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Nov. 17th, 2010 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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gramarye1971 asked me for my Top Five Bulletproof Tropes. As always, but especially with these, this is less a Top Five than a Things That Happened To Occur To Me Just Now, because there are many, many tropes I love and I've probably talked about them all at some point or other; they're also almost entirely predictable. If any of you are shocked by anything here, I also will be shocked.1. Crossdressing Girls
Aaaand this is the least surprising of all! Especially given that I already made a top fives post about it. (Note: I find all kinds of crossdressing and genderbending interesting - you can look at pretty much the whole range on TVtropes and it is probably relevant to my interest! But this particular storyline is the one that has the strongest hold on my heart.) I honestly don't know why I've always been fascinated with the girl-passes-as-boy-to-follow-traditionally-male-path story; I wrote a whole undergrad thesis essentially for the purposes of figuring it out. (So now I can spout a lot more jargon about gender roles and coming of age and narrative appeal, but I'm still not entirely sure why it's the ultimate trope for me.) By this point I am an old hand at the different genre conventions, not to mention the real-life examples - of which there are a surprising number! - and while I am always intrigued by subversions, to be honest a straightforward Sweet Polly Oliver Seeks Adventure, Wins Hearts While In Disguise, Causes Peers to Question Their Sexuality, Emerges Triumphantly Badass is the narrative equivalent of comfort food for me.
2. Narratively Respected Sidekicks
I have a great weakness for sidekicks - specifically sidekicks who have no special powers or abilities or Destiny, who are there because of friendship or determination or just a belief in the importance of what's happening; who generally get stuck with the role of Plucky Comic Relief and not much else. What really guarantees my loyalty to a story is when the narrative shows that it actually really does respect those characters. When they get to be heroic, all on their own. When they get to be right. A:tLA won my loyalty forever in the Jet episode, not because I like Jet (I mean, I think he's interesting and they handled him well, but I don't like him) but because Sokka got to demonstrate intelligence, judgment and competence; I would never take away his role as the meat-and-sarcasm guy, but I love the show for the fact that he's consistently more than that, too. One of my favorite moments in Heroes, back when it was good (THERE WAS A TIME! I remember it! I do!) was when Ando picked up Hiro's sword and went on his own to fight Sylar, because he believed it had to be done. And even though I didn't love the writing so much in Un Lun Dun, I will nonetheless always love Deeba, an amazing example of a character who punches her way out of the Funny Sidekick box. Not destined, not superpowered, and awesome.
3. The Last Brownie Clause
This is more a general attitude than a theme or a character or plot device, and I don't think it even has a TVTropes entry (though correct me if I'm wrong). I'm getting the name for it off an admiring comment I once saw about a Diana Wynne Jones novel that said, essentially, "often in fantasy books a character only cares about Right and Truth and Justice but your characters seem capable of arguing about who gets the last brownie." Now, obviously I am a fan generally of Right and Truth and Justice, but, you know, people are people! And sometimes even the most heroic of people in the most dramatic of situations are going to get sulky and cross and argue about who gets the last brownie, or who nicked whose borrowed Epic Sword, or what have you. I mean, I am all down for well-handled angst and terror and drama and all the rest of those things that make for a compelling story, but when stories remember to include these kinds of moments as well, I am going to find their characters a lot more believable.
4. Sibling Dynamics
I've written before about my love for group-of-siblings protagonists in fantasy. Partly I like them because when you have a bunch of siblings trying to do whatever quest together, you get the last brownie clause sort of automatically! But also, as someone who is fond of and reasonably close with a brother I spent a lot of time bickering with growing up, I just love the sibling dynamic in fiction. I love the way siblings can be very different and not always understand or like each other much but have a kind of underlying loyalty that extraordinary circumstances bring out; this also extends to found siblings, or integrated-family siblings. If we're going to get more specific, I like groups of mixed-gender siblings best, because I think it makes for the most interesting variety of ensemble dynamics - due to prolonged exposure to Edward Eager as a child, I will always sort of believe that the correct ratio is three girls to one boy, but, uh, I'm not actually specifically wedded to this. (I like sibling pairs too when well-handled, but two boys = not enough girls and two girls = plot far too depressingly likely to devolve into a love triangle, or conflict that revolves around one girl being prettier than the other.)
5. Significant Dancing
For my last trope here I am going to be very, very shallow. Some people love fight scenes for what they say about character, or just for the aesthetics. And I also find fight scenes interesting and aesthetically fascinating! But I know very little about fighting, and I know at least a little bit more about dancing, and therefore if I get a believable and aesthetically pleasing dance scene in a story that also reveals something about character I am going to be very, very happy. (See: that whole ridiculously self-indulgent FMA fic I wrote basically just because I wanted to write people waltzing . . .? UM.) I love dancing-as-flirtation, dancing-as-competition, dancing-as-combat, dancing-as-coded-communication, dancing-as-trust, people who totally hate each other but have to dance together FOR PLOT, people who are madly in love with each other and have to express their ridiculous sexual tension through the structured dance forms, people who are great dancers, people who are kind of terrible dancers . . . Also, I mean. It's just pretty. (And often hot?)
And if you read all the way through this wordy list (an accomplishment in and of itself) and immediately think of stuff that includes one or more of these tropes that I might be unaware of, and wish to recommend said stuff to me, PLEASE FEEL FREE. Hit my trope buttons, please.
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Date: 2010-11-17 06:38 pm (UTC)I also second your love of sibling dynamics, and of Edward Eager in particular. LONG LIVE BARNABY THE WANDERER.
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:22 pm (UTC)INTERNAL FANFIC: ANOTHER ONE OF MY BULLET-PROOF TROPES that sadly occurs so rarely that it did not seem worthwhile to put it in the Top Five. But when it does, it is inevitably hilarious.
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:25 pm (UTC)Also, The Demon's Lexicon books, for siblings, sidekicks (Annabel!), brownies, and dancing. But you've read those already.
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:41 pm (UTC)Did you know that Sherwood is putting up a bunch of stuff as e-books, and also has several from a small press? If you check Amazon, there may be lots you're not aware of.
Further disclosure: Sherwood and I are co-writing a (as yet unsold) YA series right now. It has everything on your list but cross-dressing. (It's a fairly gender-egalitarian society, and being or passing as a boy doesn't improve your chances at anything. (Not being a mutant, on the other hand...))
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:49 pm (UTC)I knew about some of the e-books, but I don't think all! I am actually just starting to foray into e-books (several years behind the curve) now that I have found I can read them on my iPod, so that's a bigger incentive too.
. . . also, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that when you guys finish this series, I will be first in line to give you my money.
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:40 pm (UTC)Anyway, sibling dynamics are just awesome! Also, a cool way to get different kinds of close non-romantic interactions into fiction - not that I don't like romance, but it does make a nice change.
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 09:47 pm (UTC)Most of this, however, was because my younger siblings are both boys, and I had this idea that if I had a sister we would always get along and it would be idyllic and wonderful and perfect. My mother, with two sisters of her own, spent a lot of time laughing hollowly at this notion.
*The qualifier there is that I have three much older half-siblings, so really I'm the middle of three. But they were all living on their own, mostly in other states, by the time I was old enough to be squabbling, so there wasn't a lot of brownie-stealing going on in those relationships.
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Date: 2010-11-17 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 07:59 pm (UTC)Also Lane Robins' Maledicte comes with crossdressing and an epic revenge quest (Idk if that's your thing but it's totally mine so I liked it).
You've probably already seen Coffee Prince but I have to include it here just in case. Excellent crossdressing romcom fun times!
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Date: 2010-11-17 08:09 pm (UTC)I have indeed seen Coffee Prince - second kdrama I saw, I think! - and it is indeed excellent. Korean drama is such an awesome place for crossdressing.
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Date: 2010-11-17 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 08:26 pm (UTC)I have not read The Wind on the Moon, or even I think heard of it, but I'm intrigued - tell me more!
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Date: 2010-11-17 08:59 pm (UTC)I'm reading up on androgyne tropes now, trying to figure out which one would fit the best. :-) May have to wait a couple of days to finish, though, since I'm out of town Thursday-Friday.
I have not read The Wind on the Moon, or even I think heard of it, but I'm intrigued - tell me more!
Oh! Well, it's a children's classic from the 1940s, by Eric Linklater. It's about two girls called Dinah and Dorinda who have adventures together that range from eating until they're fat as balloons, to turning themselves into kangaroos, to saving their father from a tyrant's dungeon. Their parents and teacher consider them naughty even when they try to be nice (and nice only when they do nothing at all), so they pretty much give up early on and do whatever they want, which is often helpful and always interesting, but not necessarily "nice" by grown up standards.
I see it as sort of a sibling to Pippi Longstocking, in that it is written in nearly the same year, deals in the same kind of absurdity, and has a rather anarchistic approach to childhood.
Quoting the packing scene, because it's early in the book and I love the mental image:
And when he had gone, Dinah said, "Let's try to be good, just to please him, because Father likes to be pleased.'
'We could help him to pack,' said Dorinda.
'We could pack much better than he has been doing.'
'Look at all the things that have to go in yet.'
'There isn't much room for them,' said Dinah.
'We could make a lot more room if we rolled all his coats and trousers into long sausages, instead of hanging them up like that.'
So they took three ordinary suits and two suits of uniform off the hangers that held them neatly on one side of the trunk, and rolled them into long bundles like sausages. Then they pushed the sausages into the trunk, and stamped on them to make them smaller, and laid six white shirts in the middle, and put two pairs of boots on top of the shirts.
'I think that's better,' said Dinah.
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Date: 2010-11-17 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 11:50 pm (UTC)The Wolves of Willoughby Chase has some crossdressing! But I'm guessing you've already met it.
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Date: 2010-11-18 03:33 am (UTC)Hahaha, I am well acquainted with the wonderful crack that is Joan Aiken. Dido Twite is one of my forever girls!
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Date: 2010-11-17 09:12 pm (UTC)(Also, your enthusiasm for Princess Tutu makes sense to me in a way that it hadn't before. Hadn't realised that it hit one of your tropes that hard. ^_^)
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Date: 2010-11-17 09:17 pm (UTC)Hahahaha Shannon, it hits many of my tropes that hard, including several I have not listed here. (Metafictionality and internal fanfic! Deconstructed fairy tales! Deconstructed femme fatales! The importance of respecting yourself as a person and making your own choices! Angsty jerkfaces whom the narrative does not take very seriously, because they are secret giant dorks! THIS IS ONLY A FEW.
I am also pretty sure that it created new bulletproof tropes for me, but that's another story.)
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Date: 2010-11-17 10:14 pm (UTC)Sadly, that is all I've ever heard about this, but I was dancing about in sheer joy that I got to be a crossdressing squire in a mystery story....
So, yes, the whole crossdressing in a plot thing is one of my biggest tropes. :D
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Date: 2010-11-18 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 10:52 pm (UTC)I've already told you about Mai-HiME's crossdressing girl, I think! It also has a very interesting sibling dynamic with the crossdresser's love interest's primary guardian basically being his older sister, who works lots of part time jobs to pay his hospital bills.
Slayers is all about the Last Brownie Clause (which you should totally suggest at YKTTW (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ykttw.php)).
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Date: 2010-11-18 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-20 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 04:37 pm (UTC)