The website TV Tropes and its ilk exemplify and take the idiom ‘if the shoe fits’ to a logical conclusion, regardless of how badly handled the example is. It’s like how the hyena girl in the story Killing Bites is considered a heinous hyena and rape is a special kind of evil, despite the fact the people she attacks don’t get traumatised by it. The beagle girl may’ve been molested, but she’s never shown to be traumatised by it. If you abuse a dog, it will react badly and get traumatised as well.
Which means TV Tropers don’t have much critical thinking when it comes to understanding what the trope, well what they call a trope, actually means. If the word fiery means easily provoked, but it’s applied to redheaded characters who are rather bubbly (Barbara Gordon from DC Superhero Girls is rather perky) then it doesn’t fit the foot at all. It’s like TV Tropers have a broad definition of things, so broad even happy characters like Barbara Gordon get shoehorned in it.
No matter how ill-fitting the shoe is, hence misfit. I’m starting to think some of the problems with TV Tropes is that there’s not much critical examination of the stereotype and cliche presented, as well as whether if the character and situation fits or not. I feel as if literary critics and anybody who’s done a proper literary analysis and studied literature before have shown their hands in ways TV Tropers haven’t. There’s more critical thinking about the stereotypes and cliches presented.
To the point where I think TV Tropes and the like have done a bad job at it, mostly because their attempts at analysing stuff is shallow and the idea that tropes are tools, therefore not necessarily bad can be bad when it comes to damaging stereotypes. It’s like stereotyping black people as well-endowed and athletic, when in reality not all black people fit those stereotypes. There are black people who aren’t that well-endowed, there are black people who aren’t that athletic and into any sort of physical activity.
These are damaging when internalised, which can mess with their mental health because of the expectations placed on them. I also get the weird impression that the average TV Troper is probably a white westerner, maybe that’s why what interests them gets prioritised over the things Nigerians, Kenyans and the like have grown up reading (Bogi Benda for instance). That’s why nonwhite voices matter, they know a racist stereotype or cliche when they see one.
In some regards, they’d see it better than a white person does especially in media created by white people. Another problem with TV Tropes is the tendency to assume something attracts women because of the pretty boys or another matter furries when comes to some things, well that’s not always the case. I find rugby interesting, but I’m not sexually attracted to any rugby player. As for Tigra, she’s supposed to be part tiger but there are furries who don’t see as a furry.
(Thundercats is a mixed bag when it comes to character design, but its version of Tigra looks like a tiger and even has an entry on Wikifur.)
A good number of TV Tropes entries are poorly researched, in the sense that they don’t always come with references to verified sources the way Wikipedia does. Wikipedia may get some things wrong, but the users add references and footnotes to the entries they work on. TV Tropes isn’t that website, well when it comes to some things. At the end of the day, what TV Tropes says isn’t always well researched and well-done. I like football and rugby, but I have no sexual attraction to any footballer and rugby player.
Not to mention, TV Tropes does breed a form of anti-intellectualism that involves adding examples to it without further critical examination of it.
fynm 