. Somewhere, early in the book he's putting a chest full of the top medals back into a box or having a flash-back to his time in the CIA or rescuing a fallen comrade in some military conflict. This is the same guy who lives a quiet life near the lake and has all his old skills and contacts still in place - as brilliantly described above.

Something happens and it's not right. So our hero goes and sorts it. Specifically he gets a gun, sorry, guns, RPGs, explosives and the odd helicopter. He has a car chase along a busy Freeway where he smashes his way past umpteen vehicles (doubtless in the process killing and maiming scores of innocent adults and children). There's a huge gunfight with the baddy or baddies in a shopping mall. Possibly a fuel depot, factory or service station is blown up. We reach the climax, probably there's a kidnapping involved, for real kitsch, its the president of some country's child or the child of the protagonist. Our hero blasts the baddy or baddies into smithereens and it all ends with him clutching the poor child and comforting it as the police arrive.

At no point whatsoever during the huge trail of this psychopath's carnage do the police think of pursuing apprehending and arresting this lunatic. On the rare occasions they try, it's a bit of a token effort and they are always outwitted, because, as we all know, all police officers are somewhat stupid. Oh and being a psychopathic murderer is fine, just as long as you know it's the right thing to do. We know this, because at the end of this epic the police are either being very nice to Mr Rampage or some official is about to pin another medal on him.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

CoraBuhlert said:


> So you don't like women who kick butt and kill dragons. Which is your choice, but there are many of us who like reading about a variety of female characters, including those who kick dragon butt.


Kicking dragon butt is thinking too small. In the new series, Pele gets to fight a super-magic boar, a T-rex, a minor goddess, an avatar of the planet's soul and a mountain. To be fair, the mountain was being a jerk.


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## Bluebonnet (Dec 15, 2013)

Caddy said:


> Yup. I've also read that people didn't stink as bad as we would now if we quit washing our hair, brushing our teeth, and bathing. They had a lot more "good" bacteria that took care of some of that stink, which we have killed with all of our cleanliness. Not saying cleanliness is bad, mind you. Just saying they maybe could stand to be by each other.


But didn't they all have fleas? There are a few Old Master paintings depicting people and servants picking fleas off themselves, such as this one:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:'The_Flea_Hunt'_by_Gerrit_van_Honthorst,_Dayton_Art_Institute.JPG
Wikimedia Commons, "The Flea Hunt," artist Gerrit van Honthorst, 1621

Others:

http://www.sothebys.com/content/sothebys/es/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/old-master-paintings-n09102/lot.54.html
Sothebys.com, "La Pulce" or "The Flea Hunt," artist Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Italy 1665-1747

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559068/
NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine ), "The Iconography of Vermin." [What a great title!] Article about painting "La Femme à la puce (The Flea Catcher)," 1638. Artist Georges de la Tour, 1593-1652

Ewww, fleas. Bet people in the Middle Ages had lice too! So we modern people might not only stink worse if we gave up our hygiene routines, but we'd also be covered with itchy crawly-hoppy critters.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Fleas were not a day-to-day issue. Someone painted a picture of it precisely because it was something of interest.

The idea that everyone was basically a mangy filth-pile is modern narcissism, much like how the Victorians desperately tried to suggest that everything before them sucked.


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

I know I have already posted (above) - but I have to add - 'The Sheik'.

THE SHEIK

There is undoubtedly a market for this sort of fiction. It sells. I don't want to dwell too much on the sexual politics of this. Suffice to say, when feminists bemoan the media stereotype that 'The only woman worth having is slim, surgically enhanced, airbrushed and beautiful (and you'd better buy this product to get your sorry self in that direction)' - it might be worth bearing in mind 'The only male worth having is a ruthless alpha'.

At its height it's the Alpha Sheik.

*THE SHEIK*

So Ms Ordinary somehow encounters a sheik. This doesn't happen in everyday life so there's a spot of plot to bridge the credibility gap. He's evil and yet... she finds something enthralling in him. He too is taken by her - maybe it's the fact that she drops her aitches, is plain, or has the temerity to query his choice of having his cucumber sandwiches at The Ritz with the crusts on?

It continues. Is her ardour assuaged by this guy being a despot in charge of a country with one of the worst human rights records, a small core of uber wealthy and mass poverty? Certainly not. So the heroine is immoral? No. She is singularly unimpressed by his fleet of gold plated Bugatti Veyrons and his karzi, which is totally diamond encrusted and cleaned every morning by an enslaved flunky with a toothbrush. The yacht in Monte Carlo and the apartments in London, New York and Paris do nothing for her either: but there's something in his eyes...

At some point our heroine sees Sheik Evil do something wonderful. He bends and strokes the puppy that he's previously kicked or gives a fiver to a beggar. This man has hidden humanity - he's the one for her.

Meanwhile Sheik Evil is singularly unimpressed with the gold-digging glamour models and princesses that yearn for him. He's a hunk and loaded. But he's tired of them and his mind keeps wandering back to that cucumber sarnie.

It continues... at the end they get together and she persuades him to build a hospital for his emaciated subjects. There is no consideration whatsoever that this Anglo Saxon waitress is Christian. The cultural differences are neatly done away with by Sheik Evil's Eton and Harvard education. The Sheik's family will not ostracise him for marrying an unbeliever, neither will the people revolt for the same reason. No one's going to burn in hell because our heroine is more Julie Andrews than The Sound Of Music.
THE END


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Vaalingrade said:


> Kicking dragon butt is thinking too small. In the new series, Pele gets to fight a super-magic boar, a T-rex, a minor goddess, an avatar of the planet's soul and a mountain. To be fair, the mountain was being a jerk.


Actually I was responding to the person above you, not to your comment. Though I completely support kicking the butts of magical boars, T-rexes, minor goddesses, planetary avatars and mountains.

About the Sheikh romance, I once read a fascinating study that Sheikh romances became more popular after 2001, not less so, as might be expected. And yes, this stuff sells. My bestseller by a wide margin is a harem girl story.


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## von19 (Feb 20, 2013)

CoraBuhlert said:


> So you don't like women who kick butt and kill dragons. Which is your choice, but there are many of us who like reading about a variety of female characters, including those who kick dragon butt.


No, I do, I'm just a little fatigued of the invincible woman trope. I'm sure I'll get back into it down the road but as of now it's no longer piques my interest.


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## Erin Satie (Mar 21, 2014)

Bryn said:


> It continues... at the end they get together and she persuades him to build a hospital for his emaciated subjects.
> THE END


I don't read many category romances, though I do know these sheikh stories have evolved in some interesting ways over the past generation--the variations on the theme can be pretty interesting.

What I can tell you is that ignoring the middle is ignoring the real meat of the story. One reason I avoid categories about these exaggerated alpha characters is how often the middle of the book--where, you know, the plot happens--involves the hero stepping over a line, the heroine deciding that she's had enough--she won't tolerate such bad behavior--and then the hero has to grovel his way to forgiveness.

Now, you might fixate on the trappings of wealth--the cars and the fancy hotels--but the heart of the story is in that cycle. A domineering man oversteps. He realizes that he's made a mistake. He apologizes sincerely.

That's not my catnip. I hate grovel scenes--I don't like books where the hero oversteps so badly that the peak emotional satisfaction lies in an apology. But in a lot of these books, there's more juice in the grovel than in the sex or the declarations of love or the sweeping-off-the-feet. The grovel is the money shot.

So, amid all your skepticism, ask yourself why someone would fantasize so deeply about an apology. Why a man acknowledging his mistakes would turn the reader's crank like mad.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I've never really gotten the grovel thing either, but then I'm not the target audience for those ultra alpha jerk romances.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Yeah, alpha males are a 'tired trope' too, as far as I'm concerned. I don't find them the _least bit_ interesting (or attractive). At all.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Jena H said:


> Yeah, alpha males are a 'tired trope' too, as far as I'm concerned. I don't find them the _least bit_ interesting (or attractive). At all.


Do you mean actual alpha personalities, or the jerk "alphas" who are little more than insecure bullies?

Just checking, because I think there is a dearth of actual alphas, and an overabundance of bullies.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Carradee said:


> Do you mean actual alpha personalities, or the jerk "alphas" who are little more than insecure bullies?
> 
> Just checking, because I think there is a dearth of actual alphas, and an overabundance of bullies.


I don't know if there's a dearth of them or not, as I don't care for alpha males so I don't bother reading about them.


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## joyceharmon (May 21, 2012)

I've been reading a number of contemporary romances (mostly, I'll admit, free downloads from Bookbub and eBookSoda promos) and a trope I'm seeing over and over again - and getting mighty tired of - is this one. The hero is perfect, and he's perfect for her. (He's The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, with two tickets to That Thing You Love!) The plot's obstacle is the heroine's Issues, based on (a) a terrible childhood, or (b) an abusive ex relationship, or (c) a short deeply romantic relationship ending in the death of the beloved. So the whole book is him trying to win her over, her resisting and resisting and resisting, because - she isn't worthy, it could all Go Wrong, or it could never be as good as it was with that dead guy. And then somehow she gets over her Issues, and then fade to black as all is perfect with the Perfect Perfect Perfect Guy. *sigh* I understand fantasy wish fulfillment, but it seems so out of whack when one side of the relationship is so perfect and the other side is just a mess. Does the heroine always have to be such a distrustful, suspicious, closed-off, mentally wounded WRECK?


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Speaking of: brooding.

Especially: a) over something comparatively minor and/or b) _years_ after the fact, and/or c) over something that is actually AWESOME.

C makes me punch things. 'Oh no, I have superpowers with ABSOLUTELY NO DRAWBACK in contemporary America because I'm afraid I'll be seen as a freak even though I have never witnessed any negative reaction!'


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

joyceharmon said:


> I've been reading a number of contemporary romances (mostly, I'll admit, free downloads from Bookbub and eBookSoda promos) and a trope I'm seeing over and over again - and getting mighty tired of - is this one. The hero is perfect, and he's perfect for her. (He's The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, with two tickets to That Thing You Love!) The plot's obstacle is the heroine's Issues, based on (a) a terrible childhood, or (b) an abusive ex relationship, or (c) a short deeply romantic relationship ending in the death of the beloved. So the whole book is him trying to win her over, her resisting and resisting and resisting, because - she isn't worthy, it could all Go Wrong, or it could never be as good as it was with that dead guy. And then somehow she gets over her Issues, and then fade to black as all is perfect with the Perfect Perfect Perfect Guy. *sigh* I understand fantasy wish fulfillment, but it seems so out of whack when one side of the relationship is so perfect and the other side is just a mess. Does the heroine always have to be such a distrustful, suspicious, closed-off, mentally wounded WRECK?


We're talking men here. so yes it's all perfectly acceptable and realistic, just so long as she has nice tits.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

joyceharmon said:


> I've been reading a number of contemporary romances (mostly, I'll admit, free downloads from Bookbub and eBookSoda promos) and a trope I'm seeing over and over again - and getting mighty tired of - is this one. The hero is perfect, and he's perfect for her. (He's The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, with two tickets to That Thing You Love!) The plot's obstacle is the heroine's Issues, based on (a) a terrible childhood, or (b) an abusive ex relationship, or (c) a short deeply romantic relationship ending in the death of the beloved. So the whole book is him trying to win her over, her resisting and resisting and resisting, because - she isn't worthy, it could all Go Wrong, or it could never be as good as it was with that dead guy. And then somehow she gets over her Issues, and then fade to black as all is perfect with the Perfect Perfect Perfect Guy. *sigh* I understand fantasy wish fulfillment, but it seems so out of whack when one side of the relationship is so perfect and the other side is just a mess. Does the heroine always have to be such a distrustful, suspicious, closed-off, mentally wounded WRECK?


LOL, I always go exactly the other way round. My heroines are usually well rounded and confident, while my "hero's" are more emotionally stunted, and start out kind of unlikable (though they are of course transformed by love). I just prefer a bad boy to a good boy


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## AisFor (Jul 24, 2014)

Amnesia..... from the frequency with which it crops up, you'd think it was a pretty common phenomenon, with large proportions of the population bumping their heads in their attics and losing huge chunks of their lives.

No offence to people who write about it, of course, I know it's a big seller


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

joyceharmon said:


> I've been reading a number of contemporary romances (mostly, I'll admit, free downloads from Bookbub and eBookSoda promos) and a trope I'm seeing over and over again - and getting mighty tired of - is this one. The hero is perfect, and he's perfect for her. (He's The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, with two tickets to That Thing You Love!) The plot's obstacle is the heroine's Issues, based on (a) a terrible childhood, or (b) an abusive ex relationship, or (c) a short deeply romantic relationship ending in the death of the beloved. So the whole book is him trying to win her over, her resisting and resisting and resisting, because - she isn't worthy, it could all Go Wrong, or it could never be as good as it was with that dead guy. And then somehow she gets over her Issues, and then fade to black as all is perfect with the Perfect Perfect Perfect Guy. *sigh* I understand fantasy wish fulfillment, but it seems so out of whack when one side of the relationship is so perfect and the other side is just a mess. Does the heroine always have to be such a distrustful, suspicious, closed-off, mentally wounded WRECK?


I confess I've written an offshoot of that. The hero is just an average, all-around nice guy, but he's not perfect. (Because, after all, "nobody's perfect."  ) And while there are challenges to the relationship, the heroine doesn't have huge issues, but she's a realist, and she knows the relationship won't work long-term. There _is_ an end-of-book epiphany, but it's not the heroine's belief that 'love conquers all.' Instead it's the hero's, realizing she's probably right and now isn't the time for them to be together.  (Needless to say, however, I don't market this as a romance, lol.)


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## RosieB (Feb 1, 2014)

I was browsing through the young adult fiction in my local bookstore the other day and I noticed they all stick closely to the same tropes:

a) a dystopian future in which the brave teen becomes a member / leads the secret resistance
b) teen discovers they are part of a magical bloodline - and they're the only one capable of killing the villain - if they don't fall in love with him first
c) Some kind of life-threatening illness 
d) Vampires, generally


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Zombie apocalypse where the humans are the real monsters (because both writers and readers put more stock in their trite cynicism than actual anthropology, especially the concept of 'suspension of self'.)

Also the bite victim who hides their condition, dooming their loved ones to being consumed and the audience to another thirty minutes of an awful movie.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

I am just amazed, actually more terrified, of my research into popular sellers. I actually believe in equality and couples both giving their all to a relationship but based on _what sells_, it seems deep down, most readers love the wish fulfillment of being the rescued princess.

Yeah, there's a lot of self-rescuing ball-stomping princesses out there who reload their own weapons and defy death along with the big boys but it's really hard to find a top-selling romance that isn't about a man coming to the rescue with his wealth, status and power as well as eyes-only-for-you, my-true-love-forever.

I'm almost afraid to write a book where the protagonist has to solve her own problems without being 100% better than everyone around her. Who'd want to read it?


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## Kristopia (Dec 13, 2013)

MrAzzatagoestotheinternet said:


> The thriller hero with a mysterious past who used to do nasty things for the government, but now he lives near a body of water with no visible means of support. All he wants to do is live in peace, but the government/damsel in distress/national emergency that he just happens to be in the middle of keeps pulling him back in. He hesitates at first, but once he starts killing again, the old skills resurface because everyone knows that once you learn gymkata (or whatever mysterious martial art he practices) your skills never rust from disuse. Even though he hasn't done dirty work in years, all his old contacts are still in the same locations under the same names, as though they were waiting for him to return just so they can sell (or give) him weapons or vehicles, and that one piece of information he needs to put the big picture together. And no matter how many dead bodies he leaves in his wake, he's never branded a serial killer and the woman (there's always a woman) can't help but fall in love with him, but they don't stay together for long (the speech is given or implied, "You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel").


Quoting Pee Wee gets you ALL THE POINTS. Well said.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

MyraScott said:


> I am just amazed, actually more terrified, of my research into popular sellers. I actually believe in equality and couples both giving their all to a relationship but based on _what sells_, it seems deep down, most readers love the wish fulfillment of being the rescued princess.
> 
> Yeah, there's a lot of self-rescuing ball-stomping princesses out there who reload their own weapons and defy death along with the big boys but it's really hard to find a top-selling romance that isn't about a man coming to the rescue with his wealth, status and power as well as eyes-only-for-you, my-true-love-forever.
> 
> I'm almost afraid to write a book where the protagonist has to solve her own problems without being 100% better than everyone around her. Who'd want to read it?


I wrote one just like that. It was on the bestseller list in Rom Suspense for 3 months. The hero goes into it all cocky and arrogant, and she basically hands him his lunch and is just all kinds of awesome. Then they have a big, huge problem that they work on together. She solves it, puts the pieces together. Yes, he puts his life on the line for her, but she saves his bacon completely.

I love that heroine. And yeah, people bought the book.  (He's not whipped, in case you wonder. He's still got plenty of cocky & successful to go around. But she's doing very well too, doesn't need him materially.) So yeah, it can definitely sell!

(Come to think of it, my latest two are much the same. I like equal relationships. They both sold too. I think there are lots of women out there who want to read that. I really do.)


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

That is a relief to hear, Rosalind!  Thanks.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I'm a little nervous to say this, but I find that, when I have a very feisty, tough heroine, that's when I make the guy a bit more dominant in bed. Even the score a little. In my view, the relationship in the bedroom isn't the same as the relationship out of it. But it does balance out the power a little--because no question, in those books of mine, the woman has more power outside of bed. (Even though, in one of them, she's literally half his weight.) And I DON'T think most romance readers want to read a guy who does seem whipped. They want that balance of power too.

(Not talking anything in the least hardcore. I don't do the hurtin' stuff.)


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

The one that gets me shows up on TV and the movies all the time. The villain is a powerful, self-contained juggernaut who has amassed wealth and commands minions -- some of them frighteningly competent mass murderers -- who open doors for him and obey him without question. And then the hero goads him into a fatal overreaction by calling him a poopyhead.


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

Rosalind James said:


> I'm a little nervous to say this, but I find that, when I have a very feisty, tough heroine, that's when I make the guy a bit more dominant in bed. Even the score a little. In my view, the relationship in the bedroom isn't the same as the relationship out of it. But it does balance out the power a little--because no question, in those books of mine, the woman has more power outside of bed. (Even though, in one of them, she's literally half his weight.) And I DON'T think most romance readers want to read a guy who does seem whipped. They want that balance of power too.
> 
> (Not talking anything in the least hardcore. I don't do the hurtin' stuff.)


I think you've tapped a 'reality'. My late g/f was a real 'alpha' female who led a 'jet set' business life. Bed? She was slightly sub. Her predecessor was pretty similar too. Outside the bedroom neither of them would broker any domination (and quite right too) maybe this is the counterpoise? Maybe it 'strikes a chord' and has appeal? Maybe I've said too much?


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Bryn said:


> I think you've tapped a 'reality'. My late g/f was a real 'alpha' female who led a 'jet set' business life. Bed? She was slightly sub. Her predecessor was pretty similar too. Outside the bedroom neither of them would broker any domination (and quite right too) maybe this is the counterpoise? Maybe it 'strikes a chord' and has appeal? Maybe I've said too much?


I think relationships work best when there's balance. It kinda makes me scratch my head when the occasional reviewer doesn't get that at all, but oh well! Different strokes.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

RN_Wright said:


> The one that gets me shows up on TV and the movies all the time. The villain is a powerful, self-contained juggernaut who has amassed wealth and commands minions -- some of them frighteningly competent mass murderers -- who open doors for him and obey him without question. And then the hero goads him into a fatal overreaction by calling him a poopyhead.


There is some sense to that. The villain is used to even those psycho-killers being respectful and reverent, so it's really no surprise for them to be subject to the Sin of Pride Downfall.

Now when the villain has a group of comedic villains who show insolence and snark at every turn with no repercussions and they STILL manage to have a Pride freakout and we've got problems.


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## Skyler West (Aug 23, 2012)

MrAzzatagoestotheinternet said:


> The thriller hero with a mysterious past who used to do nasty things for the government, but now he lives near a body of water with no visible means of support. All he wants to do is live in peace, but the government/damsel in distress/national emergency that he just happens to be in the middle of keeps pulling him back in. He hesitates at first, but once he starts killing again, the old skills resurface because everyone knows that once you learn gymkata (or whatever mysterious martial art he practices) your skills never rust from disuse. Even though he hasn't done dirty work in years, all his old contacts are still in the same locations under the same names, as though they were waiting for him to return just so they can sell (or give) him weapons or vehicles, and that one piece of information he needs to put the big picture together. And no matter how many dead bodies he leaves in his wake, he's never branded a serial killer and the woman (there's always a woman) can't help but fall in love with him, but they don't stay together for long (the speech is given or implied, "You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel").


I know what you mean, but how do you get around that? Other than making them an active serviceman/agent?


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## Kristopia (Dec 13, 2013)

Caddy said:


> Well, if you want historical to be "accurate" we would totally do away with historical romance. Women were treated like slaves or cattle; as possessions. They weren't romanced nor did their feelings matter. Plus, anyone with any social standing or money married to increase wealth. Love didn't enter the picture. So historical romance in general bugs me. That's a bigger fantasy than fantasy or sci fi.


THIS.

I never understood "historical romance" much, especially from the Reniassance era and further back. Even Shakespeare's sonnets are rife with his love and adoration for his friend, benefactor, possibly lover "young man", and his cynicism and attitude toward women. Was this abnormal? No. Women were property. Even wealthy women, once "owned" in marriage by a man, lost their wealth to him. Women were for procreating and keeping the household. I have a hard time with historical romance for that reason. Suspension of disbelief. (though I admit I have enjoyed a gothic romance or three in my time)


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## Kristopia (Dec 13, 2013)

Sylvia Volk said:


> I get thrown out of any fantasy story where the women drink a special tea or whatever that prevents pregnancy. Paksenarrion tea. Widows shroud. A total eyeroller for me.
> 
> It usually pops up in the fantasies that have battle parity between the sexes - the women are equally represented in the army, the city guard, ship crews, prison-guard crews, etc etc, gender parity is ordinary - but though that is enough of a trope to make my eyes roll too, it also makes for story fun.
> 
> Oh - ha ha - and historicals and fantasies where the writer carefully writes it in that, whatever the culture, once a character becomes pregnant, she abstains from alcohol. Bwahhah! Total trope.


Hey - the birthbane was on the dang table - if she didn't bother with it, it was her own dang fault we had to throw her out of the mercenary company.


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

Caddy said:


> Well, if you want historical to be "accurate" we would totally do away with historical romance. Women were treated like slaves or cattle; as possessions. They weren't romanced nor did their feelings matter. Plus, anyone with any social standing or money married to increase wealth. Love didn't enter the picture. So historical romance in general bugs me. That's a bigger fantasy than fantasy or sci fi.


I am mightily pleased Charlotte Bronte didn't get any of that. Emily too. It is hard to generalise because things were different in different countries and for different classes. But certainly 30 years after Austen, they were writing about romantic love and not marriage for the preservation of status.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Kristopia said:


> THIS.
> 
> I never understood "historical romance" much, especially from the Reniassance era and further back. Even Shakespeare's sonnets are rife with his love and adoration for his friend, benefactor, possibly lover "young man", and his cynicism and attitude toward women. Was this abnormal? No. Women were property. Even wealthy women, once "owned" in marriage by a man, lost their wealth to him. Women were for procreating and keeping the household. I have a hard time with historical romance for that reason. Suspension of disbelief. (though I admit I have enjoyed a gothic romance or three in my time)


There are romances dating back to pre-1300, btw. It isn't a new thing. Eleanor of Aquitaine pretty much encouraged and helped create the entire idea of "courtly love" back in the 1100s. We have quite a few examples of men going on quests and doing crazy things to win the love of a beautiful and powerful woman (usually some kind of queen or princess or fairy queen etc). It isn't like we invented the idea of being in love with your wife post 1800 or something...

And in a lot of cultures, women weren't nearly as chattel as modern people like to think. There is a whole world outside Victorian England.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Just stopping by to point out that not all women we treated as property and such in olden times. Just the ones in places where sexy accents and fancy setpieces happens.

Peasants were almost universally egalitarian everywhere in Europe, women in Africa were scholars and teachers and in the Middle East, female rulers were not uncommon. Really except for Noble Europe, Asia and the western Americas, sexism is a shiny new thing circa ~17-1900. The Middle East didn't get this wonderful technology until the 1960's which is also when the nastier parts of Sharia Law were created (both from the teachings of a guy from the late 1800's who was seen as a crackpot until the Cold War rolled into thier neighborhood and made a lot of young men feel bitter and powerless. And you know what powerless men do? Abuse women.)


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Not to mention in many cultures gender was a pretty fluid thing. Want to have most of the same rights as a man? Act like a man. Happened in many examples in Iceland, Ireland, and Scandinavia in the early to late middle ages. Not that they had to in order to have rights. They owned property, had the right to divorce husbands for pretty petty reasons even (one woman in Njal's saga divorces her husband because his manbits are too big, seriously).

Or look up the Scythians, who are famous for their warrior women.

History is way more interesting and deep once you get into the particulars and once you start taking from primary sources when possible.  Human nature is very much the same across thousands of years. We love, we grieve, we fight, we quest for knowledge.  All this is reflected in cultures across the world and across time.


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

I also have to query the criticism of Bill The Bard made above.

Titania was the most powerful character in "A Midsummer Nights Dream". Sure you can look at things like "The Taming of the shrew" and see it as being about the domination of woman. Lear's daughters? Juliet? To damn the whole of Shakespeare's works? It was more rounded than that. As for women as chattels? Interesting concept. Elizabeth was on the throne when Shakespeare wrote and it would have been dangerous for such a prominent playwright to create a body of work that suggested women, particularly regal women, should be subjugated to men. Such sedition may have led to a swift cut in Shakespeare's stature.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Which is not to say, mind you, that women didn't have a rougher shake of things in history in most places. They did (and still do in a lot of the world).  But it wasn't quite the one-sided "all women were property and had no say in anything" portrayal that a lot of people seem to default to. That's what I am saying.  Read actual primary sources from various cultures and times. It's fascinating the variance and differences and how human nature expresses itself over and over again. And how much we modern folk have in common with people living a thousand or even five thousand plus years ago.


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## AisFor (Jul 24, 2014)

Kristopia said:


> THIS.
> 
> I never understood "historical romance" much, especially from the Reniassance era and further back. Even Shakespeare's sonnets are rife with his love and adoration for his friend, benefactor, possibly lover "young man", and his cynicism and attitude toward women. Was this abnormal? No. Women were property. Even wealthy women, once "owned" in marriage by a man, lost their wealth to him. Women were for procreating and keeping the household. I have a hard time with historical romance for that reason. Suspension of disbelief. (though I admit I have enjoyed a gothic romance or three in my time)


He evidently didn't believe in cheesy romance anyways:

I grant I never saw a goddess go;	
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare	
As any she belied with false compare.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Maori culture, for example, is very, very big on romantic love. Their creation story is about romantic love--of a mother and father/husband and wife, of all things. The Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Lots of their legends are about things like that. One where a man beat his wife and she left him and he wandered all over searching for her, and had her father tattoo him (with a chisel. On the face) to demonstrate both his love and his atonement. The origins of the moko (tattoo)--supposed to be, among other things, a reminder of how a strong man does and doesn't treat women.

(Apologies if I got any of the above wrong--that's how I remember the story. But there are lots of them like that. Just as one example.)

Or check out the legend of Tutanekai and Hinemoa. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokoia_Island

That's a warrior culture that didn't have a written language, all about war and so forth, that practiced both cannibalism and slavery. And yet it was recognized that men fought over two things: land and women.

I think love--of men and women for each other, parents for children--is a pretty universal human emotion. And not just sex-love, love-love. (Whether you call that "romantic" or whatever--not just infatuation, but love.)


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

Rosalind James said:


> Maori culture, for example, is very, very big on romantic love. ...
> 
> ...I think love--of men and women for each other, parents for children--is a pretty universal human emotion. And not just sex-love, love-love. (Whether you call that "romantic" or whatever--not just infatuation, but love.)


i agree with you. My Grandmother and Step Grandfather married in their 60s and were still holding hands cuddling and kissing 25+ years later.

MAORI

Some of the Maori proverbs are both profound and beautiful. I lost over a day when I was researching in just reading them. The title of my first novel "A White Heron Flies Once" is a translation of the Maori proverb "He kotuku rerenga tahi"

Pokarekare Ana may be a more modern interpretive Maori work, but it is a beautiful statement of love and aching for someone 

MEANWHILE - BACK AT THE SHEIK

Looking at the 'Sheik' trope I bemoaned above - that whole storyline can be traced back to Scheherazade.


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## Erin Satie (Mar 21, 2014)

Kristopia said:


> THIS.
> 
> I never understood "historical romance" much, especially from the Reniassance era and further back. Even Shakespeare's sonnets are rife with his love and adoration for his friend, benefactor, possibly lover "young man", and his cynicism and attitude toward women. Was this abnormal? No. Women were property. Even wealthy women, once "owned" in marriage by a man, lost their wealth to him. Women were for procreating and keeping the household. I have a hard time with historical romance for that reason. Suspension of disbelief. (though I admit I have enjoyed a gothic romance or three in my time)


I think there are two distinct strains of historical romance, broadly speaking.

(1) A way to keep unacceptable or taboo fantasies at a safe distance. All the fantasies that you find shameful, unacceptable, but still want to indulge? Find a way to isolate them, surround them with cues that these fantasies are not meant to mingle with your real goals, priorities, beliefs. Moving them into history (and often an extremely unreal, inaccurate version of the historical past) can do that.

(2) A way to actively, intentionally engage with issues that remain current through the present day. If you want a heroine who struggles against an uneven power dynamic or you have a particular aspect of modern day life that really upsets you--putting it into the past can intensify the conflict but still allow you to grapple with issues that you struggle with in the present.

Well, there's a third one, too...

(3) People who really think times used to be better & feel nostalgic, want to be transported to the past.


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## Lane Casteix (Jun 10, 2014)

If you think romance did not historically exist until recently, go read Song of Solomon in the Bible (written nearly 3,000 years ago). Yes, culturally women often did not have the same rights as men, but to suggest that marriage was always loveless and only to serve some convenience is nonsense. There is a movie coming out this month that is based on SoS but set in modern times, proving a good love story is timeless. It is called The Song.


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## Kristopia (Dec 13, 2013)

Ariana said:


> He evidently didn't believe in cheesy romance anyways:
> 
> I grant I never saw a goddess go;
> My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
> ...


Yep - he seemed very "down to earth" in his sonnets to the mistress. Of course, there is the thought of patronage - the plague had closed down theaters, so he couldn't act or put on plays - time to scramble for a noble patron for the sonnets. Much easier to have the tone be more flattering toward the young male (potention patron) than toward his mistress, to whom he could defy the conventions of the sonnet more.

Incidentally, I do think it's interesting that he pretty much "put away" his own wife into the country - they obviously had conjugal visits, as they had three children (one born only six months after their very young marriage - go figure  ), but for at least two decades, she lived the country life, while he lived in London.


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## Kristopia (Dec 13, 2013)

Erin Satie said:


> I think there are two distinct strains of historical romance, broadly speaking.
> 
> (1) A way to keep unacceptable or taboo fantasies at a safe distance. All the fantasies that you find shameful, unacceptable, but still want to indulge? Find a way to isolate them, surround them with cues that these fantasies are not meant to mingle with your real goals, priorities, beliefs. Moving them into history (and often an extremely unreal, inaccurate version of the historical past) can do that.
> 
> ...


Excellent points, all - thank you.


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## Bryn (Aug 22, 2014)

Kristopia said:


> ...
> 
> Incidentally, I do think it's interesting that he pretty much "put away" his own wife into the country - they obviously had conjugal visits, as they had three children (one born only six months after their very young marriage - go figure  ), but for at least two decades, she lived the country life, while he lived in London.


There is no way to debunk this nonsense without taking this thread way off topic. Suffice to say that a couple of hours at the Birthplace Trust would be enough. "Go figure'? - something that's clearly documented - including the birth.


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## Twizzlers (Feb 6, 2014)

Skyler West said:


> I know what you mean, but how do you get around that? Other than making them an active serviceman/agent?


You could do a whole book where he realizes his skills have diminished and he survives situations by luck and/or the skin of his teeth and he has to work to find his old contacts or establish new ones.


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## Spinneyhead (Nov 4, 2010)

Another one from the super-spy type of story- torture works on the bad guys, but never on the good guys. 24 was particularly bad for this, with Jack Bauer spending a year and a bit between two series being tortured but giving up nothing, whilst the agents he catches have usually spilt the beans before the next ad break.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

kyokominamino said:


> There is a right and wrong way to use this, and it's the reason why I am going to whack Jim Butcher on the head with his own book if I get to meet him at Dragon*Con this year. He did it not with a major plotpoint, but with a scene we fans were DYING to finally see, and then he jerked the rug out from under us and pointed and laughed. (If you're curious someday, it's the end of Chapter 14 of Skin Game) I literally threw a temper tantrum at three in the morning when I read it. It's just plain mean. That's why I refuse to use that trope. So few times do people get it right.


I know, right? I was totally like "FINALLY!" and then, bam. _Oh no you din't!_ But he did.  Give him an extra whack for me.

The mentioned tropes about romance are why I basically quit reading it. You can only take so many of these stories before your gorge rises. And I'm saying this as a person who co-owned (with my sister) almost all of the available Barbara Cartland novels at that time.

Some things I could add relate to the current sub-genre of apocalyptic/dystopian fiction called prepper fiction or sometimes prepper porn.


The government is always bad. And it's always those _bastid libruls_ at fault. Never the good, patriotic conservatives, who truly love the America that used to be.
The protagonist has loads of guns, loads of the latest flash-frozen foods, or buckets of wheat and the prerequisite grinder, a perfect bug-out location (or fortuitously falls into one), and all the coolest military style gear and clothing.
All the good guys are staunchly Christian, love the Constitution, and usually the bad guys are atheists or Islamic. Nobody expects the Buddhist Apocalypse!
Any black or other ethnic characters are minimal, and fall into the usual government-teat-sucking welfare slacker, drug addict, criminal home boy type, or is the evidently rare, conservative "good" token character.
Women are second class citizens, subservient to the men, don't understand their husband's preps, or his guns, or his time spent being a perfect militia hero, or is totally as bad-*ss as the men, while still being subservient to the men, because Jesus.[/]

Gosh, I can see I've been reading too many of these things lately.  I want to write some, because they seem to sell pretty well, but honestly I don't think I can stick to the formula.

Maybe a book about a gun-owning, Constitution-loving, liberal, city boy with a regular job, who has a mix of true friends of all types, thinks his wife is the boss of him (and likes it) and has some regular, grocery store kind of food in the pantry would sell.

Dang. I think I'll go get lost in the tropes site for a while.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Spinneyhead said:


> Another one from the super-spy type of story- torture works on the bad guys, but never on the good guys. 24 was particularly bad for this, with Jack Bauer spending a year and a bit between two series being tortured but giving up nothing, whilst the agents he catches have usually spilt the beans before the next ad break.


This has an unsavory element of manipulating an audience's fears too.

The truth is, torture does not work and leads to resource-wasting false positives. Buuut people really want there to be a magic and visceral answer to problem 24's bad guys represent, so hurting them always leads to good things.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Sheila_Guthrie said:


> Some things I could add relate to the current sub-genre of apocalyptic/dystopian fiction called prepper fiction or sometimes prepper porn.
> 
> 
> The government is always bad. And it's always those _bastid libruls_ at fault. Never the good, patriotic conservatives, who truly love the America that used to be.
> ...


This annoys me as well, especially since these tropes seem to have overrun dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction. But I guess it's a power fantasy for a certain demographic.

Plus, the success of these "prepper books" spills over onto all sorts of post-apocalyptic fiction. I have two post-apocalyptic tales, a novelette and a short story, which aren't like those prepper books at all (no rightwing politics, no gun fetishism, no alpha males, one even has a Latino heroine), yet they sell pretty well because of the hungry audience for all things post-apocalyptic.


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