people really just read books like “no thoughts head empty 🤪”
between white women on tiktok saying they only read books for the romance and people on tumblr forcibly applying ao3 tropes to narratives i’m beginning to think maybe you all should’ve 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 it’s 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 we’ve been thinking and talking about for ever. It just adds a layer of specificity. If you can’t comprehend someone asking you what tropes you like to read, you might not totally understand what a trope is, and that doesn’t 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 aren’t, 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 “entertaining enough.” 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 can’t think critically about their own life and choices.
People can just be into romances, that isn’t inherently stupid. Nor are knowing what tropes they enjoy. That’s just how some people engage with books, and we shouldn’t 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 “I guess I’m racist for not liking this.” I too am annoyed at the failure of public education, and I too was flabbergasted when someone on reddit asked “what’s the point of comparing two very different books to each other” when I pointed out that American Psycho kinda has Lovecraftian themes. But you’re falling off the mark here, to go on about how you hate tropes because they can also be applied to fanfiction tags. 🙄 This attitude is how people start calling themselves sapiosexual.
“That’s not how real literature works”
If you think “real literature” doesn’t “work” that way, you’re 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 “original” 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 “literature” contains no works that intentionally evoke an existing pattern in their plots and characters?
“Genre” as bookshops use it is not somehow superior to “tropes.” 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 “genre” is the Epic of Gilgamesh? What “genre” is the Odyssey? Fantasy? Do you think it is in any way appropriate to “genre” 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 is…basically what literary and folklore studies is.
Just because you consider fanfic or romance to be “lesser” doesn’t mean they can’t be analyzed, or that the mechanical components of those things don’t exist in Real Literature. 10th grade English class clearly didn’t do any good for the people that did pay attention, if people are growing up thinking tropes were invented on fanfiction websites.
And it’s just a depressing point of view to be so preoccupied with how people “should” 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.
In fairness to King Kong, if I had a tiny adorable primate in my hand I would also be very resistant to someone taking it away from me.
We all assume it was romantic, but maybe when King Kong looked at her he was seeing this:
Something like this really happened a couple of years ago at the Mefou Primate Sanctuary in Cameroon, run by Ape Action Africa (AAA). A western lowland gorilla named Bobo befriended a bushbaby for a couple of hours before releasing it back into the forest.
According to AAA’s Facebook post (where you can also find additional photos and video):
Our silverback gorilla Bobo made a surprising new friend this week – a wild bushbaby! Caregivers discovered him cradling the tiny primate during their morning checks, and were amazed to see him handling it with the utmost care – proving that gorillas really are the gentle giants of the forest. Bobo’s group-mates were desperately curious, particularly his favourite female Avishag, but he kept them all at a distance, making sure that no one disturbed his new friend. Bushbabies are usually nocturnal so it is very rare to see one, and even rarer to witness this kind of interaction. The little bushbaby was happy to play in Bobo’s arms, hopping off to explore the grass nearby, before returning to Bobo’s hand. When the game was over, Bobo walked purposefully off on two legs to deliver his friend safely back into the trees.
Incidentally, the western lowland gorilla (which has the best species name of all time: Gorilla gorilla gorilla) is the largest primate in Cameroon, and the bushbabies happen to be the smallest primates in Cameroon.
Pieces of Viking pottery with traces of cat and dog paws, seen at the Musée de Normandie in Caen Castle
“So back in the day pets already ruined their owner’s artwork.” - My sis who took the photo
“ruined”? made better
It’s very humanizing to imagine some poor potter in the past screaming “nnnnooooooo bad kitty” somewhere in Scandinavia
If it was ruined, the artisan wouldn’t have baked it.
That’s… that’s a delightful point you just made.
This person chose to bake and keep their cat’s artistic contribution.
i was in spain once and there was a building with a tile that had been laid down in roman times: it had a dog’s paw print. and the thing was that after the dog did that print, the wet tile was dried, and then fired, and then shipped, and then laid, and for two thousand years every person who encountered that tile thought ‘aw! paw print!’ and kept it. this vast agreement by thousands of people over all these centuries, in memory of a dog only one of us could have met.
i loved that tile.
Every comment.
As anyone who has worked with wet clay knows, these pawprints could be removed with a dab more clay and a stroke of one hand.
That they weren’t, says all that needs said.
The hand was too busy stroking something furry that purred or wagged its tail.
You can think abortion is a sin without forcing everyone else to
Pro choice also means supporting people who want to have children! Fighting against forced sterilization! Fighting against forced abortions of viable disabled fetuses . Fighting against misinformation that is designed to trick people out of their reproductive rights on all levels!
You should be able to choose if you want to go through pregnancy no matter what.
