Top 10 Tuesdays – Tropes I Like

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week’s top 10 is about tropes- tropes that I like. Or rather, a selection of tropes I don’t hate or could have potential to be appealing with some tinkering.

1.) Vampires

I know this trope has been done to death and there are approximately 500 million book series that have followed it, but I’m not done adoring vampires and always being open to a good-sounding series with them. Reading/watching Interview With The Vampire at a young age cemented this trope into my psyche so I’m always here for it.

2.) Zombies

It’s funny that I am putting this down here because I have NEVER read a zombie apocalypse book. I really need to find one or more and read it because I am madly in love with everything zombie-related after playing The Walking Dead series by Telltale Games. They’re basically like a cross between a book and tv show in game form. Lots of (voiced) text and choose-your-own-adventure goodness and cinematics not unlike a movie or tv show. Also on the topic of zombies, I recently watched a series called Black Summer on Netflix. It was probably an objectively bad show and I loved it anyway so this trope is definitely my style. For now.

3.) Romance – Enemies To Lovers / Hate To Love

This should be in first place because I love it so much. I’ve loved it ever since playing a video game at 11 years old about a police dog who falls in love with pirate cat, lol. It was a cute little thing called Tail Concerto. This is probably going to be a lifetime obsession. Some of my favorite recent examples are Matthias and Nina from Six of Crows and Warner and Juliette from the Shatter Me series. Honestly, I’m still waiting to find the most epic example of this trope of all time. One where the enemies have a negative -5000% chance to ever get together from all the baggage.

4.) Manic Pixie Dream Girls

This is more of a movie thing than a book thing but it probably still fits. Unpopular opinion, but I don’t mind this trope. If I’m choosing between average or wildly different, even if it’s a try-hard kind of different, I would rather the latter. Plus, I feel like characters that are original and appealingly unusual could easily get flagged with this label. That said, I’m more seeking manic pixie dream boys. Do they even exist? The only one I can think of who kind of fits is Gansey from The Raven Boys.

5. The Love Triangle

So my only real reason for including this here is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done right. In every series I can think of, YA or otherwise, there is always a bias toward one of the two and we already know who is going to win and who is going to be left out in the cold. I would love to find a love triangle someday where the hero or heroine convincingly has equal feelings for both and has real trouble choosing. I mean, that’s what a love triangle is, right? But it seems most authors shy away from that because of how badly the protagonist can come across in such a scenario. Seems tough to pull off but I’m still open to reading it in the future. If anyone has any recommendations, feel free to toss them my way.

6. Child side characters.

I’m thinking of Kitty from To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before or James from Shatter Me. I just like kids I guess, especially if they’re cute and funny and offer variety that shakes up the usual tone of a story.

7. (Childhood) Friends To Lovers

My second favorite thing after enemies-to-lovers, but with the addition of childhood as I simply adore flashbacks and references to past moments that deepen a sense of time and bonding between the characters.

8. Villain Redemption

Saw this one on a list on EpicReads.com. Full disclosure- I don’t like one-dimensional black-and-white morality in villains. I won’t dock a book points for having an all-bad one-note villain but it certainly won’t get points for that either. A villain with depth and reason- even to the point of redemption- is just more interesting.

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I couldn’t think of 10 for this list but I hope this was fun to read nonetheless! If you’ve done this tag please do let me know as I’d be happy to check your post out. Do you agree or disagree with any of these selections? Have recommendations? I happily welcome your comments and thoughts. As always~