So you love a series. You own all the volumes, have various merchandise, can quote characters off the top of your head, and know every plot twist by heart.
However, one day someone asks the dreaded question "What's this about?" And suddenly it hits you -- trying to sum it up in only a few sentences makes it sound really
really ridiculous, and though the show itself may take itself entirely seriously, suddenly all the random parts, nonsensical aspects and just plain weirdness are laid bare before you.
But, really it's
Better Than It Sounds once you actually see it in action.
This is the place to record those descriptions -- the random, the understated, and the
WTF. This is not
They Fight Crime, since those shows have an
inherently ridiculous concept as part of the catch -- these are only made ridiculous by us mentioning things out of context. To keep it interesting, put the name of the series in
spoiler tags and try keep this from becoming
Complaining About Shows You Dont Like; it's actually
Making Fun Of Things You Do Like. And most of all, have fun.
Misc.
- TV Tropes Wiki: A bunch of self-admitted geeks and nerds talk about various recurring things in all forms of media.
- Just For Fun: Said geeks take a break from talking about media in order to talk about talking about media.
- Wikipedia: Giant website that seeks to be the repository for all the world's knowledge. Spends much of its time hosting arguments about what qualifies as "knowledge".
- Didn't we get these two the wrong way round?
- Nah, seriously, who the hell needs "all the world's knowledge"? The former site is much more useful.
- They Might Be Giants: A rock band consisting entirely of nerds named either John or Daniel. And there's an accordion.
- They just added a guy named Marty.
- Gorillaz: A band consisting of a blue haired childish Casanova and both eyes pressed into his head, a Satanist who owns Satan's own bass (El Diablo), a 15 year old Japanese Super Soldier and a drummer who has been possessed by multiple spirits.
- The Beatles: Four musicians from Northern England. Before the split, one recorded some incomprehensible and awful albums. After the split, another one married a one-legged woman, the third produced a Monty Python film and nobody cared about the fourth (he even had drinking problems).
- Daft Punk: Two french guys who cut bits out of good songs, add a beat, and then appear onstage to perform them standing in a pyramid made of indandescent tubes. Oh, and they pretend to be robots.
- Elvis Presley: A guy who knew how to sing and dance. That in his first appearance was shown only from waist up.
- U2: Four musicians from Ireland that promote awareness for the Environment.
- The Rolling Stones: Four British musicians tough to kill and/or retire.
- The Who: Four British musicians. Tough to retire, but easy to kill.
- Zero Punctuation: A snarky British guy reviews video games accompanied by off-beat animation.
- The Internet: People all around the world are brought together by the things they love best, which appear to be pornography, repetition of various phrases, arguing, and cats.
- Organized religion: People around the world argue and kill each other about various books, most of which are driving at the same point.
- Protest atheism: People decide to throw out the baby with the bathwater and say that the books themselves are wrong and bad.
- Pornography: People get naked and are filmed doing things which, sometimes, come waaaaaay out of left field.
- Braces: A painful, years-long method of skeletal readjustment and sometimes bone removal, resulting in permanent disfiguration, to which children are subject against their will. This is, for some, necessary to be considered attractive.
- Pregnancy / Childbirth: A parasite (or sometimes more than one) lodges itself within a woman and slowly grows over most of a year, affecting the woman physically and psychologically. Eventually the parasite(s) is ejected painfully from the body; however, it typically stays with the woman for years, and the woman may even be imprisoned if she abandons the creature. Despite the intense physical and emotional discomfort the woman is put through during this time, the growth and arrival of the creature is widely considered a beautiful and life-affirming affair.
- Adoption: After its ejection from the body, the parasite is passed off to a surrogate host, who continues the process as normal.
- Sex: An exhausting and at times messy and uncomfortable (physically and emotionally) activity that can cause disease and in some extreme cases even death, but which is nevertheless is widely enjoyed, greatly sought after by many (especially those who have not yet done it) and is in fact considered healthy and essential for survival. Despite it's widespread popularity, undertaking it in front of other people is widely disapproved of and can be embarrassing.
- Employment: People engage in a series of tasks, usually of a routine and often repetitive nature. Although the routine in which these tasks are undertaken varies from person to person, for many people this involves getting up very early in the morning and undertaking them for several hours at a time, usually until the day is well and truly over. Despite the fact that few people (unless they're lucky) can truly claim to enjoy this routine, those who do not undertake it are often looked down upon and are widely disadvantaged in society.
- How is that supposed to be better than it sounds?
- Fiction: People make stuff up; it's sometimes based on truth, but it's often complete make-believe. This results in the formation of multi-million dollar industries, varying degrees of fame and fortune for those doing the making-up, and numerous and often intense discussions about it on the Internet.
- Music: A series of sounds which need to be heard in the right order and by the right person to be appreciated; otherwise, it's noise.
- Philosophy: Endless debates between self-proclaimed geniuses that have been going on since the beginning of civilization.
- Warfare: An event in which two nations fight against each other. Sometimes several other nations join in, supporting which side that they feel will help their interests more.
- "Civil" Warfare: Same as above, but this time it's one nation fighting against itself.
- Sports: The distillation of war into various forms for fun and profit. More fun than war, because the rules are easier to follow and fewer people get killed.
- Video Games: That distillation, but with all the physical aspects that may actually result in excercise removed, and a general aura that only men can participate, although women take place in a different distilation, which is in fact a distillation of lock picking put into the form of moving non-physical jewels around a 2-dimensional surface.
- Love: Staking your happiness on another person, often making you miserable, crazy, or evil. And it's involuntary.
- Marriage: Because of the above (and possibly the "exhausting and at times messy and uncomfortable activity"), two people move together. Many things can go wrong (including results of the "parasite generation") and lead to an end where one tries to extort as much from the other as possible.
- Sleep: A state of semi-voluntary unconsciousness during which strange and occasionally disturbing visions may be experienced.
- Dreams: A series of surreal experiences you have when you're not even awake
