148 réponses à ce sujet

[Maverick827]

LPPrince wrote...

Honestly, I'm a little sick of people saying, "Don't use this trope, don't use that trope".

For christ's sake, EVERYTHING is a fricken trope now. The second someone does anything new, GASP! EVERYONE START CALLING IT A TROPE SO NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THE SAME THING!

Your mind = blown.

[_- Songlian -]

David Gaider wrote...

A human can be good.

Humanity as a whole is pretty screwed.

Words to live by.  

[Elessara]

The thing about DA though is that you've got multiple cultures - just within the scope of humanity. Fereldan culture is not the same as Tevinter which is not the same as Antivan which is not the same as ... etc. The only common factor really is the Chantry. And then you've got the other races.

Dwarves are really messed up btw. Casteless? Seriously? They have an entire section of their population that most of them believe were not meant to have existed. As Sigrun said she saw an Alienage and thought it was rather nice.

Elves have the city elves and the dalish. The opressed and the free nomads. Who are discriminated against by everyone except the qunari.

And then qunari who believe that they're right, everyone else is wrong. You will be assimilated. Or die.

I wouldn't say humans are the worst of the lot at all. Not the best but not the worst.

Modifié par Elessara, 30 septembre 2010 - 07:03 .

[Chuvvy]

Because we kick ass.

[Saibh]

tmp7704 wrote...

Saibh wrote...

Oh, of course, yes. I'm just saying that humanity's defining trait is usually "Uh...we have no defining trait". As Mordin says, you can make a fair judgment on what a turian, salarian, krogan, and so on will be like. Humans aren't like that. A writer can't make a culture as multifaceted as humanity is.

Mordin's quote is especially funny because he's dead wrong -- based even on just what we get to experience in game we don't actually have a way to judge "what a turian will be like" any more than it comes to judging humans... but the plot has to be justified somehow, after all.

Really? I disagree. I think reading their Codex entries will give you a good idea what the average turian is like: stiff, military, traditional. Many are suspicious and hostile towards humans. Krogan are violent aggressors, asari are a compilation of human female stereotypes, salarians are smart and curious, and so on.

Yes, there are outliers, just as Mordin says, but they generally all fall under a broad category. I think Mordin specifically was given this quote as an acknowledgement of the Humans Are Average trope.

Modifié par Saibh, 30 septembre 2010 - 07:10 .

[PsyrenY]

Maverick827 wrote...

Your mind = blown.

Pretty sure he is talking about how people USE the term "Trope" (i.e. as a synonym for cliché), not tropes themselves.

[shootist70]

Optimystic_X wrote...

Maverick827 wrote...

Your mind = blown.

Pretty sure he is talking about how people USE the term "Trope" (i.e. as a synonym for cliché), not tropes themselves.

Hopefully. Assuming that the use of tropes is always a negative thing would be a bit daft.

[Ortaya Alevli]

I think the word "trope" has assumed new meanings over the past ten years or so. I don't even know what it means anymore, seeing people use it left and right in the most unimaginable contexts. I've been seeing links to this tvtropes.org site, in almost any thread I checked out, so I have a vague idea as to what people are trying to say but it's still mind-boggling to me.

Anyway, Saibh's post gave me an idea about how to word what I had in mind. That whatever new fictional race/society you create will always remain superficial compared to humankind, no matter how much you draw upon reality, is a good point. Lack of depth prevents digging to a satisfactory extent, thus it's implausible to truly "understand" the fiction. It can involve only so many dimensions. So, you'll have to invoke other emotions in order to compensate. Where you can't empathize, you can always sympathize, for example. When you present the new race as victims, suddenly they don't "feel" as shallow anymore. Now it's as if there's more to them.

A nice trick, perhaps overused but that is highly subjective. But overused or not, it's been used enough times to lead to the famous "humans oppress" cliche. Humankind is already the group we know and understand best; there's no need to waste more ammunition to facilitate immersion of audience. Let's spare it for elves and work on them a little, instead, so that they don't feel as distant.

[KJandrew]

Elessara wrote...


Elves have the city elves and the dalish. The opressed and the free nomads. Who are discriminated against by everyone except the qunari.

do the Rivani not have a camp for the dalish outside one of their cities?

[Dr. wonderful]

David Gaider wrote...

Khraum wrote...
I mean DA makes us seem like the real blight. We conquer, pillage, rape and in the case elves, literally bring physical pollution. Most of all, in our appetite for power and exploitation we blew up heaven and unleashed a force out to destroy everything. Sure, elves and dwarves are bad too. Zathrian cursed humans and the dwarves turned their poor into golems, but it was because of bad things we did or to fight off problems we created. I know all fantasy likes to offer some social commentary on the real world, but the whole human bashing thing is starting to get cliched. I, for one, would like a more complicated story behind how the blight really started and the DA world turn the way it is, why doesn't rely on overly used troupes like making oppressed groups look like native Americans, Jews etc and humans racist parasites.

A human can be good.

Humanity as a whole is pretty screwed.

I thought that was a given. Thankfully none of our races get off easy on this front.

I thought it was because there MORE humans...that why.

I perfer city elves due to the fact that they are street smart.

[Urazz]

I think the other races can be just as evil as humans. It's just that humans are the most numerous and the ones in power so you see more evil from them. We do see some evil from the other races.

With the dwarves we see their nobles caring more about power and politics than fighting off the darkspawn. The best example of dwarf evil would be Bhelen,though he seems to be more of a case of doing alot of evil to get the change the dwarfs need.

With the elves, the example of evil from them is Zathrain's obsession with revenge against humans.  We also see some elves being a bit bigoted against humans but it's a bit understandable due to what's happened to them and how some humans treat them still.

Modifié par Urazz, 30 septembre 2010 - 08:10 .

[Elessara]

@KJandrew ... true enough. The Rivaini have a very different culture though. They don't follow the Chantry; they have their own religion and some follow the Qun.

[LPPrince]

Maverick827 wrote...

LPPrince wrote...

Honestly, I'm a little sick of people saying, "Don't use this trope, don't use that trope".

For christ's sake, EVERYTHING is a fricken trope now. The second someone does anything new, GASP! EVERYONE START CALLING IT A TROPE SO NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THE SAME THING!

Your mind = blown.

THERE'S A TROPE FOR TROPES BEING BAD?

WTF.

[LPPrince]

shootist70 wrote...

Optimystic_X wrote...

Maverick827 wrote...

Your mind = blown.

Pretty sure he is talking about how people USE the term "Trope" (i.e. as a synonym for cliché), not tropes themselves.

Hopefully. Assuming that the use of tropes is always a negative thing would be a bit daft.

My point was that people use tropes as yes, a synonym for cliché.

To make matters worse, they always say, "OH, THIS IS A TROPE. THIS IS BAD. THAT IS TOO, DON'T USE IT. TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOL"

For real, come on.

At this point, everything is a trope. They can't NOT use a trope.

[Dr. wonderful]

LPPrince wrote...

shootist70 wrote...

Optimystic_X wrote...

Maverick827 wrote...

Your mind = blown.

Pretty sure he is talking about how people USE the term "Trope" (i.e. as a synonym for cliché), not tropes themselves.

Hopefully. Assuming that the use of tropes is always a negative thing would be a bit daft.

My point was that people use tropes as yes, a synonym for cliché.

To make matters worse, they always say, "OH, THIS IS A TROPE. THIS IS BAD. THAT IS TOO, DON'T USE IT. TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOL"

For real, come on.

At this point, everything is a trope. They can't NOT use a trope.

http://tvtropes.org/...ropesAreNotGood


Tropes are tools.
 
You used them for storytelling, the fun thing about tropes? Finding people who subvert the HELL out of things.

[LPPrince]

Is there a reason you linked to the same page that you quoted?



(That's probably a trope)

[tmp7704]

Saibh wrote...

Really? I disagree. I think reading their Codex entries will give you a good idea what the average turian is like: stiff, military, traditional. Many are suspicious and hostile towards humans.

But this is very much circular logic, since in order to take this Codex entry as "good idea of what the average turian is like" you have to actually buy the concept entire species can be summed up in two-three sentences in the first place. And why would you, really?

What i meant by Mordin being dead wrong was a simple fact -- when you see a random Turian in a crowd you have no idea whether he's a "good guy" or a criminal, what they're thinking, what's their world views, whether they got sense of humour or not, do they get along with their parents... thousands of factors which set individial members of the species apart like day and night, and which have nothing to do with few words in the Codex.

The Codex may list few traits which are common enough they could be mentioned, but if one starts to believe that these few traits give any decent idea on what individual specimens are like, then i think they're losing the forest for the trees. Since they're starting to ignore the multitude of traits which aren't shared and as such don't get listed.

Modifié par tmp7704, 30 septembre 2010 - 08:30 .

[Khraum]

David Gaider wrote...

Khraum wrote...
I mean DA makes us seem like the real blight. We conquer, pillage, rape and in the case elves, literally bring physical pollution. Most of all, in our appetite for power and exploitation we blew up heaven and unleashed a force out to destroy everything. Sure, elves and dwarves are bad too. Zathrian cursed humans and the dwarves turned their poor into golems, but it was because of bad things we did or to fight off problems we created. I know all fantasy likes to offer some social commentary on the real world, but the whole human bashing thing is starting to get cliched. I, for one, would like a more complicated story behind how the blight really started and the DA world turn the way it is, why doesn't rely on overly used troupes like making oppressed groups look like native Americans, Jews etc and humans racist parasites.

A human can be good.

Humanity as a whole is pretty screwed.

I thought that was a given. Thankfully none of our races get off easy on this front.

Yes, but humans seem to be distinctively bad. Dwarves do a lot of bad things to each other, but they do not conquer and oppress other races. And the bad things they do seem to be related to outdated traditions rather than racism. I mean dwarves are closed off to other groups rather than "hey I deserve to oppress you because I am better" like humans. (No dwarf character in fact was openly racist). This is completely unlike humans, who seem to be the only real racist group. (Elves are racist towards humans because humans treated them badly, and they weren't racist to dwarves).

[Russalka]

Everyone has excuses, even humans do.

[LPPrince]

Russalka wrote...

Everyone has excuses, even humans do.

You mean EXCEPTIONS.

[Dr. wonderful]

LPPrince wrote...

Is there a reason you linked to the same page that you quoted?

Yes.

I written the paragraph:


There is nothing new under the sun. Including that very statement. And the book from which it comes. Completely ignoring the possibility that one's favorite show just might not be hewn from the very essence of the universe by Thor himself and placed in the periodic table under Or for "Originalium" doesn't change the fact that it wasn't. And acknowledging that it isn't should not lessen its appeal, either.
Every story is influenced by what came before it — and storytellers (e.g., writers, directors, actors) are bound to show that influence, intentionally or not, in the process of telling. Just because something's been used before doesn't mean it's a cliché, and stories often gain something by having ties to other works. That said, there certainly is such thing as too derivative, but there's a difference between playing a trope straight and utter Cliche Storm (and even those aren't necessarily bad).
It's impossible to write something completely and utterly without tropes, anyway, so stop trying. "

So Listen to the words of WONDERFUL!"

[Russalka]

Dwarves are bigoted and corrupt because of outdated values, humans are racist and opressive because of church, among many things. Elves just haven't had their chance.

Modifié par Russalka, 30 septembre 2010 - 08:50 .

[Dr. wonderful]

Russalka wrote...

Dwarves are bigoted and corrupt because of outdated values, humans are racist and opressive because of church, among many things. Elves just haven't had their chance.

Oh yes they did, around a 2 thousand years or so before the game.

[shootist70]

LPPrince wrote...

THERE'S A TROPE FOR TROPES BEING BAD?

WTF.

There's a trope for saying that there's a trope for tropes being bad. I'd post a link, but that's too cliche.

[jonluke93]

TheChris92 wrote...

Optimystic_X wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

Why do elves excel at poverty? Hmm.

Because they are shiftless, pointy-eared, alcoholic gits.

I think Kaidan made a valid point in Mass Effect. "They're not different or special, they're jerks and saints. Just like us."

I always thought this was a good line. One of the reasons Kaiden almost never gets nuked.