Book Tropes

Popular 'Romantasy' Book Tropes: love triangle, enemies to lovers,

slow burn, forced proximity, and fake dating/marriage. Are these too repetitive and predictable?

 

   As an avid reader, I find myself on “BookTok” a lot. BookTok is a subculture on the popular social media app TikTok where individuals give their reviews of books they have read and ask for suggestions to others on what their next read should be. I like to scroll through BookTok for similar reasons, to find if the influencer's book review matches my own and to find new books to read. It should be noted that BookTok is mostly made up of young adult women who enjoy novels in the genres of Romance and Fantasy. 

  

 One topic that is prevalent in BookTok is the discussion of tropes. Tropes are the specific types of situations that happen in a book. Some examples of popular tropes in the romance and fantasy genres are: love triangle, enemies to lovers, slow burn, forced proximity, and fake dating/marriage. These tropes could be seen as standardisations because they are mass produced storylines with little to no originality. “Once a musical and/or lyrical pattern has proved successful it is exploited to commercial exhaustion, culminating in the crystallisation of standards” (Storey, Pg. 65). Like this quote states with musical and lyrical patterns, there too are exploited tropes in the fictional worlds of young adult reading. 

    The interesting thing about the BookTok world is that we as a culture are very aware of these tropes and the lack of originality in them. In fact, sometimes that’s what we want. It is like having a favorite meal. Why try something new when you know you can eat something you know you will like? It is the same idea, why read something new when I know what tropes I like? 

    Many of the authors we read from in class had the opinion that the masses are unaware of these repetitions and are being manipulated. But Adorno states, “People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them.” (pg. 106). That is what is happening here, I am fully aware of these ‘swindles’ and happily accept them. There are videos on BookTok where they talk about cliche scenes (which can also be seen as micro tropes) such as, ‘there was only one bed, but there were two of us’, The main character gets hurt and her enemy asks ‘who did this to you’ Etc. But all of BookTok agrees, we eat this up and desire it no matter what. Fiske states that the reason we may see these repetitions and be okay with them is because of how we relate these stories back to our own lived experiences. “In popular culture, social relevance is far more powerful than textual structure” (Fiske, pg. 216). 

  

 So is it really a bad thing to have repetition? It seems that it is not thwarting my imagination because I am not tied to what the author is writing. I can imagine my own scenes within the story that the author wrote. I mean that's what fan fictions are after all aren't they? Fan fics are these so called manipulated and brainless individuals within the masses that are creating their own stories based off of what they read. They are creating new stories and new time lines. Do you think that having repetitive tropes is causing a lack of creativity in the readers?