Good All Along Trope

Hi everyone! So I got into a discussion with a friend of mine where we were trying to define what exactly is a “bad boy” in romance, and I realized that what I thought was a “bad boy” isn’t the traditional version that’s in romance. Where he’s toxic/abusive, but suddenly not so bad after he catches feelings? The “bad boy” trope didn’t seem to fit the male characters that I like. E.g. Kiryu/Majima from Yakuza games, Ryuji from Persona 5, Tora from Midnight Poppyland to give a few examples. The only thing they seemed to have in common is that people are usually intimidated by them/assume the worst about them, therefore they will usually keep their distance from people, but they’re actually really nice/loyal guys that have morals, and respect women.

And so I found the “Good All Along” trope that seems like a better fit? https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodAllAlong#:~:text=This%20trope%20occurs%20whenever%20a,bad%20guy%20to%20begin%20with.

Have you heard of this trope? Is this something you’d look for when browsing novels on any online fiction site? I personally have never heard of it, and thought the “bad boy” trope was what I was aiming for when I write my male leads, but now I realize it doesn’t fit them. I’m worried if I remove the bad boy tags though, no one will ever find my story? :laughing: Thoughts?

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I’ve heard of such a trope. I don’t have a character that fits such a trope…yet.

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You’ve heard of it at least. That gives me hope other people have too. :laughing:

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I’ve seen it a few times. “Stealing the bad boy’s first kiss”(I think that is the name) is something like that. You don’t expect the dude to have been saving himself for something more real than casual.

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Maybe if I play around with my story I could have a character like that. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Most of the time in my work, the “bad boy” tends to ignore or avoid the female lead.

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Ignore her as in the tsundere type where he’s like, “I’m going to act like I don’t really care about you that much because I have to be ‘manly/protect my feelings,’ but I actually think you’re cute or?” :thinking:

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More like “Why is this weird lady following me around? What can I do to make her leave me alone?”

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So she notices him first and she slowly tries to invade his life until he catches feelings? :laughing:

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It’s a bit more complex.

Her: Hi!
Him: Why do you exist?
Her: I like you!
Him: Stop.

7 chapters later…

Him: She’s really nice, but I already showed I don’t like her, so it would be weird if I told her that I liked her now.


To be clear, the “he” here doesn’t have good social skills.

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I know about it. Popular in romance manga for teen girls. He seems bad and intimidating, but once the shy girl or the kind girl pays attention to him, she realizes, hey, he’s not so bad. People just misunderstand him, that’s all. Then as she starts to get closer to him, he starts to become more relaxed and then soon, he has lots of friends and then he ends up with the girl.

Often these boys in manga have some kind of tough family upbringing. Parents are divorced or one is dead. Maybe they have a sick little sister… There have also been stories where the boy sees some real bad boys at the school, scolds them and “wins” the fight. Then rumors are spread that he’s some kind of monster, some kind of super bad boy, and it doesn’t help that he’s shy about smiling around people or prefers to be alone.

Anyway…I probably won’t look for the “good all along” tag if there is one. If I were into stories with “bad” boys, I’d probably look up “bad boy”.

And, I have a lot of “bad” male characters :stuck_out_tongue: Some who were redeemed, some who weren’t. Currently working on another to add to my collection of the "misunderstood bad boy"s.

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I feel like this could work for evil people who pretended to be evil in order to get what they desire, but the reality is that they were good all along. They were really on the hero’s side all along. It is just that they had to infiltrate the side of evil to get what they were truly after.

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That’s exactly the type I’m going for actually! That tsundere guy everyone is afraid of because baggage, but once people get to know him, he’s a big teddy bear? Although in my current story, I wouldn’t call the male lead a “teddy bear” bc he’s a mobster, and by no means a saint, but he has morals, and he respects women, especially ones in power positions. He might troll the female MC, but it’s one of those, “I push you to make you stronger and you’ll thank me one day,” kind of things?

I wish there was a better way I could tag it so it’s clear it’s that kind of guy vs the toxic bad boy. Maybe I should use the tsundere tag? :thinking:

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Yeah, that’s kind of what the description of it means when I found it, but it’s the closest thing I’ve found that makes sense with the kind of character I’m going for. Might require more research. :thinking:

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Yay!

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Personally, I prefer the good all along trope to the bad boy trope. I’m all for character development, but portraying a pos person as magically fixed when they fall in love is not only unrealistic, but sets people up to date those kinds of people expecting them to magically change because they are the one, and it just won’t happen. It will lead to self esteem issues when they don’t see themselves as “good enough” to change the “bad boy” and will result in an abusive or toxic relationship, all because a trope taught these people that bad boys are desirable.

It’s fine if a guy is into dark stuff or seems intimidating because of his appearance, or whatever that makes him look like a “bad boy”. But romanticizing the genuinely toxic traits and red flags is where I start to have a distaste for the genre. If you’re going to have an abusive character that you want to redeem, do it in a way that doesn’t put all the weight of that change on some love interest’s shoulders. Because that’s not genuine change and it doesn’t redeem the bad boy, it just puts pressure on their love interest to do all the changing for the bad boy.

I’ll take a “good all along” character over a “bad boy” character any day.

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Having genuinely toxic traits like cheating MUST be shown with a desire to change that is seperate from the woman, even if she instigated it, otherwise it’s unicorns farting magical rainbows.

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We need to show that people do change, but not unrealistically. I’d like to think I’m very much me from 15 years ago, newly married, but a ton has changed, too.

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People are capable of change, but the reasons they change have to be believable. And I’m sorry, but falling in love is not a magic pill that changes a person. Not permanent changes anyways. It can be a motivator for someone to change if they want to be better for that love interest, but the desire to change has to be there before that. Otherwise it’s not a desire for real change, it’s just a desire to trick or impress said love interest.

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Not exactly, but close. Sometimes the wakeup call comes with someone you love. Because timing is not magically NOT like romances, just like timing is not magically like romances.

They won’t always have a motivation beforehand. But there will be a distinct point where they get that they themselves or their partner isn’t enough to make it work without them being more than they’ve been.

And if the other party mistrusts the motivations, all the better. Might be a worthwhile breakup, and the other person becomes a better person from the instigation of someone they should have ended up with.

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