Why Do Some Tropes Remain Fandom Tropes?

HGohwell 2023-07-20 02:44:29 UTC #1

What the title says really. And the answer definitely isn't "because fanfic/fandom is bad/dumb", let's get that out of the way.

So, my mind was wandering and I got to thinking in particular about hanahaki disease, and how despite all the melodrama and romance possiblities, it's remained thoroughly a fandom trope/plot, and hasn't shown much movement into mainstream like some other tropes (like say omegaverse, that merged in some extend with mainstream things like shifter/werewolf romance ect).

For those who don't know, hanahaki is a very popular fandom plot/tropes, particularly for angst, although occassionally other genres (I've read a few that play it up for comedy or just as part of the adventure, although I can see how that would be difficult), very popular across fandom, where unrequited love leads to flowers growing in your lungs, coughing up petals, and eventual death. There's a lot of variation, as with all tropes, like whether the love must be actually unrequited, if it's enough to simply believe it's unrequited, if it can be cured, if there are way around it (a common one is surgery to remove the flowers, also removing your feelings for that person), if you can get it more than once (for the same person?), if it's actually deadly, if naturally getting over the feelings sees it pass naturally, and if it's actually the love that causes it or if it's the bottling up of your feelings.

Another thing would be soulmate tropes, things like matching soulmate marks, you first words written on you somewhere, seeing through each other's eyes, feeling each other's pain, there's so many variations that can lead to fascinating world building, and are also generally (the ones that art interested in such and not just fluff) fantastic at looking at things like sexuality, platonic soulmates, polyamory, pre-destined love vs choice ect. But, it's another that you rarely see move into real life.

And fromt all that, I started thinking about why certain things like these remain pretty much entirely fanfic/fandom tropes. Because they've got a lot of potential. There's a lot that you could do with these things. So, anyone got any thoughts? Any ideas why? Or any other tropes you think remain fandom tropes that have a lot of interesting potential?

vapidink 2023-07-20 03:07:58 UTC #2

Okay, so this was a while ago, but I remember hanahaki appearing in an original webtoon that was then discontinued because the author of the story from which hanahaki originated claimed ownership of the concept. So that's probably why we don't see that one in particular in anything other than fanfic. Soulmate marks have actually been showing up in original fiction, even stuff published online, but I doubt you'll see those things in mainstream media because, well, they're not mainstream. They're odd concepts that are sorta niche. Studios and publishers have largely been focused on chasing fads and remaking things that are guaranteed to make money.

Honestly, one of the reasons I love reading fanfic is because there's no restraint. Writers come up with the stories they truly want to tell and there's no publishers telling them to change things, to make things more marketable, no expectations to meet. But some ideas are too out there for anyone to invest in, at least for now.

HGohwell 2023-07-20 03:18:05 UTC #3

Yeah, I remember reading about that, which is hilarious given there's documented hanahaki stories from before the supposed original, and the sheer level of variation means they're never going to be able to stick that in any kind of court and yuo'd think a big company like that would know that. It was a pretty spineless move on the part of the company. It'd be like Disney trying to claim ownership over True Love's Kiss (although I would believe you if you told me they'd tried).

vapidink 2023-07-20 03:28:57 UTC #4

I don't remember the case too much, but it worked out for the author of the original (or who claimed to write the original) probably because they were going up against small creators who couldn't afford to deal with legal stuff. Disney tried to trademark Dia de Los Muertos a while back so I definitely wouldn't be surprised.

cherrystark 2023-07-20 03:31:02 UTC #5

I think they remain "fandom tropes" for two reasons.

When a new writer starts out in a certain genre, they only know what they've read. So they will mimic it. You see it a lot in fan fiction one-shots where they will take a set of prompts and write the scene multiple times just featuring a different character. If they start writing for a new fandom, they repeat the same set of prompts. The cycle then repeats itself when a new writer comes in.
Some "fandom" tropes would be too ridiculous if they existed outside of their respective genres. For example, billionaire romances. While there is always a slim chance of meeting a billionaire and/or marrying a partner with Scrooge McDuck money - the reality is that it probably won't happen. The situations where your average girl gets married to a billionaire are ridiculous. IF a non-romance story happens to include a billionaire - they're more likely the Tony Stark type wanting to get involved in the science shenanigans or a bad guy. They never get paired off romantically with the MC and if they do have a romantic subplot - it's with someone they already knew pretty well prior to the start of the story.

darthmongoose 2023-07-20 05:53:18 UTC #6

I think the reason these will nearly always be mostly attached to fanfic is that the concept they're based on is so strange and esoteric that if the story explains what that concept is, it won't have a lot of space to also introduce unique characters and a unique world as well. In fanfic, creators can benefit from the fact that readers already know the characters, and they've already seen those characters go on a more normal sort of adventure, so now they want to see them put into a more extreme situation.
And it doesn't matter that it's the same story conceit every time, like "they're in The Purge" or "They're running a coffee shop" or "they're in a world where people have wolf-like characteristics and there's mpreg and an intense sexual hierarchy", because the thing readers want to see is, "how would MY favourite characters from [insert series here] react in this extreme situation?" And it doesn't matter if a lot of Omegaverse has basically really similar plots; it's a template, and people want to see their favourites or their ship in that template. They're interested to see who is the alpha, and to see the scene where their favourite character to be the omega realises they're pregnant. It's like say, putting the cast of Homestuck into The Hunger Games; it's not that people want just another Hunger Games book about new characters doing thar same thing again, they want to see who out of the cast of Homestuck survives, and how, and who kills each other, and which characters the fic writer puts into villain roles.

But if you remove that aspect, the template-like rules stop being a strength and become a weakness. When not in a place where everyone knows what the rules are and doesn't care that the story will probably hit all the same cliches, because they want to see it applied to a pairing they already like, an Omegaverse story needs to set up an awful lot of complicated concepts and rules and then introduce and world and make that seem like it makes sense (again, doesn't matter in a fanfic or a known template being shown to people familiar with it, because people can fill in the gaps with what they already know) and then it's all that just to tell basically a BL story but with a very strong dominant/submissive dynamic. There's a whole layer of metatext missing; the excitement of seeing familiar characters in a different situation.

Plus there's just... it's really hard to market anything which needs that much explanation. If you ever want to see why Omegaverse will always be a "weird online community", simply try explaining what Omegaverse is to an average casual reader of romance novels in a library or bookshop, and watch the increasing expression of "WTF?" on their face. A lot of people might struggle with just "it's romance about gay men", never mind, "it's romance about gay men, but it takes place in a parallel universe where humans are broken up by these social and biological groups based on how sexually dominant they are, and there are still men and women, but the ability to impregnate or be impregnated is based on the order of sexual dominance a person has, and people give of these strong pheromones and-" (I don't even know if I got this right, I don't really read Omegaverse, and it seems to have a lot of rules and unique characteristics). When combined with how some of the rules around Omegaverse stuff can be...a bit problematic, forcing gay couples into dynamics that look a lot like old-fashioned seme-uke, and often seem borderline or straight up abusive... It's a bit of a hard sell for a mainstream bookseller. Likely to only appeal to a person who consumes so much media that mainstream stuff doesn't excite them any more and they need much more extreme and complex romantic scenarios than an average reader.

HGohwell 2023-07-20 07:01:50 UTC #7

It's interesting you pick omegaverse for this example, because I was using it as something that is breaking more mainstream, or like sub-mainstream, areas, partly because it's merging in a lot of ways with the already established werewolf romance genres and het omegaverse. I mean, a lot of what you brought up only really exists in the pwp omegaverse these days since a lot of people have moved into exploring the world building and implications, it's a lot easier to explain it as "werewolf pack dynamics in a wold where everyone is a werewolf" and lots of omegaverse leans into this, especailly when you get into like hybrids (like catgirls and wolfboys and shifters) becoming a lot more common. They're very much merging in the paranormal romance as like a gateway, since werewolf/shifter romance already had a lot of this stuff already built into their pack (even Twilight has like alpha wolf who can boss the others around because of some birth right or something). It just a lot when you put it like that, but the basis is actually the simplicity of "what if humans worked on wolf characteristics (based on an now discredited study but when has that ever stopped anyone)" and that really is is it werewolves or is it omegaverse and where's the line? And that's how it's moving into a place where I can get recommended it on Amazon when I'm looking for a fantasy romance.

But I do get what you're saying about the about of meta required for some of these more common fandom things. Like, related but not quite the same you do have the D/S verse which is literally you are born as a dom or sub as part of the world building. But then I remember the amount of times I've tried to explain Sedoretu to fandom people and it goes totally over their heads, but I guess we can't all be Ursula K. Le Guin.

darthmongoose 2023-07-20 07:16:01 UTC #8

I guess if something has reached a certain level of popularity where enough people are familiar with the tropes of the genre, it can become a mainstream genre or subgenre.

That's pretty much how it was with Vampire fiction now, or, honestly the Fantasy genre. If in the 1920s you'd been like "read this novel, it's set in a fictional medieval kingdom with wizards and elves", somebody would be like "er... what? Elves like those little spirits they believe help around the house in Scandinavian countries? Wizards like... a magician? What do you mean, a fictional kingdom?" because it's easy to forget that a lot of the tropes we now take for granted as being the bedrock of Fantasy, like saying "an elf" and people assuming you mean, "a human-like being with pointy ears, probably sensitive and attuned to magic and/or nature and perhaps very graceful, probably lives a long time" relies on a grounding in something that started as Tolkien's personal interpretation and then became widespread.

If Omegaverse can become a more generalised set of tropes people can pick up on easily through pop-cultural osmosis, maybe it can become a relatively mainstream subgenre that's more like a type of werewolf/paranormal romance fic.

JoshRaed 2023-07-20 07:30:32 UTC #9

I’ve seen the soulmate tropes used in romance webcomics about cupid, like “the boy who murdered love” and “cupido”.

VibrantFox 2023-07-20 08:45:12 UTC #10

i think i'll have to agree with the whole it's easier to add a trope to known characters than introducing the characters and the trope meta but there's definitely ones i'd like to see enter mainstream media even if it ends up being relatively niche

like the last instance i can remember with a soulmates/shared pain/shared emotions type thing in a popular series was the kiznaiver anime

if anything i do feel like there's a chance for some tropes to become more widespread outside of just fandom but it's simply a matter of time and all that remains in question is how long the wait would be

NickRowler 2023-07-20 13:47:08 UTC #11

I guess it’s just a modern version of old wives’ tales tied into fanfic writing.

I remember there was this fandom trope about characters being in comas and how the canon story was just a fever dream. I have seen people push it for series like Rugrats and Pokemon but I would not be surprised if there are others. It’s usually a property which is kid friendly or wholesome and fans trying to push some grim dark narrative on it.

cherrystark 2023-07-20 13:54:25 UTC #12

While this doesn't directly tie to "fandoms", I did have another thought about why certain tropes stay with certain genres, and that's internet marketing and more specifically - internet marketing to women.

Prior to the start of the self-publishing boom, a story like Twilight would have been marketed with its elevator pitch - "Teenage girl moves to a small town and falls in love with a vampire." It's clean and to the point. But then when fan fiction came about, we tagged our stories with generic terms as a spoiler-free way to let the readers know what was in the story. And then when big platforms started pushing for self-publishing - we started marketing the same way. While I am personally not a fan of labeling my stories with things like "alpha, second-chance romance, enemies to lovers, billionaire, strong female lead, age gap" etc - if I don't label my romances that way, they don't sell.

So I think in a way, adding on to what other people have said, the tropes we used fit into the genres we were writing in hopes of selling them. You can write a werewolf romance that doesn't heavily rely on the pre-established tropes for the subgenre, but if you do, it might not sell.

DiegoPalacios 2023-07-20 14:02:18 UTC #13

Trends come and trends go. Different sources of content have different trends, so many fanfic writers may deliberately or unconsciously follow fanfic trends and many creators of original content may lean toward other trends.

Sometimes they overlap, like an alien species visiting another planet but it's not always the case.

UrMom 2023-07-20 14:47:20 UTC #14

Oh gosh, I'll also have to agree with it being easier to introduce already established characters to extreme weirdness than just introducing the weirdness. Admittedly fandom stuff is all greek to me, the most I know about it is when I used to read Inuyasha lemon fanfic on Quizilla, and when someone said my comic was "whump". I had no idea what the latter meant until looking it up, thought I could do something with it advertising wise, but learned that it seemed to be a fandom exclusive thing and I didn't know how original works could be wiggled into something like that. (Especially comics since all that stuff was written lit, and a lot of lit folks don't seem to be fans of comics.)

Anyways, yeah! Some fandom tropes are just super specific, and niche, and would require a lot of explaining for "normies" to understand. Although I can imagine it would be cool to see some fleshed out, and expanded beyond the fandom sphere.

JoshRaed 2023-07-20 17:06:40 UTC #15

Did I miss something? Between my story descriptions being accused of being spoiler free until I gave a proper synopsis which also had no spoilers in it, to descriptions like "girl falls in love with a vampire" being called NOT spoiler-free, I feel like maybe people are using the term differently than I am.

Like do people genuinely consider the premise of a book to be a spoiler? Like you start reading it while completely blind to the premise?

HGohwell 2023-07-20 17:43:54 UTC #16

That's not really why those tags came about, the fact that they are spoiler free was as side-effect of them being how they are. They weren't invented to be spoiler free. "Enemies to lovers" is a common one of these and it still tells you that what's going to happen. Plus, these are tags, not summaries. They're for searching primarily, you still have to have a summary. They developed from a, trigger warnings, and b, if your fandom currently has 157,584 fics in it, you need a way to filter out what you like and don't like. Everything from "enemies to lovers" to "canon compliant" to certain type of sexual activity or kinks. Places like AO3 also don't have genre options, so they have to go in the tags.

Twilight would still be "girl falls in love with vampire" as your elevator pitch/summary, but would then be tagged for searching and filtering with things like "urban fantasy" "paranormal romance" "strangers to lovers" "stalking as romance" "non-graphic violence" ect.

Now, the way publishing has started using them in that way is another matter, especially when they start using them as summaries/templates rather than further information, and that's where you start hitting problems. But no, in fandom it was never about spoilers or not, it was about giving you extra information so you knew what you were going into from the start.

NickRowler 2023-07-20 17:58:05 UTC #17

I think this is an AO3 and Wattpad thing, because I don't remember these tags being a thing back when I was on Fanfiction.net. I think also with the development of fandoms, that is where the converting of fanfic to canon works came from. Think of 50 Shades of Grey just being a kinky AU fanfic of Twilight.

I also think people who are fans of a topic will create their works around around a similar topic. People who usually write "stalker romance" are those who read those types of stories. I remember there was a trend of teens writing kidnapping fanfics about members of One Direction. So it can feel like people are just adding onto the subgenre even if it's something really bizarre. I think that is also where a lot of really unusual fetish art comes from.

HGohwell 2023-07-20 18:09:32 UTC #18

Yes, it's partly in backlash to fanfiction.net, because there for a long time your options were 2 characters only (later upped to 4), no information on whether those are the ship or just characters in it (although later fixed as AO3 grew popular), 2 genre options about as vague as Tapas' genres, and a rating to go with a 200word summary. AO3's UI is a lot better for this than Wattpad, that's just a mess and you need all these tags to have any hope of being found.

Not entirely. Wattpad seems to have made a business of it, sure, but Master Of The Universe (proto-50 Shades) was posted on fanfiction.net. As were many similar Twilight but BDSM stories that got picked up and published (some of which E L James supposedly attempted to sue for copying her). There was a period of fanfiction.net fame where small publishers would look at popular works in popular fandoms and reach out hoping to capitalise on the already there fandom in much the same way Wattpad now does in house. However, it's worth noting, if you can pick out an original work as fanfiction it probably wasn't a very good fanfic to start with (note: good and popular are not necessarily the same thing) and/or wasn't given the time and attention in editing it needed.

cherrystark 2023-07-20 18:28:48 UTC #19

So an elevator pitch is basically a 2-3 sentence description of your story that you could pitch to someone in a hurry, such as on an elevator. In the case of my example, saying "A girl falls in love with a vampire" teases the premise but without revealing all the nitty-gritty details of the plot.

And when I was referring to "spoiler-free" tagging - if you have ever read fan fiction on Tumblr, at the bottom of the fic would be tags like: character name x OC, mpreg, ABO, assault, smut, fluff - stuff like that. The tags give readers a clear warning about the contents of the fic without revealing what's actually happening in the fic.

To tie back to my original thought in relation to the thread: if a story is marketed as: alpha, billionaire, second-chance, surprise baby, office, age gap romance - readers are going to expect a story about a young woman who starts working for a much older alpha wolf billionaire. They are mates. She gets pregnant. The couple temporarily breaks up and she has to give him a second chance. The extra details in the story can vary, but if the writer isn't following the exact conventions for the tropes they are tagging their story with - they won't read it.

Knowing how to pitch/market your story is a different ballpark than giving spoilers or expecting a reader to start in blind.

You are right. They are more of a search tool for a lot of reader platforms. That is why "hashtags" were invented. I just noticed as I got more into publishing that I had to be exact with the tropes I used in marketing or no one would buy it. And then each trope has its own conventions so pairing the trope tags with other tropes - you pretty much can figure out the story without reading it.