Meaningless Tropes

It’s my mother’s birthday today!

A bit of an odd week, though sometimes it seems as if I say that every week. Work is… work, though at least I got to read a couple of delightful books. Presently re-reading The Immortal Fire, the third and final book of Anne Ursu’s Cronus Chronicles. Season two of Andor is presently on Hulu (for about two weeks, anyway), and I’m giving that a go. I might re-watch Netflix’s Marco Polo after finishing The Residence–or maybe just Hundred Eyes’ scenes.

Meaningless Tropes

I’ve noticed that outside of the TV Tropes community, people have started using the word ‘tropes’, but I’m not sure they mean the same thing. A few years ago, my sister and I attended a YALLFest panel, and one of the questions was “What are your favorite tropes?” ‘Found Family’ came up more than once as an answer. In the years since, I’ve seen it used often as a “preferred trope”, or used as a general term for fiction. 

And you know what? I think it’s a pretty useless descriptor for anything.

‘Found Family’ generally means that the main character(s) find(s) a group of other characters they become close enough to that they’re more than just friends, they’re basically a family (albeit one that doesn’t necessarily have the same roles as a nuclear/biological family). A group of people who come together and bond, so that they’d go to the ends of the Earth to help each other.

So, you know, about half of all modern popular fiction. 

It’s an absolutely meaningless term! It doesn’t tell us anything other than, “Several people bond with each other.” Heck, the 2016 Suicide Squad is explicitly a Found Family story, and it’s not a very good one, and I strongly suspect that most people who would argue that they loved Found Family stories wouldn’t go about saying they love that movie.

It’s such a nothing term. It doesn’t mean anything.

Another one I’ve heard thrown around often: “Enemies to Lovers”. I want to blame BookTok for this one, but not actually being on TikTok (by the grace of God), I don’t know for sure. And as was recently pointed out in an Abbie Emmons video*, in many cases these people aren’t even really enemies. They’re just, like, workplace rivals or something. It’s just a term to mean ‘the two romantic leads don’t get along at first. Which, again, is so much of modern fiction that it’s a worthless description.

[Someone did make a musical number on YouTube, though?]

People have referred to Pride & Prejudice of all things as an ‘Enemies to Lovers’ story, because Elizabeth and Darcy don’t get along. Okay, but I wouldn’t call that ‘enemies’ I’d call that ‘one’s a jerk’. Or, you know, the title of the book, which is intentionally a pretty good description of that conflict.

You know what this is? It’s people trying to fit stories into very small slots. It’s taking a very limited view of fiction and applying it to wide swaths of it as if the only way to understand those works is through very loose definitions that can be stretched to mean anything. It’s…. Boss Baby Vibes.

Oh, yeah. I went there.

If your only frame of reference for stories is a handful of stories specifically about certain things, you’re probably going to put other things that are remotely similar in the same slot. Which isn’t particularly helpful in explaining to anyone else. It’s not necessarily wrong that there is a similarity there, but it doesn’t help. It’s like those Tumblr posts that explain that it’s not enough to say that a specific minority is represented in a book when you’re recommending it, if you don’t tell me what it’s about.

Tropes are not bad! Tropes are Tools! But a good story has a lot of tropes, and isn’t defined by just one. I could tell you Dragonlance is a Found Family story, but that doesn’t mean it appeals to anyone who is probably thinking of, like, happy friend adventures starring teenagers getting over trauma. It might, but it’s hardly the same kind of story at all.

[Also, one of those family members in Dragonlance turns out to be a grade-A douchebag that tries to conquer the world but that’s neither here nor there.]

If I ever ask you what kind of stories you like, do not give me useless trope descriptors. Give me titles, give me genres, give me a gosh darn synopsis, just don’t expect me to have any sort of idea what you’re talking about if you supply a vague idea based off of one small element that’s common to a bajillion other stories.

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*I have a couple of issues with the video but that’s not related to the topic so we’ll leave that for another time, or the comments, or something.