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I think we should let discussion run a bit longer. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet.

Edit: How about everyone lists everything major they would and would not like to change if they had the opportunity. It will give us a direction for the discussion. My list:

• More convoluted plotting (yeah, like that's going to happen)
• More cast attrition—there are 25 reasonably important heroes running around during the present timeline. Only 6 permanently leave the team either through death or by choice. The show can't really support 15 main characters (~4 characters are in support roles at any point) while maintaining a mostly episodic Monster of the Week format: if we try to keep the team sizes manageable, that still means that a given character will only go up against 8 monsters in a single season—and that's if we ignore the plot completely. Note that this doesn't mean I want to kill everyone off—I just think that it would be better to give the character arcs a satisfying end without keeping characters around for two seasons after they ceased to be relevant.
• Less of characters hanging around without anything relevant to do, especially if the creator has since left.
• More moral ambiguity on the character level—there has been a trend towards turning "gray" characters "white" in each rewrite, to the point where Ironeye stands out as an Anti-Hero because he'd rather cut himself off from people instead of dealing with problems directly. Surprisingly few members of TV Tropes joined for altruistic reasons (at least with the current draft of the back story) and many were written with moral failings of some kind—it's time that their actions on-screen reflected that.

edited 7th Dec '09 4:20:21 AM by Ironeye

• MORE goal-oriented planning (whether we end up deciding on a comedic Monster of the Week series or a more serious adventure story or a Wangst-ridden drama-fest, it would really really really help if we know where we want to take this thing while we're hashing it out)
• LESS convoluted plot threads (personally, I'm still a little plenty dazed by what we currently have)
• MORE Character Development (you know me, I'm the Character Development guy *shrug*)
• LESS Monster of the Week (we can have what appears to be a random encounter at first, but in the end, the incident should either develop the plot or the characters, if not both)
• FEWER main/major characters per season (if we're putting new people on the main cast in later seasons, we should ideally ease some of the older ones into the backdrop for a bit, so the audience doesn't have too many characters to keep track of at a time)

The whole purpose of the show kind of is to give people some kinda story to put themselves into. A large cast is appropriate. One could learn from certain other shows with Loads And Loads Of Characters, like Mahou Sensei Negima. Given that a base exists(?), you can have lots of characters be stationary there, making the show mostly based on episodic stuff happening here and there while a certain core crew with some changing members gets to occasionally move the main plot forward. This would also mean that people can have a day in the spotlight without needing to fight a monster or something. Furthermore, there could be more than one base! There's a whole lot of ways to split attention between characters and still keep things interesting, is what I'm saying.

So I guess what I'm getting at is that based on its purpose, the show should be character-driven, with a set plot that needs to be taken into account and steadily moved towards, but isn't the true focus of the storytelling.

... Also, my role would decrease? Did it increase since last time I checked, or does my current role just seem small to me because of my monstrous ego, or do you really want me to be a pure background character? D=

I didn't mean the "eased into the background" characters would ever leave the team. It's just that since we're not focusing on whatever they're doing at the moment, they're not part of the main cast.

Although that would be the ideal, if we decided that this was a plot-based story. If we went the other direction and turned this into a character-based story instead, then it would be easier to accommodate a larger cast.

So my first bullet point was the one I really wanted to emphasize. The kind of story we want to write is going to be a very very very large influence on how we're going to map it out. The other points were just to show my preference for something with continuity as opposed to an episodic format.

Fawriel is indeterminate because we've seen so little of him. Character page does not even mention he's a kung-fu mutant and all that, remember?

I vote for it being a bit more focused on the characters than the plot itself.

Kyler, I was talking to Ironeye there because he listed Fawriel as "indeterminate"... but that category also said that the listed characters' roles will decrease in any case, unless I misunderstood that.

As for Fawriel's profile! Err. Oh.

But yeah, it doesn't really make sense to not make it character-based. It's a community project, and while we're still struggling to figure out what the plot is, what we know is that everyone wants in on this.

edited 7th Dec '09 10:22:19 AM by Fawriel

I think the premise we have isn't particularly conducive to including as many Tropers as possible. If the show wasn't about fictional characters, we could include as many Tropers as we liked, but that would be a very drastic change, probably much too drastic.

Assuming we're still keeping the essence of our current writeup (since heavily revamping the show is not an option at this point), this includes:

• A more streamlined plot (okay, I admit to contributing several useless Filler episodes, but I've at least attempted to learn my lesson since then). Any extraneous episodes should at least contribute to Worldbuilding or Character Development.
• Recurring troper characters with no input from the creators cut (with warning in advance, of course).
• If it is truly Anyone Can Die, more death should occur and at least one of them should be a major character. It probably shouldn't be Children Of Earth level, but there should be an element of surprise to the choice of said major character.
• More moral ambiguity. Agreeing with Ironeye, the cast currently seems overly white, which makes the supposedly questionably trustworthy nature of the organization an Informed Attribute. This also extends to the villains. It might make sense to some degree to have the Dark Lodge be stock evil, but it isn't as compelling in terms of drama. It would also be more interesting to have more contributors positioned as antagonists.
• Every major character should be of equal importance. There should be a definite "leader" figure, but said character should cooperate with the team rather than steal the spotlight. Since we only have a very small sample of the TV Tropes contributors, they should attempt to represent the diversity of our community.
• I would say better fictional character representation, but the rules tend to hamper such a goal. Actually, we're doing pretty well in not overflooding the roster with pointless anime characters.
• The actual Matrix should be less bossy. In all honesty, that's what dropped my interest in working with the show a fair bit. I do admittedly come up with bad decisions every so often, but he doesn't have to be rude about them, especially when I still end up perplexed as to what I did wrong afterwards.

edited 7th Dec '09 11:08:04 AM by Cliche

@Fawriel: You're in the category of people who I wasn't sure would be around. Since you're here, your character will not lose focus, but if you hadn't posted...(I should note that Fawriel is considered one of the "core" characters in the context of the entire story, even if he doesn't do much on-screen until the third season; he's more important than you think he is.)

@Cliche: Just don't listen to Matrix when he gets angry. He's probably raging as a result of something I said, so skip him and ask me.

I should note that if we're making the show character-focused with all the MotW stuff as window-dressing, then we need to do a waaaaay better job of it than we have been doing so far. As I mentioned at the top of the page, we've been losing some of the subtleties of character motivations over time. We also have pairs of very significant characters who have no relationship of note despite often being on-screen together. I'm not talking no relationship at all, since that would actually be significant—I'm talking the vague "yeah, their kinda friends, but not really close" thing as the entire description of their character interaction. Also, we're going to need some more differentiation between character personalities and character arcs. (eg Name the troper who starts out very idealistic, becomes more jaded as a result of all of the bad things that happen, then regains their idealism through the help of their friends. Hint: there are at least three correct answers.) We also need to add more depth to many of the characters. (eg Jinxed is just the cute kid who loves everyone and never intentionally does wrong.) Next, we need to perhaps redistribute taelnts/training so that the team doesn't have glaring holes in its skill set. Finally, we need to get better sense of these characters' pasts. Right now, pretty much all of the backstory covers C-Day to C-Day+1 year. Surely some of these people have skeletons in the closet from before everything fell apart. Who would they hate to run into? Is there anyone they wished died in the aftermath of the Convergence? (and so on...)

Also, we actually have a decent handle on what happens in the plot. And by that, I mean me, Kyler, arimaes, arks, and SSOT could collectively tell you 98% of the plot for over half the show (at current length).

Which is why I'm banned from plot planning.

Hmmm. Maybe we could have it so that certain writers intensely study a certain number of characters that they mesh with, so rather than a group of writers who all have a vague grasp on all characters that they got from skimming through the descriptions, we'd have a bunch of specialists who may actually get something interesting out of the characters they know well. Ideally, anyway.

Also, I'm gonna be voice-acting it up over here, so my character had better be rockin'.

Wow, I'm gone what three days and this happens. Unfortantely I'm now home for Winter break, and my parents cut the internet at the house so now that I have time I don't have means to come here as often as I'd like.

Basically, I'm not pulling completely out of the project but if ya'll need to cut my character's role back or change it then that's fine. I'll make it know if Murky's development is going in a direction I don't want at all, but otherwise the writers have free reign.

I actually disagree about firming up characters' backstories - I think it's important that we shore up our understanding of the characters as they exist in the story's present, but it would behoove us to leave the past as blank as possible for now so that we can later fill in the holes in a manner that's helpful to the stories we end up telling.

Remarkably apropos to this discussion is part of the creator commentary I was listening to the other night on an episode of The West Wing:

"There's a sort of writer's Darwinism to the whole thing, which is why you don't give your characters too much backstory. When you need it, you'll use it. In other words, I know that there are people who work by deciding, 'Well, we have this character Bartlet. He should be a father, so let's give him two girls and a boy, they'll be this old, and this old... this is his history.' You don't really want to make those decisions until the story asks for them. We didn't set out by saying, 'Well, the interesting thing about this President is that he has multiple sclerosis.' It just came up around episode seven or eight, and here it is three and a half years later, and there are still stories we're telling about it."

As I mentioned to arim on Vent, it's good to have flexibility, but we haven't done anything with it yet.

Anyway, another thing we have to worry about is Section IV. In the current outline, they are pretty much cut down to a bare bones team without any character depth. This is a bit of a shame considering that they easily have the potential to be the most interesting antagonists of the entire series. Thus I propose expanding Section IV as follows:

• Change the focus of the team so that they are not just a bunch of spies. Do this in a sensible way that is not just an excuse to have them blow shit up. (See some of the proposed characters for just how bad this got.)
• Expand the team accordingly and balance out their skill sets. (Note that TV Tropes could also use some balancing in terms of character abilities—not just powers, mind—so that they can actually work as a cohesive team. Also, this would give us an opportunity to put more characters in a single episode, since most of them would no longer have the primary purpose of "beat shit up". But, I digress...)
• Give the characters significant depth and range.
• Keep them around for multiple seasons. If we play up the moral ambiguity a bit, we can even keep them as minions of the Dark Lodge for much of that time—many members of the Lodge are actually helping the areas they control, after all.
• Throw in a lot of fun character interactions between the tropers and Section IV.

Alright, let me take a stab at this. I would like:

• More character foibles: and not of the So Beautiful, It's a Curse variety. We need faults that are hard to get over and visibly undermine the effectiveness of the group and/or the individual character. We can then watch the character either build themselves out of it or crash and burn because it's just too much.It seems that all of our jerk characters are in Section IV. Let's have a few on the main team as well
• More dissension amongst the ranks: This is a group of people that were just thrown together. You can't expect them to be lovey dovey right off the bat. I find myself annoyed at how many people are unwilling to let their character have strong negative feelings toward another character. It happens in every family. Why not this one?
• More defined character interactions: We need to know how the characters will respond to one another. Part of it may be in the personality, but that's not always enough to write a scene.

I also agree that more people need to be willing to let their character be evil or die. Maybe the team breaks up because of two different opinions on how things should be run. Neither group is wrong, but their ideas are mutually exclusive.

I might think of more later.

OMGWTFHAPPENED

...and back to seriousness. Reboot? ...I'll have a think about this later... gha.

I think it would be best if Season One has a relatively simple plot and a seemingly obvious goal in mind. However, with each passing season, a new layer of plot is added onto the last. The goal becomes more distant and unclear as the characters themselves mature. Eventually the cast begins questioning what is 'right' and if they can consider themselves heroes.

This allows for a gradual development so the audience does not feel overwhelmed. It also helps the writers, as they know what the cast is suppose to be working toward.

edited 10th Dec '09 1:33:23 PM by Pentadragon

That sounds good to me.

Would this be a good opportunity for us to tweak our characters a little? I've been thinking about making a few changes to Bobby-the-character for a while now, but I had thought he might be a little too well established.

I'll come up with a proposal for action in a few hours when I get back from campus.

What's the reason they would start questioning what they are doing is right? Are they always ordered to kill the enemy fictites no matter what, only to realize later that these fictites are also fully developed characters themselves (what a great meta moment that would make), or does the elimination of said ficitites erase them from the public's conscience? That would be a great reason to start questioning their purpose.

So you're saying that there would be a memory wipe that would result from a fictite being killed? That'd require a major rewrite to the world mechanics, and I'm not sure we want to go there.

Responding to the earlier point, it's never been about kill all fictites! The tropers neutralize threats however they are able, whether the threat is Fictional or Real. They leave friendly/neutral fictites alone just like they leave friendly/neutral real people alone. I mean, unless you want to make the argument that being a fictite automatically makes your life more valuable, there is no more issue with killing a mass murderer in self-defense than there is with shooting Light Yagami as he starts writing in his Death Note.

SJ, you seem to have the problem that you would consider it a bad outcome if any fictional character was ever harmed by the tropers, even if, you know, that character is trying to destroy the world and had the magical powers to do so. Each fictite is not worth multiple humans. If anything, killing them would be less of a moral issue since, you know, they live forever in their story—oh, right: you hate that world mechanic.

Anyway, nap time now, proposal in a bit.

I'm having less problems with the mechanics of the show than I used to. I'm more curious as to what the moral dilemas are about. If anything, I feel like I might be missing some crucial knowledge of the big picture as what I'm seeing is basically: Tropers go out to neutralize hostile fictites - Tropers start to question whether what they are doing is right or not. There's has to be something I'm missing since I seem to be too lazy to check over every single detail.

Hmm...while the "questioning what they are doing" bit sounds like it could fall into Wangst done incorrectly, I can easily see Moral Dissonance emerging from the organization that turns some of the populace against them. The thing is, there wouldn't be questioning without internal conflict, and we come back to the problem of a lack of antagonistic or even tenuous relationships among the characters.

edited 10th Dec '09 8:05:08 PM by Cliche

Say, what if we introduce at some point a device or power that can, under the right circumstances, erase fictites from existance, with minimal casualties? However, using the device removes them from fiction and people's memories.

This device could be discovered after the formation of the Troper organisation, and there could be conflict within the team as to whether the ends (saving lives) justified the means (depriving the world of Dracula, Romeo & Juliet, etc.).