Your early troper shames.

A thread idea I've had for a while, a sort of spinoff of the "old shames" thread: talking about your dumb shoehorned edits, inappropriate forum posts, lazy TLP drafts, etc. from when you first began using this site.

I came on this site when I was 12 - that was 2012 so things were a bit more lax. I made a page for every lousy fanfiction idea I had, even the ones I hadn't written yet. I also shoehorned in Getting Crap Past the Radar examples despite not understanding adult content at all, leading to entries along the lines of "This character called a guy 'good looking' at a party which could be a hint that he's gay."

(Ground rules: Don't act rude about anybody's old mistakes. The goal is to acknowledge our flaws, some of which may be very common misunderstandings, and just be glad that we've improved as tropers. On the flip side, don't complain about any punishment you received for these mistakes or otherwise get accusatory, and if you got in trouble for sharing certain details, don't go into detail about them in here.)

Edited by mightymewtron on Feb 3rd 2021 at 7:15:15 AM

More minor thing; I thought Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking meant whenever those listed things happened in a work. I didn't add any examples, thank god, but still...

I participated in Trope Pantheons a few years ago but I've come to dislike most of the profiles I made. While it partially has to do with me becoming disinterested in the project as a whole, the profiles are a reminder of why writing fiction isn't one of my strong points, at least not at present.

Edited by ArgoTheBlank on Feb 4th 2021 at 10:44:02 AM

The example I'm most ashamed of adding is a ZCE-quote-pothole on Drill Sergeant Nasty, specifically about the Spongebob character in that one Boating School episode.

Yeah, I committed one of the worst sins as far as editing issues.

I once nattered on an example I had added in the first place.

When I first joined the site at around 2013, I committed nearly every single editing sin imaginable. Natter, Zero-Context Examples, improper indentation, Word Cruft, and I engaged in a few Edit Wars without even realizing it. I simply thought the site was more lenient with the rules, so I never considered to follow them back then. Though strangely, I never been suspended for those mistakes in the first few years.

It wasn't until 2016 when I read the Edit Banned thread for the first time and saw a few troper testimonies related to my mistakes that I changed my tune for the better. Now I'm very focused on following site rules and guidelines, and have since stopped my bad habits.

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Feb 4th 2021 at 4:22:42 AM

My earlier instances of writing HGS stories are pretty cringy and I shot myself in the foot tying to handle one too many characters. And dealing with the fallout of all that is excruciating

I have so much stuff related to my early days of troping that were really cringy, such as inserting my own commentary on pages, poor editing on pages in general (particularly indentation), times where I was just an idiot and/or rude, and attempting to make a page for one of my own old fanfics.

I also feel Bale's pain when it comes to RPing. My early RPing in multiple threads was embarrassing to go back and look at and coming up with a ton of characters for several of them bit me in the butt really fast (I'm still stuck with a ton of different characters/plots in one thread in particular).

I used to browse the New Media threads seeking conflict. I was bored and I needed something to rally myself up so I watched and complained about how miserable I felt. I've been avoiding them and I feel great.

My very first edit on this site is just.. cringe. It was adding to a conversation that could've been for the forums. Gah. (at least it's a Headscratchers entry so it... probably is more lax? *shrug*)

My only WMG entry was also rather cringe, but it was somewhat plausible and isn't that bad, so I don't really regret it as much.

...and they're both related to Five Nights at Freddy's, how the fuck.

Edited by TheGeekArtist08 on Feb 5th 2021 at 4:20:53 PM

I used to be obsessed with Round Robin games to the point I was quite annoying in the now-locked Thread Anti-Necromancy. Thankfully, I managed to grow out of this obsession and the junk in the Thread Anti-Necromancy.

My first edit, on Don't Try This at Home about the Bizaardvark theme song. It's clear I didn't know anything about formatting at the time.

Okay one more I keep forgetting: my earliest TLP drafts (from 2013, so I was young) are traaaaaash. The one that takes the cake is probably "And the Fandom Groaned," the negative parallel to And the Fandom Rejoiced (before it was in Sugar Wiki). Just pure complaining.

Oh God. Natter, putting the "respond" in Repair, Don't Respond (with incorrect information to boot), participating in Troper Tales, being a brat in TRS complete with a reference to something I hadn't even seen... at one point I even started deleting the %s that indicated a Zero-Context Example because I was curious as to what that did (though I quickly stopped once I got a PM about it). Little wonder now that I mostly stick to editing spelling and grammar mistakes.

Edited by ReikoKazama on Mar 9th 2021 at 5:52:00 AM

Some time a few years ago, I wrote a post about there being "two types" of tropers (it was essentially Red Oni, Blue Oni), and I regret it to this day. People are too complex to fit perfectly into any kind of personality groups, but even if you try, two is way too limiting.

A lot of my earlier edits are cringeworthy, poor writing, have blatant trope misuse and are filled with complainy tones. Nowadays, I am 100% glad that's far past behind me and I try to rectify my mistakes

I used to think that Friend to All Living Things meant Animal Lover.

I made a lot of inappropriate forum posts... I was the worst.

Yes, I was a sheltered kid from an abusive home who had undiagnosed autism, but... that doesn't cancel out the crap I did.

I did not make anything very wrong when I first edited the wiki around 2010. Guess that comes from being an adult, being careful in writing (I worked as a proofreader for years) and being very cautious with a website I did not know. I liked to imagine trope pages for the works of my dreams, but I had the sense not to write them.

However I feel some guilt over the reverse of that caution: I knew natter, gushing and complaining should not be there, but I rarely had the courage to actually remove it (in part because of "where would I even start" feelings).

I am also guilty of not following up on TLP and TRS suggestions, and I can't blame it on being too busy.

EDIT: Per a troper's request, I shouldn't have brought that up. Sorry.

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Apr 17th 2021 at 10:40:47 AM

When I first did pages, I had no idea what I was doing with the work description bits, or how the website expected it to be done. Case in point? Tower 57.

I was very awkward and naive when I was a teenager, not to mention really fucking weird, and, uh... it showed. It really showed on the forums.

I genuinely wonder how anyone managed to put up with me back then.

I was a terrible roleplayer back in the day, so I roleplay almost completely on other sites nowadays.

Admittedly, out of all the tropes I've launched, I'm not proud of Stellar Station.

The reason is because I think it's The Same, but More Specific to Space Station and that I think its launch was a fluke. How Stellar Station managed to garner a lot of support without any opposition (I recall it having no bombs either) is beyond me. Maybe 2020 was a different year entirely for TLP as a whole? IDK. My thought process of creating the Stellar Station draft was akin to me throwing darts on a board and seeing what sticks, so it's basically experimental. That, and I was influenced by Outer Wilds at the time (hence the page image).

...A lot of stuff, due to having joined when I was 12 or so. I still do embarrassing stuff sometimes, but not like that.