brightknightie | Snowflake challenge '26: #9 (Favorite trope)

snowflake_challenge: Tropes: "Talk about your favorite tropes (themes, motifs, cliches) in media or transformative works."

I've been musing on this Snowflake prompt since it posted. Just yesterday, I finally looked up the proper fannish/genre terms for my own most favorite kind of story (not previously having known there were terms for it!). Apparently, the vocabulary is "noblebright" (fantasy) and "hopepunk" (sci-fi). It seems these terms have nuances beyond their genre associations, but together they seem to orbit the general target of the stories of my heart.

I've previously tried to express this storytelling approach and way of understanding by quoting Lois McMaster Bujold on "choosing the hard right over the easy wrong," Saint Teresa of Ávila on "no hands, no feet on earth but yours," and Forever Knight on "the girl or the cup." But, unanchored, misconceived, those could be made to lead to despair, nihilism, hopelessness, and that's not at all what I want. Now, I do love to read tragic and sad stories! By all means, serve me character death! Serve me whump! But I want it in a world of meaning, a universe where the characters' choices and efforts matter. I want characters who fight for the good and the better and the right, whether at the closest, tiniest level in their own lives or at the widest, grandest level for all lives. I want stories that never preach cynicism to the reader.

The worlds in which these favorite character types live are of course full of woe. There are monsters and villains and tyrants who sometimes, perhaps often, win the day. But they won't -- can't -- win eternity. The stories emphasize that caring -- love, community, honesty, self-sacrifice, justice, mercy -- is brave, powerful, and dangerous to oppressive systems and all forces of darkness. Hope isn't just a feeling; it's a chosen determination about how to live. Actions have consequences. Characters have agency. Good and evil are different and the difference matters.

When a hero falls, his god embraces him, even if his world never did.

(Now that I have these words, I need to update my profile and standing "Likes & dislikes" post.)