I've been thinking about this because of the shitty ads for contemporary YA romance going around and the way books are marketed using an extreme amount of fanfiction tropes and almost nothing else. Like yes tropes ARE a part of literature and can be used to help catalogue books and movies in archives and such but they aren't supposed to be supplements for summaries and plot.

Like if you tell me something is contemporary YA which follows a businesswoman struggling at her job and trying to figure out why she's unhappy slowly getting closer to the local cafe barista when she stops in over the course of the novel and she goes on a journey of self discovery and etc etc that would at least tell me what the book is about. I probably wouldn't read it or like it if I read it because I don't like contemporary YA romance but I at least know what it's about and would be able to recommend it to someone if they were looking for something similar.

But if you took that same book and ONLY told me it was contemporary YA romance, slowburn, and coffee shop, that doesn't really tell me anything about the characters or why I should care. These are original characters I can't just look at ao3 tags and be like "oh yeah I like these characters already I want to see them in this specific scenario" these are original characters and you have to give me a reason to care. When I'm looking for a book to read I'm looking for a book, not a fanfiction for something I already like. If I wanted to read fanfiction I would read it. Publishing fanfiction doesn't not make it fanfiction and describing books exclusively in fanfiction tropes and nothing else does not a good book advertisement make. They are not a replacement for an actual summary, they are a tool that can help quickly identify books in a catalogue or archive if someone is looking for something to read.

This isn't to dunk on fanfiction! I write and read fanfic but it's more akin to the junk food of the literature world. It's good and yummy and can fill in a specific niche in internet communities, but it shouldn't make up your entire literature consumption, yknow?

Also for fucks sake, stop describing classical literature with fanfiction tropes you are doing a severe disservice to them and completely missing the point of literally all those books. If I have to see one more person describe Pride and Prejudice as "enemies to lovers" I will scream.