Should I write a story that takes place in a TV Tropes Verse

Sounds bizarre but I'm planning on writing a sort of complicated fic about a prophecy where a Five-Man Band has to save the plot (and obviously the world) from a Big Bad literally named Mary Sue. Anyone want to help?

edited 2nd Feb '15 5:18:00 PM by SephirotAero

Is The Leader a superhero called Captain Obvious?

Please say "yes".

Sadly, no. It's actually quite serious (which doesn't fit TV Tropes at all), and is supposed to give an anime-like feel. There's an entire fictional world for this already.

I don't see this working as a serious story, to be honest, but if you go all Fables on it (tropes and in-universe characters imagined as realistic-ish people in a modern setting), you might be able to pull it off.

edited 2nd Feb '15 9:26:05 PM by Wheezy

That was actually something I'm plotting out at the moment

Sounds good, then.

Please do it!

edited 6th Feb '15 1:17:36 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

Here's a backstory of sorts (all of it is original... and really convoluted). The post will be quite long

In the beginning of time there was an eldritch abomination that was an antithesis of the modern world; it was stagnant, but not definable. Eventually this being split into two, creating a (rather cliche) being of order. It looked upon the other half, a being of chaos, and decided it wanted to define it. So Order and Chaos fought, and in the end, Chaos "died" and Order and "dying". It also created a new concept: fate, causality, and the idea that actions have permanent effects, with everything going down a straight course, almost like a story. But it was unformed, with the end of that story fixed into saying that Chaos will return to destory everything he had achieved. Order broke free from it's nature, it's intrinsic desire to conform to itself and manipulated Fate, and the story, setting up everything to go along a path that could possibly lead to a different ending. Then it set everything up into fiction based tropes for that story, and defined everything based on tropes. Everything is defined by these tropes, be it from that cool sword being defined by the trope known as "cool sword", to various positions one may have in the fate of everything.

The last things Order did were create life. These were complex things, as they were made up of many tropes, particularly the ones more important to the story (which is now a prophecy called "The Plot"). Living beings also required a spark of life of sorts. It created animal souls from Shards of Chaos and sentient souls from Shards from it's own body. His first creation was created to rule above all others and could influence The Plot to go their way against all opposition. It named her "Mary Sue" whose power encompassed everything. Then it created a more nuanced being, one who was not perfect, meant to watch over Creation. It named her "Lady Tropes-sama" and her power encompassed anything. After creating a whole race just like Mary Sue, Order "died". It was up to this new race, now called Precursors to define the world.

Eventually, Lady Tropes-sama created another race, out of various tropes. They were made like Muggles, unable to manipulate tropes like the Precursors could. Mary Sue saw them as servants, fit only for her and grew madder and madder with power the more she wielded it. Eventually, the Precursors, led by Lady Tropes-sama, rebelled against the rule of Mary Sue, and was sealed in a metaphysical location outside of reality known as the "Can", forged from the husk of Chaos taken solid form. But this war wasn't without loss. Most of the Precursors were killed, their collection of tropes were dissolved and their Shards of Order would fuse into a nexus of souls and their memories. She gave certain worthy humans a blessing to their bloodlines, giving them the ability to manipulate tropes, as well as giving the ability to random humans throughout time. Lady Trope-sama sealed herself and the rest of the Precursors away, leaving humanity in their wake. They are worshipped as gods and still are to this day.

edited 8th Feb '15 9:00:30 AM by SephirotAero

I really like everything here that isn't an obvious attempt at being meta. Simply calling cliches by their common monickers isn't clever. And I think you're hurting your story by doing that.

Are there any improvements and changes I could make? I left a lot out and most of it I actually don't consider to be meta (Like character backgrounds and the general feel of the world. The meta parts aren't going to crop up a whole lot). The whole naming cliches after themselves thing is actually kind of the point of the story.

edited 8th Feb '15 8:21:48 PM by SephirotAero

"The whole naming cliches after themselves thing is actually kind of the point of the story."

That's what I would change. There's nothing clever about that. Maybe I'm a little jaded since I've seen a ton of fanfiction and webcomics where the writer thinks they're being smart or meta by having a villainous Mary Sue named "Mary Sue". Or having a godlike being named "The Writer" or whatever.

It's cheap and easy and I feel like it would hurt your story/setting more than you realize. Especially since it's a very easy fix. It's more rewarding to the reader if the allegory isn't painfully obvious. It gets them more engaged in the story when they discover the symbolism for themselves.

What I meant by "that was the point" (sorry for not clearing this up) is that this is actually a crack fic/parody fic. It's just more serious than most crack fics, as well as parodying various tropes in fiction. Not all of it is to be taken seriously. I mostly came up with it as a joke, then after pondering it through and adding some more serious tones, I realized this had potential. Oh, and there are some hidden things in there, like how the main character wishes to be independent of other's influences. He is a "Pawn" (more story terminology that I haven't revealed yet), which, if you recall, is a weak piece, and a metaphor for a slave. Also most of the characters have dark pasts and since the main character is supposed to be TheHero, he has to be more than just another pawn of the cliche (as the leader) and actually be a hero to his own team as well. It's supposed to look like a stupid idea from the outside and I think I accomplished that (Trust me, it gets stupider the more I superficial things I reveal. It reaches plotless shonen anime levels).

edited 9th Feb '15 3:39:09 PM by SephirotAero

It's your story, do what you want with it. I'd just suggest changing the terms. Even if it's a joke, it comes across as a lazy joke. Like even something little like calling the bad guy something with the initials M.S.

edited 9th Feb '15 3:48:38 PM by WSM

Is the name "Miriam Sanna" good enough? I'm thinking of keeping the "Mary Sue" because that particular character is actually a parody (but yeah, the concept is trite). It's more than self-awareness though (technically it's more like "No Fourth Wall")

edited 9th Feb '15 3:50:27 PM by SephirotAero

Sure, that's fine. Do what you want.

Not to be rude, but I looked at your profile and it said something about you doing webcomics... is there anything you put up online?

I appreciate you showing interested in my webcomics but I prefer not posting links on forums or over forums. I'm worried things I say in forums might reflect on my webcomic in an undesirerable way (or vice versa).

It's a weird quirck I have. If I wanted people from TV Tropes looking at my webcomics, I would've put links on my profile.

edited 12th Feb '15 10:39:20 AM by WSM

I finally decided that I won't do the whole "Mary Sue" thing. It's going to be it's own thing now.