Okay, I'll accept that. Let me rephrase: <b>TV Tropes</b> doesn't understand writing.

Subject: Okay, I'll accept that. Let me rephrase: TV Tropes doesn't understand writing.
Author: Scapegrace
Posted on: 2022-06-09 15:28:04 UTC

TV Tropes is not a good place for media analysis, even in a comedic way. As a site, it suggests that listing all the ways something does or does not conform to genre conventions is in and of itself engaging with the work critically on its own merits. It isn't. At best, TV Tropes is a first step, a comedy guide to criticism and media literacy. Personally, I don't think it's even that. By way of evidence, I offer the many dreadful novels that Tropers have written over the years, which as (not to harp on this topic) someone with a literal postgraduate degree in creative writing feels like being an architect looking at Groverhaus.

Dissection is an apt description of what TV Tropes does to fiction, but in my view it's more akin to dismantling. It's a fundamentally destructive process. It renders down a work of fiction into however many component parts, lays them all out in a row with neat labels that occasionally have something funny on them, and considers it a job well done. It doesn't do anything beyond that. It doesn't teach anything about the parts, how they fit together, how any of it actually works. You're presented with a tray of bolts and screws and bits of bent metal and told it's still a car. Or possibly a frog.

Wikis aren't works of criticism, they're works of reference. A dictionary is not a style guide. TV Tropes is neither a work of, nor a guide to, media criticism. Its stated goal is to be a comedy look at media, and in my opinion and experience that does not lend itself well to engaging with media in good faith or on the work in question's own terms. You don't get an understanding, you just get... snark, I guess? Which, if that's the best the site aspires to be, then more power to it and its user base. That's not a good formula for understanding how to write well. I'm sure it has inspired a lot of people to write more, but it's a start, not an end. If you treat it as such, it will make your writing worse.

That's... really all I have to say on the matter.

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So, been thinking about this TV Tropes review for a while. by OrangeFox on 2022-06-09 13:20:11 UTC Reply

So you know how we have a page on TV Tropes? Somewhere a year or two ago I took a quick look at the 'review' page just to see what was up with it, and found this.

Here's the link.

So I figured I'd bring it up here. Normally I wouldn't be, like, genuinely upset-feeling over something like this, but there's just a lot, to be honest. The main review's really unprofessional for someone who's supposedly reviewing, and the replies to said review are just people jumping on the angry bandwagon to talk about things they don't like about the PPC as well and it really overwhelmed me at first with the sheer vitriol of it.

It probably doesn't help that a lot of what they say are either signs of a complete lack of research (an example one Troper uses for an Agent 'indistinguishable from a Mary Sue' is Lorson, of all people, apparently for being both competent and non-human) or more lack of research (not a single person seems to realize the PPC still's, like, semi-active and in general has evolved quite a bit past what they're criticizing half the time) to flat-out hypocritical. (One fellow basically says, 'if you have a wiki to explain unclear terms, then that implies they're incomprehensible to begin with and it's thus bad writing.' On TV Tropes.)

But despite all of this, somehow it's managed to stick around in my headspace for a long while, and I'm starting to wonder why. I'm just feeling confused and whatnot about this and I'm having a hard time collecting my thoughts, so... what are your thoughts on this?

-OrangeFox, tired and clouded

Good news is, by Kі nо Shirayuki on 2022-06-12 02:49:15 UTC Reply

the site has very strong policies against creator/work bashing these days, so we can possibly get the review reported for this offense.

If it is against the rules... by Linstar on 2022-06-13 13:00:13 UTC Reply

...then report it. If not, oh well.

Best just to ignore it by Philly on 2022-06-12 01:19:02 UTC Reply

Invalid criticism is invalid.
I don’t really have much to say by Scarlett on 2022-06-09 20:25:14 UTC Reply

I did try and reason with them but to no real avail. The least I can say is they were polite and explained their reasoning, flawed as it was, which is better then what I’m used to dealing with on fan sites.

Sometimes... by Linstar on 2022-06-09 20:50:05 UTC Reply

...that’s the most you can get in a disagreement.

But, really, who reads the TVTropes review pages anyway? (Not me.)

—Ls

Oh, this. I remember this. by Neshomeh on 2022-06-09 15:30:23 UTC Reply

Yet another person deciding we're Teh Ebulz without doing any research or, y'know, actually talking to us. Yawn.

In fairness, sporking does mean squaring yourself with the fact that you may offend or discourage someone in some way. Personally, I'm content that we are doing the best we can not to hurt anyone, and if people somehow find out we've sporked their stuff, the ball is then in their court when it comes to choosing what to do about it. If people are gonna take a random stranger's criticism of their writing and characters as a personal attack regardless of it being explicitly not a personal attack (how can it be if we know nothing about them personally, eh?), there's nothing we can do about it.

And, I mean, I would also rather assume that people are not generally so emotionally fragile that a single negative experience can push them over the edge into declaring they Shall Never Write Again? Especially if they've decided to post their work out in public? I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in a world where no one ever says anything critical of a creative work ever, so I'm not going to bite my tongue on the off-chance that I might happen to upset someone who shouldn't have gone public in the first place. I learned a long time ago that everyone has to take personal responsibility for themselves; it's not my job to do it for them.

Citation needed on that stuff about egging on trolls, too. Where? When? Links or it didn't happen.

~Neshomeh
Eh, I don’t care. by Linstar on 2022-06-09 14:36:53 UTC Reply

Simply put—either get a TVTropes account and respond, or just accept that not everyone likes us and move on. Sure, what they may have said is inaccurate. But I noticed that there were a couple of more knowledgable reviewers who left kind reviews.

And as for the comments on the jargon and Lorson being a Stu; I just thought they were funny, in a Hypocritical Humor sort of way. It’s silly to say that “if you need a wiki to explain jargon, you’re doing it wrong”. Especially on TVTropes. Lorson’s writer Iximaz, found us through TVTropes. (According to her wiki page.)

And the quote on Sue Hunters continues: “Some works in this genre, inc. the Trope Codifier [us], have recognized this. In spite of this, entertaining Sue Hunters, or ones that target hated fanfics, can gain fans who like the Fix Fic aspect of these stories. Badly-written ones, however, aren't any better than your typical God-Mode Sue Revenge Fic story and may even become targets of Mary Sue Hunter stories themselves.”

Basically, they’re saying that Sue Hunters can become Sues, not that they automatically are.

And while these guys may be totally misinformed, they still have a right to say what they want. Even/ with/ a/ bunch/ of/ weird/ backslashes/.

Besides, if we could force everyone to like us, we’d be the Sues.

Tl;dr: free speech means they have a right to be wrong. Either respond calmly, or just ignore them.

—Linstar

I didn't mean to appear to quote out of context, apologies. by Kittyauthor on 2022-06-09 15:07:06 UTC Reply

I just didn't think the extra few sentences were contradicting the notion, and some people might come away with the idea that Sue Hunters are no better than the Sues they hunt. Apologies on my end!

But, I want to say to not respond to those reviews until you're emotionally steady or just... don't reply at all. Not meaning to be rude, but I don't want to feed the flames, so to speak, and have a member of the PPC get in an argument with a TVTropes (non-PPC) member. Does that make any sense?

-kA

And that’s why I said “calmly”. (nm) by Linstar on 2022-06-09 15:23:05 UTC Reply

Whoops! Didn't notice the tl;dr apprently, sorry! -kA (nm) by Kittyauthor on 2022-06-09 15:25:58 UTC Reply

I was actually curious on what TVT thought of "Sue Hunters" in general and uh... by Kittyauthor on 2022-06-09 13:59:19 UTC Reply

The big problem with this sort of character and this sort of fanfic is He Who Fights Monsters. The most well known kinds of Mary Sues are the ones who warp the reality of their 'verses to the author's own liking. As Mary Sue Hunters exist solely to kill perceived Mary Sues and thus change the world of that "verse" to the author's liking, they are by definition a type of Sue. Also, not all authors can reliably tell if an Original Character is a Mary Sue, but Hunters are almost always presumed to be able to tell — they don't generally say "My God, What Have I Done?" So statistically, they are slightly more likely to be a Mary Sue than an OC without an agenda.

(Source)

This probably explains why one thinks Lorson as a Mary Sue. According to the page for Mary Sue Hunters itself, all of our agents are Sue and Stus, more than likely.

Which doesn't make sense to me but okay.

In my opinion, I would just ignore their opinions on the topic. I don't think they're gonna change their opinions if their literal page on Mary Sue Hunters notes that, by killing Mary Sues, our agents are Sues. (This feels a lot like John hunting zombies and demons and them being told "John, you are the demons" and then becoming a zombie to me, tbh.) But, I can understand why you feel upset. I intially felt upset myself upon learning this. It made me have second thoughts and, to be completely honest, it was, for the longest time, why I hated my first mission. It was just as poorly written as the badfic, in my eyes, so I wasn't any better than the fics I was sporking. I hope I've gotten better (and I think I have?), but sometimes it does linger there.

TL;DR: Their page on Sue hunters effectively calls all hunters Sue and Stus, and I don't think their opinions are worth thinking too hard on, but I understand feeling hurt because I felt hurt when I read them, too.

-kA

Come to that, my stuff isn't perfect either. by TheBefuddledBookworm on 2022-06-09 17:11:45 UTC Reply
But at least it has better SPaG than the fic I'm sporking. Also, about the He Who Fights Monsters thing. I am sort of trying to play around with that trope. It is going, well, it's going somewhere. I hope it's not going to be too bad, but then again, I don't have a whole lot of experience with writing.
- Bw, attempting to put their two cents in
That's why there's a charge list. by Lily Winterwood on 2022-06-09 14:31:22 UTC Edited Reply

That's why the agents have to stay and witness what the fic does to the canon, and collect charges to justify whatever they do to restore "the canon". It differentiates the PPC from someone just writing their own OC into a story to kill the existing OC because it makes the writer of the mission have to stop and analyse the fic itself.

Granted, this wasn't always clear in early spin-offs -- or first missions, really. I don't like my first mission (or, honestly, a lot of my older missions) either because I didn't deconstruct the fic and really point out why the agents are going in to "set things right". That's because I was an inexperienced writer, just like the Suefic writers. We all improve with time and experience. The ability to write a good mission goes hand in hand with being able to tell a good story in general.

So I think the tropers do touch on something true -- that PPC writers can be just as inexperienced as the authors whose works they're missioning, and that historically, not every PPC spinoff is objectively "better" than the fic it sporks. But also, I think the PPC pages on TVTropes are a bit of a time capsule into 2000s-early 2010s PPC, and that's not exactly the most accurate snapshot of this community anymore.

TL;DR, if you cringe at your old missions, that's fine. It means you're improving as a writer. Keep it up.

If only TVT had let us update stuff without accusing us of "whitewashing." {= / by Neshomeh on 2022-06-09 16:31:55 UTC Reply

Yes I'm still bitter about that, especially because it leads to poorly informed takes like this.

~Neshomeh

Nuclear take: in general, Tropers don't understand writing. by Scapegrace on 2022-06-09 13:36:35 UTC Reply

Speaking as someone who literally has a postgraduate degree in This Exact Thing, the average Troper does not understand writing. They understand... fan wikis. They understand plot points and moments. They understand that lines and dialogues and themes exist, sure, but have not the slightest clue how any of it is supposed to actually work. They engage with media in the manner of someone ticking off a checklist. They only express interest in whether or not a certain trope or genre convention or whathaveyou is present, and never stop to wonder why.

I'm not sure why anyone cares what they think, but then, I'm biased like that. =]

Um...that seems a bit too much generalized. by Linstar on 2022-06-09 14:02:42 UTC Edited Reply

I don’t think saying “Tropers don’t understand writing” is fair or even accurate. The site’s central premise is the dissection of literature in a humorous way. You’re insulting any PPCers who are also Tropers by saying that.

—Ls, who found the PPC through TVTropes.

Okay, I'll accept that. Let me rephrase: TV Tropes doesn't understand writing. by Scapegrace on 2022-06-09 15:28:04 UTC Reply

TV Tropes is not a good place for media analysis, even in a comedic way. As a site, it suggests that listing all the ways something does or does not conform to genre conventions is in and of itself engaging with the work critically on its own merits. It isn't. At best, TV Tropes is a first step, a comedy guide to criticism and media literacy. Personally, I don't think it's even that. By way of evidence, I offer the many dreadful novels that Tropers have written over the years, which as (not to harp on this topic) someone with a literal postgraduate degree in creative writing feels like being an architect looking at Groverhaus.

Dissection is an apt description of what TV Tropes does to fiction, but in my view it's more akin to dismantling. It's a fundamentally destructive process. It renders down a work of fiction into however many component parts, lays them all out in a row with neat labels that occasionally have something funny on them, and considers it a job well done. It doesn't do anything beyond that. It doesn't teach anything about the parts, how they fit together, how any of it actually works. You're presented with a tray of bolts and screws and bits of bent metal and told it's still a car. Or possibly a frog.

Wikis aren't works of criticism, they're works of reference. A dictionary is not a style guide. TV Tropes is neither a work of, nor a guide to, media criticism. Its stated goal is to be a comedy look at media, and in my opinion and experience that does not lend itself well to engaging with media in good faith or on the work in question's own terms. You don't get an understanding, you just get... snark, I guess? Which, if that's the best the site aspires to be, then more power to it and its user base. That's not a good formula for understanding how to write well. I'm sure it has inspired a lot of people to write more, but it's a start, not an end. If you treat it as such, it will make your writing worse.

That's... really all I have to say on the matter.