I notice a lot of hostility towards tropes on this board. Why?
Who doesn't love to see the Big Damn Heroes beat a Xanatos Gambit with a Crowning Moment of Awesome that they did Thirty Five Minutes Ago?
Tropes are the building blocks of stories - trying to subvert or avoid them won't magically make you a genius.
seems like people just dislike tvtropes site
dunno why, maybe because of its visitors
>>47675509
Thumbnail looked like a penis.
I like TVTropes. Fun reading.
>>47675532
They're a bit up their own arses but yeah I've spent hours there reading shit
>>47675509
It's more that some people dislike the website, which made up pretty much all of those names anyway.
I'm not entirely surprised; the informal nature sometimes lends to people to using literally every trope they can even halfway justify for literally any story they can find without ever thinking too hard about it.
Like the "Badass" trope for instance.
I'm pretty sure they have applied "Badass" to literally every single character in any media ever at this point, rendering the first half phrase itself pretty much as meaningful as the word "Freedom" was during the Bush Administration, which is to say totally meaningless.
When the website was newer there was a bit more self-control about stuff like that, but now it's more about trying to cram as many tropes as you can even halfway apply to something like it's some sort of game you can win for your favorite anime and mangas and shit like that, and their pages are ALWAYS the worst ones too.
Also, nice taste in comics OP.
The Metal Men are fucking boss.
>>47675554
Also, tropers are effectively what we like to think redditors are like.
they're overly enthusiastic and optimistic about their hobbies
they're pleb as fuck
they think that having "weird hobbies" is cute and special
they lack insight in everything
they rehash old memes forever
they think that they're part of some intellectual elite because they repeat what they've heard on discovery channel.
A lot of which also applies to /tg/ more than to other boards.
So it's understandable that those here who aren't complete dumbasses would want to avoid being likened to tropers.
I admire TvTropes' dedication to autistically categorizing everything. It pleases me greatly.
>>47675509
because tropes are inherently bad.
reusing the same schtick over and over is just bad writing.
>>47675509
Because they named the trope of a villain having multiple victory conditions, a storytelling device that has probably been around since before written language, after a villain from fucking Gargoyles.
>>47675509
>tropes
People dislike it because its once again leftyshit that clueless hipsters try to turn into a social science just like"'Deconstruction".
neo-postmodernism is cancer.
>>47675702
No.
I guarantee you literally every piece of media you have ever likes or enjoyed has elements or entire plots lifted from previous stories and sources that inspired the original creation.
You are not part of a super special generation of people who enjoys new and interesting things different from all that has came before.
You aren't special in any way at ALL as a point of fact, and everything we have ever made comes from somewhere else because it comes from the imagination and minds of human beings who are influenced by stories and things they liked that were made before them.
They are not "bad" things, just ideas that can be used poorly or without finesse by less talented writers and creators.
One of the things I notice that TV Tropes tends to do is that by quantifying and trying to explain these vague narrative concepts it convince more of these less talented writers and creators that if they too include these things that pieces of media they liked had in them they their own creations would be equally awesome because it filled the by-the-numbers list of things they saw in TV Tropes. Unfortunately this doesn't actually improve your writing skills the same way a color-by-numbers piece of art doesn't do much to improve your painting and artistic skills.
So the problem isn't with ideas, because ideas have no substance. The problem is that by nature most forms of media are complete shit because most creators are not very good, hence why he value exceptional ones so highly.
TV Tropes just makes it easier for the shittier writers to write the shit they probably already would have, which is actually helpful in identifying poor writing for future reference in a "do not do what he did here" way.
It's just a site. I don't get the hate for it, and sometimes having specific terms for things can be helpful.
>>47675711
Because he embodied the trope perfectly...
>>47675554
They listed the whiteout screen from Pokemon on the Nightmare Fuel index at one point, too.
>>47675751
this
>>47675751
>>47675774
These guys have the right idea. It doesn't help that the people on the site are some of the most dysfunctional human beings on the planet.
>>47675532
How does that look like a penis?
>>47675509
Because the intention was to create language which could be used to talk about media, but like we can see from your post, the actual practice is replacing discussions with buzzword bingo.
>>47675852
creating terms to categorise things is a sign of our intellect.
without ways of classifying, describing and labelling, all that remains is anarchy
Man is a database animal.
>itt: no one remembers that tvtropes went pants on head retarded
The hate is deserved
>>47675774
>One of the things I notice that TV Tropes tends to do is that by quantifying and trying to explain these vague narrative concepts it convince more of these less talented writers and creators that if they too include these things that pieces of media they liked had in them they their own creations would be equally awesome because it filled the by-the-numbers list of things they saw in TV Tropes. Unfortunately this doesn't actually improve your writing skills the same way a color-by-numbers piece of art doesn't do much to improve your painting and artistic skills.
I have seen people who tried to improve their stories by "putting all the tropes in", but they appeared to be either trolls or somewhere on the deep end of the autistic spectrum (or both). TVTropes wasn't the reason for their stories being terrible - that would have happened anyway.
>>47675910
Are you referring to the "no more adult tropes" thing (which they were forced into, even if some of the staff got overzealous about it), to the recent change of management and site redesign, or to something else?
>>47675940
>TVTropes wasn't the reason for their stories being terrible - that would have happened anyway.
Agreed, which is why I have no problem with the website itself.
The problem was that type of person now seems to be the exclusive type of person found in the site.
>>47675886
People who have no understanding of literature or storytelling, and whose taste in media does not extend beyond shitty anime, should not be trusted to make a categorization system for tropes
>>47675949
[citation fucking needed]
>>47675816
Not the whole thing. But it looks like there's a penis where a penis would usually be on a humanoid being.
>>47675886
>Autism speaks, the post.
>>47675886
>creating terms to categorise things is a sign of our intellect.
Leftyspeak: The Post
>>47676030
I didn't know that Carl von Linné was a leftist.
>>47675509
Invoking tropes invokes the tropes website which is full of autists and therefore is scorned by 4chan
>>47675691
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!
>>47676030
Describe your favourite RPG without using labels. Go ahead, show me this world where you don't categorise things.
>>47675509
>trying to subvert or avoid them won't magically make you a genius
Unfortunately, there's a large chunk of /tg/ that believes doing the opposite of what makes sense means you're being original.
I just wish the site had more content control. There are so many shitty articles. And a lot of genuinely common tropes aren't documented very well.
>>47675532
It's good reading about the things that make up your favorite movie/show/game/etc, but yeah, the community is 100% cancer.
Does anyone have the troper tales pics? Those were a goldmine of cringe.
>>47675600
This is also true.
>>47676451
I was about to explain my opinion, but it looks like you've got it for me. Thanks.
>>47675509
The only trope that should be referenced by name is TV Tropes will Ruin Your Vocabulary.
TV Tropes talks about story elements that people have been talking about for as long as there's been human culture. There already exists a rich vocabulary for talking about stories, one that your intended audience will be able to understand. TV Tropes instead introduces a private language of obscure references that nobody outside of a vanishingly small internet bubble will understand. They practice the opposite of communication.
And furthermore, even if you do get the references, they give too much credit to their namesakes and not enough credit to the things they're being compared to. Jonathan Frakes' character on Gargoyles is not the Platonic ideal of a character making a plan, and the only people who think he is need to get their heads out of the Disney Afternoon of their own assholes.
>>47676030
>Aristotle invented Leftyspeak
>>47675509
Mostly, it's hate of popularity. When people started liking TVTropes, /tg/ felt compelled to hate it.
It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of story structure, the idea that boiling down stories to common elements means that no-one is original and that this is somehow a NEW thing. It isn't. Archetypal literary criticism, structuralism, this all pre-dates TVTropes by literal decades.
>>47676052
He was swedish.
>>47676952
fuck him up socrates
About 75% of the time, Tvtropes doesn't even understand the trope it's trying to categorize; hell, a good amount of tropes are actually named for something that doesn't actually invoke the fucking trope.
>Since this thread is apparently about TVTropes instead of the use of tropes...
I like the whole Jungian bullshit about repeated patterns and Heroes Journey and all that, so I like the concept of tropes. I also like the website TVTropes for creating a dictionary of references to point to when discussing tropes, which I'm frankly surprised hadn't been done before.
I hate that if I even mention "it's a trope where..." about things like "The Final Girl" or "The MacGuffin", that existed loooong before the TVTropes website, I get some jackass getting triggered and telling me they hate tropes and generally something about autismos and how TVTropes is bad.
Not even for mentioning *a TVTropes trope*, just the concept of tropes in general.
It's like trying to explain the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 and having the person you're talking to start going on about how memes are stupid and they hate them and going "le" and mentioning epic fails and lol.
>>47675751
>>47675802
>>47675782
>Literary discussion is leftyshit
Okay. So is pretending to be an elf.
>>47675940
>>47675774
I feel like the argument that TVTropes is bad because it identifies tropes is sort of silly. They existed before they were crowdsourced into an overgrown Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom wiki. People even used tropes intentionally before TVTropes. One of the most successful franchises of all time was made by liberally ripping off cool shit the creator liked as a kid. Tarantino made it an art style.
>>47675520
>>47675532
TVtropes is indeed rather entertaining to read on a day where you have nothing better to do, and even if they are a bit arrogant, I can't say I haven't learned a lot from them, and have discovered some neat new things from their many links.
>>47675520
>>47675546
>>47675600
>>47675910
The worst thing about the community is that even the slightest criticism of a work in a page is viewed as being bashing. Presumably a bunch of lickspittles got butthurt about the work whose boots they lick getting criticized, complained to the moderators and the mods folded like a deck of cards.
>>47676030
>Taxonomy is for leftists
>Literature is for leftists
>Jargon is for leftists
>Political parties are for leftists
>Cartography is for leftists
>Literally every discipline that requires a specific glossary is for leftists
>You, using the term "Leftyspeak", and the format "[Topic]: The [Thing]", are for leftists
>The very concept of language is for leftists
Well, I guess reality does have a well known liberal bias, after all...
>>47676788
But a lot of them don't have a good term for them. That's sort of the problem. Hell, like >>47676595 says, a lot of common things aren't documented well, and that extends outside of TVTropes.
Worth noting is that recently they've started making the references less obscure and begun naming their tropes in a more obvious way. Frankly, I'm surprised Xanatos Gambit wasn't renamed (I just checked). I guess it's one of those things that at this point is too well known. Also, needs more articles like this
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MortonsFork
I feel informed and intrigued by this piece of tax history.I only kept reading because the article quote promised incest and murder.
But beyond that, *knowing* who Xanatos is doesn't really matter. Having a term *like* "Xanatos Gambit" is what matters. You don't need to know that the earliest examples killed with knives to know what a "slasher" is when talking about a movie about a guy who kills people with a baseball bat or accidents.
>>47677476
This thread reminds me that I got to /tg/ from TVTropes. I'd jumped ship to 7chan early, but when I got into RPGs, their /tg/ board was one of the slowest. I was reading TVTropes and came across theDC 80 Escape artistthread and was reminded that 4chan had a roleplaying games board.
>>47677695
Sounds like the lefties are on to something.
>>47676521
Remember of course that language is a constructed set of artificial signifiers used to lend a sense of order and structure to the signifieds we experience
Their concept of reducing everything into rigid inescapable categories stifles creativity. Also talking to them feels like I'm talking to a combo of Gene Shallot and one of those meme-spouting, schizo nerd girl robotically expelling lines from Portal and Firefly.
>>47677973
Yes and TV tropes has gone from assisting that process to obfuscating it.
>>47678046
Who is Gene Shallot?
>Who doesn't love to see the Big Damn Heroes beat a Xanatos Gambit with a Crowning Moment of Awesome that they did Thirty Five Minutes Ago?
I like cliches and tropes, but that still made me cringe badly.
>>47675802
Unlike us, right?
>>47678110
I meant to write Gene Shalit.
>>47677973
Jargon in general tends to have that effect until you finally grasp it. Try learning a new discipline, like 3D modeling or sculpting or cooking. You'll be neck deep in terms you don't understand.
>>47678181
>>47678110
I can't draw. Pretend I drew Gene Shalit as an onion.
>>47675509
I’m going to offer an alternative theory.
Because roleplaying games, at their heart, are about telling stories. Telling stories, not talking about stories. Character backgrounds, settings, NPC motivations, the adventures themselves, all of these exist as hooks from which a story can be hung, or even strung together. We want to hear about the time an immortal luchadore caught a flying wyvern in a submission hold an dropped the both of them in a volcano, or the time the players completely circumvented a trap just to circle back and set it off in their own faces because they wanted to know what it did, or about the time that the party’s bullshit artist started a cult after the mad scientist’s pet monster got loose and staked out a territory.
I mean, sure, Sturgeon’s Law applies and most of it is crap or so painfully derivative that we’ll deride you for it, but /tg/ always wants to hear a story.
Tropes aren’t stories. I mean, look at the second line of your post. That could have been a cool moment full of tension and drama, sure, but after you stripped all the identifiers, motives, characters, and stakes out of it … what’s left? “A Thing Happened”?
Tropes might be building blocks, but treating them like lego pieces that you can connect together pell-mell and hope to accidentally stumble your way into genius doesn’t work either. Kind of like legos, you might have something in the shape of a house, but it won’t serve its function except in the most basic of ways.
As for why /tg/ gets annoyed with it in particular? We’ve all known that guy whose character concept begins and ends at “Elf Ranger”
>>47675509
>I notice a lot of hostility towards tropes on this board. Why?
Tropes are ideas.
/tg/ hates ideas.
Because/tg/ is a hivemind.
...wait
>>47678228
Tropes are stereotypes.
>>47675774
Who knows, maybe that one guy Likes 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' and absolutely nothing else.
>>47675509
>>47678127
Crowning Moment of Awesome isn't even a trope, it's a subjective term. I'm not complaining about standards, I mean it's not even classified as a trope on the site.
"Who doesn't love a Crowning Moment of Awesome" is a tautology. If you don't love it, then by definition it's not a CMoA.
Also, how can the heroes jump in right in the nick of time to save everyone if the plan was already foiled and no one needs saving?
>>47675600
This is truth.
It comes across as antagonistic and hyperbolic, but I can't find anything wrong with it.
There's probably a trope for that.
>>47678165
Well it's good to see there's at least one person left who isn't buying in to delusions here.
>>47678205
>Telling stories, not talking about stories.
First off, telling a story is aided by understanding stories that exist. Even Citizen Kane required Orson Welles to understand story structure and the medium he was working in, so that he could radically redefine the conventions of that medium.
But more than that, telling a story and talking about stories are in no way mutually exclusive, or /tg/ as a board wouldn't even exist.
Boiling the OP's intentionally disingenuous, especially when your own examples can also be called "a thing happened".
>Who doesn't love to see the ragtag band of heroic adventurers stop a plot that benefits the villain no matter the outcome with an over the top moment that cements how cool they are, all planned out so that the fight was a distraction?
>We’ve all known that guy whose character concept begins and ends at “Elf Ranger”
I feel like if we're going with the hypothetical Troper, their concept would inherently have a lot more jargon. Elf Ranger with a Heart of Gold who's Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds or something.
>I swear they had a character/plot generator
>They changed their stupid site layout
>Can't find it
aaaaaa why can't every site on the internet stay exactly the same as it was when I last went there six months ago. I don't want to do mental effort.
>>47678556
Tropes does not really give an understanding of story structure.
>>47678813
If a gene is the basic unit of life, and a meme is the basic unit of information, a trope is the base unit of a story.
>>47678832
I thought it was gene, meme, scene
>>47678813
Sure it does. It can give you an idea of how overused a cliché is.
>>47678891
Gene, meme, scene, sense, peace, race, revenge
>>47678898
I wouldn't say cliche. Tropes aren't cliches, and it's impossible to NOT use tropes, just as it's impossible to not use memes or genes.
>>47675509
Mostly because using Official TVTropes Titles in All Capital Letters makes you look like a smug asshole showing off how you're in a secret club, which is in fact just a public wiki.
Referencing tropes is fine. Using TVTropes names for them makes you look like you think TVTropes invented tropes.
>>47678898
A trope becomes a cliché when it loses all meaning/effect.
>>47678962
You can always make something new from scratch. The real effort is making it presentable, compelling or even functional.
a trope IS a cliche.
That's why tropes are bad, because they are cliches.
>>47678981
This, really. When I was in high school I browsed the site all the time and loved it. But now, whenever I see someone talking in Tropespeak it just looks grating. You don't look like any kind of intellectual when you talk about how your Big Bad is Genre Savvy and never says No One Could Have Survived That. Tropes as they exist on the site were obviously meant to be retroactively applied to works. You're not supposed to base characters and storylines off of checklists of your favorite ones.
I got into the site shortly before a certain cartoon about colorful equines hit the internet, and it all got swamped with that shit. Then, fan fiction started getting dedicated tabs and even sub pages for Trope discussions. It soon became really clear the site's community only really cared about discussing retarded fan theories and their OTPs. So basically, it became a giant collective tumblr blog about cartoons and fan works instead of a place to discuss media in any meaningful way.
>>47678981
If I ever have to resort to the wiki name, I often say "For lack of a better term" because making shit up on the spot is even worse.
You know what its like trying to make a story out of tropes?
Its like taking every worn out, dated, tired cliche in the book of jewish comedy writing and mashing them all together without any understanding of plot, story structure, character dialogue or narrative.
You want to know why your writing is shit? Because you spend all day regurgitating tropes instead of actually trying to learn how to write a proper story with a compelling narrative.
>>47679087
A cliché is only bad if the presentation is bad. Just like that post you just made and keep making more of, just like a bad cliché.
The terms are stupid and cringy.
They encourage thinking about narratives as piecewise construction rather than individual strings of events and causation
It also tries to legitimize cliches.
>>47679087
You only know about tropes as presented by TV Tropes, don't you?
>>47679172
Something is cliche when the presentation is hackneyed.
>>47679203
>They encourage thinking about narratives as piecewise construction rather than individual strings of events and causation
This is my biggest problem with the way tropes are presented. You should never write your work around what Tropes (as in a capital T) you like or don't like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ2iR1Eq0RA
you lot are the spergs even the other uncool kids avoided in high school.
>>47679092
>>47679103
>>47678981
I honestly feel like this is you guys projecting, and "using terms from a secret club that's actually public" is kind of like... the definition of anonymous imageboard culture in the first place. People don't use jargon to be cool and show off their shibboleth, they do it because *having terminology makes conversation about a subject much easier*.
For example, this is why "tumblr" has all those "made up" gender and sexuality terms.
This is why scientists use shared systems of terminology
This is why even outside of TVTropes, tropes are a thing.
This is why academic critiques tend to use a lot of the same phrases
This is why idioms and shibboleth and shared cultural concepts develop in the first place
Now, you CAN argue that using the technology of language to codify a concept creates its own set of problems, like creating a barrier to entry, or shaping the conversation itself. These are very valid criticisms. Linguistic determinism is a thing. There's actually discussion in scientific fields if certain languages are better for scientists because of how those languages work. If you've ever read Uncleftish Beholding, the rewrite of Atomic Theory to be in a hypothetical Germanized English ("Anglish"), you can see how "Waterstuff" might be easier to grok than "Hydrogen"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding
But "language shapes thought" is a much different argument than "they're using obscure terms, that must mean they're elitist pricks". Which is especially ironic on a board about elfgames, since we wouldn't be able to talk about those elfgames without terms that make a muggle's head spin.
By the way, me using terms like "grok" and "muggle"? Kind of examples. A lot better to use small words that people are likely to understand as opposed to spelling out that I mean "understand and make sense of without much difficulty" and "a person who hasn't been indoctrinated into our subculture".
>>47679330
Jesus I love Star Wars just as much as anyone else but bickering over whether or not Sheev's death blew up the Death Star is a whole new level of autism.
Remember when discussing this shit amounted to little more than the moral implications of private contractors working on the Death Star?
>>47679330
All that shit you see in youtube videos like that or the This Troper ones was banned years ago. Arguing inside an article is no longer allowed, everything's supposed to read as if it was written by the same person, and the whole "community" side of the page was deleted and confined to the forums proper.
>>47675781
Also, their wordcount on Doug Walker's pages eclipses the combined works of Shakespeare.
>>47679363
Except that they actually are just using terms bexause its a part of their favored lexicon, and not because of any practical utility those terms have. The vast majority of their diction is not meaningfuly useful or even shorter or easier to say than normal words for that which they are trying to describe.
>>47679414
I'm sorry pal, I don't know what to tell you. The image stuck, and anybody that refers or even makes allusion to tropes here gets painted with the same brush. It's better to avoid the word as a whole if you want something resembling rational discussion.
>>47679363
See I'd be inclined to agree with you, but TVTropes uses very unique jargon.
The names they use which are simple and straight forward--like "Lancer" or "Big Bad"--are fine. Even Tropes like "The Scully" have a sort of logic behind their names.
But a lot of their Tropes are a string of winded, capitalized phrases which reference some dumb cartoon or comic book or brief moment in a Buffy episode. Or worse, some kind of joke the person who named it came up with. It is very difficult to follow when you have no idea what they even mean by this. Like if I see someone say their villain is a "Neidermeyer" when they mean some kind of sadist doctor, or "A Handful for an Eye" when they just mean fucking pocket sand, then it gets really old really fast.
>>47679545
I hate "big bad evil guy" because it doesn't actually confer any additional information over "main villain", "primary antagonist" or any other number of ways to say the same fucking thing without sounding like a middle schooler
I've always wondered, is there such a thing as a serious tv tropes? A page with easily available, thorough information on literary analysis presented in a cohesive manner?
>>47679121
You know what it's like trying to write a story without tropes?
Nothing, because you literally fucking can't. Posts like this boil my blood, because it's so obvious that >>47679205 is true for you.
>>47679259
>>47679203
I feel like this is such a stupid argument, although I'll admit that I'm overreacting because of the previously mentioned boiled blood. Understanding these things isn't some negative. That's why Joseph Campbell's work is seen as so influential, and a must for writers. There is also nothing wrong with writing a story based around the things you like. The Star Wars movies that people actually like were basically the 70s version of someone using TVTropes, since Lucas intentionally followed Campbell's guide. Also he took liberally from the things he loved as a kid, like Kurosawa films and movies about WWII.
>>47679330
>You will never get these 3 minutes back
Eh. I'm already on /tg/
>Well ACKSHULLY, in the Expanded Universe...
I don't mind nerds arguing about minutiae (although that one guy is right; there doesn't have to be a causal link in the first place), but man, when Star Wars EU is brought up I can't help but cringe.
>>47679448
884,647 words?
>>47679459
Did you just... not get anything I said, or what?
The fact that a Trope (capital T) is less than summing up a complex thought (the article) every time you want to talk about something is already incredibly useful. It's why it's useful to say "Bob" instead of "My uncle with the long hair who plays guitar and likes pokemon and only dates hipster chicks" every time you want to talk about Bob. Try to have a conversation about a person without using a name. That right there is the only utility a Trope needs.
By summing up complex concepts in only a few words, you can more easily discuss something.
>>47679579
BBEG is our word. Theirs is "Big Bad". Which is simpler to say, though I still prefer "antagonist".
>>47679643
The problem is when you start using "My uncle with the long hair who plays guitar and likes pokemon and only dates hipster chicks" as if it was a literary archetype and call all such characters The Uncle Bob
>>47679243
You can use a cliché to great effect. What makes it bad is how its implimented. Lots of people love clichés and stereotypes. So that means it can't be bad by default.
>>47679545
"Lancer" is an odd example, as it's pretty fucking opaque. What about that term implies "The #2 guy"/"the alternative to the main hero on the team"? You'd have to go into some weird "lances are a less-common heroic weapon than swords" tangent for it to start making any sense. It's not remotely intuitive in casual conversation.
>>47679330
That's all of 4chan. So that includes you too. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C4uTEEOJlM
>>47679732
Thing though with "Lancer" is it just sounds cool, so people are more willing to use it if you define it right. All you really need to say is "yeah, the Han Solo character is what's called a Lancer". And they'll immediately get what you're talking about.
>>47679545
I agree with you, and they've been trying to change a lot of their trope titles to be less specific (like I said, I'm surprised Xanatos Gambit isn't changed, but I guess some titles are too iconic). Although just to point out some irony, "Pocket Sand" is exactly what you're bitching about. I don't watch King of the Hill, so if that wasn't a meme, I wouldn't know that "pocket sand" meant "throwing sand or something else in someone's eyes during a fight". In that regard, "A Handful for an Eye" is a lot more explanatory.
>>47679579
Doesn't need to.
>>47679691
That's not a problem. That is literally what I just listed as a positive. Names are fucking useful for talking about shit.
If there's a trend of long haired guitar playing pokemon loving hipster dating uncles named Bob, that's a fucking literary archetype. It helps to give that archetype a name.
That is literally what Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell were doing. They just weren't crowdsourcing teenagers on the internet.
>>47679732
As I keep trying to point out, the trope names don't really matter. That they ARE names is useful. Just like I don't need to know whichever science fiction book "grok" comes from. Heinlein?
Just like 13 year olds don't need to know why it's called "dialing" a phone, or why the music their phone plays is a "ring"tone.
>>47679780
>Just like I don't need to know whichever science fiction book "grok" comes from
I've never encountered anyone--even here--who throws around the word "grok" like it's supposed to mean something.
Also pocket sand is a much more intuitive name for what it is than some oh-so-clever play on a common saying.
>>47679780
>If there's a trend of long haired guitar playing pokemon loving hipster dating uncles named Bob
There is no such archetype, so people will start going on a tangent about how clever a uncle who doesn't play the guitar and is short-haired but still likes pokemon is a clever subversion of the The Uncle Bob even if that makes no fucking sense.
Then you get people saying that the uncle character who doesn't like pokemon but plays the guitar and is long-haired and dates ugly goth chicks because it's the only way he can get any is a deconstruction of The Uncle Bob
Then people say that whenever a uncle appears but DOESN'T like pokemon, play the guitar, has long hair or dates chicks of a certain sub-culture is an aversion of The Uncle Bob
If Uncle Bob on the other side doesn't do any of that shit at all, and comes nowhere close, he's a inversion of The Uncle Bob
>>47679862
Oh, I forgot. If Uncle Sam, after being set up to be a normal person, discovers his love for pokemon and lets his hair grow just before changing his name to Bob, then he's a reconstruction of The Uncle Bob
>>47678205
This.
Having concepts to categorize the elements of a story or a piece of art is extremely useful. It will help you to see how those elements are comonly used, how original or copypasted they are and how they interact or what they imply.
But they don't automaticaly 'tell' a story. There is an abyss between technical concepts and a compelling story. And that abyss consist on truly understading the concepts of the story and not being limited by them.
>>47679837
I hear 'grok' quite a bit when listening in on people working out rule sets that are easier to understand, usually in the form 'grokablity' or 'grokkable'.
>>47679545
>But a lot of their Tropes are a string of winded, capitalized phrases which reference some dumb cartoon or comic book or brief moment in a Buffy episode. Or worse, some kind of joke the person who named it came up with. It is very difficult to follow when you have no idea what they even mean by this. Like if I see someone say their villain is a "Neidermeyer" when they mean some kind of sadist doctor, or "A Handful for an Eye" when they just mean fucking pocket sand, then it gets really old really fast.
It's been site policy for years now that you should never name trope pages after references. There's a section of the site for coming up with better names for confusing tropes, and a long list of pages that were already renamed and why.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/RenamedTropes
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/ZeroContextExample
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/JustAFaceAndACaption
>>47679501
>People sperg out so it's better to bow to their retardation
>>47680016
People refusing to bow to retardation is why "tropes" are hated.
Language is a gift. Talk like a human being, instead of a bunch of punch cards.
>>47680012
I guess that explains why when I went back the Trope names definitely felt more concise.
I haven't browsed the site in a long time, but that was definitely a problem back then. I still hear the community is total trash though.
tvtropes more like tvmemes amirite
>>47680081
The community is kind of autistic because that's the kind of person a site about categorizing recurrent story elements attracts. Either people who watch a show and see TROPES everywhere, or people who devour dozens of trope pages a day becase they're hooked on having some amount of meta knowledge and get a smug reassurance in being able to know The Lancer just gave the Broken Bird a Glomp leading to a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming
>>47680173
>The Lancer just gave the Broken Bird a Glomp leading to a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming
This bugged me more than it should have.
>>47679643
You can't write a story that doesn't use existing tropes, nobody said you could orshould try. What you should do, is not think about them.
Your "capital T Trope" terms are worthless because most of them DON'T convey complcated concepts as a compact word or phrase. They're just in-joke names for something which can already be described in a few words.
>>47679837
I learned "grok" from here.
Also, pocket sand is intuitive to you because you know the meme.
>>47679862
>>47679899
We get it, you hate TVTropes. Good for you.
>>47679946
This is one of those statements that everyone already knows to the point that saying it just seems dumb. Like "the sky is blue". TVTropes doesn't even pretend that's what it's for in the first place.
>>47680059
That this is coming on the board for elfgames with their elfgame terminology is bafflingly myopic.
>>47680173
It's also for the kind of nerd who watches a lot of shit.
I mean, even without a crowdsourced wiki with a ton of injokes, you already had a bunch of people (like the kind of people on this board) doing armchair academic criticism. Shit, "I know how to talk about movies/games/books/paintings/music/dogs in an introspective way" is a legitimate career choice these days.
>>47680309
Motherfucker how many times do I have to explain that "it's shorter than explaining it every time" is literally all that's needed? Also, no, thinking about and keeping the tropes you're consciously using in mind is a very valid way to write something, and pretty much every author is going to do that, even if they're not consciously thinking of those things as tropes or in terms of TVTropes titles. George RR Martin is still intentionally subverting and deconstructing the tropes of the fantasy genre, even if he's not thinking of it in THOSE TERMS.
And let's be honest here, your problem seems to begin and end at TVTropes, which makes it a pretty arbitrary complaint.
>>47680309
This.
When I sit down and write a story, I don't go "Alright so this girl is the Woobie and this guy is a Jerkass With a Heart of Gold and they're gonna fight a Big Bad who's Dangerously Genre Savvy because he read the Evil Overlord List"
>>47680358
I have been trying to remember a word for like 3 days now, and that word was introspection. Thank you.
Sorry for not related, but that was really frustrating me.
>>47680358
>the board for elfgames with their elfgame terminology
Yeah, why would autists who talk about elfs care about language.
>>47680423
>We don't like codification because we care about language.
>>47680358
>We get it, you hate TVTropes. Good for you.
And you a shill for TVTropes, we get it.
>>47675956
Found the troper
>>47680536
I think I'm starting to hate 'shill' more than 'I was just pretending to be retarded'.
Do you really think people care what 4chan thinks? I'm fairly certain the rest of the world thinks we are all psychopaths.
>>47680521
>people don't like a shitty codification of literary trends because language already does the job, better
correct.
>>47680618
I feel that you are saying tropes, but meaning TV Tropes.
>>47675751
I fail to see how neo-postmodernism is politically affiliated.
Certainly the roots of post-modernism came from a fairly anti-establishment background what with the opposition to traditionalist values and such but is neo-postmodernism always left wing?
I would argue that in recent years that right wing imagery and concepts have begun to be expressed through post-modernist art and literature. I mean, naturally it's anti-traditionalist but not necessarily right wing.
>>47677695
motherfucker don't equate liberalism with the left
>>47676030
>>47675751
>>47677813
this week in /pol/ gets frightened by the lefty bogeyman
>>47680820
>>47680877
fucking saved, thank you friend
>>47680608
When people call you a shill they no longer mean you are literally getting paid to advertise
They mean you're obsessed with a topic to the point you could be mistaken for an actual paid shill that came to 4chan for whatever reason
>>47680608
Which, as a sociopath, bugs me to no end
>>47680362
No, you think "Alright, so this girl is a luckless but loveable doof and this guy is a bastard who tries to hide how kind he really is, and they'll face an antagonist who knows the ins and outs of this genre because he read a humourous meta-analysis". Although when you have a genre savvy character you're already approaching the point where referencing things by their archetypal names is not only reasonable but appropriate. So that was a dumb example.
>>47680423
>>47680618
>Feats, Classes, and game mechanic terms come from Tolkien
motherfucker, "elfgames" is a sarcastic term for all this pretend shit we enjoy. It includes fucking Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu. "Roll" and "Crit" and "fudge" and "fluff" and "crunch" are not in the fucking Silmarillion.
>>47680734
This thread in a nutshell.
>>47680536
I've barely been on TVTropes in years. I'm just aware that your argument is incompetent.
>>47680764
The fuck do you think the political spectrum means?
>>47680881
I come from a pretty right-wing family and actually had this book as a kid. It's just a harmless story about personal responsibility but Hillary Clinton is the bad guy and forces two kids to make their lemonade stand comply with some social issue regulations. But the title is too greaty
>>47680877
>Liberals under my bed
>Clinton
>>47680896
Except people call you a shill if you point out that their outlandish bitching about something is stupid. I was just called a shill for a site I don't go on. I've been called a shill for Pathfinder for saying "some people actually like those aspects".
Shill is meaningless. Like cuck, SJW, fedora, and even Redditor.
>>47680924
>Complying with regulations is bad
>>47680924
Tbh Clinton is actively worse than Trump at this point, plus she looks like she should be the witch in a children's book
>>47680059
There is never any excuse for pandering to the stupid or the easily offended.
>>47680958
It was stupid shit, like she forced them to sell a clove of broccoli with every glass of lemonade to combat child obesity.
And when they started setting aside some of their profits so they could support a shoe charity, another guy (who I think was supposed to be Ted Kennedy) showed up and browbeat them into buying into his dustbin scheme instead.
Honestly, in retrospect it felt like it was less about liberals and more about liberals who'd long ago lost their way.
>>47680924
Holy shit it's real
>>47680965
She does look like a witch, but no. Trump is worse, even if he does tell the 'truth', it doesn't matter if all his solutions are still terrible. Well, give or take a wall on the border of mexico.
>>47680965
>>47680958
>>47680924
>>47680877
This thread is already bad enough, let's not make it worse.
>>47681007
>Honestly, in retrospect it felt like it was less about liberals and more about liberals who'd long ago lost their way.So Clinton
I should probably stop as well...
>>47680734
>I feel that you are saying tropes, but meaning TV Tropes.
That's basically most of the people in this thread hating on the concept of tropes. It's honestly the same as the term meme. You can't mention memes without someone spazzing out about lolcats or whatever. "I hate memes" is a meme, and not even in the "lol, its an animal with bad grammar captioning" sense, but in the literal concept the word represents way.
Meme is also a good example of how having a word facilitates discussion of that word. There hadn't really been a term for the concept that "meme" embodies until The Selfish Gene. Now there are whole fields of study based around memetics.
>>47677585
Folding a deck of cards does not sound like it would work...
>>47680905
>motherfucker, "elfgames" is a sarcastic term for all this pretend shit we enjoy
In all my years of browsing and shitposting on /tg/, I have never once seen that term used. I am certain, without a doubt, that TVtropes is the originator and sole user of that term, becasue it doesn't sound like anything an actual /tg/ poster would ever use.
>>47681746
Same. I've heard "games of pretend" or "dragon killer simulators" but no one calls it shit like "elfgame"
Also, admitting to shitposting doesn't excuse you for shitposting.
>>47675509
>Who doesn't love to see the Big Damn Heroes beat a Xanatos Gambit with a Crowning Moment of Awesome that they did Thirty Five Minutes Ago?
Well this is exactly why.
People try to shove in tropes without any other substance.
It's like building a house with stones but no mortar.
Also you used thirty five minutes ago wrong.
>>47681746
>>47681774
No one fucking calls it "dragon killer simulators" but "elfgames" has been in common usage here for years.
>>47681774
>>47681746
I've repeatedly had people tell me that they hate SJWs because "diversity doesn't make my elfgames better". I've never seen the term on TVTropes and I doubt they've ever said it. Either way it was pretty clear what the fuck I meant.
>>47681777
I assume he meant the Heroes pulled their plan off 35 minutes ago.
>>47679707
Cliche is normally used to describe when a genre convention is used poorly or unimaginatively.
>>47680358
The terms are fucking pointless when they don't condense the information, and most of them do not
>>47675509
this is one of those pasta things I keep hearing about right?
>>47681819
http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/search/text/elfgame/
It has been said a whooping 36 times since 2013 and a good amount is from this thread
>>47675600
It's this, absolutely.
The whole thing appeals to that "quirky" faggot crowd of insincere little SJW bitches. Tropes themselves aren't bad, but everything about TVTropes is.
>>47681819
This is the first time I've ever heard that term and I've been here since this place was more or less a porn/story/porn story dump.
>>47682245
I swear that term is older than last year. Unless 4chan use is making me prematurely senile.
>>47682205
How many times do I need to explain to you that they do condense the information?
>a plan for which all foreseeable outcomes benefit the creator — including ones that superficially appear to be failure. The creator predicts potential attempts to thwart the plan, and arranges the situation such that the creator will ultimately benefit even if their adversary "succeeds" in "stopping" them.
Versus
>A Xanatos Gambit
Or, to take it outside of tropes and Tropes:
>an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
or
>meme
>>47682500
Who gives a shit.
>>47682612
>Who gives a shit.
I'm saying it's not in common usage, sperglord.
>>47680747
A lot of neo-postmodernism has it's roots in critical theory, which was espoused by genuine Marxists because they were butthurt that the bourgeois just appropriated communism, so a proletariat revolution wouldn't happen.
Critical theory is basically just just criticizing everything about Western culture to weaken it's fundamental philosophy and social structure. It's pure sophistry.
>>47682612
Condensing the the information means jack dick if you're just using some in-joke or a reference to a 90s cartoon, famiglia.
Like, if I went around and said my fake sci fi world has "Ganymede Geography" no one would have a fucking clue I'm talking about a global subterranean ocean.
Likewise, no one would understand what I mean if I describe my protag as a Crichton Point of View when I really mean "insufferable intellectual who spends pages lecturing other characters".
Overall, discussing Tropes is pointless to literary discussion because no normal writer sits down and thinks "Yeah, I'm gonna make my villain pull a Xanatos Gambit". The only guys who do that are Tropers themselves, and those people only really write fan fiction.
>>47675600
>A lot of which also applies to /tg/ more than to other boards.
>So it's understandable that those here who aren't complete dumbasses would want to avoid being likened to tropers.
Exactly, the only difference is that TVTropes prides itself on being awesome, on being, what was that Escapist quote? The Internet's Lighhouse of Alexandria. Whereas everyone acknowledges that 4chan is full of retards.
>>47682500
Don't know how old the board is, I've been hearing it regularly since like 2013.
>>47682245
I have a feeling its used more often in shitpost threads like this rather than quests and /tg/ homebrews.
>>47682679
>Believing the Frankfurt School conspiracy
>>47682713
It actually doesn't matter whether people realize what it's a reference to or not. All that matters is that the word exists. Pretty much no one these days is going to be familiar with where terms like "spoonerism" come from. Or even Uncle Sam. Jingoism. The save icon. Why your phone's song is a "ring"tone. Why it's called dialing. Why you "tune in" to a television channel or podcast. Shit, many people might not know why it's called a podcast (I didn't, until I just looked it up to see if it really was an example). Or knowing just what was unwound that you're "rewinding". A word--any word--is all that matters. You don't need to know who David Xanatos is. Once you get explained that "a Xanatos Gambit is a complicated plan where all outcomes, even the ones that seem like they'd be failures, actually result in a success for the plan's creator", you no longer need to explain it. The definition is given. You can now use the term without having to explain in long detail what you mean every time, just like with your human name.
When I say "muggle", people who get the reference can pick it up automatically, but for anyone else I can explain "someone who's not part of a subculture or not aware of something" and they don't even need to know about a certain boy wizard.
>>47682781
It's definitely a dismissive, shitposty term. That's why I used it.
>>47682729
To echo the various anti-tropers in the thread: while I do appreciate the value of a catalog of storytelling tropes in principle, I don't like the cringy way TvTropes behaves even though I enjoyed browsing it for hours when I was in college.
I like talking about classic tropes, and about new ones. I just prefer doing it in a style that wasn't curated by the grossest pedos and bronies and weebs on the planet.
>>47682781
The board has been around since October 2007 I think.
>>47682823
Marcuse is real. Its not a conspiracy to see people reading him and then echoing his ideas and evolving them. I too don't like the conspiracy theory nature of thinking about this. But the facts are the KGB tried and succeeded in influencing a lot of the intellectual children and participants of the Frankfurt school even if many of them were not communicating or participating in such activity.
>>47682834
The annoying thing is that there are some genuinely...I wanna say useful tropes but most of them are just meh. Like do we really need most of those tropes? Are they really descriptive?
>>47682888
I'm pretty sure critical theory is older than the KGB.
>>47682713
I would understand the first but not the second.
I suppose that is the point here - condensing information can be useful as long as both people know the both the information and the term being used to condense it.
>>47682920
It totally is, Marcuse is 60s era I believe. I'm just saying how some aspact of the conspiracy theory has validity in later years, even if the dudes who started the movement and its scholarship did not predict or intend later developments.
>>47682946
>I would understand the first but not the second.
Michael Crichton's science-heavy books usually have at least one character who's just there to lecture the other characters and by proxy the audience on whatever pet theory Crichton was playing with at the time. In Sphere it was a mix between the PoV psychologist and the mathematician. In Jurassic Park/Lost World it was Ian Malcolm.
His Jurassic Park and Lost World books are the best examples, because Malcolm is for all intents and purposes a stand-in for Crichton himself. Though to his credit, he wrote the other characters as finding Malcolm immensely insufferable.
>>47675691
This. That place is the Elemental Plane of Autism
>>47678046
>>47678110
>>47678201
TV tropes is about categorizing events in media without understanding deeper meaning. For example, calling Furiosa an Action Chick or whatever is shaving off characterization to make it fit into a nice little box. It chops a story into tiny pieces and makes it less than the whole of its parts.
Also using their lingo makes you sound like an idiot
>>47675774
>I guarantee you literally every piece of media you have ever likes or enjoyed has elements or entire plots lifted from previous stories and sources that inspired the original creation.
If you were a really creative storyteller, you could make up something original that doesn't use existing tropes. If you can't, then you're just another derivative hack who shouldn't be creating content at all.
Remember how in 1984 newspeak exists to condense all language into a few hundred words to stop people from expressing complex, layered thoughts and ideas? That is basically identical to reducing art into "tropes."
>>47683786
I disagree. All art is a remix. All sentences are made from words the author had read before, all stories are indirectly or directly inspired from older media. I challenge you to name one truly original piece of art (don't go back to classical times where its hard to dispute because few contemporaries survived).
That said, intentionally writing a story out of "tropes" is terrible and hacky.
>>47675509
Are you having a stroke, OP? Do you want us to send help? Nonsensical sentence structure is a typical sign and you seem to be just saying words that don't mean anything.
People don't dislike tropes. Tropes are literally just "story bits".
What people dislike is this odd need to categorize the same categories people have already categorized hundreds and thousands of times - there are entire fields dedicated to studying literature. It's called Literature. Maybe you've heard of it? I understand its popular to study in university.
>Who doesn't love to see the Big Damn Heroes beat a Xanatos Gambit with a Crowning Moment of Awesome that they did Thirty Five Minutes Ago?
So think about this for a little bit. If you were trying to pitch a story, what have you actually told me, the reader, here? Nothing.
"Heroes use a convoluted plan that is awesome to win the day".
That's the actual informationa load that speaking In Capitalized Words Mean in this case. Nothing. It doesn't tell me anything about your story. Nothing about your characters. About the ideas in it.
People love tropes because people love stories, and look at the sheer amount of stories people share and talk about. But what "people" probably hate is someone analyzing something solely by listing vague, bland categories. As if that means anything whatsoever.
TVtropes is pretty good for finding specific kinds of fiction, because at least it sorts by category and you can sort of browse around.
I do wish people would stop saying stuff like "Oh! That story! That had a Big Damn Heroes moment right after the Heel Face Turn and ended with a Crowning Moment of Awesome". And? So? Okay... Uh. That doesn't tell me anything at all.
It's label porn for the kind of people who thought stamp collection was too exciting and fast paced.
>>47682612
>How many times do I need to explain to you that they do condense the information?
You can be wrong all you want it doesn't make it true.
>a plan for which all foreseeable outcomes benefit the creator — including ones that superficially appear to be failure. The creator predicts potential attempts to thwart the plan, and arranges the situation such that the creator will ultimately benefit even if their adversary "succeeds" in "stopping" them.
So in other words, a plan with contingencies.
>>47683786
>If you were a really creative storyteller, you could make up something original that doesn't use existing tropes.
You literally cannot, though. There are simply too many tropes and too many stories out there already - ANYTHING you write will bear some resemblance to some trope out there just because of probabilitylike the time I got 150 pages into writing a book only to find out it was thematically a carbon copy of "Lord of the Flies," which I hadn't read yet.
The odds of you coming up with a completely, 100% original work is so astronomically small as to be improbable.
>>47684093
No, no, no.
All possible outcomes must benefit the plan's original creator.
It's a plan with fool-proof contingencies.
That's really hard to remember for tropers because of their intellectual disabilitiesautismso they wrap it up in a nice little term that means less and is more complicated to 99% of the human population.
>>47684220
Nobody can foresee all possible outcomes and events. They can only plan for a finite number of possibilities, vast and encompassing though they might be, depending on the schemer.
>>47683786
Motherfucker even Jean Luc Godard used existing tropes, and that man's entire schtick was "fuck what came before me".
One of the most critically acclaimed authors of all Goddamned time shamelessly rewrote existing works or histories, filled it with pandering to his patrons and the dumb hicks in the audience, and costumed everyone like it took place yesterday instead of 400 years ago.
>>47683808
>I don't understand how language works, but I'll try to make a Nineteen Eighty-Four reference
Newspeak intentionally stifled certain ideas by making them harder to talk about. It was all about reducing the number of terms so that, for instance, you could never say you were sad or depressed, only UN-HAPPY, making it so that you could only explain thoughts by comparing them to other thoughts. It's harder to describe sadness when the only way you can explain it is "more than twice as much not happy". The entire purpose of Newspeak was to prevent people from talking about concepts that the government didn't want to be easily expressed. You know, like saying "I don't like the words these people use".
I bet you call those "tumblr genders" Newspeak as well.
Creating new terms is not what Newspeak is. Newspeak is restricting language, making it harder to talk about it by removing words.
When you say "the words these people use are bad"? THAT IS ORWELLIAN.
Nevermind that chan culture is so ridiculous steeped in jargon.
>>47675509
It describes things, but it doesn't tell you anything about how it comes to be. So it's useless for writers.
It's useless for literary criticism because it only describe the surface elements of stories. It is at best aesthetic, but has nothing to do with the usual aspects of literary aesthetics like the beauty of an author's writing.
Fuck you, go away
>>47684297
>Creating new terms is not what Newspeak is. Newspeak is restricting language, making it harder to talk about it by removing words.
Anon, you're adorable, but Newspeak doesn't mean that anymore. It USED to mean what you said, but the meaning has changed, and now "Newspeak" means "a newly-invented word". Isn't language weird?
>>47676606
Tropes don't make up a damn thing. They describe phenomena which is entirely different
>>47683786
dadaists get out
>>47684352
>. It USED to mean what you said, but the meaning has changed, and now "Newspeak" means "a newly-invented word". Isn't language weird?
Which, incidentally, is exactly why Newspeak doesn't work. The Strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is bullshit because if we don't have words to express something, we just fucking make one up or change words until one fits.
>>47684093
>You can be wrong all you want it doesn't make it true.
IT IS LITERALLY A SHORTER SERIES OF WORDS, SYLLABLES, AND CHARACTERS.
THAT IS FUCKING CONDENSING INFORMATION.
THAT IS NOT A FUCKING SUBJECTIVE STATEMENT.
YOU CANNOT FUCKING DISPUTE THAT THE MEANING OF A TERM IS GOING TO GENERALLY BE LONGER THAN THE GODDAMNED TERM ITSELF YOU INCOMPETENT FUCK THAT IS HOW A DEFINITION WORKS
HOLY SHIT WHY AM I TYPING IN ALL CAPS, I'M NOT ACTUALLY THIS PISSED OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE, EVEN IF I DO THINK THAT YOU'RE BEING REALLY STUPID HERE.
>>47684220
Whether people have autism or not, using a word instead of its definition is always going to be simpler. That's how words work. That's why you didn't explain what a contingency is, or what autism is. Or what "fool-proof" means. Because language is all about shrinking information into smaller units (i.e.: "words, you dumb fuck")
>>47684279
Fictional characters can.
I swear, everyone in this thread calling autism has autism or something. And as an armchair linguist, this shit gets on my fucking nerves.
>>47675509
Because the process of breaking every example of media down into very specifically defined categories is LITERALLY autistic and largely pointless.
Tropes are a writing aid, not an end unto themselves, which is what the vast majority of the (utterly cancerous) Tvtropes community treats them as, and then they use them as a basis around which they build the notion that they are 'well read' or otherwise have 'refined tastes' which causes them to become utterly fucking insufferable.
Looking at an artistic work and then reducing it into the lowest common denominator not because you wish to analyse the thematic and stylistic choices, but because you want to break it down into a bunch of memelike phrases doesn't make you look smart, and it doesn't make you smart, it just makes you look like a cringeworthy faggot.
Much like that second sentence you typed out.
>>47683786
Dadaism tried.
It sucks
>>47684407
It doesn't analyze thematic and stylistic choices. It obfuscates the analysis thereof. That is practically the definition of a bad theory.
>>47675600
This says it better than I was going to. Most of the sperging you see on /tg/ is people who are terrified of being associated with a group they dislike, even associated by proxy.
The site itself is entertaining enough for >>47675691 this reason alone. It's impressive in the way that the world's largest tumor or the world's longest tapeworm is impressive.
>>47684346
It's not useless for writers. Writers have researched tropes long before there was a Buffy the Vampire slayer fan page for crowdsourcing it.
>>47684352
I know language evolves, and I'm totes a prescriptivist and all. But he's not just saying randomly "newspeak" as in "a new way of speaking", he was explicitly trying to draw a comparison to the book. I mean, fuck me, I know what Newspeak is all about and I didn't even finish the damned book.
(I did however read the appendix that explains Newspeak, because I'm a dork and worldbuilding is neato)
>>47684379
I don't know if I'd agree. Sapir-Whorf has a lot of evidence in favour of it, and there are a lot of things where there's a "how do we not have a word for that?" feel. You've also got the social barrier of creating a new word: Get popular and it becomes part of the lexicon. Don't and it won't. That's why esperanto isn't the international language, and that's why much as I believe in multiple genders, the non-standard gender pronouns aside from Singular They--WHICH I WILL CHAMPION TO THE DEATH, FUCK YOU DESCRIPTIVIST--are all never ever going to catch on. And on the subject of genders, you've got the social barrier where there's pushback for even having terms to express concepts in the first place. You say "bigender" or "polyromantic" around an alt-righty or even most anons and they'll go into conniptions. There are people who still get fussy over "pansexual". Even terms like "androphilic/gynephilic" are things I've seen in an actual scientific paper (about boners), but will trigger people into bitching about ess jay doubleyous.
Also, I fucking love the concept of linguistic determinism. It's so damned fucking crazy. I love language. I even enjoyed MGSV's stupid story because it was all about linguistics.
>>47676595
There is no quality control because there is no quality, not the other way around.
Tvtropes was always going to end up as a breeding ground for severe autism purely because of what it is.
>>47684522
Tropes as used and analyzed on TV Tropes. This should be implicit, sperglord
>>47684522
The key word in that is the STRONG version of Sapir-Whorf. IE, "If you cannot verbalize a concept, you can't effectively conceive of it, so control the language and you control thought." That's bullshit. I want to hold up "On Fleek" for that. No one knows what the hell it actually means or where it came from or why it exists, but "It's basically the cool way to say on point now" and that's good enough.
The Weak or Reverse versions I could buy, perhaps both at once, because language is complicated. Strong? Fuck no.
>>47678165
We are usually either regular folks acting stupid or are aware that we are retards
>>47684380
>IT IS LITERALLY A SHORTER SERIES OF WORDS, SYLLABLES, AND CHARACTERS.
It's 11 characters shorter, is itself a relatively obscure reference, and is harder to pronounce. Fuck you, you spastic faggot, your shit adds nothing of merit.
>Fictional characters can.
If they're omniscient I guess, in which case it's not exactly "planning". It's also worth noting that such a being wouldn't make for a very good character almost any narrative work.
>>47684706
>It's also worth noting that such a being wouldn't make for a very good character almost any narrative work.
I dunno, the Bible pulled it off.
>>47684475
I'll admit it's fun to go on TVTropes and browse around and see all the nifty little names they have for literary moments and that sort of thing. I'd never use any of it conversation because as a lot of people broke down, using jargon is off-putting and obfuscating. It's the same reason I'd never use "-fag" or "manlet" or "kek" when talking to people in realife. But unlike TVTropes, 4chan doesn't bill itself as a site where you're meant to build your vocabulary.
Also, I think it's funny to realize discussion of works using Tropes (as opposed to tropes) is only the bare fucking minimum of literary analysis.
The community will have discussions of works which go about like this:
>By the end of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader goes through a Heel Face Turn and in a Crowning Moment of Awesome hurls him down a Bottomless Pit in a straight-up Disney Villain Death.
Which says absolutely fucking nothing. It's just a rote summary of RotJ's climax, but filled with a bunch of Capitalized Words and Pop Culture References.
It's not any kind of analysis or discussion. It's applying nonsense slang to things that happen.
>>47676451
What did he mean by this? No, really, what the fuck is this post trying to say?
>>47684811
He means the real-life application of some Trope (yes, TVTropes does apply its Tropes to real life) triggers his Berserk Button.
Which in 4chan speak translates to "Tard Rage".
>>47684853
You know, Berserk Button is one of those very, very, very few tropes I could see falling into common lexicon, being "That one thing that inevitably and dramatically pisses you the fuck off". It's short, flows all right, and it's easy to get. Except then triggers happened, and since that is a sub-type of trigger, that went right in the dumpster. And then triggers became basically impossible to discuss without pissing someone off, ironically becoming a trigger itself, so it was all for fucking nothing. And now trigger doesn't even look like a word anymore.
>>47684928
Berserk Button is one of the few trope names I'd ever actually use in normal conversation because it sounds exactly like what it is.
But the examples for Berserk Buttons are some of the cringiest parts of the TVTropes site itself. Go through it, and you'll find basically every single instance of any character you can think of getting mad.
>>47684973
But mostly anime characters :^)
>>47684928
It's just easier to say triggered. If you can express yourself without being long-winded, why would you?
>>47685021
You know, people say that but when I last browsed Anime stuff was pretty contained. It was the Western Animation and Fanfiction sections which had a bulk of it all. Avatar, Adventure Time, and a certain horse cartoon often had their own tabs.
I hate fanfiction and I stopped giving a shit about cartoons right around the end of high school. Which is around when I stopped browsing it.
>>47685062
You are correct. Western Cartoon fanbases have become worse than weebs in recent year
>>47675509
I just hate tvtropes
That site is fucking cancer
>>47685081
They really have. At least weaboos mostly keep their shit to themselves and when they don't everyone is willing to tell them to fuck off.
But this new wave of late teens/twenty-somethings really loves their cartoons. Twenty years from now we're gonna have a new breed of manchildren except instead of gushing over which Transformer was the coolest they're just gonna keep bitching about how Zuko never fucked Katara.
>>47684706
We have found the one person who decides what does and does not have merit. ALL HAIL ANON, HOLDER OF THE ONE TRUE OPINION.
What does any of this have to do with /tg/?
Just tell good stories in your game
That's it
That's all you have to do
>>47685142
Yeah, it would be nice if some people that knew they weren't welcome fucked off somewhere else, innit?
>>47685178
Finally, about damn time someone put it together
>>47675509
/tg/ hates literally everything
>>47684549
And it's still not useless for writers.
>>47684655
But it IS hard to effectively conceive of concepts. It's actually hypothesized that this is why Germany produces so many scientists, because German language makes talking about science easier. Waterstuff is easier to grok than Hydrogen. Cultures directions based on Cardinal directions instead of relative position (North/South instead of Up/Down) have a harder time understanding spatial relationships, but have easier times navigating (or something like that). Greeks literally didn't have the word Blue! They called the ocean "wine-dark"! They didn't have the ability to describe the colour of the ocean without referencing something else, that we wouldn't even consider the same. That's literally language shaping thought. There are so many things out there we don't even have words for.
>>47684706
Please stop failing to grasp the way language works.
Also, no, I mean that because they're fictional characters, they're able to put together plans that do not fail, because the person who controls their entire equally fictional world has determined that it will be that way. Please don't also fail to understand how the concept of narrative works.
>>47684804
>Which says absolutely fucking nothing
It does say something. It says "all of these really common story beats were used in this one scene". Which is all it's meant to be. The site does what it intends to, not what you think it should. The analysis and discussion is what you and your friends do at 2am in Denny's, using your shared vocabulary.
>>47685207
>>47685142
Yeah, they should fuck off to their own website where they don't come bother u--oh wait, we're literally bitching about exactly that.
>>47685744
Just because a plan works doesn't mean the character could see every possibility. Accounting for most or all of the likely ones isn't "doing a Xanatos Gambit", it's just making a good plan.
>>47685768
I'm glad you caught on to my super secret anon, but you still bumped this thread.
>>47684380
>That's why you didn't explain what a contingency is, or what autism is. Or what "fool-proof" means.
The difference being that these words and phrases are a part of our English language, while your words and phrases are little more than super niche internet slang.
>Because language is all about shrinking information into smaller units
lol no.
>>47675509
>beat a Xanatos Gambit
The whole point of a Xanatos Gambit is that even by losing, the perpetrator of the gambit wins. They're covered under each scenario
>>47686152
Perhaps he meant "beat" more as "solved".
>>47675774
the UR-MYTH is the cultural programming impressed upon humanity by the gods ANNUNAKI john campbell heroic cycles repeating the UR-MYTH hero from the epic of gilgamesh and aneid UR is the root city where ANNUNAKI raised aryan man from apes UR is therefore the german root or primal ANNUNAKI imprinted UR-MYTH on genetic level for collective cultural conciousness
>>47685801
That's my secret, Cap, I'm always arguing.
>>47685793
The concept is specifically a plan where, even if it appears that they have failed, things actually work out in a way that the plan's creator desired all along. That is a more specific concept than "having a good plan" or "having multiple contingencies". I don't know how this is difficult for you. If it is, perhaps you should go look at the wiki page for it, which is a thing you can do, since there's an entire wiki devoted to these kind of things.
>>47685981
>lol no
You do realize that words are summations of more complicated concepts, right? All words are referential signifiers of concepts that either require more words to explain or can't be explained without words. Yes, all words are about shrinking information into smaller units. The multitude of feelings and emotions that someone has cannot truly be accurately explained, but when someone is experiencing a positive emotional state, summing that state up by defining it as "happy" means losing information (since any feeling is going to be too complex to adequately explain in the limitations of language) but being able to convey that information with more ease. This isn't even some silly TVTropes defense. That's literally one of the core principles of language. There are entire fields of study about it.
>>47686152
Well, there's always the possibility of them Taking a Third Option.
>>47686813
Speaking of principles of language, here, take these
; , . ' ! ? :
I feel like whatever the fuck you're saying would be more apparent with some punctuation.
John Campbell is a joke to academics, Hero's Journey a shit
>>47686152
So, a plan with contingencies?
>>47687013
punctuation is meaningless absence of sound words are symbolic phonology of arranged sounds representing genetically imprinted symbology representation of absence is purposeless distracting from genetically imprinted truth
>>47687019
My issue with the "Hero's Journey" is people like to use it as some kind of excuse for lack of imagination in storytelling.
>>47687133
Motherfucker, don't be dumb.
>>47687177
Gee, it's almost like he's trying to tell you something.
>>47687177
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Ar
educate yourself
>>47687162
Stupid people will always take shortcuts, never realizing that they do not actually have a clue.
>oh, THAT'S the secret to telling an appealing tale? Yoink!
>>47687198
Yes, that he's a retard that has no idea what the fuck he's spewing out of his noisetube.
>>47687265
http://www.mazzaroth.com/ChapterThree/SumerianInfoOfAnnunaki-Anakim.htm
>>47687265
or he's using his shitposting to actively stifle the debate in the thread. Which I view as fine, as tropers are overthinking fuckers who should just enjoy the story for its ultimate purpose.
>>47687013
Jesus Christ, dude, language is more than just words. That's why there's a word for talking about words: semantics. Language is more than just semantics, language is the expression of thoughts and communication. And, yes, semantics are important, but to argue that all of language is semantics is folly. But, I digress.
The reason why people are resistant to your use of tropes is because language is about communication. You describing a character as being fond of incorporating Xanatos Gambits says less about the character than me stating that the character has contingencies for his contingencies. Doubly so if you have to then stop the conversation to discuss not only what a Xanatos Gambit is, but who Xanatos is in the first place.
>>47687303
>overthinking
It never gets beyond surface level analysis
>>47687347
That's because they're not really capable of going beyond surface level due to the nature of Tropes.
Go on any of the trope pages--especially big ones like Berserk Button or Nightmare Fuel--and you'll find plenty of provided examples which are total stretches.
>>47675509
People say "tropes are tools" and then try to build a house out of hammers.
It's a site about patterns in art, not a style guide. It's useful if you're studying memetics, not for actual writing.
>>47687375
>>47687347
>Wahwah, no one is ever as clever as I am
Christ, I fucking hate this anti-intellectual elitist bullshit. Who gives a fucking shit? So what if they're total stretches? So what if they "never go beyond surface level analysis"? Christ, you fuckers are like the kind of people who would yell at kids for drawing badly. Half the complaints about TVTropes are about the community itself, as if they were pertinent to the discussion about tropes, the other half are complaining about shit that 4chan as a whole and /tg/ in particular does. Try having a conversation about elfgames with people who don't play them. They won't know any of the fucking jargon you're using, but talk to someone who knows elfgames and suddenly you're able to discuss complex subjects. The most asinine part is that half of you are actively treating the "Tropers" as kids, so you're literally bitching about children not living up to your standards.
Boo hoo, they're not giving deep academic criticism on their site that is primarily for defining repeated scenes, story beats, and character archetypes, giving them a pithy name, and then listing examples of that in fiction. They're getting interested in concepts like literary criticism in the first place. In many ways, they're gaining a vocabulary beyond just the community specific terms. Even if you never go into the examples, you can still get a taste for how to dissect a work. And they're doing it on their own time, because it's presented in a way that interests them, whereas when an English class tries to teach it, that can often be boring. (Although I will say too often you have to go into the examples because not all the articles are written well). God, I swear half of you come off as slapping a picture book out of a toddler's hands and telling them to stop reading baby books and go read Song of Ice and Fire or Elric or something.
Honestly, I frequently use TvT, as reference pages for access to other material. I find it very convenient that I am able to look for what I desire to see in something, and am able to find works that interest me. Much easier than searching through material with only the title to judge by.
>>47687655
I'd probably read a toddler The Count of Monte Cristo, or at least the initial part of his imprisonment and escape
>>47687324
>language is the expression of thoughts and communication.
That is the thing that I have repeatedly been saying. Language requires the more complex information of pure thought to be codified and molded into words. It's not about semantics. Semantics is quibbling over specific connotations and denotations. It's about meaning.
I am saying that in using language, we are taking things that are incapable of accurately being explained, putting them in boxes [words] and using those boxes to build a comprehensible meaning. The fact that I am not able to directly transmit the complex concepts that are in my head directly into your head means that I need to use the rather limiting confines of a language. In doing so, I must take complex thoughts and shrink them.
What I am saying is that once both people involved in the conversation understand what a Xanatos Gambit is--which is NOT "contingencies for his contingencies"--then we now share a language that we can use to talk about concept--or reference it in conversations about other concepts--without having to use larger structures [sentences].
And, again, this is true of literally everything. Meme, for example. It's a very complex concept. Even the definition given in the dictionary is a simplification. But once you know what a meme is, then I no longer need to describe meme theory every time I want to talk about it.
We get back to how this is like a proper name. If I want to refer to my uncle, Bob, I would not need to define him every time I talk about him, I would refer to him as "Bob". That word is a summation of all of the descriptors that make up "Bob".
>>47687841
I feel like that might be a bit much for a toddler, but then again toddlers are dumb, so you could probably read them about the revenge stuff and they wouldn't realize it.
>>47687813
I do this as well. If someone starts talking about a show, I'll look it up on Wikipedia and TVTropes to see if it's something that'll interest me. Helps that I don't go into a panic whenever someone mentions spoilers.
>>47675509
>tvtropes
Go fuck yourself with a cactus
>>47675509
You cannot write a good story putting tropes together like jigsaw puzzles.
>>47688715
Several modern stories have been written that way. It's actually how Star Wars came about.
>>47675702
You argue like Trump
>>47688935
Proof?
>>47688968
Tropes are bad. Reusing the same schtick and over -- bad writing!
>>47689105
George Lucas openly credited Campbell's The Hero's Journey which was the tropiest thing that ever troped. There's all sorts of documentaries and interviews about it.
>>47675509
Because my favorite book is Invisible Cities, also a terrific example of how tvtropes are limited. Read the book then check the tvtrope page.
If that didn't convince you how superficial tropes are, check their forums, some posts have more in common with math than writing.
>>47689157
Stars Wars used the archetypes defined by Campbell as a guideline, but it didn't limit itself on them. Unlike a lot of adventure movies.
One of the best things about Yoda being a wise sage archetype is that he's first presented as a mad goblin in a swamp.
Tropes are a intro course, Cambpell is intermediate, Jung is advanced and reading the actual mythologies it's what's good for you. None of the latter quite fit the model Campbell's presents.
>>47689290
that's true, he used some Buck Rogers and Journey to the West
paint by numbers is a perfectly legitimate way of making successful fiction
>Darth Spooky was a real suggestion
>>47689221
And?
>>47689290
No, he straight up stuck to that shit like a textbook. Also, reading the actual mythologies won't really tell you anything but a story.
You people are bending over backwards to justify your hate of a website.
>>47689302
You're still missing other sources, like Darth Vader's mask based on samurais' masks.
>paint by numbers is a perfectly legitimate way of making successful fiction
It always has been:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/08/07/allergy-to-originality-drew-christie/
>Darth Spooky was a real suggestion
There are always lots of bad sugestions.
>>47689351
You read fast.
>>47689351
>Also, reading the actual mythologies won't really tell you anything but a story.
Some people get more from them than that, you don't.
>>47689387
>You read fast.
"This short wiki article isn't as detailed as a full book" is your whole argument, then?
>Some people get more from them than that, you don't.
What I mean is that they're not really going to enlighten you through academic criticism. Simply reading a work is not a good way to understand it. You have to dig deeper. Things like understanding tropes, as well as other academic critiques are going to be much more enlightening. You as a single person are unlikely to be able to put together a complete and well rounded understanding of what the work means.
This is why those kind of things are valuable supplementary materials. Because they supplement.
So, a website that likes to define things, but lacks insight, have projects that grow past their scope and get out of hand, has been accused of being autistic across the board, and is often times downright insufferable.
So we're mad that they took our bit? Perhaps we feel threatened?
>>47689157
>which was the tropiest thing that ever troped
Do you go out of your way to make your posts as obnoxious as possible?
>>47675780
What about hitler?
