Sunday, May 13, 2012

Big Chill in TVTroperLand

'ello, 'ello. What's 'appening 'ere?

TVTropes is an enormous wiki covering common storytelling devices and conventions. It's a fascinating resource for a writer as it's a comprehensive list of just about every plot device, twist, idea ever used in history. As a lover of the weird and exotic, I've also used it in the past to discover new shows, films, games and books I might never have heard of.

Although not anymore by the looks of things.

First I noticed something was wrong was when I tried to access the Monster Girl Quest page and was instead redirected to the Monster Girl Encyclopedia page. These are two similar, but completely different creations. One is a series of artworks and books by Kenkou Cross, the other is a hentai game created by Torotoro Resistance (although it does feature artwork by Kenkou Cross). To make matters worse, the Encyclopedia page now redirects to Daily Life with Monster Girl, a completely different series of work by a completely different artist.

I'm not totally sure what's happening. TVTropes appears to be in the middle of a big purge of anything referencing sexually explicit material. I found a few posts like this and a page with a list of the affected material. If this is true it would be a great shame.

Admittedly the old TVTropes was a bit of a jungle, but that was part of the charm. It was great to go hacking into the darker undergrowth and come out with a gem of a new series, film, book to follow. The internet needs its wild spots and quite frankly, a wiki that aims to be a compehensive handbook of storytelling devices yet omits anything related to sex is totally useless.

Internet. There is damage. Time to reroute.

EDITED TO ADD:

Mveculous tweeted me this link and I'm aghast at the level of stupidity on display:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13365137390A58421200&page=1

Being uneasy on the lolicon aspects is fair enough. Those profiles don't appeal much to me either. However, the follow-up posts on redirections are beyond stupid. Um guys, you do know these are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT creations you're trying to lump together? This is basically the same (and as idiotic) as redirecting Slayer and Meshuggah to the Metallica page.

If you want to cleanse the undesirables from your playpen, fine, but don't be stupid about it.

1 comment:

  1. I too have noticed a considerable homogenization happening in Tvtropes.

    It's a damn shame that it's being whitewashed for whatever reason, Some really stuck-up people must have come into power over there. Maybe some enterprising person will make a wiki like the olden days of Tvtropes?

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