foobar137 | Trope Bingo Round 1 Postmortem

I suppose ‘retrospective’ would be a less depressing term, but I tend to think of ‘postmortem’ as the term for an after-everything-is-done analysis. So here it is.
First up, what I thought of it as a reader: totally awesome. I found a lot of great stories to read, got immersed in new fandoms I had never considered, and found enjoyable people to follow. Even if I weren’t participating, I’d want to keep track of this just because of all the awesomeness I came across. (In particular, Merideath’s entry led me into MCU fandom and Darcyshipping. Definitely a fan there.)
As a writer: I enjoyed the heck out of this overall, but it turned into a bit of a slog at the end. I ended up writing eleven stories for it, two bingos and one extra. Many of these are stories that I never would have written without the push from the bingo board.
There were a few issues I had. Some of the tropes seemed overly confining - ‘AU-daemons’ seemed to tie in too closely to His Dark Materials, which I haven’t read, so I had absolutely no clue what to do with it. Between that and A/B/O (which I was also previously unfamiliar with), that left much of the upper-left corner of my initial board hard for me to work with.
A more fandom-specific issue: many of the tropes were used canonically in Phineas and Ferb, which made them tricky to use in original ways. (Examples: I had planned to do Doof and Perry for the ‘handcuffed/bound together’ square until I saw a recent episode which featured exactly that situation. Other tropes used in the series include bodyswap, day at the beach, holiday, mind control, road trip, AU-historical, time travel...there’s even a couple in-canon AU-apocalypses to work from.) That's my problem, not Trope Bingo's, though - I always have the option of writing in a different fandom.
That said, I still came up with eleven new stories, and I like at least ten of them. Good stories I wouldn’t have written without this include “Nothing But a Scorched Fedora”, “Two Halves Make a Whole”, and “Mistletoe Is Serious Business”.
Suggestions for next time: personally, I’m not sure if getting the second board was a good idea or not. By the end, I was feeling burnt-out and really dragging to get the last couple stories done, but that may have just been that the stories on my second board were a lot longer. (Average story length for the first bingo was 1350 words; the postage stamp was 3200 words; average for the second bingo was over 4000 words.) Next time, I’m thinking I’ll get one board, complete it, maybe pull some extras from it, and go on with life. That’s me, though, not a general thing for bingo.
Overall for Trope Bingo, I think more tropes would be good. The four wildcard tropes used so far, ‘wagers/bets/betting pool’, 'going native/primitivism', ‘injury’, and ‘AU-Pokéverse’ seem potentially interesting, although the last is arguably covered by fusion and/or au-other in addition to being tied to a particular work that not all authors will have steeped themselves in. ‘Injury’ could be expanded into ‘Hurt/Comfort’, if folks aren’t thoroughly sick of that particular trope or think that's too general. (Full disclosure: wagers/bets/betting pool was my story, so I’m not unbiased there.)
There were also several ‘au-other’s that may be useful. AU-zombies might have potential (although it’s arguably a subset of au-apocalypse). AU-fairytale...hm. Interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s open-ended enough. AU-mythology could be interesting. AU-serial killer might, perhaps, be best left as part of AU-other.
Clarification of some tropes like AU-daemons would be nice; if AU-Pokéverse were added, it would need similar for people who aren’t familiar with the work.
I’m not sure what can be done with A/B/O - checking the second-card posts, there were seven cards where a veto was requested, and six of those were for A/B/O. Is there some supertrope it can be expanded to that would keep it in play while letting folks who dislike it do something else with that square? “AU-alternative gender norms”? (I suppose to some extent having one trope that polarizing on the list is fine, as long as there’s a veto option. I’d probably suggest allowing two vetoes, though.)
But these are minor, minor nits on something excellent. Overall, and most importantly, I'd like to thank the mods for making something incredible. Y'all are awesome.