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Comments
You're being hysterical.
I'm prone to jumping to conclusions, :P
^^ This lady is correct.
^ Yes, you are.
If TVT has to shut down I'll just mourn for the few articles I added to it.
TVT is probably one of the biggest timewasters for me and ignoring the forum, you don't see any of the natter of whatever it is people don't like.
^^ If TVT ever shuts down, somebody can just pick up were it left off, considering that archives of the articles are pretty easy to find on Wayback machine.
Although, the drama over who gets to be the "true" TVT successor might be glorious.
the mirror wiki already exists, and I don't imagine much'd change.
honestly if there was a total reboot I might "rejoin", since I don't think TVTropes as a concept is bad, but I'm in the minority opinion on even that.
I think that the concept itself is excellent. To my mind, the Internet needs a good comprehensive encyclopaedia of cultural memes, tropes, archetypes, idioms and story concepts. The issue is in the execution, particularly in the tendencies toward shorthand, list-making and fan-wank—none of which are inherently bad, but all of which feature in excess and ultimately spoil much of what is good about the site.
I'd guess, part of the problem is that for a well-researched analysis, you'd need somebody more - for lack of a better word - academic than a random Internaut. Perhaps if the discussion before a launch was devoted more to the discussion of the suggested trope, than to its frequency. But, I dunno.
Although I think that said random Internet itinerant might very well have interesting things to say about a particular cliché or recurring theme—that is to say that they may very well be intelligent if not educated in the field—I otherwise completely agree. There should have been a greater emphasis on what a trope meant in context from the beginning rather than one on simply recognising said pattern. After all, doesn't a deeper understanding of why an archetype exists and how it operates ensure that recognition?
I think that one can be lighthearted, amusing and imminently readable without completely compromising academic rigour. Really, it is simply a matter of speaking clearly and directly to one's proverbial audience: Using jargon only when such shorthand is necessary to properly convey a point; condensing points without oversimplifying them; and not sounding too self-serious or formal, as many academics (and/or serious nerds) might.
Also, a more selective editor base and greater entry scrutiny. Those are important.
What would do more for readability and accessibility, than specifying terminology/diction, is the use of a well-organized skimmable structure, with visual cues to indicate sections, rather than a freeform block of text. I mean something like this:
The cool thing about TVT's freeform style, though, is that if you really want to, you can go change pages to look like this all by yourself. You can initiate change unilaterally.
In other words, the examples.
I think you guys have articulated what I've been trying to say for years but never find the words. Particularly what you said, Kraken. TVTropes isn't about the tropes anymore, it's about the people. The annoying, annoying people.
It's not really TVT's fault that fandoms co-opted it, though. Fandoms will do that to most sites (just look at Tumblr), and TVT's lack of focus on any single one doomed it to such.
For what it's worth, on the note of unilateral action, look at the way I've organized the tropes on the work page for Rocket Girls.
Yes, I did that.
I did that a while back, and no one's bothered to change it.
Just make sure whatever you do is sensible and generally acceptable, and retains the same information on the same page, and is a definite improvement on the status quo.
(And don't rename tropes. That tends to be problematic.)
Edit: Okay, fine, it helps that that's a page no one checks because no one's heard of the series.
Edit: It appears that there have been edits since I last touched this page. In a way that uses the new structure, too.
(Though it needs a bit of cleanup at the moment to remove dangling parentheses, a bit of natter, and a YMMV trope.)
TVT's been having a policy of renaming awkwardly named tropes for some time already, exactly for the reason of making them accessible to folks who aren't neck-deep in fandom lunacy. I'll leave it to your judgment whether it works.
That's be-
Just wait unt-
Well, okay <_< >_>
^^ Hey, at least they chucked "The Daisuke".
It's an improvement, yes.
I did that!There was a time, when the trope about people with superhuman abilities being required by law to register - "Mutant Draft Board", it is now - was called "The Corps is Mother". Apparently it's a reference to TV series Babylon V. Not that the current one is that much better, as most people don't associate "mutants" with laserbeam eyes.
X-Men is well-known enough that the mutants=super-powers thing shouldn't be too confusing.
If it were Mutant Registry or something, I'd have made that association.
Anyhows, TVT has taught me that I like cataloging stuff, so I can't complain, but yeah, it's lacking on the analysis part, plus other information like trope origins, etc.
Well, that's essentially what it is. Draft board = conscription = registration.
What about Superpower Registry?
Err when did cyclops stop being a thing
If you say so. I'd have thought X-Men aren't exactly on the same level as Something-Man pattern superheroes, but I guess I was just underexposed. Anyway, no need to dwell on this topic further.
Okay, it came to me recently that I'd rather dwell on the topic further. How exactly popular the X-Men are, in the Anglosphere? I mean, can you reasonably expect that a random person on the street, when asked to name a superhero, would say Wolverine?
I think the X-Men are pretty well-known; people have likely heard of the series (if they are aware of pop culture of the last couple decades), and they're probably likely to name Wolverine, Cyclops, and maybe Professor X, The Beast, Gambit, or Storm.
Source: I can tell you that much, from having occasionally run into mentions of it and seen a tiny bit of the X-Men cartoon from the 90s.
Not really an unbiased sample... Still, I'd say most people are familiar with X-Men and at the very least Wolverine, they movies are pretty huge, and they're still coming out.