Tired Tropes

[AG31]

Good luck with it, but that is the one trope I have vowed not to touch. I'm not exactly sure why, but it annoys the fuck out of me.

having said that, I would not be surprised if it doesn't turn out to be your biggest hit.

Think harder. I assume it's not just the incest angle, since the whole thread is about incest. Is it the back seat? Too cramped and awkward to be believable?

 

[lovecraft68]

Think harder. I assume it's not just the incest angle, since the whole thread is about incest. Is it the back seat? Too cramped and awkward to be believable?

I'll preface this by saying what follows is personal opinion. I'm not judging anyone who chooses to write it.

For me, two things are at play.

1- For whatever reason these stories tend to do very well, so seeing the max results for minimal effort, the premise is low hanging fruit.

2-Although I/T by nature is far fetched, the idea a woman can sit on her son's lap three feet behind the father who is driving and fuck-sometimes multiple times-without him hearing anything, noticing anything in the rear view mirror or wondering why his wife is sitting in the back seat to begin with is an eye roll to me.

I never claim to be high brow or above some porn absurdity, but this premise reminds me of giving someone an award for getting up in the morning. Anyone can do this.

 

[vividlyyours]

I just submitted my tropiest of all trope stories -- a story about mom and son in the backseat of a car. It should be published within a day or so.

I look forward to it taking its place in the Literotica troposphere.

I also have a weakness for those stories.

 

[8letters]

I just submitted my tropiest of all trope stories -- a story about mom and son in the backseat of a car. It should be published within a day or so.

I look forward to it taking its place in the Literotica troposphere.

Do other categories have secret-sex-in-the-backseat-of-a-car stories? Or is it strictly an I/T thing?

 

[StillStunned]

Do other categories have secret-sex-in-the-backseat-of-a-car stories? Or is it strictly an I/T thing?

I thought Anal was all about sex in the backseat...

 

[SimonDoom]

Do other categories have secret-sex-in-the-backseat-of-a-car stories? Or is it strictly an I/T thing?

I did a quick search for "backseat" and found 14,088 stories that use the term in text, title, or tag. Scanning the list I saw stories that appear to feature a car backseat as a plot feature in Loving Wives, Erotic Couplings, and other categories. So it would appear it's not confined to I/T, although that's where the most popular stories of the type are.

 

[8letters]

My objection to tropes is that they seem to be shortcuts around character or plot development. In I/T love to see siblings drawing closer to each other over time, as when an author casts the brother as the long time protector of a younger sister or vice versa, and mutual affection develops into romantic interest. While quick and dirty stories have their place, longer and more involved pieces show better writing. Just because we like smut doesn't mean we don't like quality writing.

I suggest checking out my stories. I write long stories that avoid most tropes. My highest rated story is My European Summer Vacation, which is very non-tropey.

 

[THBGato]

Do other categories have secret-sex-in-the-backseat-of-a-car stories?

Room mates fall in love in Lesbian.

 

[8letters]

I did a quick search for "backseat" and found 14,088 stories that use the term in text, title, or tag. Scanning the list I saw stories that appear to feature a car backseat as a plot feature in Loving Wives, Erotic Couplings, and other categories. So it would appear it's not confined to I/T, although that's where the most popular stories of the type are.

Scanning the LW stories with "backseat", it seems to be a trope where the wife has sex in the backseat while the husband drives and listens in. So not secret-sex-in-the-backseat-of-a-car.

 

[SimonDoom]

Scanning the LW stories with "backseat", it seems to be a trope where the wife has sex in the backseat while the husband drives and listens in. So not secret-sex-in-the-backseat-of-a-car.

I haven't checked, but probably so, because the husband "knowing" is usually a key part of a Loving Wives story. In an I/T story, the husband is more just a plot device, a foil whose presence gives the backseat activities sizzle.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Whether you have an open marriage, a wife cuckolding her husband, or an illicit affair, there is a danger of things going horribly wrong. By adding semi-public or semi-private to the mix, you ratchet up the taboo, and having them caught makes for some riveting drama. However, being so bold as to fuck or suck your son while the father is driving that's insane, and I can't see it happening in real life.

 

[RetroFan]

One non-erotic trope that has been used for many years in all types of media, but which never gets tired and which I personally love and use all the time is 'blonde, brunette, redhead.'

A good example would be the girls in the Archie comics, where there is Betty (blonde), Veronica (brunette) and Cheryl (redhead). Or the original Mean Girls where Regina and Karen are blonde, Gretchen and Janis brunettes and Cady a redhead. It can also work with combinations of male and female characters, like Titanic, where Cal has brown hair, Jack blonde and Rose red hair.

In my story 'Cindy's Close Encounter' the three main cheerleaders are Cindy (the narrator) who is blonde, Wendy who is brunette and Jo who has red hair. The three girls' jock boyfriends also have hair colour the same as their respective girlfriends. And with the story being set in the late 1950s, when Cindy, Wendy and Jo's panties come down, one definitely sees that the three girls' carpets match their curtains, so to speak.

 

[AlexIce]

One of the reasons why I started writing my Touch of Magic series is to lampoon certain tropes (harems, mind control, bimbos, etc.) that I've seen being used by countless writers and pretty much turn them on their head.

I've gotten a couple emails (anonymous of course) dumping on me saying that if I hate them so much, then I shouldn't read them.

The point is more to poke fun at those who do a terrible job of using said tropes, not necessarily to crap on those genres. Besides, if I hated those genres, I wouldn't be writing a Novella based on a story from an author here on Literotica.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Well, incest stories, more than any other type of story here, are overflowing with repeating tropes and require more suspension of disbelief than Non-Human, SciFi&Fantasy, and Erotic Horror put together. The backseat mom and son trope already has like 30+ iterations, judging by what some readers of the category say.
But that's exactly how the category works; that's what the readers want from it. The numbers tell the truth more clearly than I ever could. So yeah, I don't see much sense in complaining about some specific tropes and themes in a category that is practically intended to work in such a way. Readers clearly like the I&T category just the way it is.

Just to quickly remind everyone just how much trope-centric Lit readership is. These are all today's I/T stories. Just take a look at the difference in views, favorites, and lists.




I rest my case.

 

[AlexBailey]

I’ve met some real world products of IT. In reality the trope forms are sick and selfish beyond measure, but believable plots of different IT stories with realistic backgrounds are possible.

I know a couple I met as fellow parents at my kids’ school who were know to be first cousins who took in kids from their dysfunctional family members. In a peer counseling session the guy shared his story that his cousin/wife and him are actually half siblings from the same father - one from the father and an aunt. They carry so much shame that they never sought relationships with anyone else and the kids they raised were also children from their father.

I also know a guy whose father spawned dozens of kids with random women. The guy has met women at bars and later found out they are half-siblings, and yes he once unknowingly fucked his half-sister.

My wife works with the homeless community and knows a beautiful woman in her early twenties with diagnosed schizophrenia whose fentanyl addicted dad used her regularly until he overdosed this summer. The daughter was clean and medicated for months - working toward an AA degree but she just showed up at shelter again, freshly gang raped.


There’s a lot of room for real drama and tragedy in the subject if you want to write something with literary value.

 

[AchtungNight]

Women in erotic stories are pretty much always happy bisexual sluts. I have used this trope a lot, I will admit, but I always try to put a unique spin on each female character I write. Not all are bisexual, some have to work up to being happy with their sexuality, some keep their interests quiet at first, some have other personality traits you wouldn’t expect, etc. I try to do similar stuff with the guys and my characters of uncertain gender (I have at least two).

I have used the blond, brunette, redhead trope in multiple stories. Fear, Lust, and Vanity features a trio of female characters with those hair colors. There are four brunettes of varying ethnicities in Girls Dorm Gathering, plus a redhead and a blonde.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Yep, I/T is full of tropes and unrealistic narratives. But then again, it's hard to craft an incestuous storyline without some suspension of disbelief. I understand plenty of readers just want a quick, simple story that gets them going in all the right places, so I can appreciate the simplicity of such stories without wanting to read them myself. This is a site for fantasies, after all.

What I will say frustrates me most about the category is that almost every story begins with our incestuous couple already attracted to one another. Even the slow-burns usually contain explicit sexually-charged narration right from the start. This is erotica, but not every thought you have towards your hot sister has to be sexual in nature. I wish more stories developed their characters in a slower, more natural way, progressing from platonicity to sex over time. It makes for a more engaging arc to the story, and (in my opinion) it's also just hotter to read about our characters grappling with this forbidden attraction.

But to each their own. There's a place for realism and a place for heightened fantasies. I've read and written incestuous stroke stories myself. Fair enough to all those who enjoy 'em!

I have some somewhat deep ones, that aren't just, "my brother's a hot, loner nerd. He jacked off in the panties I just changed with my bedroom door conveniently cracked open 3½ inches, so I'm gonna fuck him." And I've been working on another one.

 

[Abbafan]

I don't read I/T. I mainline Lesbian Sex like a junkie that's just heard there's a fungus affecting poppy plants. I've read over a thousand stories in the last year.

And the thing is, tired tropes are what readers want. They want the awkward meet-cute, the friends-to-lovers, the only-one-bed, the abusive ex that one character needs to be rescued from, the slow-growing feelings, they want the tearjerking coming out moment. Sure, the very best writers in the genre (@onehitwanda @Jackie.Hikaru @bi_cathy @redgarters @HelenL @Pluna @Areala-chan ET al ) put their own twists on these tropes or can get away with excluding them entirely. But they are mostly still there.

Readers want these. They are the drug we crave. As @StillStunned 's stats suggest readers lap them up. Omit your category's tropes at your peril. Unless you are as good as the writers listed above.

Yeah, when it comes to smut, I think people don't get tired of certain thing, those things varying from person to person.

Actually, this is true of a lot of mainstream movies and writing, too. I think one of the reasons the last Indiana Jones movie failed so hard is that they didn't like seeing the saga ending with Indy being punched out by a scrawny individual in order to prevent him from doing something dumb. Note: I'm not saying this was the only flaw that hurt the movie at the box office. Subverting expectations doesn't necessarily mean something is good. At least, a lot of the audience won't see it that way.