I Like Things

Just a gal who enjoys being around. Formerly ElectricPike. Follow my art blog pikethorne.tumblr.com

[prinnay]

Little Sunfish

[racesolar]

Hrothgar make Hrothgar make condom

[transhuman-priestess]

I've seen half a dozen girls use this as their profile banner on here and i don't think half of them know that like, I'm a real person who really made this and that I'm right here and it's kinda fucking with me.

Anyway i'm a real life trans woman who's struggling to make rent and getting fucked over by unemployment so if you'd like to help me out, my cashapp and venmo are both @kellanium, and I also have a Ko-fi.

[squeakitties]

[inquisitorgrand]

[prokopetz]

You've talked a lot about how TvTropes isn't suitable for literary analysis (the specifics elude me), but I haven't been able to parse your point, could you possibly elucidate on your thoughts of TvTropes as an institution?

The short version is that all systems of categorisation are at least in part prescriptive, in the sense that each one depends on a particular set of assertions about how the lines between categories ought to be drawn. When you sort things into buckets, you're not just describing those things – you're also enforcing those boundaries. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it's critical to recognise that when you apply a paritcular system of categorisation to a particular topic, you're forcing that topic into a shape that will fit into that system's buckets.

To the topic at hand, then, the issue with TV Tropes is that its system of categorisation – that is, how it relates tropes into hierarchies, how it draws the lines that separate one trope from another, even its basic concept of what a "trope" is – are all informed by the fact that it started out as a Joss Whedon fansite, and even though most of its present users aren't aware of that fact, its analytic framework has never really moved beyond those roots. Any media that's understood through the lens of TV Tropes' system of categorisation unavoidably gets smooshed into the general shape of a TV show written by Joss Whedon, whether that was the intent or not. This is a perfectly fine analytic lens if what you're describing is, in fact, a TV show written by Joss Whedon, but it becomes a progressively worse fit the further you get from that sphere of competence.

[frustrationinexcelsis]

One notion I have from having been active on Tv Tropes for several years now is that its site culture/means of analysis has never really grokked the idea of "tropes" as something that's specifically rooted in particular places and contexts as opposed to just existing.

Let me clarify that I think that this is a methodological and subconscious bias more than a conscious one. In the abstract I think that the editing body understands the concept more or less fine, there's the whole thing with Trope Makers and Trope Codifiers and so on, but the way in which the site and its pages are structured very strongly emphasizes identifying tropes through a checklist of traits over identifying tropes through their history and origin -- the Maker/Codifier stuff often feels like a bit of a tacked-on appendix and usually isn't present on pages anyway.

The concept came to mind for me a few years back when I was following along on some drama in the Launch Pad part of the site over whether or not to create pages for certain things and settings typical of Japanese media (if I remember correctly, the issue was a proposal to split off a page about Isekai settings in particular from the Trapped in Another World page and a lot of people didn't see the value in having what they saw as a "TiAW but in anime" page), and part of the issue there was that it's actually very difficult to create a consistent "checklist" definition for an Isekai that's distinct from general "stuck in another world" story.

And I'm inclined to think that that's the site's biggest problem -- it's never been suited for viewing literary trends and tropes as things defined as a branching system of inspiration and descent instead of things that can be primarily recognized by spotting a certain set of tells.

(To make a very rough analogy, it's sometimes a bit like trying to say that two trees aren't actually distinct trees because they've got the same leaves and bark.)

And the thing is, if you're specifically setting out to categorize the contents of one creator's work, using a set of tells as your guideline works great. And if you're setting out to categorize the contents of a very specific, focused family of works (say, fantasy-adjacent serialized TV in the 90s-aughts), that also works just fine. But when you try to expand this to cover essentially the totality of human media (that is, when you're moving from describing one branch of one limb of one tree to the whole entire forest), that's when it doesn't work so fine anymore.

[prokopetz]

Totally – TV Tropes' culture of curatorship strongly pushes the idea of genres of media as actually being defined by checklists of tropes, rather than occasionally being approximately described by them (and understandably so, because that's kind of the site's whole mission statement!), which tends to explode messily when it crashes into the reality that genres are defined by dialogues between creators. I tend to think of that as a problem that lies downstream of the Whedonism issue, since the Whedonesque approach to television writing very often does construct genre television as checklists of tropes, but it's worth examining in its own right.

(I think my personal favourite personal illustration of the deficiency of the checklist-of-tropes approach is that, when reduced to such a checklist, Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation [1986] and The Silence of the Lambs [1991] are the same film.)

[she-who-is-two-sizes-too-big]

Wait I need elaboration on that last bit of trivia.

[prokopetz]

Both films concern a young female protagonist whose excellence in her chosen field is not recognised by her peers

In both films, a creepy dude offers to help the protagonist get the recognition she feels she deserves in exchange for an unsettling but seemingly harmless quid pro quo

In both films, the protagonist initially enjoys renewed success, but soon discovers that the aid she’s been given is part of an elaborate plot by the creepy dude to get revenge on a supporting character

In both films, the protagonist is forced into a final confrontation alone after the creepy dude’s misinformation sends her allies on a wild goose chase after a nonexistent foe

In both films, this confrontation takes place in an underground lair situated beneath an otherwise innocuous location where young people are imprisoned, tormented, and eventually consumed

In both films, the creepy dude ultimately goes unpunished

[svvoosh]

[aobubblegum]

this image is magical to me.

[sepulchretide]

my favorite thing to learn about regular show is one of the showrunners stating "Yeah, CN let us kill anyone we wanted on-screen, just as long as they exploded."

[rubello]

Rewatching Regular Show 🌲

[gordons-moved]

Please, please, have a seat.

I’m here to debate Steven Universe with you

[roboco-san]

sometimes I see posts like this and wonder what this post must be like for people who don’t play mtg. this joke must have an entirely different texture if you don’t know who this man is and what he has done to me personally

[soft--dogs]

business hours only!

[factbot]

[despazito]

the second radish is 29 feet away

[tranarchist]

[kompanie-mutter-deactivated2021]

this is legitimately the funniest post on this site

[pocketss]

widehead

[theweirdwideweb]

[sonjabysonjamorgan]

my fav recurring things in bojack horseman is that princess carolyn has a regular poster for junior in her apartment alongside 2 animal pun movie posters

[plumpikethorn]

I wonder if it was an inspiring film for her, seeing a film where a man of all people is able to give birth when she's infertile and has had these lifelong aspirations of being a mother

[lohboh]

I can't wait for anime watchers to experience Steel Ball Run I will never get over how Araki developed "hamon, except it's even stupider" used it in one part and dropped it pretty much entirely for Jojolion

[lohboh]

[technovillain]

Happy Neil Day! Please enjoy the very rare alternate Neil images!

[doubleca5t]

I take immense schadenfreude in Elon Musk spending $25 million to try to influence an election in Wisconsin only for the candidate he was backing to lose by a larger margin than was predicted before Musk got into the race. Like how tf do you dump that much money into a state supreme court election and get not only nothing out of it but LESS than nothing. That's a truly impressive level of failure. I'm watching Elon become the most hated man in America like the Sickos yes hahaha yes comic

[doubleca5t]

The latest news out of DC is that everyone in the federal government, up to and including all the MAGA ghouls cannot fucking stand Elon Musk

lol. lmao, even