Play a chill and light-hearted game of Kids On Bikes, investigating the minor mysteries of a small town. Then do a time skip and play the gritty CW reboot with the same characters, but using the Veronica Mars rpg “We Used To Be Friends”. Now you’re solving murders and keeping secrets.

I like the idea in fantasy that humans are better at maintaining things long term because they set up societies or professions to do it whereas dwarves and elves and stuff are like “just get bob to do it he’s got a good few hundred years left” and then bob doesn’t teach anyone else how to do it

do you think in fantasy settings with long-lived elves where elf-human relationships become common you’d have discourse about whether it’s unethical to pursue a human in your first century because your life with them basically functions as like, training wheels for the rest of your life. like regardless of whether or not it’s true, i bet there’d be a common feeling that elves who do that and then end up with another elf later are basically just using the human’s whole lifespan for character development and then moving on to a longer-term relationship they actually have to take seriously. and then there’d be a reaction that’s like how are those marriages less ethical than a centuries-old elf getting with a human with vastly less life experience, and also obviously in the first example it’s actually the human who’s problematic for being more relatively mature than the elf

ALT

We're having a Trope Flip Fest here at the Prompt Foundry for November 2025!

We all have our favorite tropes in media and fanwork, and we all have tropes we merely tolerate or are bored of. Either way, there's lots of room to have fun exploring the possibilities of turning the usual tropes on their heads!

A big thank you to everyone who helped contribute to this list by sharing their favorite tropes! It's great to have the community chime in.

These prompts are particularly well suited to prose writers, especially fanfiction writers, since that's the realm we're drawing inspiration from this month, but all artists and forms of creative work are more than welcome to join the fun.

Feel free to combine different days’ prompts with each other, or combine them with other events, like OC-tober, Inktober, or last year's Nom Nom November! Use your OCs, your favorite characters from media, your own experiences, whatever tickles your fancy.

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Respond to as many prompts as you want or as interest you, don’t worry about missing or skipping any, or posting your work after the day the prompt is assigned to. Remember, this is supposed to be fun!

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if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!

1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.

2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.

3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes

it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.

It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.

so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know

I started thinking about how fun it would be to play with the idea of two characters from completely different cultures bonding and getting along quite well, but due to their different backgrounds they have completely different ideas of what their dynamic with each other is. Like they are friends, but their ideas of the nature of their friendship are practically opposite from each other.

And the example idea that occurred to me was having one character who considers themselves the dominant one, who looks at the other one and thinks "this is my loyal companion, who has served me well and whom I can trust with my life. Though they are sometimes stubborn, and will refuse to obey if they cannot see the logic behind my desicions, I consider them more a friend than mere attendant."

And the other one considers themselves the one in charge, and looks at the other one like "this is my idiot friend, whom I clothe and feed because they can't be trusted to take care of themselves. They are charming in their own way, and I like this idiot too much to leave them to fend for themselves and very likely die."

And then I realised that's just the dynamic of having a cat.

My favourite trope in the world is overpowered main characters who think they aren't that great at whatever they're doing and they're just scraping by, meanwhile they're the devil incarnate from everyone else's pov

I love a Villain To Damsel pipeline

so imagine there is a kingdom which had a mythical Good King like 200 years ago. And then the good king was mortally wounded in his prime so he was carried away by sylphs and such into the magical sea to heal and someday return to reclaim his throne.

In the meantime the kingdom has been operating as a stewardship. there is an empty throne with the memory of an unimpeachably Good King, and a government of civil employees who sprang out of the palace staff immediately after the good kings demise. this government has been managing the kingdom with the express goal of making sure the king is able to return to a kingdom that has been well cared for in his absence.

and you know, it's been 200 years. this is just the government now. people talk about the good king in an archetypal sense, the way people talk about the constitution. "We can't do this, we can't do that, it wouldnt abide by the spirit of the good king's decrees," that sort of thing.

There's a democratic process, there's an electoral system, there's civil service departments. There's been a lot of development in considering the spirit of what it means to act on behalf of the good king. there's been a series of factions over the years interpreting this differently. people bemoan and bicker about the flaws of the kingdom constantly like "you know it wouldn't be Like This if the good king was here" no matter what *This* is.

And Then The Good King Returns.

What do you do?

There's no way to make this work. There's no way to do this. you've hashed out all these compromises and rules and rights over two hundred years of legal bickering. what happens if the good king disagrees with the consensus interpetation? what if the good king takes the throne and resumes the absolute monarchy and then possibly passes that monarchy on to an heir, who perhaps won't be a good king?

you thought this guy was mythical or at best long dead and heavily mythologized, and now he's standing here causing problems. you're looking around at everybody else you know like look. You seem like a genuinely really good dude. However.

However.

Wouldn't it be easier - wouldn't it be better for everyone - wouldn't it be most in the spirit of the good king if here and now you all make one quiet and terrible choice. and take up your long knives.

and the good king it turns out never arrived at all, so until he does you will continue to care for the kingdom in his name.

possession horror where the thing possessing the autistic character causes them to behave in a more neurotypical way. autistic possession horror where the thing inside you is easier to communicate with than you are, the thing inside you doesn’t have a flat affect, the thing inside you doesn’t let your body stim, the thing inside you is how you were told to behave and you can only do it when you are no longer you. autistic possession horror where you will never forget that everyone liked it better than you before they found out something was controlling you. autistic possession horror where they know what’s inside you isn’t you and debate whether it would be easier for everyone to leave you like this anyway. you agree. reblog.