Yearly Archives: 2013

I have a feature and giveaway going on over at Sensuous Promotions today – be sure to go check it out!

Trope: Childhood Friend Romance

Description: Our lovestruck protagonists have known each other for nearly their entire lives. Over the years, the innocent games of childhood have evolved into mature feelings of passion and love. This trope has a number of variations – it can end with Happily Ever After, it can lead up to Happily Ever After until tragedy strikes, or it can be portrayed as one-sided unrequited love where the HEA is never achieved.

Examples: Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights, Christine and Raoul from Phantom of the Opera, Forrest and Jenny from Forrest Gump, Cory and Topanga from my secret favorite show Boy Meets World

Pros: There’s something sweet about this trope (assuming it ends well). While there’s something to be said for torrid love affairs, when it comes to choosing a life partner, don’t we want to be with someone we can consider a best friend? Even when there’s no happy ending with this trope, the drama feels real, not contrived, and pulls us into the story. (I’m sure we all have that person from childhood about whom we occasionally wonder “what might have been?”)

Cons: The transition from friends to lovers can be difficult to make, both in real life and in fiction. Also, characterization has to be spot-on accurate here: If you’re starting with your characters as adults, you need to find a way to establish their friendship without a big infodump. If you’re starting all the way from childhood…well, that’s a long road and it better be interesting and well-paced. Also, if this trope takes a turn into unrequited love territory, there’s a good chance of a love triangle developing, and we all know how many pros and cons there are to those.

Would/Did I Use It?: It’s stated in Searching the Skies that Geneva and Marcus were childhood friends, but nothing romantic ever happened until after almost ten years of separation. As I said, there’s a sweet, wholesome quality to this trope…but there aren’t any laws prohibiting sweet and wholesome from going to naughty and scintillating! On my long list of potential story ideas, this trope comes up at least one more time, so I’m going to give it the thumbs up.

Trope: Amnesiac Lover

Description: In this trope, our love interests have already found each other and have started on the path to “happily ever after”. But then…tragedy strikes! One partner suffers some injury or other experience that results in the loss of memory and can’t remember his/her true love. (In some cases, both partners have amnesia.) Throughout the story, they set out to rediscover their love. The Amnesiac Lover learns why his/her partner was so awesome to begin with and they resume skipping down that HEA road.

Examples: Sarah from Chuck (yes, again!), Paige from The Vow, Joel and Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Pros: If you’re a fan of the idea that “love conquers all”, this is a pretty good trope. Nothing will ever keep our heroes apart, as even amnesia is powerless in the face of true love. This trope also offers up a good change of pace in the romance genre – in a way, we already know the end result for the couple (as they’ve already wound up together), but we’re able to relive the journey with a different sort of tension.

Cons: Most stories that use this trope do not portray amnesia with any sense of medical accuracy. (Most, not all.) If this comes up in a series of books, TV shows, or films, the audience can feel cheated by having the couple they’ve been rooting for all along be torn apart by yet another dramatic twist. Even if the Amnesiac Lover recovers and the couple falls in love all over again, we’re left wondering – are they really going to be the same?

Would/Did I Use It?: While I have included an amnesiac character in a book, she (Liora from EotS) doesn’t fall under this category, as she fell in love after the amnesia kicked in. However, I’m not opposed to this trope. Sometimes it’s interesting to see a romance from the other end, after the couple has already gotten together. In real-life situations, even without any sort of trauma, I think it’s important every now and then to remember the things that attracted you to your partner in the first place. Stories like these can be a needed reminder not to take them for granted.

(Finished the first Mass Effect! Now I’m trying to get back into good writing habits and complete some projects before ordering ME2.)

Trope: Violently Protective Girlfriend

Description: Do not mess with the boyfriend of the Violently Protective Girlfriend. It will not end well for you. Just as mothers instinctively protect their children, the Violently Protective Girlfriend does not want any harm to come to her chosen partner under her watch (and if something does happen, she’ll feel really really bad about it). She’s usually adept when it comes to self-defense or physical fighting, whether she has powerful weapons of doom at her disposal or nothing but her bare fists.

Examples: Sarah from [one of my favorite shows] Chuck, Katniss from The Hunger Games, Zoe from Firefly

Pros: It should be no secret by now that I loves me some badass women. I think women can (and should!) be heroes just as easily and often as men. Having the knight in shining armor protect his damsel in distress is a much more common plot; there’s nothing wrong with turning things upside down every now and then. (Note that this trope differs from the Badass Damsel.)

Cons: If a man constantly needs his woman to protect him, it can be seen as emasculating. In romance, that might make the male lead less conventionally sexy. There’s a reason the aforementioned “man saves woman” plot has been so popular for so long. Overly tough, aggressive women can also be difficult to relate to in the context of traditional romances.

Would/Did I Use It?: As I said up there, it’s obvious by now I like strong female characters. Ro from Disintegration could fall into this category, and a case could even be made for Liora from The Edge of the Sphere. I’m not going to give away any spoilers for the in-progress Searching the Skies sequel, but…let’s just say this trope might come up eventually….

I’m about a third of the way through the first Mass Effect and I’m enjoying it so far. Might as well make this week’s Trope-tastic Thursday somewhat relevant!

Trope: (Green-Skinned) Space Babe

Description: The attractive alien with mostly human features so having sex with her (or sometimes him) isn’t too squicky. While the fictional aliens of yore were mostly green, these days the space babes can come in every color of the rainbow. Female space babes are more prevalent than the males, and they will frequently be large-chested and/or scantily clad.

Examples: Liara (and the Asari in general) from Mass Effect, Jabba the Hutt’s slave girls in Return of the Jedi, the trio of male aliens in Earth Girls are Easy

Pros: After a certain point, I guess there’s only so many sexual adventures you can have with humans. Relationships with fictional species can also add a slew of other compelling issues – an element of danger/the unknown, social repercussions, concerns about reproducing, etc. The flip side of that is the possibility for creating qualities and abilities that can, um, enhance the experience for the human.

Cons: Everyone’s got their preferences when it comes to romance, and for many people, interspecies sex is a no-no. If you’re not a fan of what can seem like unnecessary drama, pretend I copied and pasted that list of “compelling issues” in this category.  Also, while they’re supposed to be similar to humans, I just can’t help but think that that green skin would feel a little…reptilian?

Would/Did I Use It?: I’ve thought about it, actually. In addition to the StS sequel, I’ve also been working here and there on another project, and I was very tempted to make one of the love interests an alien. I ultimately decided, however, to keep them both human. While I can understand why it’s appealing for some people, the idea of sex with aliens, no matter how attractive they may be, just doesn’t do anything for me.