Eccentric Flower talk:200912/The Alien Washing Machine

Shmuel:

Please note: Tropes Are Tools. Which includes "Tropes Are Not Bad."

-- 21:17, 14 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Well, then the tone needs to be a wee touch less one-sided, don't you think?

-- 21:20, 14 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

That is, yes, I agree tropes are merely tools, and I'm happy the site agrees tropes are merely tools on what amounts to one of their policy pages - but that doesn't change the fact that everywhere else on the site the tone is, "Look what these idiots do and let's all talk about how annoying it is."

Now, I realize a fair bit of the content is user-submitted, so I may be punishing the site maintainers for the sins of their users, but, too bad.

-- 21:22, 14 December 2009 (GMT)

Shmuel:

I confess that I don't hear the tone the same way you do. It does sometimes veer into either snarking about or reveling in the use of a trope, but usually it just lists examples and lets the reader decide how she feels about it. That article seems a perfect example of that...

-- 21:29, 14 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

I see what you mean, and I confess that I can't point to any examples where the tone seems hostile ... and yet the overall effect I get from the page is basically that of a "list of shame," as if calling out offenders. Which is pretty much what I get from almost all of their other pages as well, even when I feel the trope needs some ridicule.

P.S. I have changed the second paragraph of the entry, because I think you're right, but I still can't shake the sensation that there's an attitude here I don't like. When SFWA wrote the Turkey City Lexicon, it was meant to be a guide for new writers (e.g. what not to do) and the attitude, if condescending, was basically helpful. But as soon as the lexicon got reprinted on the tropes site, the helpful was gone, and now it is condescending plus point-and-laugh. I can't see the basic tone of the tropes site as anything other than point-and-laugh, really. I'm sure it's just me!

-- 21:31, 14 December 2009 (GMT)

Shmuel:

While the sheer number of examples can be overwhelming, my attitude browsing it tends to be more like "Cool! Hey, I wonder it has my favorite webcomic listed for this... yay, it does!" I think by and large tropers list works they generally like... I tend to wander through it in a haze of pleased recognition. But that, too, may just be me!

(The two sides of this may be embodied in the Sugar Wiki and Darth Wiki.)

-- 22:20, 14 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Huh. Not a word about the substantive body of the entry (no offense, Shmuel, but that was a side discussion there). Foo on y'all.

-- 21:32, 15 December 2009 (GMT)

Thomas:

The trouble with the main point of the entry is that a writer cannot buy the indulgence against being snarked at.

A reader can always complain: "Why did you give me chocolate (and inferior quality one, at that) while I felt like eating some mushroom stew at the moment!"

Also, you tell yourself that about the issues you agree with you have nothing to say. And you refuse to post useless comments like: "You have a point here. I agree. Thank you for writing this thought provoking piece!"

So why are you not filing this one as : "Yay! For once everyone agrees with me! No comments full of disagreement!"

-- 04:51, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Thomas:

After some addditional rambling in email (as you actually do have point that we should provide some feedback), I still left out another possible solution.

You can make the hero an hardliner in language use - in his notebook he will use only human words, no loans from aliens! It might be a conscious choice - the hero may have disliked listening to people who return from the travels among the aliens and seem to have gone native (gone alien?) so badly, their language so contaminated by alien words and constructions that it is all but impossible to understand.

So no alien words used, no matter how ridiculous the result.

-- 09:28, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

So why are you not filing this one as : "Yay! For once everyone agrees with me! No comments full of disagreement!"

Because I don't believe for a moment that everyone agrees with me.

The issue in your second post is actually a very important one. The business of "going native" is one of the key points in the story, and the idea of strict-English-in-the-journal-as-rebellion is one that, indeed, comes up - with all its related mental issues. So, you see, you are prescient!

-- 15:29, 16 December 2009 (GMT)