people really just read books like āno thoughts head empty š¤Ŗā
between white women on tiktok saying they only read books for the romance and people on tumblr forcibly applying ao3 tropes to narratives iām beginning to think maybe you all shouldāve paid more attention in 10th grade english class
I was talking to this girl on hinge and we got onto the topic of books (i work in a bookshop), and she asked me if i had any favourite tropes to read? And for the life of me i couldn't figure out how to respond? Like Ms, i dont read fanfic, i dont understand what youre asking. I dont think 'tropes' can be used interchangeably with 'genre'. We dont have a section at work for shit like 'enemies to lovers' im sorry thats not how real literature works
I thought this post was gonna go somewhere relevant and interesting for a full second, but I guess not. Tropes are older than dirt. The idea of a trope has existed as long as humans have been making things, and itās not empty-brained to ask what tropes someone might enjoy reading. For example, someone could answer: haunted houses. rivalries that span decades. tales of revenge. generational family dramas. coming of age stories. stuck in a snowstorm with a killer. The word trope is just a way people currently talk and think about concepts in literature that weāve been thinking and talking about for ever. It just adds a layer of specificity. If you canāt comprehend someone asking you what tropes you like to read, you might not totally understand what a trope is, and that doesnāt make the other person dumb.
What I was hoping this post might touch on is how people cling to book reading as a hobby that will make them automatically smarter or more superior than those who arenāt, no matter how little mental engagement they actually put into reading. There are people who shit on novels like Things Fall Apart, The Jungle, and Invisible Man for not being āentertaining enough.ā There are people who base their entire personality on being an avid reader who chose to never think critically or challenge themselves. There are people who think reading makes you more empathetic by default, when in reality anyone, even terrible people, can project themselves onto the hero if they canāt think critically about their own life and choices.
People can just be into romances, that isnāt inherently stupid. Nor are knowing what tropes they enjoy. Thatās just how some people engage with books, and we shouldnāt be looking down at people for that. I have way more issue with the white goodreads users who rate Things Fall Apart as two stars and start their review āI guess Iām racist for not liking this.ā I too am annoyed at the failure of public education, and I too was flabbergasted when someone on reddit asked āwhatās the point of comparing two very different books to each otherā when I pointed out that American Psycho kinda has Lovecraftian themes. But youāre falling off the mark here, to go on about how you hate tropes because they can also be applied to fanfiction tags. š This attitude is how people start calling themselves sapiosexual.
āThatās not how real literature worksā
If you think āreal literatureā doesnāt āworkā that way, youāre not thinking substantially about literature, neither in individual instances nor in the broader scheme.
What do you think a tragic hero is? What do you think a quest narrative is? How do you think we can conceive of Seven Basic Plots? What do you think Comedy and Tragedy are? Do you think the Aeneid popped out of nowhere without referencing any of the patterns of Greek epics that made it compelling to its audience? Do you think Shakespeare was popular because his plays were āoriginalā ideas with storylines that would have been surprising to his audience? Do you think fairy tales sprung out of the air as discrete individual units? Do you think no one has ever written anything that follows the patterns of Greek epics, Shakespeare, or fairy tales intentionally? Do you think āliteratureā contains no works that intentionally evoke an existing pattern in their plots and characters?
āGenreā as bookshops use it is not somehow superior to ātropes.ā Fantasy, Westerns, Paranormal Romances, those categories are like, less than one or two centuries old and also damn near useless for anything except marketing. Genre is a hot fucking mess and pretty artificial. Tropes on the other hand? Those have always existed. They are, quite literally, inherent and natural parts of stories.
What āgenreā is the Epic of Gilgamesh? What āgenreā is the Odyssey? Fantasy? Do you think it is in any way appropriate to āgenreā these stories using categories that would have been nonsense to their ancient audiences? What the fuck is fantasy?
Over and over again, we have told stories about heroes destroyed by their hubris, about mortals struggling against the inevitability of death, about the antics of trickster deities, about clever young boys outwitting giants and other malicious characters, about young girls swept into royalty, about brothers in conflict with one another, and the ability to identify these patterns and explore why they have persisted isā¦basically what literary and folklore studies is.
Just because you consider fanfic or romance to be ālesserā doesnāt mean they canāt be analyzed, or that the mechanical components of those things donāt exist in Real Literature. 10th grade English class clearly didnāt do any good for the people that did pay attention, if people are growing up thinking tropes were invented on fanfiction websites.
And itās just a depressing point of view to be so preoccupied with how people āshouldā tell stories that how people do tell stories is not even interesting.
All of the above is A+ but I'll add one more thing: do you know what I just finished filling out for my publisher? Of the book that will be in bookstores next year? Paperwork listing the genre and...the tropes. For marketing and sales purposes. This is standard procedure. It's how my book will be marketed online upon release. It's how my book will end up on suggested title lists. It's how Amazon's algorithm knows that such-and-such book is the bestseller in two niche categories and 20th in a broader category as well as 56th overall in YA titles. So aside from the fact that "tropes" have existed far longer than "genre" as folks have stated above, the people/companies who make "real literature" right now literally require authors to provide lists of tropes included in the novel at the front end of the publishing process.
So if you're working in a book store and don't think tropes exist outside of fic, that's a self-own so devastating I'm getting secondhand embarrassment right now.
Yeah, hi. 10th grade English teacher here. We really just want more kids to read - in any way, shape, or form. Stop gatekeeping reading, folks.
