extrapenguin | Trope Meme redux

Extra tropes via

china_shop! (Original edition.)

High school romance or middle aged romance: Middle-aged, since it's less likely to contain teenage melodrama or be a codified trope narrative where the calls and responses are reading off a script rather than organically arising from the characters and setting. Also, less US High School stuff.

BDSM or vanilla: I like D/s a whole lot, and bondage in service of that, but I'm not into discipline. As from sadism and masochism, idk, I ... can like them as seasoning, but I'm reading fic for the head-stuff of D/s. But I also have dom preferences! D/s with the right dom is better than vanilla is better than D/s with the wrong dom.

Redemption or corruption: I actually like both, but corruption is more of an id/kink thing, I think? Corruption only from the POV of the corrupter, though. Redemption also tickles places a lot! (Those places are less dark and destructive.) In general, I guess redemption, though here both is good and it depends on how they're handled and what I'm in the mood for.

Vampires or werewolves: Neither. I'm not into the tropes either of them bring. Though vampires don't seem to have as strong a tendency towards "call-and-response narratives" so vampires, if I had to choose.

Soulmates or second chances: Neither? Soulmates would in theory be a good romance trope for me, in that it cuts out all of the "does the other person liiiiike meeee" BS from the romance narrative and we can get to the good, post-get-together part, but in practice it just means that the whole "does the other person liiiiike meee" BS is even dumber than usual. Second chances I can like in cases like Guardian, where one of the people was ripped away through the fabric of space-time, but if it's just regular mundane circumstances of breaking up, I don't see the point. They didn't work out the first time around, and authors often have too fast a turnaround for me to believe the relationship to be anything more stable than a revolving door. In conclusion: I pick the second love trope, because it is possible for people to fall in love more than once, and with more than one person, and soulmate tropes are my anti-id, apparently.

Hurt/comfort or romance: H/c is sort of adjacent to a lot of things I like, but not it. I have also never found hurt/comfort fic in my fandoms that wasn't shipfic, so this is very "romance or subcategory of romance?" – I guess I'm picking hurt/comfort, because that usually has a plot not exclusively composed of dumb misunderstandings, and there's some sort of external conflict going on. (...sometimes I wonder why I even read fanfic. *g*)

Rescue fic or working together to defeat X: The latter! I'm into competence and back-to-back badasses, so characters working together to defeat a villain is excellent. I approve. Though if there's a power differential, the occasional rescue fic where the more powerful character gets rescued can be nice, too. (I really enjoyed Zhao Yunlan coming to rescue Shen Wei from the pillar!) But working together, with both of them having crowning moments of awesome is the best. (I mostly find this a ship trope. It gets a bit more unwieldy at 3+ people, and then you end up having a team leader who's more awesome anyway, in which case I want it to be a competent badass leader with loyal and competent subordinates. Just a maximum of two lynchpins?)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am pretty much right with you on all these.

A person of taste, I see! :P

I have also never found hurt/comfort fic in my fandoms that wasn't shipfic
This is so contrary to my own experiences that I'm boggling. Seems like I was lucky.

I mean, some of it was pre-slash, and it's not like I ever sought h/c out, but ... yeah?

Ah, ok. I was specifically looking for gen h/c. (Though of course it also depends on the fandom - SGA for example was great for that, while now that I think about it I don't recall seeing it much in e.g. Hockey RPF.)

Yeah, I've mostly been in fandoms that were primarily shippy, and the gen fandoms I've been in only had h/c as a ship trope. It might also be falling out of fashion nowadays? I think at least intense friendship fic is falling to the wayside in favor of shipfic, so gen h/c is going the same way.

Though if there's a power differential, the occasional rescue fic where the more powerful character gets rescued can be nice, too.

That is excellent!

Corruption might be my anti-id. We touched on this in a different conversation, and I think that was the first time I realised that was a trope for people - very aha moment! Though the more I think about it, the more I know for sure it's definitely not my thing...

I think my ideal rescue fic would actually be a rescue subplot in a fic where the main characters work together to defeat the big bad. I could have my cake and eat it too! (Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan and the SID work together to defeat the Rebel Leader, who's been resurrected by the Hallows or something! All the people they've helped come help them in turn! At one point, Shen Wei is in dire straits, and thinks hope is lost, but then Zhao Yunlan rescues him! Then they defeat the big bad together.)

We touched on this in a different conversation, and I think that was the first time I realised that was a trope for people - very aha moment!
I'm completely blanking on the conversation, but I'll believe you that it happened! *g* /goldfish. For me, the corruption thing is related to my power trip thing, and I'm picky about the POV (corrupter, not the corruptee) and just who's being corrupted by whom. And part of my redemption thing is enjoying heroes "corrupt" villains to the light side. *g*

Middle aged romance is so good! I liked high school AUs and high school canons all the way to my mid 20s, but now that I'm inching closer to 40 they just make me feel old. Teenagers have too many feelings.

Ha, I think I was tired of high school romance even when I was in high school. *g* Probably mostly because all the HS romances were US HS AUs, and my high school experience was very different to the US one.

But I also have dom preferences! D/s with the right dom is better than vanilla is better than D/s with the wrong dom.

That makes a lot of sense.

I have also never found hurt/comfort fic in my fandoms that wasn't shipfic

I've tried to write team h/c a few times, but I understand the trope so poorly that I don't know that they registered to anyone else as h/c. ;-p

I'm into competence and back-to-back badasses, so characters working together to defeat a villain is excellent. I approve.

:-D

Sometimes my dom preferences are affected by fandom – e.g. if I like dom A, and the dom B fics imo misinterpret A or B's character, I'll get pushed further into only reading dom A. Whereas if it's the dom A fics that misinterpret A or B's character, I'll go "do I have to do everything here myself???" and I guess eventually quit reading fic or something.

I've tried to write team h/c a few times, but I understand the trope so poorly that I don't know that they registered to anyone else as h/c. ;-p
Hm, I think h/c is a two-character (or maybe three max) relationship trope, so trying to include more characters is either "one character is hurt, everyone comforts them, hurt character approaches woobie Mary Sue status" fic, or "everyone is hurt, only one person can comfort them, the comforter approaches woobie Mary Sue status" fic. Or I guess fic where there's a bunch of binary h/c going on with multiple pairs? But I don't think it's really a team trope.

Trope Meme redux

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