Hello, Readers! It’s Clevenger…. still.

Forgive us, but Graham is still recovering in the hospital, and needs that extra time to get healthy. I won’t go into the details, but it has been a long road, and still looks to be longer still. Please wish him well, as we continue our journey.

But when last I left you, I talked about my favorite tropes. Tropes that I’ve always enjoyed reading. And it would make sense to talk about my least favorite tropes, or tropes I don’t like in this post. But that’s not what I’m going to do!! *raspberry noise* HA! No, you see. I really don’t have a least favorite trope, or a trope I don’t like. When I crtique a book, or a show, I normally find something that interests me. So even tired tropes, I can see a glimmer of goodness in them. And can normally see “oh, if they would have done this, that would have been SO cool.” I think, as we’ve talked about earlier, that sometimes the finished product is not the sum of the parts that they wanted, but the parts people would accept. And Tropes are easy to “substitute” when you have a boss on your writing that wants to “make it sellable.”

So, instead, I will talk about Tropes that we wanted to avoid. Not because of a disdain, or a lack of interest in them, but because our story could be different.

And I’ll start with the Trope that came directly to the forefront, “The End of the World as we Know It” In fantasy literature, it’s very, VERY easy to create a Big Bad Evil that will devour the world and put the hero on the path to stop him. Prophecies, magic items, all can ramp up the BBEG and no amount of danger is greater than the destruction of everything. But, not all tragedies are that grand scale. In our current world, there are atrocities are being performed all across our globe, and depending on where you are located, you may never hear of them. Wars, invasions, massacres, and tyrants are horrid enough to the people they affect. But to the world, the scope of their terror is relatively minor.

Please understand, I’m not saying that no one should care. I’m saying that the world keeps spinning, and there are a LOT of people who never notice. Good or bad, it’s a reality. And we wanted to encapsulate some of that in our book.

The heroes are forced to deal with an invasion of their hometown. Dark forces that are bent on killing them and overthrowing the powers of the kingdom itself. But it’s just one kingdom in a world of many. When they travel to another land to seek aid, they are met with apathy. Why would this land, who had lent aid before and was made a scapegoat, ever reach out their hand again? With this relationship, Graham and I had a whole new playground of story pieces that we could explore. The black and white, good vs. evil, wasn’t so clear cut. At times, you even understand why the invaders want to destroy this kingdom. And if they do, it won’t wreck the world. It’s a HUGE deal to our main characters, but so many people they meet, don’t care.

The other Trope that I enjoyed avoiding (even though I did not set out to) was the “Celibate Hero.” Our main characters are young adults, not children. And our society is FAR more progressive than most fantasy settings. Our mains are super open about their past relationships, both good and bad, and have little regrets about them. When Symon learns about the men that his lover has been with, he doesn’t react with repulsion. She is not “unclean.” She’s like him. They are honest about who they’ve been with, what it meant, and they create a natural relationship. Jesse has a bit more darkness in his relationship past, but that’s not my tale to speak of… I’ll let Graham fill you in on what he wants you to know before you read it in the books!

The last trope that I truly enjoyed avoiding was “Wouldn’t hit a Girl.” And this is a delicate one to explain. In our world, women are just as badass as everyone else. Our main characters encounter dozens of female warriors and characters that are strong, determined, and lethal. When faced by any character in combat, our MCs fight them as the threat they are. To do anything else, would imply that they were less dangerous than their male counterparts. And we just didn’t want to do that. Our two female protagonists that travel with the MCs, hold their weight. They are not damsels, and if they are in distress, they are likely to find their own way out.

The balance between embracing their femininity as characters, but still embracing the equality that we wanted. I hope we succeeded in our vision.

Several other tropes we wanted to avoid, but I am running out of time to go into the details. “Moral Event Horizon,” “Forbidden Love,” and “Plot Armor” were all tropes we choice specifically to walk away from. And they each added story elements that we love.

Again, there is nothing wrong with these tropes. “Romeo and Juliet” is the GOLD STANDARD of “Forbidden Love” and will always be one of my favorite Shakespearian tales (which I can truly thank my wife for getting me more into Shakespeare). That Trope is powerful, and when done well, is an amazing story telling device. But for the story we wanted, the forbidden drama wasn’t… right.

And that’s that. Tropes have a place, but not all tropes have their place in every tale. So we picked and chose, and worked with the ones we knew were right for us. And we’ve cut a lot of them and dropped them on the edit room floor. And a few… well, subversion has it’s place as well. *cue evil laugh* Muahahaha!

Until next time.

Be Kind.

-Clevenger