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.