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I wouldn't think so, but I'd like a mod's opinion.
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Probably not. Memoirs are (presumably) nonfiction, so it would be problematic vis-a-vis the "troping real people" issue.
Bigotry in the name of inclusion is still bigotry.
That's pretty much just real life stuff. There's barely any information about their lives we even put on their actor page, and this goes well beyond that.
All righty then.
There's still writing tropes, and choices of what to include and what not to include that affect the narrative. As long as you're aware of the issues (and you must be or you wouldn't have asked), I'd think you could probably do it. Though it might require a little extra effort.
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
Pretty sure there are some memoirs or at least similar works already troped, actually.
OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!
It's classified as creative nonfiction so I see no reason for it to not be tropeable. It is not "troping real life persons" so much as it is troping RL public personas. If they were offended by the tropes in their memoir then they wouldn't have written it.
Edited by WaterBlap Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Make sure to trope the memoir itself and not the events described in it.
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We trope documentaries; I think this would be sort of the same thing. There's a list at Documentary.
There will still be at least narrative tropes, since it's telling a story about something that happened, instead of being a live record of the thing as it happened.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
Memoirs are heavily personal. An event described in a memoir is not the same as an event described in a newspaper even when it's the same historical event. This is basic memoir writing: you leave information out when that info distracts from your message. Thus, not RL per se.
This is contrasted with autobiographies, where the information is piled on (in order to justify decisions the writer had made).
Edited by WaterBlap Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Memoirs may - and perhaps should - be non-fiction, but they're still supposed to be literature, and are usually subjective. So they will use tropes and literary devices.
Memoirs also tend to be subjective and sometimes more fictional than they purport to be: they show us somebody's public persona rather than their true self.
I'd say memoirs can be troped as long as you're careful to trope the work and not the real person behind it. For example, if the memoirs of a retired general describe how heroic his actions were, you can give examples of how the author is applying hero tropes to himself, as long as you keep this apart from the general actually being those tropes (which may of course be true, but would be troping a real person).
EDITED: I don't mean to imply that Grant (who is probably more famous as a general than as the 18th president) was applying heroic tropes to himself - I haven't read his memoirs and don't know if that's a fact or not.
Edited by GnomeTitan
Memoirs can still be troped. Compressing someone's career into a book is always going to entail some fictionalization and storytelling.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Yes, please do! More great literature is needed on Tv T.
^^^It's actually quite the mixture with Grant. He admits that he had to write the memoir because he was swindled out of all his money; he admits making a tragic mistake when ordering the frontal assault that led to a horrific bloodbath at Cold Harbor. He does not however say much of anything about the drinking that led to his quitting the Army.
It's a remarkable book. Dunno if I will make a work page, other stuff to do, but it's good to know that I can.
He was also dying of cancer when he wrote it, so being explicitly honest wouldn't come back to bite him much.
I think this can be locked.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
Can we?
I was thinking about making a work page for the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, still regarded as the best book ever written by an American president. But I am not sure if a memoir is subject to troping.