The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Shroom Man 777]

*REAL LIFE EXAMPLE - The 'entire recorded history of armed human combat, starting from the point where we asserted superiority over other animals by inventing the spear'. Shock and surprise, a soldier is obviously more dangerous when he has a technological weapon. Soldiers rely extensively on their weapons to do battle. They can use (a mech, some sort of ray gun, lots of explosives) a gun, a knife or a stick... Once a soldier is separated from his technology - i.e. unarmed and without body armor, combat boots and is completely naked - he can be taken down with relative ease by a one-eyed farmer with a flintlock. One of the reasons why so much people consider Prehistoric Cro-Magnon Warfare to be more dramatic is because nowadays warfare relies way too much on technology like guns and knives and sharp sticks to leave anything to the human factor. This makes this trope "Older Than Dirt"... or as Old As Cavemen.

LULZ TROPING!

oh fuck now i am an internet fatty! STRAK STRAK STRAK!

Jesus Christ, this TVTropes thing has become very lame.

[Darth Wong]

Amusing. Although it would also be worth pointing out that it makes the whole concept of "tropes" pointless, if any aspect of logic and reality can be considered a "trope".

[Darth Wong]

I'm going to hazard a guess that due to magic, the punch was moving at the speed of a bullet.

How bad would that be?

If the punch was at bullet speed, then the hand would be shattered and the guy that threw the punch would be howling in pain. [...]

Oh, for fuck's sakes. Yeah, it would. Obviously, it doesn't shatter every bone in his arm, so as a corollary, whatever's making him able to punch that hard is also allowing him to survive the stresses of doing so. I figured that would be painfully obvious enough that I wouldn't have to actually specify it.

That's retarded. The ability to throw a punch at 300 m/s would make the person nigh-invincible, for various reasons. How could any human being fight kung fu with such a person?

[Gil Hamilton]

Did you also notice how many of their references are bizarre, including old videogames that nobody plays, or obscure anime bullshit?

If something is a cultural trope, it should have high-profile examples. Give me something from Indiana Jones, not Wizardry VIII.

That's because an encyclopaedic knowledge of old video games and obscure animes are a badge of honor amongst such people. Moreover, its interesting how they list not just obscure videogames or animes, but as many as they can collectively think of as well.

[Shroom Man 777]

Amusing. Although it would also be worth pointing out that it makes the whole concept of "tropes" pointless, if any aspect of logic and reality can be considered a "trope".

Exactly. They're really ignoring all sorts of nuances in written and visual fiction and just lumping it together (even when it barely fits) for the sake of doing so, while referencing their favorite pop culture or cult fixation to boost their nerd cred and crap because they think so-and-so is so awesome.

How the hell can you categorize, or attempt to categorize, everything? It's compulsive, rather dull and done for shits and giggles just so the "tropers" can go "tee-hee, my favorite character/franchise/whatever did XYZ, didn't you know?"

It gets really bad when you get "tropers" making entries going "THIS TROPER XYZed IN REAL LIFE" and their actual wiki entries end up becoming dialogue between one troper and another. Geeze.

And it gets even worse when aspiring fiction writers start adhering to the nonsense being written and espoused in that site, basing their entire works/plots/stories/characters on tropes and using the examples from that site. It actually stunts imagination and creativity by making people think that everything adheres to certain pre-conceived conventions or "tropes".

Who the hell would spend their time categorizing their favorite animus or mangoes or comic books, anyway?

That Trope thing could've been actually useful if they limited their signal-to-noise ratio.

On a slightly related note, TVTropes has been brought up several times in this thread. Checking their website, I don't really see that anyone has identified the trope that magic and superpowers automatically make a person virtually invincible against mere mortals armed with conventional weapons, even if those particular superpowers should not logically grant such invincibility.

Because that would force them to admit that their favorite awesome animu characters with dumb hair and giant robots adhere to a dumb and tired cliche, and instead they'd prefer to label those things as "Crowning Moments of Awesome" or some crap wherein instead they can faun about how awesome their favorite animu characters are. If they end up categorizing their favorite animu characters like that, they'd end up realizing that their dumb hair sword characters with giant robots are practically all the same and that would eliminate the source of their shits and giggles.

Most of them would rather not, because they'd rather wank to how awesome their franchise is. lulz truth in television trope animumangonaruto!

The fact that the vast majority of those entries are animus is, yeah, pretty much all you need to know.

[Simon_Jester]

It's the same reason why Dragon Ball Z villains laugh at firearms but a guy throwing a punch whose "power level" is rated at some absurdly high number hurts them, even though the punches themselves move slower than bullets.

They have a bit of an excuse, if not a physics explanation; everyone with noticeable powers in that setting is explicitly pumping magic into their body to make them stronger, faster, and tougher*. So the guy with bulletproof skin is getting the crap beaten out of him by a guy whose fists are in fact more destructive than bullets, because the other guy hacked the laws of nature and sanity the same way the bulletproof guy did. It's completely made up, but it's fairly consistently made up in that regard.

*Or is a superhuman robot/zombie/alien/whatever.

I think a similar assumption is often implied in Oriental 'my kung fu is stronger than yours' settings where individual warriors beat the crap out of each other hand to hand all the time. The guys punching each other really aren't normal guys; they're these bizarre magic-enhanced supersoldier freaks.

On a slightly related note, TVTropes has been brought up several times in this thread. Checking their website, I don't really see that anyone has identified the trope that magic and superpowers automatically make a person virtually invincible against mere mortals armed with conventional weapons, even if those particular superpowers should not logically grant such invincibility.

You could always make one; that's how the other tropes got there.

It gets really bad when you get "tropers" making entries going "THIS TROPER XYZed IN REAL LIFE" and their actual wiki entries end up becoming dialogue between one troper and another. Geeze.

The editors (moderators? Guys In Charge? Whatever.) do seem to crack down on that, though I'm sure they miss it in places.

The fact that the vast majority of those entries are animus is, yeah, pretty much all you need to know.

Hmm. Depends on the trope; if you go to the ones that aren't purely about some random bullshit that happens more often in cartoons than anywhere else in all of fiction, you'll find fewer examples from cartoons.

[Darth Yan]

I love the sight, and their section on the Star Wars EU is awesome. Oh, and someone sighted Darth Wong's story about his marriage as an example of parental marrige veto. Also, they do sometime's site serious examples. Plus it's just plain fun.

[Ted C]

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that mind control/possession only works on nephilem?

2. Wouldn't the tin-foil hats prevent the crew from being controlled?

To my knowledge, 1) the mind-control will work on any human if 2) they don't have sufficient shielding around the brain.

The control would certainly require getting a crew that wasn't wearing protective headgear.

[Junghalli]

And it gets even worse when aspiring fiction writers start adhering to the nonsense being written and espoused in that site, basing their entire works/plots/stories/characters on tropes and using the examples from that site. It actually stunts imagination and creativity by making people think that everything adheres to certain pre-conceived conventions or "tropes".

I personally find TVtropes to be somewhat helpful as a writer because it provides a nice quick checklist of things you should probably avoid in your fiction, or things that have been done to death so if you're going to write them you should try to find a way to put a new spin on them.

But yeah, the idea of actually assembling a story or setting out of "tropes" like it's some sort of lego assemblage ... I'm hard-pressed to imagine that approach not being absolutely poisonous to imaginative storytelling. You've actually encountered people that do that?

Did you also notice how many of their references are bizarre, including old videogames that nobody plays, or obscure anime bullshit?

If something is a cultural trope, it should have high-profile examples. Give me something from Indiana Jones, not Wizardry VIII.

Meh, for me it's part of the charm of the place that I can find info about obscure stuff I never heard of there. Although I see your point about wanting high-profile examples instead of nothing but obscure stuff if it's supposed to be a trope.

[Simon_Jester]

I personally find TVtropes to be somewhat helpful as a writer because it provides a nice quick checklist of things you should probably avoid in your fiction, or things that have been done to death so if you're going to write them you should try to find a way to put a new spin on them.

But yeah, the idea of actually assembling a story or setting out of "tropes" like it's some sort of lego assemblage ... I'm hard-pressed to imagine that approach not being absolutely poisonous to imaginative storytelling. You've actually encountered people that do that?

As much to the point, have you encountered people who do that who might have written decent stories if they hadn't done that? Anyone dumb enough to try to write a story by snapping together TVTropes pages like Lego bricks probably isn't smart enough to write a story worth reading in the first place.

One thing I'll say for TVTropes is that it creates a vocabulary for fictional concepts that didn't have a name before, albeit one you can't reliably use among people who don't know the site.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I've never seen anyone try to build a story out of trope legos, but I have seen fans of the site try to build stories out of trope "subversion" legos. That's arguably worse, as it's hard to imagine anyone worth anything as a writer falling for the temptation to make the world's most cliché tale straight from a listing, but any aspiring writer could know that obviously if you instead subvert every trope in the book, that's the opposite of cliché and you'll have the best story around! Plus, subverting tropes is terribly clever so everyone will know just how smart you are. Damn, when can I start?

[Ryan Thunder]

That's retarded. The ability to throw a punch at 300 m/s would make the person nigh-invincible, for various reasons. How could any human being fight kung fu with such a person?

They couldn't, unless they had similar capabilities through similar magic, which I had thought was the case.

And yeah, it's retarded. Magic tends to be like that.

[Simon_Jester]

I've never seen anyone try to build a story out of trope legos, but I have seen fans of the site try to build stories out of trope "subversion" legos. That's arguably worse, as it's hard to imagine anyone worth anything as a writer falling for the temptation to make the world's most cliché tale straight from a listing, but any aspiring writer could know that obviously if you instead subvert every trope in the book, that's the opposite of cliché and you'll have the best story around! Plus, subverting tropes is terribly clever so everyone will know just how smart you are. Damn, when can I start?

Though it's not as if there weren't stories that got most of their humor value from subverting or poking fun at tropes before TVTropes came out. Most comedy does that to one degree or another.

[Baughn]

I don't think you should blame TVTropes for the actions of bad writers. Really, it's not fair.

Tropes aren't bad, and nobody on the site is claiming that they are, or that subverting them automatically makes your story good. They're trying to build a vocabulary, nothing more.

You might argue that they're not doing the best possible job of it, but - nobody else is even trying. Don't let perfection be the enemy of "good enough".

[Shroom Man 777]

But yeah, the idea of actually assembling a story or setting out of "tropes" like it's some sort of lego assemblage ... I'm hard-pressed to imagine that approach not being absolutely poisonous to imaginative storytelling. You've actually encountered people that do that?

Not to the point of turning their entire stories into Trope Legos, but more like basing their characters on certain tropes and letting it determine characterization and stuff.

Personally, I think that while there are genre conventions and cliches or tropes (i.e. anti-villain, asshole anti-hero protagonist, etc.), these tropes and conventions and cliches are really just the bare bones and in the greater picture the conformity of tropes are NOT as important as the individual differences an actor/writer/director/artist puts into his character/story/movie/work.

So "lulz xyz animu/movie falls into xyz trope" wherein people just fixate on categorizing works of fiction actually kinds of depreciates the works of actors/writers/directors/artists and the special unique touches they put into their efforts because everyone's too busy trying to figure out which tropes they fit into... to the point of inventing totally nonsensical tropes just for shits and giggles.

Which is why I also kind of find people who say "xyz genre convention" as unoriginal or overdone to be kind of annoying, since they just fixate on genre conventions, cliches and tropes - when in fact, none of these things are anywhere near as important as the unique touches actors/writers/directors/artists put into their creations.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

I thought LegoTrope stories always just resulted in shit like Scary Movie, Disaster Movie, and Not Another Teen Movie. Anyways, when's the Answer to the Ultimate Question coming?

[Darth Yan]

Scary Movie and Not Another Teen Movie are actually pretty funny. Superhero Movie is kind of better, but Disaster Movie and Epic Movie make me feel guilty about laughing.

[Shroom Man 777]

Aww

They amended their Tech Fu article, removed my entry, and clarified the 'trope'.

[Darth Wong]

What a bunch of pussies. They couldn't admit that the "trope" itself is entirely stupid, so they just pretended that a soldier "who can still get into a bar fight" doesn't count. What about a soldier who can't get into a bar fight? Contrary to popular belief, soldiers don't actually get extensive martial arts training. It's quite possible to have a soldier who is really not a very proficient fighter at all without his weapons. I guess the TVTropes people don't want to acknowledge that.

[Sidewinder]

What a bunch of pussies. They couldn't admit that the "trope" itself is entirely stupid, so they just pretended that a soldier "who can still get into a bar fight" doesn't count. What about a soldier who can't get into a bar fight? Contrary to popular belief, soldiers don't actually get extensive martial arts training. It's quite possible to have a soldier who is really not a very proficient fighter at all without his weapons. I guess the TVTropes people don't want to acknowledge that.

I think the main problem is one shared by writers of technothrillers, comic books, movies and TV shows (including anime), i.e., SHEER IGNORANCE of how post-WWII militaries are organized. For example, in the US Army, the VAST MAJORITY of soldiers have maintenance, logistics, and other supporting roles as their Military Occupation Specialty- truck drivers, mechanics, clerks, etc. No amount of wishful thinking on the Pentagon's part will change the fact that the vast majority of soldiers are grease monkeys, NOT shooters- or the fact shooters cannot double as grease monkeys without accepting such compromises in the time and resources devoted to training, they'll become incompetent at BOTH tasks instead of competent in one task and "smart enough to know when to ask a specialist- someone smarter than them- to take care of this" in another.

[Tritio]

Hello Stuart,

Great work with the fanfic. I stumbled upon Armageddon yesterday and I was hooked. I've just caught up with the Armageddon and Salvation War story up till now and it's been an enjoyable ride. I look forward to the rest of your story.

Caesar's foundation of a credible state in Hell (the one which we have received the most insight into) is fascinating, and the stories of what is happening in Hell could offer a lot to the main story. Besides the problems of creating the systems and institutions of a state from scratch, it would be interesting to see how the ordinary people cope with their newfound freedom and what their priorities become, since many priorities in real life/death would change (reproduction, health, etc).

That would of course be part of the bigger question of what afterlife and Hell will come to mean post-liberation.

[Shroom Man 777]

I wonder if I could be an even greater asshole and cite another 'REAL LIFE NON-COMBAT EXAMPLE' of that Tech Fu trope, i.e. those amputees with fiberglass titanium prosthetics who are apparently disqualified from running with non-amputee athletes because their super-springy peg legs might give them an unfair advantage.

[mr friendly guy]

I'm reminded of the plot of Mortal Kombat. We are told that if humanity's greatest warriors cannot win the tournament of mortal kombat, then Shang Tsung's legions of warriors will flood onto Earth. At no point did anyone ever manage to explain how a bunch of kung-fu morons with funky superpowers and melee weapons would get past a single Chinese army brigade, never mind conquering the world. It was simply assumed that these creatures, having superior strength, kung-fu skills, and strange abilities, would just walk all over humanity.

Apparently in the sequel they did, with his generals describing their triumph. This was after Shao Kahn found a loop hole in the rules just like the video game. Naturally the conquest all happened off screen.

In the mortal kombat tv series it was set in a more early time, where Kahn's "near limitless" soldiers would have an advantage against us mere humans. This IMO made more sense, unless you are going to ascribe some unseen super natural power to the bad guys which allow them to triumph over modern weaponry.

[Darth Yan]

Cummon Stewart update the story.

[Kodiak]

Cummon Stewart update the story.

If you're going to bump the thread w/ the equivalent of a PM, you could at least spell Stuart's name correctly.