It's not against TV Tropes Rules to make your own pages for works, right?

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Edited by WolfMattGrey on Jul 19th 2022 at 12:56:36 PM

You can't add Word of God statements to this wiki without citing another source of your statement.

That is, you can cite your blog or Twitter as the source of your WOG statement, but it cannot originate in this wiki.

Well, if the author is making a statement on their work in TV Tropes (say, in a forum discussion) that would be an appropriate citation for a Word of God entry.

Eh, that's dubious. We aren't a primary source.

So about Auto Erotic Troping and no YMMV stuff: what if you intentionally write a character as a Complete Monster or something, in a way that's actually intended to be relatively objective? To be fair, yes that character would be very flat. The reason I don't go into more detail here is one, it'd be in the very last part of my series and even if I were to start working on it feverishly that'd be years off, and two because it's at the end I don't have too many specifics worked out, just the character's existence and general role.

edited 2nd Dec '17 11:13:38 AM by TroperOnAStickV2

Such an example can be proposed in the Complete Monster thread.

Forgot there's a thread. But again, it would be very intentional and a bit over-the-top.

edited 2nd Dec '17 11:51:38 AM by TroperOnAStickV2

You can write any character any way you like in your own work, so long as you aren't violating some kind of license or agreement. That's irrelevant to whether it's considered Auto Erotic Troping.

What you cannot do is use authorial intent to override a decision on a subjective trope like Complete Monster. That's covered in the FAQ.

Was not aware there was an FAQ. But the character ticks off every point except maybe the bit about defined motives, he/she/it (nospoilers remember) is basically driven by a "motiveless malignity", an apparent desire to cause as much pain as possible.

... no, none of the other villains are nearly that flat.

NOTE: I do apologise for basically derailing this thread at least for a while, but I am curious. Also, this is why I hate Death of the Author, at least when it's applied in black-and-white terms.

edited 2nd Dec '17 2:35:06 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

An entry could be written like this:

• Word of God: The villain, ~Encirt Nayme~, was intended to be seen as a Complete Monster, according to the author on a Fox news interview [link here].

It is not a Complete Monster entry, but a statement of authorial intent. Just because the author intends a reaction in their audience doesn't mean the audience must feel that way.

Fair. But the page is entirely meant to be Word of God at this point.

As a side note, this is NOT The First Light. This is for an entirely different (at this point) canon I've been nursing for the better part of a decade.

edited 2nd Dec '17 6:39:45 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

To put it another way, the reason authorial intent can't be the last word vis-a-vis subjective tropes is that no amount of authorial intent can negate the possibility that the author did not succeed in making the intended portrayal. Concepts such as Narm are all about such mismatches between intent and effect.

In the case at hand, "motiveless malignity" could call the character's moral agency into question, and an "over the top" portrayal could be seen as a parody of the concept, which in turn could implicate the heinousness and/or seriousness requirements. Presumably, neither of these pitfalls are intended, but that might not stop the audience seeing them.

I both do and don't see how motiveless malignancy calls moral agency into question. I may just be tired, but it doesn't directly connect. This character, as far as anyone knows, acts out of their own free will. The character is intended to be treated with complete seriousness, with the appropriate reactions from other characters, IE fear or rage.

As far as anyone knows, the character is in complete control of their actions and doesn't have any mental issues that would influence them. We're not supposed to get into their head. The character is treated with complete seriousness by the story.

I need to go to bed, sorry I guess.

That's nice. Sounds like you're a good writer. Authors still aren't allowed to add subjective tropes to their works.

... this is why I hate Death of the Author... I can't tell if that's sarcasm, it had better not be.

The stories being discussed are waaay on the back burner anyway at this point. Especially since they began life as glorified fanfiction and may still be too close to the source material, superficially if not in terms of the actual plot.

It's not Death of the Author. It's that authors don't get to say how people react to their work. What you intend to create and what people actually take away from it may be different.

edited 7th Dec '17 7:33:15 AM by Fighteer

"Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no weight in determining an interpretation of their writing."

Not entirely sure how that's not what's meant here.

That isn't what's meant here. The intentions of the author doesn't matter when it comes to how the audience actually perceives the work. There are tropes there the intent of the author matters, but those are not Audience Reaction tropes. For those tropes, the audience's reactions matter.

Now, there are a bunch of ways to play with a trope that can make for an objective example of a subjective trope. Explicitly lampshading it, for instance, is completely objective, even if the trope it lampshades is subjective.

Still sounds like the same thing worded/applied differently. essentially Death of the Author is the same thing as Audience Reaction tropes, just as a formal concept. Not saying I don't understand it, just not how it's different.

The bit about playing with a trope, at least, is intuitive.

edited 6th Dec '17 9:32:42 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

The author intends to create certain emotional reactions in their readers. However, readers may or may not have those intended reactions. This isn't Death of the Author; it's a simple fact.

You may think that you've made a character that's so awesome that you want them to be in every scene. However, your readers may find this character annoying to the point of deciding that they are The Scrappy.

You may think that you've made a character an embittered jerk, but your readers may find this character to be tragic enough to declare them The Woobie.

You may think that you've made a character so heinous that there's no way they wouldn't be considered a Complete Monster. However, readers may find their backstory sympathetic, or their motives insufficiently detailed, or their actions too generic.

That's why these are subjective tropes: because people will disagree about them (with you and with each other). It's the risk you take when you put your work out for the public to see.

Death of the Author is a distinct concept. It's when the interpretation of the underlying meaning of the work is taken away from the author. Let's say you've written a story that's intended to illustrate The Power of Friendship in a post-apocalyptic survival setting. However, people start insisting that the real message is that ruthless people always win in the struggle for survival. You insist that's not what you intended, but it falls on deaf ears.

The key distinction here is between reactions to your work and interpretations of your work.

For example, J. R. R. Tolkien spent a lot of time defending Lord of the Rings from the claim that it was an allegory about the conflict between the Axis and Allied powers in World War II, with the One Ring a stand-in for the atomic bomb. He noted, wryly, that had he actually intended such an allegory, both sides would have created their own Rings of Power, and simple folk like the Hobbits would have been trampled beneath the resulting conflict.

edited 7th Dec '17 7:31:34 AM by Fighteer

So... I wouldn't be allowed to add any subjective tropes to an Unpublished Works-type page? Even if they'd basically be Word of God about my intentions?

Currently, the character's backstory, what little we get, is that their depicted actions (basically extreme abuse) are part of a pattern. Their motives are not heavily detailed but what little is shown should imply that it's basically For the Evulz. I'm not entirely sure how actions can be "too generic". There are specific things the character does that are markedly different from the other. more fantastical, villains in the story.

edited 7th Dec '17 9:57:59 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

That is correct. You may not add subjective trope examples even on an Unpublished Works article. With respect to the CM attempt, there's no point in you presenting the case here. The Projects topic is where you need to bring that up, after the work is published.

edited 8th Dec '17 4:28:45 AM by Fighteer

Would you be allowed to bring up one of your own characters in that topic, though?