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Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

Getting tired of hearing about tropes yet? Good, because I am going to make you listen to even more. Today I am discussing some of my favorite tropes, and even a few guilty pleasures. We’ve said it before, and we will say it again. Tropes are tools, and they are unavoidable. It really comes down to how you use the trope, whether it is fresh and unique, or tired and cliched. There are a few that are always going to grab my attention. This is an area where Clevenger and I vary widely, as some of our favorites are almost contradictory. We have adapted to this, however, and blended them, rather than butting heads.

I loath a big third act army vs army battle, especially in literature. In movies, it can make for a decent visual backdrop (eye candy) while the interpersonal conflict is wrapped up. But in a book? Nothing will bore me more. And since it seems to be the staple of the fantasy genre, it tends to grate on me further. Clevenger mentioned the Night Angel Trilogy. I’ve read the series twice. I still can’t recall much from the third book, as it centers around a giant battlefield. It’s one of the things I actually appreciated about Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), that there were so many battles going on left and right, and yet almost no time on the page was actually spent IN the battle, just the prep, the outskirts, and the aftermath. Helms Deep was epic to watch on Blu-ray, but trying to read it nearly killed me. Save the epic battles for the Warhammer table, please.

However, I will go out of my way to look for the one on one final battles. Give me Inigo Montoya vs Count Rugen. Bring on Luke vs Vader, especially after Luke had already tried and failed, so now we get the second attempt in Jedi! Please let the main character earn their wings, pass their trials, and then finally get their showdown against the BBEG that has been gunning for them the whole story. I live for that. It feels earned, and feels important. I want to see the growth that the MC went through to earn their victory, as well as watch them grow into their character.

This leads me to my next trope, which is the Coming of Age. Clevenger likes the cleanness of the Chosen One. I think the chosen one is a bit too much of a sleight of hand trick, kind of a cop out. To me, it feels like the “you all meet in a tavern” of character motivations. I guess it comes from the fact that I loath prophecy and time travel in stories, as they both take away a storyline’s agency, and this sits in the same corner for me. However, a Coming of Age story is about the MC moving up from a place of shelter, of innocence, or just a general situation where they have no control, no agency, and through character growth, attain control over their life. There are so many misconceptions about Coming of Age, as well. They don’t have to be children or teens. Luke’s story in A New Hope was a Coming of Age, even though he was already 19. Similarly, the life the MC is coming from does not have to be innocent and good. Crona from Soul Eater begins their CoA during the series, but they started from a place of torment and abuse. The point of the CoA is that they move from a place of being locked down with no idea how to control their own lives, into a place where they learn to have their own agency, to learn how the broader world works, and to grow into their potential as a thriving person. This is probably my favorite trope, and I end up watching way too many “kids” movies because of it.

Now Clevenger chose to open with his world building trope of choice, but I’m going to close with mine. I enjoy a good hard magic system, sure. I love exploring the rules and seeing where they can be creatively exploited and possibly even bent. But I am just as good with a soft system as well, as long as the story is strong. No, I am all about the world building, so I have several tropes that I love and hate when it comes to that aspect of the story. But probably at the top of my list is that if you are going to be fantastical, then be FANTASTICAL! I am horribly disappointed with this recent trend of merely using a fantasy setting as a backdrop to tell your story. I don’t necessarily need to see Dragons. That is a whole other aspect of world building. No, my thing is, if you are going to write epic fantasy, have races other than Humans, and please don’t just have a few token characters. This is something I fought hard for in our book. I had to work a decent bit to convince Clevenger of why it was important. He was happily going along with it because it was important to me, sure. After all, we are good friends. But eventually I got him on board as to why it was important for the story and the world building, not just for me. So now we have right around 50 different sentient races in our world, Humans are just as prolific as any of the others, and it really lends a sense of “alien-ness” and the fantastical to the story. It is also fun to think about some producer down the road pulling their hair out, trying to figure out how to create such a menagerie of characters on-screen once out book series is optioned by a studio! Haha.

Okay, I lied about saying that I was closing out on my world building trope, because I have two dark, evil, guilty pleasure tropes that I want to quickly touch on before signing off. One is something that can make or break a story, depending on how well it was done, and how much the plot revolved around it. That is the twist, specifically the betrayal. If it is done right, set up properly, and makes sense in-character, I live for a good twisting betrayal. Ah, the shivers down my spine! The second one is, well, I don’t want to think about what it means for my psyche, but I am a sucker for a child BBEG. Bonus points if they act innocent much of the time. This can be the “thousand year old stuck in a child’s body”, the “evil alien shapeshifted into a child”, or just the simple “twisted child”. I can’t tell you why, but the whole idea of having evil wrapped in the skin of innocence just does it for me. The Omen, Servants of Twilight, even Hobb from Robocop II, as cheesy as that movie was. I have zero stomach for horror, my nerves can’t really take it, but I watched Children of the Corn, village of the Damned, The Good Son, and plenty others, just to satisfy my craving for this twisted trope. I ALWAYS pay for it later through panic attacks and nightmares, but what can you do?

So anyway, there you have my take on some of my favorite tropes to be found. Comment on the post here and share some of your favorite tropes that you look for. Until next time…

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham