Our Tournament of Tropes community event is nearing its conclusion. The semifinal is here! I hope you've all been enjoying our first community event of 2023.

You can view the full bracket HERE. Read on to vote.

Read on to learn more about the tropes doing battle today, and if you like them, check out the book representing them! Laterpress is not using affiliate links for this community event. All proceeds from any sales go directly to the authors!

When can I vote?

Mark your calendars! All voting rounds begin at 1pm Eastern, and close at 11am Eastern on the day the next voting round begins. 

Round of 4 - Right now! Keep reading!

Championship - Monday, March 13

Semifinal Matchup #1: Reluctant Heroes vs. Alien Artifacts

‍The Reluctant Hero - Often, when a hero undertakes a quest, they do it because they feel a calling to the task. In other cases, their life may depend on it and they have no other choice to proceed. But sometimes, our hero is perfectly cozy and content with their life, but the course of events drags them along on an adventure (though they would have preferred to just stay home). Those are your reluctant heroes.

You’ll encounter reluctant heroes in The Adventurer’s Guide To Shopkeeping and Sidequests, by Elle Wilson

Alien Artifacts are a popular science fiction trope, where explorers encounter some relic or piece of technology from a lost or vanished alien race. The Stargate franchise is filled with alien artifacts, from the Stargates themselves, which allow for travel across the galaxy, to lost deposits of knowledge, and even the lost city of Atlantis itself. These artifacts don’t always push humanity forward though. In the Dead Space games, alien Markers lead to madness, death, and nightmarish transformations. 

You can find alien artifacts in On the Outward Edge, by C.P. Night

Semifinal Matchup #2: Murphy's Law vs. Secret Worlds

Murphy’s Law is popularly known as the idea that “Anything that can go wrong, WILL go wrong.” Characters may make careful plans to confront an enemy, but those plans will all go awry, often spectacularly. Any genre can use this trope. I’m most familiar with its use in military sci-fi, where battle plans against invading aliens blow up in our hero’s faces, or in fantasy, where best-laid-plans devolve into the kinds of hijinks you may see from a good group of D&D players.

Murphy’s Law is in full effect in The Night Rangers, by J. R. Froemling.

Secret Worlds are whole societies running parallel to our own, in secret. They’ve been there the whole time, if you only knew where to look. The wizarding world of Harry Potter is a secret world, hiding from the Muggles. The John Wick franchise depicts a vast secret brotherhood of assassins, with its own arcane rules and traditions. 

In A Wreck of Witches by Nia Quinn, witches and magical beings hide their talents and do what they can to pass as normal, to avoid upsetting those without magic.