I think you're already pretty deep in cheese territory by choosing to allude directly to tropes. Regardless of how comedic the rest of the story is, the concern in #2 is going to be the least of your worries. And could you explain what you mean with #1? I don't think hashtags even have anything to do with this site, and Stock Phrases are already kind of dubiously tropable as it is.
But I have to ask, how do you think this will contribute to your story? You say that it would add extra nuance, but the whole point of nuance is to get the reader to think about your story, read between the lines, and notice it on their own, not to have it pointed out with a URL. When most stories directly reference tropes by name to the point that it's obvious they're trying to reference the site, it can very easily come across as tacky long before the joke even has a chance to wear thin. Why does it feel tacky? Picture someone going to a team-bonding or meet-and-greet event where the point is to converse with people, but as that person learn about them, they stop and say that they wouldn't have made such a good impression without this awesome self-help book about making friends.
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
Thanks for the input.
By #1 I meant any sort of web resource (not necessarily tvtropes) that explains/describes stock phrases (or at least lists them), simply for the purpose of being able to reference a phrase in a link. ...Also, turns out, instead of "#hashtags" I should have written "HTML #anchor elements" (e.g. wikipedia/HTML_element#Anchor). Sorry for the confusion.
Why am I attempting this? Initially, I didn't intend that character to be a troper... but seeing as she was fleshing out into a genre-savvy person with a penchant for analyzing things (and making puns), making her a troper was a pretty natural fit. In fact, the "troper speak" seems to be a perfect match for this character, as it highlights her tendency to see everything in terms of games/fiction, her geekiness (she's used to nobody getting the in-jokes) and her love for the multi-layered meanings.
Also, I should probably mention that this story is intended for a webcomic (or maybe an in-browser kinetic novel). Since it's pretty common for webcomics to reference external material in the annotations, I assumed it wouldn't be too big of a difference if one character could also reference the Internet directly (instead of writing in the annotations "most likely she's talking about [reference/link]", as I do for the other characters when they mention something that requires more context).
Hmm, if I make the links optional (as in, the reader will be able to switch in realtime between the linked and linkless versions), would that be acceptable? I'm all for the death of the author and alternative interpretations, but perhaps some people would appreciate the ability to have a better knowledge of what's going on in a character's head?
In any case, I'm pretty early in the process, so it probably won't be too cumbersome to modify the characterization. I'm kind of having fun with writing her "multi-layer" thought process, though 0:-)
P.S.
It's not about tvtropes specifically, but what I find so valuable about this site is that it gives various fuzzy concepts a clear disambiguation/categorization and at least some semblance of standardized names. This makes it much easier to ascribe a more precise meaning to what one is trying to say.
edited 29th Sep '15 2:47:46 AM by AcWatbaa
(Double post, sorry.)
edited 29th Sep '15 2:47:40 AM by AcWatbaa
Elementalist
I may very well appear rude in this message. I did not intend to be, but I did intend to not dance around the issue, so I probably am blunt and that may well make me appear rude.
Thing is, if you think that constantly referencing anything like TV Tropes or Twitter or Facebook or whatever else of this sort will make the story better when there's no actual need for it, you are being an idiot.
Gratuitous capitalisation of words does not help the readers; if anything, it makes it harder for the readers to keep reading instead of throwing the story into the fire place and burning it to ashes (and then burning those ashes again). The only reasons TV Tropes uses "camel case" for naming tropes are that it helps the parser change them to links and that it makes it easier for people to look for tropes by looking at the link only; that's it, and peppering your (or any of your characters') speech with gratuitously capitalised words just for the sake of having "tropes" will not enrich the story in any way. In the same vein, people do not use "hashtags" in speech because it is oh-so-clever; they do it because (in most cases) they are immature and throwing a few words with a prefix looks easier than communicating properly does.
Another thing is, if you think that savviness of a character is in any way measured with how often the character does something like quoting a website of some sort or saying something that anyone who aspires to maturity would agree is better left unsaid, you are once again being an idiot.
Savviness, including the so-called genre-savviness, is about one's ability to comprehend their situation and where exactly they are in it and act accordingly. It is the ability to perceive and react. It is not, in any way or form, a penchant for repeating oneself like a recorder that should long ago have been scrapped, nor the refusal to stop using bad puns.
And yet another thing is, if you think that throwing around trope names or "hashtags" makes for good puns, you are yet again being an idiot.
Puns are essentially quick and humorous jabs at the situation in general or at something specific. If you start using trope names or hashtags for those, they'll immediately become overdone, old, and moldy. And moldy puns aren't something most people would want to get close to. And someone who is supposed to be "savvy" and with a sense of humour not completely crappy is quite likely to know that and not throw that stuff around.
It's your story so write it in any way you want, but if you follow the road you'd mentioned wanting to follow, what you'll get at the end will be a "train-wreck"; maybe an enjoyable one, maybe not, but nothing more than a train-wreck. An occasional joke that references that stuff is fine, but going too far won't make your story better, believe me. So if you want to make that sort of thing your character's defining trait, make a fictional equivalent to one of those websites that is a bit of a parody and make that the character's thing rather than the real versions.
Kazeto, thanks for not dancing around the issue :-)
Despite reading this site for several years, I guess I still don't have enough experience to tell just how stupid some of my ideas are. Glad I asked early :-)
I suppose I just liked the writing style of tvtropes enough that I wanted to use it in my story too (not the camel case or anything like that, just the tongue-in-cheek style with clarifying web links and/or alt text). Though I'm afraid I *did* get carried away with the in-jokes, so a notable percent of the gags I imagined for this character indeed came out quite immature.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll try to make the character simply a bit Deadpool-esque (reacting to/commenting her own thoughts).
E.g. instead of
"Well, you can either play along on your own terms, or force the narrative's hand to cut off every escape route you try."
the character would say
"Well, you can [[Like_a_genre_savvy_character_would_do either play along on your own terms]], or [[You_poor_fool force the narrative's hand]] to [[Wouldn't_that_be_hilarious? cut off every escape route you try]]."
(Sorry, seems like I can't make an arbitrary text into a "weblink" format here.)
edited 29th Sep '15 1:50:20 PM by AcWatbaa
I'm writing a story where one of the main characters has read so much tvtropes that she can literally pot hole her own speech and thoughts. This allows to add a sort of non-verbal extra meaning / nuance to what the character wants to say (and also provides some comedy opportunities), but there are some cases I'm not sure what to do about:
1. I can't seem to find an appropriate link to use as a Pot Hole. This is most common when she refers to some kind of stock phrase or situation which does not have its own web address (For example, saying "No. Freaking. Way." while actually implying "Not on my watch"). Does anyone know a list of stock phrases which allows to link to individual phrases (at least via #hashtags)? Of course, I suppose I can always just use an arbitrary phrase or Wiki Word in place of the link, but I'm not sure it's a good practice since the "link" would be invalid.
2. How to deal with the situations when the character refers to multiple tropes (or a non-straight variant of a trope) by the same phrase/word? The only way I can think of doing it right now is to use the "chained sinkholes" method, but this is a discouraged practice.