Probably! And the stories don’t make it much better! Ahhhh one day of morning sickness and now I’ve just got a bump with 2 guys fighting over me!
Where are the hormones? The swollen feet? The sore boobs and back pains?
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I believe this trope rose more in popularity due to Twilight and it’s ehem fanfiction turn into it’s own full fledge movie 50 shades.
Twilight did try to touch on Bella’s pregnancy but personally it was gloss through since it’s not 9 months and it’s more of a romance and fantasy…so that aspect is not covered totally like in reality… as in the gravity of a pregnant woman and the situation she faces is not much touch upon in Twilight like how would a normal human mother face.
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read a story on Episode that was like about this girl that’s like shy and stuff and gets bullied a lot and the LI was just like, “I saw you four years ago doing homework and I fell in love with you.”
The characters have no personality… interests… etc, the LI helps the MC constantly and it’s just- the main conflict is literally just the bullies. There is no falling in love.
…there should be good internal conflict I think.
Personally I like stories where they’re kinda friends first- or maybe they know eachother and are slightly flirty but don’t really consider a relationship at all but they work so well together and are practically a team.
In one of my favorite shows- it was this crime drama thing, and the MC and LI worked together to solve cases and at the end of each episode they would go out and eat together. Literally every one. They would talk about things that happened briefly and life lol. It was great. It showed their relationship growing each time and how they worked so well together… before they even considered getting together.
I just really enjoy the bad boy stories, even if it’s always the same 
But the ones where the bad boy just treats the MC badly all the time are just bad for me. Especially the ones with emotional abuse, I don’t get why people like them so much. At least let the MC stand up for herself!
Romance happening to fast is something I personally don’t really mind because there can still be romance after they get together. But I get the part about the conflicts from the outside. I wouldn’t mind reading 20 chapters about a happy couple 
I have to agree with everything mentioned in the blog post! Just like Cat I really, really enjoy the bad boy stories but once there is emotional abuse and treating the MC badly I stop reading it.
When it comes to making the romance happen too fast I don’t mind it that much, I guess. But it is way better when we get the chance to see what made them choose each other, to see the whole journey.
And mean girls… yes. Can’t describe how much it annoys me to see a mean girl only made to ruin relationships.
Added tags 
Hey @Bloggers & @Bookworms, what romance tropes make you stop reading, if any? Take a read of this and tell me what you think!
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When the characters are supposed to have a date or bonding scene together and then the writer just skips over it. Like why? Huh?
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This happens?
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Yep, just read a story like this lol XD. At least in Episode. Happens quite often.
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Eek! That’s terrible. Why would the author do this?!
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I mean, unless it happens in the next episode… but it was on a shelf too!
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Oh, boy, was it a romance?
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Yep!
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Okay there’s a scene in the next ep but for some reason in the last ep they walked off when it was supposed to be a bonding scene. Weird.
But I’ve definitely seen people skip past romantic/bonding scenes.
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Very weird.
In saying that, there are quite a few weird Episode writers.
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Omg there are so many of these that I agree with!
Abusive Bad Boys
I think this was worded really well. In the real world, the people called ‘bad boys’ in episode stories are the teenage drug dealers, the emo/goth/punk ones, or just the @ssholes.
I know people from all three of those categories, some nice, others not so much. The ones who aren’t nice aren’t liked, surprise surprise. Except in episode it seems that the rude ones are the ones girls fawn over. Huh? People don’t do that irl. That alone would make me put down a story right off the bat. It’s unrealistic. Girls/people attracted to guys aren’t idiots.
As well as that, romanticising abuse is just wrong. Don’t do it because in real life it leaves scars. I don’t care if you think it’s ‘cute’. You’re teaching impressionable young people that that kind of behavious is ok, even desired, and sets them up for a path of self destruction.
Making the romance happen too fast
Aha this is something I really wanted to talk about.
When someone walks into a room - you do not immediately fall in love with them. Ever. No matter how good-looking they are. It just doesn’t make sense. Yes, teenagers are full of hormones which allow them to have feelings for someone much quicker or whatever, but there’s a limit to insanity.
On top of that, if the romance progresses to fast you run out of conflict. the writer speeds through the actually interesting conflict, digging themselves into a hole where the only thing they can think of is to throw a ‘mean girl’ in there to rile everyone up a little. Mean girls don’t even exist in real life, at least not in the context where their only purpose is to bully the poor helpless MC. The mean girl has no d-mn character, either. She’s vain, full of herself and narcissistic. It’s boring and flat and lazy.
Throwing in Trauma
This just makes me cringe.
If you want a traumatised MC, I’m not gonna stop you, but jeez do it right. Trauma is not one flashback/panic attack and then you’re all good. It is not something your boyfriend can ‘fix’. It is not something that only affects one measly part of your life.
Idk, that bit just annoys me sm, but I won’t get into it bc I’ll prolly have to censor half of it if I do lol
Defined by their romance
Lazy.
Just lazy.
If someone is defined by their partner, spending every waking moment thinking about them, then they no longer have a life. They just have an obsession, and it’s not healthy, to put it frankly. When I was in my (one and only XD) relationship, I barely thought about the guy outside of our dates. Romance is rarely all in from the get-go. It takes time, and effort, and even then it shouldn’t consume every part of your life.
and that’s my input XD
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oof I hate when some people talk about trauma because I thought that trauma was like this really intense one event that happened in your life, which, in a lot of cases it is but like other times - and in the case for me, you don’t know you’ve been traumatized by something until literally years later!
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I’ll literally read the most toxic romance because the authors are good at suspense lol. I can be laughing at the characters and be like, “Jeez this is so toxic!” but then I’ll still read because that’s all that’s on Episode and I have this weird curiosity to figure out the formula of those stories…
However, I will exit a story if it’s a boring romance.
There have been so many stories with sweet romance, but there just wasn’t enough conflict to get me interested! Or, the characters were boring!
I’ll expand on this by explaining my ideal romance in stories and the cliche stuff I see, and then finally the boring stuff. Cuz tbh unless a cliche story is grossly misrepresenting stuff or is toxic I’ll tend to say it’s better than something that is flat and boring. Edit: Ended up going into more cliche than boring stuff but meh!
Okay- Ideal. Now, my taste is gonna be different from others’ tastes lol. My favorite things that happen in romances is when the LI and MC actually spend time with each other and we see their relationship growing! I think there are definitely some stories where the LI and MC turn out to be in love (I’m not talking love at first sight, a lot of these stories say they are slow burn, and the relationship is “slowly” building but in the end you don’t know why they are in love) and it seems to be based purely on attraction.
I like when the characters actually have conversation, and there isn’t just this time skip of “oh, we went on this date and bonded a lot!”. Because that does happen too where the author just skips a lot of stuff that I would have liked to read through. I liked how Charlotte Bronte did this in Jane Eyre. However, this romance is definitely weird and toxic, it does show like actual in-depth conversation that they have and it doesn’t just skip things.
And I also enjoy stories that aren’t JUST PURELY romance. Like I don’t like when the conflicts only revolve around the romance plot and not anything else. Like, these people have whole lives you can play around with. For instance, in the Sound of Music, there was an interesting plotline about N@zis and a father being emotionally distant from his children. And obviously the whole music part lol. It just makes the romance that much more interesting and you don’t have to rely on the whole fake cheating plotline, the kidnapping plotline, the hot and cold plotline (like MC and LI having a whole thing where they keep almost connecting then something stops them), the mean girl, PREGNANCY, the list goes on…
I’ve just noticed that when you rely on purely romance to fuel the plot… after they get together and that conflict is over with you have to add on more conflict for the reader to keep being interested. So often times authors tact on this enemy of the LI or something bad happens to the MC (basically both lol). Ofc it’s present from the beginning (well most times) but it’s never realistic to the point where you’re sympathizing with them. No, you expect the MC getting kidnapped and you’re like “stupid b*tch deserves it”. It’s like watching a horror movie and watching the characters make horrible stupid decisions. Sound of Music spoilers: However, if you have a much more realistic conflict this doesn’t tend to happen. In the Sound of Music, there is this N@zi historical thing going on because this was based on a real story. In the musical at least, this conflict is present throughout the whole plot as characters whisper about it and you see the world around them changing. Which makes it much more realistic when Maria and they all have to flee.
K*dnapping plotlines often aren’t realistic because they’re so overused. But to aide my examples, let me try and explain a way to make this feel more realistic in comparison to trending stories. This is not me saying that this is how k!dnapping goes, this is just a way to make it feel more realistic in regards to the story. Usually in cliche trending stories, you don’t know who the k!dnapper is but you have guesses lol. I mean, it’s easy to guess. It’s usually this big thing where the MC is missing for like months and its very dramatic…
However, if you were going for a more gothic romance where you see a character (the k!dnapper) slowly going downhill. This can either be a sideplot, or somehow involved with the MC/LI. Ex: MC’s brother or uncle. If it’s more personal, maybe the overall message of the story can deal with mental health and how love can play a role in this. Perhaps the MC and her brother aren’t doing well and MC grows with LI, but her brother gets worse until something ultimately happens that leads to the k!dnapping. Perhaps the actual incident is short and MC gets away. And obviously is the accurate? Idk, but its just to show you that this at least feels more realistic than other cliche stories. Well, hopefully at least.
And characters are really important. I mean, in any story. But I hate when authors rely on tropes in a romance and make the LI the same as all LI’s and the MC the same as all MC’s.
OR (In a more boring flat story) the characters are not memorable and are flat and boring. I think that it’s important to make memorable characters. Except for background characters, I think it’s important to even make side characters have their little quirks and problems/conflicts. I see a lot of people make these characters lives revolve around the MC and LI. It’s infuriating! They have their own lives! Or they should!
Anyway that’s all I have to say, lol.
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I’ve probably said this before, but when the MC and the LI are too perfect.
If your story is purely romance, you need good flaws to keep the story going. If not, you have to rely on outside conflict to keep the story going. Even if there’s a story that has a repeated plot and such, I’ll like and enjoy it SO MUCH more if the characters (mainly the MC) has flaws that affect the plot!
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