Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish!
This week is ten bookish things I want to quit, so I’m going to list the tropes in YA I want to stop reading about!
1.) Love Triangles
I’m very tired of reading books that have love triangles in them.
Does it ruin the book for me completely? No.
Does it annoy me sometimes? Yes.
Is there a problem with a main character having options for their love interests? No.
Is it STILL annoying to me? Yes.
There now I’ve made myself clear, I just don’t like love triangles. Never have, never will. There are books where the love triangles are subtle and not so obnoxious like in the book “The Wrath & The Dawn” it’s not the entire plot therefore making it tolerable. “Snow Like Ashes” and “The Hunger Games” have prominent love triangles, but they make up for it by having well done plots. Then you have books like “Twilight” and “Fallen” where the books are a mess even without the added clutter of a love triangle.
Overall love triangles?
2.) Insta-Love
Insta-Love is worse than love triangles! There’s nothing, NOTHING more irksome than two characters meeting and thinking they’re destined for each other and they’re “in love” after a few seconds.
The absolute best example of insta-love in the entire history of insta-love is “Romeo & Juliet”. They died for each other after less than a week and were married in less than a day, people. If that’s not the worst case of insta-love ever I don’t know what is. Another example is “City of Bones” you can see my review for that thing here. Clary falls so fast for Jace she’s willing to get caught up in the affairs of an entire secret world. Ugh.
3.) Mary Sues & Gary Stus
For those of you who don’t know what a Mary Sue or Gary Stu is:
- The Mary Sue/Gary Stu is perfect, flawless, and can do no wrong.
- A Mary Sue/Gary Stu always wins over their perfect and flawless love interest.
- There is no one that can best them and the Mary Sue/ Gary Stu always wins their fights.
- Everything always works out in the end for a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.
They basically make your reading experience one giant eye roll. Perfect examples would be Tris Prior from “Divergent” and Zoey Redbird from “Marked”. Tris is a Mary Sue because she is apparently the greatest thing that has ever happened to the people of post apocalyptic Chicago. She’s a Divergent which also means that she’s the most special person in the entire book. If that’s not a Mary Sue I don’t know what is. And Zoey is a vampire and in a world FULL of vampires with special powers, Zoey apparently has even MORE special powers than the “normal” vampires. Ridiculous.
Gary Stus are Mary Sues but male, obviously. Examples of Gary Stus would be Edward Cullen (Obvious) from the Twilight and Jace Wayland from The Mortal Instruments series.
4.) Protagonists That Think They’re Ordinary But Are Obviously Beautiful
Not that I have a problem with a good makeover or people making you feel beautiful, but when you sit and complain about being “plain” and “ordinary” until the completely gorgeous love interest comes along and suddenly you discover you were beautiful all along and everyone starts noticing for the first time.
How about no?
Can I use “Twilight” in all of my tropes on this list? Yes because it’s a giant trope itself.
I loathe characters that sit and try to convince everyone and us, the readers, that they are completely average or below average and there’s nothing beautiful or special about them, when they so obviously are. Especially when the love interest swoops in and suddenly the main character is a damn supermodel or something. In “Cinder”, Cinder is the same way until she meets Prince Kai and then everything is suddenly wonderful.
You did not just magically become the most gorgeous person because a guy said so. No. That’s not how it works in the real world or how it should work in the fictional realm of YA literature.
So my thoughts on this trope?
5.) Conveniently Absent Parents
I’m fairly positive if you’re in a YA book, then either one or both of your parents are either gone or dead. Even if you’re lucky and have both parents then they’re the type that are always working or something that hence allows you to run around and do whatever the hell you damn well please.
How convenient for them.
There’s just no way your parents or parent can be completely oblivious to everything if you’re living in a fantasy world full of things that can kill you or a post apocalyptic world full of things that can kill you. Yeah right.
“Oh sure honey you can go out into the forest at night where there’s zombies running around ready to eat you. Be back before 11:00!”
Or don’t notice that you’ve been kidnapped/ whisked away with a bunch of vampires.
“Oh she’s been gone since yesterday morning but I’m sure she’s fine and will show up soon!”
Writing in parents that don’t parent (in my opinion) is just an easy way out of writing extra characters and creative ways for the protagonists to actually go about their adventures.
I only came up with 5 tropes out of the recommend ten since it’s ya know….Top Ten Tuesday, but it’s a good thing right? Not that many annoy me! Yay!
Are there any other tropes you guys don’t like that I didn’t list? Or any other books/characters I didn’t mention in my listed tropes?
Let me know!
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