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Ask the Tropers:
openNo Title Literature
Is it just me, or would nearly all examples on Funny.Fifty Shades Of Grey be better on Narm.Fifty Shades Of Grey? The following bit of Natter on the page (which I removed) seems to have a point:
- Let's just say the whole book.
- Let's just say the entire series.
- Most of them are mostly Narm rather than intentional (especially the inner goddess parts).
openNo Title Literature
Coming here as I'm confused as to where to take it. I think it would bounce all over the place; Trope Talk, Lost And Found, and the "Is This an Example" thread.
I'm working on the page for the Doom novels.
Hey, stop laughing! They're a Guilty Pleasure that introduced me to Robert A Heinlein and HP Lovecraft.
Anyway, the main problem I have is that these books are badly written. Not in the "I think this character sucks" manner but in that they are very inconsistent on facts. I have no idea how to document such mistakes. I'm not sure what we'd consider them, like Retcons or what. And the quality gets worse as the series progresses.
I want to document this, of course I'm trying to get this in a proper objective format.
Some highlights:
- A dead character changes hair color over ten pages. She's blonde when mentioned and then suddenly a redhead.
- A monster talks to The Hero early on in the first book. This is a minor plot over the series and becomes a major plot point in the fourth. The trick is a second monster spoke in the first book, cracked a bad joke, and this is never mentioned again. Every time the subject of talking monsters come up it's only the first that anybody remembers, that was the only time it ever happened as the characters are concerned.
- The teenage girl in the group changes last names between the second and third books.
- The characters use Reporting Names for the monsters. Fly calls a monster "spiny", Arlene named them "imps". After the third book, both POV characters insist that Arlene calls them "spiny". Repeatedly.
- At the end of the third book, the heroes are unarmed and naked after teleporting disintegrated their weapons and clothes. At the start of the fourth they have their uniforms and weapons back. They didn't find new ones, they didn't make new ones. I get why, it's a Retcon because the authors backed themselves into a corner. But they even call attention to it when Arlene laments losing her wedding ring because it disintegrated when they're Retconning the disintegration.
- At the same time as the gear retcon, they now have different weapons than before. And these guns are now their weapons of choice when it was the destroyed set.
- The teenage girl changes hair color between the second and fourth books. She's a redhead in the second book and blonde in the last.
I love this series but it's a mess. The text supports all of this, I'm not bitching about perceived flaws, just trying to record what they've done wrong.
Edited by Rotpar

Please unlock the YMMV for Mark Twain. I intend to crosswick an approved CM entry for a work which does not exist on the wiki.
- Complete Monster (King Leopold's Soliloquy): King Leopold presents himself as a vicious hypocrite and sanctimonious tyrant who subjects the Free State of the Congo to horrific depravity. Having countless people killed and entire regions depopulated, Leopold demands high taxes and production rates from his supposed subjects, cutting off limbs or even castrating others who cannot meet them. Having people tortured and murdered in huge numbers, Leopold notes one of his mistakes was to have sixty innocents crucified and remarks fewer people would care if he'd them skinned. Uncaring of anything but lining his pockets, Leopold shows his only sympathy is to himself, indifferent to the half-million corpses he has left in his rush for money.
Edited by SkyCat32