a definitive tier ranking of popular tropes

hi hello I hope you're taking care of yourself if you're new here my name is Lexi and today we are so back we're going to be talking tropes tropes get a lot of flak I think for being cookie cutter generic kind of whitebred descriptors of things I mean I myself have described books in the past as being like poorly disguised stacks of tropes in a trench coat before so that can definitely be true don't get me wrong but tropes are tropes for a reason they're fun they're recognizable and they're the foundation for a lot of the best stories in all of media and today in this video I'm going to be telling you which ones are fantastic which ones along in prison and then which ones kind of fall between those two extremes it's not that I'm an expert exactly but I did read fanfiction as essentially a full-time job between the ages of 12 and 18 so take that as you will I do believe that I've seen some things out in this world you know I come by my opinions honestly I have a good mix in this list of typical fantasy tropes and typical romance tropes so we're keeping it broad all audiences today and I have six categories I'll be sorting everything into the top category I have named the pantheon and these are the exalted tropes these are tropes that will off single-handedly make me consume a piece of media just because I've heard like a whisper of an echo that they might be there when I go too long without reading or watching something in this category I start to go through withdrawals it's like actively bad for my physical and mental health to be without them for too long that's how much I like these the next category is always eats and this is pretty self-explanatory these always eat they're always a good time in almost all forms they are A Feast for the body and spirit it's pretty hard to bungle them up although it is definitely possible next step after that is a little treat for me and these are tropes that on an objective level probably are not good enough to belong in the higher tiers but to me they're crack these are my absolute guilty pleasures no matter how silly they are they just fill me with this pure and unbridled childlike Joy you know next step after that is Smash and these trops are fine I'm pretty neutral on them they can definitely be executed really well but just them being there in the book is not enough it doesn't really make me feel any kind of way after that we have highly variable and this is a category for tropes that depend strongly on execution they can go from slaying just absolutely doing numbers for me to on the other hand if they're not done very well these are tropes sometimes that make me wish I'd never learned how to read For Better or For Worse these have range and lastly the final category I have jail also pretty self-explanatory I think just jail for these they're the worst and I don't like them I wish them only the worst in life in love okay that's all of the categories and I've pulled like 40 or so tropes obviously this is not going to be an exhaustive list I don't know if you two have spent days of your life slowly picking through tvtropes.org as I have but we're not doing everything I've just picked the ones that feel the most relevant and that spark joy to discuss with you today and even though I would consider this to be a definitive list given my history my expertise that's also mostly a joke because I'm not here to yuck your yum okay like if something in my jail tier really lights your fire really keeps you warm through these Long Winter nights in this absolute hellscape of a planet don't let me take that away from you okay this is just my opinions which of course are right to me but who's to say if they'll be right to you whether you agree with me or not is the fun mystery that we're going to be exploring in this video together aren't you excited okay that's everything that you need to know but before we get started I just have a quick word from past me and the sponsor of today's video which is book of the month jumping right in real quick with a word from the sponsor of today's video which is book of the month if you've never heard of them before which would surprise me if you watch my videos since I love them book of the month is a book subscription service that hand selects several of the very best new releases that are coming out every single month you go into their website or into the app on your phone you browse through all of their really cute curated tags and information and synopses on all of the books you pick one out and then they ship a brand new hard cover straight to your door every single month I absolutely love book of the month I feel like they have a really good eye for picking up Banger debuts in particular and they select from a pretty wide variety of different genres so there's always going to be something that you like every single month no matter what kind of reader you are but even if you don't if nothing catches your eye you can always just pause your 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being hunted for sport not even because I'm projecting and I would rather walk into the sea than have this happen to me but like I have never looked at a couple in the middle of a romance novel who's dealing with like conflict and problems and thought to myself you know what would improve this you know what would really make me believe in them to stay together forever and deal with all of their problems a human child that would really do it I have never once thought that and I will never take seriously authors who try to convince me that this is like healing because I feel like that's always how it goes like you have The Accidental pregnancy Trope come up and then the main couple has to solve all of their other problems and like they finally talk and are honest about their feelings and everything's fine so that way they can raise this baby together and it just makes me feel like I'm reading the backstory of like the kid at summer camp you meet 15 years later who comes from a broken home with parents that like throw glass bottles at each other because they never should have been together but like had to get married for the kid you know what I mean it's just I hate it I hate it I hate ha it every single time honestly it's impressive I don't think I've ever read a book that this didn't make so much worse next up is the Amnesia Trope and this can come in one of two forms most of the time you can either have a protagonist who starts off the series with absolutely no memories and kind of has to put together the pieces of who they used to be with the reader as you're trying to figure everything out or in the other form you have the main character or some kind of important side character loses their memories in the middle of the book and you as the reader know what they used to be like but you kind of have to reconcile that as they're figuring out what to do with their Amnesia in the middle of the story and I think think that this strongly depends on how it's executed type one Amnesia can sometimes be really fun but I also feel like it can be a crutch to avoid having to do baked in World building the normal way especially in fantasy you can just have your main character have amnesia and then all of the other characters can tell them how the world works because they're like a fresh-faced infant and they don't understand anything and that can be lame in my opinion also if they've forgotten something about their identity that is later revealed as this insane twist that can be pretty dumb but it can still be good especially with books that have a mystery component or an unreliable narrator then it can smack but type 2 amnesia when it happens in the middle of the book I almost never like most of the time it just really cheapens the relationships between the characters or like forces you to redo the same conflict but again like for example I read all of the American Royals books for some reason all of them even though I never rided any of them I don't think over like two and a half Stars it was just a dumpster fire that I could not look away from but in the last book they just give one of the main characters Amnesia and she has to go through like all of the conflicts from the first three books but again she like returns to her original emotional state and it was genuinely so stupid it was some American Royals type [ __ ] like it was kind of exactly what I expected from the author but it just gave so much nothing like it was so obviously an excuse for the author to not have to come up with a new Conflict for this character and it sucked it was lame so that's kind of an extreme example of why Amnesia can sometimes suck but yeah this really just depends on how it's executed for me next up is a boarding school/ University setting and this eats every single time I am so glad I'm done with college I'm so glad I never have to step foot for an extended period of time on a college campus ever again but the Unapologetic nerd inside of me who dreamed of I covered walls and like walking through the quad to get to this beautiful historic building that houses a secret society that I've just discovered that does incredibly suspect things that part of me will never die and these books as a result they're always going to slap there's just something so much fun about the bakedin schedule and routine and rigor alongside all of the different weird traditions and clubs and like ancient histories of the campus it just Cooks every time especially if you're reading something with a mystery component or something that's a little bit culty I love it I love these books whether they're magical or not this is my favorite setting I think brother's best friend for me is a smash I want to say off the Jump that I'm never mad if this is in my book it's never going to make me like cringe but what is this really like I was 7 years old in love with this 9-year-old boy who happened to be my brother's best friend but I never really knew anything about him because he was my brother's best friend like for the most part I just don't care about this and I feel like so often this entire premise rests on the back of the older brother being like no you can never date my younger sister how dare you even consider it she's forbidden to you and it's like a grow up B get better friends why don't you trust her with him does he hate women if so why is he your friend what does that say about you because the only reason that you would feel the need to be that protective over your younger sister is if your best friend is just like the wo like absolute trash dumpster fire of a man because in real life this is honestly an ideal situation like you basically get to spend every single holiday together forever if they get married and they're happy together because like you care about your sister and you care about your friend and you pick good enough friends and I don't know all of this to say it's just kind of a boring premise with a dumb conflict as its backbone Because unless there is an interesting secondary dynamic or Trope at play it's like you can write anything in this world pick something that's interesting I'm honestly begging you but yeah that's all more negative than I really am because honestly most of the time I feel indifferent towards this but next up is Bully romance and this is straight to jail as well this is a Trope where you have the main character who is like the kindest and sweetest and loveliest girl that there's ever been like she might be a little bit shy a little bit socially awkward but she's doing her best you know and then you have a guy who just decides to ruin her life for fun genuinely this Trope is like what if he just treats me subhuman and says all of these terrible awful things to me and then I still fall in love with him and marry him at the end of the book and crucial to mention here is that it's one-sided core to the bully romance that it's only going almost always from the guy to the girl maybe this is a hot take but like it's okay to be awful to each other especially in like a fantasy romance as long as you're both doing it but when it's just the guy being really mean to the girl and she kind of just like takes it and then loves him anyways because she realizes that he's just tortured I guess it is just a Trope that makes me feel bad in and empty inside which I really do not think is the target feelings that you're supposed to get from a romance novel it's not for me it is weirdly popular but I've like never gotten it even one time in my life it just feels toxic on a level that is so much higher than a lot of the other classically toxic tropes because at least those men genuinely do love and care about the protagonist even if they're psychotic and they're like Mafia men who bought us like at least they're kind at least they say nice things these men I don't understand at all next up is the training montage and this is kind of a microt Trope but I included it because this is absolutely the definition of a little treat for me the training montage occurs in its finest form when you have a character who is precociously good at something they have a tremendous amount of untapped potential but they are as of yet unrefined and typically with the aid of some kind of Mentor you get either a literal Montage in a TV show or a movie or alternatively a few chapters where they're just training and grinding and like becoming the best whoever do it in their respective skill or superpower or whatever it is when I say I love competence I love it when characters are good at things it is just it's a feeling like nothing else the training montage is how they earn it because without the training montage when you just have somebody who like shows up and comes in being the best that there's ever been it can feel really cheap and unearned especially if they're never really checked by the rest of the story I want to see them sweat okay I want to see them like bandage up their hands and then punch a bag for a while and somehow that makes them a better fire bender I want to see an old Mentor that plans an obstacle course that is really just a metaphor for life and for achieving like impossible things that the protagonist is expected to give up in like they're expected to fail but they just keep grinding until they're able to make it to the end and then the mentor like sheds a single tear you know because the protagonist is ready that's what I want okay whenever that is in anything I lose my mind I go feral I don't care how cliche it is I don't care how silly it is it just makes me love the main characters so much more when I see them suffer a little bit but next up is the cheating Trope and this is also straight to jail I will say that I will allow cheating in genres where I don't really root as much for the relationships like Thrillers Mysteries literary fiction often times it can be kind of interesting as a relationship dynamic in books like that where I'm not really expected to root for the couple because that's my main problem with this Trope is just I will never believe in you after this happens I will never believe that your couple will be happy together and I know that's kind of unfair because in the real world there are couples who make up after infidelity that does happen but it would never happen with me so this is one of the least attractive things that one of the characters in a couple can do it's just like if Trisha your cooworker at your office was that sexy that one time that you just had to take her back to your hotel room during your company trip but like you're really really sorry and you apolog oliz profusely after she found out because you didn't know that it would make your girlfriend want to leave you I am never going to believe that she should forgive you even if she does even if she does decide it's okay and like you get back together and you have a romance novel happy ending because the cheating was made to be symbolic of other problems that are happening in your relationship that the other main character kind of takes credit for so you make up it just feels icky to me and I hate it and I wish that it never jump scared me in books that I am otherwise enjoying friends to lovers I will say I think that this is the ideal way to meet people in real life I feel like the absolute dream for many of us is that you go to like a woodworking class and you meet someone queued and it kind of just blossoms from there over time and by far I feel like these relationships are the most stable in real life as well because you kind of know what you're getting into you're going to have less surprises as you date somebody but honestly for that reason I feel like it's kind of boring most of the time I think that especially outside of sandalon in things that are longer Series where there are other things going on there's like a main plot that's really interesting and the characters kind of have to work together friends to lovers can cook really hard in the background in a slowburn but when it's just one book and the whole thing is that it's a friends to lovers romance novel I don't know it is one of the only tropes on this list that deserves rights in real life and for that reason it's highly variable because it's hard to execute something that is so normal in a way that is also fun and interesting and worth writing a book about however childhood friends to lovers always eats in my opinion and these might seem very similar you might be confused as to why they're so different on the list but let me explain childhood friends to lovers almost always implies some kind of falling out that happened in between childhood friends and lovers there's normally kind a two strangers to lovers component in there where you have a book that's like I used to play with Finn every summer at the beach from when I was six until I was 17 but then something awful happened and we fell out of touch for 12 years and now we're both 29 and we run into each other mysteriously at somebody's wedding or something and even though we're so much hotter now and so many years have passed and I've like actualized when we make eye contact across the crowded bar I feel like we're 15 again with our toes in the sand but can we ever get past the original tragedy that kept us so far apart to begin with and even if we do could he still be the same th that I used to throw a frisbee to all those years ago am I even the same girl with a braid freckles in a book that I keep in my backpack that's shaped like a flower and it always Cooks every single time like that additional layer of built-in mystery and conflict is so much fun to me especially when it's revealed that character a has kind of always held a candle for character B like they've never really fallen out or forgotten that first love of their youth it is possible to screw this up like there was a book that was really big a couple of summers ago where the central mystery reveal was so bad that it genuinely ruins the entire book for me whatever book you're thinking of you're probably right it was like a big summer beach read but as long as you don't do that as long as you have any semi-legitimate reason for them to have fallen out of touch this Trope is so much fun next up we have the typical Chosen One Trope this is like a quintessential part of almost every young adult fantasy series that has ever been and ever will be and honestly I think this Trope gets a lot of flock because it's often paired with having a Mary Sue character who's just kind of better than everybody else in every way and has no flaws and that can suck for sure but for me this is still a smash I'm neutral on this there are so many good Chosen One pieces of media especially in my opinion when the chosen one doesn't really want to be the chosen one when they're kind of an anti-hero who walks ass backwards into having to do something really important to save the world that is so much fun in my opinion but even in more traditional kind of Chosen One stories I don't really mind it doesn't really say anything to me about the quality of the actual book or TV show or movie sometimes it's awesome sometimes it's not awesome but either way it's almost never because of the chosen one Trope it's like something else is done very well or very poorly that makes the piece of media good or bad next up is having a conflict due to poor communication otherwise known as the miscommunication Trope but miscommunication was too long a word to have readable text you might think that this would go to jail but actually in my opinion This is highly variable and don't get be wrong this can definitely be the worst this can be one of the tropes that makes me most want to tear every single hair one by one out of my skull but like not all miscommunication tropes are created equally because a lot of conflict is rooted in this in real life and in books it's rooted in this inability to communicate in a way that makes sense to both of you with your partner about your needs and desires and it definitely can be dumb like you can have a 90% miscommunication where like character B thought that character a wanted pesto pasta from the Italian place but it turns out that character a wanted Alfredo and character a starts spiraling and thinking about how their entire life would just be like a pesto pasta existence if they stayed with their partner which is really just like their trauma speaking out onto their new relationship so they dump character be all of a sudden about this pasta even though it's obviously not about the pasta and then in 20 Pages they make up and they have their whole I love you scene all over again and you're left thinking to yourself like why am I still here only to suffer only to read about pesto Pasto relationships that just make me want to set my entire house on fire like that can definitely happen but also there are some really good romance books that I'm honestly blanking on right now but I'll put them up on screen if I remember where the central conflict is miscommunication of some kind it's the two characters not really being honest about what they were feeling and they kind of just have to grow up during the book and learn how to like acknowledge their own emotions and advocate for themselves in relationships in order to end up happy with each other by the end and those books when it feels true to life when it's not not contrived when it feels like both characters really are kind of doing their best and aren't just not doing something because they're stupid they can really smack those are some of my favorite romance novels honestly so really it just depends on how stupid I feel like your characters are being because when a poorly executed miscommunication Trope is inside of a book that I like I kind of just pretend that it's not all right next up is redemption Arc and this is going straight to the top as does corruption Arc which is also absolutely fire although very different I absolutely adore internal conflict in books where it's just you versus yourself trying to figure out what the [ __ ] you're doing and what side you're really on and when characters like that get to the point where they're switching sides because they've realized something terrible about the world or about themselves oh those moments when they're done right are so fired like tops the obvious example of this that everybody has seen is zugo from Avatar the Last air bender if you have not seen avatar the Last air bender you really should get your priori straight and stop watching this video and go watch that TV show but that is far from the only example of a Redemption Arc or of a corruption Arc I mean my favorite corruption Arc I think happens in Attack on Titan although the ending does complicate things a little bit I feel like overall for one of the characters the story is like an insanely good corruption Arc that really has you on like the edge of your seed kind of figuring out what's going on and that's the thing about Redemption arcs and Corruption arcs is that even when you can see them happening even when the seeds have been seed and you understand what's going on the tension of the will they won't they be a good guy or a bad guy even when it's obvious it's always just it's so good in that one moment when they finally turn it's so much fun I absolutely love these if you have any recks please let me know honestly for anything in this section of the list like I will eat it up next step after that is when the main cast has this like big battle going on or this big thing is happening that like they're probably losing they're not doing very well when on the horizon appears this character that you thought was dead or disappeared or just for whatever reason out of commission like you never thought that you would see them again they pull up at the most pivotal moment they join the main team and the day is saved this is so Niche compared to the rest of this list but a lot of the niche ones I picked because they're little treats for me I love these moments bro they always get me I feel like I always cry it's just so good every single time and I'm honestly so gullible like I normally believe it when a book tells me that somebody is dead so like it's just such a roller coaster it always gets me fake dating this is also maybe a hot take but for me this is kind of just a smash I don't hate it like some people do but I do find it to be incredibly formulaic in a genre that obviously is already quite formulaic like a romance novel has a very predetermined Arc you know what you're going to get but like the fake dating conflict 100% of the time is just I'm being forced to fake date this person that I didn't like before except acting like I in love with them is making me develop real feelings for them isn't that crazy but it's all fake and it could never feel the same way about me like that is always the conflict in a fake dating romance and I'll still read it and I'll probably have a good time I'll probably rate it 3.5 to four stars but it just it doesn't turn my head in the way that other tropes do but next is enemies to lovers and you might think that this is going in my top tier it's not it's going and always eats because it does always eat when it's done correctly I have so much beef with books that are marketed as enemies to lovers where it's really just you did a mean thing to me one time 3 years ago and I've held it against you ever since but like now it's chapter 4 and I guess we can be friends and the enemy section of the book is like 15 pages long and then you just have them lightly bantering for the rest of the time and it just bugs me so much like I feel like to be real enemy slovers you almost have to be slowburn and you have to have a real non- Petty important reason to hate each other that would actually make you want to avoid developing feelings for that person if you kiss with any kind of affection or endearments attached before like page 200 I don't trust you if the hatred is one-sided if the other person is revealed to secretly have liked them the entire time I don't trust you you're not enemies to lovers stop lying to us especially in contemporary romance I think it's just harder to have legitimate reasons to hate somebody with the fury that I want but regardless when it's done right this is fantastic soup like compliments to the chef it's just the concept of being forced to recognize that your hot enemy the person that you were made to despise from day one they might be your soulmate after they've casted this like 500e curse on your family you might have always have been me to be with them all along even after you've like CED their Kingdom like I will eat it up every single time it's fantastic but next is academic Rivals to lovers which is pretty similar to enemies to lovers but instead of typically hating each other on like a base level because of some unchangeable action or difference or characteristic academic Rivals to lovers has that same banter and tension and kind of petty hatred except for it's because they're competing for something and they're typically both very smart they're very competent they either want to be like the best at a class or they want to get like the one spot at a summer program or something like that for me this isn't the pantheon and this might seem like a hot take but the girls who get it get it honestly outside of like the candy jar on Netflix I don't even really have that many recommendations for this because I think that 95% of my academic Rivals to lovers content has been consumed as fanfiction School a use oh I'm so sorry but just it's the best backdrop for banter it sets the stage for one of the characters when they're finally becoming close and recognizing their feelings one of them can betray the other person in order to win which is always so juicy and also I feel like there's usually a scene where the male main character recognizes the competence of the female main character and it's like I have only ever seen you as the only person who is capable of competing with me as the person who will push me to be the best version of myself when like she's being ducked on or put down by somebody around her and he like lets her handle it because he knows that she's competent because she's his academic rival and I just love it like if you get it you get it and if you don't I think that you're just wrong next up is force proximity and honestly I don't think that this is a Trope that on sheer quality is that good like for most people this is kind of neutral I think it needs other things to kind of get cooking but for me I do love it I do consider it to be a little treed and I have definitely read Force proximity romance novels that have done absolutely nothing for me but what I'm thinking about when I think of force proximity Is specifically when two characters who would otherwise not want to are forced to work together to accomplish some kind of goal I like to call it reluctant partners in crime I think that sometimes these are books that can be advertised as enemies to lovers but that is not accurate in my opinion it's just like two people who kind of maybe dislike each other who have to do something together but it's good for its own reasons like I love those scenes where the characters notice something about the other person that they never would have noticed if they hadn't been spending every waking hour together and it's clearly them starting to develop feelings but they're not all the way there to acknowledging it yet it's just scrumptious but with that said I'm not sure how well that this stands on its own most of the time I think that it's kind of like the accent wall of tropes you still need to have a nice room you still need to have nice Decor in order for your accent wall to not look super out of place but it can really pull things together if do it right okay I'm going to speed up a bit because I'm yapping way too much and I do need to eat dinner eventually but next is grumpy sunshine and this is also I think a hot take but honestly this is just a smash for me I think it's just kind of overdone unless the sunshine has a little bit of spice to her like unless she can kind of hold her own and banter back and like be more than just painfully sunshiny and optimistic all the time I honestly think that the dialogue in some of these books can be a little bit stilted and annoying but it's never going to stop me from picking a book up and I do think it can add some pretty cool flavor sometimes as as long as there are other things going on and also as long as the grumpy person isn't kind of just like sad and stoic and boring like they need to be at least a little bit snarky and clever in my opinion for this to work I also will say that for straight romances I do really like it when it's grumpy girl ex Sunshine boy I think that that can be really fun that can feel kind of subversive so yeah it's a smash I'll still read it but it's just not going to single-handedly draw me to the book hero loses powers and with this I specifically mean at the end of the book after the big bad has been defeated after everything is okay and like you're getting your ending whatever that ending looks like the main character no longer has powers probably because they've had to sacrifice them in order to win that last fight this is Niche is but I picked it because I have such a specific hatred in my heart for this Trove there is one young adult Series in particular if you know you know where at the end of the series the main character she like opens up an orphanage and kind of becomes a homesteader Loki and the entire series up to that point the male love interest was so insecure that she was more powerful than he was and it's like oh genuinely made me want to scream you can be powerful and also have peace in your world you can be powerful and also be tra if you want to as long as your boyfriend isn't like phenomenally insecure you can keep your powers and still make that decision if you really want to like you don't have to do it because you're powerless I don't know man like even outside of that one instance where it really made me mad I just feel like it's the kind of cliche that is dumb and pointless and also at the same time so tremendously predictable like you have to make this insane sacrifice in order to win but you don't want to kill off a character so instead let's just sack this power that is probably also core to the identity and the personhood and the personality of whoever your protagonist is and I hate that it doesn't make me feel good it doesn't make it feel earned it just makes me feel like the winners are kind of left shells of themselves in this allegedly happy ending I just don't like it there's a special place in hell in my opinion for this Trope next up is her comfort and this is when you have character a in some kind of awful anguished State whether that's physical mental emotional spiritual they're just really going through it they're having a bad time and there's nowhere else to go EX except for the waiting arms of character B who is there to support them this can take approximately a million different forms and I swear to God I've read them all I used to read every single hurt Comfort fan fiction I could get my hands on and for that reason it always eats I mean it's pretty simple it's just you have this sad person and then you have the person that they would least suspect who is telling them that maybe they're worth it after all and like they have the capabilities to accomplish whatever they need to in life and that it's going to be okay and it hits it does it's one of the best ones and the only reason that it's not in the absolute top tier is because I have read had a lot of really ass hurt Comfort fanfiction in my time everybody wants to write a scene like this but it's not always what the people need the author is not always cooking the way that they think they are cooking with these but when it's good it's great and it's also a pretty essential component of a lot of these other tropes like especially enemies to lovers academic Rivals to lovers I hate everyone but you this is when you have a character who is genuinely a missing throw like they actually think that other people were created solely to make their lives harder usually this is trauma but really who's to say like some people just end up like this I think in books for reasons that are never completely clear to me but the protagonist is able to crack that cold exterior they're able to warm their way into that person's heart this is also kind of a sister Trope to grumpy Sunshine but I think that it's harder to execute well because often times this is paired with a frankly laughable threat to like burn down the entire world if they touch the main character which never feels legitimate inside of a contemporary romance like whenever a contemporary romance man who's like an accountant makes a threat that he'll burn down the entire world because he hates every body but the protagonist he becomes a clown Emoji to me like I cannot take him seriously I also just tend not to really like the men who do this in romance novels because they're usually really mean to other women which I've never found attractive like I don't think that you're hot solely because you're mean and rude to people who are not mean but it can be good sometimes especially in fantasy I think like there is potential for this when the man is capable of following through on threats when that's actually believable for whatever reason then we can cook but without that I don't know about this one next is install love which is kind of like the derogatory form of love at first sight and from that description alone you can probably tell that I think that this is in jail if I'm reading a book where romance is a primary plot point I just get kind of bored if they end up together too early my investment in a lot of books has ended essentially as soon as they kiss each other for the first time it's just not as interesting anymore I like the will they won't they I like the push and pull I don't want to read a book that's about this couple that already feels established by chapter 6 that just has to deal with a bunch of random conflicts you know what I mean I want to read about two people falling in love they can't do that off screen and I also think for the record that I'm more forgiving of this than a lot of people are because like you can be low-key obsessed with each other it can be obvious to me that the male lead is obsessed with the main character even if maybe he doesn't have like that many good reasons to be but a it's nowhere near as fun if that's completely requited the entire time and B make it so they can never confess to each other or else like the crest of their family will go up in Flames put in some actual tension that makes it difficult to interpret what is actually going on between the two of them and also that gives them something to work through that is interesting and brings them closer together so that way it feels more earned by by the end but when it's obvious and bad and especially if the two people have like no reason other than Vibes to like the other person I check out so fast from books like that I'm gone and thusly that's why it's time to talk about slowburn as well as its children Mutual pining and it's always been you slowburn to me is an essential component of all of my favorite romance stories I don't think that there is a single romance that I really really really love that feels not at least a little bit slowburn and part of that is definitely me just having my brain rotted out from the inside like I'm used to reading 150,000 word fanfix with notes from the author that are like sorry guys I was just in jail for 6 months but I'm back now I can write the scene that you've spent your entire life waiting for like that kind of stuff gating me off from being able to enjoy the characters actually getting together I know that that had bad effects on my brain chemistry at the age that I was when I was consuming all of that content and it's cooked me and I know it's cooked me because I feel like a bit of a masochist whenever I'm reading like a long slowburn and I'm on page like 325 and they're just now having a shoulder brush moment where it's like charged with the sexual tension of all that can never be between the two of them and I'm just like kicking my feet in the air even though all that they've done is brush shoulders but there's just something about it man I like my characters to suffer a little bit on their way to success and likewise even though this is barely a Trope I'm putting it in the pantheon next to slowburn Mutual pining I want my characters to be like sweating with how much they like the other person even though they never intended to even though the other person could never feel the same way about them I want it to be ruining their lives I want them to be quaking with all that could never be and I needed to go both ways and I will say this is a dangerous line because if you make your characters stupid if you make your characters just kind of like dumb in ignorance of the fact that the other person is into them then the magic is gone it can't be like super obvious that character B has always been in love with character a that ruins the fun this is a pair of tropes that has to be done artfully with tact with patience but if it's done right H it's so good and similarly the it's always been UT Trope which is a common component of slowburn mutual pining although it's also a pretty common component of like childhood friends to lovers I mentioned it other tropes too this is not in the pantheon but it does always eat the concept of it never could have been anyone else for me I would have just I guess died alone if not for you or at least died sad and regretful obviously it's kind of pathetic but it's like pathetic in a way that's hot it's pathetic dressed up in lingerie and ready to have a good time 10 out of 10 whenever this scene is in a book I lose my mind genius character and specifically what I mean by this is having a genius character who like wins against far superior opponents as a result of being a genius like as a result of like trickery or just coming up with a really clever rag tag solution to defeat a bronny opponent who in every respect should have won this is certainly a little treat for me if you can't guess by now I really like competence in books let me say it again for the people in the bag and I love the creativity that's on display when this works well because when you have a well-executed genius character it requires a really intelligent and sharp writer because the stakes have to feel real like for this to be satisfying you have to feel like everybody is doomed like they're really just out of their league and then out of nowhere comes this awesome in insanely creative solution that only the sly wise cracking trickster on the team could have come up with whenever that happens whenever I'm like how are they going to get out of this one and then they get out of this one with something like that I am losing my mind I think it's super duper fun knife to the throat this is a smash I guess for me you might think that I would be not neutral on this considering that enemies to lovers is so high and I feel like this is an enemies to lovers cliche but honestly I feel like this has been done so many times that when the author tries to write a scene like this with her full chest it just it comes off kind of cringe at this point it's more about what they say during the knife to the throat scene than it is about the knife to the throat you know what I mean like the quality of the banter is really what matters in my opinion and that's really independent of what's happening in the book it's okay love triangle this is a classic and I'm actually not a love triangle hater but I do think that it really depends on how it's done it's definitely pretty lame when there's one person who you know the entire time is going to win and then the tertiary character kind of only exists to be a romantic rival and like doesn't have that grade of a characterization on their own that can definitely be a little bit annoying but I low he think that a little bit fun there is nothing in this world that I chase more than the Nostalgia of my youth and like all of the books I used to read had love triangles of variable quality right whenever I see one now it's just like saying hello to an old friend and they're definitely less popular than they used to be I think because they get clowned on I also feel like I never really see them outside of young adults and I read young adults in part to read something that is Trope year that is a little bit Camp so I'm okay with it honestly definitely they can suck like the Twilight love triangle in my opinion was atrocious and also all of the love triangles where the main character doesn't pick the person that I would pick those suck as well but honestly I feel like I normally pick right so I'm not that disappointed most of the time if it were all that I read if I read like a lot of love triangle literature instead of just one in a blue moon like every few months I think that I would have different opinions because I do strongly believe that you do not need to add a third person to give your main relationship enough drama to make your way through the book like two people can have enough problems all on their own and they're never going to be my favorite love stories but they are sometimes a little bit of fun as a treat marriage of convenience I should have just done this with fake dating because honestly it's pretty similar but I do like it more than fake dating I like that it requires a higher level of commitment to the bit and as a result I like that it creates more problems typically between the two main characters but it's still predictable in the same way that fake dating is predictable but honestly this is closer than the other tropes in this category to being a little treat for me it's just it's not quite there I do really enjoy the ceremony of it like there are all of these layers of traditions and different things that you have to do and it's just it's higher Stakes fake dating which I do respect but it's just not going to do it for me alone you know I need something else to spice it up give me a childhood friends marriage of convenience give being enemies to lovers marriage of convenience now we're talking now we're cooking with gas but just this alone is not enough in my opinion found family if you know anything about me you know that I love found family oh man me when the blood of the Covenant is thicker than the water of the womb I love friends in books I love friends that would die for each other I love ragt groups of outcast who come together in one unit because nobody else has ever looked after them in the world but they love each other so much it's just so good it's always good it always makes books so sad also whenever something bad happens to one of the members of the found family like that is the quickest way to make me cry do not contact me for 5 to 10 business days if you were going to kill off a member of my found family in a fantasy book okay honestly I feel like there's just nothing new to say about found family like everybody already loves this for a very good reason if you don't love this Trope like do you not like being accepted for the person that you are do you not like friends do you not like Having the courage to be understood by people who may not share your last name but they do share your spirit they do share your fire like maybe when you're older you'll understand why it's important to like found family but honestly I've never met anybody in my life who did not love this Trope so that's really all I have to say on that this is probably the goat like it's a classic for a reason okay rapid fire because I really do have to go office romance this might surprise you but this is jail for me honestly so boring as a setting for a book or a movie if I wanted to read about finding love under capitalism I would just go on like credit r/ relationships genuinely give me anything else I don't want to think about having to be productive to society when I'm reading a silly little romance novel it's just not for me the only time that this worked is set it up on Netflix and that's that next up one of us is famous this is a little treat for me I was obsessed growing up with the Disney movie star struck it was the made for TV movie that starred Sterling Night from Sunny with a chance and he was this gigantic pop star who had this meat cute and ends up falling in love with this completely normal girl in society and they have to like reckon with that I loved it I probably watched that movie like a 100 times from the ages of 10 to 14 it's just so much fun and it's also the classic Daydream that you have when you're like 10 and you still believe that you're going to marry George Clooney or something you know or in my case Sterling Knight from Starstruck from Sunny with a chance I really did truly believe that that was still on the table at that point in my life and I even thought to myself like how meta would that be if I married this man who starred in a movie about like marrying a normal girl and I'm a normal girl and he's a famous man it would be so crazy obviously this never happened but I do still love this Trope second chance if you know me you know my all-time favorite romance novel is a second chance romance but still this to me is pretty highly variable it really for me depends on why they broke up like was it Petty did he just kind of bring her the wrong salad one time was it insane like did he kill a man in front of her and she had to help hide the body and then she went into like witness protection because also he's psychotic or was it just kind of a right person wrong time circumstances beyond their control sort of thing you know what I mean all of those different scenarios create wildly different books that I'm able to take a different amount of seriously and when it's good it absolutely Cooks because it has kind of the childhood friends to lovers Reckoning with who you used to be with that person versus who you both are now and like can you or even should you have the same relationship that you used to have or are you two different and is that okay you know like can you grow with this person towards something better for both of you I really love the dynamic in books and the good second chance romances always have that but the bad Second Chance romances are just character a did something that's completely unforgivable and character B decides after 300 pages that they might as well forgive them for it and it's just like that's not that's not really for me next St is age Gap and to be clear I don't mean here like she's 25 ex her 30-year-old brother's best friends I don't really care about that like you can have a fun time it's none of my business what I have in mind specifically here is like old man ex young girl or old woman ex young boy both of those are weird but like this is your salt and pepper English Professor X your 18-year-old College freshman which I guess I'm doing more specifically later but either way it's jail this is one of my classic most hated tropes I just don't know what you have to gain from dating somebody that is barely illegal adult stay within a reasonable distance of your lane because it's not even necessarily that it's a Taboo it's just that I am never going to believe that these couples are actually going to be able to have meaningful relationships like what do you have in common with somebody who's 30 years younger than you how you even communicate with somebody who is young enough to be your child it's just so icky to me and also honestly too realistic for my romance novel I don't need to read fiction to see old men prating upon young girls I just need to like go outside during the day in a major US city so jail for that for the record I also don't like Immortal 1700 year-old Fay X 18-year-old girl but that's a different story also just while I'm here teacher X student is also jail same exact reasons except for it's even worse because you have the addition of a power dynamic between the teacher and the student why are you interested in the 18-year-old College freshman in your English recitation like she probably barely knows how to write with the literacy standards the way that they are in this country what do you have in common let her study um I hate this with my entire heart if that's not clear final stretch I have to go so fast body Ard romance this this is a little treat for me I have only read a small handful of books in Aus like this but there is just something about it that goes so hard it's like the willingness to die for your charge both because you kind of are contractually obligated to but also because you love them or are falling in love with them it just it's fire you protect them but also lowkey they protect you maybe you're the only person that they've ever trusted before with the secrets of their profession I don't know man it's like the closest to a spy Thriller that you can ever get a romance book and I really do love that there was only one bed kind of hot Take This is highly variable for me half of the time when I read there was only one bed scene in the modern day one of the characters actually says oh no there's only one bed as if it's like an acknowledgement of how camp and overdone the Trope is and it's just like why have we let it get this far why does every single book that I read in the modern day need a there was only one bed scene I want my one bed scenes to be like caviar in books I want them as a surprise once in a blue moon to like remind me how much fun it can be to have that kind of tension but getting them constantly all of the time they've kind of just gotten stale for me it's pretty rare that one of them is actually memorable however who did this to you also is super overdone but it is a little treat for me I do love this every single time this is honestly a sister Trope to hurt Comfort but it implies more anger more potential for Retribution Maybe person B will like take revenge on behalf of person a and I do love it when that happens even though violence in real life is never the answer it is often times the answer in my heart in fantasy books this is especially fire when paired with a wound cleaning scene I will say like a softer kind of edge to it is really nice 10 out of 10 it does in fact do it for me and finally the last Trope thank God is Wise Old mentor and this always eats I have Uncle iro on here for obvious reasons he's like quintessential wise old Mentor he's a god anybody with eyes and ears does love him but any like wise benevolent old Mentor or alternatively like grizzled veteran Mentor those are also really fire they're always good they always eat and they also set up some of the most heartbreaking scenes in media when you become unhealthily attached to the wise old Mentor and then something happens to them it is not a good time it does feel like a tactical emotional nuke but yeah this is the list I could order it more specifically within the tiers but I'm not going to do that because I have to go actually right now thank you for tuning in to this cool video I hope that you agree with most of my takes and that if you don't you're nice to me please I strongly recommend subscribing if you agree with my takes because we're clearly in sync I also recommend subscribing if you don't agree with my takes because it's important to challenge yourself in life but either way please tell me every thought that you have in the comments I try to read as many of them as I can but yeah that's it I'm actually on vacation right now so I'm going to go do vacation things and get some dinner but thank you guys so much again I love you and I will see you when I see you bye

Channel: lexi aka newlynova

Views: 115,057

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Id: 4PZq71VQWmE

Length: 43min 5sec (2585 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2024