An Australian university student.
Some thoughts:
Metatropes are a sort of trope. Which ones can be done to each other? Playing streight cannot be lampshaded or exaggerated. Many of them cannot be inverted, which is the same as with many other tropes. Lampshading cannot be subverted.
A The Faceless who simultaneously undergoes Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Samus Is a Girl and Luke, I Am Your Father would probably also be an Action Mum.
I would like to see a Darker and Edgier Deconstruction which was not very Dark or Edgy, just moreso than the very light original.
As a resident of inner Melbourne, I've grown up with the assumption that retributive justice is not intrinsically good. Also, my brother has provided an argument to support this position:
Assume that if a hypothetical world were possible such that: A being with all non-moral knowledge and understanding of moral standard X, but no other moral knowledge, could not possibly distinguish right from wrong by applying moral standard X, moral standard X is not a complete and good moral framework.
Imagine a world where sentient beings consist of two species of equal population. Members of each species act with complete kindness to all other members of their species. But they treat the other species with (depending on the standard of the standard being disputed) complete disregard of any possible rights or sadistic malice.
If rights depend on virtue, one species is in the wrong and the other in the right. How can one tell which is which?
So, anyway, when I find people on the internet assuming without supporting argument that retributave justice is intrinsically good, I'm a bit bothered. That happens a lot on this site.
It also really bothers me when people talk about a "particularly wallbanging example" of a trope I normally like. It's happened, though I forget where.
A thought about cannon: any work is part of some cannon. A fanfic might not be cannon for the work it's a fanfic of, but it's cannon for the fanfic it'sself.
In a lot of stories with magic (for example Gunnerkrigg Court and Earthsea), it isn't just a way of destroying things and may not even be good for destroying things. So why do some people on this wiki talk as though magic=ability to throw fireballs?
Perhaps relatedly: I'm not all that interested in weapons technology or military tactics. I understand some people care about those things, but personally I won't mind (or know) how much a story messes it up.
Some of the media I like:
Anime:
- Howl'sMovingCastle. I would describe it as Adaptation Decay done well, rather than Adaptation Distilation: many of the good bits weren't derived from the book.
Non-Genre Books:
- Shadowboxing by Tony Birch
- The Power And The Glory by Graham Greene
Genre books:
- everything by Douglas Adams
- Diskworld
- Good Omens
- The Culture
- Thursday Next
- Imaginary Numbers by William Frucht
- many things by Ursula Le Guin
- many things by Tamora Pierce
- Howls Moving Castle
- Harry Potter
- Margo Lanagan's short stories
- Keys To The Kingdom
- His Dark Materials
- The Wind On Fire
- Many other books I haven't thought of yet.
Comic strips:
Fanfiction:
- As It Should Be
- Brainbent
- Fed
- The Game And Those Who Play
- The Gods We Used To Know
- Herding Cats
- One Of Our Submarines
- Sburb Glitch FAQ
Mythology:
- I enjoy mythology as fiction.
TV shows:
- The Chaser
- Dead Ringers
- My Hero
- The Twilight Zone (watched on DVD)
- Frontline (watched on DVD)
- Doctor Who
Webcomics:
- XKCD
- Order Of The Stick
- Gunnerkrigg Court
- MS Paint Adventures
- Erfworld
- Slightly Damned
- Dresden Codak
Some of the many tropes I generally like:
- Dark Is Not Evil
- Light Is Not Good
- Jigsaw Plot
- Chekhov's Gun
- Where It All Began
- Karma Houdini
- Prophecy Twist
- Hypocritical Humour
- Involuntary Shapeshifting
- Not So Different
- Stable Time Loop
- Alternate Universe
- What the Hell, Hero?
- Thirty Xanatos Pileup
- Postmodernism
- Speculative Fiction
- Sweet Polly Oliver
- Negative Space Wedgie
- Crossover Cosmology
- Cry for the Devil
- Rage Against the Heavens
- I Am He as You Are He
- Our Monsters Are Different
- Spanner in the Works
- The Aversion of the First Law of Tragicomedies
- Post-Modern Magik
- Mundane Utility
- Fix Fic (I really enjoy reading fix fic even when I don't agree with the author's complaints. "How would you have done it" is a good question)
Some tropes I dislike:
- Gorn
- All the Double Standards
- What Measure Is a Mook?
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?
- Aliens And Monsters
- Toilet Humour
- Merchandise-Driven
- Executave Meddling
- Always Chaotic Evil (I think to be done in a way I liked, it would need to be done in a more unsual way than it normally is. If known A.C.E. provided a plot twist when a character of an A.C.E. race introduced as an enemy ultimately helped the heroes out of self-interest, that could be good. If it were done in order to facilitate a serious exploration of how this effects society, or of the moral repercussions, I wouldn't mind that. But normally such twists aren't used and the social effects and moral repercussions are almost taken for granted.)
- War On Straw, especially but not only when I'm in the group strawmanned.
- Silly Rabbit Idealism Is For Children
- The Chosen One
- Fan Haters (not exactly a trope, but it really annoys me)
- The True Art tropes other than True Art Sticks It To The Man and True Art Is Foreign. I don't agree with those ones either, but they don't bother me as much. I like some ancient artworks, some intentionally incomprehensible artworks and so on though, and I don't like it when/if people assume that because a work fits one of those attitudes' standards of true are, anyone who likes it has that attitude.
- Author Existence Failure (Again, not exactly a trope, but I hate it)
- All Just a Dream. It even bothered me in Alice In Wonderland, which is the only time I know of that it was done convincingly or non something-ex-machena.
- Deus Ex Machena
- Medieval Stasis
- Toilet Humour
- Not Blood Siblings. It does not work that way.
Other tropers I know from elsewhere:
Tropes which apply to me
- Aerith and Bob
- Two First Names (my middle name and my surname)
Pages I've started:
- Theme Table (which has since been completely rewritten)
- All Women Are Lustful (I'm currently in the process of slowly going through the wicks so I can later submit it to the trope repair shop. It really needs it.) (eta: I doubt trope repair can fix that page. It's a horrible page that contributes to the confusion around All Men Are Perverts and I'm sorry I made it.)
- A Mythology Is True
- How Kazir Won His Wife
- Big Labyrinthine Building
- Sir Index of Tropes
- Sliding Scale of Objective vs. Subjective Games
Regarding the colors of morality, I think reality is Black White and Grey, with conflicts of all combinations. I like stories with conflicts of any colour, but there should be at least some characters who are grey or white.
