Diseased TV Tropes community

[From The Uncanny Valley]

What page is this?

"Surprisingly Improved Sequel"

 

[Gingervitis]

"WE CAN'T THINK FOR OURSELVES!"

To be fair, Cinderella 3 > Cinderella 1

 

[GethN7]

Y'know, after looking at the cringey as shit SJW whining on some TV Tropes pages, and realizing my own wiki has most of those pages either without the whining or they haven't been written yet, that means I and everyone else sick of that crap get to have our cake and eat it too.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

When I first discovered TV tropes I had a grand old time looking up all the shows, movies, and video games from my childhood. It was great to see other people also found things weird, annoying, and nonsensical just like I did.

I continued reading it for all the shows and movies I'd watch, I'd go there and see their take. It's great to see something pointed out there that you thought only you noticed. I really enjoyed their pages on double standards, stupid aesops, and things like that.

Over time, the site has gotten worse. The goofy leftist crybullying wasn't it, I never cared about the forums and didn't see much of the effects of it. It was just the armies of weird anime fans, filling up every single page with a million examples of kamen rider alphabet soup volume 62, naruto, and the various other word salad anime titles... everything is a reference to Dr. Who, dumb arguments on fan sites became important trivia to document, and worst of all, the fucking pinball examples in everything.

It's like it went from people documenting stuff that amused them to people obsessively filling out the pages for their favorite works, like it's a requirement that any entry include every single trope ever mentioned on the site. Every single thing ever has the four-temperament ensemble (Come on, do we really think the creators of any modern media are giving a moment's thought to which character has the phlegmatic personality) or the 5 man band. Has anyone in real life given a moment's thought to which of the 5 friends were the lancer? Red oni/blue oni? What the hell are you talking about?

Also... what the fuck does pinball have to do with tropes? Pinball machines are fun and all, but they are not a medium telling a story worth thoughtful analysis. Why was pinball allowed to be entered? If you want to obsessively document pinball machines, do it on wikipedia. I came here to laugh at the silly stuff in media, not check out your autism fort you built with all your Dr. Who DVDs.

 

[GethN7]

When I first discovered TV tropes I had a grand old time looking up all the shows, movies, and video games from my childhood. It was great to see other people also found things weird, annoying, and nonsensical just like I did.

I continued reading it for all the shows and movies I'd watch, I'd go there and see their take. It's great to see something pointed out there that you thought only you noticed. I really enjoyed their pages on double standards, stupid aesops, and things like that.

Over time, the site has gotten worse. The goofy leftist crybullying wasn't it, I never cared about the forums and didn't see much of the effects of it. It was just the armies of weird anime fans, filling up every single page with a million examples of kamen rider alphabet soup volume 62, naruto, and the various other word salad anime titles... everything is a reference to Dr. Who, dumb arguments on fan sites became important trivia to document, and worst of all, the fucking pinball examples in everything.

It's like it went from people documenting stuff that amused them to people obsessively filling out the pages for their favorite works, like it's a requirement that any entry include every single trope ever mentioned on the site. Every single thing ever has the four-temperament ensemble (Come on, do we really think the creators of any modern media are giving a moment's thought to which character has the phlegmatic personality) or the 5 man band. Has anyone in real life given a moment's thought to which of the 5 friends were the lancer? Red oni/blue oni? What the hell are you talking about?

Also... what the fuck does pinball have to do with tropes? Pinball machines are fun and all, but they are not a medium telling a story worth thoughtful analysis. Why was pinball allowed to be entered? If you want to obsessively document pinball machines, do it on wikipedia. I came here to laugh at the silly stuff in media, not check out your autism fort you built with all your Dr. Who DVDs.

The issue is one my colleague Brent Laabs has addressed, what he calls the the issue between "content creation"and "content classification".

The former is what you went to see on TV Tropes, new content about things you didn't know before.

The latter is what you found stupid, which is the obsessive need to add all sorts of trivia you already know compulsively and ad nauseum to every page.

The latter does have it's place, some works do share related tropes and classifying them is useful to an extent, but explaining new concepts and media is how a troping wiki is supposed to actually grow.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

'
The Emoji Movie was a production doomed by its very concept: In a world inside a smartphone, where each emoji has its own specific role it can fill, one, Gene, can express a variety of emotions. For this, he is cast out of Textopolis, embarking on a quest to fit in. In the meantime, the phone's owner, Alex, tries to woo his crush while beginning a new chapter of his life. When the "meh" emoji she's texted goes haywire, he sets out to factory-reset the phone. The story is clichéd, insultingly predictable, embarrassingly unsubtle and self-contradictory with each of its messages (one of which is a message that practically anyone would know, making it completely pointless), in addition to being obnoxiously "hip" and "with it" without providing any message of actual value to the audience. It outright plagiarizes several plot points and even an entire subplot from far more successful animated films made in the past five years, albeit without any of their sincerity and originality (namely, Wreck-It Ralph, Inside Out and The LEGO Movie.) That's saying nothing about the generic, uninspired and nonsensically failed attempts at humor (many of which date the film right away, or are even offensively awfulnote ) or the embarrassingly heavy-handed dialogue (which tends to be unintentionally hilarious at times, and often tends to be more entertaining than the film's poor attempts at humor), as well as the fact that it's plainly been written by people who know absolutely nothing about the subject matter being covered by the film.note Most of the characters are by design and personality one-note, and the ones that aren't unlikable are just boring or exceedingly obnoxious, making it nigh-impossible to care about what happens to them. By and large, the most effort in this film went to the blatant Product Placement, which takes up huge chunks of the film and all but derails any semblance of a plot, to the point that it's basically a 90-minute-long advertisement. Even the admittedly beautiful animation isn't enough to save it from everything else wrong with it.

• While its very announcement was met with scorn across the Internet, with mocking it becoming a popular trend, review sites didn't treat it much better when it was finally released (it was Not Screened for Critics to prevent the awful reviews affecting its box office; this didn't help much, as the movie was only mildly profitable, and even then only because people went to watch it purely out of Bile Fascination due to all the massive backlash); its Metacritic page currently stands at 12 out of 100 (earning it the dubious distinction of the lowest Metascore of any animated movie), its Rotten Tomatoes page currently stands at 8% (the second-lowest score thus far for an animated film, with an average rating of 2.7/10, which is lower than Norm of the North's 3.1/10) and its rating is 2.7 on IMDb, at one point appearing on the site's Bottom 100 list. Many professional critics have gone so far as to say that the film represents everything wrong with Hollywood due to how cynical and profit-driven it is, and that it would cause the end of cinema due to its sheer awfulness.
• The sad part is, T.J. Miller left his role on Silicon Valley to star in this film. Would you believe that Sony Pictures Animation president Kristine Belson believed that this would be the beginning of an animation renaissance for the company? In addition, Sony apparently thought this movie would be so great that they submitted it for Best Animated Feature consideration at the Oscars. Unsurprisingly, it didn't even get nominated.
• The backlash for this movie is so strong that many reviewers gladly and willingly gave it a beatdown. Said reviews are far more entertaining than the film itself:
  1. Chris Stuckmann tears this movie a new one (and in his review of The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, he mocks this film as "the recent animated version of cancer on film"), and he later named it his worst film of 2017, beating out other stinkers like Fifty Shades Darker and the Flatliners remake due to how angry he was at its shameless pandering to children and its awful moral of "Text more often!" that he wanted to find every copy of the movie and destroy it.
  2. AniMat also tears the film apart here (at one point saying that the film's attempts at humor are so awful that even Dunkirk, a war film, is a funnier film), and he later named it his #1 worst animated film of 2017, going so far as to say that it's a fact that the film is bad by that point.
  3. I Hate Everything analyzes his open disgust in great detail.
  4. Bobsheaux points out the film's Idiot Plot here.
  5. Phantom Strider gives the movie a dressing down over its pandering nature here and named it the worst film of 2017.
  6. CellSpex also takes several shots at it, and would later call it the worst film of the year.
  7. Brad Jones said in the opening of the Midnight Screenings review that it was so bad he thought that Dave Gobble (an atheist) "found religion". They would both put it their respective worst of the year lists (Jones at #5, Gobble at #1)
  8. The Double Toasted crew also shared their thoughts on the matter. Token White guy Grits would call it his personal worst film of the year.
  9. Max Gilardi (of Brain Dump) came up with a much better plot for the film.
  10. Quinton Reviews brings up the Unfortunate Implications of the film here.
  11. Joey Tedesco of the Cartoon Palooza also shared his thoughts in two separate videos.
  12. RebelTaxi would later call the film the 9th Worst Cartoon News of 2017.
  13. The Mysterious Mr. Enter also has some choice words for the film, and he points out how the film has the audacity to insult its own audience while pandering to them at the same time. He also compared the film to the infamous Seltzer and Friedberg films.
  14. MovieBob also talks about it here, and later named it his 5th worst film of 2017.
  15. Even xkcd got in on the action.
• Many have gone so far as to say that it makes Norm of the North look like a masterpiece by comparison, since at least that film had an actual plot and was made on a much lower budget, originally being meant to be Direct-to-DVD, whereas this film is a profit-driven cynical 90-minute-long advertisement without much of a discernible plot made on a $50 million budget by a bigger studio that has made theatrically-released animated films before with talented voice actors, such as Patrick Stewart of all people.
• Furthermore, the film made history by becoming the first ever animated film to be nominated and win the awards for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screen Combo and Worst Screenplay at the Golden Raspberry Awards, beating out other reviled films like Transformers: The Last Knight and Fifty Shades Darker.

Is this virtuesignalling? I'm pretty sure this is virtuesignalling.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Is this virtuesignalling? I'm pretty sure this is virtuesignalling.

That's a lot of words to just say, "This movie sucked."

 

[NARPASSWORD]

Is this virtuesignalling? I'm pretty sure this is virtuesignalling.

Let me guess, this is on "so bad it's horrible", isn't it?

 

[Zarkov]

Also... what the fuck does pinball have to do with tropes? Pinball machines are fun and all, but they are not a medium telling a story worth thoughtful analysis. Why was pinball allowed to be entered? If you want to obsessively document pinball machines, do it on wikipedia.

They are autists. Autists have weird obsessions and are convinced everyone cares.

 

[GethN7]

They are autists. Autists have weird obsessions and are convinced everyone cares.

I think I can PARTIALLY explain.

Pinball is a combination of tropes concerning toys and whatever media they represent if they are based off a licensed property, so by this definition, qualify as a form of media and are thus a creative work.

Granted, all pinball machines generally have the same mechanics and outside of any shout-outs or cameo references to things included in later versions of the main work for licensed properties, there is not that much to say about pinball machines.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Yeah, exactly.

The entries are stuff like:
Gameplay and story segregation: Subverted Trope - While the Bally version of the machine does seem to indicate when you get the ball over the Jackpot Ramp (Linked to "Exactly what it says on the tin") and clear the loop de loop, that Batman throws his Batarang and knocks the Joker off his helicoper. However the Midway version of the machine showed that canonically that was not a batarang, but in fact a pinball with wings fastened to it.

Fan Dumb - "In this linked chat log you can see where this other dumb guy says it's a batarang even though the wings are clearly only 24mm in length rather than the canonically established 23.75mm length"

Fridge Brilliance: "When you hit the machine really hard it says "TILT". Observant fans will recall in episode #633 of "This Gay Batman" when he threw the joker into the arcade, a pinball machine also said tilt. Upon further inspection of the 2 pixels that can be made out of the pinball machine in that comic, it's clearly this machine!"

Now, I wouldn't care if this kind of nonsense would just stay on the entry about the pinball machines. But this will show up in anything even tangentially related. And this obsessive documenting is diluting the genuinely interesting and funny content. Same with anime stuff. It'd be fine if it were segregated, especially since so many tropes are anime tropes and really don't fit other media. But it crowds other stuff out because there's just so damn much of it.

 

[NARPASSWORD]

Yeah, exactly.

The entries are stuff like:
Gameplay and story segregation: Subverted Trope - While the Bally version of the machine does seem to indicate when you get the ball over the Jackpot Ramp (Linked to "Exactly what it says on the tin") and clear the loop de loop, that Batman throws his Batarang and knocks the Joker off his helicoper. However the Midway version of the machine showed that canonically that was not a batarang, but in fact a pinball with wings fastened to it.

Fan Dumb - "In this linked chat log you can see where this other dumb guy says it's a batarang even though the wings are clearly only 24mm in length rather than the canonically established 23.75mm length"

Fridge Brilliance: "When you hit the machine really hard it says "TILT". Observant fans will recall in episode #633 of "This Gay Batman" when he threw the joker into the arcade, a pinball machine also said tilt. Upon further inspection of the 2 pixels that can be made out of the pinball machine in that comic, it's clearly this machine!"

Now, I wouldn't care if this kind of nonsense would just stay on the entry about the pinball machines. But this will show up in anything even tangentially related. And this obsessive documenting is diluting the genuinely interesting and funny content. Same with anime stuff. It'd be fine if it were segregated, especially since so many tropes are anime tropes and really don't fit other media. But it crowds other stuff out because there's just so damn much of it.

I actually find the pinball stuff worse than the animu autism. At least anime is a type of media with actual storytelling elements and world building. Pinball is just a plotless game (sometimes video, sometimes not) that's not really worth analyzing in any meaningful way.
And this is coming from someone that loves pinball, mind you.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I quite enjoy pinball machines as well. There's just not much to analyse, from a story perspective. If you want to analyse them from a pinball perspective I'm sure plenty of pinball enthusiasts could find something interesting to talk about, but that's not what TV tropes is.

Like I said, the anime stuff is fine, it just should be separated. Like, so many tropes in anime simply do not exist in other forms of media, because it's all based on weird japanese stuff that only makes sense within the context of that culture. And it seems like any popular anime has a thousand different shows made with almost the same name but with some word salad thrown in at the end, which causes them to clog up any entry they find themselves in.

 

[Wakko Warner]

I quite enjoy pinball machines as well. There's just not much to analyse, from a story perspective. If you want to analyse them from a pinball perspective I'm sure plenty of pinball enthusiasts could find something interesting to talk about, but that's not what TV tropes is.

Like I said, the anime stuff is fine, it just should be separated. Like, so many tropes in anime simply do not exist in other forms of media, because it's all based on weird japanese stuff that only makes sense within the context of that culture. And it seems like any popular anime has a thousand different shows made with almost the same name but with some word salad thrown in at the end, which causes them to clog up any entry they find themselves in.

If you think that's weird, there's a page for McDonald's, and some articles have "Foodstuffs" as a category!

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Say, anyone notice that TVTropes has changed its entire appearance?

Apologies if I'm :late: on this.

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

Say, anyone notice that TVTropes has changed its entire appearance?

Apologies if I'm :late: on this.

It's because of Nate Spergwood.

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

Say, anyone notice that TVTropes has changed its entire appearance?

Apologies if I'm :late: on this.

You weren’t. It happened about 3:30. I don’t think they even announced it would happen like they did the last time.

 

[Anus]

Actually, from what I can tell, the Pinball-related entries are by and large the work of one autist with far too much time on his hands.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

You weren’t. It happened about 3:30. I don’t think they even announced it would happen like they did the last time.

They did on my end, they said they disabled editing and logins until they updated it.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Actually, from what I can tell, the Pinball-related entries are by and large the work of one autist with far too much time on his hands.

Whoever they are, they deserve a thread.