Good news! I'm achieving my goal of blogging more and sharing more of my real thoughts and feelings, rather than just generic airbrushed things sanitized for public consumption.
Bad news: I am hardcore revealing how much of a dork I am through my honesty. :)
So today's nerdy topic: TVTropes. One of my favorite websites. Basically, TVTropes is a catalog of tropes: that is, a catalog of storytelling devices encountered in film, literature, video games, etc., etc. For example, one of the tropes is called a "Disney Death." This is a scene, usually occurring at the end of a story, where it appears that a character has died. Other characters mourn, the reader/viewer gets upset... and then we learn that everything is okay and that character is alive after all! Disney movies are notorious for this--we see this in Snow White, Pinocchio, and Frozen, among many others.
That's an example of a plot trope. There are many, many kinds of tropes, examining things like characters, setting, and even dialogue, not just plot points.
TVTropes lists tropes in two ways--1) by trope (so you can go to the Disney Death page and see examples of this posted from all kinds of media), and 2) by story. So, for example, you can go to the Pinocchio page and see all the tropes in that film that TVTropers have identified and labeled.
Basically it is a nerdy writer's paradise. I love analyzing the stories I read and watch and hear, and with TVTropes, I have trope names I can use to label the different deconstructed pieces of the story.
TVTropes is a wiki of sorts. About a year ago, I tentatively made an account and made less than a handful of contributions. Well, I don't know if it's the grant getting to me or what, but tonight I went CRAZY. I've probably added a good 20 trope examples all over the place on the site. It's really fun! We'll see if other people have to go back and clean up my work since I'm a newb, but I'm encouraged because my contributions from a year ago are still there, untouched and even expanded upon.
Finally, a healthy way to channel my overanalyzing of everything I read and watch! Look out, internet, I've got a lot to say about this stuff and apparently I'm not afraid to say it anymore.
Erick is a big fan of TV Tropes too. However, when we watch stuff together he tends to blurt out the tropes as they go by and it kind of ruins the experience when everything is predictable. Does it do that to you?
ReplyDeleteI've always been guilty of trying to understand what the writer's intentions are and what will happen next, even before I knew the word "Trope." :) For me it's a fun victory when I predict what's coming next. Although I also really enjoy it when there's an unexpected twist I didn't see coming.
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