Update: TVTropes Deletes All Rape Tropes

[theultimateend]

Freedom of speech, freedom of information?

Pisha!
That's SO outdated.

That's more related to government censorship.

I think this is more a case of proof that pure capitalism does not lead to a libertarian paradise.

But regardless your point is sound, this was a bad idea and it panders to the lowest kind of human.

People who attempt to avoid reality are probably the group that I loathe beyond anything else, even those who create those negative realities. Because it is that ignorance that lets that dark world thrive.

 

[Clarste]

I don't support the removal of Rape tropes, however I can completely understand why this is being done. This isn't anything new either, since there's been a systematic removal of things like this for a while now. It needn't be said that all the arguments here, on both sides, have been made ad nauseum by the users themselves.

That being said though, there seems to be a strange tendency to think of "tropers" as a unit. For every 14 year old from Alaska writing a nonsensical example, there's someone else cleaning up after them by editing or removing their example. This is just the nature of an open wiki. Yes, a lot of pages end up filled with bad examples or meaningless "wanking", but then they get removed. Eventually. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes the entire pages are so bad that they have to removed entirely. Sometimes entire sections of the wiki get "corrupted" (looking at you, Troper Tales). But it gets cleaned up. If you see something terrible not getting removed for a while, then just do it yourself. Why not? It's just as much yours as it is theirs. Because as much as "tropers" disgust some of you, they disgust other tropers on the site even more.

 

[Sylveria]

Score one for Movie Bob and half-hearted internet feminism I guess. If we pretend it doesn't exist, then it can't happen, right?

 

[Tratchet]

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.

I'd argue that proper understanding isn't at all hampered by categorization. I'm a physicist, and physics is pretty much nothing but categorization. You categorize forces, energy, equations for describing everything; it's all very broad and sometimes it's hard to understand what it could be useful for, but that doesn't mean it's useless, and it certainly doesn't mean that these categorized parts can't be used for something bigger. Many different machines use levers to do different things, but if you don't understand how levers work on a basic level the machine will do nothing but suffer, and the same thing can be said about fiction. I don't think that understanding the components of a story, even if they're removed from context, is unhealthy for writers, and while fiction and science are inherently different, I personally think they have much more in common than people think.

This isn't to say that TV tropes in particular categorizes fiction well. I think sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. More what I'm arguing is that the categorization of fiction's components is not innately bad.

Also, out of curiosity, what changed your mind about the site?

 

[Grygor]

Glad I've never been to the site though, knowing about tropes annoy the fuck out of me anyway (they either break the immersion or give the wannabe movie buff shit to say during the film), seems like it's more a version of 4chan for movie buffs these days.

Movie buffs? Please. Tropers' interests revolve around anime and crappy fanfiction.

That being said though, there seems to be a strange tendency to think of "tropers" as a unit. For every 14 year old from Alaska writing a nonsensical example, there's someone else cleaning up after them by editing or removing their example.

Like hell there is. The lunatics are running the asylum over there - almost everybody who has invested a significant amount of time cleaning the site up has either been banned from the site or simply given up on it altogether.

Because even though it is ostensibly and open wiki, because of site policies ("no notability", "no negativity" and especially "don't be a dick") it's difficult to clean up bad content, and almost impossible to do so effectively without interacting with the existing toxic and dysfunctional troper community.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

On the one hand, the guy that runs TVTropes is a ****, for far more reasons than this, and the site's users largely follow his example.

On the other, running a website isn't free, people; if you want to scream about censorship and credibility and all that, why don't you make up for the money lost by Google pulling their advertising? No? Then put a sock in it.

 

[Lieju]

But there is no good side to rape, (except statutory rape, which we differentiate by name and isn't closely associated with rape). Whilst the worst of drug addiction, torture and killing equals the worst of rape, the lightest of rape is much much more scarring than the lightest forms of torture, drugs and killing

There are still many places where a man forcing his wife to have sex with them is considered ok, and the woman who refuses to have sex with their husband is vilified. It's not that long ago that things were like that in the countries like US, either.

Not to mention that people will disagree on what is rape, a disturbing amount of people consider it ok to pressure someone into sex.

I'm definitely not saying they are right, but since your point was that unlike something like killing, rape is universally opposed, I felt like pointing that out.

I don't think TvTropes should remove the content, but they should keep the pages better moderated. It's not just fetishist stuff, a lot of pages don't have much value, apart from reading stuff about things you have already seen. They tend to be so cluttered with non-important trivia (In episode 5 of season 8 one of the characters tells this kind of a joke) finding for example what series focus on certain themes can be difficult.

But I guess removing stuff is just the easy solution.

 

[Casey Goddard]

Seems rather socially irresponsible on TV Tropes' part. Based on what's quoted in the article it sounds like the guy running the website is basically saying "We're lazy and greedy and our boss is kind of clueless so...yeah...we decided to promote ignorance."

Hope they get their shit together over there and remember what the whole fucking point of their website is.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

TV Tropes has been going off the deep end for a while now. This is the nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned.

Rape in real-life is wrong, disgusting, and a crime.
Rape in fiction is fantasy.

Is it really that hard to see?

 

[Alterego-X]

The main problem with TVTropes, is that Eddie thinks like an engineer, and utterly fails at herding people. His solution to every possible problem, is a heavy-handed intrusion into the site's mechanics, that causes more harm than good.

Don't like a trope's name? - Write a script that will replace it everywhere with your preferred version, even if will make no grammatical sense.
There are edit wars on some arguable trope entries? - Classify some tropes as inherently subjective, and forcibly remove them all to a subpage!(even in cases were every user would agree that they were present)
There are some too perverted works discussed? - Automatically erease everything on the Hentai index! (with Visual Novels like Fate/Stay Night on it, that basically has less than 0,1% of sex in it's plot, but is technically categorized as an "eroge" for them.)
Some of the users might be enjoying rape discussions? - Delete every trope with rape in it's name!

 

[Evil Smurf]

this makes me sad. Giving in to the man!

 

[Skeleon]

Good to hear they are reinstating the content. Silencing and ignoring such issues doesn't make them go away and, frankly, rape is a very powerful, often overused decive for fiction. Ignoring that and its impact on pop-culture wouldn't serve anybody.

 

[Treblaine]

I fucking loath the userbase with a passion. When I first joined there, I just hung out around the tabletop forum, which was generally quiet. But when the innocent panties debacle launched the great pedocide, I got more involved with the community trying to help clean up the site.

The vast majority of users are against changing anything, and after three months of nonstop bitching, moaning, complaining and defending their precious lolicon, I had enough and just quit. Other sane individuals were banned with more flair and pomp, calling out the pedo apologists and scum, but I just said fuck it. I didn't want to deal with that shit anymore.

To see it dredged up here on The Escapist, and to see people using the same "freedom of speech!" arguments again just makes me angry. If any of you got to interact with those shitbags the way I had to, you might understand why I feel the way I do. Seeing escapist members suddenly doing the same song and dance of whining about their rights being trampled on just depresses me. The shit followed me here.

What do you hope to achieve by badgering paedos into silence or banishment? That they'll somehow just stop being paedos, or that if they go away they are somehow less of a problem overall? Is your problem with paedos the assumption that they all hurt children, or do you just hate them because they are different?

Also, you can't so easily dismiss freedom of speech. You have to actually make an argument for why it does not apply to paedos talking about weird loli fetish, yet still applies to other subjects of discourse. There is an argument to be made, but you can't throw out the baby (freedom of speech) with the bathwater.

This "shit" didn't follow you anywhere you go, it is everywhere on the internet, people are resistant to infringement on freedom of speech for the precedent it sets.

 

[MammothBlade]

I know, right? I was barely even aware TV Tropes had a userbase and a site admin named Fast Eddie until this month, when they became horribly impossible to ignore. I think I may have looked at a forum thread or two and saw a few discussion pages, then fled back to the actual trope pages and never looked back. The Headscratchers and Wild Mass Guessing pages were all I needed if I craved discussion. Never realized anything was up until Fate/Stay Night got mysteriously cut.

Then the whole Kodomo no Jikan debacle happened, where the whole argument boiled down to "the article should be kept in some form, <url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13345387140A33840100&page=20#494>for very good reasons" vs. "it's pedoshit and you're a bunch of pedophiles for defending it," of which Eddie jams his fingers into his ears and comes down firmly on the latter side...and now I find out that there actually are visible creeps on the site who used it as wank material?

Sigh...you're lucky. Disillusionment aside, I don't think I can quite the site until it actually goes under. It's helped me in more ways than one, and I still feel some attachment to it, especially the pages I contribute to most frequently.

Hah, by no means am I lucky. I got forum and edit banned somewhere along the line, I didn't leave voluntarily. I must have spent... about a year there. I could in theory rejoin, but really I want the site's management crippled and Fast Eddie ousted from his position. I have a bit of a grudge...

I really don't care about the minority of "creeps", they can have their opinion too - as long as more level-headed people are allowed to openly debate with and criticise them. Ahh yes I remember Chagen 46 well. He was an amusing chap.

You are either a troll or have never been on TVTropes. I go on all the time, and even though TVTropes can ruin your life and vocabulary, the community is mostly made of normal, intelligent people. Yes, there are porn and rape tropes, but they aren't made for people to look them up in order to find porn or rape scenes. It's merely a database of tropes used in the media an information about their use along with tropes to compare and contrast with them.

Agreed. I hate how people are condemning the userbase. From personal experience most of them are ok. There are idiots like in every community. Outside observers just view it through a certain lense which makes the userbase look worse than it actually is.

The main problem with TVTropes, is that Eddie thinks like an engineer, and utterly fails at herding people. His solution to every possible problem, is a heavy-handed intrusion into the site's mechanics, that causes more harm than good.

Don't like a trope's name? - Write a script that will replace it everywhere with your preferred version, even if will make no grammatical sense.
There are edit wars on some arguable trope entries? - Classify some tropes as inherently subjective, and forcibly remove them all to a subpage!(even in cases were every user would agree that they were present)
There are some too perverted works discussed? - Automatically erease everything on the Hentai index! (with Visual Novels like Fate/Stay Night on it, that basically has less than 0,1% of sex in it's plot, but is technically categorized as an "eroge" for them.)
Some of the users might be enjoying rape discussions? - Delete every trope with rape in it's name!

Exactly. And like I've said before, my main problem is with the way that site is run.

 

[Polite Sage]

Remember people, if you delete all content regarding a controversial topic, that means it doesn't exist anymore. That's why for example if you destroy all books, movies, articles etc. regarding holocaust, it means it never happened and jews are just greedy fucks and fake martyrs DDDDDD

Seriously tho, I'm not happy with the current TV Trope development. First goes lolicon altogether (the site itself was never hosting / linking to said material, just discussing it as a trope in particularly Japanese media. Even how lolicon was an unbuilt trope from "Lolita" which is regarded a world classic in literature), now everything with word "rape" in it gets deleted. In the future I can see them taking down all fetish tropes (casual kink etc.), next everything sex related because it offends minors / moral guardians / hyper feminists.

 

[Biodeamon]

Goddamn. The cruel sick irony of it all.

free-speech itself is being raped.

 

[Biodeamon]

Remember people, if you delete all content regarding a controversial topic, that means it doesn't exist anymore. That's why for example if you destroy all books, movies, articles etc. regarding holocaust, it means it never happened and jews are just greedy fucks and fake martyrs DDDDDD

Seriously tho, I'm not happy with the current TV Trope development. First goes lolicon altogether (the site itself was never hosting / linking to said material, just discussing it as a trope in particularly Japanese media. Even how lolicon was an unbuilt trope from "Lolita" which is regarded a world classic in literature), now everything with word "rape" in it gets deleted. In the future I can see them taking down all fetish tropes (casual kink etc.), next everything sex related because it offends minors / moral guardians / hyper feminists.

why were you looking up lolicon anyways...?

 

[gigastar]

Remember people, if you delete all content regarding a controversial topic, that means it doesn't exist anymore. That's why for example if you destroy all books, movies, articles etc. regarding holocaust, it means it never happened and jews are just greedy fucks and fake martyrs DDDDDD

Seriously tho, I'm not happy with the current TV Trope development. First goes lolicon altogether (the site itself was never hosting / linking to said material, just discussing it as a trope in particularly Japanese media. Even how lolicon was an unbuilt trope from "Lolita" which is regarded a world classic in literature), now everything with word "rape" in it gets deleted. In the future I can see them taking down all fetish tropes (casual kink etc.), next everything sex related because it offends minors / moral guardians / hyper feminists.

why were you looking up lolicon anyways...?

You would be surprised how common it is in manga, anime and light novels. And im specifically not referring to the hentai ones.

Usually its played for laughs with a swift serving of karmic justice or for setting up those awkward moments. Otherwise the author is trying to create a character that they want us to hate.

 

[Nash]

They took away the "Mind Rape" section?

Fuck you, TVTropes. You used to be cool. I used to respect you!

Seriously though. This is frankly ridiculous. When are we all going to stand up and realise that rape does actually happen? We can't bury our heads in the sand over something like this, regardless of the subject matter. If anything, I like the way in which we're approaching this. Somebody (I think it was Yahtzee, but I can't be sure) commented on how this was and/or would be the year that video games 'grew up'.

And yet, the gaming community has to get in a fluster over a graphical representation of, or a lengthy discussion about rape. I don't think that anybody is trying to make the notion of rape seem as anything other than what it is away from our consoles and keyboards - a disgusting and vile act. And honestly, when a multi-national company such as Google refuses to place advertisements on a particular website because they have the gall to address this controversial issue ('controversial' is probably the wrong word but I'm sure you understand what I mean), it only makes the general populace want to bury their heads in the sand more.

Nobody is going to do anything other than vilify rape, so why is it that our chance to have a frank and open discussion about its depiction in our medium being shot down, or ripped to shreds?