The Internet is an amazing place.

          I mean, if it weren't for the Internet, we wouldn't have TV Tropes, which is my favorite website of all time. If you don't know what that is, either because you've been living under a rock with surprisingly good wi-fi or because you simply don't care, let me enlighten you.

Do you have a spare moment to hear about the greatest website of all time besides the Heroic Imagination Project (more on this later)?

          TV Tropes is kind of like Wikipedia, except it focuses on describing and providing examples of plot conventions and devices you can find . . . well, everywhere, from video games to movies and from musicals to Youtubers. IT'S AMAZING.

          I actually use this website pretty often, either when I'm bored or suffering from a horrible case of writer's block, as it's useful to get to know your characters and even your writing style. You see what tropes your writing and characters fall into, and it can help you move on from that particular scene you've been stuck on for, like, two weeks (guilty). It's important to note that tropes aren't necessarily bad things, much like clichés, even though they refer to different things.

          Here's the director's cut version of my favorite tropes. Keep in mind these are my personal opinions and yours might differ from them, but TV Tropes has such a large selection it's almost impossible for my favorite ones to exactly match all of yours.

MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

          DEFINE: People often have good intentions, but find themselves making one mistake after the other and, sometimes, those mistakes can be downright catastrophic. This trope comes into play when someone, typically a hero, realizes their actions have brought disastrous consequences—they might have caused pain, distress or even loss of life.

          EXPLAIN: Listen. I'm all for people snapping out of it and opening their eyes to the consequences of their actions. As psychologists and psychotherapists, we're going to deal with impulsive people, and it's our job to make them realize their actions have consequences, their decisions have consequences, and it's our job to make them think before they act. Naturally, sometimes that's just downright impossible, as there are certain situations when you just don't have the time or the cognitive resources to stop and think about what you're doing (if there's a bear chasing you, YOU GET AWAY FROM THE BEAR or you pull a James Ford and, you know. Shoot it). Point is—I'm interested in what happens after. How will the character react? How will other characters react? What impact will it have on them and on the story?

          EXEMPLIFY: Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, after saving Darth Sidious and killing Mace Windu. He literally says it, and it's a moment that solidifies his character and reminds us he's still a young boy who's terrified of himself. He's morally ambiguous and does questionable things; in this case, instead of making amends, HE KEEPS DOING EVEN EVILER STUFF. It reminds us character development isn't always for the better.

VENGEFUL VENDING MACHINE

          DEFINE: You give a vending machine your money and expect it to work properly. Except it doesn't.

          EXPLAIN: I have a long history with evil vending machines. Back when my book avery. was still up, Elliot had his issues with vending machines, as they always kept his money or he got his hand stuck. THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME. It's eight-fifteen in the morning, I have class in fifteen minutes, and I need my coffee. I need my coffee regardless of what time it is, since time doesn't actually exist, and, since I paid for my coffee, I'M GETTING MY DAMN COFFEE. Once, I paid 40 cents for a 'full' coffee. The machine gave me back half of the coffee I was expecting it to. Tl;dr don't trust vending machines because they're evil and smell fear.

          EXEMPLIFY: Turk from Scrubs. When Carla is giving birth, he gets his hand stuck in a vending machine twice and nearly misses the birth of his daughter. 

BECOMING THE MASK

          DEFINE: Someone has to adopt a fake identity for whatever reason. Eventually, they grow to love and identify with their new identity, and want to keep it. And they do.

          EXPLAIN: See the example below. This trope goes hand in hand with deindividuation and groupthink, which are two of the main concepts behind my book, Project Oxygen (which just so happens to have been loosely inspired by the Stanford Prison Experiment), and they're both two things I really enjoy reading about, as my major requires it. I think it's interesting to see how characters behave throughout it all; why did they adopt that fake identity? Did they have a choice? If yes, what were the alternatives? Why do they keep the fake identity? What would be necessary to get them out of it? In my opinion, in provides great insight to a character's motivations, and it has nothing to do with your emotional strength—you might have good apples and bad barrels. 

          EXEMPLIFY: The participants of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (bet you're super shocked I found a way of including this in a chapter THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT). Jokes aside, I'm including this here because it just shows how many things tropes can be applied to. If you don't know the experiment, I'm not going to explain it on this chapter because, again, it has nothing to do with it, but feel free to Google it and then get back to me with what you thought of it. All you need to know is that those participants, college students, eventually turned into the roles they were playing in the experiment—they adopted prison guard and prisoner mentality, depending on the role they had been assigned, which led to a bunch of issues that made the researchers end the experiment after six days instead of the planned fourteen. Zimbardo himself found that he was beginning to think like those guards. It wasn't pretty.

BATTLE COUPLE

          DEFINE: THEY FIGHT TOGETHER. Then they kiss.

          EXPLAIN: THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE TROPES AS EVIDENCED BY THE EXTREME AMOUNT OF CAPS LOCK. Ahem. I don't even know why I like it so much, but I . . . I like how close these couples are, and how they can separate business from pleasure (most of the time). I like the witty banter and the comradeship and everything that goes along with it (one of them snapping when the other gets hurt? The big NOOOOOO? Sign me up).

          EXEMPLIFY: ROOT AND SHAW FROM PERSON OF INTEREST. That is all. Also, Han and Leia from Star Wars, Adrian and Rosa and Jake and Amy from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

          There are plenty more, trust me (Climatic Music!!!!!!!!), and some aren't even listed on the website. For example, Friends to Lovers is nice, but you know what's better? Enemies to Friends to Lovers. Sharing a bed? Heck yes. There are also tropes I really, really don't like, such as Love Triangle (in monogamous relationships), Dangerous Possessive Lover and Yet Another Stupid Death, but I'm to blame for this one because I always find the dumbest ways to die in video games.

          What are your favorite tropes, regardless of whether they're listed on TV Tropes or not? Which ones do you absolutely hate?