DISCLAIMER: THIS POST IS ONLY MEANT TO DESCRIBE TROPES USED IN VISUAL STORYTELLING AND MEDIA, NO ONE IS TARGETED. THE LINKS LEAD TO THE PAGES WITH THE REAL-LIFE TERM AND EXAMPLES FOR EACH TROPE.

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So I've already discussed the two mainstays of my typecasting as a VN dev....and now as promised, I will discuss the close seconds...

While this little list doesn't cover everything, these stick out the most in my works (next to the main two):

• "Facial profiling" - when the racial/ethnic coding of humanoid characters is "signaled" through a visual characteristic. In works that have human characters, I often write them in contexts that help "represent" real life people/communities/etc, so I use this trope to help differentiate them as skin color cannot do that alone (multiple races come in multiple shades). I normally do this by the shape of the nose. If you see enough of my work with "human" characters, you will often be able to tell what "race" they would be if they existed in real life. If not used carefully, it can come off as extremely racist - like a lot of retro anime can attest to, but I can assure you that the simple differentiation of nose shape I use is NOT meant to make any one racial coding less attractive than the others. The EF project is a prominent example for this.

• "Fantasy caste system" - kinda self explanatory, when fantasy creatures behave culturally in a way that bring to mind a culture or lifestyle that is or has existed before in real life. Project Equals is a prominent example in that fairies represent upper class USA (less racial variation) by living high up in nutrient-rich trees, and goblins represent lower/working class USA (more racial variation) and literally living in the ground under the fairy trees.

• "Fantastical racism" - the act of symbolizing real-life racism with fantasy analogues. The symbolism comes into play when I construct an analogue of the traits that are present in dealing with real-life racism. Anyone who has seen (or been) the behavioral patterns of people who experience or inflict racism will recognize them even in a fantasy setting, thus getting the point across while being digestible for audiences that might be triggered by a more blatant execution. Nearly all of my works have some shades of this.

• "Lampshading/deconstruction of character archetypes"- most notably, the "ace"(ex: Seraphia), "designated villain"(ex: Cocytus), or "forced proximity/strangled by the red string", as I often let characters lampshade these things and call them out for how ridiculous they can be in context. This does nothing to discredit any real-life occurrences, but the self-awareness of the characters involved can make the romance more believable as they explore avenues to learn, accept, and perhaps even justify it.

• "Cast of snowflakes" - this essentially means I take the time to try and give each and every character a unique facial structure (or similarity between blood-related characters). Though my art style has BLARING trademarks, I try my best to achieve this in every work, because I want any viewers to be able to identify their favorite character as if they were a real person - not just "character with eye-1 hairstyle 2 color 3".

I hope this clears up a little about how my art and writing work because I will be exercising these tropes regularly in the creation of future VNs! Please check out the ones I already have, as they exemplify some of these already!

#art #OCart #tropes #advice #discussion #media #writing #storytelling