TV Trops

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > TV Trops

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Namtab posted:

Yeah I'm sure the wizarding world doesn't have magic policemen or doctors who have a spell to find this poo poo out. Bearing in mind the ministry of magic can track down underage magic usage easily and even identify whose wand it was. But loving tracking down a rapist, no chance.

None of the stupid specifics top the fact that this should even be an issue in your Harry Potter fanfic in the first place.

I read some other stuff by this guy and it only gets worse.

quote:

The Confessor held up a hand. "I mean it, my lord Akon. It is not polite idealism. We ancients can't steer. We remember too much disaster. We're too cautious to dare the bold path forward. Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"
Akon wasn't sure whether to smile or grimace. "The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books. I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -"
"You need a history refresher, my Lord Administrator. At some suitably abstract level. What I'm trying to tell you - and this is not public knowledge - is that we nearly tried to overthrow your government."
"What?" said Akon. "The Confessors?"
"No, us. The ones who remembered the ancient world. Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees. When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong."
Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"
The Confessor shook his head. "There aren't any words," the Confessor said, "there aren't any words at all, by which I ever could explain to you. No, it wasn't prudery. It was a memory of disaster."
"Um," Akon said. He was trying not to smile. "I'm trying to visualize what sort of disaster could have been caused by too much nonconsensual sex -"

Making the rapist a woman in that example was a nice touch, should keep those hysterical feminists happy knowing it's all equal in The Future. :downs:

quote:

"I know the theory," Akon said. Exhaustion in his voice. "They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world. Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own scruples." Akon slumped a little further. "And somehow - none of that really makes a difference when you're looking at the Lady 3rd, and wondering why, when there's a ten-year-old with a broken finger in front of you, screaming and crying, we humans only partially numb the area."
The Confessor's hood turned back to look at Akon. "You do realize that your brain is literally hardwired to generate error signals when it sees other human-shaped objects stating a different opinion from yourself. You do realize that, my lord?"
"I know," Akon said. "That, too, we are taught. Unfortunately, I am also just now realizing that I've only been going along with society all my life, and that I never thought the matter through for myself, until now."

Yeah, so all the BEEP BOOP stuff isn't even exaggeration here. There are pages of this poo poo. To be fair his descriptive prose isn't bad but his dialogue is loving appalling and it seems to account for 80% of the text. I physically can't keep my eyes focused on it.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 20:12

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 13:51

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

The Monkey Man posted:

Oh God, I hadn't realized that he also wrote Three Worlds Collide. (For the record, I actually thought that story started off really well but went downhill quickly.)

I saw this and went to read the beginning in the interests of fairness and curiosity.

I loving hate you and I take back what I said about his prose not being awful. :colbert:

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 20:47

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

The content violations thread (aka The Place for Purging Porn and Pedo-Pandering, aka Why the gently caress Does This Need to Exist?) is usually worth a look.

Discar posted:

Gonna be honest: I still have no idea what the hell to do with Flexible Survival.

Flexible Survival posted:

Please bear in mind that these ARE adult games, and roleplaying is common and encouraged in the MUD. Consider both games completely NSFW.
...
Black Comedy Rape: In a way, though getting raped is how you gain new powers for the most part.
Brain Bleach: Sometimes you'll want a bit if you see some of the more extreme mutations.
...
Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Or a slap on the rump, when the monsters are randy.
...
Furry Fandom: Very rampant, given what most of the mutations turn you into.
Gag Boobs: Very easy to obtain, since most female/hermaphrodite mutants start at C and go from there. There's even a merit/perk that allows a PC to gain breasts well in excess of H. (T is the maximum, though only with one pair.)
Gender Bender: Happens a LOT.

Yeah, tough call, man.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2013 11:48

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Oi, less armchair psychology more :tvtropes:

Keromaru5 posted:

I almost posted it earlier, but then felt dirty. I don't know how you guys do it.

I'm going to go ahead and post it here because it'll probably be deleted now that we've mentioned it (goons making fun of them being a much more serious concern than actual loving pedophiles on their site) and it should really be preserved for posterity.

quote:

In more than one tragic instance of Loophole Abuse, young girls have sold their bodies to pedophiles for some quick money, fully knowing they cannot possibly be sentenced guilty by law for prostitution, while said men (and sometimes women) get charged for indecent assault or non-consentual intercourse which means a long time in prison. Suffice to say, laws have yet to catch up on this practice.

I find myself wanting to rant about all the ways in which this is hosed and wrong, but who the hell would that explanation be for? Tropers ain't gonna listen. This page has been around since 2010, for the record. And led me to...

Seikon no Qwaser posted:

Seikon no Qwaser is written by Yoshino Hiroyuki and drawn by Satou Kenetsu, the artist of the manga adaptations of Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome. It is a story about Russian Orthodox Church Militants using alchemy with power over one specific element from the periodic table each. However, the Qwaser recharge their power by drinking "Soma" from women's breasts, and the stronger the emotions of the woman being sucked, the more potent the Soma. Yes, this rule applies to female Qwaser as well.

As you might guess, this story is definitely NSFW. On the other hand, if you're looking for a borderline-hentai manga with action, a plot, some chemistry and gratuitous Russian words mixed in, then Seikon no Qwaser may suit your taste.

The anime adaptation of this work premiered in January 2010, with a second season that started in April 2011. This time Sasha goes undercover in an all girls school to find a legendary maria. He does this by - you guessed it - sucking the breasts of his fellow schoolmates.
...
Fetish Fuel: Breast feeding mostly, but Katja has her own special fandom. [[links to 'Lolicon']]
Freud Was Right: Q & R: a pair of masochistic little girls who beg various characters to "order" or "punish" them.
...
Lolicon: Hana. Katja's intro chapter makes this abundantly clear. Taken Up to Eleven in the anime, where, near the end up the fourth episode, it shows Hana very happily licking Katja "down there". Ayame was a little too happy to help Katja with the Toilet.

We got rid of the pedoshit guys I swear

Saint Drogo fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Oct 6, 2013

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 10:51

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

CobiWann posted:

I�ve been trying to pen a novel for the past few months. I have the plot outlined, I have the few chapters written, and the more important scenes that come later in the story are fleshed out for when I get to them. It does involves a supernatural element (without going into detail, it�s Hatfields vs. McCoys in modern day North Carolina, but with magic and witchcraft), so I came up with the �rules� for magic, along with a history for both families and the small town this all takes place in.

Guys it's coming from inside the thre- :suicide:

For real though, nobody said worldbuilding was bad, it's necessary for some genres and it can improve a story if it's done well. You need to have a story for that to happen though, which is what tropers don't get, and if the plot and characters aren't good then worldbuilding isn't going to do poo poo.

That, and most examples of worldbuilding (actually that's just an irritating loving word) we see in this thread are of the "American military worship MEETS nonsensical bullshit MEETS impractical horseshit MEETS animeeeee MEETS my weirdly specific fetish!" variety.

e:Screw it, this comic sums it up best.

Saint Drogo fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Oct 15, 2013

# ¿ Oct 15, 2013 14:42

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Sentient Data posted:

I was going to try to make everyone lose faith in humanity with Google Trends, but I was pleasantly surprised - "clarissa rule34" and clarissa rule 34" both have too little data to show anything for the graph! (And just to make sure there isn't a safesearch/etc issue, I had it check for other rule 34 searches and graphs could be made of those)

I was overjoyed and had my hope in the human race restored, there was now a light at the end of the tunnel of endless human poo poo! But then I realized that any good scientist checks results in multiple ways, and I felt a sudden sinking sensation...

gently caress you. Just gently caress you, internet.

why would you do this man? It's not even related to TVTropes, you just randomly started looking for kiddie porn so you could say 'gently caress you' to the people who drew it. :psyduck:

# ¿ Oct 18, 2013 14:24

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

This ~~David loving Stiefel okay~~ Dozerfleet Admiral guy is quite a find.

quote:

Yo-Splaz! was a newsletter written by the Dozerfleet founder from June of 1999 until around August of 2000, intended for a friend/romantic interest of the time named Carly
...
When it was discovered that she was no longer even reading the letters, all publication of them was discontinued. In addition, all letters she had sent were thrown away. Evidence of her apathy was made clear when she could not recall a previous issue documenting the start of Stationery Voyagers as a project. She also showed no sympathy whatsoever for the founder having had to get stitches.
...
The newsletter worked for about a year to serve as a bridge to keep the two together, but she grew increasingly interested in new horizons even as the Dozerfleet founder grew increasingly stubborn about proving he could be faithful to her, even in the midst of a student body that was encouraging a "be a player" mentality. It became as much a need to prove a moral point as it was an inability to let go.

God drat dude, how did you hold out? :allears:

e: If you don't mind prying Gnarlicious Bro...did he strike you as mentally ill when you knew him? I thought he was just another loathsome, oblivious weirdo at first but this wiki is a scary level of obsessive. He includes so much embarrassing poo poo he'd have no reason to mention, along with the actual obituary for another of his 'girlfriends' who died of an overdose and a blow by blow recap of his reaction to it.

Saint Drogo fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Nov 7, 2013

# ¿ Nov 7, 2013 02:26

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

MatthewTheRaven, in the edit history posted:

Everything about the story -from the evil gay crusaders of the Crooked Rainbow, to the strange syntax and diction, to the idiosyncratic, obscure way even its TvTropes pages are written- sounds like the ramblings of a mental patient.

It finally happened. Someone out-TVtropes'd TVtropes.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2013 21:10

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

quote:

Before long, an entire hall full of girls began sexually harassing the film crew, with one in particular even going so far as to moon the crew. As they brought their beefy football player friends to ask too many questions, John's personal levels of insecurity reached critical mass. The crew had to get out of there; both for personal safety and to protect the equipment. Girls were threatening to take their tops off before the camera, and that was simply not going to be allowed by the campus or film crew.

This guy is amazing.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2013 12:21

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Jay O posted:

Apply this to bronies, moe-philes, etc etc etc etc ad infinitum, and you have any time I ever say anything negative on Twitter ever.

This seems to be what sparks most of the shitfits internet reviewers get thrown at them: not bending over backwards to say 'but hey this is just my opinion guys different strokes yeah' or 'don't worry I'm not saying all Poki Foki Panto fans are like that I saw one nurse an injured sparrow back to health once' after any negative statement. No burden on the part of the reader to use a little loving discretion or react like adults.

Djeser posted:

Internet reviewing is a job, and just like a job in the business world, you have no recourse if someone is harassing you. Sexual harassment suits are thrown out all the time because the plaintiff was "rude".

Dude, sexual harassment is a relative term, being a dick is the ultimate evil by any measure.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2013 12:10

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

e: beaten by loving bees

Apple Tree posted:

You know, I was looking at the comments about how they can't seem to distinguish talking about Jay O's personal life from talking about a fictional character and thinking, 'Welp, that's your garden variety objectification right there...' But actually I think it's weirder than that. Think of their mission statement on the home page:

Get that? You're not supposed to bash 'things'. Bashing people, though, is perfectly okay. Jay O would probably be getting more defenders if she was fictional.

Ah, but Jay O is fair game because she bashes things (and worse, their fans :monocle:

) for a living. Fast Eddie is the guy almost solely responsible for the 'no bashing (or real analysis)' rule on the wiki and he still has that little gently caress Critics message at the bottom of his page (y'know, under that anecdote about a conversation between him and his two sockpuppets).

TVtropes has a pretty good history with treating people like poo poo in situations like this though, see also that person who wanted credit for their comic(?) being used as a page image and got roundly told to go to hell.

e again: The game Ahab worked on (in what I'm going to go ahead and assume was a minor role given what we know about his coding skillz) was the Wolfenstein remake. The one Yahtzee reviewed in limerick form. I've only heard that in this thread though, even if it makes sense - all I remember is FE throwing a shitfit in the Zero Punctuation discussion page.

Saint Drogo fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 12, 2013

# ¿ Nov 12, 2013 17:00

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Improbable Lobster posted:

I already know that the answer is a firm No but don't these people want to improve their work?

They don't have work to improve. Most of them don't produce anything beyond what they write to take part in forum games. TVtropes isn't a writer's community, or even a community with a higher number of wannabe-writers in it than anywhere else geeks congregate. That's why ninjaxenomorph's "attacking our creativity??" was so funny - not counting the occasional internet tip of the hat from creators who are vaguely aware of the site, the biggest creative successes from the TVTropes community are a Neon Genesis Evangelion/Warhammer 40k crossover fanfic, a rewrite of the first Harry Potter book by a maniac who wishes he was autistic and the line "the dickgirls opened fire".

# ¿ Nov 12, 2013 17:50

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

AlbieQuirky posted:

He still looks like a nerdlord, just a better-groomed nerdlord.

Fantasy authors on the whole are not a stylish bunch.

Actual Writers can look as goony as they bloody well please (nothin' beats GRRM's shiny purple waistcoats and weird leather hats, though). It's one of the many perks of actually doing things instead of just deciding you're a Brilliant But Lazy tender misanthrope.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2013 22:28

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Jay O posted:

Animorphs was mentioned earlier in this thread as a thing tropers are obsessed with, which I guess I never noticed before, I figured it was mostly british fantasy novels and animu.

The association is mainly because of one guy, Deboss, who could never shut the gently caress up about a) how much he hated Shakespeare and b) Animorphs. He thought liberal arts education was universally worthless compared to science and engineering while using his engineering degree to work a dead-end job pushing trolleys. We all miss him. :allears:

Deboss posted:

Shakespeare was the most unpleasant work I've ever been exposed to. I've seen most of Uwe Bol and Seltzer Burger work, and I'm including it in that statement. Part of the unpleasantness comes from the idea that it's impossible to dislike it, and the answer is greater exposure to Shakespeare. The sooner the works of Shakespeare are forgotten, the better. Given the power, I'd make teaching it a capitol offense
...
I'm not sure why you'd assign them a book written more than a hundred years ago. I mean, just because they're bound to run into bad books somewhere doesn't mean you have to add one in for a requirement.
...
When classical literature becomes something that's worth forcing people to reading instead of scraping off the bottom of my shoe, I'd consider adding it back into the mandatory section.

On a related note...

And Ninety Nine Cents posted:

When the screaming infomercial finally reaches the point of telling you the price you can be sure that price won't be a round number. Nothing will be sold for $10.00, $50.00 or $100.00. Every price will end with .95, .98 or .99.

This trope isn't restricted to TV commercials. Real world pricing follows this trend as well, and has for a long time. Called "just-under pricing", this is a psychological tactic to make an item seem cheaper than it actually is. Gas stations even go so far as to price gasoline in tenths of a cent. See also The Other Wiki.

Another possibility is that this method of pricing was originally designed to prevent cashiers from pocketing payments. A price ending with .99 almost guarantees that the cashier will need to open the register to get change, which then logs the sale in the register.

The trope has become so prevalent and ingrained that people automatically round prices up in their heads... even if it is a flat price. For instance, a person seeing $29.99, will immediately think "30 bucks", but if it's priced $29 flat, they may still round it up and think "30 bucks". On the other hand, said rounding up is a useful way to calculate whether you're still in your budget; rounding 29.50 down to "29 bucks" and being 50 cents over is a Very Bad Thing indeed.

An oddball one is the Brands-Mart chain located mostly in Florida, where all of the prices end in 88 cents and have 88 in the price as well ...

It's easy to mock banal poo poo like this and Brown Eyes, but these are the only articles TVTropes is actually suited for: Stuff That Happens with no need for opinions or analysis. This page is more in-depth than anything they've got on fiction.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2013 14:27

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Namtab posted:

Iirc Fast Eddie actually did that blanket removal of the word "rape" as a result of goon criticism, cause it was right before the gassing of the last pure troperthread.

Oh hey, TVTropes is actually useful for this! :pseudo:

There were two separate Google Incidents as they call them, one way back in 2010 and the one in 2012 that led them to decide that maybe they shouldn't be catering to pedophiles, and also Fast Eddie's hilariously incompetent rape filter (which not only blocked innocent pages but allowed you to view the blocked pages if you just changed the capitalization a bit).

Not only are those pages informative, they're legitimately funny in places:

The Google Incident posted:

FastEddie wrote a lot of code quickly

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 21:32

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Flesnolk posted:

I can't help being reminded of that one bit in Adaptation, where the guy is giving a lecture to film students or something (?) and goes, "Nothing interesting happens in real life? Are you out of your loving mind?"

This one right here.

Psychoanalysis poo poo to one side, remember a lot of tropers really are just kids, or at least new to writing and thinking about writing. Getting the nitty-gritty non-sexy bits right is a problem for loads of writers and I feel sorry for that Twentington guy because a half-decent community would have so much advice for him: they'd tell him to loving make it interesting, give him examples (remember how you nodded off through the 'boring' bits about the protagonist's mundane office job in Fight Club? No? They were awesome? But...but how?) or at least tell him to stop trying to write poo poo he doesn't care about. To be fair, they try, but...

Various tropers posted:

Do you research and talk to people and you'll find something interesting, at least about the person if not their jobs. Maybe your mail carrier is also a war veteran and likes the relatively boring routine.
...
Improbable Age is a thing. Giving characters experiences they shouldn't have at their age isn't that much of a problem.
...
I'm wondering if ARIA (the anime, not the manga) might be what you're looking for. It technically fits that description. Pretty much all it is is characterization (of a cast of characters whose names all begin with A, confusingly enough), pretty music, Scenery Porn, and so little science fiction you forget it takes place in 24th century Mars. A far cry from Warehouse13 and Firefly, I suppose.

...ehhhhh. :cripes:

Twentington's troper page posted:

Pages created:
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
Aero The Acro Bat
All Star Blitz
Almost Naked Animals
America's Funniest Home Videos
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Back at the Barnyard
Battlestars
B.C.
Beat the Clock
Beanie Babies

[Seriously 92 more pages, plus 47 biographies and 14 incredibly banal 'tropes']

You know what? gently caress it, this guy's hopeless.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2013 12:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 13:51

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

I felt like a total goon because my first reaction to LessWrong was 'so this is the kind of berk who wrote the ending to Mass Effect 3', but gently caress it, that's the level of response it deserves.

Robin posted:

Wow. The obvious answer is TORTURE, all else equal, and I'm pretty sure this is obvious to Eliezer too. But even though there are 26 comments here, and many of them probably know in their hearts torture is the right choice, no one but me has said so yet. What does that say about our abilities in moral reasoning?

So motherfucking rational I'm gonna jump straight to "YOU ALL SECRETLY KNOW I'M RIGHT." :byodood:

Yudowsky sounds like he's had a weird, isolated life that's turned him into the larval stage of the timecube guy. The nerds he surrounds himself with are the ones who need slapping around the head; the dude might have a chance to use his mighty brain for something worthwhile if he didn't have a layer of rear end-kissing pseuds between him and the real world.

edit:

ArchangeI posted:

The argument was that the AI would punish anyone who did not contribute to AI research. He runs an AI research institute (that probably has done nothing to advance the cause of AI research). Ergo, giving him money protects you from punishment.

No proper scam artist would ever try something this retarded. QED. :colbert:

Also here's a website for people so loving daft they got hounded off LessWrong.

Saint Drogo fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Apr 8, 2014

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 17:43

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > TV Trops