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trobadoraYears ago on LJ I identified my ideal tropes as mapping into a double cluster around a center that's basically a period of yearning in the gap between sex and intimacy -- either you have sex first and spend the story yearning for intimacy (e.g. aliens made them do it) or you have intimacy first and spend the story yearning for sex (e.g. everything from hypothermia to truth serum). All my answers here definitely follow that pattern.
Slow burn OR love at first sight::. It amuses me that I find love at first sight less plausible than sex pollen. I
do enjoy variations on a theme of "the first time I saw you, I was already obligated to do some long-term, difficult, and intimate thing with you" -- for instance, "I have amnesia and I woke up in bed with you and we were both wearing matching wedding rings," or "so you're the royalty from the neighboring kingdom that I've just entered a political marriage with." Soulbond stories ring that bell for me, as long as the bonding in the
situation takes a little while to produce a bonding in
feelings. Fake dating OR secret dating:. Fake dating is definitely a gap-type trope -- here we are holding hands and pretending to be happy together while I yearn for that but believe that you're not interested. Yep, yep, that does it for me. Secret dating isn't a trope I can remember seeing a lot of. I suppose you could have a Romeo-and-Juliet type scenario, or one of those delightfully farfetched romance scenarios where you'll lose the inheritance unless you can stay single. It locates the obstacle to the relationship
outside the relationship, which isn't as interesting to me.
Enemies to lovers OR best friends to lovers:. I like them both, but enemies to lovers takes longer and is more difficult. With best friends, you have to look for some additional reason why they haven't just kissed already.
Oh no there's only one bed OR long distance with correspondence:. I'm not nuts about either of these, because mostly neither of them is very plausible to me. If you had to share a bed with someone you were longing for, you'd probably either not really sleep, or wake up back to back, and while a good writer could make either of those enjoyable to read, there's not as much inherent drama in it as I would like. And I have never read a romance conducted in correspondence that didn't make me go, "Oh, come on." Either they require characters to understand what they feel and communicate it in a way that I don't find at all plausible, or they require me-the-reader to be able to understand what's being communicated in the subtext
and both the characters to understand what's being communicated in the subtext, and I just don't buy it. (I've seen it done well for comedy -- "My dearest M., I assure you it wasn't my fault; the boat was already on fire when I got there, and I got nearly all the penguins out of the ballroom unharmed.")
Fantasy AU OR modern AU. Both are done badly a lot more often than they're done well. It's a worldbuildling issue. Modern AU is certainly easier for the
writer, but a lot of the time if you take the characters out of a historical or fictional setting, all your conflicts go away too. Sometimes it works, though -- I think one reason the high school AU is so popular is because high school is probably the closest most contemporary people ever come to living in a world with very narrow social roles and high penalties for violating them. Fantasy AU is an awfully big category -- could include anything from "Fraser's a werewolf and Ray's a vampire" to "exactly the same as the canon except that Spock has telekinesis." Delightful if done well, but few writers want to put enough effort into worldbuilding.
Smut or fluff. I don't know, what even is the definition of fluff? I think of it as meaning explicit emotional communication, and most of the time that's out of character for the kinds of characters I like to read. On the other hand, if you give me the choice between a basically solid story with sex and no emotions or a basically solid story with emotions (expressed in an in-character way) and no sex, I'll choose the emotions.
Mutual pining OR domestic bliss. OMG, pining pining pining. What can you do with domestic bliss? What can
happen? I'll read and enjoy domestic
comedy, but I pine for pining.
Alternate universe OR
futurefic. I mean, I like them both, but it's easier to do futurefic well, because it requires less worldbuilding, and so a higher percentage of it is good. Also, like many fanfic fans, I always view canon as basically what sets the scene for the
real storytellers, i.e. us.
Oneshot OR multi-chapter. Even a long story is more likely to make me happy if it's posted as a oneshot. Stories posted in chapters have a high likelihood of being posted before they're finished, which means they have a high likelihood of disappointing me with either a weak finish or none at all.
Kidfic OR
road trip fic. I haven't seen a lot of either of these, and I don't feel particularly strongly about road trip stories. But I read kidfic all wrong. If a story has a child in it, I have a laser focus on the wellbeing of that child, to the point that the relationship starts seeming like a distraction from the
real story, which is when is the last time that kid ate anything other than string cheese, and isn't it about time for her to go to bed?!
Reincarnation OR character death. I really dislike character death. There's enough grief in real life, thank you. Reincarnation isn't something I always avoid, but it does tend to keep company with some specific ideas about soulmates that I don't really like all that much, though -- that whole "We will always find each other through all eternity" stuff. It might be fun to read a reincarnation story in which the two characters aren't particularly soulmates but either (1) they have real potential that just can't be developed until both of them have done several lifetimes worth of maturing or (2) they're just two people who get more and more compatible because they have more and more practice at being together.
Arranged marriage OR accidental marriage. I like both of these, but arranged marriage hits right in my trope cluster. Arranged marriage is also a nice way to add zing to a best-friend story.
Time travel OR isolated together. Another pair that are both good. Time travel is risky because it often takes over the story -- I understand the temptation to explain things, but honestly I'd prefer "Suddenly, in the night, Sam Vimes found himself meeting up with a teenage Vetinari," just as an example, rather than two pages of explanation. But isolated together is excellent too!
Neighbors OR
roommates. If you're going to make them neighbors, why not go all the way and make them roommates? As far as I can see, both scenarios have the same advantages, but roommates has them more.
Sci-fi au OR
magic au. Magic has some pre-existing worldbuilding that a writer can just pick up and use. This would very much not satisfy me if I were reading a nonfannish novel -- the worldbuilding there is the whole thing I'm reading for -- but I read fanfic for relationships, and so if the writer wants to go "And he's a wizard -- you know what a wizard is like" or "And it's a curse -- you know how a curse works," I'm fine with that. SF is inferior in fanfic precisely because of the lack of those worldbuilding templates. (I mean, unless by SF AU you mean "Steve Rogers goes to Starfleet Academy," in which case I am so there.)
Bodyswap OR genderbend. Bodyswap is, of course, intimacy without sex, so I love it. Genderbend is often a lot of fun as social commentary. Social commentary is something I have more strength for some days than others; in the current political situation, often it's going to hit on some things I'm trying not to think about.
Angst OR crack. Now these are both things that are so dependent on skilled handling for me! Angst has to have a light hand with emotional explicitness -- it's a lot more effective if you give me the sorrow-and-yearning kit and make me put it together myself. And crack depends on (1) whether I agree with you about how funny the premise is and (2) whether you're able to execute it with a complete straight face.
Apocalyptic OR
mundane. God, I hate apocalypse. I hate it so much. It's so
lazy. And it seems like it shows up in all the canons [hisses at Marvel] and ruins everything. I like stakes high but human. Throw too much risk in there and you lose me.
Editing to add the "story idea" tag and point my future self at the
Dome Habitat AU.
