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I moved on from TV Tropes
So why can't anyone else do the same?
Comments
I've moved on, for the most part; I'm just not above discussing it when it's brought up as a point of argument, like what's going on in the Less Wrong thread we have now.
^That. I'm not going to pretend I've never heard of it if the topic comes up.
I don't mind discussing it, but I wish threads about media and sex didn't eventually go there.
The only talk about it I've seen lately was a thread that started out being about it.
"So why can't anyone else do the same?"
Good for you! Now try getting over reducing complaining to strawman arguments.
V We haven't had prolonged discussions on the site for a while anyway. I just felt since you put up a point, I should give an appropriate counterpoint.
*shrug* As much as I don't have much to do with it anymore, I still like discussing it now and then. Plus, as has been brought up often, it's the one thing almost all of us have in common, it's not surprising that discussions about it spring up more often than, say, ponies or sexism or swords or whatever.
Maybe I shouldn't have brought that up on the other thread...
^^ YOU CUT ME DEEEEEEEP!
He's got a point, though, DonZabu; the one-liner OP thing hasn't been working very well for ya.
Except this time, people actually get what I'm talking about.
They do, but you also generalized.
Why should I move on from TV Tropes?
Personally I'm just tired of the whole thing. TV Tropes tends to attracts obsessives both in its fans and its detractors, perhaps because of the nature of a categorizing site.
Regardless, I find talking about it's problems rather tedious at this point.
^^ TV Tropes has been on a steady downhill slope for about three years now. All anybody ever talks about with the site is how awful it is and how awful the subcultures it spawned are. I figured everybody would've jumped ship by now.
^ That too.
I've mostly stopped caring about TVT at this point. Stopped posting there, stopped reading the PYF thread...I just don't care anymore.
Sometimes I do go back to Yack Fest and post in the LGBT thread, because there are still a few people there I like, but often it just reminds me of all the things I disliked about Yack Fest.
Some people enjoy the place. Nothing wrong with that.
I see many problems with it and I've come to think of the wiki as IMDB, but with more trivial shit that nobody cares about, and the forums are either incredibly boring shitposting or incredibly stupid debate.
But...well, if that is somehow your thing, then good on you.
As long as you realize it is lousy as a serious resource, it's fine. Only madness lies in the way of treating it as a serious literary tool.
I just wish everyone who posts in the Magic: the Gathering thread (with maybe one or two exceptions) would come here so I could finally leave. I do still occasionally post in other places, but that thread is the only thing that really keeps me going back.
Pretty much, Nyktos. In fact, I deleted my account until I remembered that there was no other way of asking for games, so I'd be stuck in an endless loop of killing Zudak and being murdered by Haven.
I'm just glad most everyone I want to talk to is around on IRC or another board. (Except, as Nyktos says, the MTG thread as a whole, but after a point not even that was enough. The HH version of that thread was a decent facsimile for a while, but it's pretty dead at the moment.)
Honestly, I'm surprised to hear that someone who has been around as long as you doesn't have a reason. I guess it's a pleasant surprise; usually after being a troper long enough people have all manner of anecdotes.
For a more general reason, how about...they declared the wiki a "family friendly" site, started a project to clean up the R-rated material, and left it in the hands of a moderator who will literally say there's nothing NSFW about tentacle rape.
Why did you use a specific example for a general reason?
>As long as you realize it is lousy as a serious resource, it's fine. Only madness lies in the way of treating it as a serious literary tool
I wish people would acknowledge that it's a toybox rather than a toolbox. Nothing wrong with toyboxes, but...
Ugh. I'm talking about it again.
The general reason here is that regardless of how much TvT is aiming to be less...TvT these days, they still aim their efforts at the wrong places and with the wrong tools.
> All anybody ever talks about with the site is how awful it is
That doesn't mean that the site is overall awful; that merely suggests that some parts of it are awful enough for their awfulness to be of note.
> As long as you realize it is lousy as a serious resource, it's fine. Only madness lies in the way of treating it as a serious literary tool.
Once again I disagree that it's not useful as a serious tool. Then again, I'm not a story creator--a whopping zero stories (or even ideas for stories) have been spawned from my reading TV Tropes.
What TV Tropes has done for me is the following:
* provided lots of information about and insight into how fans approach a work
* provided a community with which to discuss creative work, to share tastes, analysis, opinions, recommendations, and such
It is definitely a toolbox, not just a toybox. The thing with it being a toolbox is that, like all toolboxes, people who don't know how to use the tools properly will just create a mess. That's what you get if you, say, try to smash some random assortment of tropes together and attempt to make a coherent story or character out of that. It might be interesting to ponder as thought-experiments, but that's not the way to go if you're serious about writing a story.
What it IS useful for is brainstorming, first thoughts, and pointers to further information. Wanna see a lot of fan-wanking about gender roles and strong female characters and associated ideas and tropes? TVT has a lot of it. It may be biased toward recent media, but it's got something nevertheless, and it's something you won't find just on one person's blog or on Wikipedia. This bouncing ideas off of each other only really works in a community. And the correct way to use that information is not to simply carbon-copy it into whatever you're making up, but to ask yourself what it all means, how it all fits together, and what parts of it make sense in the context that you're placing them into, in your own work. What kind of character do you want to write? Maybe you can look for works with similar characters, and see how they handled them, and decide for yourself whether those characters were handled well. What can you expect of the audience's reception? Lots of TVT users are often waiting to give you more than you'd ever need to know about their opinions, and why they have them.
Yes, it's also got trivia entries, like Zettai Ryouiki (which last time I saw it isn't listed as trivia...even though it IS trivia). Though in a way, that's also informative about how you might expect the audience to react to details of your work--such as a character's choice of clothing. These might become relevant as you think about how you want the audience to react, and how you can change the details of your work to cause different audience reactions.
Is the site perfect? No, not at all. Among the things that I come in contact with, I still think a lot of titles ought to be improved, but there's just so little desire among other users to change them. I've been trying to propose a change of Killer Rabbit (which is not actually about rabbits) to Cute But Deadly, but so few others want to change it, even though it is better for a number of reasons. (I can go into that if you want.)
But I think, as much as I care about making changes like that, I have to tell myself that I can't win all my battles, and sometimes I lose, like how sometimes candidates I support lose elections, and life goes on, and you move onto the next battle.
I think that's a different level of engagement than most people complaining about TV Tropes refer to. Still, what utility it has in that department is going to be destroyed by the viewpoint that "it's also got trivia entries", because really, they're all trivia.
...Also.
Who says yes‽
"I think that's a different level of engagement than most people complaining about TV Tropes refer to."
Mostly because it's not unique to the site as any general forum can provide such a community.
Malkavian,
Personally I'm just tired of the whole thing. TV Tropes tends to attracts obsessives both in its fans and its detractors, perhaps because of the nature of a categorizing site.
I think this seems like a pretty good take on the situation. I definitely agree that the site has its problems, so I do not blame people for leaving it completely.
That being said, I tend to take issue with people making it into a scapegoat or saying in so many words that its users are generally freaks, creeps, neckbeards, or whatever else. My main problems with those kinds of statements is that they seem plainly false and promote some pretty unfortunate nastiness and elitism.
While I would like to think that there has been clear progress on the site in some ways (e.g., moving Troper Tales and Fetish Fuel offsite, beginning a cleanup of "creepy" stuff on the wiki, working on the TRS backlog), I realize that whether or not this redeems the site is very much in your mileage may vary territory and I do not like the site enough to want to defend it nor do a see much of need for that.
Enough people to fill TVTropes with that kind of stuff, apparently.
"Wanna see a lot of fan-wanking about gender roles and strong female characters and associated ideas and tropes?"
If you wanted to escape from that, IJBM isn't really the right place to run to.
I got banned 3 months ago, so I'd say I was forced to move on.
My true motivation for coming here wasn't just because "oh hey fellow tropers." I wanted to pick up my interactions with fellow tropers where I left off.
A damn shame, especially since I'm still slapping myself in the forehead over how easily I could've avoided being banned in the first place, among other things. I miss taking part in working on all the shmup and Asian rhythm game pages, which were drama-free for the most part.