TvTropes Meme

[aletheiafelinea]

Look, I did a meme and it didn’t even take half a year a month! Also, I think it should be obvious you should take this title for a warning. I’m not accepting any suits for whatever much of your lives you’re gonna lose entering this. :>

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

# Dying Curse -- I guess. That is, I like it as a purely rhetorical device, along the lines of punchy last words (but it doesn't have to be a curse for me to like it). As an actual thing with magical properties, I don't like it very much, because it seems to be mostly a cheat to dissuade other characters from killing the people in possession of such power.

# breaking the fourth wall -- fuck yes! This is actually very timely because 1) that's 85% of the fun of Deadpool to me and 2) the Terra Ignota books I'm currently reading do this very well, and to increasingly bizarre degrees (the narrator starts out addressing the reader in normal Englightenment Lit fashion; by book 3 the reader is having conversations with the narrator and the disembodied metaphorical spirit of Thomas Hobbes. Or something...) I find I especially love this when when it turns out that the reader the narrator/characters are addressing through the fourth wall are different in some major way than the audience they THINK they're addressing. Basically, when it's done for a joke (in Monty Python, Austin Powers, Mel Brooks movies, the Simpsons), it always seems to amuse me, and when it's done as part of creative narration, I tend to like it a lot.

# Even Evil Has Standards -- yes. I really like the kind of scenarios this can lead to, where long-term antagonists who are legitimately at least morally grey, and sometimes outright evil, team up with "the good guys" to oppose the worse threat (Marcone in Dresden Files is a great example of this, as well as people like Mab and Lea). I'm also a fan of anti-heroes and villain protagonists, who tend to fit this trope (in fact, Jayne Cobb, who is quoted at the top of the TV Tropes article, is my favorite character in Firefly).

# and apparently this is a trope, so how could I not bring it to you XD (Polka Dork) -- POLKA WILL NEVER DIE I'm sorry, what was the question? XD I can honestly say I've never encountered this trope other than with Butters, but that makes it a fuck yes automatically. Also, tropes aside, I genuinely love accordion music because it's like the definitive feature of a lot of Russian and Ukrainian folk music, and haters to the left.

[aletheiafelinea]

# breaking the fourth wall -- fuck yes!
Huh, you're more enthusiastic than me. :) I like it, but to me it's one of things that's easy to overdo. I don't think it could make the main merit of the plot to me. Though, as always, the obligatory "depends on realization".

team up with "the good guys" to oppose the worse threat
Yes, love it too!

I can honestly say I've never encountered this trope other than with Butters
Of course I immediately went to check the 'Literature' section, and I nodded seeing Butters listed as first, "Good, there's justice in the world after all". XD

[hamsterwoman]

but to me it's one of things that's easy to overdo

I started out with a milder version of "yes", thinking that, but as I went over the examples listed in the TV Tropes page, I found that I had enjoyed all of them I recognized. So I guess I like it more than I thought I did!

Also, while I do think in theory it's easy to overdo, I feel like the works that usually attempt it -- at least in the categories I'm familiar with -- tend to do a pretty good job of it.

Do you have cases where the fourth wall breaking didn't work for you? I'm curious if I truly have more tolerance for it or just haven't run across it not being done well.

[aletheiafelinea]

I think I once mentioned to you that book, "Gniazdo światów" (Nest of Worlds) by Marek Huberath, that makes the reader choose the ending, but I hated it not because the trope, but for the whole gloomy, tedious, boring rest leading to it, so I don't think it counts...

No particular example comes to my mind, but I don't like when it's too obnoxious and in your face, "Hey, you! Yes, you, what are you staring at?!". I don't care much also about ones that do it every other second, making it their main concept, that feels sort of lazy.

I like when it's more subtle and unexpected. In 200th episode of SPN, which was basically one big fat crazy meta, Jensen Ackles ends one scene looking suddenly straight into the camera, which - so they say - was unplanned, but they kept it. It's great because he doesn't need to say anything and you still know what he means, even though at the same time you don't know which he that is - is it in or out of character? Fits for both. :)