are tropes on booktok ruining reading?

i wanted to make a video about all those book tropes on tiktok and ended up talking about fairytales, fanfiction and post-structuralism.

00:00 intro
5:35 is originality dead?
17:18 fanfiction
28:18 beyond structure
35:51 the alternative

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sources
essays:
Mackenzie A Parsons, "Once Upon a Time, Again: Exploring the Function of Fairy Tale Retellings" (2023). Theses and Dissertations. 10198.
Vladimir Propp, "Morphology of the folktale" (1928, revised and translated to english 1968)
Claude Levi- Strauss, Structures and Form: Reflections on a Work by Vladimir Propp (1958)
Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)

books:
Catherine Belsey, "Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction" (2002)

online articles:
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🌼 s o c i a l m e d i a
• twitter: @thebookleo
• instagram: @thebookleo

🌺 a b o u t m e
Hi! My name is Leonie and I am a 25 year old girl from the Netherlands who loves talking about books! From YA to non-fiction to classics, I read it all (although fantasy will always be my fave).

🌹 m u s i c
Music, art, and video by Jokabi

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[Thenumberstationangel]

The worst part about the proliferation of tropes as a form of advertising is that summaries have gotten significantly worse. Okay i know it’s enemies to lovers but what else happens

[evildoesnotsleep-xb]

i don't like books being advertised with tropes, it ruins the whole discovery process, i wanna read and stumble upon a trope and then decide if it's being used correctly. am i alone in this?

[josefinaamadio]

the thing for me is: when you look for fan fiction about a certain ship/fandom/etc. you already know and love the characters and they usually are well written and fully formed. They have flaws, virtues and reasons for WHY you love them. that's why the trope filtering usually works: you know your characters, already have an idea of what they're like so you can insert them in your favourite tropes/universes. you care about them. what sometimes happens now is that authors concentrate so much on the tropes and their stereotypes that they forget to write characters with a personality, with agency, with a reason as to why they're special and as to why we should care about them. for me that's why so many of these trope centred books fall flat. yes the dynamic is fun but WHY should I care about these two being enemies who become lovers if there is no actual chemistry? no actual reason for why they hate each other? i don't care so much about the tropes but the chemistry and dynamics and actual STORYLINES I'm reading about. if they're not engaging then I will not enjoy the reading experience. thank you for coming to my tedtalk

[abbiehannah_]

I feel like tropes on booktok are super great for quick 15-30 second reviews, but not the only thing you should be caring about when looking for a new book to read

[fortunatecookie]

People are talking a lot about trope advertising, but the worst form of advertising for me is when books LIE about “if you liked [super popular book] then you’ll love this one!” And the two books are nothing alike

[johat]

Just to make clear, enemies to lovers was not meant to be bully and Stockholm syndrome victim. I hate when they marketed bullies as an "enemy" and a "lover". NO! The characters are enemies by confronting circumstances, values, political compass, socioeconomic status, etc, so when the romance happens is because they get pass those two different sides and POVs to find similarities and, of course, attraction and love. An a-h*** is not an "enemy", is just a sociopath, tag it as such.

[novisob]

I feel the same about tropes as I do about trigger warnings: I want the information to be out there if I go looking for it, but I don't want it to be thrown at me otherwise because, when they go into so much detail, that can be spoiler-y and make the reading experience less interesting

[stanloona]

' no beta we die like *insert character from your fandom* '

[queena]

Yes they are so many authors are writing books with no plot and just tropes strung together to appease Booktok and it’s getting harder to find good books in the specific genres I like 🤦🏾‍♀️

[juliannesl]

I realized once, when thinking about tropes I like and tropes I don't, that most of the tropes I loathe to see advertised are tropes that give away the entire plot of the story, because there's fewer ways the story can play out. I mean, when you see "fake dating" on the cover, you already know pretty much every major beat of the story - contrived setup forcing the leads together, forced romantic gestures, the leads develop real feelings, after some third act contrivances they confess their love and ride off into the sunset. I don't despise the concept of fake dating in books, but once I've read one fake dating book, I really feel like I've read them all. Meanwhile, tropes like "morally gray characters" or "forbidden love" bother me a lot less because there's a lot of ways the story can play out. All enemies to lovers books are basically the same, while not all books with morally gray characters are even remotely similar, do you know what I mean?

[breathoffresherin]

“I think Nature is healing” YES! thank you. I think there are so many talented fanfic writers out there with the potential to become great authors and writing fanfics is a great way for them to experiment and hone their skills.

[ChloeFrizzle]

I like describing a book by its Conflict. Like what the internal conflict of the protagonist is, or the external conflict of the plot

[luvmeday]

the fanficification of book publishing is actually what this goes back to honestly. same story different characters? same characters different story? tagging specific scenarios and tropes? all there. also literally publishing fanfiction is so big in the last decade too. also been on my mind as i was thinking about old greek stories. like after the illiad there was so much more written about the characters before and after that's essentially fan fiction but because it was so popular it's kind of blended in with the illiad's "canon". think the trojan horse that's not even from the original illiad but from later works taking place after.

[kiljoy]

I find micro tropes like “there was only one bed” to be so useless like at least “enemies to lovers” or “grumpy x sunshine” describes plot and character.

[brianna]

My main problem with tropification isn't the tropes themselves or the repeatability--I love a good trope!--but that the quality of the book no longer seems as important as whether or not the trope is present. So I think a lot of books are getting published primarily because everyone knows the trope will sell; but the book isn't actually good. And there's a proliferation of these stories so there's just a rush of mediocre literature being published and it's frustrating to wade through. Don't get me wrong--I love the romance genre and tropes. But the writer also has to have skill and be talented and the book has to have a good plot and good character arcs and writing that's a little bit above average, and it doesn't seem like that's really important as long as the right trope is there.

[Espeonchan]

I wouldn't necessarily say tropes are ruining reading. It is very annoying, though, because the book in question gets reduced to one thing and the rest of the story doesn't seem to matter anymore.

[mishyy]

An interesting thing that I’ve noticed about “tropification” is that tropes are usually romantic and commonly only present in plots/sub plots that involve romance. For example, you don’t see tropes in (for example) science fiction books I.e, they’re not condensed to being described and promoted as “sun explodes”, or “alien invasion”, or with thrillers, you don’t see people saying “books with the ‘kidnapping’/‘covering up murder’/‘police chase’ tropes. Because for all these other genres, they’re plot points, not “tropes” used to market them. It’s interesting how tropes seem to be exclusively genre-centric to romance, I’d like to see someone break down how that came to be.

[oxfordscomma]

I've been subscribed to your YouTube channel for a few years now and it is such a full circle moment to see that you referenced my article in your description and video -- the one titled "Are tropes ruining books" from the Michigan Daily. I'm so glad you liked it and thank you for making this video :)

time-stamp: 34:01

[aishar]

Another option of recomending books that I LOVE is "oddly specific recomendations" such as "a book to read at 3am with a cup of tea and candlelights" or "childhood feverdream". I guess it's like the aesthetic recommendation but with words kinda.

[liacamp]

the problem with "accepting" this tropeification is that authors think they need to write to appeal to it and can only market their book as tropes. the books themselves are losing their plots and the characters their complexity because authors are more focused on the marketing side of things (which is understandable, they're trying to sell their art in a capitalist world), but i really think we should leave "tropes" behind. when it's something niche for the tiktok and ao3 girlies (gn) it's fine, but when it becomes the only marketing strategy the publishers use, i think we need to give it a step in other direction. in conclusion, we need to come back to (re)telling stories because they're compelling, even if they're cliche, and not because the only way to be successful selling your story is through booktok.