As a fantasy writer, I earn my keep with the use of tropes. They are my bread and butter. They settle onto my characters like long lost lovers. Some of the most beloved characters in literary history fall into one trope or another. My favorite is the magical girl, the dark lord, and the femme fatale. Catwoman is possible the first name on anyone’s lips when you think of femme fatales, but Catwoman is just a persona slapped on top of a trope. The Oxford Dictionary defines a trope as “a commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs, or clichés in creative works.” Fantasy tropes are those literary tropes that occur in fantasy novels, television shows, radio shows, cartoons, and the list really could go on forever. There are dozens upon dozens of tropes available for use in any number of ways by authors. Wikipedia has devoted considerable space to the topic. However, the use of tropes that victimize women is a dizzyingly popular choice that authors have been milking since the written word was pressed into a book. This raises question on whether fiction is art that is imitating life? What happens when we apply the beloved tropes from …show more content…
The damsel in distress trope has prevailed through the ages. It has survived Greek tragedies to Percy Jackson to The Girl who played with Fire. These stories are spoon-fed to our children through children 's books and more popularly, Disney and Pixar movies. Disney continues to set forth the ideal that females, like Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty, and Rapunzel, are just waiting for a strong man to rescue them. In today 's libraries there exists scores, upon scores of books featuring, the typical female victim, or the distressed damsel. She is often terrified while being terrorized by one male character that then has to be eventually rescued by