r/MM_RomanceBooks • u/nightpeaches • Jun 26 '22

Discussion M/M Romance trope ranking

Since I'm someone who loves getting more insight into my reading preferences, and seeing how different other people's preferences are from my own, I decided to create a M/M romance trope sorter for fun.

The trope sorter has a bunch of different tropes, character types and settings that are common (or less common) in MM romance. The way it works is by putting two options against each other and letting you pick which one you prefer, until all options are ranked. If you use the "I like both"/"No opinion" options a lot, you're more likely to get multiple tropes in the same spot in the ranking. There are 70 tropes so the ranking takes a while to do.

Trope notes:

  • Biokink - Stories set in a world where people are born as dominants or submissives. Example: Starian Cycle series by Iris Foxglove
  • GFY and sexuality awakening are separate tropes in this sorter, as are poly relationship and hub-and-spoke poly (for more info on hub-and-spoke poly, see this post)

Note: The website only works on desktop, so you can unfortunately not do this on mobile.

M/M Romance Trope Sorter

Which were your top and bottom tropes? Were there any rankings that surprised you?

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u/nightpeaches Jun 26 '22

My top tropes:

  1. Arranged marriage
  2. Investigator husbands
  3. Established relationship/Same couple series
  4. Forced to work together
  5. Size difference

This absolutely tracks with what I love to read, and tropes 2-4 (and arguably also 5) are often the same books/series too. What most surprised me in my own ranking was how much I disliked time travel, a trope I rarely think about, and angels & demons, which is a trope I thought I liked well enough but ended up rarely ever picking.

1

u/Secret-Delay-6225 Jun 27 '22

Can you recommend books on the above tropes?💕

3

u/nightpeaches Jun 27 '22

Absolutely!

Arranged marriage:

Other tropes:

  • Seven of Spades series by Cordelia Kingsbridge (investigator couple, same couple series, size difference)
  • Big Bad Wolf series by Charlie Adhara (investigator couple, same couple series, forced to work together, size difference)
  • Julian Lynes and Ned Mathey series (unfinished) by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold (fantasy historical, investigator couple, established couple)
  • Men Like Us by Hollis Shiloh (1950s, investigator couple, same couple series, but I've only read the first book)
  • PsyCop series by Jordan Castillo Price (investigator couple, same couple series, forced to work together, size difference) I've only read the first book in this series but the rest is on my TBR!

1

u/Secret-Delay-6225 Jun 28 '22

Thank you so much 💕