Tropes aren't bad, exactly. They're building blocks. People have been telling stories for thousands of years; nothing you come up with is original, out of context. The trick is how you put it together. It's like working with LEGOs.

I don't mind assigning tropes to things at all, but I do get annoyed sometimes when people read into metaphors and such in stories. Sometimes a story is a just a story. If you take certain things from it, that's great, but I'd be hesitant to say the author meant one thing or another unless you're the author.

Do you also dislike the way science "explains away" the mysteries of the universe? (serious question, not a jab)

Yes. The morning dew is painted on by the wee folk in the middle of the night and that is they way I like it.

The problem is TV Tropes is not really "scientific" or literature analysis and criticism, it more leans towards snark and a lot of neologisms like (on that page), things like "Apathetic Citizens". There's a lot of judgement values being placed just in the names of these items. It's not identifying them as tropes, there's an inherent judgement value with some of them. For instance, whoever put the Gnafia and linked them to the Scrappy is more or less placing a Subjective value on it. (And outside of a few people on this page in this forum, was there really a true "scrappy-doo" hatred). Is that really a "trope"?

The more ironic, cynical, and snarky the criticism, the less constructive it is. Seeing this page if I had no knowledge of Lusternia wouldn't make me see how wonderful it is, it would probably make me think it's a lame game full of cliches and avoid it, when the truth is much different.

I guess I can kind of see that, but on the other hand given the understanding (which I think a lot of users on the wiki get, though not all, obviously) that tropes are not bad and crop up everywhere simply because of the sheer breadth of them, I'd rather take snark than "actual" literary analysis as criticism. For example, I really enjoy a lot of the setting of P&P RPG Exalted, which I got interested in (after having it recommended to me years previous, but never getting into it) after seeing some of the descriptions of the tropes on its page. It was pretty easy to just skim a tropes list and find interesting points that a deep dissection of the material (or worse, the system itself) wouldn't have uncovered. Maybe the Lusternia page is missing elements of that though, it's hard to tell since I'm already very familiar with what there is to say about it.

A side note, the gnafia was clearly marked as a case of "your mileage may vary" to someone familiar enough with the site to be seeing what it says about something, it's on the YMMV tab rather than the main article now though(big good might be worth moving too).

That being said, the majority of the tropes are dead on.

Though honestly, few things top the Gnafia in poor execution. That they're delegated to scrappy isn't a surprise as unlike the real scrappy, their only purpose were to be smug snakes.

I feel like Maeve maybe qualifies too, but perhaps the younger half of the playerbase doesn't remember back when everyone used to rage about her all the time.

Eh. For me, she was rescued from being a scrappy with the Hai'Gloh event. Just something about seeing her so vulnerable made me feel sorry for her. But, as with all scrappiness, YMMV.

You honestly feel sorry for Maeve? If it didn't affect the forests, I'd say go hai'gloh her some more!

I remember wishing we could split her in two or something. She's interesting on a story telling level, but as someone you need to actually interact with... no.