69 Penn Specific Romance Tropes for Valentines Day

What it says on the tin. 

And they were roommates!  

  1. There’s mold in your room, but the housing people aren’t coming for 5 days. Guess it’s time for you to crash at Person B’s place…in a twin XL bed… 
  2. You mistakenly buy twin bed sheets instead of XL bed sheets. Guess it’s time for you to crash at Person B’s place…in a twin XL bed… 
  3. Your roommate waited 40 days to bring out her suitcase of Victorian dolls, and now it’s too late to request a swap. Guess it’s time for you to crash at Person B’s place…in a twin XL bed… 
  4. Your roommate waited 40 days to bring out her suitcase of Victorian dolls. You bring out your own collection of Renaissance clowns. Soulmates AU. 
  5. You accidentally let a squirrel into your room, and it destroyed your bed. Guess it’s time for you to crash at Person B’s place…in a twin XL bed… 
  6. You accidentally let a squirrel into your room, but luckily your roommate can speak to squirrels. Disney AU. 

Food is love?  

  1. You’re lining up for the vegetable bowl at Commons. “What sauce,” asks the lunch lady. “Um, no sauce.” you say. The lunch lady squints at you, and shakes her head with the “sauceless fool” look. You kind of want to die but also this is the only decent station at Commons. “It’s okay,” says someone, as you’re waiting for the food to cook. “The sauces are too overpowering for the rice, meat, and vegetable combination. But if you hit it with a little soy sauce afterwards, it’s delicious.” You blink. Finally, someone gets it and doesn’t think you’re a sauceless fool. Is this love? 
  2. You and Person B both get food poisoning from Hill. Cue alternating dashes to the toilet (and hysterical conversations in between). 
  3. You see Person B dumping cafeteria food into containers they’ve smuggled in. You join them to avenge your $17 meal swipes. 
  4. Coffee shop AU but you’re secretly dating three separate baristas from the three Starbucks on campus. 
  5. Williams Cafe x Penn closet get-together. “Coffee colored Khakis” 
  6. You meet at Trader Joe’s. You are buying celery, Person B is buying grocery store wine. A tale as old as time. 

Glorification of competitive culture [finger guns] 

  1. You and Person B are academic rivals in high school. Both of you shit-talk each other, get deferred from Harvard during ED, are humbled, and then end up going to Penn. Enemies to lovers. 
  2. You and Person B are dating. You are applying to a club, Person B is interviewing you.  You don’t make the cut because iTs eXtReMeLy cOmPeTiTivE. Lovers to enemies. 
  3. You’re hooking up with someone from Wharton for the free printing money, but then you start to fall for their projected future earnings as well. FWB to lovers. 
  4. You and Person B are dating, but with all the classes and clubs, there just isn’t time for emotional commitment. Lovers to FWB. 
  5. Enemies to lovers except your Princeton rival doesn’t really see you as competition.
  6. A Cinderella story but the fairy godmother whisks you up a Canadian goose jacket for frat parties. The prince can’t find you afterwards because everyone has that jacket. 

Can I make it any more obvious? 

  1. He was a finance major, she was also a finance major. Can I make it any more obvious? 
  2. She was on the frisbee team, she did improv. Can I make it any more obvious? 
  3. He was a freshman, he was a PhD student with access to alcohol. Can I make it any more obvious? 
  4. She was struggling in CIS120, he was a CIS TA. Can I make it any more obvious? 
  5. He needed to pee, he was the Benjamin Franklin statue. Can I make it any more obvious? 
  6. They were at a frat party, he was coronavirus. Can I make it any more obvious? 

Love languages: 

  1. You find out that Person B has been purposely failing midterms to help lower the curve for you. You dump them: you have a minimum GPA requirement, after all. 
  2. They always say “that’s a really good point, Person A. It made me think about…” during discussions. 
  3. Person B walks with you to the DRL even though they have classes at Williams. 
  4. Person B takes a class that isn’t a gen ed or a major requirement to spend time with you. 
  5. They say they can get you a Sobol 50% off using the code PYRMDSCHM? with Snackpass.
  6. You both get to the last laundry machine at the same time but they let you use it first.

iN tHeSe uNpReCeDeNtEd tImEs: 

  1. It’s just the two of you in this breakout room, and they are mic off, camera off. Somehow though, this is just more mysterious…
  2. You pick up drinks mixing as a quarantine hobby, and Person B picks up cooking. Symbiotic power couple. 
  3. Both of you have had Covid. Guess you’re both immune now…haha jkjk…? 
  4. You attend Class Ambassadors meetings in a vain effort to feel any semblance of human connection. Found family, gen. 
  5. You pin Person B’s zoom screen, and call it ‘making a move’. Slow burn, pining. 
  6. You’re sending flirty messages to Person B on zoom, but you accidentally press send to everyone instead. You transfer to Swarthmore out of shame. 

Big Grifter Energy: 

  1. You have locked yourself out of their dorm for the 10th time, and don’t want to pay the fine. You enlist person B to help you break back in. Love ensues. 
  2. You’re a professional free food grifter, so you find yourself at the philomathean talk. The leader of Philo is trained to root out grifters, and now you must demonstrate your intellectual prowess. Your brain is so huge you’re invited into the Philo orgy. 
  3. You become a tik tok star, and are now faking a relationship with Person B for clout. Fake relationship AU. 
  4. You and Person B both try to seduce the TA, but they aren’t interested. You and Person B cut your losses and go for each other. 
  5. You and Person B get together, and then make your big idea about college application consultation come true. The two of you invest in bitcoin together. 
  6. Person B shows you a price match for a textbook at the Penn Bookstore. You’re a little bit in love. 

College is for learning (to get an MRS degree): 

  1. You and Person B trauma bond over memorizing anatomy terms. It adds to the mood in the bedroom until you both break down crying. 
  2. You never attend lectures and person B never does the readings. This is thermodynamic equilibrium. 
  3. You’re in M+T and they’re in Viper. Your baby has more folds in their brain than the average adult. 
  4. You and Person B take the professor out to lunch but really it’s a ploy from you to take Person B out for lunch. 
  5. Cute date idea! You and Person B spend your time stalking Cooper’s twitter account over calculating the integral of the curve. 
  6. You and Person B work together on a group project and the division of labour is equal. Fantasy AU. 

This is no one’s fantasy: 

  1. You start falling for the guy in class that likes to pLaY tHe dEvIL’s aDvoCaTe. 
  2. You’re dating someone on the football team so every weekend you spend 3 hours watching 11 minutes of riveting ~sports. 
  3. A cinema studies student takes you to a showing of Pulp Fiction and explains why it’s transformative in cinematic history. 
  4. “Let me tell you about bitcoin.” 
  5. You see someone wearing shorts while it’s snowing outside and think, “damn, what a brilliant display of machismo.” 
  6. Their tinder profile says “Wharton ‘23″. 

Alternative Universes 

  1. Coronavirus is over and you’re back at school with all your friends haha,,ha
  2. Hogwarts where the colleges are the houses and there’s the same sprinkle of anti-semitism but with like, magic or something. 
  3. High school AU: Like college but you have optimism for the future and a 4.0 GPA.
  4. Star wars but Person B took a sociology class and keeps trying to talk to you about the treatment of droids in Star Wars and how it’s a poorly-executed stand in for slavery. 
  5. Marvel but he keeps thinking that Elon Musk is Tony Stark :\
  6. Politics AU but you’ve seen behind the curtain so everything is disillusioned. 

Alexa this is so sad:  

  1. Person B shows you their code when you’re really stuck. You tearfully report them to the office of student conduct. 
  2. You and Person B are a merry College couple. Person B transfers to Wharton. 
  3. You find out Person B has been checking their problem sets with someone else. 
  4. Long distance relationship: You live at Hill and they live in Gregory. 
  5. You’ve read 65 Penn Specific tropes on Valentine’s day. 
  6. You’ve written 66 Penn Specific tropes for Valentine’s day. 

Maybe I shouldn’t link this list with my name: 

  1. Fantasy threesome: You, Amy G, Wendall P in Amy’s helicopter. 
  2. Love triangle between you, Person B, and the Quaker mascot. Turns out Person B is under the Mascot… 
  3. Times are getting tough. Doesn’t Gritty look kind of ,,,zaddy? 

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