In Which Solstace Liveblogs The TVTropes Fora, circa 2008

Meta Four: Probably within the next hour or two

Been putting the next thread off, since it'll probably be worth a multi-post >.>

Oh cool! This next thread is actually still around today! The Random Conversation Thread!

Started by Faw because he wanted a place to rant. It seems that quite a few threads throughout our history have been created for similar reasons.

What are the focuses of poor Fawriel's grievances, you may ask? Well, he's upset because Tales Of Symphonia is, like, one of his favorite games, but after reading up on it, he learned that the game is full of cliches! And well, the sentiment had been stirred up even more after someone dared to call the game Grandia a Cliché Storm! The scandal....

Following this post is Tangent128, with a completely different subject about cars with keypad locks, and the numbers of buttons on them. Personally, I have never seen a car with a keypad lock. It's amazing how much times have changed in the past 2 years, ain't it? We use keys now and everything.

Our very own Meta4 helpfully replies to both Tangent and Fawriel.

Skip a few posts where nothing of note happens, and William Wide Web makes me lol.

Moving on, and OMG THREAD IS FULL OF WALLS OF TEXT!

I've mentioned before to Tzetze, but it seems that the early tropers were a lot more longwinded than the current set, and those still remaining from those days of old seem to have shortened their attention span.

Moving on.

So, these were the days before Contributor pages, huh?

Moving on again, there is further discussion of Tropes Are Not Bad.

Then Brickman drops the bomb with this post. I didn't see anything else in the thread about what he's referencing, so I imagine a mod heeded his request. Hmmm.... The Plot Thickens.

Skimming to the bottom of the page, and oh hey, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TANGENT128!!!!

End of page one. Page two will be posted eventually.

edited 30th Nov '10 5:00:04 PM by Solstace

Ha. Fawriel Unbuilt Trope'd the editable userpage thing.

Okay, I've gotta ask: Why are the quotes from back then different from the ones we have now?

Because that was phpBB and this is hax.

Because we were running on completely different software?

(Actually, how do you do the "old" kind?)

Solstace is using some kind of arcane hack to emulate the appearance. There's no regular markup for it or anything like that.

edited 30th Nov '10 6:08:09 PM by Tzetze

We had contributor pages back then (heck, we had them back before the forum existed), but as Tzetze said, that was before encouraging other to edit your contributor page was the cool thing to do.

Ah, Solstace's "arcane magic" is just the folder markup from the main wiki.

edited 30th Nov '10 10:50:17 PM by MetaFour

Tzetze was the one to start that trend, I believe. (Hmm, does my page still credit him for that? yes, yes it does.)

edited 30th Nov '10 10:53:08 PM by Haven

I got the idea from TroperTales.Noimporta, though.

:<

edited 30th Nov '10 11:04:26 PM by Tzetze

Hmm, this is quite an interesting liveblog so far. Makes me feel nostalgic, even though I only really got into the forums after Fast Eddie scrapped the old phpBB forum.

I thought it would be fun.

I'll probably get another update tomorrow. Thanks for all the interest, guys

I actually think I was around at this time, or shortly after it, but I wasn't particularly prominent. I'd be known as "Idler" in the older threads.

I think I saw you at some point when I was just browsing, before I started the liveblog. If you're there, you'll pop up eventually.

Hm. How much was moved from phpBB to the current system?

Every thread was moved at the time, but on a few later occasions (the most recent being just last month), Fast Eddie removed threads which had not been posted in for several months, so very few of the threads from that period survived the purges.

The Random Conversation Thread, continued.

The second page begins with Tangent lamenting about how old he feels. 18 is such a large number, y'know?

Following his post, Zephid begins trolling the people complaining about the Chocolate vs Vanilla flame war. I still want to see this.

And then Fawriel posts another crazy long post. Reading through it, it seems that the Random Conversation Thread was meant to be kind of like a cross between IJBM and the Angst thread. His post laments how busy his life is, and ends with a mention of needing life-counseling.

My theory, at least for the IJBM part, is further supported with Blackadder makes a remark about how inanely stupid Youtube comments are.

And then my theory is tossed out the window, as RuthieA and Fawriel start Troper Tale-ing.

I am still astounded by how frequently GMH style Wall of Text responses show up. By GMH style, I mean "picking apart someone's post, giving two paragraphs of feedback per sentence".

Hmmm, further down the thread, William Wide Web makes a remark about RuthieA being a Data Vampire slayer, and the Main Character. Is this a reference to TV Tropes The TV Show? Or something completely unrelated?

After that, the discussion turns to college plans, and story development.

My god, this page is looooooooong!

It seems the rest of the page focuses mostly on story development.

No new faces on this page.

To be continued.

I'll have to watch and see if I was ever more long-winded. I thought I was always this terse.

Well, it's been a few days. Or more.

On to page 3 of The Random Conversation thread!

This page begins with Zephid confirming that TV Tropes is still full of young nerds, with emphasis on young.

And then Meta 4 makes his first appearance! With a very terse 8 word post! What this post says is nothing more than "Dude, you're all young compared to me!". This was paraphrased

Change of subject again with the next post, as the thread takes a turn towards romance and proves that the fora has always been home to people who know just how to ruin their own happiness. Fun. I won't go into details, because tl;dr

And in response, Alkthash makes his first appearance. Huh. Didn't know you'd been around that long. Though with no avatar, title, or signature, it seems that you haven't been around too long then, either.

Well, that was a quick refuge in the insecure. The topic takes another change, this time discussing OC Remixes. In particular, their work with the Final Fantasy games

And actually, this page was really short.

Will probably do another tonight.

Huh, said romance thing was less bad than you made it sound.

Yeah, I know. Still. tl;dr