I rarely read books that are squarely in the romance genre, so the tropes that I will be talking about today are ones that typically appear in fantasy books with romantic subplots. Even though the books I pick up usually don't have that much romance, the way the romance is executed has a pretty big impact on my reading experience. If the romance is good, I enjoy the book a lot more; but if the romance is poorly done, my entire reading experience kind of suffers.

This post is so overdue! Earlier this year, I wrote about five tropes, or common elements, or regularly occurring things in general within the fantasy genre that I didn't like. I always meant to follow it up with a companion post about the ones I do like, but it turns out this post was harder to write than the first.

I've encountered quite a few posts on diversity and representation on social media lately, and I find myself coming away with a few opinions of my own as a response. This post is a loose collection of those responses. I don't think I'll ever have a definite, set-in-stone Thoughts™, because I'm still at the point in my journey where my understanding of good representation is still evolving, and I'm still trying to make sense of my own personal experiences, and the world is also constantly in flux so what I may need one day may not be what I need the next. Basically, take these with a grain of salt, and know that these are just my thoughts at this current point in time. I don't want to box myself in and never give myself an opportunity to change my mind. That said, hopefully there's enough coherence here that shows that my thoughts and feelings are rooted in something consistent.

This is a bit of a hot-take, because I know there's this unspoken chasm between those in creative fields and those in technical fields. But today I'm going to propose that software developers and engineers are creators too.

My favourite genre is fantasy, but like most people, I too have some issues with my fave. Like they all say, nothing is perfect, right? So today, I'll go over some tropes or concepts or common occurrences that I see in this genre that aren't really my cup of tea. It doesn't mean that these are bad or that the authors who employ these in their stories aren't skilled. I can even understand why these concepts make sense in certain contexts or might appeal to some readers. But they just don't work for me.