Project: Sinistral
Alternate title: FUCK YOU TROPES AND CLICHES, I WIN.
And okay, admittedly, not all of these are crystal clear in the first (and finished) novel. Some stuff is revealed in the second (unfinished because it decided to lack direction). Or just unincorporated worldbuilding facts in my head. Which is an entirely different post that I'll make later.
Sinistral was born when I wandered the NaNo (fantasy) boards one too many times and saw one too many comments about evil aristocracy and two-dimensional, selfish royalty just oppressing every poor peasant ever. And my brain exploded into silly nerd!rage of the fuck you plenty of those people were perfectly nice, and had crushes and True Love and hated their jobs and cried themselves to sleep over hard decisions and genuinely tried to be as fair as possible! FUCK YOU ALL FINE I'LL WRITE IT.
(This is how all bad ideas start. See: 300k and counting of teh Pokemanz.)
And I was still feeling cranky and spiteful, so I sort of subconsciously collected a bunch of pertinent cliches and tropes, stole some characters out of a random dream, and set about with some systematic literary arson.
Few years later, Sinistral is 168k, finishing its third draft, and 300 pages long. And I have a really hard time describing it beyond "Well, I got tired of cliches and cliche attitudes, so I fixed it and somehow made it mostly coherent." To test this hypothesis, I braved TV Tropes after work today and made a list. In no particular order. And without links, because I'm lazy.
Badass Princess Those around Analinn (MC/POV) tend to think she can fight and be a badass, but really, she only knows enough to buy time to run away. What she does know she's really good at, though.
Classic Princess Linnana is sort of the foil to Analinn, except for the part where she is very emotionally unstable and Analinn is not, and no one knows how unstable until the last second. When it's too late.
Theme Twin Naming: Sort of. Is it still theme naming when they're matrinymics?
Patronymic: See above. The ruler passes the name to the first born. The first born were twins. Time to be creative.
The Maiden Name Debate When Analinn gets married, she gets three sets of IDs. One is her new married name. One is hyphenated. And one is her maiden name, so she can still be a political ballbuster without bringing up sticky questions like when the fuck did you get married. She goes by whatever is most likely to get her what she wants, but prefers her married name. Take that, trope.
Rebellious Princess Analinn gets herself disinherited and says fuck being a queen, but she is A) terrified of the responsibility B) knows she's not the most qualified heir available and C) has a backup plan. ...This also isn't an easy decision for her, due to family pressures, and it takes her half the novel to solidify it enough to act. So she's not exactly just throwing her nice things and stomping off in a huff, either.
Kissing Cousins I'm calling it subverted because in reading the trope description, it's for either forced royal incest or the creep factor. Analinn's parents are third cousins (or second; it's a very minor point) and weren't forced to marry each other, but her mother found her father to be the most palatable option of the bunch. Yet they're also not in love, either. They put up with each other.
Aristocrats are Evil Another family's younger son has "pet charities" that he funds through starting rumors and then charging the media for exclusive interviews over. They are, for the most part, generally very personable people. But Carlo is obviously my favorite minor character.
Royals Who Actually Do Something They do. A lot of stuff. Yay, politics.
Inadequate Inheritor Analinn knows her sister's more qualified; her sister knows; her mother knows. This isn't a secret, and no one has any angst about that. The devil's in the details.
Not So Imaginary Friend Due to privacy concerns, Analinn's boyfriend catches a lot of shit at work about his "imaginary girlfriend." It's pretty minor, but I guess it counts. She does show up in the office once or twice on legitimate business errands, but there's never any actual "yes that's her" validating moment.
Sister Rivalry Except they're not rivals. They're best friends until Linnana has her little mental breakdown.
All a Part of the Job Analinn admittedly does get called in a lot, but that tapers off after her family gets used to thinking of her as not living at home, and she puts her foot down.
Brilliant But Lazy Jarik in a nutshell, really. This is good, because his brilliance is generally skewed toward troublemaking and delinquency.
Grass is Greener It is totally greener.
Was Actually Friendly Analinn goes through... oh, 2/3 of the novel fearing her mom's reactions/retribution/disappointment, and then finds out that A) her mom knew all along and B) her mom is totally supportive, just wanted to make sure that she wasn't taking the first escape route to present itself.
Pink is for Sissies Linnana loves pink, but doesn't wear it often out of professionalism (sticks to gray and dark blue suits). Linnana is arguably the strongest politician but oh so damn girly.
Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Analinn can't drive and still has major culture shock moments regarding "normal" life. However, she can boss around entire Parliamentary Houses.
Smarter Than You Look Except everyone but Analinn knows she's smarter than she thinks she is and therefore portrays herself. (Turns out, it's a type of smart--she's more intel-based than smooth-talking diplomacy.)
The Chosen One The majority religion believes in fate and fatecasters, who announce at a young age the 'niche' (or trope) you'll fit into. There's actually a reasonably high accuracy rate for the real ones. Analinn's parents mostly buy into it, as does the nation at large, but she doesn't. Whether that accuracy is self-fulfilling prophecy is literally anyone's guess. Sinistral takes a straightforward "yes, religion exists, moving on" approach.
Can't Have Sex, Ever Life is difficult when your boyfriend's allergic to OTC birth control ingredients and you're too high-profile to just waltz in and get something hormonal. However, changing name and moving to another country solves this.
Intertwined Fingers They hold hands a lot. It happens.
Official Couple There is NO love triangle, will-they-or-won't-they, ANYTHING. It's inarguable. So... take that, romance tropes in general. Another aristocrat comes calling, trying to weasel into the family, and she tells him to shove it.
Talented Princess Regular Guy ...Or is it, when the Regular Guy actually teaches the Talented Princess what makes her Badass in the first place?
They Do Yeah, not so much a cliche here. It happens.
Understanding Boyfriend Technically. Although he bitches a lot. ...A lot. And comes very, veeery close to cracking under the stress.
Parental Marriage Veto She lives in fear of this. It never happens.
Big Fancy House Eh. It's a big fancy house, but it's also the hub of executive power. Basically the American White House. They just happen to live there.
Blue Blood Except with a lot of social mobility. You can make your way through the ranks if you've got the elbow grease and the talent.
Big Screwed-Up Family Like most families, they think they're more screwed up than they probably are. Things are just emphasized since they happen to make a lot of big decisions.
Royal Blood It's a monarchy. Sorry. (But they can be voted out of power.)
Succession Crisis HAHAHA. GLEE. It's only a crisis because Analinn overreacts, and even then, only in her own mind. It's actually very not a big deal once she mans up. However, since this whole thing is in her POV... unreliable narrator much? *evil grinch smile*
All Nations are Superpowers Some are. The ones that end up sparking the war and the assassination necessity are basically impoverished, corrupt Third World Nations being little pissants and getting slapped down. BALANCE OF POWER.
Obnoxious In-laws Jarik's aunt and cousin hate Analinn on sight. They're prejudiced against aristocrats because one knocked up the cousin and bailed. Another cousin is just taking the opportunity to be a bitchy little punk. However, instead of begging her to be nice and put up with it, he encourages her to just deck the punk cousin when he deserves it. She does. At the baby shower. And almost breaks his nose.
Almighty Mom Both mothers are actually pretty "almighty," but one of them is actually a queen, soooo...
Good Parents Jarik's parents are awesome. As are Carlo's.
Mandatory Motherhood One of the reasons Analinn bailed was because of the 'produce an heir' deal--she knew the guy she wanted to marry wouldn't be capable of that kind of lifestyle, and couldn't stomach anyone else. Linnana takes that a lot better. Is kind of reluctant, but accepts it.
So Proud of You It's sort of a byline and goes without much acknowledgment.
After the End Heh. Basically... I took string theory, combined it with fears regarding the Large Hadron Collider, and had myself a world. And then advanced it a couple hundred years, so the 'First World' nations come off as fairly modern. But technically, it IS "after the end." And I did that to justify some quirks in the fantasy aspect, not to spite the trope, too!
EVERY SINGLE DAD TROPE Dasin is not overprotective, by a long shot. He does not have any "daddy's girls" except for maybe the youngest and the brattiest, but as we find out, she was almost a miscarriage (thus spoiled more), and she's brilliantly manipulating the brat image in order to literally run away with a stable boy. No so much a Daddy's Girl. Meanwhile, Dasin isn't happy with his own marriage, so he resents Analinn for liking hers, and doesn't really connect with any of the other kids. He's just sort of... there in the background. Parent Non Grata. Although he is seen in a few sympathetic/encouraging scenes, and on decent terms with his wife. So it's all very ambiguous and none of the kids really knows what the hell "dads" are supposed to do besides donate sperm. And balance budgets.
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