Forum:My idea

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Hey guys, it's been awhile.

So, awhile back I made the suggestion that All the Tropes should distinguish itself from tvtropes somehow.

My idea was that we could be a "one-stop-shop" reference for fiction and pop culture. One of the ways I proposed we do this is to create a space for "world elements". Vorticity asked me to try it out in my user space.

Here's my example: http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/User:Topazan/QuantumVibe

I meant for this to be much more complete before I showed it off. The fact that I was only able to finish a couple of entries shows the major flaw in this plan: the amount of manpower it would require.

However, I think that this could help attract more attention to this wiki. Every time one of us sees a new fandom, or a new webcomic or something, we can say "Have you started a wiki for this yet?  We'll give you the server space, community, and the framework of tropes to get you started." If we can turn this place into THE place for making fictional world wikis, that will go a long way towards distinguishing us.


 * Bump Topazan (talk) 19:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Will someone please say something? :) Topazan (talk) 02:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * While I admire the idea, we're a wiki on a wiki farm, not a wiki farm ourselves. However, you always could help our insanely benevolent Orain overlords out by recommending this wiki farm service to people who want to do that and don't like the limitations of Wikia (our main competitor in this regard). GethN7 (talk) 03:41, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, my main concern is that we find something to offer that tvtropes doesn't. It doesn't have to be this, but if we don't think of something we'll never overcome tvtropes' massive head start or attract enough people to match their advantage in community.  I don't think what I'm proposing would take away from the core mission of this wiki.  There'a a lot of interesting analysis that could be done by focusing on individual elements rather than the work as a whole.  In fact, many tropes are only applicable to individual elements.  Many tropes, for example, are character tropes.  If we focus on a specific character, we could really reflect on what purpose he serves in the story, his relationships with other characters and the associated tropes, and the tropes concerning his character arc in the story.  This, I think, would be much more meaningful than "Somewhere in this ten book series there's a Knight In Sour Armour who wears a Badass Longcoat and had a Crowning Moment of Awesome.  Topazan (talk) 03:59, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about being out of contact for so long. Part of it was not having time to say anything, part of it is not knowing what to say. I... don't know if it's the right vision for us. That's a not a quasi-polite dismissal; I mean I really have no idea. I really don't have much of a vision for the site other than "tropes, but better". And that's my failure more than anything. Which means that you're asking the right questions, Topozan, but I don't have answers for them.

But, I guess that means I'm going to attempt it anyway.

This, I think, would be much more meaningful than "Somewhere in this ten book series there's a Knight In Sour Armour who wears a Badass Longcoat and had a Crowning Moment of Awesome." So that statement is 100% true. And covering that would be useful. I had similar thoughts when I was thinking about Azumanga Daioh, and writing my fanfic on the topic. I discovered that, other than tropes and stuff, the cast each serves a particular role with respect to plot: Where does that go? It seems like it says something about writing, and thus belongs on the wiki. That characters can be used to alter the plot, not just react to it. But where does it go?
 * Tomo: plot escalation
 * Yomi: plot descalation
 * Kagura: conflict creation (typically as competition)
 * Sakaki: conflict resolution
 * Osaka: plot permutation
 * Chiyo: mood lightening
 * Kaorin: mood darkening

I think I need to work backwards from first principles, then. What is fiction?

It seems to be made of a few parts:
 * Plot
 * Characters
 * Setting
 * Theme
 * Medium
 * Audience

Plot is perhaps an emergent property of the characters interacting with the setting, out of which conflicts arise, play out, and resolve over the course of time. Settings change, and characters develop over the course of the plot. And "theme" really means all of the metatext about the story -- aesops, emotional response, subtext, and maybe even symbolism. All of this seems to be virtually universal, from minimalist works like Hemingway's Six Word Story or The Orc and the Pie], all the way to The Bible or The Lord of the Rings.

Tropes themselves are a form of metatext -- sometimes even meta-metatext, because they're about the process of story creation and the creation of metatext. But that might be a level of indirection too far :) But in general, tropes are descriptors of common patterns in plot, characters, or setting, and occasionally theme.

And finally, it's actually impossible to separate a work from its audience -- after all, the first audience is the author herself. And God created Man on the sixth day, so that someone else could see how bitchin' creation is.

So, how do are those things currently covered on the wiki?


 * Recap pages, more than anything, seem to be about plot. They have summaries, and often recurse into trope pages (subplot tropes)
 * Quotes pages are sort of a selective form of recaptulation.
 * Image Links is kind of the same deal, but in graphic form.
 * Laconic could honestly be anything, but it usually comes down to genre and plot.
 * Characters pages are, unsurprisingly enough, about characters.
 * Ho Yay is occasionally about characterization.
 * Trivia is ostensibly for the craft and its medium, but honestly it's for stuff that TVT folk don't quite consider a trope. It also includes audience reactions, which is actually a different thing entirely.
 * Radar pages are also about the craft, in allowing communication across social norms.
 * Analysis pages are about the theme of the work, it's particular uses of symbolism, and social context.
 * Audience subpages include:
 * Emotion class:
 * Crowning Moment of Funny, Heartwarming, and Awesome subpages are primarily about the reader's emotional connection to the work. In this case: laughter, love, and joy.
 * Nightmare Fuel is the same thing, but for fear.
 * Tear Jerker is the same, but for sadness.
 * Reviews, naturally, are about the viewer's overall perception of the work's quality.
 * Ho Yay is some portion audience reaction, combined with characterization.
 * On second thought... categories include:
 * Fridge -- works that are more brilliant/scary/confusing in hindsight.
 * Headscratchers are the same, but even more confusing in hindsight, so I'm going to complain.
 * ... and the second half of Trivia, which tends to be about mass audience reactions.
 * We also have metacanon pages, too. Fanfic Recs are for adaptations, continuations, or transformations of the original canon.
 * Memes is a variant of this, in a bite-sized, pithy adaptations.
 * Haiku are inline metacanon, poetry inspired by other works.
 * WMG are thought-experiment extensions to canon.
 * YMMV is a really odd bird. Content can really belong to any category, so long as people agree that it doesn't always belong.

That's kind of a wall of text, but do you notice what's missing from the list above? Setting! Setting tropes, always always go on the main page. Plot tropes typically do, but sometimes only appear in Recaps; character tropes are sometimes banished to the characters subpage.

World elements are a core part of storytelling, which we generally call setting. So I'm going to pronounce GethN7's argument as rejected. That said, I'm not sure Topozan's argument is all-the-way where it needs to be yet, either. I feel like a lot of that page could fit in our existing framework. I tend to believe in incremental change. I don't think radical changes are successful in the long run, as much as I want to revolutionize the world.

In that spirit, I propose a new subpage for settings, worlds, and the general millieu of a work. I think that's a good fit, sets us in a new direction, and refocuses us towards writing. Does that feel like a good start? Vorticity (talk) 09:04, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Given the rather wordy yet eloquent way this counter argument was presented, I have to agree the new subpage idea has merit. I originally was under a completely different impression about what this idea was all about, but the way Vorticity puts it sounds like it might be worth considering. GethN7 (talk) 14:08, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * That does sound like a good start, but I'm not clear on how this setting sub-page would be organized. Setting is a pretty complex thing and honestly I think the character sub-page doesn't really provide enough room for real depth either.  I also don't see any reason why we should be beholden to tvtrope's format except on its own merit.  We're not the same site.  To that end, I think we should do something about the ambiguity between "headscratchers" and "fridge logic", and eliminate one or the other. Topazan (talk) 22:40, 16 March 2014 (UTC)