#trope discourse

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

✨writing rant because i’m UNWELL and someone said enemies to lovers is “overdone”✨

okay listen.

i don’t care how “overdone” the trope is. let her fall in love with the enemy prince. let him smile like a knife and lie like a prayer. let her fall anyway. and then let her stab him with a hairpin. a hairpin!! we deserve this.

this isn't about originality. this is about execution and emotional violence and aesthetically pleasing betrayal.

tropes aren’t dead. they’re haunting us in new outfits.

every trope is a reusable little narrative skeleton and you get to dress it in whatever cursed, beautiful, petty, yearning flesh your heart desires. you can take enemies to lovers and make it toxic, or tender, or tragic. you can give them shared trauma. you can make them childhood friends turned enemies turned lovers turned enemies again. you can make the stabbing literal or metaphorical. you can make it an almost-stabbing, where she presses the blade to his throat and doesn’t do it. you can make her do it and then sob in his arms while he bleeds out whispering her name like a prayer he never meant to say out loud.

you can make it GAY.

that’s the power of tropes. they’re not restrictive. they’re launchpads. they give readers expectations so you can BREAK them. or better--fulfill them in devastating, soul-twisting ways.

also. like. if you think a trope is “overdone” maybe it’s not the trope that’s the problem. maybe it’s just being written without any real teeth. no emotional bite. no stakes. no tension. no pain. and that’s not the trope’s fault. that’s just boring writing.

give me the obsessive yearning. give me the knife-to-throat confessions. give me the battlefield truce that turns into a five-second pause before they go right back to trying to kill each other. give me quiet moments in enemy territory where they realize they’re not so different. give me the one bed. give me the i hate you but i’d burn down a kingdom for you and hate myself for it.

let the prince kneel at her feet, kiss her knuckles like he’d never crush them, and then go home and report to his war council like nothing happened. let her wear the hairpin he gave her while plotting his assassination. let them both suffer about it. let them choose each other anyway. or don’t. let them fail. let them fall apart in the final act and still reach for each other across the ashes.

i literally do not care how many times we’ve seen it. i want it again. i want it done well. i want it done with spite and softness and aching inevitability. i want to feel like the betrayal was worth it. i want to scream into my hands and text my writer friends like “why would you do this to me” while secretly living for it.

write your trope. write it the way it’s been done before or write it sideways and backwards and messy. just write it with emotion. and a little hairpin. and blood under their fingernails.

okay bye

Rin T.

[littlefeltsparrow]

The whole “I’m hurting you to protect you” trope only works well when the harm inflicted is lesser than the harm that would have otherwise occurred had a character not intervened. This is a good guiding principle for examining how well this trope fits into a given story. Because if the harm inflicted fails to meet the condition of being lesser than the harm that would’ve otherwise occurred, then the whole relationship is called into question.

Rhysand’s actions under the mountain are a good example of this trope done wrong, because there are very few points where the threat of harm to Feyre genuinely justifies the harm he inflicts upon her. For example, Feyre could have reasonably stayed in her jail cell and remained safe without Rhysand’s intervention, which ultimately, caused her more harm than was necessary. Many fans try to justify his actions by claiming that he was sparing her from the horrors she might witness UTM, but that simply isn’t substantiated by the evidence we’re given. We’re never given a substantial reason that requires drugging and fondling Feyre for nights on end to save her from greater harm. It is never established what might have happened to Feyre had Rhysand not intervened, and the reader is given no reason to think that Feyre would have suffered more had she remained in her cell.

The most blatant example of this however, is when he uses physical force to coerce her into agreeing to a contract that serves his interests. He did not have to twist her broken arm or frighten her into signing the contract, he could’ve just healed her because Feyre beating Amarantha was ultimately beneficial to everyone. Nobody told him to do that and it is never established why he *needed* to hurt her in order to protect her.

This trope is very broad and can operate on a spectrum of severity, but it must involve an established/implied threat for it to reach its full potential. The fact that Maas overlooks this crucial aspect of the trope is further evidence of her incompetence as a writer.

[clinko]

What's the worst trope?

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

fanfic writing culture isn’t “oh dang! I wanted to write about this prompt with this character but someone else already wrote it, so now I can’t”.

fanfic writing culture is always “two cakes is better than one. the more the merrier. there can ever be enough fics of this character with this prompt!”

[sorcave]

The Miscommunication Trope Is Not Deep — It’s Lazy

There’s a point at which a trope stops being a storytelling tool and becomes a crutch, and the miscommunication trope has long since crossed that threshold. It’s everywhere: in romances that fizzle out for 200 pages because one person didn’t ask a single clarifying question; in tragedies that spiral out of control because a character overhears half of a conversation and storms away before hearing the rest. In theory, miscommunication is supposed to create tension. In practice, it often reveals a story’s hollowness — a manufactured conflict where genuine narrative stakes could have been.

Here’s the thing: communication is a fragile, deeply human thing. Misunderstandings happen all the time in real life. People talk past each other. People lie. People repress. But what makes this bearable — even fascinating — in real life is context, character, complexity. We misunderstand because we’re afraid, or insecure, or raised in systems that discourage clarity. When miscommunication happens in fiction without any of that grounding, it feels like the writer has run out of ideas. It feels cheap. And most of the time, it is.

The trope hinges on the idea that people do not talk to each other. But in reality — especially in high-stakes situations — people do talk. They ask. They clarify. They text. They call. They double back. They notice. And when they don’t, the absence of communication must be a feature of the character, not a flaw in the plot. If your couple breaks up because one person saw the other hug their ex and left the room in tears without speaking, that’s not romantic tension. That’s bad writing.

What’s frustrating is that this trope is almost always avoidable. Entire plotlines collapse if one character says one sentence. And not a poetic, revelatory sentence — just a basic one. “I’m not dating her.” “That’s not what I meant.” “Can we talk about this?” And when you reach that realization as a reader or viewer — that everything that hurt and broke and ruined could have been undone with a single human impulse to speak — it doesn’t feel tragic. It feels insulting.

We are past the point of finding this compelling. We are too aware now. We’ve watched too many seasons of television where the plot gets dragged by the neck through arcs that only exist because no one would sit down and have a five-minute conversation. We’ve read too many books where the third-act breakup is built on a misunderstanding that could be resolved with one text message — and worse, it’s not because the characters are flawed or scared or shaped by trauma. It’s because the author needed something to go wrong. It’s a tool for false tension. It’s scaffolding, not structure.

The tragedy is not that people misunderstand each other — the tragedy is when people understand too well and still fail to act. That is the heartbreak of Hamlet, of Anna Karenina, of The Godfather — not that no one knew what was going on, but that they did and it still wasn’t enough. Good drama is not built on withheld information. It’s built on choices. And when a story relies on miscommunication, it takes the weight of choice away from the characters and gives it to contrivance.

This is not to say that all miscommunication is bad. There is a way to do it with intent. When miscommunication is a deliberate function of character psychology — when it reveals something — it can be devastating and brilliant. Think of Kaz and Inej in Six of Crows. Think of Marianne and Connell in Normal People. These are characters who fail to communicate because of who they are — shaped by trauma, fear, shame. Their silence means something. But the key is: the audience knows. We are in on the failure. We see the missed connection. We ache with it. We understand why it happens.

But when miscommunication is used as filler — as a lazy wrench to keep a plot spinning — it becomes a disservice to the reader. It’s not clever. It’s not tragic. It’s not slow-burn. It’s just slow. And it wastes the most powerful thing a story can give us: the moment when people face each other honestly, say what they mean, and still have to deal with the consequences.

That’s what makes stories worth telling. Not silence for its own sake — but speech that costs something.

And while we’re on it, maybe the most frustrating byproduct of this trope — especially in its modern fanfic-forward iteration — is how it almost always insists on a moral asymmetry between the characters. Miscommunication, when written lazily, doesn’t just create empty drama — it manufactures a skewed sense of right and wrong, one that often exempts the protagonist from any meaningful culpability. The miscommunicating party — usually the love interest, often male — becomes the scapegoat for not anticipating a reaction they could not reasonably be expected to anticipate. Meanwhile, the protagonist — usually the POV character, often female — is framed as the injured party, even when the miscommunication stems from their own assumptions, projection, or lack of emotional maturity. And no one questions it.

We need to talk about how often these narratives implicitly frame emotional entitlement as justified, especially when the entitlement is romantic and comes from a “sympathetic” main character. How many stories hinge on a protagonist getting upset because the other person didn’t read their mind? Because they flirted once, and then didn’t follow it up with a declaration of love? Because they were kind — and kindness, apparently, is now a promise. And when the other person doesn’t deliver, the story treats it as betrayal, not misalignment. As if decency is a form of leading someone on. As if you owe people feelings just because they want you to.

And yes, I’m not saying this as a dig at female characters — I’m saying it as someone who’s tired of bad character writing being passed off as empowerment. There’s a trend, especially in fanfiction and romance media, where the female lead is insulated from fault, even when she’s the one who made assumptions, even when she projected a whole relationship onto someone who never said they were in one. If a man doesn’t communicate, it’s toxic. If a woman doesn’t communicate, it’s tragic. If he flirts but doesn’t pursue, it’s cruel. If she flirts and he doesn’t pursue, it’s his loss. There is no space for ambiguity. No space for two people who simply read a situation differently.

When we write stories this way — when we punish people for not returning someone’s feelings, or for failing to anticipate unspoken expectations — we reinforce a worldview where emotional clarity is treated as optional and where miscommunication becomes a weapon instead of a wound. The worst part? These dynamics are often dressed up as romantic. As yearning. As proof of how deep the connection is. But they’re not. They’re misunderstandings that curdle into accusations. They teach us that desire alone justifies disappointment, that feeling something entitles you to something back. And that’s not romance. That’s not tragedy. That’s just selfishness in a prettier font.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff. (edit: yes, cliff then hyenas. But cliff first. Lol.)

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took a step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.

[prokopetz]

Discourse about whether shipping the Chosen Hero with the immortal Beast of the Apocalypse represents a problematic age gap, and if so, in which direction (i.e., the Hero, on account of the fact that the Beast is ten thousand years old and the Hero is like thirty, or the Beast, on account of the fact that the Beast is only awake for like two weeks once every century and thus has less lived experience).

[questions-about-blorbos]

This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any Blorbo-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote with their own Blorbos in minds

[kisses-in-the-void]

I need more hetero ships where the guy doesn’t like the woman at first—including her appearance—and it’s not the usual ‘ugh, she’s so hot, why does she have to be such a bitch?’ situation. I mean genuine initial rejection. But over time, as he gets to know her and starts to admire her personality, he slowly begins to see her as beautiful too.

Because for me, that’s what real love is—based not on physical attraction, but on being drawn to the soul inside. And when you love that person’s soul, their body starts to look beautiful too. Because beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.

So far, though, I can only think of one couple like that: Jaime and Brienne.

And when I say "hetero couples", it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to see that dynamic in queer ships too. But I feel like this idea is so deeply ingrained in most straight ships, and in how the majority of people expect them to be portrayed—that a man should ALWAYS be physically and sexually attracted to a woman first and foremost. It’s acceptable if he can’t stand her personality, but the desire has to be there from the very first minute they meet.

[randomness-is-my-order]

idk why alot of people underestimate the maturity and composure of wei wuxian’s character but to reduce his personality to his mo xuanyu lunatic persona is a total disservice to his character. i get that the first impression we have of him is a pretty memorable one and his behaviour IS volatile and quirky (completely on purpose) for the better part of the volume one but what baffles me is that we are clearly shown how his outward behaviour is in stark contrast to his internal monologue. his thoughts offset his actions and root them solidly in stone-cold logic.

from my perspective at least, wei wuxian’s reaction to discovering that he’s reincarnated is hilariously understated—it’s a grumbly “meh” and straight to business right after. he coolly assesses his surroundings, the marks on his arm and ways to get rid of them. THAT is wei wuxian’s true personality—the ability to obfuscate his intelligence and insight by acting unpredictably.

also people forget that time did not pass by normally for wei wuxian in those thirteen years that he was dead. after reincarnation, he was mentally still the age he died at—ik there is some debate here but none that has convinced me otherwise—only, he was rid of all the cumulative intense mental pressure and immediate guilt that he was harbouring in the past. the wei wuxian that is the mentor for the juniors, the voice of reason and the pool of trivia and knowledge that guides them calmly through the chaos is not a wisened and more experienced wei wuxian than how he was when he died. thirteen years for him passed in a limbo. as such, the maturity we clearly see from him after the timeskip is actually what he carried in the original timeline! his demeanour is just more... chill, because he is not fighting for his life and defending a group of innocent wens with every fibre of his being against the entire of horde of cultivators waiting for one misstep on his part to pounce and wipe him out.

the difference between past wei wuxian and future wei wuxian isn’t time-gained maturity but the loss of devastatingly heavy responsibilities and continuous emotional turmoil. their mindsets, moral code, logical reasoning are still largely the same.

yes, there are differences between the two versions of wei wuxian but i think they come majorly from how the stakes have changed for him. when wei wuxian is able to slow down and is allowed to have a support system, he can solve things without risking his emotions getting the better of him (which he is actually quite good at regulating) and is also able to look back and reflect on his past mistakes with an objective lens. that is why, when wei wuxian does muse about his “younger” self, it is not so much about him outgrowing his youth through passed time but through sheer richness of lived experience. his childhood had already forced him to mature before his time and it continued till the end of his first life—where the kind of stance he took ensured that he would have to keep up emotionally, physically and mentally with not just his peers but with the elders of the cultivation world.

that’s why, after reincarnation, we never feel like wei wuxian has to play catch up with his older peers—he had already attained the emotional maturity for it in his first life and if anyone was playing catch up, it was his peers.

knowing this, it does irk me when these aspects of him are buried under a portrayal of unrestrained chaos, constant gremlin-like energy, inconsideration and incompetence—wei wuxian is the antithesis of these values. he is joyous, playful, extroverted, sometimes loudmouthed but also deeply thoughtful, adaptive, resourceful, caring, kind and mature.

this brings me to my first point—

this aspect of wei wuxian is shown to us in the first few pages of mdzs: he doesn’t act like a lunatic because he’s an agent of indiscriminate chaos but because his logic dictates so, because he must play the part of mo xuanyu and exact revenge on his behalf. his actions always have a reason behind them—they are very rarely impulsive. it’s just more and more, i see people fall for the act and disregard wei wuxian’s layered (and frankly, far more interesting) personality in favour of replacing it with a surface-level veneer that outright betrays his original characterisation.

[kiwinatorwaffles]

when i vent about how shipping culture and romance in media has led to aspec discrimination and a corrosion of friendship in real life some people respond to it with "well you're aspec and dislike to ship however i'm allo and it's a part of me to like shipping" they literally miss my point. i don't dislike ships. i have a few ships myself. it's completely valid to enjoy these aspects as a personal preference. i dislike shipping CULTURE and the insistence that everything must be romantic/sexual.

amanormativity is the reason why friendships in real life are treated as inherently lesser than a romantic relationship. it's why people get made fun of for being virgins when everyone should just mind their damn business. and it reflects hard in the fandom preference for everything ship-related and pushing aside anything else. also saying it's inherently allo to ship sounds really fucking amanormative to me but what can i say

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I love you misunderstood villain who’s been through the worst kind of hell and wasn’t able to come out of it unscarred.

I love you villain who is well understood and just likes doing bad things for pure pleasure.

I love you villain who is loved by the fandom.

I love you villain who is hated by the fandom.

I love you villain who has to cry alone and lick their wounds in the dark because they’re too scared to let anybody see them vulnerable.

I love you villain who’s not scared to shout all their pain and trauma at the top of their lungs for the world to hear.

I love you villain who’s on their knees begging to be accepted and loved for once.

I love you villain who never bows down to anyone.

I love you villain who hides their scars like their deep, dark secrets.

I love you villain who shows their scars like trophies from the battles they won.

I love you villain who wants to create a better world, even if their way of trying to achieve the goal is different than hero’s.

I love you villain who wants to burn the world down.

I don’t do that Anti Shit in my house

[absent-o-minded]

Shoot From The Hip Character Tropes

One of the things that I find most interesting about improv comedy is that, after watching a show or a group over a long period of time, you start seeing certain character archetypes or tropes they gravitate towards. These are all uniquely individual to the performance troupe.

Therefore, here is a little post (with examples) on some of the character archetypes and tropes (whether self-confessed by the lads or noticed by the audience) that crop up across a lot of their longforms:

Misguided parent that finally realizes the error of their ways:

Mark’s Dad: Clarissa’s DIY Wedding

Angus: The Hobnob Affair

Jemima: The Milkman

Thomas: The Enigma of the High Visionary

(In the same vein) Children with immense trauma / Children who have had to parent themselves:

Alexa and Januscz: Ballet on the Battlefield

Pinnochio: The Grape Depression

Chip/Bradley: The Cardboard Stegosaurus

Peter Steven: The Milkman

L: The Creak in the Attic

The 'outsider' character who finally gets accepted for who they truly are:

Troll Son: Wine Under The Bridge

Bill Hannigan: Death For A Dollar

James: The Unrelenting Aubergine

John Jacob McAllister: The Off-Season

Characters who 'haunt' the narrative:

Annabelle Langbrook: Priscilla's Final Petal

Jimmy the Hare: The Hare Who Wore A Sweater

Hugh’s Tree Father: Marigolds, Bluebells and Hugh

Jorgen Skelter: Burgalry and Bobsledding

Marie-Clare: The Cardboard Stegosaurus

Grandfather and Grandmother: The Creak in the Attic

Lover's reunion underpinned by tragedy:

Bill x Maria: Death For A Dollar

Egbert x Samantha: The Leftenmost Window

Tarquin x Amanda: Lost In Your Eyes

Bubba x Jeremiah: The Mysterious Cube

Characters who have brilliant minds but not-so brilliant execution:

Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Midnight Circus

Clint: The Lighthouse

Jimmy: Toby's Secret Pockets

Janae: The Neighbours Under The Bed

Humans that lack humanity versus Animals who are overflowing with it:

Johnny Jones: Too Big To Be A Jockey

Mario The Sheep: The Lighthouse

Juliet: Caesar and Juliet

Mr Polar Bear: And It Begun/Began/Begeune

[khattikeri]

it bugs me when people treat lan wangji like a generic yaoi seme (i.e. filthy rich, selfish, arrogantly dismissive and unsatisfied, lords his position over those weaker or poorer, near-universal advantages over others, etc.

lan wangji IS way more privileged than wei wuxian, but lan xichen and the lan elders have FAR more power, control, and political advantage over him. lan wangji single-handedly physically fought 33 members of his own family to protect the man he loved, and they whipped him to near death for it. they forcibly imprisoned ("secluded") him and took advantage of his bedridden state to join the other clans in ambushing and assassinating wei wuxian.

my point is, he's not a stereotypical arrogant jerk with unending influence over others. if anything, being a dom top in bed isn't an expression of power for lan wangji, but an expression of freedom. he can be true to himself, his love, and his desires without being held back by his family and society's politics.

[questions-about-blorbos]

Trigger warning: rape/ non-con, violence, murder

Every poll on this blog is about fictional characters only. This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any Blorbo/fandom-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote

[nadiajustbe]

The other thing I immensely love about Bartimaeus of Uruk is how inhuman he is. Usually in media authors tend to "humanise" inhuman characters, by giving them stable human appearance or/and character traits. This vampire is actually a 17yo guy. This devil is a 30yo man. This magical god is a always teenage girl and they act accordingly. This is an easy route. Johnathan Stroud doesn't chose it.

Bartimaeus is not a woman but nor he is a man (even despite using he/him pronounce primarily it is canon all spirits are genderless out of nature, some just stend to stick more to one gender than the other). Sure he is not a "child" but nor he is an "adult", because he was never a human in the first place and was never fully presented as either of this. He doesn't devide love in platonic and romantic and doesn't feel a need to clarify. He struggles to explains the way he thinks and difficult for it to translate it to a human reader. He doesn't act as someone of a particular age in "human" understanding as well. He knows thousands of languages and switches between them. He loves humanity and yet still has an unique outside perception of it because he's not a human. He doesn't fit in any of human boxes to check, he's everything and nothing at once. He can look an act of any age or gender or feeling and perhaps fit none of those in your mind.

And this gives so much freedom for creating and fanfiction. Go on make him a young adult college student! Make him a middle aged man who has thousands of jobs! Make him a fourteen year old Ptolemy's twin! Create an AU where he as an anger or a cupid or an ageless God and none of it would be OOC to him! Human!Bartimaeus can be a traveler, a performer, a coffee shop barista, a hired killer! Perhaps don't make him a human at all, what If he is a tired cat who Kitty feeds on her way to work in a shop?

The possibilities are endless because instead of being a human with some cool flashing eyes and superpowers he is not actually a human. He's Bartimaeus of Uruk and that's it.