I have a page now! But not a non-shameful username. It comes from a purported medieval variant of Elisabeth/Isabel (one of those is my middle name) back before they had quite split into separate names. It's appropriate because I love looking at etymology, but not really appropriate because it sounds so amazingly frou-frou. (Nothing against amazingly frou-frou people! I just don't happen to be one myself.)
Reddit and Tumblr have bigger slices than TV Tropes in my Revolving Pie of Internet Obsessions (says who that's mixing metaphors?), but you have to take a lot of care on those sites not to fall in with nasty people. TV Tropes and its inhabitants are for the most part ridiculously friendly and welcoming, so I'm happy to be a Troper, even though I only visit intermittently, and make terrible edits when I dare to interfere with the wiki at all.
I'll jump a little late on the "describe yourself in three characters" bandwagon with Bilbo Baggins, Stephen Maturin, and Lady Sybil Ramkin. They differ from me in age and setting and abilities, but there's lots of stuff I relate to in their temperaments and worldviews.
I wanna start a tropes page for Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce mystery novels once I get past my laziness and anxiety.
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Tropes That May Describe Me
- Bookworm: Zig-Zagged Trope. I didn't start to read till the late end of normal. But I read almost continuously from then till age 15, and got told by my dad that at age eleven I wrote better than most college students (that gap has certainly closed now, if it existed). But now I'm obsessed with visual media instead. But I do still read a lot. But it's mostly on the Internet not in books ...
- Homeschooled Kids: And not the least stereotypical example. Wound up anxious, undereducated, and behind my peers on many, many practical life skills. But after a few years of pushing, my parents (who always had love and good intentions) owned up to the flaws in their approach, and with their help I've learned enough to get my high-school equivalency degree at age 21.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: With many media, but especially video games, since I never had any consoles growing up.
- Raised Catholic: Currently trying to walk the line between the old scrupulosity
and cafeteria Catholicism.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: I'm a homeschool graduate who's religious and sheltered and has social troubles, a girl who's subhuman at math, and a young nerd Troper, so people can very well have this reaction.
- Team Mom: Am not this by a long shot, but aspire to be someday.
- Writer's Block: For the past two or three years! I can crank out a poem once in a while, but all my stories get stuck in the research-headache stage.
Tropes I Like in Stories
Tropes that give me vital nourishment:
- Platonic Life-Partners, along with Heterosexual Life-Partners, The Not-Love Interest, True Companions, and everything that acknowledges the strength, importance, and variety of platonic relationships.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Because the world does, empirically, suck, and we'll never see perfection this side of judgement day, but even the little improvements we humans can make are significant and worth something.
Tropes I like cause they're cute or fun:
- Adorkable. Come on, there's nothing wrong with loving loveable people! I'm instantly biased towards people like this in both real life and fiction.
- Battle Couple. I don't get invested in Will They or Won't They? stories, but I love stories where They've Already Done and can casually show their love for each other while advancing a badass plot. (It's also fun when there's an Action Spouse and a Peace Spouse and each looks out for the other in his/her own way, but I'm not sure there's a trope article for that.)
- Cuddle Bug. Wish fulfillment, because I'd be like this in real life if I had the guts (and the social awareness to make sure I only hugged people who wanted to be hugged).
- Cuteness Proximity. The best variations are: 1 - when somebody's moved by the "cuteness" of something that is not traditionally cute at all; 2 - when a sapient alien thinks human beings are cute and/or vice versa, and everybody in the "cute" species is embarrassed, angry, or flattered, depending on individual personalities; and 3 - when a character is so genuinely scary or evil that you're legitimately shocked they like cute things (not just the "oh they're kind of stoic, but secretly a big softie" character, though that's excellent too).
- Dem Bones: I dunno, I see a skeleton character and I wanna be friends with them. Coco was good for me.
- Little Guy, Big Buddy. A highly endearing friendship trope that deserves more attention. (The non-platonic version, Pitbull Dates Puppy, is also cool.)
- Token Heroic Orc: The most huggable people.
- Ugly Cute and Creepy Cute.
Tropes I like for the a e s t h e t i c:
- Fingerless Gloves
- Man In White / Woman In White. Especially a white outfit on a superhero or other actiony character - you immediately wonder what power this person's got that makes them able to keep that outfit clean, and then when it does get dirtied or bloodied, it's dramatic.
Miscellaneous:
- Antiquated Linguistics: I've got this "illustrated natural history of the world" book from 1922, written by some Ernest Protheroe, F.Z.S. It combines Seldom-Seen Species with Antiquated Linguistics and it's the purtiest thing, look at it:
- The Nightjar is also called the Goatsucker, but it does not suck goats, although various superstitions to that effect are current in most European countries. Notwithstanding its owlish face, the bird is not related to the owls; but it frequents bracken, and hence another name, "Fern Owl," is more appropriate. The title "Nightjar" fits the bird excellently, for its habits are rather nocturnal, its flight is noiseless, and its cry is a long-drawn jarring or churring sound, not unlike that produced by drawing a hard substance across a large-toothed comb.
- Elemental Powers: Never, ever think this is too cliche to use. About the only way you can go "wrong" with it is make the Earth elementals good with plants and animals as part of their power because simply moving earth is not pretty. First of all, living creatures need air and water, and have much more of those in their bodies than earth (ideally). Second of all, it's even more awesome when you take the creativity to make earthbending visually appealing and powerful by itself.
- Pretty much everything in the Gender Dynamics Index is fascinating - several are unfortunate when Played Straight, but I love to see them discussed.
- Proto-Superhero: Starting with Robin Hood. I love these guys.
- Seldom-Seen Species: Tree kangaroos, caecilians, numbats - you can't get tired of these.
Tropes That Annoy Me
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Because it usually doesn't make sense; that a good thing gets done is the important thing, and letting your team be your team and help you makes it likelier to get done. This makes you look as if you care more for your pride than for succeeding, which is annoying since (in fiction) the thing the character's trying to do alone is usually something really important with lives or the world at stake.
- Ye Olde Butchered English: Even if done intentionally it's just not to my taste. (If you like Info Dumps, that second-person pronoun goes like this: "Thine eyes are dim, thou canst not see, thou hast not brought thy specs with thee.")
- You Bastard!: You hate the tendencies of this genre, so you write a work in it and deliberately load it up with these perversions that you hate, in order to call all your fans monsters for enjoying your work? That was a lot of time and work you could have spent on something more enjoyable for everyone concerned.
Favorite Fiction
- 9
- Atomic Robo. New best thing in the world. Robo along with Alan now is the epitome of Cute Machines, without being reduced to a mascot or anything.
- Aubrey & Maturin.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender. I spent my childhood reading instead of watching things, so finding this a few years ago was my gateway into becoming an animation junkie.
- The Blues Brothers.
- Child Ballads.
- Discworld, particularly the City Watch, but also Going Postal and Tiffany Aching.
- Dracula. I know there's other, less appealing, interpretations, but I like to think of this book as a battle between objectification (Dracula wants to use everyone as food and turn them into half-people who lack any traits he finds inconvenient) and human dignity (the True Companions who defeat him include a husband and wife who stand by each other through the most traumatic circumstances, three guys who remained respectful friends with a girl after she rejected him, a lot of ride-or-die platonic friendship, etc., etc.).
- Disney or Pixar movies, particularly Robin Hood (for, uh, reasons - one of the first movies I understood), Coco (the skeletons are so cute, agh!), The Princess and the Frog, Moana, and Big Hero 6.
- Fullmetal Alchemist, though I've only watched the Brotherhood anime so far.
- Hot Fuzz.
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Best depiction of The Fair Folk I've found outside of actual folktales.
- Lackadaisy.
- Moana. So good I didn't wanna hide it in the catch-all Disney asterisk.
- My Hero Academia - have only seen the first two anime seasons so far, and a tiny bit of the manga, but character designs! And friendship and drama and idealism!
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The Changelings are so cute, agh!
- Oddity Woods - two kid detectives of different stripes investigte an Afterlife Express.
- Samurai Jack, though I haven't yet watched the new season. I'm so glad I've become able to enjoy the visual arts, and Jack is such an admirable person.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse! Animation and soundtrack and humor and seriousness were on point.
- Star Trek (especially Deep Space Nine).
- Stranger Things
- Teen Titans.
- The Lord of the Rings, and Peter Jackson's Adaptation Distillation.
- Widdershins.
- Wilde Life.
- Wild Kratts.
Favorite Other Stuff
- Websites: other semi-social media (Reddit and Tumblr) and the Public Domain Gang (Wikisource, Project Gutenberg, Libri-Vox, the Internet Archive).
- Music: Mostly vaguely folkish stuff with engaging lyrics - the Oh Hellos, Gretchen Peters, Over the Rhine, Delta Rae, Aimee Mann, Rhiannon Ghiddens,
- Movie soundtracks: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Blues Brothers, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I like a soundtrack where the composers choose a particular genre to fit the film's theme instead of just going, "Movie? Big orchestra time."
- Poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, Homer, Mary Oliver (though I've read barely any of her stuff), I'll think of more later. I'm ignorant on poetic history and movements so my list looks rather arbitrary.
Fiction I Haven't Read/Watched/Whatever, But Want To
- ABZÛ - prettiness, relaxing vibe, scientifically-accurate oceanic ecosystems, cute design for the protagonist. It's got everything!
- Ace Attorney.
- Gormenghast.
- Hollow Knight.
- I need to rewatch The Incredibles (which I haven't seen since I was smol and scared of CGI) so I can finally watch Incredibles 2.
- Journey to the West - thanks, JTTWLover.
- Not all of the MCU - it sounds like a big old mess - but I'd like to see some Captain America and some Ant-Man. (I've already seen the first Iron Man and Hulk movies, which I didn't connect with tbh, and Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther, which I loved, especially the latter.)
- Modesty Blaise, because I know it has action, adventure, an old-timey pulp tone, and rock-solid wholesome platonic friendship, and those are several of my favorite things.
- The Rocketeer, and maybe the comics it's based on. Gosh, it's pretty!
- The Shadow, though I'm not sure whether to start with the novels, the radio show, the 1994 movie, or what.
- Shovel Knight.
- Zorro. Lucky thing, though: first book is on Wikisource!
Two of my siblings have Troper Pages too now! - older brother Ninja Caracal, and younger sister Sapphire Roses.
