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i love thinking about trope talk so much. there's a lot of things i could say about tropes commonly utilized in public fiction (especially in the ya sphere with That Genre of advertisement. the one with the arrows and the tropes pointed at the characters in the cartoonish art styles; you know the one), but i love thinking about it in fic more because there's such a playground there (and because the universality of the tropes permits me to be really general as opposed to working within the confines of things of just the popular ya books, etc.)
for me, the two biggest things i like thinking about are enemies to lovers and aus. aus deserve a whole post for themselves, so i'm going to be reserving that for some other time, when i feel good enough to go on my rambles about them. enemies to lovers is a trope that i used to dislike all of the time, but i've warmed up to it nowadays, and i think that's because i can identify why i used to dislike it.
i think enemies to lovers fundamentally requires just one thing, that thing being a genuine personal dislike. which doesn't sound hard to pull off, but in combination with the common societal values that naturally pervade what you write and what you perceive as "acceptable", it becomes a lot harder to pull off. by this, i mean to say that much of the time, there are two paths pursued: the hatred being founded on a misunderstanding (mutual or otherwise), being really old and dating back to childhood (interplay with the childhood friends trope, and also likely connected to the misunderstanding point), or if the setting permits, perceived ideological differences derived from being on opposing sides.
the misunderstanding point i understand as being drawn from convenience. enemies to lovers is a genuinely hard thing to pull off; given that its fundamental requirement is hatred, it seems really hard to have them in a position where they can reconcile. i understand, but it gets frustrating as a reader to see people fumble around and being unable to communicate, which is why i previously disliked that. i also find that if it's a misunderstanding, it's not genuine enough hatred (don't get me wrong; it can be genuine hatred even if founded based off of a misunderstanding, but things come back to convenience: if the misunderstanding is just drawn-out and nothing serious, you can get a facsimile of hatred that can justify slapping the trope tag on, and that's what i tend to see as the most common route pursued). given that this is a post specifically about fanfiction and that fanfiction is naturally self indulgent wish fulfillment (i am a fic writer myself. this is in lighthearted fun), i can't hate this so much, but i don't tend to read enemies to lovers thanks to this
the more interesting route for me personally is the (usually dystopian) positioning of the two love interests as being on opposing sides. the hatred here is oftentimes drawn from them being on opposite sides, and since it's a dystopia, it's going to be clear that one of the sides is going to be something along the lines of ontologically evil, which plays into the trope, right? i think that on the contrary, the common want for your love interests to be moral angels sabotages the setting. more times than not, i find that the love interest on the "evil" side will have been forced to play the role or some other thing that denotes unwillingness and a shared sympathy with the protagonist. i don't hate this either, to be clear, but i feel that if the ideological difference ceases to be a motivation for them to hate each other, that the enemies part collapses; they were never Personal enemies if it was a perceived ideological difference, to me. this is akin to the one-sided misunderstanding, as the person who's unwilling to work understands that they're on the same side. the more interesting route to me personally is the route less chosen, where the love interest is actually on the evil side willingly, because that's the only time an ideological difference would be sustained, and then that also permits interesting commentary on brainwashing and things of that sort.
the summary of all of this is of course to like what you like. i just can't really like enemies to lovers unless it's from a vetted friend of mine who sees what i see in it, and well, that's fine. it's fandom, at the end of the day. like what you like
for me, the two biggest things i like thinking about are enemies to lovers and aus. aus deserve a whole post for themselves, so i'm going to be reserving that for some other time, when i feel good enough to go on my rambles about them. enemies to lovers is a trope that i used to dislike all of the time, but i've warmed up to it nowadays, and i think that's because i can identify why i used to dislike it.
i think enemies to lovers fundamentally requires just one thing, that thing being a genuine personal dislike. which doesn't sound hard to pull off, but in combination with the common societal values that naturally pervade what you write and what you perceive as "acceptable", it becomes a lot harder to pull off. by this, i mean to say that much of the time, there are two paths pursued: the hatred being founded on a misunderstanding (mutual or otherwise), being really old and dating back to childhood (interplay with the childhood friends trope, and also likely connected to the misunderstanding point), or if the setting permits, perceived ideological differences derived from being on opposing sides.
the misunderstanding point i understand as being drawn from convenience. enemies to lovers is a genuinely hard thing to pull off; given that its fundamental requirement is hatred, it seems really hard to have them in a position where they can reconcile. i understand, but it gets frustrating as a reader to see people fumble around and being unable to communicate, which is why i previously disliked that. i also find that if it's a misunderstanding, it's not genuine enough hatred (don't get me wrong; it can be genuine hatred even if founded based off of a misunderstanding, but things come back to convenience: if the misunderstanding is just drawn-out and nothing serious, you can get a facsimile of hatred that can justify slapping the trope tag on, and that's what i tend to see as the most common route pursued). given that this is a post specifically about fanfiction and that fanfiction is naturally self indulgent wish fulfillment (i am a fic writer myself. this is in lighthearted fun), i can't hate this so much, but i don't tend to read enemies to lovers thanks to this
the more interesting route for me personally is the (usually dystopian) positioning of the two love interests as being on opposing sides. the hatred here is oftentimes drawn from them being on opposite sides, and since it's a dystopia, it's going to be clear that one of the sides is going to be something along the lines of ontologically evil, which plays into the trope, right? i think that on the contrary, the common want for your love interests to be moral angels sabotages the setting. more times than not, i find that the love interest on the "evil" side will have been forced to play the role or some other thing that denotes unwillingness and a shared sympathy with the protagonist. i don't hate this either, to be clear, but i feel that if the ideological difference ceases to be a motivation for them to hate each other, that the enemies part collapses; they were never Personal enemies if it was a perceived ideological difference, to me. this is akin to the one-sided misunderstanding, as the person who's unwilling to work understands that they're on the same side. the more interesting route to me personally is the route less chosen, where the love interest is actually on the evil side willingly, because that's the only time an ideological difference would be sustained, and then that also permits interesting commentary on brainwashing and things of that sort.
the summary of all of this is of course to like what you like. i just can't really like enemies to lovers unless it's from a vetted friend of mine who sees what i see in it, and well, that's fine. it's fandom, at the end of the day. like what you like
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yeahhh me neither. i dislike how the want for the bad boy trope also ties into the want for a moral leader in current ya circles... the most apparent example to me is from haunting adeline. the love interest quite literally assaults her and it's just apparent abuse but the author doesn't even fully lean into the moral bankruptcy of it all because on the side he's secretly a vigilante cracking down on like, sex trafficking rings. and i guess there could be an angle to spin it where it's about people who seem to be good samaritans having the potential for evil, but that would've required the book itself to acknowledge that what he's doing is bad, which, well, it doesn't. i've still got really mixed feelings about books like these, since i think it sucks that this is the caliber of book that people are reading, but i mean, at least it's good that they are reading. to each their own?
i loveeeee considering characterization when i write. that's my biggest deal, honestly... i have a lot of qualms with fanfic because i feel as though lots of people end up discarding characterization in favor of making everything conform to a trope (which as you can probably tell from the initial ramble, i have a lot of opinions on as well), but i treat fic as almost an extended character analysis even if it is a shippy sort of fic. i think that with shipfic, it gets even more confusing characterization-wise. naturally, actions don't happen in a vacuum, and a character will already be considering various other things from their backstory/the situation & how much they know, etc., but it's so much harder to factor in another person altogether, which makes shipfic a fun challenge. i'm generally romance-repulsed too, though, so it's some sort of masochism for me to be writing shipfic.
and yeah! enemies to lovers at its core is about people changing because of and i guess for the other. which is why enemies to lovers fast burn doesn't really work. there needs to be sufficient development there! fast burn i find acceptable with something like friends to lovers (but even then, friends to lovers kind of implies that you were already into one another and kind of tiptoeing around the whole situation, so that might contradict the fast burn aspect a bit?), but since enemies to lovers is already such a hard trope to pull off, fast burn just doesn't really mesh well at all.