TV Tropes meta thread

Thanks for the clarification.

Thank you, Parable and Septimus Heap! The thing makes much more sense now.

For the record, here's the thread for FATAL in the Content Violation Discussions forum.

So, if you set Google Chrome to have every website in dark mode constantly, the red links on this website turn orange, and blue links under spoilers turn a lighter shade of blue instead of darker.

This wiki (or, at the very least, certain editors) seem to have it in for idiot-type characters (Patrick Star comes to mind especially), what with this weird meme of characters that are stupid being "secretly evil" or some nonsense. With the way this wiki talks about Patrick, they'd have you believe he's some sort of criminal mastermind. Like, is he stupid to the point where he can be dangerous in certain situations? Yes, but it's not like he's some sort of sociopathic supervillain who pretends to be stupid just so he can get away with his so-called heinous acts.

Which brings me to another observation, this site abuses the word "sociopath," even moreso than everywhere else, which kinda reeks of ableism (even though it more-or-less fell out of use in the psychology field). Perhaps the worst offenders of this would be the Dethroning Moment Of Suck pages.

At least in Patrick’s case, there is evidence that, while not entirely faked, he enjoys the problems his stupidity causes for others. I haven’t watched the show in years, but the lines given as examples on this page don’t exactly paint him in a sympathetic light.

He has a driver's license so he a little smarter then he looks

I think part of this can be blamed on Mr. Enter, a You Tube animation reviewer who has or has had at one point a lot of influence on the opinions of animation fans. Namely, those who put far more thought into the implications of gags than necessary.

While I do agree in general Patrick isn't a good example of this. He got hit by flanderization so hard that his dumb antics at their worse come across as malicious. Even in the more recent seasons where the show has managed to return to form after heavy seasonal rot Patrick still at his very worst can come across as malicious in his actions considering more modern episodes such as Ink Lemonande

This didn't help, one of the jokes that popped up in one of the episodes during Spongebob's really bad case of seasonal rot in the past was that Patrick was intentionally being dumb to mess with people. Mr Enter interpreted not being dumb but acting like it just so he could get away with being an asshole and considering his characterization at the time this interpretation did seem very very plausible.

I think the issue is dumb characters in comedy entertainment can tread this thin line between being entertaining with their stupidity or be extremely annoying and frustrating for the audience to watch.

Edited by Wispy on Jan 21st 2020 at 3:54:33 AM

I wonder where some tropers get their information in regards to fanbase related YMMV tropes. I know they are ymmv for a reason but I have never seen enough of a particular trope to make generalizations based on what some people do/are.

Speaking of fandom, people here bring up "toxic fandoms" so. Damn. OFTEN, it lost all meanings for me.

I swear to God, I'm actually suspecting there are people who WANT there to be toxic fandoms.

Last time I had a wanted to add a YMMV item, it was after I had a hunch due to the nature of the source material, and then I decided to check the appropriate subreddit to confirm the opinion was widespread.

It may be a result of the wiki format (can't say anything for sure if anyone expresses doubt), but a lot of the fanfiction we have under So Bad, It's Good are clearly parodies or trollfics, yet the article talks of them as straight examples. Love's Grande Quest, everything by ShakespeareHemmingway and Squirrelking, and especially My Immortal are quite obviously parodies (My Immortal is fairly subtle about it in the first half, but once "Tara" breaks up with "Raven" it becomes clear as day from the spelling alone) but their pages will at most give this as a possibility.

Edited by Reymma on Jan 24th 2020 at 5:02:16 PM

Maybe it's just me but I feel like the site has been getting slightly less traffic and activity compared to 4-6 years ago. Granted I am mostly on the wiki side of things in the community and that inherently has less traffic than others but still. I noticed it in some other sections of the forums too.

If certain entries on this site are of anything to go by, quite a number of editors seem to really like to go out of their way to demonize idealism, optimism, seeing the best in people, etc. for some weird reason, and I can't help but get really rubbed the wrong way about it.

It's probably half-and-half between edgy "nihilists" and genuinely depressed people.

I definitely understand how you feel, considering that I'm the only optimist in my family.

Maybe it’s just the circles I hang out around, but it seems like memes become discredited memes way slower on this site than on other reaches of the internet.

*remembers Epic Fail trope*

Hmm...

I haven't seen Exactly What It Says on the Tin used or mentioned anywhere in a long time. I only remembered that it exists just now.

Heh...funny you should mention that, I just put an entry for that on Ghost.

I think its because after TRS cracked down on the rampant misuse of the trope a while back, people slowed down potholing it and using it as a phase even when it didnt fit.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 24th 2020 at 10:44:56 AM

The Tvtropes reddit looks a lot like Trope Finder.

When I visit subpages, the language detector seems to think I'm reading it in Zulu and offers to translate it as such.

Even though I've known about the existence of the Accidental Nightmare Fuel page for a while, I have never seen Accidental Nightmare Fuel used on any pages before. I had to go to the Related page to see where it is linked, and there's a surprisingly large amount of pages it's on that I've never been to before.

Edited by DrNoPuma on Apr 5th 2020 at 6:43:50 AM