Tv Tropes Wiki

[Serafina]

I searched the forum, and found no title mentioning TV Tropes Wiki.
Thus, here it is, my first new topic (other than introduction). If you want to move it to another forum, do so.

TV Tropes Wiki is a great site about, well, tropes.
They cover tropes of all kind, used in any kind of media (TV. movies, anime/manga, tabletop, fanfiction etc.).

TV Tropes Wiki is somewhat informal: They do not write about facts or pure observations alone, but also about impressions. But if you look at their subject, this is only fitting: Tropes are subjective, after all.
But they do not write random stuff: Most of their descriptions are accurate and fitting.

For all of you that do not know already: A Trope is a device/convention that is used by writers.
E.g. certain types of characters or plot devices, like a "General Ripper" (a high-ranking officer who is obsessed with one type of enemy, e.g. "commies" or "milkmans").

Obviously, knowing about tropes is great for a writer: Your readers will react to tropes, wheter you/they know about them or not. Perhaps you want to use a certain kind of character and avoid common errors, or perhaps you want to subvert a common cliché. If you do know how the trope is widely used, this is way easier.
For non-writers, knowing tropes is a great way to re-discover and analyse fiction.

Oh, and while TV Tropes Wiki has no science, it certainly has mockery of stupid people (or writers, that is).

[Ford Prefect]

While no topic has been made on it, members will occasionally link to it. Personally, I find parts of the trope wiki to be kind of interesting to read, but other parts are such pits of nerdy lameness it's makes me sad to be a geek. The overstuffed 'crowning moment' pages, for example, are totally awful. So to is the sort of mindset which reading this wiki seems to cause: for example, analysing fiction from the angle of tropes is intellectually bankrupt, in my opinion.

And I swear to God if anyone makes a 'your mileage may vary' crack I will find you.

[Serafina]

Well, those parts of the wiki are marked "just for fun" and are in a different area of the wiki for a reason.

And yes, analysing fiction merely by tropes fails - tropes are a tool to analyse, not an analysation.
But then, overanalysation is common no matter what kind of tool you are using - just like overzealos hunting for fallacies.

[Stark]

Like Ford, I find the hilariously shoehorned lists of not-really applicable stuff to be great light reading - the videogame version is even better, because any trope ever is applicable to Metal Gear, Halflife, and Final Fantasy. TRUST ME.

The faux-intellectual posturing of 'omg I know a trope vaguely related to xyz plot development/character/etc' utterly disgusts me, and is the literary version of totally broken inherit poseur wisdom.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Ugh, I spend way too much time on that site, I basically agree with Ford, with the added note that many of the examples sections display just how chaotic the whole setup is. Not to be taken too seriously but definitely fun to browse and see if you recognise the franchises involved, also feeds you interesting plot points from things if you have no intention of reading/watching them.

Also, they need to delete all pages and references to 'Crowning Moment of Awesome'. If it's your crowning moment you cannot have more than one, that devalues the whole phrase. Do you know how many of these 'Crowning Moments' Mal Reynolds from Firefly has? 12

[Duckie]

Furthermore, not every series should qualify for crowning moment of awesome, just like every series doesn't have a big damn hero moment or a heel face turn- people on that wiki seem to use it to mean "Part I thought was cool". They should delete every single crowning moment of awesome and make a new trope page called "Not A Crowning Moment of Awesome". Make it just say:

"You know that moment you thought was awesome in some show nobody else has seen? Yeah, it wasn't."

TVTropes is oddly self-aware about its own stupidities at times and oddly oblivious at others.

With that said, besides its fandom element of calling everything awesome and squishing stuff into lists where it doesn't belong, it's a pretty good site for browing- I've lost entire hours to it without knowing where they went.

[EarthScorpion]

Yeah, it's sucked up a lot of my time, too. On the other hand, it was what persuaded me to take a look at Haruhi, so at the very least I can thank it for that. Just sort of live with its quirks, and it's tolerable.

Also, Academia Nut's Thousand Shinji has been given its own page, which is somewhat amusing.

[Samuel]

Why the hell is this in fanfics?

TV Tropes will suck your time away, into a black hole of time wasting. It is a good way to find out about other interesting stuff however.

Not to mention sci-fi debris has their own page

[Academia Nut]

You have no idea how hilarious I find that page. While I will admit to the ego boost, I refuse to mention my own glee at things until after the fact as I prefer to simply let other people express their enjoyment rather than trying to poke it along myself.

And yes, the most irritating thing is when they include a trope name under something and then don't substantiate it, because then its like "So where exactly in this story does this trope happen? Does it even happen at all?"

Crowning Moments definitely needs to be broken up though. Probably one section for "Kickass Moments" or some such thing and then hash out from there the one definitive moment of a series or character that defines their ability to be awesome. That would probably cause huge fanboy fights though, which is probably why the Crowning Moment of Awesome has turned into an index rather than a page due to fanboy bloat.

[Ford Prefect]

The faux-intellectual posturing of 'omg I know a trope vaguely related to xyz plot development/character/etc' utterly disgusts me, and is the literary version of totally broken inherit poseur wisdom.

The notion of subverted or inverted tropes eithe amuses me or shakes my head. So a character doesn't fit the archetype set by a trope? INVERSION! I enjoy reading it from time to time and it's kind of cute to notice stuff in one's own writing that fits a trope, but ugh. It's pretty hilarious that a fanfic from here managed to score a page though.

[Edward Yee]

I do have to say, I found the "So Bad It's Horrible" section to be pretty... yeah, it seems that putting up the disclaimer about what that means did help the quality control. (Especially in the "So Bad It's Horrible: Wrestling" section...)

[Majin Gojira]

As someone who LOVES dramatic analysis, TV Tropes is a mixed blessing. Good idea, a fun light read, but marred by the Wikipedia mentality.

Still, it's a fun way to kill a few...days.

[Serafina]

Why the hell is this in fanfics?

TV Tropes will suck your time away, into a black hole of time wasting. It is a good way to find out about other interesting stuff however.

Not to mention sci-fi debris has their own page

Well, it is not merely about science fiction - it is about all of fiction.
And i considered it usefull for fanfiction-writers.

And yes, they should put up a warning "contagious like crack".

And yes, lots of it are overdone - just use your own mind.

[speaker-to-trolls]

The notion of subverted or inverted tropes eithe amuses me or shakes my head. So a character doesn't fit the archetype set by a trope? INVERSION!

At the risk of me-tooing, that is kind of presumptuous since in many cases it's debatable whether the tropes even exist. And seeing 'inverted with X, Y and Z' when they're referring to THE BIBLE is kind of... odd.

Also there are spoiler tags on their bits on the Bible, blanking out the fact that Spoiler

Jesus dies at the end

One's got to assume that's a joke, though.

It's pretty hilarious that a fanfic from here managed to score a page though.

Armageddon!? gets a few mentions as well.

[Samuel]

Why the hell is this in fanfics?

TV Tropes will suck your time away, into a black hole of time wasting. It is a good way to find out about other interesting stuff however.

Not to mention sci-fi debris has their own page

Well, it is not merely about science fiction - it is about all of fiction.
And i considered it usefull for fanfiction-writers.

And yes, they should put up a warning "contagious like crack".

And yes, lots of it are overdone - just use your own mind.

That is what off topic is for.

One's got to assume that's a joke, though.

I knew an evangelical Christian who stood outside Passion of the Christ and shooted out that "Jesus dies at the end!" And that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader for Episode 3 just for the laughs . It is funny the first time you hear it.

[Ford Prefect]

That is what off topic is for.

Sammy, the board servers will not suddenly burst into flames because this topic is in the Fanfic subforum. It doesn't actually matter.

And seeing 'inverted with X, Y and Z' when they're referring to THE BIBLE is kind of... odd.

Yeah, there's plenty of silliness. The duck above makes a good point about the varying levels of awareness with regards to the trope wiki's stupidity. At times it seems clear that it's dryly cynical, and at times its fannish wankery, sometimes of the wiki itself. It's a curious mixture, but as entertainment, I see nothing wrong with it. I have actually picked up useful information from there, though it isn't actually trope related.

[Serafina]

Well, i wrote iny my OP:

If you want to move it to another forum, do so.

So, if a mods thinks this is the wrong forum, i ASKED to move the thread.

And yes, TV Tropes Wiki has very distinct levels of quality. The trope-descriptions are mostly good, the examples...not so much. Of course, its a wiki, what do you expect?

[SAMAS]

Crowning Moments definitely needs to be broken up though. Probably one section for "Kickass Moments" or some such thing and then hash out from there the one definitive moment of a series or character that defines their ability to be awesome. That would probably cause huge fanboy fights though, which is probably why the Crowning Moment of Awesome has turned into an index rather than a page due to fanboy bloat.

The thing is, Crowning Moment of Awesome is a subjective thing. What you consider to be "the" crowning moment may not be what I think is. You get thousands of people reading the thing, a dozen or so examples is to be expected as different people add what they thing was the best moment.

That said, however, there is some Site Decay, to paraphrase a Trope. After all, the place did start by talking about Television before expanding to films, games, anime, comics, literature and theater (and anything else I missed).

[Starglider]

If you thought 'crowning moments of awesome' was bad, just look at the spin-off crowning X of awesome' pages, particularly the music one. That is just a huge utterly random list of tracks someone somewhere happens to like; I loaded five or so at random and four of them were awful (although it was worth it, because the fifth one was a genuinely awesome track by 1200 Micrograms ).

But yeah, it does prove that a 50/50 cross between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica seems near-optimal for wiki entertainment value.

[Edward Yee]

Subjective tropes will inherently lead to "a huge utterly random list of tracks someone somewhere happens to like," although I do agree with the Ace Combat lists (particularly the track "Zero").