Me when a review frames the inclusion of a particular trope in LEGENDBORN as an Accidental Amateur Failing...rather than a Deliberate Pro Choice.

What if I told you...that I wrote my book On Purpose.

The question, friends, is what did that trope allow me to do? Why did I choose that one and not another?

And, always -- what does it mean that a Black girl protagonist is at the center of that trope in this book, and how does that impact the story? What are the ripple effects?

This framing I occasionally see is WILD to me!

Like tropes are a ditch on the side of the road and I don't know how to drive lmaoooo.

When it's like, naw, beloveds. I see tropes as TOOLS and my ass drives into them with skill.

THIS IS ME

My feedback training and creative upbringing is to ALWAYS assume choices are choices, rather than accidents, and to interrogate **what happened in the art** as a result of those choices.

This discourse wherein tropes are so quickly maligned rather than examined is tiresome.

And when those tropes are quickly maligned when POC authors are writing POC characters who haven't been fully explored via those tropes in published literature **AND** the framing is that that POC author doesn't know what she's doing....

CRINGEY Y'ALL. REAL CRINGEY.

Okay last thing:

TROPES ARE NARRATIVE DEVICES THEY ARE NOT INHERENTLY GOOD OR BAD THEY ARE JUST STORYTELLING TOOLS AND STORY HEURISTICS

/runs back in/

Tropes are building blocks to tell stories, similar to the way the alphabet is a building block to make words.

So, when you say "Stories that use this one trope are weak" it's like you saying "Words with the letter 'K' are weak."

THAT'S HOW SILLY YOU SOUND!!!