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FIRST_GIRL

                                             March 26, 2021

In discussions of the "Quientessential Quintuplets"
you'll see complaints about what they refer to as
"the first girl trope".

                                             QUINTHUNT

   That's the common plot pattern where the
   candidate introduced earliest in the story
   turns out to be the winning candidate at the
   story's end.

   Calling it a "trope" is being dismissive--     The word "motif" has
   modern usage has that as only one notch        nearly identical
   above a "cliche".                              meaning, but without
                                                  the dismissive tone.
       Myself, I think it's a sign of the
       limited understanding of much of              This aspect of language--
       the audience.  If they can                    a choice between nominal
       percieve a pattern, they think                synonyms for a phenomena
       that's a sign of some sort of                 can slant judgement--
       problem-- or maybe, they think                seems problematic.
       they can score points for
       intelligence and use a "complaint"                 I'd call this a
       as an excuse to demonstrate their                  syndrome but I've
       insight.                                           over-worked that
                                                          trope.
       I think that it's a very difficult
       question: when there's a recurring,
       common motif in play, it could be
       that it's a sign of the author's
       laziness, but it *also* could be a
       clue as to the underlying function
       of this kind of story, it could be
       that that common element is really
       needed to get the story to "work".

             Consider, is it necesary for
             a detective story to be a
             murder mystery?  Detectives
             might investigate all sorts
             of situations, and might be
             called in to solve a number
             of different kinds of problems--

             The continual resort to murder
             might be a cliche, or it might
             be a wise recognition of the
             nature of the genre.

                   But even that can be a difficult
                   question: one era's necessary
                   genre-element can become another
                   era's abandoned concern...

                   The complaints ("trope!", "cliche!")
                   might be a sign of the fading power of
                   that element-- or it might be, and I
                   suspect often is, a clueless disregard
                   for underlying required patterns.


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