When the protagonist’s plot fails at the last minute, but just when it seems that all hope is lost, it turns out that the failure of this plot was all part of the PLOTTIER PLOT OF SECONDARY CHARACTER, who knew all along that they couldn’t succeed unless Protagonist’s plan failed, or that this failure would open up an opportunity for an even greater success that they’d been cleverly working towards the entire time.
Often seen in heists and thrillers, but a surprising number of fantasy novels too, and even romances. I’m such a sucker for the secret mastermind reveal.
What about you, what’s your favorite trope?
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Mentor mentee relationships, like knights and squires or wizards and their apprentices. Especially when they’re close enough in age to have older brother vibes instead of surrogate daddy. Like Anakin and Obi-Wan.
This is part of the charm of The Mask of Zorro, one of my favorite films.
As long as the story isn’t predictable while still making sense to a rational thinking individual, I’m happy.
I like stories about the encounters of very different civilizations and the result of these difference. (Is that a trope?)
I love stories messing up with the space-time continuum. (Is that a trope?) But they have to be smart and exact. (So many stories about that fail on the logical front)
My favorite trope is when it doesn’t seem like the author assembled their novel from obvious building blocks that can be easily cataloged on Wikia or whatever.
What kind of building blocks? (Just curious)
My favourite trope is when the main protagonist is on the run.
I just finished “A Shadow of All Night Falling” book 1 of “The Dread Empire”, so I discovered my new favorite trope
At the end of the book, within the space of a few pages, all the main characters are killed. Not at the same time, just in a series of increasingly unlikely events.
Then a character who hasn’t previously appeared in the story shows up suddenly and performs a resurrection spell and brings them all back to life for no particular reason.
So my favorite trope now is the massively unearned deus ex machina. Like the bigger the F-U to the reader, the better. If at the same time the heroes are saved, the ultimately powerful antagonists are also killed trivially, like in this book, Im satisfied
I’m calling it the “Deus ex Maxima”
Except for the resurrection part, that sounds like the end of Hamlet!
enter Fortinbras
Does Ender’s game count for this?
Oh, I’d totally count that! Haven’t read it in decades, but it had such an impact on me as a teen.
The Genius Ditz Someone who comes across most of the time as a clueless dingbat, until their one area of expertise is needed, and they suddenly snap into a miraculous prodigy.
Any recommendations? I LOVE rewatching the My Cousin Vinny courtroom moment but I can’t think of a book like this.
Like Zach Galifiankis’ character in The Hangover?
Did he have skills? I saw a couple of those movies but don’t remember Alan being anything other than a mess.
like on “do revenge” (2022)?
YES
Dude, time travel shenanigans and the genius manipulator who entraps their opponent before leisurely explaining how they accurately predicted how things would play out. Usually seen in detective novels, but also fits right in with thrillers. I also really like morally grey/borderline villanous protagonists.
Most recent book I read featuring these tropes (sans the time travel) was the Baru Cormorant series.
Villain redemption arc. I’m a sucker for them. Jaime Lannister comes to mind.
Gamebit Pileup is nice when you can see everybody’s plans colliding with each other in hilarious way (or tragic way, but I like that less).
But my very-very favourite is an exceedingly rare trope Good vs. Good, when the conflict in the book is between people or factions who have the best intentions in mind, yet find themselves opposed to each other to the point of fight to death. It’s so, so more interesting than yet another boring war with absolute evil, or even murky gray vs. gray struggle for power.
Most nobody can do this right, but when someone gets it, its GOOD. A perfect example are factions in Ada Palmer’s “Too Like Lightning” - all of them want the best future for humanity. And their visions are really great, implementing any of them might be a great improvement to the already great world at the beginning of the book. But they cannot succeed at the same time, and, frankly, it seems that humanity has only one shot at this, so they can’t just take turns trying things, AND their projects require all available resources of humanity to be directed to the same purpose. Thus, the conflict. Where you can sympathize with everyone involved, nobody feels like an idiot who’s only there to be a foil for braver heroes, and you find yourself putting the book away for a few minutes every now and then to ask yourself who are you rooting for.
“The youngest among them must rise to the burden of leadership.”
It’s the classic coming of age arc. A young, inexperienced character joins a group of older, more experienced characters. Time passes, something happens that makes the older characters seem much more mortal and human (rather than their larger-than-life early impressions) and suddenly you realize they’re looking to our young protagonist for leadership.
I am a sucker for any well written Time Travel/Time elapse at different speed novels.
If anyone has any good ones in mind, please let me know.
I love it when characters do the smart/right things, but everything still goes wrong.
Rogue who ends up doing good despite himself. Moist von Lipwig in “Going Postal” by Terry Pratchett or Flynn Rider in Tangled as examples.
Also, the person whom everyone looks at with contempt, but possesses skill that makes the antagonists look like fools at some point.