snowflake challenge #8

Challenge #9
Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

There are so many tropes that I love but I'll try to narrow it down, though I'm sure I will forget a couple.

Amnesia: I lean toward partial amnesia rather than complete, but I'll read both! There's something really appealing about a character trying to figure out what has changed in their life since the last thing they remember, especially when it comes to the love interest. Seeing them look at a relationship with new eyes or try to struggle to remember the already established one gives me both angst and humorous possibilities, both which I enjoy. And I love it from the other side too! Where the LI wants them to remember but also wants to help them heal at their own pace (while pining!).

Canon Divergence/Fork In the Road: There are always points in canon, or even pre-canon, where I wonder 'what if x had happened instead of y' and it's just interesting to explore the possibilities.

Fake Dating/Relationship/Marriage of Convenience: Whether it is for something low stakes like needing a date for a wedding or trying to escape the "helpful" matchmaking of friends/relatives or a little more high stakes like going undercover, this trope is just fun and full of pining, angst, and potential for others, like misunderstandings and accidental love confessions. All of which I enjoy. I like it when one half of the ship has feelings or both have feelings and think that this is all they can ever get. Or when they don't even consider each other and slowly fall for one another while they're "pretending". This extends to marriages where the ship gets married for "reasons" and then just doesn't want to divorce but thinks the other one doesn't want that.

( a few more )