Book Confessions: Tropes I Hate

Tropes are something I find myself thinking about more and more these days. When I was younger I had no idea what trope even meant or which ones were present in my favourite stories. Now I’m pretty much still the same. Well, I know what a trope is, but I’m not always the best at spotting them.

Love triangles

Oh, the age-old tale of the love triangle. I definitely sit somewhere in the middle with this trope as sometimes I don’t mind it. But this is when it is not unnecessary and doesn’t overshadow the main plotline.

The Hunger Games and Twilight are the best representatives for unnecessary love triangles. It’s obvious from book one who Bella and Katniss are going to end up with so stop the unnecessary drama. I just want to read about teenagers fighting to the death and overthrowing the government! Also, Gale and Jacob were both completely pointless as love interests, like seriously who was team Gale or Jacob? I wanted Jacob for myself so I was in fact team Edward all the way.

Most of the time I will give this trope a pass if it is literally the main point of the book. However, often it’s just padding for a plot that would otherwise be lacking.

I can’t think of any love triangles off the top of my head that I actually like, so I’ll have to come back to you on that one.

Good girl, bad boy

For me, this trope is often cringe-worthy, predictable and should be left solely for fan fiction. Yes, I’m looking at you After.

Your most common case of this being in a high school setting where the ‘bad-boy jock’ is failing a class and has to be tutored by the quiet nerdy girl. Spoiler alert! They somehow ‘fall in love’ even though they ‘have nothing in common’ and everyone will be against them going out. Fast forward a few chapters and the bad boy has done something horrific to the girl and like an idiot, she takes him back before the book ends.

When I was a teen I ate that stuff up. I loved these types of stories, especially After. I remember reading all three books on Wattpad on my phone (cringe). But you can’t judge me, we’ve all been there! The funniest thing about that is that I don’t even like Harry Styles these days.

Not like the other girls

I absolutely hate when female characters claim to ‘not be like the other girls’ when in reality they are exactly the same. There is something so infuriating about this, especially when it used at the same time as the ‘plain jane’ trope. But I’m going to save that one for a future post.

My main issue with this trope is when the character is using it to seem superior to other people. Please can we stop pitting women against each other? Thanks.

I am all for characters with interesting quirks and characteristics, however, make sure they are actually interesting before claiming they are ‘not like the other girls’. Also claiming ‘quirky’ as a personality trait does not count.

I’d absolutely love a bad-ass female character to reclaim being ‘girly’ and show it in a positive way. More often than not, the character this trope is based around is ‘different’ because she isn’t interested in having a boyfriend/girlfriend or ‘girly’ activities like shopping or using makeup.

After finishing this post I realised that Twilight has all of these tropes and that made me laugh a little.