[376] It's been a while

[heartburnkid]

I'm actually an editor on the TV Tropes Wiki, and I just wanted to pop in and say that nobody's trying to make fun of Tom. You've even got a couple of nominations in our current "best webcomic" voting on the forum.

We're here to catalog, not insult. Sure, sometimes we get a little snarky, but we really wouldn't be fans if we weren't. We don't really hate or insult anybody (well, except perhaps Vince Russo. And 4Kids Entertainment. And M. Night Shaylaman. OK, there's a few people we insult, but you're not one). Tropes are not "cliches", they are storytelling devices. Whether they're cliche or not depends entirely on how they're used.

Remember, Tropes Are Not Bad.

[Tom Siddell]

As long as you also remember that saying "no offence" doesn't mean you're absolved of causing offence.

Laying in to a movie or a book is harmless since the creators won't see it, but webcomic creators are pretty much guaranteed to pick up on sombody badmouthing them (intentionally or not) and have the opportunity to voice their opinion in return.

[Freederick]

Uh oh, I've been making these TV Tropes references myself. I've mostly done it as a shorthand--one link to Waif Fu is worth a thousand words of explanation. It was certainly not meant to disparage.

There is nothing wrong with a work of literature utilizing a recurring motif. As a matter of fact, it would be well-nigh impossible to write something that does not employ any known motifs, and I doubt the result would be worth the trouble, anyway.

[heartburnkid]

admin said:

As long as you also remember that saying "no offence" doesn't mean you're absolved of causing offence.

Laying in to a movie or a book is harmless since the creators won't see it, but webcomic creators are pretty much guaranteed to pick up on sombody badmouthing them (intentionally or not) and have the opportunity to voice their opinion in return.

Go right ahead. We encourage it.

Feel free to edit the wiki however you like. We've actually picked up quite a few fanfic, webfic, and webcomic authors after they noticed somebody else talking about their works on the wiki. Unlike that other wiki, we actually encourage authors to come in and contribute, as long as they're able to look at their own work with a detached eye. Heck, as somebody who knows how to tell a story, you're one of the best people to help us document the devices used. We'd love to have you.

[rallan]

nikita said:

Wow, I didn't know there's a page specifically about Gunnerkrigg.

That's because There Is No Such Thing As Notability over on TV Tropes. If enough of the locals are fans of something, bits of it will start getting mentioned as examples of various tropes, and eventually it'll reach a critical mass of fandom and someone will say "Oh fuck it, I'll write it up already" and give it its own entry complete with a list of all the tropes, plot devices, cliches, schticks, archetypes, stereotypes, formulae, departure from formulae, and everything else that can possibly be quantified right down to who the fans are writing slash about (well okay, that last bit usually doesn't come up in the entries, just on the forums ).