Subjective Trope Deletion

Fan Speak might merit its own banner, given that it's more of a dictionary thing than an encyclopedia thing (you can't rename a dictionary entry, that defeats the point, but you can rename an encyclopedia entry when updating it for a new edition, because the content of the article is what matters, not the title).

BTW, I'm a chick.

No... see, for most... or at least a certain section of Subjective Tropes, we don't want discussion in the article. Some of them it's, if not welcome, tolerated, though.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

see, if the things in Audience Reaction Tropes are not tropes, then can't they just be Audience Reactions? -blink-

i agree that they should be kept if we're intending this wiki to be useful to creators/writers/storytellers/etc— you use tropes in your works to get a reaction out of your audience. it would be pointless to have one and not the other. keep them in a different namespace, perhaps?

(edited for grammar fail lol).

edited 29th Sep '10 7:58:18 AM by carla

The conversation has moved past what this was a reply to, but it's still pertinent: Just as TV Tropes is not about kvetching, the wiki isn't about edit warring and arguing. So known and obvious natter-magnets should be used sparingly if at all.

But that doesn't mean they can't also have elements of tropeness — even enough elements in some cases to raise those out of the realm of mere opinion into full tropehood. In other words, "this is not a trope, it's an opinion" is fallacious, because something can be both. It would be trivially easy, say, to defend as objective the inclusion of Nation Of Mice on the page for Maus or Black Cat Detective. If we want to restrict the use of natter-magnets on works pages (or, in extreme cases, bar potholes from anywhere in the Main namespace), I think it's imprecise to claim to be doing so because they're "not tropes."

I'm not sure that such an argument couldn't be mustered about a substantial minority, at least, of tropes. As Mad and KU said, we don't want to excise anything reasonable people can ever disagree on from works pages o there'd be practically nothing left.

^I think it's supposed to primarily be useful to readers/critics/students, with usefulness to writers/creators coming a close second (Fast Eddie, does this square with your understanding?)

edited 29th Sep '10 3:04:41 PM by HersheleOstropoler

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

Ok, let me try and see if these things can be sorted out:

A trope is a storytelling device that commonly occurs in given mediums.

An argenfargle is how an audience reacts, and is not a trope. Examples include Draco in Leather Pants and Unfortunate Implications.

A subjective trope is a trope that is highly prone to evoking differing reactions and interpretations between individuals. These tropes are subjective (all tropes are subjective to some degree, these are the tropes that are significantly subjective.) Because of this, please list all examples of this trope on their respective trope page, and not on the works page, as it attracts Natter (examples being CMOA and Complete Monster.)

A Flame Bait is any entry on a page that tends to attract...vocal...responses. Please post them not on the actual works page, but on their respective tropes page.

Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo? | i be pimpin' madoka fics

Perhaps something like Reactions And Impressions. Er... maybe Impressions doesn't work. Reactions And X...

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

^^Perhaps an argenfargle can be a Tnope.

...or a Tripe.

I wonder if adding "Subjective tropes this work has an entry on" category below the generic tropes is allowed.

The whole point is to get these natter-causing things off the work's page. So ... no.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

@ Hershele Ostropoler: Aim at readers with the covert mission of getting them thinking about storytelling as an art form consisting of the artful use of materials, an art form that has techniques, like any other art.

But not all stuffy like that.

Writers/creators already think like that, so what we're saying just makes sense to them. They're just reading for the materials, the techniques, and the inspiration.

edited 30th Sep '10 10:44:22 AM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Well, that's a problem, isn't it? How are we supposed to add examples if we can't add to the main page or add it to the trope's page?

I see TV Tropes as a place where people can get together and discuss the conventions of fiction. In discussions, you will eventually get people with very differing opinions, and while I would admit that Nattering is unacceptable for main pages, it doesn't really feel right limiting discussions on tropes or even discussion on works.

Personally, I think the banners up right now are good enough for the Subjective Tropes and that we shouldn't delete Subjective Tropes, but we should delete examples from Works Pages unless it is widely agreed on. Like Scrappy-Doo being The Scrappy in Scooby-Doo agreed on. However, we shouldn't just ban addition to a Subjective Trope on the Trope's page itself.

edited 30th Sep '10 11:53:04 AM by GameGuruGG

Wizard Needs Food Badly

Or when they're intentionally invoked like creators of a work saying that a work was meant to be So Bad, It's Good.

For about the fortieth time, we have no way to determine if some opinion is 'widely held' or not.

^^The works pages are not places for discussions of the works. We have discussion pages, the reviews section, and the forums — all of which were built specifically to keep discussions out of the wiki articles.

Is just wrong. They are not wanted and won't be tolerated.

edited 30th Sep '10 12:09:45 PM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

They have been heretofore. Perhaps they oughtn't have been. Perhaps they weren't intended to have been. Perhaps you're simply putting more effort into making the wiki look like it should have  ^*

^{by you, at least}

all along.

But, like the harder line against natter generally (welcome as it is), it comes across as a reversal and as a major shift in tone. It's not surprising people are reacting as if the wiki is changing.

Maybe you should have made Janitor do it.

---

Now then. What about a standard of, not "widely held" (because we indeed can't know), but (where applicable) objectively present, either removing intransigent cases or hashing them out in the discussion section? So if Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael said "I think this deserved the Oscar, I don't understand why it wasn't even nominated," that's an Award Snub. If (as I said in that thread) the League of Acceptable Targets holds protests, we can report that someone who specializes in things saw Unfortunate Implications.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

It just isn't important whether or not it was snubbed, or if it wasn't. Or if it was a blockbuster or it closed out of town.

These things are measures of marketing success, not tropes of storytelling. Now, we can say that marketing is a medium which employs storytelling tropes. Boy, howdy, can we say that.

An examination of successful marketing campaigns as works would be very useful. The seed of such examination is in the Advertising section some tropes have. A more thematic approach would be fun and useful.

We have some concrete measures of how successful a marketing campaign has been. Box office, market share, cost versus result scales ... all kinds of things.

I would imagine there only a few genres for campaigns.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

so, basically, we can't call scrappy The Scrappy in the Scooby Doo page. yes? just in The Scrappy page.

i can't argue, but it's kind of funny either way.

Normally, I don't dispute the war against subjective tropes.

My moral code however determines that true onjectivity simply does not exist, and among subjectives, sometimes it can be as objective as most objectives. Emphasis on sometimes, obviously, but The Scrappy applying to Scooby Doo and Star Wars is really objective enough to warrant a mention to me, given that the media at large refer to the relevant characters as such. What random character a random fan refers to as the scrappy is of course irrelevamt, but I think that Scrappy Do and Jar Jar Binks are worthy of mention on the work pages, and could provide citations if desired for their inclusion. Such is the hatedom surrouding the characters, it's more or less objective that they are bad, even if a couple of people dispute it.

Would you kill your best friend, can you save yourself?

Well... limiting the entry to "See The Scrappy for opinions about [character name]Jar Jar Binks." would work for those very rare situations.

edited 1st Oct '10 11:56:11 AM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Not just "funny." It represents a huge upheaval of the Wiki, by completely separating two aspects that have since now been linked, and then making it illegal for them to be connected. It's like we're making two mutually exclusive wikis that won't interact with each other, even when they should.

I agree, though for me it's my philosophical code that brings me there.

edited 1st Oct '10 11:59:27 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Wouldn't The Scrappy just go in the list of tropes Scooby Doo named, anyway?

Yeah, and descriptions aren't usually allowed there.

You got some dirt on you. Here's some more!

^^ Just pushing for a correction back to the intent of the wiki while still leaving a place for people to air their opinions. We can't let the examination of storytelling tropes disappear under the sheer weight of all the opinion stuff.

Which there is some danger of it doing, if anyone is getting the very mistaken impression that any of this opinion stuff has anything to do with how stories are told — aside from a very doubtful idea that some creators could possibly be influenced in some small way by them.

edited 1st Oct '10 12:14:06 PM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Maybe you're right that "this opinion stuff" shouldn't be on the main page, but from a certain perspective it's as important as the tropes themselves. Just knowing that a trope exists and can be used in certain ways isn't enough to show a prospective writer how to use it. They also need to know which uses succeeded, and which failed—which should be mimicked, and which should be avoided (insofar as we can measure success and failure, which admittedly can be a problem.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Except audience opinion is essentially an integral part of understanding storytelling. If no one is around to listen at the story being told then there is no point to telling the story and anyone who listens to a story will form their own opinions about it. Hell, it's Lit 101 to ignore the opinions of the author and formulate opinions about the story.

What about the Tropes Are Not Bad and Tropes Are Not Good sayings? It is hard to say that a Scrappy or Mary Sue isn't bad, but this site is to teach people storytelling techniques, so just ignoring or trying to remove examples of what not to do is stupid. I mean even the very concept of The Hero is ultimately subjective to the audience, else we wouldn't have gotten that funny quote on top of the page for Ensemble Dark Horse.

edited 1st Oct '10 4:12:09 PM by GameGuruGG

Wizard Needs Food Badly