Thread "Trying to get a tvtrope page for my webcomic, oh and somebody stole my phone too." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 10:09AM, Sep. 16, 2023

Just need to talk about this, but yesterday somebody stole my phone and my mom's phone while we were asleep. We tried to call the police through the emergency call system found near by, only to get ignored after I shouted we were robbed.
Kind of a blessing in disguise as mom told me her phone was going to pop because she was trying to nurse it until she got a replacement battery, but it was draining, never charging and getting very hot for no reason so it was very close to blowing up.
And that was just the start of the day, after getting some food we gone to the library to charge up the one laptop mom got told by the person who says they run said library that we are not allowed to come around any more because of my service animal, they won't allow it and told her to never come back.
It kind of ends with a bird crapping on me.
One the upside I got an replacement drawing tablet by accident, got food, work on getting a part to fix my old laptop, setting up a patron tip jar and promoting my comic which means I try to create tvtrope page… Which I have no idea on how to do that but I will figure that out later.

Just had to share the madness of life.

Posted at 12:09PM, Sep. 16, 2023

I've launched a number of work pages on TV Tropes in the past, and even helped launch a few new tropes at that . . . but if you want my advice, in as much as I understand you wanting a TV Tropes page to further help broaden the exposure of your work, unless you really, really know what you're doing, I'd say it's not worth it. The TV Tropes staff do not accept mistakes, and even if you make just a few of them, they will ban you. It happened to me. I was a regular and frequent contributor to TV Tropes way back when, and I'll admit that when I first started out, I did make a few mistakes, but when I learned from such mistakes, I went back and corrected them. That didn't matter to them. They estimated my contributions to their wiki into the thousands (wow, I really do have no life, do I?), but even so, they chose to tunnel vision on the handful of rookie mistakes I made, and even disregard my fixing and correcting those mistakes, and decided it was best to ban me from adding any further contributions to their site, since, according to them, I had no idea what I was doing, and didn't learn from any mistakes I made (their word vs. mine).

That was just my experience, but I've seen other former tropers out there who have shared similar experiences and grievances with the TV Tropes staff like that . . . as a matter of fact, at one point, there was even an Encyclopedia Dramatica article about the exact same staff member who singled me out, all about what a jerkass he was.

Posted at 4:09PM, Sep. 16, 2023

J_Scarbrough wrote:
I've launched a number of work pages on TV Tropes in the past, and even helped launch a few new tropes at that . . . but if you want my advice, in as much as I understand you wanting a TV Tropes page to further help broaden the exposure of your work, unless you really, really know what you're doing, I'd say it's not worth it. The TV Tropes staff do not accept mistakes, and even if you make just a few of them, they will ban you. It happened to me. I was a regular and frequent contributor to TV Tropes way back when, and I'll admit that when I first started out, I did make a few mistakes, but when I learned from such mistakes, I went back and corrected them. That didn't matter to them. They estimated my contributions to their wiki into the thousands (wow, I really do have no life, do I?), but even so, they chose to tunnel vision on the handful of rookie mistakes I made, and even disregard my fixing and correcting those mistakes, and decided it was best to ban me from adding any further contributions to their site, since, according to them, I had no idea what I was doing, and didn't learn from any mistakes I made (their word vs. mine).

That was just my experience, but I've seen other former tropers out there who have shared similar experiences and grievances with the TV Tropes staff like that . . . as a matter of fact, at one point, there was even an Encyclopedia Dramatic article about the exact same staff member who singled me out, all about what a jerkass he was.

Holy crap, that is actually kind of scary and reminds me of my time with Moon Romance, the Sailor Moon fanfic archive.
I think I will stick to promoting through Twitter, uh, "X", feeds and reddit for now.

Posted at 7:09PM, Sep. 16, 2023

It also doesn't help that they not only were vague with some of their rules, they were also very inconsistent with some of those rules too.

One specific example I can give is I added a listing for a "Memetic Mutation" on a work's YMMV page, citing that Nostalgia Critic was responsible for that work's memetic mutation, but a mod deleted my edit and said it was a "shoe-horned example" which they claim they don't allow . . . yet, you'll find a number of examples of something from a work being a memetic mutation and citing Nostalgia Critic as the one responsible for said memetic mutation . . . so how was my edit a "shoe-horned example" for citing Nostalgia Critic, but these others aren't?

Posted at 3:09AM, Sep. 17, 2023

Yeah, one of these days I'll do the work over there some have asked me to. As if I keep track of my own work. I'd rather trace the development of tropes in Poverty Row movies of the 1930-40s as if anyone born after 1976 even knows what they are.

Posted at 7:09AM, Sep. 18, 2023

Well, you did the healthy thing by talking about your misfortune to your fellow webcomic authors as we have each other's back for better or worse. Sorry that this stuff happened to you. But at least the bad day is over. It can only get better from here.

As for building a TV tropes page, in my experience, it is better to let your fans do that for you. Once people start making TV tropes pages for you, it's a sign that you're on the right track or rather, one of many possible signs.

Posted at 4:09AM, Sep. 19, 2023

mks_monsters wrote:

As for building a TV tropes page, in my experience, it is better to let your fans do that for you. Once people start making TV tropes pages for you, it's a sign that you're on the right track or rather, one of many possible signs.

So much this. I'm doing the comic, can't the fans handle the Fandom?

Posted at 6:09AM, Sep. 19, 2023

bravo1102 wrote:
mks_monsters wrote:

As for building a TV tropes page, in my experience, it is better to let your fans do that for you. Once people start making TV tropes pages for you, it's a sign that you're on the right track or rather, one of many possible signs.
So much this. I'm doing the comic, can't the fans handle the Fandom?

Yeah, it is best to let the fans do the making as I keep forgetting why I left TVtropes alone for a reason, and it is not because it is a time sink of cliff notes of famous tv shows with a smartass attitude.

To be honest the tvtropes thing is a bit of tongue in cheek way of saying two things, one is trying to lessen the horror of people willing to steal from the homeless along with how downright near impossible it is to replace these common items when you feel down and out. The other is I am taking making comics a bit more serious and actively looking for ways to get eyes on my work, and the next step is, after getting a job and some cash put away, to advertise on here.