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Quotes About Tropes

I'm a genre writer - I chose to be one, I ended up one, I still am one, and I'm not writing transgressive, genre-blurring fiction. I write 'core SF' - it may occasionally incorporate horror or noir tropes, but it's not pretending to be anything other than what it is.
~ Alastair Reynolds
The only way to real mature love is to get past the tropes of what we consider 'romance.'
~ Joss Whedon
Thrall is a feast of both visceral and existential horror – the gut tightens and the mind reels. Mary Sangiovanni joins that select cadre of women writers who are ignoring the safe old tropes and pushing the genre in new directions.
~ F. Paul Wilson
the philosophers of history privileged particular tropes, or figures of speech: Marx emphasized Metonymy and Synecdoche to organize the historical field, whereas Nietzsche relied on Metaphor and Croce on Irony.
~ Hayden White
Most important, White rejected the idea that one genre or trope was more appropriate for some historical event than another. He likewise rejected the idea that one genre or trope more accurately corresponded to what really happened in the past than another. Instead, he insisted that tropes were how writers prefigured the historical field—the past became available to us only through a poetic act of construction.
~ Hayden White
Thus, although life is by and large unthrilling, when we do find ourselves in the sort of situation upon which thrillers dote we cannot really experience it, because our imaginations are occupied by the familiar tropes of popular fiction. And the result of this is a kind of dull bafflement, and the sense that whatever it is cannot really be happening. We actually think that phrase: this can't be happening to me.
~ Michael Gruber
I have a problem with the term 'leading man.' It's so limiting; it involves not upsetting anyone. Obviously, we have anti-heroes now, but if we're talking about the two tropes - character actor and leading man - I would so rather be a character actor. That's why I have a career.
~ Jimmi Simpson
My films typically veer towards the darker side, and I enjoy turning things on the audience. I really enjoy working in genre because people come into the film with certain expectations, and they know the tropes so well that when you turn on those, it can be really shocking. There's a complaisance that comes with watching those films.
~ Ari Aster
When people think girl adventurers, they tend to think of a spunky, plucky tom-boy with a chip on her shoulder. I'm not saying that this makes for a dull character, but I think other types of adventurous girls exist. It's easy to fall into well-established tropes, believing that the tropes of a genre define the genre itself.
~ Ted Naifeh
The title 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' is meant to be a deconstruction of a stereotype, and the whole show is about deconstructing the boxes that we're supposed to be put into. We like taking apart the tropes and the stereotypes and explore the nuances, so 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' is a label that we go deep underneath to explore.
~ Rachel Bloom
Personal opinion time: some of the bravest, strangest, coolest stories right now are being told in the young adult space. It's stuff that doesn't fly by tropes or adhere to rules -- appropriate, perhaps, since young adults tend to flick cigarettes in the eyes of the rules and don't play by social norms as much as adults do.
~ Chuck Wendig
There's a lot of ordinariness, and people tend to play to the same regressive tropes - sexism, patriarchy, unkindness to the oppressed. Comedy shouldn't fall into these traps - by its very nature comedy is supposed to be edgy and anti-establishment.
~ Varun Grover
The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic clichés you could have cut it with a knife.
~ Jasper Fforde
Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes; But no too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes: Disguise even tenderness if thou art wise.
~ Lord Byron
and deeply seductive, storytelling tropes that you see in cinema.
~ David Brin
I was thinking about vampires and, specifically, about what makes vampires a romantic trope: about what people like about not just vampires but supernaturally long-lived creatures in general, which is a thing that shows up in probably fifty to sixty percent of paranormal romances... And then, for some reason, I decided to reverse it.
~ Alaya Dawn Johnson
I can't change the preconceived notions a reader brings to a work, but I can do my best to be aware of, address, and subvert tropes and expectations that readers may have as best I can and hope I don't screw it up too much.
~ Kameron Hurley
Technically and logically speaking, actual Victorian science fiction writers cannot be dubbed 'steampunks.' Although they utilized many of the same tropes and touchstones employed later by twenty-first-century writers of steampunk, in their contemporary hands these devices represented state-of-the-art speculation.
~ Paul Di Filippo
The truth was, Librium and Valium were marketed using such a variety of gendered mid-century tropes—the neurotic singleton, the frazzled housewife, the joyless career woman, the menopausal shrew—that what Roche's tranquilizers really seemed to offer was a quick fix for the problem of "being female.
~ Unknown
was, Librium and Valium were marketed using such a variety of gendered mid-century tropes—the neurotic singleton, the frazzled housewife, the joyless career woman, the menopausal shrew—that as the historian Andrea Tone noted in her book The Age of Anxiety, what Roche's tranquilizers really seemed to offer was a quick fix for the problem of "being female.
~ Unknown