Troping Works That Promote Bigotry

I do want to make clear that I fully agree with that. My whole point on was not on what TV Tropes actually is but on what others insist on perceiving it as, from those using it as The Big Online Database of Tropes to those seeking to take advantage of this website for some external benefit outside of our scope.

I will clarify that this whole perception vs. reality bit is only really relevant in an extreme case like Stonetoss where one party is actively trying to tip those scales, actively trying to pass off the perceived as real. In the vast majority of cases I do agree that this notion of "perceived value" isn't tangible or relevant to be a real concern for us adhering to our core goals. And like...I looked back at those old Stonetoss discussions, the moment it became clear it was actively trying to hide its power level to court favor with us was the moment the line had been crossed for many in said discussion which is about as fair as you could probably be in that sorta scenario.

That was one troll on the internet using said item to directly advertise recruitment here.

Something we don't allow anyway. It's not a precedent to mean a thing. Anyone who comes here for the sake of advertising is breaking our rules too. Thus? No, it's not relevant what they think.

They can perceive us all they want, but that doesn't mean they're actually paying attention. A lot do come on this site.... to cause trouble, coming in with a pure agenda. It's actually not that common that people like that come here to actually try and improve the site either. And that's because they don't bother to do the research or even try to understand what this site is about. We can't force people's perceptions.

But what we can do is to keep on task with this site's purpose. And throwing out fictional works cause of something unimportant like people with agendas is a very poor reasoning at this point. We ain't some special authority of what works matter. We're just a fansite. No more, no less.

Thus? I don't see any good reason to entertain them. The only reason we starting cutting works was because of Google wanting to pull their ads from us. Which, notably, wasn't related to Stonetoss or any such controversial work. It was purely about the porn factor. We only changed our policies afterwards because we had to. Not specifically cause of some perceived morals. So our precedent was "only if necessary" at that point. We also decided we don't want works that specifically sexualize children and promote it as a good thing. Which keep in mind, is a type of pornography(meaning it's an extension of said "removing porn" rule). Neither of these related to propaganda works in any way, meaning even our past history doesn't really say much in that case.

So we need a much much better reason than trolls on the internet being unable to actually pay attention to our site's purpose. At least "a lot don't like it morally on this site" holds a bit more water, because we can create a proper crowner and consensus on that. You can't do that with trolls. Now if Google goes further to pull its ads, then the rest of our reasonings don't matter anymore. That's an automatic change that has to happen. Otherwise, how we handle this situation is subjective.

Edited by Irene on Dec 27th 2022 at 12:43:54 PM

To summarize myself, I'd be against a cover ban on this topic. If someone thinks we endorse something by mentioning it, well they need to grow up. We had one exception we couldn't handle due to outside pressure and there wasn't much worth to keep. Until there's a Flame War I'd prefer it to stay the only one.

Since it was brought up, I decided to see our page on Mein Kampf, and it has exactly the problem I expected: the page is not troping it as a story, it is mostly shoehorning in historical commentary using tropes like Canon Discontinuity and Self-Serving Memory. An autobiography in principle can be troped, since it is casting reality into a story, but this is not what our page is doing for the most part. I could get behind cutting this as not being tropeable, regardless of its politics.

I mean, doesn't that mean we should clean this up first? Cutting is the last option.

What is there to clean up? If it's not fiction, it's not fiction. Cleanup won't make it tropeworthy.

The problem with fixing the page is it means one of us has to actually read the book.

I was fine reading something like The Turner Diaries for cleanup purposes, but Mein Kampf is a step too far for me.

I honestly think its in the wrong namespace. Its worth noting for historical purposes but that's useful notes job, not literature.

I mean... maybe????

I'm already on record saying that I think UN is overstuffed and that pages about historical works and the like don't belong in the namespace designed to help writers understand concepts better...

But we also don't have a better namespace for this stuff.

Move to UN then. That's a good enough cleanup in itself. If it's not basically a story to trope like one, then it belongs there as more of a list of events than a direct autobiography.

Also, keep in mind, "don't want to do the work" is a terrible excuse for cutting. The work has to be done and prove it's unsalvageable first and foremost. It doesn't actually violate out rules as a page alone, it's just at best in the wrong namespace with the way it's written. We have two choices; clean it up where it's told like a story or move it to UN where it fits as it currently is. IMO, I don't think it's good as the former, but the latter sounds like a good way to handle the situation.

...And UN having a lot of pages isn't really a problem? That's its job, to have various works on it and to describe things. Like, the worst that happens is some UN things might feel like they don't fit said namespace, but "it has a lot of pages" isn't exactly something that should be a determent to correct namespace placement. The most overusing a namespace can occur is when it comes to subpages that aren't directly needed or were split more than they should be. Which is arguably not too often to have a big issue.

Yes, I do feel like UN is being misused and that overuse is a part of the problem because a lot of UN pages don't belong in UN and people are using it as wikipedia lite which it's not meant to be. This isn't a debate to have here but I stand by what I said, and I said what I meant.

My point is that while UN might be the more fitting namespace I'm still not convinced that it actually belongs there. It's sort of like how we have some weird non-trope pages in Main/ because there's nowhere else to put them.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 28th 2022 at 9:46:39 AM

This is a "narrative" in the same way as any autobiography; it's just that what we're troping here is its creation, which is... uh... literally Hitler.

I mean, that leaves us two choices outright. We clean it up by fixing its tropes, including removing those incorrectly using them(by changing its purpose as a work page), and if and only if it's a stub, we should cut it.

The other one is to move it to useful notes, which I do see a partial reason to consider it misuse(not as how the page is written, of where it makes perfect sense there, but the fact the page is written wrong to begin with).

I'm not sure how we ended up on Mein Kampf, but I don't think it's supposed to have a narrative? Isn't it just Hitler's treatise on everything wrong with Germany and why the Jews are to blame?

It was brought up mostly because, yeah, of concerns that it lacks a tropeworthy narrative (which is why I'm unconvinced that "clean it" is a solution).

UN sounds good then, since it's much more accurate. Though to be fair, if autobiographies should be there too(which isn't that what this is essentially? Keep in mind I never legitimately look into the book details, so please correct me if I'm wrong on that), we might need something akin to an alternate UN-like category if this gets too much/awkward?

But for now, I wouldn't worry about that.

If nothing can be cleaned up, well, it's the only legitimate place where it could belong.

The reason why I mentioned Mein Kampf is because my personal stance on how to treat such works is strongly informed by the way that book (heavily propagandistic and antisemitic, not to mention the obvious associations with The Holocaust) is treated by Real Life law.

That raises another interesting question: should we have a page on a book that is widely banned by law?

I'm going to still say yes in itself.

Context is key. The only thing we've banned is pedo-pandering works due to an extension of our porn policy. But that's only because of the Google incident first, and by pedo-pandering, it's basically related to porn(sexualization of children) enough that it falls under the same rules category.

This is not the same thing here. Many places ban specific subjects or content types(I.E. Gambling video games, Mortal Kombat's ban in Japan has specific notes, etc). I consider that insufficient in itself. Especially when we're just talking about a UN page that doesn't do anything more than make it clear what it's about.

So... I don't see that kind of rule being useful to really removing works on its own, not without it being a very clear extension of a previous policy and with some huge notes to why said policy was created(we weren't having any plan to remove general pornography works to begin with, but had to because of Google. A key difference as is).

I mean, if there's a consensus, fair enough, and I won't argue against that at all. But "not being able to be sold" isn't really enough for me to say it should apply here in general.

I mean, if we're discussing personal stances, like I said before I'm still way more concerned with how the Victoria page was created, edit-pimped, and blatantly whitewashed by someone who was banned for advocating the exact same abhorrent ideology as the novel than by our page on Mein Kampf which I'm pretty certain wasn't edited by either Hitler or modern neo-Nazis.

So to see if Mein Kampf can be cleaned up, here are the tropes and whether they belong:

All There in the Manual: Misused, it's referring to other historical sources, not something by the author meant to accompany the work.

Author Filibuster and Author Tract: Used correctly, and the latter has a long list of sub-tropes that could be expanded.

Bowdlerise: Used correctly.

Canon Discontinuity: Misused for differing political aims between works (or rather manifestos).

Conspiracy Theorist, Freudian Excuse and Self-Serving Memory: Misused, it's troping the author.

Hijacked by Ganon: This is a weird example, but might actually be correct, in that the work is setting up several problems and conflicts and then revealing the Jewish conspiracy is behind them all.

Nazi Protagonist: If we treat this autobiography as a story, then it's correct.

The Power of Hate: Seems to be correct, if it's how Hitler describes himself.

Purple Prose: Used correctly.

Space-Filling Empire: Misused (it's about world-spanning empires as setup to the story, not as an aim) but could be corrected to Take Over the World.

Un-person: Misused, it's again troping real life.

Unreliable Narrator: This requires authorial intent. Again it's troping the author.

Untranslated Title: Used correctly.

Very Loosely Based on a True Story: I guess this is correct, but it make me wonder why the trope itself isn't Trivia.

Worthy Opponent: Probably correct.

So I see three courses of action:

1) Cut the page as not tropeworthy, keeping entries on pages like Purple Prose for it and moving any important information to UsefulNotes.Adolf Hitler.

2) Make into Useful Notes, integrating information in the tropes entries into the description.

3) Clean up the page to be about the narrative that Hitler makes of his life, with matters of historical accuracy moved to the Trivia page. While there are few correct tropes as of now, the long list below Author Tract could be expanded into proper tropes.

(Tangent: the book was never actually banned in Germany, it was out of print and the copyright held by the government which refused to allow reprinting. In 2015 the copyright ran out and an annotated version was released.)

That's a good point there, nrjxll - these other works were being "pushed" in a way that Mein Kampf wasn't.

I note that in several countries discussing Mein Kampf as a historical document (when discussing the history of Nazism and Hitler) is fine, but commercially is heavily frowned upon (see the tale of its Hebrew translation, in Israel) and propagating its viewpoints can land you in jail.

As mentioned, Billy the Heretic has an extremely negative page. Doesn't exactly seem inaccurate to me, though, and I can't say I'm particularly upset about tropers taking a negative attitude to antisemitic propaganda.

It is also pretty short. Granted that Stonetoss has been a fairly long runner, but down to the content, and even then most of it relies on bigotry to work. And focusing on that would make the TVT page about as short, unless you use the tropes to deconstruct his works.

His comics on BLM usually rely on Playing the Victim Card and you can use that to deconstruct on how the comic of a knee on the neck of a black man in the close up and then his own knee on the full frame shot, is nothing but a bullshit take from the author.

If Stonetoss wants TVT to host a page for his tropes because he wants the extra visibility, you can edit it to make as unflattering as possible and then lock the page and bar him and his fans from editing them. Or just refuse to give him one, which is what happened.

We couldn't make the page unflattering because of his insistence that the comic wasn't political. By treating it as though it was we were opening ourselves up to accusations of slander, which was a minefield we wanted to avoid.

Normally we would just make the work seem bad, which again is what we already do with other works like these. Not that it's particularly difficult to make a Neo-Nazi work "seem bad" anyway.