S08.09: Our Favorite Romance Microtropes

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Society & Culture, Documentary, Books, Arts

4.9 • 889 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We had a great week, and so we decided we all need nice things, which means it's time to just talk about the stuff we love in romance. We're talking about our favorite microtropes in romance novels--the things that give us pure shots of joy. There's all sorts of stuff in here: contemporaries, historicals, paranormals, mafia, hockey, tattoos, piercings, kilts, families getting their comeuppance, and much much more.

If you'd like more romance chat in your life, please consider joining our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! There, magnificent firebirds hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Our next read along will be KJ Charles's The Magpie Lord. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.

Notes

It’s not too early to donate to our Fated States Giving Circle, or maybe you want to Run for Something.
You can check out the Collections page for more great book lists (made by humans!), and we also talked about the breeding kink episode in case you want to see just how unhinged we get on New Year’s Eve.
The Mandela Effect is in fact named after Nelson Mandela.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a researcher who has described universal pleasure centers.
Monkey Island is a real place called Cayo off the coast of Puerto Rico or a video game.
Here’s an amazing dissection of a microtrope beloved by Mary Balogh: stern men who can’t stop skinny dipping.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, today's going to be a goofy fun one.
0:02.6	You know, we deserve nice things, as I like to say.
0:04.9	We're having a good week.
0:06.4	We are.
0:08.7	Everybody, listen, faded states did the job.
0:12.2	We alone.
0:13.7	Alone.
0:14.6	It was just us against the world, and here we are.
0:16.6	No, listen, it's Wednesday, the 5th, and yesterday was Election, uh, as you can imagine, the text threads were bopping. And, uh, we did very well. And we're feeling very good. See to shining sea. Uh, we have done the job that we should have done last year. But we'll just let that go, let that go.
0:40.2	And all I just want to say is any person who helped us by giving to the Fated States Giving Circle with the stage project this year.
0:51.4	I know we were pushing it. I know a lot of you were like, oh, do we have to
0:54.4	have to listen to another blather about this? A lot, a lot, a lot of you gave money. We hit our
1:00.2	$10,000 goal. And that $10,000 went directly into the pocket of candidates in Virginia
1:07.6	who were door knocking and phone banking and getting out the vote.
1:12.3	And we flipped, as of today, 14 house delegate seats.
1:20.2	Yeah, those numbers were wild.
1:22.7	Right.
1:22.9	We were hoping for three. And we got 14.
1:29.1	Yeah.
1:29.8	So, wow.
1:32.8	And you know what?
1:33.6	Way to go Virginia.
	...

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