Hot Take Incoming: 1) Every author uses tropes because it's literally impossible not to. In Lit tropes encompass things as broad as plot structures and as small as figures of speech as well as literary devices like foreshadowing. 2) When bookish SM discusses tropes, it's generally not using using the lit definition but using "tropes" as a shorthand for "common genre conventions." The discourse gets frustrating when different sides use different definitions (or cherry pick to score points)