Robespierre has his Tv Tropes page...! Ô drama

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

This, which I just discovered, just topped most of the reasons why I nurture love-HATE feelings for TV Tropes:

I must bring to your attention that Maximilien Robespierre has his own TV Tropes page!... Uh-huh, after all these weeks of playing around on that site, I just discovered it. (Or perhaps it's new.)

Amoral Attorney and Just The First Citizen, orly? *rises eyebrow*

...hm, I don't know who exactly is this group in charge of TV Tropes, but they can sound like such cynical, bitter, ultra-sarcastic, arrogant b**ches at times. Trust me, I can tell. Ha ha ha, maelicia can do humor.

Some of the Tropes listed there can be, as usual, pretty hateful and/or just plain irritating, and any Historical Inaccuracies/Slash Mentions (yes, they exist -- that's how I first came across that site in fact) aside:

1) I love how, in "Just The First Citizen", Robespierre coexists with Roman Emperors, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Hitler and Mussolini. Admittedly, it's rather unexpectedly appreciated that they put all presidents and prime minister of the present democracies in the same package deal. In other words: we're doomed.

2) Hoist By His Own Petard: he was eventually executed via guillotine, the fate he assigned to so many others. Ugh. I'm so tired of this one. But it could have been worse, they could have listed Karmic Death. However, Karmic Death is a bit too overused in Original Thermidorian Literature (that is, the pamphlets, etc.) -- which I can testify of after much readings of said documents. Shoot me... but don't miss me in the jaw. Ha ha ha, moar humor.

3) Villains Out Shopping: At the height of the Terror, he lived a normal life at a respectable boarding house, eating toast every morning with his favorite marmalade and flirting with his housekeeper's daughters (although not too much as he was a rather prudish guy). After this of course, he would go to work and sentence lots of people to guillotining.
Yes, you know... that would be logical since IRL "Villains" don't really exist, IRL people you consider "Villains" never really consider themselves as such, and IRL people do lots and lots of very common, banal, boring stuff like everybody does. No, seriously. In between Important Guillotining Scenes and Plotting of Evil Plans Of Tyranny And Mass-Murdering, Robespierre doesn't just brood in the dark sipping red wine blood---oh wait.

4) I'm grateful for the "It's worth noting that many of the morality tropes here differ in different works/character representations." and "A highly controversial person, the level of sympathy allotted to him depends on the work." Small progress. However, the rest....



Thoughts? Comments? Guillotine? Complaints to register? (I really can't stop linking back to that one lately.)

Comments

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Also, apparently The French Politicial System is "bizarre" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FrenchPoliticalSystem). Funny how you can always answer them with their own tropes: Values Dissonance (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ValuesDissonance) and Your Mileage May Vary (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourMileageMayVary). But then, I assume their ultra-cynicism and hatred of Omg The French And Their Revolution would make them blind to see their own ethnocentricism.


But geez. Evil cripple. They could add "from the Thermidorian point of view" or something. Geez.


Edit: Still in their Troperville, editing their nonsense. Added a precision at least.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose it occurs to them that every political system, to the extent that each one is unique, is going to look bizarre to anyone who isn't used to it. But, of course, as you say: ethnocentrism. It is interesting though, how they provide you with the tools to combat them.

Good for you.