The controversial topic of TV Tropes

[averagejoe]

Quite true. The trouble is that, for example, people seem to mistake Elizabeth Elliot and President Fowler as a Straw Feminist and a Straw Liberal. In both cases, their actual politics are rarely touched on, it's their personal flaws that make them antagonists. EE is vain, ambitious, and overconfident, which leads to her being utterly incompetent in the role she wound up playing. Fowler is too insular and cliquish, meaning he'd rather accept a flawed recommendation from Elliot than a sounder one from an outsider. There's barely a trace of straw on either of them, but, becuase they're liberal semi-antagonists in a book that tends to support a more conservative viewpoint, they are tarred with the strawman brush.

Again, I don't know if this is generally true of Clancy's writings, but what got me about Without Remorse wasn't any individual case of, "This guy is obviously a Straw Liberal," but more that every single protagonist in that book (that I remember) was either 1) US army or ex-US army or 2) female. It's not that, "Oh, these two liberals are villainous because their liberals," it's, "Every liberal in this book is villainous."

I don't know that any of this says anything about Clancy's views or anything. Honestly, from a deconstructionist viewpoint that book had so many problems that there's a certain amount I'm willing to just ascribe to bad decisions on the author's part. Like... okay, here's a good example. There's a bit in Without Remorse where this middle eastern doctor accosts one of the female supporting characters being all like, "Oh, look I'm middle eastern so I treat all women badly," and generally acting stereotypical, all so our hero can show his machoness by hurting that guy and making him back off. Meanwhile I'm reading it going, "No Tom Clancy! Don't do that! It's a terrible idea!" Now, I don't think this makes him racist, I think it means he put something in his book that he didn't really think through the implications of (or something, I'm not a mind reader). But at the same time I can certainly see why someone might get that idea.

[Fiery Diamond]

So you are enforcing the fallacious argument of personal failings as comments on political philosophies, to argue that character who's critical flaws personal are ad homeim attacks on any policy the source disagree with. I always liked the description of this as a verbal Escher drawing.

I'm not arguing anything; as I said, I've never read his books. But such ad-hominem-esque attacks DO exist, and I'm suggesting that the hatedom possibly views his books as having them, whether they actually are intended or would otherwise seem to exist in the books to an objective observer or not. Obviously those who engage in writing books deliberately employing that sort of ad hominem approach are being fallacious and, in my opinion, foolish, but that doesn't mean that such authors don't exist. Nor does it mean that someone might not see such an argument where it wasn't intended.


Edit: I could be wrong, but you seem to be saying that I'm enforcing a fallacy by suggesting that others are (possibly wrongly) believing that someone is using a related fallacy which incorporates the thing you think I'm enforcing. Which, pardon me, makes absolutely no sense. Regardless of how fallacious something is, the thought process and flawed reasoning still exists amongst members of humanity, and acknowledging that it exists and drawing possible hypothesis for why the hatedom would say the things they say based on accepting that the fallacious reasoning exists in some people cannot be rationally construed as support of said fallacious reasoning.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Like... okay, here's a good example. There's a bit in Without Remorse where this middle eastern doctor accosts one of the female supporting characters being all like, "Oh, look I'm middle eastern so I treat all women badly," and generally acting stereotypical, all so our hero can show his machoness by hurting that guy and making him back off. Meanwhile I'm reading it going, "No Tom Clancy! Don't do that! It's a terrible idea!" Now, I don't think this makes him racist, I think it means he put something in his book that he didn't really think through the implications of (or something, I'm not a mind reader). But at the same time I can certainly see why someone might get that idea.

Well I will say that he's not afraid to pull punches, however umm on the example of middle easterners treating women badly.... well do I have to make this point? Yes not ALL of them (and in degrees by location, Saudi versus Turk is a big difference) but that doesn't make automatically an invalid potential depiction either for a real world Values Dissonance.

And while not perfect by any means the guy was writing about Islamic terrorism and the potential damage relatively few people could cause in the 90s. I don't want to call it prophetic but well he got a lot more relevant for awhile there. (On the other end Debt of Honor is so off base its silly, but not the only case I've seen from a peculiar part of the 90s)

I'm not arguing anything; as I said, I've never read his books. But such ad-hominem-esque attacks DO exist, and I'm suggesting that the hatedom possibly views his books as having them, whether they actually are intended or would otherwise seem to exist in the books to an objective observer or not. Obviously those who engage in writing books deliberately employing that sort of ad hominem approach are being fallacious and, in my opinion, foolish, but that doesn't mean that such authors don't exist. Nor does it mean that someone might not see such an argument where it wasn't intended.

Yes but for this case its not really so. Or that would be a outright hostile interpretation. Not that the books are apolitical, because such a thing is impossible at the levels it uses, but Sum of All Fears for example if it had a general political message would be "Hey watch out for Islamic terrorism, its more of a threat then you might think."

Which isn't so unreasonable in hindsight for being written in the 90s is it?

[averagejoe]

Well I will say that he's not afraid to pull punches, however umm on the example of middle easterners treating women badly.... well do I have to make this point? Yes not ALL of them (and in degrees by location, Saudi versus Turk is a big difference) but that doesn't make automatically an invalid potential depiction either for a real world Values Dissonance.

And while not perfect by any means the guy was writing about Islamic terrorism and the potential damage relatively few people could cause in the 90s. I don't want to call it prophetic but well he got a lot more relevant for awhile there. (On the other end Debt of Honor is so off base its silly, but not the only case I've seen from a peculiar part of the 90s)

Yes, but it's problematic when the only faucet of the guy's character, and his only role in the story, is to be a stereotype. There are real life examples of middle easterners treating women badly, and it would be dishonest to avoid this; however, I'm very confident that no middle easterners exist for whom treating women badly is all there is to them. It's not the fact of the sexism, it's that the only reason this guy existed was to be sexist and foreign - the only reason he existed was to be objectified - so that our hero could defeat him and show what a swell guy he was without the audience questioning any of it. And that's dishonest, ignorant, and self destructive no matter how relevant Islamic terrorism is.

[Gnoman]

Actually, that isn't the only facet of that character. He's also arrogant and incompetent. The purpose of the character is to give Kelley a means of connecting with the nurse who will eventually become his wife.

The thing that you have to remember about Without Remorse is that it's basically a Mack Bolan homage intended to fill in the hints given to Clark's background in Clear and Present Danger and Debt of Honor. By itself, it's one of the weaker Ryanverse books.

[Horrorshow]

Back on topic.

Why does TV Tropes suck? This is why:

http://www.youtube.com/user/CrazyGoggs

[Coidzor]

Back on topic.

Why does TV Tropes suck? This is why:

http://www.youtube.com/user/CrazyGoggs

...Oh dear. I feel ill now.

[Kato]

...? So, there are stupid people on tv tropes. I'm shocked. Just don't go to the troper tales. EVER.

[H Birchgrove]

Back on topic.

Why does TV Tropes suck? This is why:

http://www.youtube.com/user/CrazyGoggs

What is this I don't even

[Gnoman]

...? So, there are stupid people on tv tropes. I'm shocked. Just don't go to the troper tales. EVER.

Can't anyway. They axed the section.

[Lord Seth]

...Oh dear. I feel ill now.

At the stuff from TV Tropes that's shown, or the fact that someone actually spent time making videos about them?

Can't anyway. They axed the section.

Hrm...while Troper Tales was a fairly dumb place, at the same time I'm worried that doing this will just recreate the problem that Troper Tales was created in the first place to fix: People putting those personal experiences on the main pages and clogging things up.

[Kato]

Well... if we talk about the quality of information... since tv tropes is a free editing page it would be impossible to keep it clean. I'd say troper tales was a good place for the people who feel the need to tell their stupid stories and removing it was a bad idea... but there are so many other problems it's not really funny anymore You can't really fix tv tropes to make it an excellent side but I can still enjoy it.

[Prime32]

Well... if we talk about the quality of information... since tv tropes is a free editing page it would be impossible to keep it clean. I'd say troper tales was a good place for the people who feel the need to tell their stupid stories and removing it was a bad idea... but there are so many other problems it's not really funny anymore You can't really fix tv tropes to make it an excellent side but I can still enjoy it.

And even without the creepy stuff you get this:

Trope
People have been known to do this.

Troper Tales: Trope
- This troper does this.
-- Really? This troper does it too!
--- This troper does it more.
- I've got to be the only person who does this
- This troper does it with five people at once while riding a rollercoaster. True story.
- I like cheese
-- Me too!
- I've got to be the only person who does this
- I do this with pride.

You people are anonymous. Your posts tell us nothing whatsoever. You might as well as have posted "Yes" over and over.

[Soras Teva Gee]

At the stuff from TV Tropes that's shown, or the fact that someone actually spent time making videos about them?Hrm...while Troper Tales was a fairly dumb place, at the same time I'm worried that doing this will just recreate the problem that Troper Tales was created in the first place to fix: People putting those personal experiences on the main pages and clogging things up.

Nahh... Troper Tales shouldn't have existed in the first place and is indicative of a compromising attitude where none is needed. Stuff that goes in there should be just deleted, or maybe put under a YMMV trope if there's enough of a fandom consensus on something. No such thing as notablity does not be every random thought deserves a place.

Swing mightily the sword of editing and deletion!

[Lord Seth]

Stuff that goes in there should be just deleted, or maybe put under a YMMV trope if there's enough of a fandom consensus on something.

Sure, you can delete it, but the problem is it keeps cropping up. Troper Tales nicely forced it all onto a page that you're not going to look at unless you want to, whereas now I fear it'll creep back onto the main pages and have the same issue again.

[Coidzor]

^: The only possibility is to change the culture of the community to not be tolerant of such things, which'll probably take a bit of time and cause some flare-ups from diehard holdouts that can't take a systematic effort to get them to conform or leave, as far as I can tell.

At the stuff from TV Tropes that's shown, or the fact that someone actually spent time making videos about them?

Both. And that people would willingly post and believe some of those things in the absence of duress.

Even with anonymity, you'd expect some basic tact to tell them that they shouldn't admit to wanting or planning to commit rape.

[Trazoi]

Sure, you can delete it, but the problem is it keeps cropping up. Troper Tales nicely forced it all onto a page that you're not going to look at unless you want to, whereas now I fear it'll creep back onto the main pages and have the same issue again.

It shouldn't be an issue if there's a directive to clean up that stuff as it crops up. There might be the occasional Troper Tale worming its way onto a page but they can't be a massive build up before it becomes glaringly noticeable.

The Troper Tales pages were an open invitation for people to throw irrelevant creepy rubbish up on the site. It didn't even matter if you never read them - the mere fact you can see that the page exists for every trope is enough to creep you out. There's some tropes in there that are creepy enough by the lavish care tropers put to filling out examples, they don't need the extra creep factor by having Troper Tales pages attached.

[warty goblin]

Nahh... Troper Tales shouldn't have existed in the first place and is indicative of a compromising attitude where none is needed. Stuff that goes in there should be just deleted, or maybe put under a YMMV trope if there's enough of a fandom consensus on something. No such thing as notablity does not be every random thought deserves a place.

Swing mightily the sword of editing and deletion!

Actually I'm pretty sure that every random thought deserving a place is the inevitable, nearly encouraged, endpoint of not having any such thing as notability. If the lower bound on importance doesn't exist, everything from the secrets of the universe to the exact RGB color code of the three thousand and fifty-third pore, counted radially, on my left ear, is fair game.

Standards are a good thing. Let's have and enforce them.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

You know... I actually really like that as a trope name. I think it's substantially better than either True Companions or Nakama (especially nakama, because that's just being bad at translating).

I concur wholeheartedly.

[Mauve Shirt]

Troper Tales is kind of idiotic, but everyone wants to talk about themselves. The need to share everything is a compulsive thing that everyone on the internet comes here to do. Best to let them do it off the main page, or they'll just clutter it up in the examples like they used to. You don't have to click on the little icon that takes you there, you know. The website says it has no notability, and as many of you have said it's not supposed to be a super serious resource. It never was, as far as I can tell. It's a community of media nerds.

[Tectonic Robot]

I... I kind of like Tv tropes... I think it's cool...

There are weird people everywhere, guys. I mean, everywhere. And it's cool to browse through...

[Fiery Diamond]

Actually, the "no such thing as notability" was the one aspect of TVTropes that I honestly respected. Wikipedia is full of itself and has overzealous editors who delete things for very little reason. I understand the desire for standards, but anyone who truly uses Wikipedia as a scholarly source (rather than, for example, following the citation links to find actual scholarly sources) is being a fool. TVTropes is more honest; if it exists in media (or is a book or movie or show or comic), then if someone wants to put it up and talk about it, they don't have to worry about whether it appeared in the New York Times or some other "unaffiliated" source, they can put it up and talk about it.

As an example: "elements" in fantasy (fire, water, ice, earth, wind, lightning, and many more). There used to be a Wikipedia page on that which provided some useful descriptions about different "elements" used in fantasy and how they were often related to each other or to personality types. It got deleted because it didn't really have any substantial citations; it was just a compiling of information gleaned by watching/reading/playing lots of fantasy. TVTropes provides the perfect environment for that kind of page to exist with it's "no such thing as notability" approach.

[Tiki Snakes]

Yeah, for all it's volume, Wikipedia is often suprisingly useless when you actually want to look something up. TV tropes has it's field of info and the no-notability thing is a godsend on a lot of it.
Likewise, if I want to know something about internet culture or history I end up having to sift it out of the nonsense that is Encyclopedia dramatica instead.

The idea that the fact that I and other people want to be able to find out about a topic does not make it noteable enough to exists is something I always found faintly offensive.

Also, I'm no expert, but I suspect that a large proportion of the more colourful troper tales, (Not that I ever read any of them) were simply trolls.

[Trazoi]

The "no such thing as notability" rule is great for removing any hesitation for people to put a reference to their favourite thing in the wiki and to avoid the annoying Wikipedia deletionist issue.

However when I used to help out by finding images for the Image Picking subforum it did get used to block suggestions. You couldn't rely on any familiarity with the work, how classic the example was, or argue that the image should be given extra weight because it's from the trope namer, because there's "no such thing as notability". Images keep getting more literal or simply cut as an unrepresentable trope.

Also, I'm no expert, but I suspect that a large proportion of the more colourful troper tales, (Not that I ever read any of them) were simply trolls.

It's hard to sort the trolls from the genuine. Look around the forum and you'll see a few of the regulars are consistently... colourful.

[Wardog]

Following on this I randomly found there is discussion to rename The Red Baron, which derives from a cross-cultural icon of military achievement.

Can anyone say you wouldn't understand what the Red Baron is or why going with some merely descriptive title is somehow better.

Actually, I think "The Red Baron" is one of the more badly-named tropes. It suggests to me that it is either refering to the real Red Baron, an expy of him, or a fictional character notably similar characteristics (e.g. infamous enemy ace pilot).

The actual trope meaning, "badass character who is only known by his nickname", while a plausible meaning, isn't (IMO) the most obvious one, and if you were to describe such a character as "The Red Baron", I wouldn't know what you were talking about (if I hadn't read teh Trope page).

On the other hand, I do agree that renaming "You fail X forever" to "Artistic license - X" was a bad move, especially as (IMO) describing something as "artistic licence" is more at least as much a value judgement than the former. (Getting something factually massively wrong is objective; describing it as artistic licence is effectively saying it is justified).

[Shadow of the Sun]

Well, the shift to artistic licence - X from You Fail X Forever was because tropers would end up putting ANYTHING that didn't agree with biology or physics or whatever in there as if the author had legitimately made a mistake. With Artistic Licence, they've made it so you can add examples without directly implying that the author made a mistake, instead saying that "This disagrees with field X".

So while it might be less objective in some ways, it does have the advantage of making authors who ignore physics for actual legitimate artistic reasons can be listed without implying that they did so because they simply didn't know.

[Doug Lampert]

Give him a sneer and say, "Well, you dont exactly have room to talk considering how fast you recognized it. Done a few link marathons have we?" Or hit him with a brick. Both should make him shut up if you do it right.

If we're coming up with ideal responses then "What's TV tropes?"

Seriously, he's the one who appears to think that any knowledge of the term is a reference to TV tropes, which means (a) he reads TV tropes, and (b) he is an idiot since TV tropes didn't invent the term and makes no such claim.

If getting terms from TV tropes is snear worthy then he's the one who should be sneared at.

Using the term in no way implies knowing anything about TV tropes, but thinking it comes only from TV tropes both means you are familiar with TV tropes AND means that it is likely that you are not really familiar with language, theater, and literature.

"What's TV tropes?" and then act baffled that he'd think some internet wiki is where you got the term from.

No, to be serious, when someone claimed Xanatos' Gambit was totally incomprehensible because s/he didn't know who or what a Xanatos was and s/he only knew Gambit from the X-Men character I a) wondered what that person was doing in his childhood if s/he didn't know Xanatos and b) how someone who's presumably a native English speaker doesn't know what a gambit is if I know it.

Gargoyles first aired when I was 20, so I somehow survived childhood without it, as did billions of other people.

I was of course watching Warner Brothers cartoons as a child like any reasonable person.

(b) I can't help you on. Gambit is a term you should know from chess if nothing else.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, we don't actually know what would happen if someone were to fly into a black hole. Based on that, I can't see how it would be "incorrect" to have it be time travel, alternate universes, or Sparkly Funtime Fairy Land. Considering all the other cases where authors can get science wrong, it seems odd to use this as your example.

You're wrong. :)
Black holes are a prediction of physical theory, the same theory that says they EXIST also says what happens if you fly into one.
(a) For any reasonable sized hole the tides rip you apart. For a galaxy sized black hole you might live.
(b) For any non-rotating hole you disappear from the universe and are never seen again (time dilation makes this strange, but the effect is the same) although Hawking decay may mean that some of the mass-energy does eventually escape. But a non-rotating black hole is very unlikely to exist.
(c) For a rotating black hole it gets complicated depending on your course, but amusingly enough one of the solutions to the general relativity equations dealing with black holes involves a course where you leave the black hole prior to your entry (AKA time travel), most physicists don't believe in time travel, so they invent quantum feedback loops to stop this sort of thing (or just count on (a) above to stop this from happening).