Tropes Are Like A Box of Chocolates

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Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "What trope/theme did you think (or wished) had "died" only to recently reappear?"

From Wikipedia: The word trope has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.

So here’s the thing – I don’t think in tropes. I don’t pay attention to them, I don’t read for them or despite them. When I saw this topic of the week, I thought of a See’s Candy Shop, with all the flavors and varieties. (Alas for the good old pre-pandemic days when their stores were open.) I know which ones I like, I usually order the same ones (dark chocolate vanilla buttercream is my favorite, followed closely by dark chocolate butters and many more…) but occasionally I’ll try a new one, which is how I discovered my love for raspberry truffles. I don’t even glance at the flavors I don’t like and I politely refuse a free sample if those are the ones on offer. I’m perfectly happy for the other flavors to exist, for whoever enjoys them, but they’re not on my list.

True story: when I was in college, I worked for the May Company as a housewares department manager, I used to stroll down the mall on my dinner break and have See’s candy. Now I’m not saying I did this every day, but I did it often. This became a problem when my husband came to keep me company for dinner one evening and suggested as a treat we get some See’s. Uh oh. The clerk greeted me enthusiastically and put my usual order into a bag without my ever opening my mouth! Busted! My spouse was concerned for my health more than anything else and we laughed about it later but I guess I might have overdone my “dinner at See’s” routine a bit.

Yes, I know I digressed but See’s candy….yum.

So tropes can be overused to the point they become clichés – the black hatted villains in cowboy movies come to mind – but even then, if a reader enjoys reading cowboy novels with black hatted villains, is it really a problem?

One of my favorite web sites is TV Tropes, “The All Devouring Pop-Culture Wiki”, which despite the name does cover other areas than just television. You can browse, search, look at the indices and otherwise roam this site for far too long, finding fun examples of every trope under the sun. I picked a few at random from the “Overused Sci-Fi Plot Devices” list, which is extensive:

Time travellers go back in time to prevent some Bad Thing from happening and in the process actually cause the Bad Thing to happen.

Time travellers go back in time to prevent some Bad Thing from happening; they succeed, but cause something worse to happen.

When a player gets "killed" in a virtual reality simulation, they also die in real life.

A war gets started over a stupid misunderstanding between two sides that otherwise have no reason to fight, and no effort is made to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

The two opponents in a war have been fighting for so long that they've forgotten how the war got started in the first place, but no effort is made to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

The two opponents in a war have been fighting for decades/centuries/millenia; the main characters end the war peacefully in a matter of days or hours.

Humans have a special quality that makes us unique, so that even superbeings can learn something from us.

A pet survives the disaster, and is discovered at the end of the story.

(I think I’ve seen every one of those on a Star Trek episode!)

Some of the entries on the list have links to other essays and there are folders of examples in every field from anime to music to toys live action films.

In my own writing I have certain tropes I go to just about every time and here are some examples – the weary but deadly Special Forces soldier, the high powered business woman, the Ancient Aliens, the extremely dangerous or catastrophic situation (Wreck of the Nebula Dream, my first published science fiction romance contains a number of these tropes of mine), a dream space or alternate form of reality where the characters can connect, maybe a pet, sometimes a child, an interstellar crime syndicate,  the evil implacable alien forces, a benevolent galactic civilization with bureaucracy, Artificial Intelligences, true love, a Happy ending (whether For Now or Ever After)…

But the thing is, this is the type of book I enjoy reading myself and therefore the kind of book I want to WRITE. And I’m blessed to have readers who enjoy the same ingredients.

The key is to tell a good story each time out, to mix and match elements – maybe this time the weary soldier is a kickass woman or the ancient alien is a tree, who absorbs the characters to talk to them – and be sure to tell an exciting tale.

I also keep my eye out for new concepts to work into the stories. Some of my most novel plot elements have come from reading articles in business magazines. Refresh a trope with a new take!

My Badari Warriors series is at thirteen books and going strong. The basic trope is the same in every one, since the novels are about genetically engineered soldiers of the far future, fighting alien scientists for the right to live and to love. They each find their fated mate in the course of the book’s events and together the couple battles the enemy. The key, however, is that each time I consciously challenge myself to find new elements and new ideas to differentiate the plots, and of course the characters in each book are different people, each with their own characteristics, background and likes/dislikes. So far the readers seem to find the books satisfactory.

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Going back to my See’s Candy analogy, their recipes use the same ingredients – chocolate, sugar, cream, butter, flavorings, nuts – to create that entire store full of delightful delectable different offerings. Tropes are the same – ingredients that can add up to an infinite number of stories and there will never be enough time in the world to read them all.

Stay safe, sending best wishes to you and your loved ones for good health in these stressful times! Happy reading…

Spare Me the Antihero

Houston, we have a release date. On June 10, the third book in my SFR series Chronicles of the Empire comes out. The first NEW novel in this series in nine long years. Seriously overdue.

It's never a good day when a radioactive hunk of starship nearly drops on your head.

The Claugh Empire attacked Edie's planet fifteen years ago, murdered her parents, and left the teen for dead. So when a wrecked Claugh starship interrupts a salvage mission, she's torn between revenge and rescuing survivors—especially the stirring captain with an uncanny ability to rekindle her dead emotions. Something about him inflames the urge to come to terms with her past. But the mercenary in Edie doubts trusting a former enemy will bring her redemption or put old prejudices to bed. When a new common enemy, hell-bent on wiping out humanoids, threatens to bury them all, the captain tries to convince her a mutual coalition might breach their political impasse—all for the greater good.

I think I have the tropes SO covered with this book. Enemies to lovers. A heroine who flirts momentarily with being an antihero which is funny, because when we talk about tropes I don't want to see, the antihero is right at the top. I wish I could breakdown why I hate antiheroes so much. Maybe it having to read A Clockwork Orange in high school. I wanted every single character in that book dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. And not by their own hands. I wanted them robbed of the agency they robbed others of. Apparently I am karma, and I have zero patience. Either way. It feels to me like antiheroes are either unwilling to learn and grow or are too stupid to do so. Therefore, in a just universe (and hey, in fiction, you GET to have a just universe dammit! That's why it's fiction!) they'd all die because death is the result of failing to adapt, right? I suppose this all makes sense since we currently have a cadre of antiheroes running our government like it's a clown car and I have certain intense feelings about that. (Please let me live long enough to vote in November!)

So yeah. Antiheroes. Won't read 'em. If I want to keep company with willfully ignorant jerks I'll turn on the news, thanks.

Trope? What's a trope?

(the genius of Wreck It Ralph 2, see it if you haven't!)

It’s blursday!! Is anyone else having trouble keeping track of what day it is? 

One thing I don’t keep track of much are what the it trope of the year is. Oh, I’m absolutely aware of what they are because a trope doesn’t become it until it reaches the mainstream and is everywhere. But some of you may be scratching your head, what exactly is a trope and am I reading one?

Short answer: yes. A literary trope is a theme, type of character, language etc. that is used over and over so much that it becomes a red flag, a bullseye, a characteristic that tells you immediately what type of book you are reading. 

The chosen one. A marriage of convenience. The Butler did it. Killer aliens. The secret heir. An object of immeasurable power. Vampires.

All of those are tropes that give you clues to what you’ve just picked up. And all of them have been bemoaned at some point.

But when the masses are calling for a trope to die, it doesn’t mean it really truly dies. It only means the market is oversaturated with that specific trope and, like the bunny being fed pancakes at the end of Wreck it Ralph 2…people explode from too much of a good thing. 

So the bunny explodes. There’s pandemonium and screaming as the other books scramble to be the entrée. And the pancakes hang out in the background until people start looking around, craving those fluffy flapjacks covered in syrup again. 

Since I don’t tend to binge on books of the same trope I don’t get sick of any. That’s not to say there aren’t tropes I give a hard no to, there absolutely are. There’s no such thing as everyone will love it. Even if the social’s blowing up with pancakes, not everyone’s going to be eating them and subsequently calling for their annihilation.

But to answer the topic of the week: for me, the pancakes have always been vampire stories. I loved Dracula back in the day, fell hard for the Dark Prince of the Carpathian series, couldn’t get enough of Cat and Bones, and have been searching high and low for my next fanged fix ever since. 

I’ve known vampire books would return someday. And no, I know some of you are saying write what you want to read if you can’t find it, but my brain doesn’t write vampire fic. And I'm very good at waiting. 

How about you? What tropes have you gotten sick of recently?

And the trope came back, the very next day

You know that maybe-a-bit-too-dark kids' cartoon song "The Cat Came Back" about Mr. Johnson who tries to get rid of his overly destructive cat but the cat keeps, um, coming back? (For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW9f04Dctz4)

That's sort of the opposite of me and story tropes. Nothing pleases me more than a beloved story trope all dressed up in some shiny modernity and busting back out into the market.

Story: Back in middle school, I read all of Anne Rice -- even her erotica, shh, don't tell -- and loved, loved, loved vampires. All things vampire. I played Vampire: The Masquerade in college. At a roleplaying con. For which I won an award. I watched all the vamp movies (aside: Tom Cruise will never be Lestat to me, but Antonio Banderas pinching a flame out sure was fun) and read pretty much every vampire book in the library. So, seriously, drowned myself in the vamp goodness. It was glorious.

And then the Twilight thing happened, and the world went, oops, maybe too much vamp, and then sadly all my angsty undeads went away.

I missed them and kept my spirits up by re-reading my faves and a few determined series that kept on going (bless you, Christa Paige and Juliet Lyons), but then guess what came out yesterday?

No really, guess.

*jumping up and down*

THIS!

AND THEY'RE MAKING A MOVIE OUT OF IT!

May this officially usher in a new round of vampire fiction.

And may it never, ever, ever, ever again sparkle.

p.s. -- When I saw the SFF Seven topic for this week, I had a twinge of panic. I wasn't sure what was hot in the market these days, so I asked my Facebook buds, and apparently alien mchotties with prehensile everythings are a big deal at the moment, which you know what that means? Tentacle porn is back, too! If you need to dig out some very old and dodgy anime purely for the nostalgia, I won't tell anyone.

Die, Trope, Die, Damnit!

Tropes that just won't die, eh? Tropes that need to be shoved through the airlock during an interstellar mission? Tropes that ought to be dunked in lighter fluid then fed to a dragon?

The whole Incest is Best thing. Like, really? REALLY? Even the allusion to it needs to be dropped into an active volcano. Sexual abuse is horrible on any scale, regardless of gender. Rape as character motivation or punishment is so ingrained in spec-fic that it's more shocking to not encounter it. Stories that add Keeping It In The Family as an extra layer of brokenness? Ugh. DNF. Instant wall-banger.

Yeah, yeah, "but it happens" and "history is full of examples." So? Fantasy in the 80s was rife with sibling sex. Hell, there was required reading in school involving that shit. Fast-forward 40 years and low and behold, that damn trope is back. Worming its way into popular SFF, again. More than just that one super famous series that made it to TV or even that other semi-popular book-to-show series. More than that next one you're thinking of too.

~head explodes~

If you want your character(s) to be really fucked up, you don't have to have them fuck their family. FFS.

~wanders off to find brain bleach~

Changing Up the Apocalypse

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Resurrections: What trope/theme did you think (or wished) had "died" only to be recently resurrected?"

I don't often have it in for tropes. After all, they're simply story constructs and are neither good nor bad, any more than paragraphs and sentences are good or bad. Everything entirely depends on the writer and what they do with the trope. As we often talk about, there are no new story ideas - the feeling of freshness comes from the author and their voice. I recently saw a review of one of my books where the reader said I revitalized a tired trope. A nice compliment, but tropes can't get tired - they just get handled in tired ways.

Anyway, since the pandemic and apocalyptic themes are on our minds, I can talk about an apocalyptic trope I've never cared for. That's the one where civilization collapses and the people who rise ascendant are the brutal men. Women automatically become rape-imperiled property and Tough Men with Big Guns battle constantly. We see this all the time and it drives me nuts. As if women are simply perched on an unsteady tech platform that can at any time tip them into a lawless world where they're dragged by the hair into caves.

Spare me. As if they educated, capable, tough women of the modern world can't figure out how not to be helpless.

What's been interesting about the COVID-19 pandemic is that the skills emerging as critical to our lives and well-being aren't prancing around in leather and shooting big guns, but the simple hearth skills like baking and sewing. We've been baking our own bread, sewing masks we can't buy, adopting home-healing remedies since we can't hit the urgent care centers.

It makes sense, too, that when we lose access to the instant gratification of civilization, we are left to create our own. I think that, in a post-apocalyptic world, the people who can create stability and safety, with decent food and the comforts of a warm home, will be the true heroes.

Doesn't make for an exciting action flick, but... well, aren't we all discovering we prefer normal life? And baked goods. :-)

My Portals to Escapism

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Our topic here at the SFF Seven this week is: books vs movies vs games vs comics.

In ordinary times and in these pandemic times, my first escape when not writing my own books is to read books by other people. Currently I do all my reading on my kindle and I’m very eclectic in my choices, although science fiction, SF romance, paranormal romance and fantasy do predominate. I always have a large To Be Read list, both on the kindle already one-clicked and waiting for me to be in the right mood and also in a wish list of books I might try at some point. If I discover a new-to-me author that I love, I might end up reading their entire backlist in a big binge before moving on to anything else.

I also re-read books like Shield of Winter by Nalini Singh, which is one of my all-time favorites. Sometimes I go all the way back to my favorite Andre Norton books, or Anne McCaffrey’s, although I do tend to skim a bit when reading a book I’ve practically got memorized. I found myself re-reading Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon earlier this year when the apocalyptic nature of our current situation became clear to me.  Randy Bragg’s trip to the grocery store on the eve of nuclear war, although different than what we’re dealing with, resonated, shall we say! I always remember the ladies watching him shop and commenting on his fifteen cans of coffee…

I also worked my way through the Flashpoint series by Mike Kraus and Tara Ellis, who were a new writing duo for me. Additionally I really enjoy Kate Morris’s Apokalypsis series, which led to me reading her McClane Apocalypse series.  Yes, I was definitely in an apocalyptic mood.

I guess I still am but as the pandemic deepens, I find I’m going more for scifi romance.

But having said that, my last two reads were This Is Chance! By Jon Mooallem, a nonfiction book about a woman reporter on the front lines at the 1964 Alaska quake, and other Anchorage citizens, and how they all coped. I actually knew two people who survived that quake, one of whom was inside the JC Penney’s store at the time. The other was standing outdoors and watched the ground running in waves and going up or down, with crevasses opening up around her. The book was an interesting read, definitely the 1960’s were another time, especially as regards women working outside the home. It was a bit jarring to be back in that era while reading the book, frankly. Then right before that I read In Five Years: A Novel by Rebecca Serle, which is a romance with one ‘time travel’ element. And before that was Paladin, a Galactic Gladiators novel by Anna Hackett, who is a must-buy author for me.

In the middle of all that reading, I also re-read the first few books in my own Badari Warriors science fiction romance series. I’m about to start on the next book, Ivokk, which will feature characters who have been mentioned off and on, so I wanted to refresh my memory.

The only thing I watch on live television any longer (which gets us to my second form of escapism – movies or TV shows) is cable news. For everything else, I go to the kindle and stream or binge watch. I enjoy the “skills-based” reality shows – all manifestations/imitations/spinoffs of Project Runway for example. I never get enough of those, maybe because I used to sew a lot of my own clothes and my daughters’ Halloween costumes and doll clothes, so I feel I can relate a little. Some of the shows are better than others but I enjoy them all.

Also Top Chef is a favorite of mine, although right now I’m struggling because the current season is in Los Angeles, filmed last year, and it’s jarring to see the contestants bopping around SoCal, going in and out of a Whole Foods grocery store with fully stocked shelves, eating at small niche restaurants that probably went out of business in March 2020…yeah, a bit hard to take.  Oddly enough, I haven’t fallen in love with any other cooking shows I’ve sampled. I did watch a few seasons of the one with Food Trucks but that got depressing to me. I watched the Great British Bakeoff with my daughter and her husband and am sad to say it didn’t grab me either. There must be some ‘magic’ to Top Chef that keeps my attention.

I loved Face Off, the long running SyFy show where special effects artists competed to create the most amazing things. I have a years’ long, mild crush on Tate, the Season One finalist and always wanted him to WIN, not come in second. Which he finally did triumph in the spin off Face Off: Game Face show and I was so happy for him. (Oh yeah, I’m a devotee of that program all right.)

I have all the seasons of Making the Team – Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (or DCC as they’re commonly known), although right now it’s hard to fully immerse myself in the pro football world, since in my opinion the NFL will have to postpone the coming season, hence no need for cheerleaders either.

During the season, I do watch NFL games, although it’s hard for me to fully enjoy the game anymore, knowing what we know about concussions and CTE brain. I think I’m drifting toward abandoning the NFL if they don’t do better at safeguarding the players’ brains. But wow, when a play goes just right and the pass is caught and the runner gets into the end zone, it can be a thing of beauty…I especially love it when some burly defensive player catches an interception and lumbers (they always lumber) into the end zone…I personally hate all the reviews by the officials. It’s a game, let them play, you know?

Most of the time I forget who won the contest in any specific episode of an old season of a reality program like those, so I do re-watch seasons sometimes. I never remember jokes, who did it in mystery novels or the winners in these shows! So it’s all mostly new to me when I do re-watch.

I used to be a Dancing With the Stars devotee but gave it up about a year ago when the choices of who got eliminated became pretty obviously messed up in MY mind anyway, with good dancers who deserved to be there passed over in favor of some people who could barely put one foot in front of the other but who made ‘good TV’ I guess. Yeah, I was done caring. Although I did always love their Disney Theme nights. My all time favorite clip from DWTS is Riker Lynch's paso doble to "He's a Pirate."

I have Lego Masters queueing also but have yet to sample it.

I’m watching ‘War of the Worlds’ on Apple+ TV…grim but engrossing limited series. I SO want the French military commander and the astronomer to have a romance. I’ve convinced myself there’s definite attraction going on, but it’s not clear to me they’ll ever act on it in the midst of their End Of The World As We Know It situation. The series keeps me on edge inagoodway because they don’t hesitate to kill off people you thought would live and also to insert some pretty shocking plot twists. I also appreciate the European setting.

I’m not watching any other series right now although I have ‘Manifest’ episodes accumulating. Season one of that was intriguing.

I was a huge fan of ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ partly because I was a Caltech employee for years  and the series did nail what some Brainiac scientists can be like…they’d also refer to JPL sometimes, which is where I actually worked. (Caltech runs JPL for NASA.) It was absurd, it was amusing, it was frustrating…sometimes it was just so spot on…

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I find right now I’m watching a lot of reality series on the kindle that center around zoos and what goes on behind the scenes. There are a TON of those, some with multiple seasons. The variations between the zoos are fascinating to me. New York versus Tampa versus Columbus… I think the zoo shows are feelgood TV to me right now. Usually the animals get through whatever the crisis is or give birth to the darling babies, although every once in a while a much loved creature does pass away, which is always sad. The keepers are so attached to their charges, which is heartwarming. There are some dizzying time jumps – the babies are finally born, (blink) oh here we are six weeks later when they’re bigger, (blink) now it’s a year later….wow, the miracles of editing.

When it comes to movies, I have a lot of favorites that I re-watch, like “Aliens” and the 1950’s version of “The Thing From Another World.” I still have a cabinet full of hundreds of dvd’s but tend to buy the movie on the kindle if it’s available now so I can sit and watch it up close. I like musicals, action/adventure and obviously science fiction! I’m not much on the newer movies, although I’m going to watch the sequel to the Rock’s “Jumanji” this weekend. I loved the first one and of course I adored the Robin Williams version. Each film has its own charms. The last movie I actually went to the theater for was “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”, with my teenage grandson.

I browse Netflix for movies and offbeat series to try…

I think with movies and scripted TV shows my basic problem is that as a writer myself, I want the plot points to stay settled. Don’t spend season two undoing every single thing I loved that happened in season one! Don’t have your sequel start as if the first movie never happened. Don’t give me movies with no romance…so I kind of gave up on scripted, open ended series and sequels. Also, while SyFy's ‘Killjoys’ managed to have its full five years of shows to tell the entire story, ‘Dark Matter’ and other shows I was addicted to got cancelled and I hate to feel cheated as far as “what happened to the characters???”

I’m not a gamer at all, although I find computer games fascinating to read about and to see discussed on social media. I’m not good at them either, which probably has something to do with my lack of interest! I’d rather read. Or write.

I read comics voraciously as a kid but I stopped when DC Comics started writing too many alternate universes and “Hero X actually dies in this issue!” plots. See my comments above about scripted TV shows undoing what had been done LOL. Just not for me! I have vintage Brothers of the Spear and Magnus, Robot Hunter in the Dark Horse compilations and I do browse through them on occasion and sigh for the old days a little…

I’ll add that many authors I know are doing jigsaw puzzles these days to pass the time. I thought it sounded like a great idea so I got a couple to try. In the old days when I didn’t have an empty nest we used to keep one going nearly all the time on the dining room table and people would work on it as they passed by. What I discovered to my surprise now is that (a) it’s not as much fun when no one else is working on it too and (b) OMG am I compulsive about wanting to finish the darn thing! Which is ridiculous but I just felt compelled to slog away at it – the one I was doing had beautiful tea cups in many pretty patterns and I found I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. It had become a chore, almost enough to fit on the weekly To Do List – “finish the darn puzzle!”. So I gave that up. Not for me apparently.

So there you have it as far as my chosen forms of escapism.

Speaking of which, I just put my boxed set of the first 3 books in the Badari Warriors on sale for $.99 so if you've been wanting to try the series for your escapism reading, here's your chance! Featuring genetically engineered soldiers of the far future, the Badari were created by alien enemies to fight humans. But then the scientists kidnapped an entire human colony from the Sectors to use as subjects in twisted experiments…the Badari and the humans made common cause, rebelled and escaped the labs. Now they live side by side in a sanctuary valley protected by a powerful Artificial Intelligence, and wage unceasing war on the aliens.

Buy Links: Amazon:    Apple Books:    B&NNook  Kobo 

Escapism

While out walking yesterday, I came upon this motley crew. These dinos each had a sign. Triceratops carries one saying, "Be cool. Sanitize." T-Rex says, "Wash your hands." We're finding all kinds of sidewalk chalk art - some of it really sophisticated stuff, some of it equally delightful is clearly drawn by our neighborhood kids. All of the artwork comes with encouraging messages. Someone's also been busy painting palm-sized stones in the neighborhood and leaving them scattered about for everyone to find and enjoy. So when we talk about my go-to entertainment, apparently my options are wider than I'd once believed. Still. When we thought up this exercise, it was pre-plague. I have a ranking system to accommodate my preferences for entertainment. It goes thusly.

1. Books
2. Games
3. Comics
4. Movies/TV

I've loved all aspects of being entertained and this list has been renumbered over and over through out my life, but I don't think books ever fell out of the number one spot. That said, I will say that this game is getting a lot of play right now because it is so topical. Don't go watch the game trailer. It's -- hard to watch right now.

 When the game gets a little too real, I retreat to World of Warcraft or to writing my own stories as a means of escape. And I'll tell you. Some days, there's nothing quite like a mindless decorating show on TV to fill you with a sense of ease and normalcy. Maybe because I get to hold a cat while I do it.