Update: TVTropes Deletes All Rape Tropes

[John Funk]

Why is the escapist so obsessed with rape today? Is it international forced entry day or something? Seriously there are three rape-realted escapist peices on the front page in one day. "The R word", "Jimquisition; murder vs. rape" and now this. My news feed is being raped with rape : |

Coincidence, really. We get a good article on the subject, we publish it. Jim, who decides what to do every week on his own, does his video on the subject, we publish it. This news breaks today, we report it.

And honestly, after the month the industry has had, it's not really surprising.

 

[GloatingSwine]

What happened to TVTropes man?

Nothing happened to it.

It always sucked (and I say this as someone who fell for it once). Here's the news: TV Tropes is, was, and always has been a waste of time, in the most literal sense. It is driven by an overweening desire to dissect and categorise but never actually analyse or understand. You will not, having read a TV Tropes entry on a work of fiction, come away with a deeper understanding of that fiction. If anything your attempt to understand will be hampered by the shallow categorisation of elements cut away from the whole and presented without context or any attempt to examine why they have been used, how they interact with other elements in the same fiction, how they affect the work as a whole, what they say about the author.

TV Tropes is not just the lite version of literary criticism, it's actually an anathema to critical understanding.

Tropes: Just Say No.

 

[RvLeshrac]

What? I thought this is what everyone was demanding. It wasn't, you say? Then what were you demanding?

...

Oh, you were demanding the removal of the content you disagreed with? So then why isn't Google entitled to the same?

...

Oh, they're not entitled to demand that sites remove content they find disagreeable because you didn't disagree with it? Tough. Fucking. Shit.

This is exactly what happens when you start demanding that legal speech and expression is silenced. Google is protecting themselves from the people who might start boycotting services or writing that Google is "encouraging a culture of rape" because they allow ads on these pages.

The pages will go back up. When they do go back up, you're going to have people who edit them to be *genuinely* offensive pages. If you want people to stop saying something, you need to engage them in debate and discourse, not just duct-tape their mouths shut.

 

[GloatingSwine]

That's not how TV Tropes works. I haven't read any of the tropes in question(wait. no, I do think I actually read Mind Rape at some point in time), but the entry itself explains what the trope is and gives comparison and contrast to other related tropes. The examples are just that: examples. If you want context, you go find one of the examples and read/watch/play it for yourself so you can see how the example fits within a larger work. That's what context means.

Real works of criticism account for and explain the context alongside the element being specifically examined, because you cannot understand an element of a fiction without its context because it loses all meaning.

(Another problem with TV Tropes, the tendency to categorise and then try to explain the whole category in incredibly broad terms leads people into thinking that a particular literary device will mean a particular thing, which it won't necessarily do when examined in its proper context)

 

[WanderingFool]

Well, that explains why "Mind Rape" was gone. But really, I dont see why TVTrope articles about dealing with rape in fiction and such were deleted in the first place. It seems like nothing more than a knee jerk reaction to... something... Seriously, is there some massive international Rape awareness thing going on that I missed the memo on?

 

[I.Muir]

Money talks
Seems kind of ignorant to deem any discussion of the rape in fiction as the same thing as promoting rape
I had hoped that it would be a little while before google started to burn books (metaphorically)
Tell me if they start goosestepping

 

[RvLeshrac]

When the editors start to go into exacting and loving detail about how a person was raped, it gets more than a little creepy.

I have no idea where people get the whole creepy vibe, from. Looking at the actual trope pages, all the examples are described in an almost clinical manner or at the very least, describing it within the context of the example.

"This seems to be the backstory of Hawkeye of the Young Avengers. She was assaulted and strongly hinted to have been sexually molested while walking home one night. She decided to deal with the trauma by taking up a bow and arrow and fencing, dressing up in purple, and beating up aliens and criminals. Her therapist approves." ~ Rape As Backstory Page, Comics.

"There is one Hentai short where a woman is attacked by a gang of tentacle monsters that tear off her clothes and begin to rape her. They stop when they realize she isn't screaming and complain that if she enjoys it they'll be fired as they have quotas to meet." ~ Black Comedy Rape, Anime and Manga (The page is still up for some reason)

"In Water for Elephants there's a creepy scene where two prostitutes get the main character drunk and start to take off his pants and start forcing him to have sex with them. He then passes out and when he wakes up, they have shaved his genitals and made him look like a clown. They don't come out and say that they raped him, but it's IMPLIED. How disturbing that scene was." ~ Double Standard Rape: Female on Male, Literature.

To some people, the audacity that you'd even *MENTION* a subject is offensive.

These are the people that freak right the fuck out when they see Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, or Sarah Silverman doing stand-up.

 

[Frission]

TV Tropes is a pretty creepy cesspit and they're incapable of dealing with rape or anything like that in a sensitive way.

I don't get those who are whining "but free speech!"

 

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, no, provocation is very much a factor. See, I can't prove my claim of Tigers attacking for no reason by running up to a Tiger and smacking it a bite and screaming "SEE, SEE!" just before it bites into my neck, that's not how that works. What happened is that she manipulated the shit out of people and you my friend are still falling for it. Did she get undeserved abuse (the undeserved part depends on who you are asking I'll admit)? Sure. Was she looking for trouble? Yep.

On the other hand, the fact that this reaction could be so trivially provoked rather reinforces many of her points, don't you think?

If you know that people are going to respond in a particular shameful way, and your intent is to publicly shame them, making them actually do the shameful thing in public is a good way to start, no?

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

So wait:

Google thought trope pages on rape was bad but was completely fine with trope pages on murder and torture?

I'm fairly certain there are creeps out there that get off on killing people.

Geez, is Google run by Americans or something?

 

[Rednog]

In June alone, the videogame industry has seen controversy flare over the "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117776-Hitman-Studio-Apologizes-For-Nun-Massacre] - with furor over booth babes and treatment of female journalists at E3 to boot.

I'm a bit curious as to why the escapist is defending Anita Sarkeesian so hard? You don't say describe the hitman trailer, or the Lara Croft thing, nor the booth babes or female journalists with a positive or negative context, but you throw in "disgusting reaction" just when mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter. Why isn't it neutral like the other's why isn't it "the reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's...."? Or the reverse, the questionable Hitman trailer, the horrific treatment of Lara Croft, the mistreatment of female journalists?

I'm a bit miffed that the escapist has really taken a non neutral approach to Anita Sarkeesian. In the initial article it completely painted her as a victim. Yet there is still no mention of the fact that she spammed chan sites with her kickstarter in order to force that kind of reaction and to put controversy behind her project to get attention. Isn't news supposed to be neutral and report the whole story? I do not support what people said on her youtube page, but at the same time her actions aren't excusable either. The means do not justify the ends. It's a cheap tactic to get publicity, and she shouldn't be rewarded for choosing that route. There is absolutely no integrity in her means.

If I walk into a police station and say hey look the police are terrible people who oppress the citizen of the country and to prove it I'm going to punch out a cop. And then I act all shocked and hurt when the police draw their guns and slam my face into a wall. I then scream See! See! The police are evil, look what they're doing to me!

For context? People may have missed it when we first reported on it. The reaction was disgusting. There is no defending it. End of story.

I'm sorry but you addressed nothing.
For context?
Already talking about context, deciding to "contextualize" the Feminist Frequency but not the other issues sticks out, any English teacher would circle that with a red pen and say it's inconsistent.
People may have missed it?
Um, ok, where was I complaining that you linked to the various related articles?
The reaction was disgusting. There is no defending it.

Spoiler

I made no attempt at defending the reaction:

I do not support what people said on her youtube page

I'm criticizing her and questioning as to why the escapist left out that aspect of the story, oh look people wrote god awful things, wtf is wrong with the world. Oh but I find out she's really shady too in how she conducts herself...well that doesn't make up for what people said or make it any better, but I sure as hell don't feel sorry for her or think she is some kind of martyr if that was the reaction she forced/wanted to get.
End of story
I typed out a reasoned criticism and it gets shut down in a single line of text, basically accuses me of defending misogynists, I guess that makes me a terrible person for questioning and that's the end of the story.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I don't consider starting shit with 4chan, the general cesspool of the net as trivial,

I absolutely see "starting shit with" 4chan as trivial - they do that to themselves every day. See also: pissing into an ocean of piss. If /v/ gave a cause that rustles their jimmies free publicity, they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.

 

[psijac]

Censorship is the enemy of Good story telling

 

[Frission]

Censorship is the enemy of Good story telling

Oh don't start with censorship. I don't like censorship, but TV Tropes is a site about man children talking about their favorite under aged porn. It looks nice on the outside, but it's pretty much horrible on the inside.

Google is requesting it to go down because it's supposed to be a "family friendly" site. Either take out the family friendly tag or take out the creepy shit. It's not that hard.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I don't consider starting shit with 4chan, the general cesspool of the net as trivial,

I absolutely see "starting shit with" 4chan as trivial - they do that to themselves every day. See also: pissing into an ocean of piss. If /v/ gave a cause that rustles their jimmies free publicity, they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.

And she has nobody to blame but herself for the abuse, glad we cleared that up.

Bwuh? I don't know about you, but I tend to lay the blame for harassment on the harassers.

Censorship TVTropes is the enemy of Good story telling

Fixed.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I don't consider starting shit with 4chan, the general cesspool of the net as trivial,

I absolutely see "starting shit with" 4chan as trivial - they do that to themselves every day. See also: pissing into an ocean of piss. If /v/ gave a cause that rustles their jimmies free publicity, they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.

And she has nobody to blame but herself for the abuse, glad we cleared that up.

Bwuh? I don't know about you, but I tend to lay the blame for harassment on the harassers.

Look, if we can't blame the victim we're going to have to admit that there's a problem with the way some people treat women when they think they can get away with it.

And who wants to deal with that?

 

[GloatingSwine]

It can be both, I remember there being analysis on there.

No. You don't. Because there never has been. Actual analysis would take twice the length of the average page on TV Tropes to discuss one example in its proper context, examining it from multiple angles and discussing its meaning to the text and how it is communicated.

TV Tropes doesn't do that shit, because it's difficult and takes a long time and requires effort and work and a wider understanding of the example, the work it comes from, and the literary landscape that work is a part of.

 

[Kahunaburger]

She was harassing 4chan

[citation needed]

Look, if we can't blame the victim we're going to have to admit that there's a problem with the way some people treat women when they think they can get away with it.

And who wants to deal with that?

Yeah, if we progress as a society, the feminists win!

 

[pretzil]

This is a good thing!

Now if only wikipedia would remove its rape page there will be no more rape in the world! Hoorah!

Btw, Google Dictionary defines rape as:
The crime, committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with him, esp. by the threat or use of violence.

A plant (genus Brassica) of the cabbage family with bright yellow, heavily scented flowers, esp. a variety (oilseed rape) grown for its...

The stalks and skins of grapes left after winemaking, used in making vinegar.

 

[Vausch]

I feel stupid for asking this so late, but did I miss something somewhere? A good chunk of articles involving games and culture lately have been devoted to rape and the discussion of whether it's a societal taboo to talk about in storytelling or fiction or something like that. Did something happen I missed or did all of these just suddenly get put in the spotlight?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying rape is a go-to thing and if you feel it must be used in a story it would probably be best to try and find an alternative or know good and well what you're talking about so as not to trivialise the act, but it just feels like all of a sudden it's become a total taboo to even speak about it in fiction.