TV Tropes/Quotes

It Just Bugs Me (Headscratchers)

"This is not forum games. This is IJBM. Where everything is serious business and sex topics are derailed into language discussions, and language discussions are derailed into sex topics."

—AHR, TV Tropes thread

Neutral

"TVTropes exists as a site to catalogue "Tropes", which are supposedly common elements of fiction. In practice this means that they have a trope page for every possible cliché imaginable, plus several that aren’t really narrative clichés at all. So while a trope page for "Everyone Did It" is an actual trope, they also have trope pages for "Hawaiian Shirt" and "Fan Art", which are not narrative clichés. So a trope page exists for every possible thing that could happen in or appear in a piece of work ever, regardless of whether or not it is narratively relevant. So that’s what a trope is."

—Namtab (Something Awful goon) in the Foreword, Anime is the Tie that Binds Us: An Unofficial Criticism of "Mills College Anime Club"

ROFL! It's so adorable when people break their TV Tropes cherries. It's like when small children fall down wells and can't get out.

—"Kylenne," wow.com, 10/7/2009

Negative

"TV Tropes is filled with anti-intellectualism, horribly shallow "analysis" that often misses the point by a mile, a moratorium on expressing critical thought, enforced fake positivity that makes the Stepford Wives look normal by comparison, pedophilia, and disgusting insular attitudes that make all of the above possible."

—Dr. O, Television Tropes & Idiots (Project A.F.T.E.R. editorial)

"A person who discovered that she is just like everybody else and instead of accepting it, she made an autistic little club into finding things that don't exist?
Sounds like a troper thing to do."

—Accel_Rider on Haruhi Suzumiya, in a Kiwi Farms thread about TV Tropes

"A valuable meta-cultural resource? Are you high? A better name for TV Tropes would be "A List of Things That Happened: The (Bloated And Costly) Wiki."
TV Tropes doesn't analyze anything. It's just a place where socially stunted weirdos can sperg about their favorite children's cartoon show and make lists of a whole bunch of pointless trivia."

—BreadGod, reply to a comment on TV Tropes Deletes Every Rape Trope; Geek Feminism Wiki steps in (The Mary Sue)

"The new community’s sense of self-perceived intellectualism (in actuality, pseudo-intellectualism), paired with the loss of the original community and the administration’s rush to make the site more family-friendly, has left TV Tropes as a place for the socially inept individuals seeking vindication of their beliefs and hobbies in an environment where criticism is neither present nor tolerated. The unique tenants of the site, paired with the administration’s new efforts to promote a confrontation-free environment, allows self-proclaimed critics to vocalise their opinions without criticism or feedback. Engrossed in their pseudo-intellectual pursuits, and without anyone to remind them that their approach was misguided, the TV Tropes community has decayed. Anything resembling intelligent discussion is absent now: individuals insistently believe that everything they have to say is important, and that by talking with other individuals, they are somehow contributing greatly to the field of media. Instead of meaningful discussion, there is a forced consensus and mindless agreement: contrary opinions are quickly suppressed by the moderators, removing any opportunity to present alternate viewpoints.

From the events that have transpired, a few points become apparent: TV Tropes has only ever been a project about categorising different aspects in media, and its main value lay within the community that created it. The responsibility in maintaining the community is a joint effort between the moderators and members. The initially open policies at TV Tropes led its members to get away with increasingly questionable materials, and by the time the administration stepped in to regulate materials following the First Google Incident, the community had already become divided in opinion. The fractures in the community led some members to become banned, and others simply left out of protest or for their own reasons. Future events resulted in further site policy changes and divided the community further: these change has done TV Tropes a very great disservice, discouraging the open discussion that made once TV Tropes a good place to hang out and talk about various matters. These changes did not happen overnight, instead, culminating as a result of the community’s own actions, leading the administration to push for a more family-friendly site. Of course, doing so encouraged the membership of youth with little experience in the real world and even less courtesy, driving the site further away from its original objective of maintaining an informal, breezy place to talk about media."

—infinitezenith, Tv Tropes and the rise of pseudo-intellectualism

"[...] [M]y hatred of TVTropes is born from my love of art. See, while TVTropes may put on airs and claim that they are “celebrating” art and media, in truth it is diametrically opposed to art.
What TVTropes is ultimately trying to do is to create a catalog of what goes into the making of fiction. "Trope" in the tropespeak sense, is not just what you and I call a trope. Anything that happens, makes up a plot is a trope. Any aspect of a character's appearance, personality or concept is a trope. Anything that relates to the conception, creation or structure of a work is a trope. Everything to do with purpose, meaning or theme of a work is a trope. Mediums, style and genre are tropes. Everything is a trope.
People have compared it to the Periodic Table, and that's really what it's like. They are trying to build a Periodic Table for art. Tropes are to art as atoms are to matter.
But art isn't finite. You can't just plug and play, and hope for the best. What they are describing are not devices in writing, they are arbitrary observations made by people who know nothing about art. As a fellow goon said, they are like the Collectors from Mass Effect, brutally collecting all art, and grinding it down into a gray paste.
They are trying to take the soul from art. How can I feel anything but disdain for someone that does that?"

—Build Your Own Boat (Something Awful goon) in the Foreword, Moby Goon and other works of Build Your Own Boat

Vorticity: I'm apologizing for the behavior of the admins when you tried to do this change on TV Tropes. I guess you missed that subtext 😛
Topazan: Oh, thanks, but if you're going to apologize for every time the tvtropes mods were dicks to their users, you're going to be here a LONG time. :)

—From a 2014 discussion on Talk:Subtext

Apparently Pizzeria Tycoon has a TV Tropes page, I used to think that was an accomplishment, now I know it is a curse.

—"Emissary", on SpaceBattles.com

TV Tropes is currently run by mentally ill totalitarians who distort, exaggerate, or fabricate reasons to ban people.

—"Katie_Boundary", r/tvtropes, 12/26/2021

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