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The only thing I think TVTropes might even be slightly possibly useful for is if you really wanted to use a particular cliche in your work, and wanted to see where it had been used before in order to get some inspiration for yourself. Even then, this one slight possibly piece of worth is lost due to any cliche being hidden under a stupid rear end name, and their unwillingness to admit that some pieces of work are objectively better than others.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:26
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TvTropes are an amazing example of a good idea gone horribly, horribly wrong.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:28
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my dad posted:TvTropes are an amazing example of a good idea gone horribly, horribly wrong. Not really, the idea of pigeonholing every possible piece of art was stupid to begin with.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:33
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Call Now posted:Not really, the idea of pigeonholing every possible piece of art was stupid to begin with. That's a part of the gone horribly wrong thing. Imagine a humorous reference card of popular media that wasn't run by a bunch of creeps.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:39
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Call Now posted:Not really, the idea of pigeonholing every possible piece of art was stupid to begin with. Depends what you want to use it for. If you wanted to study fiction, then yeah, categorising in a non-stupid way might have some value, though you'd have to have some idea exactly how you wanted to study it so the categories had some kind of point to them. The tropers, though, seem to be aspiring writers, and categorising everything is deadly to the imagination, and the more so the more time you spend training your brain to see narrative as a collection of Lego bricks. It's like the way they want to be both 'family friendly' and non-'prudish', and to be both a nice friendly place and a place where it's okay to say horrible bigoted things without reprisal. On pretty much any subject, they want to be all things, including a lot of things that are incompatible. And that is truly stupid.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:42
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Yeah... Not even the tropers themselves know what they want.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:49
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From a thread entitled 'Wizarding School - NOT a Harry Potter rip-off':quote:I've been thinking about writing a story set in a Wizarding School. Here's what I have so far:
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Sep 17, 2013 23:10
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Not ripping off Harry Potter = taking the exact setup of Harry Potter and changing the names. Here's an idea for a Wizarding school that doesn't rip off Harry Potter: don't do it in the first place.
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Sep 17, 2013 23:12
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I don't know guys, this might be legit - Harry Potter didn't have Home Ec classes.
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Sep 17, 2013 23:21
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FrozenVent posted:I don't know guys, this might be legit - Harry Potter didn't have Home Ec classes. Yeah, the fact that you have to take math along with spell casting is a nice touch
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Sep 17, 2013 23:23
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I dunno about you guys; but I'd definitely read "Henrietta Potter and the Mystery of Long Division"!
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Sep 17, 2013 23:34
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I'm reminded of an old science-fiction writer's pamphlet thay discusses tropes that were common in science-fiction, and why those tropes would add to or subtract from a work. If TvTropes had stuck to a similar format (i.e. critical analysis of tropes and their effect on the success of a piece of writing), then it would be an incredibly useful writer's resource. Hell, even notability isn't too big a concern if those pieces are used in the service of criticism. Instead, TVTropes is a hugbox because Fast Eddie believes the only crit is positive "constructive" crit, so you can't analyze why things don't work, because that would be negative. In turn, it creates an environment for people to dump their own terrible original stories and fanfic, and get pats on the back for their use of tropes, regardless if those tropes are good or not. TVTropes takes a bunch of interesting ideas, fails to think them through, and pats itself on the back for a job well done. You see it on every level of the site, from the way the site is structured, down to how criticism and analysis is handled. Basically it's a critical-thinking free version of criticism.
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Sep 17, 2013 23:36
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Henrietta Potter and the Mathgician, might as well rip of the Simpsons while you're at it.
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Sep 17, 2013 23:36
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my dad posted:Imagine a humorous reference card of popular media that wasn't run by a bunch of creeps. This is called Saint's Row IV
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Sep 17, 2013 23:51
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Well, poo poo, maybe linking threads was a bad idea; a thread I linked earlier got "nuked" despite not having had any posts in ages. Can someone explain what happened? Did somebody touch the poop?
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Sep 18, 2013 00:12
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LaughMyselfTo posted:Well, poo poo, maybe linking threads was a bad idea; a thread I linked earlier got "nuked" despite not having had any posts in ages. Can someone explain what happened? Did somebody touch the poop? When you browse into the abyss, the abyss browses into you. There are tropers lurking this forum and their admin is paranoid as poo poo since the last "SA attack".
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Sep 18, 2013 00:15
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Namtab posted:The only thing I think TVTropes might even be slightly possibly useful for is if you really wanted to use a particular cliche in your work, and wanted to see where it had been used before in order to get some inspiration for yourself. Yes, well, it's terrible for that as well, because like, 90% of the entries are not about cliches, and will have 90% of their examples be based on completely ridiculous misreadings anyway.
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Sep 18, 2013 00:18
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TvTropes is occasionally fun reading especially for their lists that aren't tropes like at all. Now, I am 100% straight  but I think it's kinda interesting to sit down and read every set of weird difficulty rankings in video games or like the big list of Survival Mantras or fictional mission statements or whatever. But yeah anything opinion or analysis based is kinda garbage.
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Sep 18, 2013 01:42
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Djeser posted:From a thread entitled 'Wizarding School - NOT a Harry Potter rip-off': They already made this movie, it had Tim Curry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUhuPn8_d0Q
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Sep 18, 2013 02:46
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From a thread called "What do you think of these characters?" It's cute how  it isEdit: don't want to image leach Smoking Crow fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 02:51
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projecthalaxy posted:TvTropes is occasionally fun reading especially for their lists that aren't tropes like at all. Now, I am 100% straight Yeah, I recall the pages about weird translation mishaps were pretty fun to read. That was how I found out about Star Wars the Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West. The dwarf fortress page was also pretty good about giving entertaining examples of the weird poo poo that goes on in that game. I guess when a website pretty much just becomes randomthings.txt there's guaranteed to be a couple of interesting things on it.
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Sep 18, 2013 02:55
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Jygallax posted:Yeah, I recall the pages about weird translation mishaps were pretty fun to read. That was how I found out about Star Wars the Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West. The dwarf fortress page was also pretty good about giving entertaining examples of the weird poo poo that goes on in that game. I guess when a website pretty much just becomes randomthings.txt there's guaranteed to be a couple of interesting things on it. I did enjoy reading a list of trivia, easter eggs, and behind-the-scenes commentary for some movies and games that I already gone through. Did you know that Hideo Kojima has a butt fetish? Neither did I, but it explains so much. Anyway, in a thread about what sort of fanfiction ideas would be interesting, a person has a problem, Two Gun Angel posted:I've been thinking about writing a Diablo/Highlander Fusion Fic set during the 20- year period between Diablo II and Diablo III . Thing is, I'm not all that versed in the cosmology of the Highlander series, and thus have absolutely no clue as to how Immortals would fit into Diablo's world of demons, angels and nephalem. He wants to make a story a mix of Diablo and Highlander, but he doesn't know what Highlander is.  Paulie romanov posted:I had an idea for a Curtain Fic that is also a crossover of Code Geass and Mafia II . The basic idea is that C.C. and Vito Scaletta go to Pizza Hut. It's supposed to be funny and cute, and I may have it go past a one-shot. Help, how do I write a story about a WW2 era mobster going out with an anime dude to Pizza Hut? In the 2000 words I'm going to write, I don't want to get anything wrong here. Dr. Plothole posted:I have one: It's called "Gravity Falls The Movie Fanfic: Across the Second Dimension" and, like the title suggests, it's the Gravity Falls version of Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the Second Dimension", do you think anybody would be interested in that? I just posted this because I can't believe this person actually exists. EagerSleeper fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 03:32
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TV Tropes is occasionally useful as a resource for finding something you want to read/watch: i.e. I just read this book and I liked the way it did X, I will now find other books that have done ostensibly done X according to Tropers and sift through that to find things that actually do X. Thats really the only use of TV Tropes, other than the huge compendiums of random non-analysis related stuff of which some might possibly be interesting to read just by law of averages. As a resource for literary analysis its loving useless, because Tropers really don't understand literature, analysis, or the stuff that they sperg about.
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Sep 18, 2013 03:33
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I'd completely forgotten how much I'd missed these threads. Hopefully this one doesn't implode like so many others have.  IceAgeComing posted:I dunno about you guys; but I'd definitely read "Henrietta Potter and the Mystery of Long Division"!
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Sep 18, 2013 03:45
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Wouldn't that be "Harriet Potter"?
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Sep 18, 2013 04:04
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EagerSleeper posted:Help, how do I write a story about a WW2 era mobster going out with an anime dude to Pizza Hut? In the 2000 words I'm going to write, I don't want to get anything wrong here. Oh god Paulie Romanov is the worst. He's this really spergy tabletop gamer who just won't loving shut up about anime and World Of Darkness and his anime-inspired World Of Darkness game ideas. You see him on forums and every few weeks like clockwork he'll roll around and try to get approval for his  WoD campaign about vampires with katanas. It's like he doesn't even want to play the games, he just wants everyone to pat him on the back and tell him how cool his ideas are.Every character I've seen him make has to have a katana because they're Japanese, it makes sense for them to have a katana, why do so many GMs hate katanas, etc.
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Sep 18, 2013 04:27
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FrozenVent posted:When you browse into the abyss, the abyss browses into you. Yeah, for all the "we aren't listening to Goons  " stuff that was getting thrown around, whenever a page or thread gets linked here and has big problems laughed at it tends to get changed pretty quickly. Coincidence though, I'm sure.
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Sep 18, 2013 07:45
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Smoking Crow posted:From a thread called "What do you think of these characters?" I'm not much of an artist, but holy poo poo even I know those proportions are absolutely off  It's like they looked up "How to draw anime eyes" on Google and then thought that was all they needed to be able to work for Sunrise or Pierrot or something.
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Sep 18, 2013 07:58
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vetinari100 posted:[ ... subverted ...] That's one of my personal irritants* with tropers - the insistence that their favourite show "subverts", "inverts" or "lampshades" a trope. Which usually actually means: a) is a minor variation of that trope, or b) isn't that trope at all You thought one group was going to be the main villain in a season of Buffy and it turned out to be someone else? Subverted. A scene is foreshadowed or called back to? Lampshaded. The hero has to be rescued? Inverted. * The other being the way tropers inject endless references to their own fan fiction into every entry, said fan fiction consisting of nothing but tropes. Prime example being the "Whateley universe". Seriously, go to any entry and look for the examples from it.
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Sep 18, 2013 08:17
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Venusian Weasel posted:I'm reminded of an old science-fiction writer's pamphlet thay discusses tropes that were common in science-fiction, and why those tropes would add to or subtract from a work. If TvTropes had stuck to a similar format (i.e. critical analysis of tropes and their effect on the success of a piece of writing), then it would be an incredibly useful writer's resource. Hell, even notability isn't too big a concern if those pieces are used in the service of criticism. The Turkey City Lexicon, right? But there's a huge difference; it actually IS 'tricks of the trade', because it was created by people IN the trade. And you can tell, because it's a) succinct, as you'd expect from actual writers who know how to make a point and when to stop making it b) practical. Every phrase implies its usage; either they're a short way of saying 'Hey, you've fallen into this common stylistic error, cut it out' like 'Roget's Disease' or 'Said Bookism', or when they're about stuff that happens in the story - the kind of thing TVTropes is supposed to be about - there's a clear reason why there's a name for it. Usually, the phrase means, 'Hey, you know that idea you think is incredibly clever? Well, it's been done before and it wasn't that clever the first time.' Things like 'Abbess Phone Home' and 'Jar of Tang' are quick ways of saying 'That's a lame concept.' So I tried feeding them into TVTropes to see what would happen. And what happened? quote:Turkey City Lexicon http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/ Yep, they just copy-pasted it. And added links to some of them. Let's take an example and compare for quality, shall we? Turkey City Lexicon: quote:Signal from Fred: A comic form of the "Dischism" in which the author's subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: "This doesn't make sense." "This is really boring." "This sounds like a bad movie." (Attr. Damon Knight) Crisp, to the point, and makes it clear why this doesn't fly. TVTropes: quote:Lampshade Hanging is the writers' trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief, whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly blatant use of a trope, by calling attention to it and simply moving on. ...Yeah, that really has nothing to do with the 'Signal From Fred' that you linked, TVTropes. A self-conscious joke is not the same thing as an unconscious complaint. Turkey City Lexicon: quote:The "Poor Me" Story: Autobiographical piece in which the male viewpoint character complains that he is ugly and can't get laid. (Attr. Kate Wilhelm) Epigrammatic. You can infer other examples that don't literally have to do with being ugly and unable to get laid, but the show-don't-tell example gets the message across completely. (And you notice that they like to attribute where they can as well, being of the opinion that writers deserve credit where it's due.) TVTropes: quote:Anti-Sue Much longer to say the same thing, with a pointless swipe at Oscar-winning films to the effect that 'nobody would make a character less than awesome unless they were trying to manipulate those darn pretentious snobs!' Turkey City Lexicon: quote:White Room Syndrome: A clear and common sign of the failure of the author's imagination, most often seen at the beginning of a story, before the setting, background, or characters have gelled. "She awoke in a white room." The 'white room' is a featureless set for which details have yet to be invented — a failure of invention by the author. The character 'wakes' in order to begin a fresh train of thought — again, just like the author. This 'white room' opening is generally followed by much earnest pondering of circumstances and useless exposition; all of which can be cut, painlessly. It remains to be seen whether the "white room" cliche will fade from use now that most authors confront glowing screens rather than blank white paper. An insider's perspective with some simple advice: cut it and move on. And a thoughtful reflection on how the changing world may have an effect on this. TVTropes: quote:White Void Room We have no idea what this signifies. It's a white room, let's describe it! Let's throw in some leching about workout videos! Let's say it's good! Let's say it's bad! Let's say SOMETHING! The Turkey City Lexicon works because its phrases contain within themselves analysis and advice. It knows what its aim is: to push writers towards avoiding unoriginal, badly written or cheesy fiction. TVTropes is just a mess. Probably because they class sharp and useful analysis as being a 'Deadpan Snarker'. Apple Tree fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 08:20
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That would be the one. As for a quick-and-dirty guide to writing, the Lexicon works fine by itself (although possibly in need of some expansion for non-genre works). However, TVTropes also aims for some discussion/pseudo-scholarly analysis of tropes, so perhaps the Lexicon falls a little short in that aspect. In a website geared towards that kind of discussion, a concise description of the trope (and whether or not to avoid it), an example or two, and a history and analysis section of the trope would probably make a genuinely useful page for writers and armchair scholars. TVTropes completely subverted that idealism by embracing overly wordy descriptions of tropes. And creepiness.
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Sep 18, 2013 08:53
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I wasn't going to post in this thread, but I feel inclined to re-post everybody's favourite Troper Tale:quote:Arguably, this Troper is probably the youngest of which who suffers from this Trope. This is practically the invisible label that's under the invisible Berserk Button of this 13-year old kid. He broke 33 pencils in his life, and had a good friend break two of those pencils because they were too hard. He even yelled at someone because that guy was the third person who asked if he could be punched for the third time, with a teacher only a mile ahead! I have absolutely no clue what the last sentence is trying to say. There was a response: quote:I actually poo poo myself when I read that. There I realized I wasn't just dealing with the usual horrifyingly egotistical Troper Tale. This person will BREAK YOUR PENCILS without a second thought. Should he meet you, without any regret, he will DESTROY your beloved pencil collection. Your Crayola, your HB, everything. That beloved pencil you had for three years? Snapped in two with no remorse. Even if you reinforce your pencils to try and stop him, he has a good friend, even better in the arts of pencil-snapping. And when he is done, you will be nothing, sobbing in a heap of pencils as broken as your dreams. And he will laugh. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
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Sep 18, 2013 10:50
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Venusian Weasel posted:That would be the one. As for a quick-and-dirty guide to writing, the Lexicon works fine by itself (although possibly in need of some expansion for non-genre works). However, TVTropes also aims for some discussion/pseudo-scholarly analysis of tropes, so perhaps the Lexicon falls a little short in that aspect. For scholarship, I'd say the Turkey City Lexicon actually isn't very useful. It assumes a writerly perspective and is free in its assumptions that if the writing comes out like this, the writer was probably feeling or thinking that. Just in the examples I quoted, 'Signal from Fred' states that statements in the story come from the writer's critical subconscious, the 'Poor Me story' is 'autobiographical', and 'White Room Syndrome' is 'a failure of the writer's imagination' suggested by the sight of a blank white page. From a writerly perspective that's fine, because you're assuming that the people hearing these phrases will be writers who know from the inside what writing is like. From a scholarly perspective it's a big no-no; it'd be considered highly speculative and impossible to support properly. Some critics can get away with a kind of autobiographical analysis, but they have to be unusually good to do it, and good enough that they don't need a list of catchphrases. Even if you're not into post-Barthes 'the text and only the text' theory, saying 'This fails because the author was thinking this' would get a big red underline on your essay. Which is fine: writing and scholarship are two completely different things. We don't expect to become able to paint by studying the history of art, nor to become art history experts by working on our own canvasses. And if we have any sense, we definitely don't expect to be able to learn either by compiling endless lists of 'Madonna And Child With Nipple Showing' and 'Urns In The Background.' In the interests of content, I tried 'Madonna' on TVTropes. They don't have a separate page for it, nor for 'Madonna and Child.' All they have is 'Madonna Whore Complex'. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MadonnaWhoreComplex.) Which includes the example 'Betty and Veronica', and also links to lovely little bit of  :quote:My Girl Is Not a Slut I'm not sure whether this means that fatherhood is reversible or that syphilis began in 1963. Anyway, it certainly doesn't mean we have to consider the possibility of sexism. No, it's , the explanation so nice we have to say it twice! (In three short paragraphs.)
Apple Tree fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 11:13
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Metal Loaf posted:I wasn't going to post in this thread, but I feel inclined to re-post everybody's favourite Troper Tale: I can't read that without immediately thinking of this any more. I want to believe that it's just another anime reference and not someone thinking they're a badass for snapping pencils. I want to, but I know it's going to be the latter.
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Sep 18, 2013 14:37
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Djeser posted:From a thread entitled 'Wizarding School - NOT a Harry Potter rip-off': Man, I just don't know what kind of legitimate response anyone is supposed to have to this. This is the kind of thing a student in 8th grade says when the teacher asks what topic they're writing on for their creative essay. Its filled with such inane ripped-off bullshit and basically the guy is saying "here are broad strokes of a story with no character motivations, no plot or story or rhyme or reason to anything that might follow. Opinions?" It is literally impossible to give any type of "feedback" because there is nothing to give "feedback" on. What are you gonna say, maybe take out the foreign language class and put one in called dragons? The only acceptable responses to this question of feedback to this is either "this seems trite and you are ripping off Harry Potter" or "OK", in that you are acknowledging his story will include these elements. But I'm sure this guy will pour long arduous hours into "world-building" rather than try to tell a loving story. Guys my as-yet-unnamed main character suffers from some magical disease but biological knowledge is lacking in the wizard world, which textbooks can I reference so the un-named headmaster has real-world references to refer to in explaining the unknown disease to the students of this as-yet-unnamed school? This is important thx. Feedback?
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Sep 18, 2013 16:09
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Please note that "Lampshade hanging" is apparantly part of the "Deconstructor Fleet", which I assume is all their tropes about what they think deconstruction is. I loving loathe tropers. Djeser posted:From a thread entitled 'Wizarding School - NOT a Harry Potter rip-off': Of course it is.
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Sep 18, 2013 16:51
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MinistryofLard posted:TV Tropes is occasionally useful as a resource for finding something you want to read/watch: i.e. I just read this book and I liked the way it did X, I will now find other books that have done ostensibly done X according to Tropers and sift through that to find things that actually do X. Like a shittier, sperged out TasteKid So the Troper Tales section was closed due to stupid drama and lots of  inducing moments, but its spirit lives on in their Wiki:Mistaken For Racist posted:
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Sep 18, 2013 17:03
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oldpainless posted:Man, I just don't know what kind of legitimate response anyone is supposed to have to this. This is the kind of thing a student in 8th grade says when the teacher asks what topic they're writing on for their creative essay. Its filled with such inane ripped-off bullshit and basically the guy is saying "here are broad strokes of a story with no character motivations, no plot or story or rhyme or reason to anything that might follow. Opinions?" The feedback I wanted to give on that page was, 'If you're as young as you sound, do NOT let anyone on this site find out where you live.' Because the conversation that followed this post came under the heading of 'The kids are playing beautifully together.' The 'feedback' was quibbles about whether the colours of the houses were right, and ended up talking the poster into reducing the six houses to four (which is hardly going to help with the not-Harry-Potter thing). I was picturing it as an overheard conversation between early teens, quietly whispering together while painting each others' nails or building a fort. If it's between kids, it's completely innocent, and it might actually be quite sweet to have websites where kids could get together and share their imaginary worlds. Lots of kids have such worlds, they're usually very derivative, but since they're kids, who cares? They're just playing. 'Play nicely and don't be mean' would be a good rule. 'Everyone's as good as everyone else' would be a good one too. These are clubhouse rules. But for a site like that to be safe, you'd have to moderate the gently caress out of it, disallow or vet the gently caress out of adult posters, and keep the creepiness right out. Unless you seriously supervise every conversation, putting children in the same conversations as immature adults is dangerous. A clubhouse only works if you keep the guys in the dirty raincoats away from it. EDIT: oh, except for this dude: quote:and you seem to be missing the fact that my point was segregation by grade/class, and not what criterion they are segregated. they could be tested by height or breast size and my point would still be they'd be sorted by grade/class. See? Keep the dirty raincoats away! Apple Tree fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 17:24
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Namtab posted:Please note that "Lampshade hanging" is apparantly part of the "Deconstructor Fleet", which I assume is all their tropes about what they think deconstruction is. The whole troper idea of what deconstruction is is hilarious and a perfect example of how, in their mad dash to fit every "good" trope into their favorite comic and/or anime, they've completely diluted the meaning of the word to the point of uselessness.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:34
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From their thread on unions:Barkey posted:If you're essentially unskilled, then why do you deserve good wages? Tuefel Hunden IV posted:The vast majority of bus boys and baggers do not even come close to working all day. No it shouldn't pay living wage for someone just putting groceries in a bag. That is ridiculous and unrealistic. If you are working standard 40 hour week you have quite a bit of time to find a second job.
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