All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XVIII

[robkelk]

Old thread is old.

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"Please Put Some Clothes On" currently uses this image as its page image. That image is cropped from this image that shows more.

Now, I don't see any issue with replacing the crop with the complete image (since The Second Google Incident doesn't apply to us), but I know my community's standards are different from other communities' standards.

Safe to replace, or not?

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, yeah, that's fine.

[robkelk]

Thanks. Image replaced.

[Bob Schroeck]

In the future, Rob, you might want to wait for more votes than just mine. Rule of Three. Just sayin'. <grin>

[robkelk]

... his only reason to be back was to be a putz.

Speaking of, do we have a trope for "character who sits back and complains that the people who are actually doing something aren't doing enough work"?

E.g., Yukari-sensei from Azumanga Daioh during the second beach-house episode. Need two more examples that aren't this dude in order to start a Trope Workshop page if we don't have it already.

Still haven't come up with more examples, although I'm reasonably sure that they exist, so I've started the page in my sandbox instead of in the Trope Workshop. Feel free to add to it.

[robkelk]

YKTTW somebody complains about having to live up to unattainable expectations? What do we call that? (I have a new example for it.)

[robkelk]

A proposal for a non-trivial change to the wiki (which is why I'm making it here first - no point in suggesting something that the other mods are against): Add a new type of page.

We have Trope, Work, and Creator (and the less-used types Useful Notes and Just for Fun).

We don't - currently - have Character

Not to say that we don't already have pages about specific characters - Category:Public Domain Character, Category:Historical Domain Character, Category:Top One Hundred Comic Book Villains, Category:DC Comics Characters, and Category:Marvel Comics Characters list dozens of these pages.

I recommend we limit Character pages to characters that have appeared in multiple works. If somebody want to list "that droid who guarded the cell door in a single scene in one obscure fanfic", we already have Characters subpages to put such minor characters on.

If we make "Character" its own type of page, then we'd have to define its look-and-feel.

• First, the title would not be italicized - a character is not a stand-alone work.
  
• A description is mandatory, as it is with every other type of work. Mention who created an fictional character and when the character was created, if these are known. Alternately, mention that a Historical Domain Character is based on a real person.
  
• A trope list analogous to "creatortropes" would follow, detailing the character's personality and circumstances
  
• Then there's a list of the character's appearances in fiction, analogous to an "examples" list for a trope. This is required - the character has to have appeared in multiple works! (If we allow pages for "that droid who guarded the cell door in one fanfic", then we risk becoming swamped with trivia the way Memory Beta and Wookiepedia are.)
  
• Finally, there's an optional stinger and a required category cloud.
  

Pros? Cons? What sorts of subpages would we expect, and how much coding would it take for a new page header type?

We'd have to make clear that Category:Characters and Category:Character are different things.

[Bob Schroeck]

I like this idea. Every time I come across one of the existing character pages we have -- like the Joker, for instance -- I always find myself thinking that it's definitely not a work, but not really a Useful Note, either.

If we do this, we should make the Character template be a simple copy of the Work template so we disturb the existing pages as little as possible.

[robkelk]

I don't have time to hand-hold today. Could somebody else answer this one, please?

[Bob Schroeck]

I don't have time to hand-hold today. Could somebody else answer this one, please?

<goes and reads>

Oh, dear god.

[Bob Schroeck]

I did end up replying to the message above, but that user doesn't appear to have been back since making that request. We'll have to see if they ever return.

On another topic, I know we must have a trope for this but I'm drawing a blank both from memory and searching the wiki. What covers a "Why are we doing something stupid and complex when there's a simple and easier way to do it?" situation. I would have gone for "Common Sense" except that doesn't appear to be a trope. (Maybe it should be; I know I have the perfect page image for it.)

[Bob Schroeck]

Also, three days ago I finally got around to telling Jason taylor that he's got to up his game when it comes to contribution quality. Today his only response despite a request he respond in the thread was a "thank". I'm planning on tempbanning him for lack of proper response in a day or so. Just so folks know.

[robkelk]

Also, three days ago I finally got around to telling Jason taylor that he's got to up his game when it comes to contribution quality.  Today his only response despite a request he respond in the thread was a "thank".  I'm planning on tempbanning him for lack of proper response in a day or so.  Just so folks know.

How about I do the tempbanning? After all, I never saw a "thank"... so as far as I can prove, he hasn't replied.

[Bob Schroeck]

Feel free.

[robkelk]

And done. One-week block, but "once you reply in this thread to Looney Toons' satisfaction, the block will be lifted".

[robkelk]

Is this edit reasonable, or is it based on a misreading of the trope that was linked to?

I had to roll back a similar edit by this particular troper a while ago. Is this a case of the troper getting the trope wrong, or an I getting the trope wrong?

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, ooooh, hard call, but I think I'd come down on Goo Monster's side there.

[robkelk]

Thanks. Leaving that as-is.

As for jason's latest reply... I've replied to it, but I'll bow out of anything that doesn't blatantly push one of my berserk buttons from now on. Tag, you're it.

[Labster]

Not quite sure what to do with this, but a historian has made a really strong case for a trope he's calling The Fremen Mirage which, despite being a relatively complex trope, seems to have over two thousand years of examples of the genre.  I guess, let me put a first draft down here.

Laconic: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”

"The basic outline of this pop theory of history: that a lack of wealth and sophistication leads to moral purity, which in turn leads to military prowess, which consequently produces a cycle of history wherein rich and decadent societies are forever being overthrown by poor, but hardy ‘Fremen’ who then become rich and decadent in their turn."

There are six parts to the idea of the Fremen, taken from Dune as a pure example of the trope:
1. They are unsophisticated and poor, and do not value material wealth
2. They are morally pure, in such a way that their manly virtue makes martial prowesss
3. They are ruthless and clever
4. They are superior fighters due to living in harsh conditions
5. There is a basis for the difference.  Classical basis: environment; modern basis: genetics and ethnic purity
6. They are a contrast to the softer, decadent, effeminate societies around them.

Note that history has never actually supported this as a valid argument, despite the fact it keeps recurring.  State power has almost always rebuffed warlike tribes from any real gains of the richer territories controlled by states.  However, because horse nomads often came from crappier places, they were beyond the state's reach, and thus got an large number of at-bats, and succeeded occasionally.

The only truly successful warlike tribe to beat back several states were the Mongols -- but they didn't succeed because of their virtue.  It was because their survival skill of horse archery happened to be a highly effective military strategy, providing a highly mobile army that didn't need long supply lines -- just pasture.  Thus the mirage -- despite millennia of people advocating this trope as reality, it never seems to have existed in real life.  Though the tropes appear in histories, they are de facto fictions, with facts assumed to make the author's point about culture.

Highly related to [[Barbarian Tribe]] and [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]]. Might actually be the same trope as [[Noble Savage]], but might not.

Examples:
* Tacitus just making shit up about people in Germania as a way of lamenting how kids these days were making Rome weak -- at what was essentially the golden age of the Roman Empire.
* Julius Caesar on his reports of his enemies in Gaul played up how fearsome the next enemy was, based on their unique barbarian culture.  Right before he went and creamed them with a larger army, thus proving how awesome he was.  The power levels of the next Gauls just kept increasing.
* Later people reading Tacitus, and crediting his martial strength to the blood purity of the German people (after centuries of conquests and intermarriage), and thus adding to the strength of the modern German state.  See also [[Those Wacky Nazis]].
* [[Dune]], of course, with its Fremen who take on decadent space empires.

[firvulag]

This looks like a very old trope, Herodotus ends book nine of "The Histories" with something similar, circa 415 BCE.

This Artayctes who suffered death by crucifixion had an ancestor named Atrembares; and he it was who made the Persians a proposal, which they readily accepted and passed on to Cyrus.  'Since,' they said, 'Zeus has given empire to the Persians, and among individuals to you, Cyrus, by your conquest of Astyages, let us leave this small and barren country of ours and take possession of a better.  There are plenty to choose from - some near, some further off; if we take one of them, we shall be admired more than ever.  It is the natural thing for a sovereign people to do; and when will there be a better opportunity than now, when we are masters of many nations and all Asia?'
Cyrus did not think much of this suggestion; he replied that they might act upon it if they pleased, but added the warning that, if they did so, they must prepare themselves to rule no longer, but to be ruled by others.  'Soft countries,' he said, 'breed soft men.  It is not the property of any one soil to produce fine fruits and good soldiers too.'  The Persians had to admit that this was true and that Cyrus was wiser than they; so they left him, and chose rather to live in a rugged land and rule than to cultivate rich plains and be slaves to others.

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks. Leaving that as-is.

As for jason's latest reply... I've replied to it, but I'll bow out of anything that doesn't blatantly push one of my berserk buttons from now on. Tag, you're it.

Heh.  I was in the process of writing a rather more substantial reply when you posted that, and I edited mine to reflect yours before posting it.  If he wanted specific requests, well, he's got a very specific laundry list of his common errors now.

[Bob Schroeck]

Not quite sure what to do with this, but a historian has made a really strong case for a trope he's calling The Fremen Mirage which, despite being a relatively complex trope, seems to have over two thousand years of examples of the genre.  I guess, let me put a first draft down here.

Laconic: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”

I swear I've seen this in other contexts.  Didn't the Foundation trilogy use something like this for its galactic civilization?

Anyway. Your write-up looks good, although I think it could stand to be expanded a little bit, and maybe make the fact that this is not a "real" cycle of history clearer. Maybe note that this is basically a Plot, albeit on a civilization-wide scale, not an individual one, usually played out over generations with Named Characters not so much "driving" it as "riding" it (the "right men at the right time" kind of thing) at key moments in the cycle.

But yeah. I like it.

[robkelk]

I swear I've seen this in other contexts.  Didn't the Foundation trilogy use something like this for its galactic civilization?

Well, he was riffing off Gibbon [who?], who used Tacitus as a source, so it's to be expected.

[robkelk]

For various reasons, the first line in this section came up today.

"If an image has a little copyright stamp (©) on it, we can't use it." is straight out of TVTropes. Is this our policy as well, or do we - with our more granular ability to track image licenses - go with a more mainstream interpretation of "fair use" / "fair dealing" and say we can use it the way any other encyclopedic website (such as Wikipedia) can?

[Bob Schroeck]

<goes and reads>... why can't we use it if the copyright owner permits? This smacks of someone at TVT not wanting anyone to look too closely at their license situation again.