TV Tropes

[beatnikchick300]

Just making conversation, actually.

I get your point roundly. I've jumped out of various message boards for various reasons, and that sort of complainy conduct is why I stay far far faaaaar away from any semblance of a Transformers fanbase. I can see parallels between the two. Their wikipedia (which is awesome by the way) tries very hard to make peace between the nonstop complaining fan forums, often making fun of them in the process. There's a "True Fan" entry and a "Ruined Forever" entry. Both address the worst of their own fanbase.

Seems like TVTropes's main page wants to try to address those facts with entries like "Complaining about Shows you Don't Watch" and the like, but I've heard horrible things about edit wars, and it seems the main page is highly regulated because of troubles in the past. But I'd suspect that the forum is where members circumvent that sort of thing, and bring on as much discord as possible. Then of course, there are entries on the main page that seem passive aggressive. I'm sure those managed to sneak by too.

Unfortunately, that sort of thing can't be suppressed no matter how hard mods and respectful members try.

Good to know. I'm all for complaining on forums, if that's how fans feel. Like I said, I'm disgusted with both TV Tropes' recently-found obsession with putting themselves forth as this lovely bastion of neutrality, but yet tolerance of some kinds of negativity more so than others (you can hate Lisa Simpson, Scrappy Doo, and that stupid koala that used to be on American Dad for God-knows-why, but don't you DARE badmouth Cartman, Roger from American Dad, or any of the sacred cows of Disney villainy [I think you can guess a few I mean]). I've found that I'm not alone in thinking this, a lot of former tropers left the site because they grew sick of its Draconian administration, and the selective way the rules are enforced.

 

[minor muppetz]

So how do you ad "tabs" to a works pages? I've started pages for a few works that didn't have pages, and don't know how to add, say, "Your Mileage May Very", "Trivia", and other such tabs. There were a few cases where "YMMV" was added within a day of me adding a page (and judging by history, it seems nobody else contributed to those works pages), but not on everything I've added pages for.

And do tropes really need to be "YMMV" or "Trivia" if it occurs in-universe?

 

[mr3urious]

All you need to do is replace the word "Main" in the address bar with your page name of choice.

 

[Drtooth]

Is there a trope for...

I dunno how to explain this...

Ever notice that you can tell something will happen to something in the background of a cartoon series when it suddenly becomes a foreground cel? Like a mailbox that was a background fixture in one shot is suddenly a cel, and then it blows up or something, or a wall suddenly becomes cel animated and a shot later it crumbles down.

Is there a trope for that phenomenon (doot doo doo doo doot)?

 

[mr3urious]

Is there a trope for...

I dunno how to explain this...

Ever notice that you can tell something will happen to something in the background of a cartoon series when it suddenly becomes a foreground cel? Like a mailbox that was a background fixture in one shot is suddenly a cel, and then it blows up or something, or a wall suddenly becomes cel animated and a shot later it crumbles down.

Is there a trope for that phenomenon (doot doo doo doo doot)?

That is what's called a Conspicuously Light Patch.

 

[minor muppetz]

I was just looking at the page Popularity Polynomial, which is for things that were big at one point but then lost popularity for years and then suddenly regained its former popularity... It mentions Pokemon, but did Pokemon really lose popularity? I think I was older than the target audience age when Pokemon debuted and wasn't too interested in the franchise, though I did enjoy watching the early seasons of the series as well as the first two movies and the earliest video games (though I preferred the more non-traditional Pokemon games, like Pokemon Pinball, Stadeum, and Snap). I don't think my younger brother or his friends ever outgrew Pokemon (unless this is a case of holding on to what you liked as a child and not giving up) and it seems there's always been newer main series games every few years (were there new games every year since 1998?).

I sort of think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could qualify for that trope... If they didn't have so many comebacks in such little time.

 

[minor muppetz]

I wonder if a work could be considered "follow the leader" if it had already been in development but then rushed or released fairly differently than planned because of something similar that became a success.

For example, Doug's First Movie was originally planned to be a direct-to-video release, but then the popularity of The Rugrats Movie led to Disney releasing it in theaters. And it was finished (or at least finished enough for a promo to appear on The Lion King II video release) before The Rugrats Movie.

And then there's the Hey Arnold movie, which was originally going to be a made-for-TV movie (actually it was originally going to be in theaters, but then they decided to make a theatrical film involving Arnold's long-lost parents and decided to make this one made-for-TV) but then the success of the Recess movie led to the Hey Arnold movie getting a theatrical release (and since the one we got had more development and more ready to be released, we got that one instead of the other). Speaking of which, does anybody ever talk about the Recess movie (or even the series) anymore?

 

[Drtooth]

There's probably a small element to that, but again... us Westerners are confounded by the idea of theatrical versions of television cartoons that are animated and come out when the show's on the air. As opposed to 20-30 years later, live action, in name only, when everyone's kinda forgotten about them. Japan's the champion of movies based on existing animated shows, they even pulled an episode of Beast Wars out of the broadcast rotation just so they could air it theatrically, in a triple bill with 2 other Takara (Transformer's Japanese owner) short films. I'm always going on about this, but Phineas and Ferb in the 2nd Dimension was good enough to release theatrically.

I'd say there was some incentive for Disney to release some of their cartoons theatrically due to the success of the Rugrats films. I'd say CN tried to get PPG out because that was the height of their popularity, as much as Nick with Spongebob. No idea why they tried with Hey Arnold. It was only sort of popular at best.

 

[Drtooth]

Here's a trope that I was wondering existed.

Niche Network

You know, the bizarre, no way they'd exist in real life type cable channels that they usually reference in cartoons. Usually anything Garfield related, where it's used expertly I might add.

I was expecting a funnier name, like "Strangely Specific Cable Network" or something.

 

[minor muppetz]

Something has just occurred to me: People often use the "spoiler" highlight so people who don't want to be spoiled won't have to see it. But then suppose somebody is wanting to avoid spoilers but they also want to make an edit that occurs right below that spoiler, where if they edit they'll be able to see the spoiler?