Tadaru - Television Tropes & Idioms

24-year-old male Adult Child with professionally diagnosed Asperger Syndrome originally from the Seattle area. Graduated from the University of Washington with a B.S. in computer science with a minor in Japanese, and then studied Japanese in Tokyo. He is in the process of looking for a job.

Likes to play video games, mainly of the Eastern RPG, Shoot 'Em Up, Puzzle Game, and Rhythm Game varieties. He's a very non-mainstream gamer by Western standards; he won't touch Call of Duty, Madden, or Halo with a ten-foot pole. Occasionally watches annie may as well, but never reads man gay (it's just not the same without Crowning Music of Awesome). Other hobbies are logic puzzles like sudoku and nonograms, as well as reading and editing TVTropes.

Has been lurking on TV Tropes since May 2009 making a few edits from time to time, but did not become a full-fledged member until January 2011.

This page has a total of 157 links.

Favorite games are:

Bemani (at this time, mostly Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Freaks).
Many Cave shmups (Death Smiles, Mushihime-sama Futari, Esp Galuda II, DonPachi series in particular)
Raiden Fighters. This was actually his Gateway Shmup which showed him they can be fun and caused him to play stuff other than ticket games at arcades.
Giga Wing
Touhou series; mostly the older ones.
Metal Slug series (especially X and 3)
Tetris: The Grand Master series
Panel de Pon
Final Fantasy series. Unlike most fans, he likes both the old and new ones equally (except XIII; that one looks god-awful; though he even enjoyed XII). His favorite is IV by a little, though it's close between several others.
Dragon Quest series, his favorite of them being Dragon Quest VI. This fandom is surprisingly recent; never having taken the series seriously before, he essentially went on an Archive Binge in 2008 where he beat all eight main series games that existed at the time. He's since beaten IX too.
SaGa series. For now, he's only played the original trilogy though. Many examples added for Sa Ga 2.
Secretof Mana
Seiken Densetsu 3
La Pucelle
Disgaea

Started the following pages:

Pang

Tadaru and his life have examples of the following:

Accentuatethe Negative: People have accused him of doing this.
Acceptable Hobby Targets: He's gotten flak for watching Let's Plays (and at one point, making them), and indirectly has gotten flak for some of his other hobbies (i.e. people point out how strange/nerdy it is to listen to video game music, and while not directed towards him, he directs it toward himself).
Adult Child: A couple other tropes here should confirm this.
Ambiguously Autistic: Surprisingly, many people don't see anything off about him, even though he does have some visual symptoms of Asperger's.
Archive Panic: I have to watch 500 episodes to get up to date on this series?! Screw that!
Asianand Nerdy
Asian Drivers: He was horrible when he started, and is still probably below average when it comes to driving.
Asperger Syndrome: Professionally diagnosed as of 2002. He also has traits of ADHD and OCD.
Ask a Stupid Question...: He won't hesitate to respond with a sarcastic answer if you do.
Berserk Button: Several. The main ones as of late:
- Asking him stupid questions, or asking him a question that he's just answered. See above.
- Similarly, being Captain Obvious while he's watching a TV show.
- Calling Asperger Syndrome a "disease". It sucks to have, but it's not a disease.
- Assuming Japanese-Americans can automatically speak Japanese.
- People complaining about shmups being too short.
Born in the Wrong Century: He graduated from college in March 2009. Enough said. Had he had been born even a year earlier...
- Ironically, he thinks he may have done better in a world before computers and the internet. Obviously he'd do horribly if he were suddenly warped back being used to using them, but if he were born before the ideas of them even existed, things may turn out alright. He'd probably be forced to be more social, and also wouldn't have to deal with information overload.
Brilliant, but Lazy: His IQ is estimated to be in the 140s, occasionally 150s. For quite a while he had a sentence here referring people to the non-existent intro on his troper page, but that's no longer applicable. He'll think of a new example eventually.
Cake Eater: As far back as he can remember, he's always wanted someone several years older than him. possibly to justify him being the more immature one. He couldn't see himself dating anyone significantly younger than him. Thankfully he's 23 years old now, where it wouldn't look weird to date someone in their late 20s.
Challenge Gamer: He aims for one credit clears (i.e. beating the whole game without continuing) in shmups and some other arcade games.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- Will virtually always use default names if given in RP Gs, if given. If a name's not given, he will often opt for Fart due to a lack of creativity and/or maturity.
- For virtually every Shoot 'Em Up he has played significantly, he will always use the same ship/character. Usually tends towards fast with straight shots.
- Almost always picks the water-elemental starter in Pokemon. The only exceptions are if it's a subsequent playthrough, or he's trying to get all the starter Pokemon.
Cosmic Plaything: When he's depressed, he feels like one.
Damn You, Muscle Memory: Being a fan of the Super Nintendo, having the same four colors and same four names for the buttons on the Xbox360 but in a different layout confuses him.
- He also doesn't really like it when a major website suddenly changes its layout.
Driven to Suicide: Subverted.
Everything Trying to Kill You: He wasn't far from the epicenter of the 2011 Sendai earthquake.
Fan Nickname: Fartsbook, for a certain social networking site. See Toilet Humor below.
- Take a wild guess what he replaces the "You" in Youtube with.
- Raiden Far... you get the picture.
Fetish Fuel: He's quite fond of Meganekko, and his favorite Japanese teacher...
The Firefly Effect: Thanks to how often his hobbies have died off, he's afraid of getting into any hobby that looks as if it's about to die or is dying, and will desperately try to replace any that he already has if they are.
Fragile Speedster: Fits him to a tee. He even dresses very lightly, wearing shorts 9-10 months out of the year.
Fridge Horror: He lived through the 2011 Sendai earthquake. The situation at the nuclear plant...
Genius Sweet Tooth: He's a little less of one now. At the very least he's given up energy drinks.
Good With Numbers: He's quite skilled at mental math.
Grammar Nazi
Gratuitous Japanese: Justified, in that he has passed the JLPT N2 and recently took the N1.
Growing Up Sucks: So many people tell him this, and he wonders why he should keep living.
Hype Backlash: Currently preventing him from trying Minecraft.
I Know Mortal Kombat: He can play real drums thanks to the Bemani game Drum Mania being very much like them.
Internalized Categorism: He's embarrassed by his hobbies.
I Just Want to Be Normal / I Just Want to Have Friends
Kansai Regional Accent: He frequently uses parts of it despite never having been to that part of Japan yet.
Loners Are Freaks: He's arguably both. Therefore true.
Memetic Mutation / Running Gag: He'd jokingly say "(expletive) off <member>" to a member of an IRC channel he frequented (he does not really hate this member in any way). After doing this a few times, he changed it to the Lighter and Softer "shut up" which ended up becoming the meme. From there, he had it turned on him by another troper in that same channel, resulting in his handle. Now he uses it on anything that makes him upset, adding an "-aru" suffix onto the end of his target.
- And that member's usual response: "o"
- According to many people in the same channel, he's beaten it to death, but there just is no such thing as an Overused Running Gag to him.
Mouthful of Pi: He used to be able to recite 100 digits of pi. It's Awesome, but Impractical but mostly impractical, so he can't go that far anymore.
Nausea Fuel: Womb levels. Possibly a result of Fridge Horror.
No Guy Wants To Be Chased: Averted, but now that it's happening to him, played straight. Just feels way too easy, and is quite scary in a way.
Older than They Look: Your Mileage May Vary. On average, people underestimate his age. Most people correctly estimate his age, but some people think he could pass for a high school student.
Rage Quit: It happens.
Sequel First: Since he was a bit too young for the original NES and started on the Super Nintendo instead, it's happened. Only the most egregious ones follow:
- As listed above, first Final Fantasy game was IV in the early 90s when he got into video gaming. He didn't play the original one until 2004, and the other NES ones until after that (II in 2005, III in 2007).
- Played the GB SaGa games in reverse order.
- Played Puzzle Bobble when it was new, in the mid 90s. Didn't play Bubble Bobble that spawned them until 2002.
- Surprisingly averted with the Mother series; all three of them were out by the time he got into it.
Smart People Play Chess: Averted oh so hard. He hates and is terrible at chess and any similar games, especially Go. He's even tried to learn how to play the latter, but these types of games are simply not compatible with his brain at all.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Eventually he wants to make it to the Kansai region, which is much harder than the Kanto region in terms of Japanese language difficulty. It's a non-standard dialect and they tend to speak much faster.
Stupid Sexy Flanders: He will occasionally find effeminate-looking men attractive.
The B Grade: He was one when he was younger; He got better depending on your definition of 'better'. Now he's happy with any grade that's at least a B; for Scrappy Classes, at least a C any passing grade.
- He failed the JLPT N1 by two fucking points. He needed 100/180 to pass; he got 98. FUCK EVERYTHING.
- However, he very much plays this straight when it comes to Rhythm Games; for instance, in Dance Dance Revolution when his AA would have been a AAA if he had gotten one fewer Great.
Toilet Humor: He uses it occasionally sometimes frequently.
- Lampshaded by him one night:
(someone else says "fart")
Tadaru: You mean I'm not the first one to say the word "farted" tonight?
Trilingual Bonus: English (natively), Japanese (JLPT N2 confirmed, see TheBGrade above), Spanish (studied in high school and have seldom used it since; I probably shouldn't even say I know it by now).
Vapor Ware: So many unfinished programming projects that are stinking up his hard drive.
Unconventional Learning Experience: For many years his listening/speaking ability in Japanese has been lacking compared to other areas. I wonder why? Watching the Japanese equivalent of Let's Plays fixed this.
Yangire
Your Mind Makes It Real: He's feeling earthquakes that aren't actually happening.