Tropes and Cliches

True Love's Kiss

So this trope is mostly a fairy tale type thing, so a lot of Disney examples...also spoilers. 

So with a lot of stories there are two common tropes: Rule of Three and True Love's Kiss. True Love's Kiss wasn't necessarily a thing back when fairy tales and legends were new. It wasn't named dropped until Disney released Sleeping Beauty. Find your true love and you will be cured of 99.9% of those magical maladies and curses, or your money back!

But where did it come from? Well...Disney...Let me explain. In most fairy tales to date, aka the Brothers Grimm,Hans Christian Andersen , etc., there is no happy ending. Or at least a child friendly ending. In Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose ( aka Aurora in Disney's version) was raped by a rando ( who later returned) was impregnated,and gave birth to twins. One of the twins sucked the spindel thorn/splinter out of her finger, thus lifting the curse. In the orginal Little Mermaid the condition was just to marry the guy to stay human, but betrayal and turns into seafoam. Also in the orginal Snow White, the dwarves dropped the coffin and the apple piece fell out. That's just a few fucked up story I'm glad I didn't get ahold of until high school. So why did I say Disney created this? Well I mean they created the trope of one's true love can lift a curse or what ever.  And it sort of carried into other forms of media.

The Seven Deadly Sins for example used this when Griamore is turned into a child, Veronica (whom he had some Ship Tease with as an adult. It sort of cleared some stuff up, but whatever) ends up accidentally turning him back by giving him an innocent kiss on the forehead. But this is where we don't know that would happen as normally it's some curse that stated that ends with something along the lines of "...shall be sealed/broken with True Love's Kiss"

And now the list of Disney stuff that requires True Love's Kiss:

-Aurora curse was lifted by True Love's kiss a contigency plan from the fairies

- Snow White is revived via True Love's Kiss

- Belle broke Adam aka Beast's curse with True Love's kiss

- Ariel needed to kiss Eric by the third day to stay human, a requirment is that he must fall for her as well. 

-The Princess and the Frog has a lot of fun with playing this trope to the letter. Technically, Prince Naveen can kiss any princess - whether he loves her or not. Even the Princess of Mardi Gras counts as she's technically a princess for the night. This does not work when Mardi Gras is over and she is no longer a Princess. Fortunately for our heroes, Tiana marrying Naveen, even as a frog, technically makes her a princess and their problem is solved when they kiss as husband and wife...but it still falls under this trope.

- In Frozen, Anna is literally freezing from the inside out. The trolls are like " An act of true love should fix this." And Anna reads this as, you guessed it, True love's kiss....but that backfired in the most fucked up way possible.But they do subvert this by using an act of true love. I.E Anna sacrificing her life to save Elsa.

There are others, but I rather not make this entire chapter Disney related.

Now my personal favorite is in Avatar the Last Airbender. In the Cave of Two Lovers,Aang and Katara are lost in a maze and seperated from Sokka and a group they came in with.There's a folk tale says they have to "let love lead the way" to get back out. One of them suggests a True Love's Kiss, but they don't decide to go for it until their torches are almost gone. They lean in, the light goes out... and crystals in the ceiling begin glowing, marking a path. Katara guesses that the lovers from the folk tale just put their torches out to see the crystals and find their way, and love had nothing to do with it. Now no one really knows if they kissed or not, many say the did, but you got to tease the fans every now and then. 

Now there is no right way to write this trope, because "love" isn't really easy to find. What if the person in question have two true loves? What if it's the love on one's family or friend? It's a cute trope, but very difficult to decifer. I mean can you have more than one true love? According to Howl's Moving Castle we can. All in all, you all know I'm not a fan of romance, but I still like the romantics tropes every now and then.