All The Tropes:Tropes Are Tools: Difference between revisions

When editing the wiki, then, remember these two mantras:

 

 

There is one thing that you must keep in mind to retain your sanity here, and that is that including a trope in a particular work does not make it "''[[Ruined FOREVER|ruined]]''." Not even ''[[Bad Writing Index|those]]'' tropes.

'''There is nothing new under the sun.''' Including that very statement. And the [[The Bible|book]] from which it comes. Completely ignoring the possibility that one's favorite show just might ''not'' be hewn from the very essence of the universe by Thor himself and placed in the periodic table under '''Or''' for "Originalium" doesn't change the fact that it ''wasn't''. And acknowledging that it isn't should not lessen its appeal, either.

 

 

[[The Tropeless Tale|It's impossible to write something completely and utterly without tropes, anyway, so stop trying.]]

'''Fiction isn't necessarily supposed to be realistic.''' When your reader wants to escape from the tired drudgery of reality, you shouldn't be trying to indexically recreate it. Much fiction seeks to show not what is, but what could be, or what should be. A trope being unrealistic isn't necessarily a flaw, and is often covered by [[Rule of Cool]], [[Rule of Funny]], or [[Rule of Scary]]. Indeed, a trope, however unrealistic, can be a convenient shorthand when played straight; setting up aversions or subversions for it can be more wordy than is needed to get on with story.

 

 

[[Tropes Are Not Bad]] covers the bad half of this, but there are good reasons to remember [[Tropes Are Not Good]], too:

'''All tropes can be written badly.''' This includes tropes that everyone thinks are good, like [[Magnificent Bastard]]. A badly written [[Magnificent Bastard]] may be done in such a way that everyone else in the story are [[Idiot Ball|idiots]] and generally gives less of an impression of intelligence and more of an impression of [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|cheating]] or changing the [[Screw the Rules I Have Plot|internal rules]] of the story. [[Refuge in Audacity]] has different breaking points for different people.

 

 

'''Just because a trope is realistic doesn't mean it's good.''' There is a reason why we have an entire category devoted to [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]. That category only applies to video games, but there are some good non-video game examples as well. For example, [[The Hero]] gets shot in the shoulder and dies. [[The Determinator]] doesn't come into play, no [[My Name Is Inigo Montoya]], nothing. Realistic, maybe, but that is not what we want a hero to do. That's right, one of the most fundamental character archetypes is usually unrealistic. The important thing when writing a story is that it's ''believable'', not that it's ''real''. [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], after all; often people are so used to tropes that it's ''reality'' they find jarring.