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Author: DmM

Jun 30th 2012 at 7:11:10 AM

I'm not part of the MSB fandom. I haven't even watched the show since I was around 12 or 13 (I'm 22 this year). If I was to engage in FanMyopia over this one, I'd have named it after "Sic Transit Gloira... Glory Fades". Sad but true :)

Once again, as someone who fulfills some but not all of the prerequisites for being some sort of geek/nerd, I can't help but feel that a lot of pages on ThisVeryWiki engage in FanMyopia to some extent. I point to the fact that AvengersAssemble isn't named for the Marvel characters, or the classic British TV series ''The Avengers'' or the Marvel film (released as ''Avengers Assemble'' in the UK and Ireland to avoid legal issues because of a recent film reboot of the aforementioned spy show). The TropeNamer is ''Buffy''. Y'know, a lot of people nowadays haven't seen ''Buffy''...

And then there's the {{Hatedom}}. Did you know that, up until recently, the description on the FallOutBoy page said they were more ridiculous than Spinal Tap? (Doubtless a valid opinion, but out of place on the main page of an article). It still lists "impregnating Ashlee Simpson" as one of their major achievements. In fairness, whether you like or loathe them or their style of music, they deserve a bit more recognition than that!

My point here is simply that a lot of the contributors to this wiki have "unquestioned assumptions". That's in quotes because I'm nicking the concept from the essay of the same name by Ursula K. Le Guin. She listed a series of unquestioned assumptions in western fiction, the main ones being we're all male, we're all straight and we're all white (this is shown in fiction through the MaleGaze, token black characters always having their race mentioned when they appear, stereotypical token gay characters, etc). This wiki's unquestioned assumptions seem to be 
* We're all a bit geeky/nerdy
* We all love JossWhedon
* We all love NeilGaiman (who doesn't?)
* We all find emo (both the music and the subculture) a bit laughable
* We all get jokes about long-outdated games and [[{{Firefly}} TV shows that got axed before their first season had finished]]

I could list more, but you get the picture. Now, I'm not complaining. Most if not all of those points apply to me. I'm just saying that this is mass myopia and a kind of cultural insularity that leads to "I don't get that reference, so it's obviously too obscure". Again, I'm not particularly picking on anyone involved in this conversation, its something I've seen on a lot of YKTTW threads. Even the wiki itself can be pretty patchy. Do you realise we have a trope page for a fan-made game where nothing much happens that started out as a ''Half-Life'' mod, but not for the most consistently critically-acclaimed rock band to come out of the US in at least the last 12 years? (and yes, I'm a Brand New fan. Doesn't stop it being true. Someday I'll have the time to start a page for them...) Everyone has their own preferences and prejudices, so we should take advantage of that. The best, quickest easiest way to have this wiki cover the widest possible range of cultures, subcultures and works is to give everyone's preferences equal priority (within the bounds of reason and practicality, of course)

Having said all that, if someone thinks of a good, memorable name for this trope, please let me know! Also, that was an enjoyably wry use of a hyperlinked phrase, MorganWick. In fact, that kind of humour is one of the reasons I love this site and one of the ways I've discovered new stuff