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[nicksgal]

Here's a fun writer and/or reader topic. As we know, tropes are tools. Which ones define your works? Which ones do you find yourself going back to again and again? Do you have a trope that you use a lot for characterizati on? Which ones do you love to read about? Are these ones different from the ones in your writing?

This probably has roots in the many years I spent writing BSB fanfic, but I love five man bands! Pretty much anything I've ever written has had a five protagonist group (plus a sixth ranger sometimes). Most of the books or TV shows I enjoy have this character grouping at heart as well. Fun side topic: Which Boy is likely to be which role in that trope and/or which role do you usually typecast them in? I think I tended to lean toward Nick/Hero, Brian/Lancer, Kevin/Big Guy, Howie/Smart Guy, and AJ/Heart.

Another trope I love is The Power of Friendship/True Companions. I am a sucker for them! Maybe even more than any romantic subplots. There's just something warm and fuzzy about a good friendship plot.

Favorite character trope... I probably use Defrosting Ice King the most in my writing, but never the more typically female version of the trope. I also love a good Bright Lady/White Knight pairing.

Discuss! (And kindly let me know if this is in the wrong spot, I have taken a long leave of absence.)

[RokofAges75]

Hey, I just found this thread!  Somehow I missed it when it was posted like 2 months ago LOL.  I guess we all did, since no one replied.

I know we ended up talking about tropes in the writing thread.  I enjoy going down the rabbit hole of TV Tropes (tvtropes.org for anyone who's not familiar), but I am not good at knowing/remembering tropes by name the way you are.  I usually have to look them up to see what they are or make sure they are what I think they are.

I will have to come back and update as I come across more than I use, but one that came up recently in the other thread is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.  I looked that one up after I saw it mentioned, and when I read the description, I was like, "Oh, that's totally Claire in Broken."  And when I saw that Zooey Deschanel is often identified with this character type, I thought of Cary in Curtain Call because her look and style was inspired by Zooey Deschanel, even though I think her personality is different.  I guess I really like Manic Pixie Dream Girls!

[nicksgal]

In the beginning, I tried to put threads where I think they would have gone in ye olden days instead of looking for the catch-all threads we have now. That's why I put my thread for Matches all the way in the sub-board "Backstreet Chatter" instead of the "All Things BSB thread."

TV Tropes is my favorite rabbit hole! I know all my favorite ones by name and a smattering of other ones. I also made up one with "they don't sell shoes in hell," but I feel like there has to be a trope for that, but I don't know what it's called. On my phone, I have four tabs of TV tropes open right now. One, I won't say what it is. The other three are: Memory Tropes, Japanese Pronouns/Useful Notes, and Amazing Technicolor Index (a list of all tropes that have to with colors). I'll spend hours on TV Tropes if no one stops me. I don't know what it is about tropes; I just love them. Whether I'm playing them straight, subverting them, averting them, lampshading them, etcetera. I would love it if I ever published something and it had its own TV Tropes page so that I could laugh about ones that I never intended, but readers thought were there; I would spend so much of my free time looking at it.

I enjoy Manic Pixie Dream Girls too. But my favorite way to spin female protagonists is "Silk Hiding Steel"/"Yamato Nadeshiko" ("Southern Belle" is similar in concept for the US and "English Rose" is similar in concept for the UK). So there's Minako in a nutshell, but she's young, so she falls more into the "plucky determination for my man and family" and "selflessness" aspects of them than the subtlety of iron an older woman would possess. I think everyone who said they didn't like her even though they thought she was a good character in my featured story thread way back when probably aren't huge fans of any of those tropes.

I've said many times that Nick is "sugar and fire," even though he started off as more "sour outside, sad inside." He's also a "Determinator," of course. But, to be fair, I have an entire list of all the things Nick is in my google keep notes, including more fun ones like "No Indoor Voice."

I love tropes.

[RokofAges75]

I know why I missed it (because I missed it again tonight) - I always click straight to the updates thread (Tracy's, in this case) and don't think to the check the rest of this board.

I've had fun browsing the medical drama tropes.  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedicalDrama  I am definitely guilty of some of these and recognize plenty of others from all the TV medical dramas I've watched over the years.

[nicksgal]

I put it in the wrong place to get anyone to talk about them, haha. It's probably just general fic talk and not necessarily writer circle specific and updates are more interesting anyway.

That list is a lot shorter than I thought it would be. But I did scroll and tic off a few that I recognized from you.

Here's probably the closest to my writing (Sword and Sorcery) that actually lists tropes and not just work examples: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wuxia