"Comics are for children." Especially if they contain superheroes. At least, for the good portion of the population that doesn't actually read them, they might as well be.

Unfortunately, the backlash of this gave us DarkerAndEdgier to the point where it became hard to find a superhero comic you ''could'' let your child read without having to explain why Captain Vengeance decapitates jaywalkers. This has become better lately, with titles specifically geared towards children again.

And in the same vein, cartoons ''based'' on superhero comics. Just ''try'' telling someone over the age of ten that your favorite show is ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' or ''TheSpectacularSpiderMan''... and those are considered two of the more mature, well-done shows.

It's a bit easier nowadays, with the advancement of superhero-movies-for-regular-people, such as the new Spiderman and Batman movies, and ''{{Smallville}}''.

''{{Watchmen}}''.

Some disturbing exit poll statistics estimate that as many as 10% of Watchmen movie viewers were under the age of 13. Clearly, their parents expected colorful men in tights fighting evil instead of a complicated, dark, violent, sexual, and mature story that happens to involve colorful men in tights. Watchmen and similar movies have been used as evidence that a movie's rating ultimately has no effect on whether or not a parent will take their child to the theater.

The crying toddler that was in the theater while I was there would like to agree with you on that. And he/she would also like help paying their future therapy bills.

This Troper watched a father take in his two sons, neither of whom could have been over 5, in to see Watchmen. I warned him, saying "It's really not a kids movie, you'll want to take your kids somewhere else" and he brushed me off. It was around the scene where Rorschach tosses cooking oil into the prisoner's face that he grabbed his kids and pulled them out. Great parenting that.

Oh, to have been the one to have told him so.

Related to the "action figures are not dolls" issue (don't get into that one here), it often takes explanation that "graphic novel" is '''not''' a denial term for serial comic books. Also, not all comics are about superheroes, and not all superhero comics are just brawlfests with snark and bat-nouns. And still, when I bought ''Watchmen'' my mother expressed disappointment with me. There is a giant hole in my bedroom wall now.

This is really bad if you ''do'' happen to read some of the more "fun" superhero comics. I had a really fun time explaining to my teachers why I was reading ''Ultimate Spider-Man'' and ''BlueBeetle''...

This troper is 14 years old, recently purchased Watchmen and absolutely loves the dark ambiguity of it. He maintains that there is no such thing as 'for kids' and has tried to explain that to the very conservative mother of his friend that no, really, an intelligent 14-year-old can handle Death Note.

Right on. This troper just did his English final exam, which included an essay on villains in literature. Guess who the essay was about? Light Yagami. Now I just hope the markers take it seriously.

Exact same thing earlier this year on a test comparing another literary character to Brutus. Haven't gotten it back yet for comments though, three months later.

When the 9/11 Commission Report was adapted into a Graphic Novel, news outlets loved getting ManOnTheStreet reactions due to this. The one that stuck with me was "I think this is a serious thing, and shouldn't be handled in, you know, a 'funny' way." I don't even know what reference pool that was, but I about blew the ceiling off.

My mother doesn't openly express her dislike of me reading comic books, she just sort of gives me this sad "what-is-my-daughter-coming-to" look and walks away in disapproval. Quite frankly, I wish she'd just start bashing them, so I can explain to her why she's wrong! I know perfectly well it's because to her, comic books are essentially equivalent to picture books. Real Adults read Real Books, and Real Books means no pictures.

Since when do people in our culture read real books?

I just got into reading manga, after years of following DC Comics, and I am still getting treated like I'm not even TRYING when it comes to reading. This is coming from a girl who collects books and writes in her spare time.

This troper combines all the worst bits of PublicMediumIgnorance in her interests. I am a fan of superhero comics, cartoons (mostly of the Western variety, which makes it even ''worse''), and in particular? I looooove superhero cartoons. At this point, I've just given up on explaining to ''anyone'' what I do in my free time, because this trope will inevitably come into play, and my BerserkButton pushed until broken. Just not worth it, man.

This is an actual conversation I had with my English teacher I had when I brought my ''BloomCounty'' treasury in for independent reading: #QUOTE#'''Teacher:''' You can't read comic books in here, you have to read an actual book. #QUOTE#'''Me:''' This is an actual book. #QUOTE#'''Teacher:''' You know what I mean. I said in the beginning of the year you can't read comics during independent reading. #QUOTE#'''Me:''' If we can't read comics in here, why have you got ''{{Maus}}'' on the independent reading book shelf? #QUOTE#'''Teacher:''' That's different. Has this won any awards? #QUOTE#'''Me:''' It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. #QUOTE#'''Teacher:''' I'm not having this conversation right now. Please, just read something else. #QUOTE#''Me:''' Fine.

Also, my mom said she wouldn't take me to see ''ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' because she thought everyone in the theater would think I was a pedophile, and told me to ask my dad to take me instead. (My dad is decidedly much better about this sort of thing, he and I have seen every Pixar film in theaters together since ''ABugsLife'' and is eagerly anticipating taking me to ''Cars 2''.) I'm not sure why I never asked him to take me besides an impulsive fear that the title would put him off. My mom's not horrible about it either, but usually tells me I can see it with a friend and unfortunately...well, who the hell was I going to ask to see ''ThePrincessAndTheFrog''? At least ''9'' sounded interesting.

If you are a software developer, at least twice a month somebody will be disappointed that you can't "fix their computers". This is a law of Nature.

To be fair if you professionally design computer software you at least know a little about how they work.

Worse yet, try telling someone you're a web designer--not even necessarily a web ''developer'', but just a web ''designer'', and count how long it takes until they say "Oh, I'm having this problem with my printer..." It'll probably take about five seconds.

I can fix their computers easily! Let me get my Linux install disc...

You ''better'' not do what happened to my sister's boyfriend.

To be fair, that's a hardware job.

Unfortunately, my parents seem to think All Computer Use is Games. It gets rather frustrating when I'm reading the damn ''BBC website''.

This troper can relate. "What are you playing?" "I'm... *looks at Word page* ...writing...a short story?"

Oh, I bloody well ''hate this''. My mother recently said that all I did on the computer was play games and read comics. I haven't played a ''single game'' on the computer since I withdrew from college and moved back in, and while I will sometimes ArchiveBinge if I'm bored, most of the time I am doing ''neither of those things''. In fact, most of my computer use of the past week has been dedicated to overhauling the ''{{Negima}}'' character page, which was '''hard work''', dammit.

This troper's friend has a serious issue with this. Said friend is unable to work on his webcomic, in Inkscape, since it apparently looks like a game. Bizarrely enough, the Flash games on Kongregate do not fall into the same category.

You all have my sympathies. I now understand how lucky I am that my mother likes to defend my near constant computer use by saying that I'm always using it to read and look stuff up. Which is actually almost all I do anymore.

This troper got a lot of flak last November for rotting his brain with computer games all the time. Imagine his parents' surprise when his completed novel arrived from the publishers.

MadeOfWin right there.

A common (though understandable) misconception about computer science is that it's a paperless field in which all you pretty much do is program stuff on computers. Not quite; at this troper's college (as well as many other colleges, I'm sure), one of the classes required is an algorithms class in which you do surprisingly much mathematical work on paper in comparison to coding; it's been described as "not a programming course."

This Troper's Computer Science undergrad curriculum involves one class that requires a 40 page paper. That's longer than most English majors here have seen. Yet it's the Comp scis that are supposed to be less literate geeky types. (I BS'd that Algorithms class though, on account that the lecturer was kinda incompetent).

My mum blames every single problem I have in my life on the internet. True, the internet has caused some social awkwardness, but it's either A) a small symptom of a much larger problem that has been there a while, or B) something so insignificant that it doesn't matter. She doesn't seem to understand that by spending my time on the internet I am socializing. That's kind of the point. A lot of my friends are people I'll never meet, that's what the internet is for.

The only thing that annoys me more than this is the implication that the socialising on the internet is somehow inferior to RL socialising. Apparently it's because "there's no body language clues, so it's impossible to tell if people are lying or kidding", despite the fact it's often very clear when they are. Certainly, it's not impossible that someone is lying to you from the get-go, and is really a 40 year old old guy/girl living in a basement rather than the 16 year old girl/guy they introduced themselves as, but. People lie to you in Real Life too. And it's usually harder to tell.

I used to think this way till I realised socialising is socialising, no matter where you do it. True, it has its own unique perils and disappointments, but it can be a lifeline.

Aw yeah. This troper has heard many times about the supposed evil "unreal world of the Internet" as opposed to the real life. Because, obviously, all these people on the Internet are just advanced AI constructs and not real humans.

This troper spent at least an hour trying to convince someone that all silent movies aren't guys with curly moustaches tying girls to railroad tracks and trying to unsuccessfully recommend some good ol' Charlie Chaplin, but it seemed {{failure is the only option}}.

Shoulda tried Buster Keaton, man. He's by far the more accessible of the two. Or ''{{WALL-E}}''. Everyone loves ''WALL-E''. And it has remarkably little talking for the first half.

''TheGeneral'' is a masterpiece. Actually, if you compare Chaplin and Keaton, some people end up finding Buster Keaton funnier. He's just more obscure because he could not transition to talkies nearly as well as Chaplin did.

''The Navigator''. That is all.

''ThePassionOfJoanOfArc''.

Harold Lloyd, and remind them he did his own stunts.

He even ''lost a couple of fingers'' when he hung from the clocktower, one of his most famous stunts.

This troper has a subverted example. Being both a film buff and one of the best students academically at my school, people seem to assume I have a great love of avant-garde cinema and Citizen Kanesque classics. In actuality, I have a great love of {{so bad its good}} movies and great cinema classics such as ''{{Commando}}'' and ''{{Army of Darkness}}''. In a strange double subversion, a lot of people have never heard of the pulp crap I watch and often assume that they're moody independent films.

You're not alone...Stephen King said, in his non-fiction horror compendium "Danse Macabre," that "in order to develop a taste for fine wine, you must also develop a taste for real cheese" as he wrote about Z-movies such as "Plan 9 From Outer Space."

This Troper considers himself a movie buff, with a love for horror films, both great and campy. I love the George Romero zombie films, and New Nightmare is one of my all time favorite films. Of course, they're horror films, so they CAN'T be taken seriously. I mean, you can't love films AND appreciate any films that aren't {{Oscar Bait}}. Mode}} That would just be silly.

@/{{Kaywinnet}} gets pissed off whenever someone dismisses the horror genre as being all jump scares, slasher films, and/or {{Gorn}}, and whenever someone says the only point of a horror movie is to scare you. While she enjoys being scared, much of her interest in horror movies comes from their ability to explore the darker side of human nature and craft fascinating, complex characters in need of many, many therapy sessions. For example, ''{{Carrie}}'' or ''LetTheRightOneIn''.

While this doesn't quite fit most of the examples other tropers have gives, the same thing does apply to martial arts movies. Specifically, I brought Jackie Chan's "Legend of Drunken Master" to watch in class on a slow day, and more than one guy thought that they were all ninjas. Never mind the fact that no one is even dressed as a ninja or that the actors are Chinese and the film is set in China (but then again I guess a lot of people are just completely ignorant of the different kinds of Asians). This pretty much applies to martial arts in general; people who don't do martial arts can't tell the difference between them and either call it karate or kung fu. I would have thought the popularity of Mixed Martial Arts would help fix this, but since all the traditional martial arts practitioners got weeded out in the early years, it hasn't really. At least more people know what Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujitsu are...

I have been told anime is that "manga Japanese stuff", "Italian(?)" and for kids. We had to do a TV show thing (a.k.a how everything you watch is horrible) for Religion class, and I asked if I could do anime. I bet you 20 dollars my Religion teacher is shocked at a summary of DeathNote right now.

The key is to realise that Light is the anti-hero, not the hero. This religious troper was horrified by Death Note at first but loves it now.

Anti-hero? Light is the ''villain''.

Read this trope.

Even UK magazine ''RadioTimes'' recently used the word "manga" when it should have been "anime".

Ah, yes. The same has happened to anime/manga ("OMG THEY'RE ALL ABOUT NINJAS?!?!?! OR FLYING BLOND PEOPLE?!?!") and comedy movies (largely due to all the ''ScaryMovie'' rip-offs), which seem to be all labeled as lowbrow. The same has happened to horror (they're all slasher films or some such, and horrid J-horror remakes, but there are gems out there).

You can blame the slasher steriotype on the absolutly horrid horror market these days where most of the new Horror movies made are remakes of slasher movies or indy films that no one watches and paranormal activity.

The anime confusion is even worse when you're not reading the only two manga categories known to mankind: {{Shonen}} and {{Shoujo}}. I once spent two hours explaining to a friend that the series she was reading had no {{Magical Girl}}s, Giant Robots, or Gay Pretty Boys. And this was an ''anime fan''.

It can be even worse when you're watching anime that DOES have some of those properties but is certainly not {{Shonen}} or {{Shoujo}}. Trying to explain why ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' is not appropriate material for a ten-year-old is difficult when one has to overcome both the AnimationAgeGhetto AND the HumongousMecha stereotype. ("Yes, there are giant robots. No, this is ''NOT'' a show for kids.")

I have given up trying to fully explain her interests unless whoever's asking is genuinely interested and willing to look past the stereotypes. She's had enough experiences when people look at her funny for attempting to explain when they were just making casual conversation. It's almost to the point where she just doesn't give a flip and outright says "it's either for kids or porn" all the time, instead of saying it only when she's in a bad mood.

This troper was watching Evangelion on my Zune, and some "not-so-sharp" classmate (who randomly quotes 4chan/Encyclopedia Dramatica out of the blue) asked "Is that hen-tay?"

Even within the genres of {{Shonen}} and {{Shoujo}}, there's a lot of variation. This troper has spent a lot of time trying to tell people that not all shonen is {{Naruto}} or {{Dragonball}}- and it's usually fans of the shounen series that are different from the two aforementioned shows, such as YoshihiroTogashi's work. Try explaining to someone who got into YuYuHakusho or HunterXHunter ''solely'' for the fighting what all of the HoYay, YaoiGuys, and extremely depraved RuleThirtySix is doing in their macho "fighting manga/anime". Whooboy.

This troper got into a humongous debate with her stepfather over the merit of anything usually called "genre" (anime, scifi, comic books, etc) which he universally labeled "movies with robots".

This one knows ''many'' people who think of anime as "stupid Chinese cartoons" or "sick-ass hentai". Which is especially jarring if you consider this happened in Mexico, and as of 2008, pretty much every single Mexican in his college years has watched at least one anime series when they were young.

On the other hand, though, the effects of the anime wave that swept Mexico in TheNineties are still strong, with ''entire classrooms'' going all nostalgic about stuff like ''MagicalDoremi'', ''MazingerZ'', ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' and ''SailorMoon'' over the simple mention of a single anime series.

This troper, some time ago, came across an anti-anime Facebook group run by a complete A-hole who thinks all anime is hentai, people who cosplay are smelly, lazy freaks (never mind how much effort goes into a good cosplay), and just plain thinks it needs to be banned, and any "normal person" would laugh at someone who watches anime, let alone cosplays. Never mind that there are [[strike:otaku]] anime fans out there who are friends with or are in relationships with people who are not into anime.

Whenever this troper meets someone who claims to hate anime in general, she simply replies with a flat "And do you hate all books from Canada? Or all films from Italy? All anime means is that it's something that is animated and made in Japan. You can't say everything of a given medium from a certain place sucks just by being from that place and of that medium. I suppose all American music is lame just because it's music and it's from America?" At this point they either shut up or they just repeat their original statement.

This troper has a friend from Mexico. Evidently, DragonBallZ didn't cause the same stereotypes of anime because they didn't edit out the violence and dick jokes, and actually had good voice actors. Upon seeing the American opening of DragonBallGT, he raged.

This troper struggles with depression. Her mother's answer? "You should stop watching that ''DeathNote'' show. What's it even about?" She doesn't really trust anime. Or the internet, or webcomics. And that's not counting the hours of research I had to do to convince her that ''{{Dungeons and Dragons}}'' was ''not'' evil.

Hours of research? Why didn't you just use a mind bondage spell on her?

She should have used Hamaon or Mudoon. Or maybe Megidolaon if she resisted the other two.

She could also have tried Armageddon, though I guess pretending to shoot herself in the head could be misconstrued.

She was probably wary of using anything with the word "bondage" on her ''mother''.

Between trying to explain ''RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' and ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', this troper is convinced that there is no sufficient way to describe many anime series to people who don't have the spurious imagination required to absorb foreign media. Especially when you can't use genre names without much of the meaning being lost on the listener. On a positive note, explaining the "rabbit in the moon" was easy.

This troper, even after showing his father such things as ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', ''{{Grave of the Fireflies}}'', ''{{Keroro Gunsou}}'', ''{{Death Note}}'' and many more (ranging from ''{{Serial Experiments Lain}}'' to ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' -- when undubbed, of course)... still has to argue about whether all anime is all shittily-animated shounen series about muscle-men beating each other up and girls with huge boobs with really, really bad dubbing that doesn't match the lip flap. And that's to say nothing about his friends, who see all anime and ''anime-styled artwork'' as Chinese porn. Let's not even GET IN to both party's perceptions of J-Rock.

This troper feels your pain. After years of watching anime, his father was still under the impression that anime was all just ''{{Pokemon}}'' and ''{{Digimon}}''. Said father even called him a "one-trick pony" for liking anime, and wouldn't listen to any explanations about the many, many different genres and types of series. Of course, god forbid this troper call the father "closed-minded."

With this troper, it's not her father (he shares her appreciation for movies like ''SpiritedAway'' and more or less understands what anime is about), but her mother, who seems to hate all things animated. She's a history teacher, so this troper hopes to convert her with ''GraveOfTheFireflies''.

A guy at this Troper's work said he hated anime. When asked what anime he'd actually seen, he cited Disney's ''{{Enchanted}}'' as an example - a Western film that's only even animated for about ten minutes of its runtime.

Okay, one indicator of Asperger's Syndrome is "has a narrowly-defined interest". My psychiatrist heard this troper say I mostly watch anime and read manga, and go on the internet, but don't watch much TV. This was used as an indicator that I had AS. (I did, but it's beside the point) The fact that I could be watching or reading science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, comedy, war stories, postmodernism etc. in these anime or manga didn't even come into the equation. Even the clinical psychiatrist who assessed me got manga and anime mixed up, despite having ''lived in Japan for two years''.

OT - she also said that there was a strong trend of AS people liking manga. Nyoro~n.

This fellow Aspergian points out that it's an unusually well-suited group of media for that sort of thing, and even then many will specialize. (I'm pretty much the same way about TV versus websites, internet-anime and internet-manga.) The media are broad, featuring just about every genre that can be put on a screen in live-action except gameshows, plus a few. And then you factor in all the Sliding Scales, and you get a selection even broader than live-action. You're right, it is a bit odd. Also, next time you see your shrink, you might want to point out that "anime" is short for "animated."

Wait, wait, what do you mean you watch anime but not much TV? Doesn't anime come from TV?

Most people watch anime by downloading it, streaming it from the Internet, or watching DVDS.

It's still a television show. That's like saying you don't watch TV because you watch it all on Hulu. :/

I will concede the point about TV and modify it to "I don't watch the TV channels that everyone else where I live watches." - which is what people assume when you say "TV". It's a handy cultural shorthand. Kind of like saying, "the Earth" when you really mean, "insignificant water-drenched planet that on the scale of the universe barely exists". :-P

If you even say 'anime' to this troper's father, you can practically hear the blinkers clicking into place, let alone try to watch some in his presence. He seems to think the non-kiddy stuff is all porn. I tried to tell him that the series had a really good story and he said "they don't have stories".

...And yet the MythArc is one of the traits most commonly associated with anime, especially as a genre distinct from WesternAnimation. Excuse me while I go bang my head against a wall and then reread ''FullmetalAlchemist'' until the pain goes away.

This troper hates it when he tells people he likes tokusatsu (especially Kamen Rider and most 70s henshin heroes), and gets reactions like "You like PowerRangers?" He then has to explain to them for 10 minutes that PR is heavily watered down and Macekred sentai and that sentai is far more violent at times, and that not all toku is sentai anyway.

This troper agrees in that most of the time, whatever the hell other people are watching don't even have half the plot that is in quite a few Tokusatsu shows. Even the show being aired now called "KamenRiderDragonKnight" doesn't even have HALF the plot of the original "KamenRiderRyuki". Fan dumb indeed. Try telling it to someone who watches it and mocks it for being childish crap by saying "They all end up dead in the end". Shuts them right up.

This Troper thinks using words like "toku" and "sentai" wouldn't help (unless you explain to them what they mean).

Several years ago, this troper went to a local comic book store and asked the man behind the counter if they happened to have any Sentai-related merchandise. The man behind the counter gave this troper a funny look and said "Do you mean 'hentai'?" A couple of years after that, a friend of this troper went to an anime store while on a trip to Boston, asked the people working there a similar question, and received the same answer. On a more minor note, this troper went to yet another local comic book store and asked about Kamen Rider merchandise. And while the man behind the counter seemed to know what it was, he constantly pronounced "Kamen" the same way that the word "Cayman" in "the Cayman Islands" is pronounced.

It's quite difficult these days to find a {{Mons}} series that somebody won't immediately label as a "Pokemon-ripoff" (well, excluding ''{{Narutaru}}'', but there's quite a few reasons for that). If it has humans (most likely kids or teens) gaining connections with cute (somewhat) monsters in any way, it's a Pokemon-ripoff. No matter what other mechanics are in play, or what the setting and plot is like. More infuriating when {{Yu-Gi-Oh}} is classified as such, though that might be just due to the rivalry formed by the public between it and the aforementioned series.

This troper tried to introduce his (usually open-minded and intelligent) family to the concentrated awesome that is ''NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind''. And the ONLY THING they remember about it is the part where the little girl sings "La, la, lalala, la, la, la, lalalala, lala, la, lalala, lala, la, lalalalalalala." Granted, it's one hell of an EarWorm, but the rest of the movie might as well not have happened if you asked them.

Well, this troper found it rather boring. And that's coming from someone who ''loved'' SpiritedAway and thorougly enjoyed ''Howl's Moving Castle'' and ''Princess Mononoke''.

This Troper almost never bothers trying to explain videogames, anime, or some stories people unless specifically asked by someone not totally ignorant. If asked, he'll give a very brief, and sometimes very vague explanation about it. Like when my dad asked about Gundam 00: "It's a bunch of robots being piloted by various unlikeable people in a very hamfisted allegory of the Iraq war, where the world's apparently only desert. And the robots are solar powered" His response? "I didn't know Al Gore wrote those Japanese Cartoons".

The Gundams are not solar powered. They run on a perpetual energy generator that is called Solar furnace for simplicity's sake. The mobile suits that run on solar energy are the ones used by the AEU and they get scrapped pretty quickly after finding out that their solar powered suits are never going to even be CLOSE to matching a gundam anyways and as a result, they eventually get shunted to become mecha mooks.

I was giving the short, very simplified and somewhat smartassed version to my dad. I didn't want to get into a discussion explaining about Gundams and mobile suits, and he just loves to snark about how unrealistic anime is. Do you think I really wanted to hear a snarky comment from him about impossibilities in anime again? Because I've never heard those before.

Actually this troper — who writes lines like "if I'm a Zaku he's a Gundam" into ''stories about werewolves'' — had the same reaction to Gundam 00, almost verbatim: "I didn't know Al Gore wrote anime."

PlotWithPorn, and the idea that if a VisualNovel has a sex scene, then it's a full-blown hentai game. Or simply the idea that all visual novels are dating sims or h-games. Where do we ''start?''

How about the fact that JackThompson, of all people, defended MassEffect against criticism of "pornographic displays."

According to this troper's parents, FMA is "a thing for crazies and lunatics", TTGL is "a moronic show about robots" and {{Watchmen}} "a superhero book for fourth-graders". And DON'T EVEN THINK about their opinion on MGS...

Please, curious minds need to know!

They sound quite nuanced in their views. I second the one about curious minds.

Figsjitigimufughijubuh

Explaining the title of {{xxxHoLiC}}.

That's almost more ContemptibleCover than this, because they chose their title without bothering to consider how it'd look in imports.

This troper had to do that once! Her cousin saw "xxx" on the tab and started yelling "[troper] is looking at porn!!" Of course, it turned out the cousin had read the manga before and was just being difficult.

Inverted by This Troper. I ''am'' the friend that people try and explain their Japanese cartoons to. I'm aware that I might be entirely alone on this wiki, but... I just don't like anime. Or manga. Sorry. And it gets a little frustrating when I say that and people say, "Oh, that's because you haven't seen FullMetalAlchemist / TengenToppaGurrenLagann / NeonGenesisEvangelion / whatever." No, actually, I have, people like you have forced me to watch them and I ''still'' don't like it. Sorry.

This troper is similar to you. I have watched anime and read some manga, but am not a big fan. Yes, I see why NGE is good. Yes, I think that FMA is good. No, I'll ask if it's Thursday to watch the episode. But when my dad called Chrono Trigger (paraphrased) "a game for babies"... Let's just say that my self-control is good. He said something similar about ''EarthBound'', but ''EarthBound'' doesn't really LOOK mature at first glance does it?

DeltaOne - no, you're really not similar to me. NGE is not good. It is weird and boring. FMA is just odd. Thursday is only relevant because it's two days to the weekend. I have enjoyed exactly one anime my entire life - Thunderbirds 2086. I have never read a manga I enjoyed (backwards reading... why? It's no longer in Japanese.) I stopped caring about my parents' opinion of my video games back when I tried to explain ''Suburban Fox'' on the BBC Micro to my mother. And this comment is evidence that I have terrible self control.

This arguably doesn't fit here, because you've given the medium a try therefore are not entirely ignorant about it. Thus your opinion is to be respected.

I think his/her point is that the people who ''assume'' that the only reason he/she hasn't enjoyed animae is because they haven't watched certain animae shows (the ones who make the "oh that's just because you haven't seen FMA" comments) are the ignorant ones.

Try some of these.

This troper would dearly love to have the half hour he spent trying in vain to explain how Touhou wasn't Sailor Moon to his mother back. Please?

This troper has this problem with her father. Anime/Manga is "''always'' evil and demonic", the characters "''all'' look stoned", it's "stupid", and "childish", and pointless. Oh yes, and the fact that I bought my own DS for Christmas a year ago means that I am giong to fail at all my school courses, because all video games are horrible and stupid. Yes, because AceAttorney is ''so'' easy to play. Yeah, it's not *as* graphic as other games, but it's flippin' ''hard'', leading to many much GuideDangIt moments for ThisTroper. He also gets on my case anytime I don't get into 'realism' i.e. I read fantasy, and sometimes I *the horror* ''read the same book more than once'', and I watch Crime Dramas (like {{NCIS}} and {{Bones}}) (among other things), I mean, I ''know'' that the stuff that happens in the shows isn't "realistic", but after that, I started to read non-fiction books about those fields, and NOW I have an idea of what I want to do with my life. (Become a Doctor, either for forensic anthropology, to be a medical examiner, or work for the CDC as a virologist. *Sigh*

characters looking stoned is an actual critiscism its nitpicky but its a real complaint.

My father still thinks, that after all this time, a lot of the Japanese-language music I listen to is "anime music". This has died down a little bit as I've gotten more and more into Korean music but... yeah.

Mostly averted with this troper. Although her grandmother asked her, "Isn't ''DeathNote'' teaching you how to kill people?" However, a simple "Er, no" sufficed to calm her down. Generally, her parents don't mind too much what she and her little sister read/watch, although they won't actually try to get it.

This troper's dad seems utterly incapable of comprehending that not all anime is "Pokeymon" and she has completely given up any attempt to change his mind. Her brother is an ignoramus (well, not really, but I feel like telling him that a lot) who constantly asks her why she likes "Japanese music" (Goddammit, it was ''Russian''. Is it really that hard to tell them apart?) or any music in any other language because "you can't even understand it." She has used the "I like how it sounds" response so many times that it's practically engraved on her tongue and he ''still'' can't get it through his thick head that ''people have different interests, dammit!'' Then again, he's a huge fan of ''GGundam'' and ''{{Zoids}}'', so it's not like he has any room to talk. Her mother is the only one who'll watch anything with her, and that's because she likes "cartoons" and, in the eyes of the rest of the family "never grew up." Sometimes she hates living with a conservative-leaning family with origins in the Midwest.

And she hates the fact that no one in her family seems to think of her fanfiction as anything other than "wasting time." She has also never gotten an opinion beyond "solid" or "okay" from them. Ever. And because of the heavy "Do not expose children to such things!" vibe her dad has, she will never, ever show him some of my better works because then she'd have to explain why there's so much gore, death, and swearing. Or why she does such horrible things to her characters. *sigh* Not her style.

This Troper had a strong genre bias against anime, probably from its association with the English-dubbed {{Macekre}} that I grew up with in the States and New Zealand. Then, one of my friends agreed to watch ''{{Firefly}}'' (BESTSHOWEVER) if I watched ''AxisPowersHetalia'', and after I finished I thought "That was amusing." Then, an online acquaintance (and, I found out later, a MASSIVE HumongousMecha fan) told me to watch ''TheMelancholyOfHaruhiSuzumiya'' ("a bit of an exception"), ''CodeGeass'', and ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' ("really just girl-shaped mecha"), and I was completely hooked. I got a list from said acquaintance and soon found myself saying things like "That was cool.", "That was strange.", and "That was cool." regarding shows I would never have previously watched.

Oh, this list is what told me that HumongousMecha was not for kids. ''Geass'' has LudicrousGibs and a LOT of tragic main character death (even I was almost ''sad'' at Fenette's death), ''Gurren Lagann'', while a lot more child-appropriate, had death, which was quite bloody for that series, and ''Evangelion'' had... it had '''''Neon Genesis Evangelion'''''. Anyone who thinks that HumongousMecha shows are for kids should see ''Eva''. They will... be amazed. Very amazed. The next time someone brings up the AnimationAgeGhetto (seriously, someone once asked me (sic) "why do you watch kiddy shows dude?"), my response is "I will take you into a room with a projector. I will tie you to a chair. I will show you every episode of Eva in one sitting, no sleep until it is over. AND YOU WILL REPENT."

This troper has had the very devil of a time explaining anime to her mother. She's had an even more difficult time explaining roleplaying and cosplaying. And she's still not allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons. Her father, however, is rather more easy-going, and even watched ''DeathNote'' with her during its first Adult Swim run. Furthermore, a couple of her cousins have stated "I don't like anime", without even trying any - one was quite vehement about it. However, they had friends who introduced them to ''DeathNote'', which the more vehement one is now mildly obsessed with. The troper has had an even more difficult time trying to introduce ''{{Discworld}}'' to her family, since they all think it's really weird:when introducing your non-geeky friends to Discworld, do not mention the Luggage straight off. "Homicidal suitcase" sticks in the brain, apparently. Even her stepdad, who is an SF&F fan.

This troper runs into this a lot when she mentions she's a YaoiFangirl. Yes, I watch/read things about two guys having a romantic relationship- wait, where are you going? Really, guys, ''we're not all like the loud ones.'' We do not all see random homoeroticism everywhere (except for the giggles, really). We do not all write crappy, {{OOC}} fanfiction. (And for that matter, not all yaoi/slash fanfiction is crappy and OOC. I've read some that's better than what it's based on.) Please stop calling us freaks?

Preach it, sister. It's worse when you do fanworks about male/male couples. Never mind that you put lots of effort and time into making your fanwork as well-done, in-character, and interesting as you can. Never mind that you ship based on personalities, plot, and chemistry rather than "these two would look good in bed together." If you write fanfic or draw fanart of male/male couples, you are an immature freak who can't write or draw and thinks that all male characters are shtupping. We're the {{ButtMonkey}}s of the internet.

Also, this troper is a fan of Snake/Otacon and continually has to deal with flak--even on ThisVeryWiki-- from fans of MetalGearSolid who can't seem to bear the idea that there might be GAY in their stealth-based game series. This often gets coupled with CompletelyMissingThePoint about the "manliness" of the series. (A game about the horrors of war? But it has GUNS in it! And giant mechs! And Snake has Manly Stubble!) Never mind the HoYay, ShipTeasing, and WordOfGod; there is absolutely nothing gay about Solid Snake. Ever. Ever ever ever. Because apparently preserving the MANLINESS of Solid Snake is more important than recognizing the beauty and heartwarming-ness of practically the only thing keeping him human. (IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Of course this ship is up for debate. It is not those who don't ship Otasune that I am ranting about, merely those who have a severe case of AntiGoggles to the nth power, coupled with some UnfortunateImplications.)

Hey not all guys think that about Yaoi Fangirls. This troper doesn't think that way at least. It just seems kinda normal.

I've had an experience where a girl I knew only was interested in ''HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi'' (I had brought in the manga of Watanagashi-hen to the sci-fi/fantasy/horror general geek club at my school) because of "boobies". (It didn't help that it was Shmion on the cover). I loaned it to her, and all she noticed from it was the boobies and the beautiful artwork. Um, yeah, did you manage to utterly fail to notice the HighOctaneNightmareFuel?

I'm having this trouble trying to convince that not every anime/manga is a series of cliche storms where if you get in trouble in a fight, a random friend will show up to save you, or you'll have some secret move to save the day...so far, I've convinced him ''DeathNote'' isn't like this.

This Troper was reading ''DeathNote'' the other day. My mom looked over my shoulder and made a remark about "Poky-man."

"What's Linux?"

*headdesk* I ''hate'' that one. "Woah, that's no Windows!" No, no darling, it's not.

This gets a lot worse when someone attempts to use your Linux machine without realising that it isn't windows. This tends to result in a lot of problems trying to explain why your computer is like that.

Or when someone sends you a file that is only readable by a Windows-only program (like an Office .[doc,ppt,xls]x file) then doesn't understand when you can't open it.

Not completely sure whether it fits or not, but despite the typical "Anime=tenticle porn/gorn/nightmare fuel" I've actually found a few of the american erotic comics I've found in persuit of real hentai to be far grosser and just downright dirty than the manga.

For something I'm actually sure of, I've got an interesting case of this. I live with my mother, who is actually incredibly accepting of my habits. Her basic rule is "If I can handle it, and it isn't porn, then it's okay." and despite many people who would seem to think everything is porn, she's actually okay even when there is full chest nudity, so long as I don't blatantly stare. However, whenever she describes my interest in anime and manga to others, she says "pokay-man", which is deeply frustrating to me. Especially when I've already specifically explained to her that pokemon is actually a slightly revamped show that has had lines changed and other such things to be 'suitible' for children. At one point, I've actually admitted that I enjoy the shows immeansly, and that I've seen many more plot-oriented shows in japanese media than in american media. Likewise, before I found an interest in anime and manga, I'd only found one movie moving enough to make me cry. I've now cried about four times, and I am a thirteen year old male, and I've freely admitted it to project my love of the shows. Despite my pushing, mom still won't watch them under the fact that she doesn't enjoy subtitles(which is fixed with dubs) and that she doesn't like the art. Even though I once explained to her and even held proof that at it's very core, the manga art-style was adopted from Walt Disney. She answered with something similar to 'no-comment' and we left it.

Another strange thing about it is that while I have several classmates who thoroughly enjoy manga and anime, each and every time I've attempted to tell them of a manga/anime that I in particular liked, they shot me down in favor of the 'favorite' such as naruto, bleach, or in one freinds case, Legend of Zelda. It's interesting that while they are incredibly stuck in these complicated plots that go far too long for my liking, I've enjoyed anime such as Elfen Lied, Zero No Tsukaima, and the manga Mahou Sensei Negima, which is one of the few series which the incredible length does not keep me away. In general, I guess I seem to be subject to both 'american' generalizations, as well as japanese ones within themselves. Oh well. Sorry if this seemed like a rant or something. Just thought it was worth mentioning.

This troper is tired of people telling her anime is all people with spikey hair and big swords. Or that it's all stupid kiddy stuff. I've watched a wide range of anime, everything from Bleach to FMA to CodeGeass to ZombieLoan to DeathNote. Anime isn't one show. There is something for just about every taste.

This Troper went through a Vocaloid craze (that he's still in) and posted a bunch of links of music. Some of his family and friends and whatnot kind of went, "Meh, it's just a program." How do you explain to someone the richness of the Vocaloid background? How do you explain that Hatsune Miku has a massive discography and thousands of fans? How do you get them to understand a video game about them, an anime based off of them? How do you show the awesomeness of their live performances? Miku Hatsune isn't just a program. She's a real diva!

Wait, THERE'S AN ANIME? Link. NOW. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LINK ME NOW.

''BlackRockShooter''

Ever since revealing what anime was to my peers, a student on my class now thinks EVERYTHING I DO involves ninjas. My classmates might have thought it was funny before, but now even the cheerleaders are getting annoyed...

I know this is a common problem among fans, but the bias against anime/manga is ridiculous. I remember trying to introduce a person to Yotsubato (in my opinion, one of the better ways of breaking the ninja/sailor moon stereotype) who became skeeved out by just seeing the big eyes. Even with relatively western looks (Serial Experiments Lain) its hard to get people to watch by saying anime. Its better to just call it animation.

This troper encounters loads of ignorance with, of all things, BOOKS. LMHS may be a top school in the Southeastern United States, but damn it if, outside of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', half the school is near illiterate. Some students read as if they've barely read anything not in chatspeak for the past ten years (which wouldn't be surprising), and most not only express surprise if this troper is reading the novelization of a film (which he usually retorts by saying that he doesn't have a portable DVD player), but they're even more shocked if he reads a book more than once. They all seem to think that books are inherently boring because of the lack of visual effects, so imagination is clearly lacking. It doesn't help that most of them, again, apart from ''Twilight'', nobody reads anything that the school doesn't force on them, which are almost universally boring, sometimes difficult, and mercilessly torn apart by teachers and turning every piece of emotion from the author into basic logic while forcing students to answer inane questions on events to see if they've been reading. Nothing quite like reading Huck Finn and having a test telling you to identify types of irony and specific examples of their use.

This troper could not agree more. She's as bookish as they come, and her ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''-toting classmates can't understand why she'd want to spend a month reading Tolstoy or why on earth she's reading Lord of the Rings ''again'', shouldn't she just watch the movies? God, it's infuriating.

Agree. The question "Why would you read the book, if you can watch the movie?" makes this bookworm troper want to stab things.

In this troper's Senior English Class the teacher decided in the spirit of upcoming Halloween to have us read Edger Allan Poe's The Raven. Most of kids in the class had never heard of it and the girl sitting next to her didn't even know ''who'' Edger Allan Poe was! (Remember these are high school seniors not to mention it was a private school)

This troper brought the Communist Manifesto. *GASP* - You're not a communist, are you? Best thing is, I didn't get any of that crap while reading Mein Kampf, which is in the school library, but most of the other kids are too uneducated to realise it's written by Hitler. Bear in mind that this is the 7th best school in England, with students exclusively from the top 94% of the population.

I can't understand people who would want to read a book again...or repeat anything, for that matter; you know everything that's going to happen already, so there are no surprises...which is one of the main reasons why I read. I used to read a lot until I got bored with it (nearly impossible to happen, but fits of melancholy and all), and my friends were all readers. Due to the stupidity of people around me, whether they would read a good book or not, left me jaded and cynical that anyone who wants to claim to have some sort of intelligence must have read something for pleasure. ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' doesn't count.

Gah! The plot is not the only reason to read a book! Emotions are still evoked, language is still aesthetically pleasing, and nuances are still discovered on repeated readings. This applies to other media, too.

^This. That, and sometimes you really connect with the characters/world so you feel like "visiting" them again...or is that just me?

Nonsense! This troper is probably your clone or something....he feels exactly he same, and if you read a book again, chances are you'll find something interesting you haven't before....

Also, some of us ''don't'' have total recall. We genuinely ''forget'' elements of stories that we love, & we look forward to re-experiencing them, still with a degree of surprise involved.

And this this neat little thing called ''foreshadowing''. Some people enjoy it when they pick up little signs of events that happen later on their second time around.

Some (most) stories contain bits of foreshadowing you definitely didn't catch the 1st time through. Your 2nd time through a story may reveal that the huge plot twist was practically right there with a giant neon sign telling you it was going to happen (which is what makes games like TalesOfSymphonia so fun).

And how many times have people re-watched a movie, or a TV series? Do they honestly only see something once and never go near it again?

As I travel a lot (retired geezer) I will often re-read a book set in a place that I have visited. After my first trip to India I dug out ''Kim'' and found much in it that I had missed many years ago. Then I read ''Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia'', and found out who the actual people were that the charterers in ''Kim'' were based on, and now that I've spent some time in Bhutan and Kolkata I think it is time to read it '''again'''

This troper has the same issue at his school. Last year we had to read ''LordOfTheFlies'', and there was ''not a single moment of class time'' without absolutely '''everyone''' complaining that they didn't understand it. It would help if they weren't two steps away from retarded, but still. I can't wait for when we get to read Frankenstein or Flowers for Algernon next year.

Yours too? I have to admit the book was a bit dark for me, but it's children slowly going native. How hard is that to understand?

Hell, Lord of the Flies and Frankenstein were the only books that my class LIKED last year (the others being RomeoAndJuliet, DrJekyllAndMrHyde and some obscure, obtuse piece of shit. The year before that, the only books I liked were BraveNewWorld and NineteenEightyFour). Although, there are some books that I read outside of school (the aforementioned Brave New World and 1984, also the Space Odyssey series).

Your school sounds a lot like mine, except that by the time our class has gotten to Frankenstein and Flowers for Algernon, the more hopeless kids have already dropped out of that particular program.

This troper is sick of being confronted by moronic ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fans whenever she reads a book. To them, every novel that isn't ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' is inferior, which makes me a weirdo for liking actual literature, apparently.

This troper was unable to go past 1 paragraph about a someone walking in on a guy lying in bed. The way the description is made, it is as if they had to literally draw the picture from the book out, engrave it in your face and then proceed to hammer every last detail through your weakened scalp. And I didn't even finish the paragraph. Stephanie Meyer is one of the shoddiest writers in the world, she makes Dr. Seuss sound like Julius Caesar. At least Dr. Seuss can keep up a good rythm and keep you going till the end. How people stomach Twilight is beyond me.

To be fair, ''TheGaulicWars'' isn't really a shining example of great writing.

And Dr. Seuss is a really good poet to begin with. Some of the poetic meter he utilizes is ridiculously complex.

As a semi fan of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' I have to admit that the main characters are completely idiotic, and have horrible development. On the other hand, it's mildly entertaining on occasion, and some of the supporting characters aren't that bad. Though, it seems even having a toleration for Twilight is enough for someone to get labeled a "gay retard" most places on the Internet.

This troper needs to resist the urge to strangle someone every single time this troper sees a paper that looks as though it is written in chatspeak. This troper also needs to resist the urge to just move to f*** ing Canada every single time someone believes that they are an expert at something despite never having studied the damn subject. This troper also goes to Troy High School in Fullerton, California, a school that is notorious for its supposedly intelligent students.

I found the problem with reading during my school years to be the teachers. When they chose the books, I didn't find them very appealing, with a few exceptions (''The Chrysalids'', ''Fifth Business'', ''Fahrenheit 451''). When I got to choose, it was often limited to a list of Canadian authors, none of whom had ever written anything approaching sci-fi or fantasy. Finally, we'd analyze them to such a point that we'd actually get sick of the book. They basically took all the fun out of reading.

Seconded. Appearently, this troper's teacher believes that a class of upper-class 15-year-olds aren't intelligent enough to read anything but predictable teenage romace novels unless it's a native classic.

Isn't there something ironic about the fact that, by trying to force kids to read boring and dull literature (or at least making it boring by their teaching methods), a number of teachers make them hate it more?

Tell me about it. I loved reading until 11th grade english when we had to read a book called ''Oh! Pioneers'' (if you haven't read it, consider yourself blessed). This was followed by the more famous ''Ethan Frome'' (which, unlike the previous book, I didn't bother to try to read after falling asleep in the middle of the 1st chapter). I haven't finished a real book since (I've read comedy books, but those don't really count).

There was one particular guy in high school who was obviously not on a first name basis with literacy. He asked me why I was reading the novelization of a movie I'd already seen (because its a comic book movie and Peter David writes novelizations that are better than the movie) and remarked that the comic book collected edition I was reading had too many words (it wasn't like Watchmen or V For Vendetta. I think it was just an average Spider-Man one from the local library).

Wow... makes me happy that apparently my classmates are above-average in intelligence. Quite a few of them like reading, and I have several times had to lend out books that others don't have but want to read.

This troper understands completely. I loved to read, and was kind of a loner in school, so i got all sorts of odd comments about reading instead of being "normal." Whatever that means. The teachers were oddly the ones that I got it the worst from. my favorite genres are sci-fi and fantasy and I had a teacher ask me why I didn't read "real books." I assume that she meant something of the classical genre, but i was baffled by that statement.

Is it wrong that I think that I would enjoy identifying the types of irony in Huck Finn?

Again in the high school realm, this troper has found it incredibly amusing that his classmates thought that books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 have "too many big words." Never a complaint about normal words, just too many "big" ones. Ex: The last thing we read in 10th grade was Julius Caesar. Not the actual play, the Sparknotes play-next-to-modern-english version. The conversion takes all of the emotion out of the text, and simplifies as much as possible, and they still complained that they didn't get it. That's their only excuse, other than big words. The kids only read it because our teacher had us read it out loud. And my school is a charter school designed to help minority students get to college.

Okay, related to the above: '''''what's wrong with reading Twilight?''''' This troper doesn't, but she certainly understands that it's a (sometimes guilty) pleasure for people, and certainly respects and understands their right to read it, even if she doesn't like it. The fact that so many of you are calling Twilight a book for morons and putting Shakespeare/Tolstoy/insert-"good"-literature-here on a pedastool certainly speaks to the applicability of this trope. Certainly, many of you might find Twilight to be absolutely deplorable in comparison to any particular pick from your amazing collection, but not everyone who reads "bad books" is an idiot, and not everyone considers them "bad books".

Because, as detailed on its main page, it's FUCKING STUPID.

Wow, amazingly open-minded and non-trope-invoking troper, way to sound like a complete jerk. It's a matter of taste and opinion, and public medium ignorance around Twilight seems to focus only on the fact that yes, it's very silly and reads like a self-insert fic. Yes, that's true, but that doesn't excuse the fact that it ''is'' a very valid source of entertainment for many people, just as valid as reading the Odyssesy or Altas Shrugged or whatever the hell people consider "intelligent" reading. The public (or, at least, Troperville) seems to have the idea that anyone who reads Twilight is an idiot who doesn't know good literature to save their life. This troper has plenty of friends who love Twilight who've also gone on to great universities. One who even went to Princeton as a ''comparative literature'' major. She enjoyed Twilight for what it was: entertainment, and quite honestly, you calling Twilight is about the same as someone calling the books you consider great ''stupid'', "literary worth" be damned. It doesn't have to be what the holier than thou literature community considers good to be enjoyable; it just has to be good to the person who's reading it.

One guy did a very thorough analysis of just how God-awful Twilight is on this website: http://markreadstwilight.buzznet.com/user/.

Okay, you guys need to shut up. The OP wasn't saying "Twilight rocks you guys, leave it alone!". I know Twilight sucks, we all do! So do most of the things listed on the Guilty Pleasures page, to a degree. But you still should have the right to enjoy them if that's your thing. You people are proving this trope right and heading into militant {{Fan Hater}} territory! So just leave this topic alone.

When This Troper mentioned in english class that she likes comedy books, what was one classmate's suggestion of a good comedy series? "Gossip Girls".

Well, you could laugh at how God-awful terrible the show is, I suppose.

Well, it's based on a series of books. I have no clue how funny and/or horrible they are, though.

Take a drink every time the Troper Tales page about Public Medium Ignorance includes an example of AdaptationDisplacement.

This troper enjoys telling people about the thousand-page "porn" she likes to carry around. The series is very good.

This troper mainly read that series while in his high school. When one teacher pulled the book out of his hands and read the inside blurb, she wanted to confiscate said "porn". However, when I pointed out I had gotten it from the public library....

Try being a Public Librarian these days. You spend a lot of time defending your existence to well educated white Males who haven't been to the library in 10 years and think that we haven't anything beyond undigestable literature to torture teens with and romantic stories for bored housewives. I find that females are a lot more likely to have actual valid critism on the state of affairs in a library, unless it's a moral guardian.

I'm sorry, I find using the words 'well educated' and 'hasn't been to a library in 10 years' oxymoronic.

Given that the OP was a librarian, I smell SarcasmMode.

I had several relatives who couldn't wrap their minds around the fact that I needed a degree--a ''graduate'' degree, at that--to qualify for most library positions. "What do they do, give you classes in shushing?" Yes, because all librarians ever do is sit behind desks and shush people, while that huge pile of books, periodicals, movies, music, and heaven knows what else surrounding them stays budgeted, organized, useful, and up to date entirely on its own. (And don't even get me started on people who say libraries are obsolete because EverythingIsOnline these days...)

I absolutely hate it when I get the "normal people don't talk like that" treatment from people whenever I use a word that might be remotely classified as a "big word". I mean, are people really that ignorant? I don't use words that are that hard... anyway, back to the trope at hand, your mom should be glad that these shows about vampires are enriching your vocabulary. (Start using "nosferatu" and "sanguinary" in normal conversation and see what she does.)

Getting those words ''in'' the conversation in the first place would be a laudable enough feat in itself. But I do agree about the "big-otry" of some friends when I demonstrate a polysyllabic vocabulary. =)

Actually anyone who went out of their way to use "sanguinary" in a conversation would automatically be qualified to use Nosferatu...of themself...since it comes from ''nesuferâtul'', "the insufferable one".:It's actually a euphemism for Satan, though.

From the first responding troper: Patronizing is a big word. Nigh is really quite short.

This troper has found that it's easy to take the wind out of sails of people talking about The Dresden Files by using the blurbs on th back to mention how it's basically Harry Potter staring Philip Marlow.

*facepalm* What's it got to do with ''HarryPotter'' aside from the main character being a wizard named Harry, and (arguably) getting darker as the series progresses? The people who write half of those blurbs just go for the easy "wizard named Harry" joke, and rarely say anything with substance (at least, not on the editions my library has).

Seriously. He's "Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull." Thomas said so.

My dad thought my L keychain was of a Pokemon (not of a Pokemon character, but a Pokemon). Of course, my parents are quite supportive of my love for anime, even buying tickets for the local con, and I never really expect them to get it.

This troper's family is the same way. They'll buy stuff like that for me but are for the most part clueless about modern games and the anime I watch unless I mention a title, and never ask to see the contents. They did have a rule while I was growing up that I wasn't allowed to play M rated games lots of times (Fighting games seemed to be an exception) but I thank them for that now. It does show people can be clueless but tollerant of others.

This troper suffers this often. For example, she prefers to read manga during the school day- easier to carry around, more likely to be borrowed from friends, easier to read a quick segment of quickly between classes, etc. In her AP English class, we often have days that are designated as 'Book Discussion/Silent Reading' days- where we bring in what we're currently reading and read and/or discuss books quietly. This was one of the very first instances of that sort of class, so this troper had forgotten her book in her locker. The previous few instances, she'd been reading young adult novels that she happened to like. Because she didn't have her book with her, she just pulled out her manga- xxxHolic, I believe. Her English teacher came over and made a snarky comment about how I should be reading 'real' books, as 'comics' were only for 'idiots'. A bit cheap of him, really, seeing as several girls were, of course, reading Twilight and nothing else looked any less... chick-flick-esque. I took great pleasure in marching back to my locker and grabbing my dog-eared copy of ''Anna Karenina''. The look on his face was ''priceless''.

This troper writes fanfic. She hates that people assume it means she writes marysuetastic self-insert fics with bad grammar and crack pairings. Okay, so the crack pairings part ''is'' true, but still, just because it's fanfic doesn't mean it has mary sues or that it's a self insert.

This troper reads and writes fanfic as well and has been quite involved in various fandom communities since she was in her early teens. Whenever people snicker about this, she likes to introduce them to the published authors, media personalities and other absolutely awesome people she has met through fanfiction (and who are always amazing to talk to when it comes to helping her grow as a writer), and show them the original novel she is working on in between studying law and language at university. She owes everything she accomplishes, whether as a lawyer or as a professional writer, in the future to having written fanfiction. Why, you ask? Simple: almost nobody can tell that this troper is actually ''dyslexic'' due to how much writing fanfiction has helped her hone her literacy and grammar over the years. Even better is that this troper is also working as an English tutor, and is constantly asked by her fanfiction deriding classmates to edit and restructure their essays.

DON'T GET THIS TROPER STARTED ON IT. She was once in a class with a girl who downright derided all fanfiction authors and readers, calling them close to borderline unintelligent and completely uncreative for failing to make their own stories. Never mind the fact that, sometimes, it's just fun to play in someone else's sandbox: fanfiction is no less valid a form of writing than actal fiction. There are thousands of fan fiction writers who write on par, if not better, than published original writers, and manage to write captivating stories that capture the characterizations of the original characters extremely well. Not to mention all those fantastic plots and storylines that writers weave to expand, or in some cases, alter the ideas of the work it's based off of. Never mind that it's getting far easier for this troper to find good, ''free''fanfiction, as opposed to the laborious process she goes through to find a book worth purchasing. And that many fanfiction authors hone their craft with fic and write perfectly good original stories as well. How did this troper learn to write? Certainly by reading a ridiculously amount of physical books, yes, but she can say without a doubt that fanfiction has expanded her vocabular and her ability to write fiction in a way that years of reading only books never did. This troper tried to explain some reasons for writing fanfiction (dissatisfaction with canon: the original author's word doesn't have to be written in stone with fanfiction; expanding upon an idea; or simply for shits and giggles: writing doesn't always have to be super-meaningful-- it can be just for ''fun'', too; etc), but it all fell upon deaf ears. This troper is now convinced that there's virtually no way to convince a writer who's firmly entrenched in the tradiational approach to writing that fanfiction is an acceptable outlet of creativy.

Worse yet is the people who assume all fanfiction is slash and graphically sexual. No, seriously, I've run into people like that. They ''absolutely refused'' to believe me when I said not all fanfiction isn't like that, despite me telling them I write fanfiction, offering to show them several examples, and pointing out that I'm an administrator of a fanfiction site that has extremely strict rules about sexual scenes! (aka, fade-to-black is ''it''. Kids frequent our site; if you absolutely MUST write your sexy, sexy fic, take it somewhere else.)

As I sat down to read a science fiction book a while ago, my mom admonished more for not reading "more serious stuff." Um, ''what''? You can also feel the disapproval coming off in waves whenever I buy a kid's or teen book (most recently, Scott Westerfeld's ''Literature/{{Leviathan}}''.)

I still have to defend liking and buying Pratchett to my mother, since it is 'not real'. Well, it is fiction, but so are your psychological thrillers. This has lessened somewhat the past years, fortunately.

I'd be hard-pressed to find a more serious topic than ''a world war'', even if it is AlternateUniverse and steampunk...

This troper would never dream of telling her friends she reads furry stories, and has given up telling people she writes fantasy. The "oh, I thought you were smart" look they give her when they are told that what she's writing is ''not'' a journal and in fact features people with magic has become annoying.

This troper hates that whenever young adult fiction/literature is brought up, people automatically think it's only stories about teenage girls and their boyfriends -- or it's just all ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' (and its knockoffs) all the time. Every time she sees an article in which a critic dismisses it as "immature" or watered-down, she wants to throw things.

The bookstore This Troper goes to occasionally ran a series of posters about various literary genres (in the form of "X% of [genre] [stereotype]"). One that stuck in my mind was "118% of science fiction has nothing in common with reality". Really? Even skipping the number, the fact that sci-fi, especially the one written in the second half of the 20th century, was usually a way to deal with the most current problems, i.e. the problems other genres couldn't (or were afraid to) write about, clearly isn't important enough. Because every other genre in the overarching "Fiction" category is 100% true. Honest.

I suspect that that poster was intended as comedy. Declaring that fiction is unrealistic using an impossible statistic? Sounds like self-deprecating humour to me.

I had an interesting conversation with my mother after I revealed that I was reading American Psycho after having seen the film. She asked what the point of reading such a violent novel was, and I simply could not answer. I thought I was reading it to possibly understand the psychopathic personality better, the actively antagonistic one (as such an idea is completely alien to me, the desire to cause harm), but I'm not sure what good has come of me reading it. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to "get it"... a great fear, I suppose, that the work you'd be defending from the "Mainstream-focused sheep" (a concept that I believe has strong ties to No True Scotsman) is, with all intents and purposes, as useless or damaging as all these "Moral Guardians" contest. I can't help but notice that I have learned as little as Patrick Bateman did throughout the book. I've developed a bit more of a desire to do good. Well, at least I'm allowed to say that I'm the only one I know of who has read the novel... as difficult a read it was. I almost wish I was still in the "Ignorance" stage regarding it. Then again, a motto of mine is "You cannot understand good without knowing evil"... then a-double-gain, I may be wrong... basically, I'm questioning the desirability of such unique... tastes, in any medium listed on this page.

This Troper's father is a big fan of history, particularly the civil war, as well as westerns in general. When I suggested he watch ''{{Firefly}}'' because it's similar in tone and setting, he dismissed it by saying, "I don't want to watch anything with cutesy robots in it." The sound you hear is the echo of my skull smacking into my desk.

River practically counts (cutesy borderline-autistic BioAugmentation girl is definitely the same ballpark). Not that that's bad; this troper loves anything with robots (okay, bioroids).

This troper greatly enjoys sci-fi, especially the older stuff. It's not all Star Trek, people! And it's only the old shows and movies that are cheesy.

My dad is like this... with TV. He likes to lecture me when I watch a TV show instead of read a book. He argues that all TV is inherently inferior to books, and the stories, plotlines, and writing is incredibly bad. I once challenged him on that, arguing that ''Firefly'' was as good, if not better than many of the books I've read in those aspects. His response was that I "haven't read enough" and that I should "get back to (him) when (I)'ve read 1000 books." He quickly changed the subject when I called him out on the 1000 books number. He also refused to watch the show. Debating my dad is not fun.

If you hang out with friends who think ''x'' genre of music sucks because it doesn't take as much talent as ''y'' genre, keep your mouth shut if you listen to rap or electronic music, unless you have a novel-sized list of arguments explaining why it's okay to listen to "[[FunWithAcronyms Retards Attempting Poetry" or computer-generated music.

Bizarrely enough, this seems to be even more present in the metalhead community. This troper spends a lot of time on metal-related sites, and notes that you'll find many disparaging references to [=cRAP=] or "Tekk-no", or pop. This is rather irritating to this troper (despite the fact that he was responsible for many of those references), because nowadays metal is usually regarded by most people as long-haired Norwegian Satanists screaming about elves over a sound that resembles a guitar being murdered, and ergo, considers it rather hypocritical for a metalhead to disparage other genres. Of course, this troper will remain an elitist bastard about genre no matter what, but hey.

Most American metal bands that started after 1996 wouldn't know heavy metal if it fell from the sky and crushed them.

Probably doesn't help that a lot of new metal sounds like the description above. It used to sound like music, really!

The metalheads, themselves, are part of the problem here, as many of them will dismiss anything with even a hint of melody and/or a tempo slower than the heartbeat of a fat guy in a marathon as "not metal." If Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and/or Iron Maiden were new bands in 2008, they'd be classified as Hard Rock.

This Troper's younger brother's like that. "Sabbath's not metal!" It makes me want to punch him in the face.

Likewise, This Troper has heard a fan of "pop-punk" (called "punk rock" by said fan) such as Fall Out Boy and Avril Lavigne say that Dream Theater and Metallica weren't metal bands.

{{This Troper}} just entered a {{Heroic BSOD}} just by imagining such a situation.

If Sabbath gets it, Deep Purple gets it ten times worse. For three albums in the early 70s they were metal trailblazers, but unlike Black Sabbath they didn't have the sound, so for all their insane drumming and speedy riffing they hardly ever get a good word from the metal folks. Power metal, and especially Dragonforce, gets some of this, which they make up for by completely ignoring their detractors. We're having more fun anyway. On another subject, death metal is popularly characterized ''only'' by its harsh singing style, which can lead to bands anywhere from black metal to metalcore and even hardcore being called death metal.

This troper can't stand Metal...but ''loves'' {{Metalocalypse}}. Thus, the solution: create {{Rapolocalypse}}. Simple.

Five members become one?

This troper enjoys rap and hip-hop as styles, but finds that too much of what comes out nowadays is just the usual formulaic 'money niggaz hos' stuff - which he hates with unequaled passion.

Seconded by this troper, who has resorted to listening to old school and nineties' rap. Out of all the modern rappers, pretty much the only one he listens is Xzibit.

Semi-related: I intensely loathe rap, hip-hop (although, I admit, I've grown up among the modern crap. There's a scant few bits of hip-hop that I like), and the assosciated culture, and I'm somewhat vocal about it. ''This has gotten me called a racist'' '''''by black people.''''' So all black people live their lives like the songs?

This troper listens to at least one band/artist from every genre of music (every!..except opera), but listens to a lot of non-mainstream and/or odd bands. The biggest problem? Electronic music. The average person seems to equate Techno with Electronic music and is shocked to hear the wide variety of music that falls under the "Electronic" super-genre. The bizarre names for various types and styles of Electronic music don't help (House, Trance, Acid, Drums & Bass, etc.). Another issue? Mashups. This troper really wants to find a course in Music Philosophy just so he can argue with people who see compositions or songs as sacred, not to be played with. They say: Music should be revered as the composer intended! I say? Pop Will Eat Itself!

This troper would like to agree with you in listening to at least ''one'' band or artist from every genre of music, as she's willing to give everything a try at least once. So she mostly just complains about certain artists instead of an entire genre. Unfortunately, her brother isn't quite so forgiving, and tends to wail on anything he doesn't like, and one has to practically strap him to a chair to get him to listen to anything involving R&B, rap, and anything like that. He especially hates how a lot of classic rock bands are incredibly popular to the point of nausea (Led ZEPPELIN, ACDC, Nirvana) and that other, just as good bands have either been forgotten or subjected to one-hit-wonder-itis to the general population (Oasis, J. Guiles Band, ELO), or all the masses want to listen to are metal and emo music (Billy Talent, My Chemical Romance). She's given up pointing out that not everyone is going to like the same music he does, of course the masses are too stupid to spread out into other music genres, and him complaining and b*** hing about it isn't going to change anything. To continue, the Rock genre is just as diverse as the Electronic one, as there are hundreds of subgenres based around music style, appearance, concert type, etc. It's almost impossible to list a band as only one, and even harder to define the different ones. Don't even get her ''started'' on foreign music..."You listen to Japanese music? Isn't that...like...weird? You can't understand it!"

This Troper despises rap... but respects your right to listen to it. Myself? I had to calmly explain to my parents that owning Evanescence does not make me some sort of goth, and that metal =/= screamo. I haven't told ''anyone'' about the fact that I listen to electronic music or video game songs.

This Troper finds it both amusing and distressing to be in the following position: constantly broadening her enjoyment of music across the spectrum (while still finding plenty "unlistenable" - simply not enjoyable - and realizing that as personal preference), yet becoming acutely aware of how narrow the choices of those around her are. Grew up: Country (Merle to [=McGraw=]), an interest generally shared across close family members. Dad: Blues... and "Christian" defined primarily as "The Gaither Vocal Band, because I'm not interested in any other Christian artists right now." Mom: Celtic and Classical. Brother: Rap and Rock. Other Brother: Rap and Pop. Friends: Rock. Other Friends: Metal. Other Friends: J-Pop. Any of these categories could probably find something bad to say about every other one. Me? I'm slowly exploring the world of music. Take a look at what could be a typical load of my iPod:

Country, Christian, Ska, Raffi, Tickle Tune Typhoon, Within Temptation, Alice Cooper, Kaptein Sabeltann, some Taiko performances, video game soundtracks, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gilbert and Sullivan, The Bee Gees, Hanson, Meat Loaf (TWO WORDS, IDIOT. IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE COVER), Billy Idol, Depeche Mode, Chage and Aska, Nine Inch Nails's ''Hurt'', plus ''Dragostea Din Tei'' (aka ''The Numa-Numa Song'') (in five languages), ''The Scotsman Song'', and ''Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom''. I mean, why restrict yourself to just a few genres?

Likewise.

Parents: Whatever's on the radio, Persian music. Friends: {{ACDC}}, various video game soundtracks, AvengedSevenfold, LinkinPark, SystemOfADown, KanyeWest. Me: {{ACDC}}, TomLehrer, Shiro Sagisu, Frank Klepacki, Robert Prince, The Ink Spots, Beethoven and TheBeastieBoys.

This troper is a fan of rock, particularly classic, and a few metal bands (mainly ones that are somewhat older, like Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden and Metallica). While he doesn't much care for rap, country, or the aforementioned screaming Satanists murdering a guitar, he respects the talent needed by each and those who do like them. Most of my friends are subversions of that rule as well, seeing as in my main Nakama we all like different genres (classic rock for me, techno for one friend, rap and pop for another friend and metal for the last), but unfortunately we're the only subversions of this I know.

I second the statement made above about how metal != screamo. I don't know how many people I've tried to explain my love of Nightwish to who, after hearing it's "symphonic power metal", go, "WHAT, you actually LIKE that freaky screaming metal stuff?!" While some of Nightwish's songs do border on the screamo-ish, I enjoy their music for the variety of instruments, the complicated and interesting melodies/harmonies, and the way the vocal music weaves into the rest, giving the sound of the voice precedence over the lyrics. In a way, Nightwish is closer to classical symphonic music than screamo!

This troper came of age musically around 2000. I had no real sense of what music I liked before that. Of all the possible ways to be introduced to electronica, mine came from Moby's ''Play'', specifically the track "Machete." This eventually led to a love of trance music; I collect it, listen to it, write it. And, unfortunately, I still have to explain to most people what it is.

And, in many cases in middle/high school, after explaining, "you know, like techno," be faced with the line from Eminem's "Without Me": "NOBODY LISTENS TO TECHNO!" Particularly painful since Eminem specifically dissed Moby a few lines earlier in that song.

This troper listens to a lot of punk rock music... which to most people probably suggests the cliché-fest of dudes in leather jackets with neon-coloured mohawks and safety pins in their faces, screaming about the man. But not every band is The Casualties! In fact, The Casualties are looked down on by a lot of actual punk fans, and ThisTroper prefers BadReligion - old men, shouting about politics! or ScreechingWeasel - sarcastic songs about suburbia by Ramones fanboys! or TheWorld / InfernoFriendshipSociety - a delicious fusion of more traditional punk with cabaret-style antics, or TheGaslightAnthem, or Dillinger Four or... any number of bands that are ''not'' the SexPistols...

Da_Nuke has a separate playlist on his üPod called "Gateway Metal". In case someone pops in and says heavy metal is A.- a bunch of Norwegian church-burning, blood-guzzling, shrieking sickos, B.- a bunch of drunken Americans singing about their latest orgy with 5 groupies, or C.- annoying and corrosive guitars played by mallcore kids, I immediately slap them in the face with the European folk sound of Korpiklaani's "Wooden Pints", then with the catchy rhythm of Sonata Arctica's "Gun", then with the majestic orchestra of Nightwish's "Ghost Love Score", and then with Liv Kristine's heavenly voice in Leaves' Eyes's "Newfoundland".

This troper absolutely loves music from other countries (not just Japan and Germany) and can't get people to understand why she likes it. "You can't even understand the lyrics" and apparently "I like the way it sounds" isn't good enough. Then people start talking about how they're probably singing about how much they hate America. I look up the lyrics now and can proudly state "It's actually about seaweed falling in love." Still what irks her the most is when she makes revenge snarky comments about their choice of music and they give her the same answer she gave them!

"I like the way it sounds" is exactly why This Troper got into Masami Okui's music. Thankfully, he's never had to explain his love for her music much, but when he has to, that reason is the exact one he gives every time.

iTunes has illustrations for some genres of music. Some of them are acceptable, ("dance" for techno, "r&b" for soul, etc) but any punk is labelled as "alternative". Bollocks.

Nevermind the bollocks.

This troper's friend used to think that any music that wasn't Japanese (he was horribly and is still somewhat) sucked. Then this troper got him into DragonForce (this was back while this troper still listened to them (READ: in his ignorant youth of having about 7 or 8 bands on his playlist compared to the 100+ of now)). This friend went on to say that American music sucks thinking its all rap and IntercourseWithYou pop. Then this troper got him into Kamelot, an American band (knowing that he would reject them based on their origins, this troper didn't tell his friend that Kamelot was American until after he was addicted to them.)

Once, my sister tried to borrow ThisTroper's headphones (which ThisTroper is very attatched to) while ThisTroper was playing a RhythmGame on the iPod. When ThisTroper protested, she said I didn't need them because I wasn't listening to music, just playing a game. *mentally facepalms*.

This troper has been unable to form an easily understandable response to the ubiquitous question "So, what kind of music do you listen to?" since he can remember himself. That kind is hardcore techno, and I am tired of having to say, "Do you know techno? Do you know how it has a four-to-the-floor bass drum? Okay, now imagine the drum being distorted" to anyone who asks.

Anime fans that listen to Japanese music exclusively that claim that all western music is about sex and violence irritate this troper to no end. He repeatedly tries to explain that the mainstream doesn't represent all of western music and that Japanese music explores sex and violence as often as western music does, they simply don't notice it because they don't speak the language.

Shit, the ignorance has swung back? *sigh*

This troper went to an audio school, and in one class a fellow student went on a rant about how the program Garage Band was ruining music production FOREVER. I asked him what his favorite program to use was and he said Logic. I told him that Garage Band was basically a simpler version of Logic and that, with the right tools, you can do quite a few of the things in Garage Band that you can do in Logic. He thought I was kidding. *bangs head till it bleeds*

Regarding music in general, this troper has coworkers complaining that their kids "just have no ''taste''". I regularly inform them that yes, their kids have taste, just not the ''same'' taste as the parent, which is a different discussion altogether.

This troper has taken to telling people she doesn't like music, rather than give a full and honest answer and try to explain the genres she like. PublicMediumIgnorance is better off an AvertedTrope...

This troper feels you. How do I explain to people why I like electronic beeping video game soundtracks and weeaboo techno Japanese hardcore dance music?

This troper runs into this sometimes. I'm not ashamed to admit that I like InsaneClownPosse. I know they're not TheBeatles or anything (which is another band I like), but I find them entertaining. A perfect example would be when in my government class we were watching a documentary about how media influences people, and they had a small segment on Juggalos. Of course, they only chose the most loud, obnoxious, and downright embarrassing fans to be in the documentary. Right after the doc moved on, I told the class that not everyone who likes ICP acts like that. It's kind of like the wrestling example earlier on this page, that the most vocal spoils it for the minority. And wrestling is another thing. I'm also not ashamed to admit to liking wrestling. I'm just lucky that my parents understand that I am interested in different things, and don't judge me. Hell, my mom used to play Super Mario World with me and my brothers when we first got our SNES.

Completely averted with This Troper's mother, who knows what EarthBound is, loves game music, etc. Played straight with his father, but his inability to listen to people other than him (which has lead to him insisting that things proven scientifically wrong are true to the point of threats) is the least of his problems.

Try telling elitists that picking good songs is just as artistic as writing them and be flamed like actual hell.

Don't even bother trying to explain NASCAR to anyone in Britain. Hearing "They're just turning left, that's easy isn't it?" ad nauseum makes this editor really want to say "I'd like to see you try it without crashing after five minutes". On a broader scale this applies to any other motorsport too. The reasoning being that if you can drive a car at 50 mph you could race in F1, which to this contributor's mind sounds like saying that just because you can hit a ball over a net you could enter Wimbledon.

That's really the case in a lot of United States, though, too. This Troper has little problem saying NASCAR doesn't do much for me; most coastal city folk just don't get enough exposure to the underlying technology early enough to ever find the stuff interesting, even if they can objectively tell you that it's at least difficult.

Not only that, a lot of people overseas seem to think that NASCAR and other forms of oval racing are the ONLY major form of motorsport to be found in the States, completely ignoring the existence of Trans-Am, American Le Mans, the Rolex Sports Car Series, etc... This troper personally suspects the blame partially lies on the fact that the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix used to be run on a modified oval circuit.

Again, sadly true in America as well. This troper has been stumping for the American Le Mans Series as the best racing series in the world for a few years now, and most people seem to be confused that people race cars on tracks that aren't ovals, or sometimes even in closed-off city streets, despite living less than 20 miles from where the Long Beach Grand Prix is held every year.

American Football (the one with the sharp-ended oval-shaped ball) is certainly impressive when you understand the underlying rules, and many if not most Americans recognize or at least don't contest that. Without that understanding, though, the game seems to center sweaty men running into and grabbing each other for hours in front of a mass of drunk guys without shirts. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

To a lesser degree, Americans do not have much tolerance for 'soccer' (aka football with the spherical ball), never mind to the level of reaction other countries riot to.

Soccer is largely associated here with the term "soccer mom", which has connotations of someone bringing their kids to a game, which makes it a "kids' game", you follow the logic? (Of course, in recent years "soccer mom" is increasingly associated with the MILF phenomenon and has nothing to do with sports.)

No offense to Europeans but Americans probably also equate soccer with European pansies because they don't like it sharing the same name as their favorite American past time. This American troper hated gym class but loved soccer because all I had to was wait for the ball to come to me and kick it away from the other player.

Of course in fairness, soccer fans any any better with this either. Just simply tell them that you don't like their sport and they will call you a "Pussy that watches 'pussy sports like Handegg'."

This troper is sick to death of the reactions he gets when he says he's into MMA. He consistently has to explain that yes, it is a sport. Yes, there are rules and safety features similar to boxing, wrestling and other combat sports. No, it's not "anything goes." There have been a total of three fatalities in the sport ''ever'' and only one of them was at a sanctioned event. That's a safety record that puts boxing, american football, rugby, hockey and many others to shame.

Kickboxing is one of the most popular combat sports in the world, and the popularity of K-1 (the biggest contest of the sport) matches, if not exceeds that of MMA organizations like the UFC and Pride in Japan and Europe. Unfortunately, its popularity in the US makes soccer look like an all-American sport. I mean, this place has loads of references to Professional Wrestling (though that might be because of the more show-oriented structure of the sport) but I couldn't find a single reference to Ernesto Hoost or Peter Aerts.

Do you know what it's like being a ProfessionalWrestling fan? According to a combination of liberals, conservatives, sports enthusiasts, anime nerds, social commentators, the ad industry, the networks and...well, everyone that isn't a wrestling fan...we are nothing but a bunch of homosexual, misogynistic rednecks. And all because we like to watch what amounts to a "men's soap opera". Last I checked, people who like ACTUAL soap operas weren't half as hated as pro wrestling fans.

Oh, and we're all stupid enough to believe that the match outcomes aren't predetermined (or simply "wrestling's fake").

I'm not a wrestling fan, but in you guys' defense; most MOVIES and TV SHOWS, and indeed, ALL OF FICTION, and by extention, basically the vast majority of entertainment in general, is also pre-determined and fake.

This Troper has had some success explaining wrestling to movie fans (i.e. almost anyone) by describing it as choreographing a fight scene in one continous take, with no rehearsals, no stunt men, no post-production editing and, oh yeah, in front of an audience of thousands. They still may never enjoy it, but they can at least appreciate the craft that way.

I'm not a fan (I just can't enjoy a bunch of men doing things that would probably be considered gay porn if not for the spandex they wear), but here's the way I see it (read it all before formulating your response). There are 4 types of wrestling fans in my eyes: Closeted gays, rednecks, non-redneck morons, and people who understand that it's fake and enjoy it in the same way one would enjoy a play/movie/tv show. The first 3 give a bad name to the 4th one (it's like how the dumbasses who try to emulate GTA and such give a bad name to those of us who don't shoot at random cars because a video game character did it).

An interesting case of intra-medium ignorance, this troper is an apprentice playwright. She's been told by more than one fiction writer that "plays are easy, they're just dialogue".

Arrrrgh! That's wrong! Dialogue is about the hardest thing to write in ANY medium.

And it always irritates me when other authors say that. Dialogue actually is easy for some people. I have to write dialogue and then go back to describe the setting which typically leaves me banging my head against a wall trying to come up with a description that doesn't feel like sandpaper.

This troper agrees with the above. Since writing dialogue is much easier for me than describing appearance or events, I tend to prefer writing something for a visual medium, usually comic books.

You're kidding, right? Dialog is easy to write. If you're having trouble, your characters are poorly thought out and have a bad voice.

There are so many things wrong with that statement that it's hard to know where to begin, so I'll confine myself to the most obvious point. There's a world of difference between a character having a "good" voice and it being ''easy'' to get into that voice, to make yourself speak and ''think'' as that character (and to have events affect the way you speak as the character changes) -- and then have to ''switch between characters at a moment's notice.''Now, I'll agree that all this gets easier with practice, but scoffing "it's just easy" makes you a JerkAss.

It kills this troper when people use their own writing experiences as a guideline for how others will write. Some people have 'the ear' for dialogue, and it simply flows for them. Others do not, and struggle to get hold of those unique voices. Other people have an eye for detail, and descriptions flow for them. Others struggle with it. That other writers are not identical to you SHOULD NOT SURPRISE YOU.

This troper also finds dialogue the easiest thing to write, in both short stories and novellas. No one part of writing can really be said to be the hardest; it varies between authors.

YES! Thank you! I love writing dialogue and am always willing to help people with it, but I suck at describing the setting! It all comes down to Ears Versus Eyes. I'm an auditory person and therefore have the Ear for Dialogue. To invert some trope that I don't remember: my dad has the Eye for Detail that I lack.

This troper's the same. It's gotten to the point where he'll deliberately force himself to write settings. Dialogue is easy (for him, anyway), descriptions, though, are very, very hard. His father actually gave him a book to read and then said, "This is one of the worst things I've read in my entire life. No story or characters whatsoever. But you need to read it because the description is absolutely amazing." Strangely enough, it actually helped.

In England, it irritates me that people look down on me doing Drama as an A-level, as apparently "anyone can do it, it's just standing on a stage reading lines!", refusing to notice the amount of study you have to do to actually be any good at doing it.

Similar mindset was present in my secondary school: quite a few people signed up for Drama thinking it'd be a 'free class', essentially. They wanted to dick around and not do anything. More than half of them quit when after a couple of classes when they realised actual fucking ''work'' was involved.

Same at my high school in DC. I take four drama classes because I'm interested in directing and acting, and except for the conservatory and directing classes, which required auditions/pitches, there are only one or two students in each class that take it seriously. It doesn't help that the teacher is a flake. People openly refuse to do exercises as simple and impersonal as a warm-up because they don't feel like it, and they get no consequence (except maybe a B instead of an A).

Drama is not ''standing on a stage reading lines''! Drama is putting yourself into the character and bringing them to life! As the above tropers have said, that takes WORK! It takes years of practice to be good at it!

Scale modeling? "Oh, your toy cars look so nice..." Made no less irksome by the fact that several of them ''are'' toys (albeit heavily detailed out and with their wheels often glued solid), often being the only scale representations available of a given subject.

This troper has gotten the usual responses found on this page, and more, even from other fans. For BJD fandom, try terms like "sex doll" and "expensive baby" on for size. No. No. You don't understand. It's a ''doll''. It's a big, expensive doll, because I am an adult and I like to pay for quality. It's also a work of art. Yes, it's bigger than a Barbie. No, I don't sculpt it myself. It's not a surrogate for the children I'll never ha-- no, no, it's not a [=RealDoll=] either -- why are you running away? (Also, all vampire fiction that is not Twilight is Satan worship. Of course, this will never happen, because all vampire fiction is Twilight. Even that book I'm reading at lunch with fucking ''InterviewWithTheVampire'' emblazoned on the cover. "Gasp! What is that book about?" Well, the title kind of gives you the gist.) Also, any book bigger than ''BreakingDawn'' must take months to read, and is probably the Bible, anyway. I'm sick of being treated like some kind of weird savant because I read an unabridged paperback of ''LesMiserables'' at lunch, or ''JonathanStrangeAndMrNorrell'', or ''A Breath Of Snow And Ashes''. Wow! A book thicker than 300 pages! You're kidding me -- ''no''. They don't print ''those'', would they? Who would read them?

Oy, I feel your pain. Any time you read something in less than a week, you're treated as if you've run a marathon.

Heh, I once read the first 6 Harry Potter books in a week or so (I had nothing else to do that week), but my friends, being nerds too, didn't really care.

I got a few weird looks when I got mad that our school assigned the abridged version of ''TheCountOfMonteCristo''. Yes, I know it's pretty long (even to me, who on a good day can read 300+ pages in a night). Yes, I know the language's somewhat archaic. But the abridged version took out the Villefort plot and a slew of necessary scenes.

Ditto. Then again, most of my recent reading (about a month and a half) has been on this wiki and Armageddon!?, which '''still''' amounts to ''a couple thousand pages' worth of paper, '''at least'''....''

"Son, you're 21-years-old. Why are you still buying toys?" GAAH! I collect {{Bionicle}}s and other {{Lego}} sets, building with them on occasion. If I had a dime for every time someone (my parents especially) told me I was too old for toys, I'd be a wealthy man.

Gah, this troper won't even bother explaining to his relatives what game I'm talking about much anymore. In fact, I'd rather not even tell them the proper nouns and names of these games. It feels embarrassing. "You play on the computer? Like Mario and Youtube?" "Huh? RagnarokOnline has a story? Yeah right. The game's just about maxing out the AGI stat during the earlier levels and upgrading Bash to lvl.6 THEN focusing on finding a balance between STR and VIT on later levels (preferably 30-45 max), in which case you're going to have to do that sidequest with the Skirt of Virgin to get that rare headgear in that Archer town. Afterwards, you should join a party (<{W1ntarWulvs}> FTW!) to get the..." ARGH!

Charlie Brooker sympathizes with your plight here.

This troper's little brother once told her grandfather that, "Trying to explain how a computer game works to you would be like trying to explain how a light bulb works to a caveman."

...I think you posted that one to the wrong page.

Don't you mean these pages?

The idea of professional competitive spectated video gaming, especially when referred to as eSports, generally evokes reactions ranging from puzzlement ("So, you just watch them play a game?") to outright mockery ("Who wants to watch a couple Korean dudes in racing outfits click their mice like madmen?"). The former is generally the reaction of the uninformed, and the latter is generally the reaction of those who have a passing knowledge, and may even be gamers, but refuse to accept the idea of competitive gaming, either because they feel it makes the game only for obsessive perfectionists or because they think it is utterly ridiculous for video games to be professionally competitive, or labeled as a sport. Despite this opposition, there is quite a bit of support for eSports in various ways. Most notably in South Korea but Europe is also warming up to the idea, if not in an entirely mainstream way.

To be honest, the entire concept of an "eSport" in a game that's not, essentially, Unreal Tournament or something akin, just doesn't make much sense. Considering the impossibility of making anything with classes or movesets perfectly balanced, it's like playing soccer where the Italian team can shoot fireballs from their hands, and the Canadian team can throw beavers on their enemies. Which one is more powerful? I dunno. But one of them sure will be in the end. This means you end up playing the metagame more than you end up playing the actual game. Case in point? WorldOfWarcraft. They're trying to make it an "eSport". They're failing. The one thing every single player will agree on, is that PvP (especially arena) is horribly unbalanced in one way or another.

Apart from only very few games being even remotely suitable for any type of respectable competition, the bigger problem in the long term is that of cheating. When Counter-Strike became a professionally-played video game in 2000, it also immediately became a professionally-cheated game. When you have 14-year-olds pining for 800$ graphics cards, morals go down the drain. Private hacks that allow one to play on secure servers are sold for high prices, and the advantage from even a subtle aimbot is sufficiently large to keep everyone who isn't using hacks out. The result is that you can't even get past the qualification stages in most leagues without having to hack. If professional cycling is the live trial of the newest hormonal enhancements, then the CS tournaments generally are displays of the latest private hacks.

I think that eSports also has a big problem with ever changing games. videogames do not last like sports as Tennis and Soccer and don't get much time to build some sort of tradition. The tradition building is mostly reserved for eSports itself.

My sister is a hideous example of this trope. She dismisses any and all action games like the LegendOfZelda and {{Metroid}} as inherently bad, because in her mind, anything involving swords and guns are stupid and don't require any thinking, despite many games she mentions having several difficult puzzles for you to solve to progress, in particular Zelda, and rather complex worlds that requires a bit of thought to navigate, like Metroid. This extends to movies too: she HATES TheNightmareBeforeChristmas and Coraline because "They're too weird and scary", despite both being chock-full with NightmareFuel from the very start(With Coraline, just by the TRAILERS I could tell), not to mention both are a bit of a MindScrew too. She hasn't seen even a few seconds of either films, nor did she even play the game I mentioned. Yep, she's a {{Troll}}.

Many people refuse to accept video games as a valid source for good music. This troper knows several people who, even after listening to music from games renowned for their musical scores, insist that all videogame music is "stupid electronic beeping."

Some background on this misconception is necessary. Despite classical music being generally agreed as one of the high points of human creativity, most people in the modern day do not like hearing instrumental, lyric-less music outside of the appropriate context (movies, TV, or video games). Whether there is a correlation between the fall of instrumental music and the rise of pop music would be an interesting study to perform.

As noted above, this stereotype extends to movies and TV shows, as well as other instrumental compositions ("trailer music" being a genre on the rise over the last 5-7 years). Anything without a singing human being is considered unacceptable for casual listening. This troper remembers a sad incident in which, during a car ride with several friends, he turned on a medley of Star Wars music. Everyone in the car cheered--"Star Wars, fuck yeah!"--and then sat in awkward silence for about 30 seconds before someone finally asked if we could hear some "real music."

Furthermore, no matter how classic, nostalgic, wondrous, and orgasmic 8- and 16-bit music might have been...it's often ''really irritating'' to someone who has never played the original games and heard the music in its original context, especially when the music is just MIDI looping over...and over...and over... Thankfully, the rise of epic, orchestral music from the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, and even modern Nintendo games has caused video game music to finally begin crossing the ghetto into acceptability.

This troper is lucky. My love of {{Halo}} has exposed my family to awesome video game music for years.

Tell me about it. Most of my friends don't even like the classical stuff, which reeks to me of poor taste.

I had that problem after giving my father bootleg copies of all three albums by '''The Black Mages'''. I just ''had'' to give the guy a detailed track listing.

A case in point is ''FinalFantasyVI'', which was released on the SNES (and much later on the GBA). An excellent album of orchestral arrangements was produced that was essentially what the game would have sounded like had the hardware been able to support it, and this troper surprised many people when he told him where the music came from.

This troper, who plays the piano, performs the how-full-of-crap-are-you test on people by exposing them to professionally arranged video game music (like the Piano Collection series of Final Fantasy songs, which require advanced skill) without telling them where it came from. After they've enjoyed it, he explained it to see how far towards dislike they would swing. People of the current generation tend appreciate the surprise. People of the previous generation tends to be very... not appreciative.

This editor loves doing this to people. Surprisingly, most of them seem to enjoy the music anyway. He can also vouch for the technical difficult of the FF piano collections. He's been playing piano for over a decade and still finds them difficult.

Video Games Live and PLAY!. 'Nuff said.

This Slashdot thread has a number of live ones.

In this troper's high school years when he was asked what his favorite kind of music was, he said "game music". Then the person asking clarified, "No, what's your favorite ''real'' music?" By his tone, somehow I got the impression that "real" wasn't referring to recorded human musical performances. And never mind the many times that when I said I like game music, people would be amused and ridicule me by spontaneously humming the level music from ''SuperMarioBros''...

This troper had some similar experience and thus, preferred to say he didn't listen to music much instead of trying to explain why video game music was appealing.

Maybe it's just something that bothers this troper, but how can you even call 'game music' a genre? Is there anyone who says 'movie soundtracks' are their favourite genre? Some of the music I like happens to be FROM games, but whence the silly categorization?

That'd be true, if the question was "what's your favourite genre". VG music can still be classed as a kind of music because 1) they aren't based on genres but on themes and thus are hard to class otherwise, 2) they melody is based on themes which regular music tends not to be, and 3) they can easily be associated with the part of the game in question. For example, I can get emotional listening to good game credits not because of the music, but because of thinking about the game itself.

Guys, TwoWords: Cohen's Masterpiece. That'll shut em up.

This troper's mother didn't understand that video games had good music. She was listening to this troper play ''Wind Waker'' and swore that the music was coming from a movie. This troper played the OST and her mother was amazed. And then asked to borrow the [=CDs=].

This troper's family refused to believe at first that some of the music from the Legend of Zelda games actually came from videogames. "Well, videogames sometimes use classical music, right? Where does it really come from?" It has become easier just to tell people that the music is composed by Koji Kondo, and not even mention the games.

Similar story here. I was humming the ''Super Smash Bros Brawl'' theme, and my mother's reaction was, "Such great music. Too bad it's from a stupid video game." When I protested that Brawl, at least, was absolutely ''not'' a stupid video game, she replied, "They're all stupid." I was shocked and incredibly saddened.

Break up with your mother. That'll teach her.

If you can, get your mother to play Planescape: Torment. That game has one of the best-written plots in video game history.

Another example: this troper was sitting around in Ironforge when her mother complimented the music. Upon telling her it was from a game, she expressed surprise and said "Oh! Well, I just like the orchestrals in that one. Not like the silly music in other games." Because... apparently... any music which doesn't feature grand trumpeting and clashing of cymbals is silly? I'd better tell her to stop enjoying Abba, then.

This Troper once had a song from Red Alert 3 played on the radio. It was billed as "Grinder from some movie called Red Alert"

This troper has explained his love for video game music as "I mostly listen to my [=iPod=] in the car, and coincidentally, a lot of video game music (especially the stuff I listen to, tends to be Crush 40's Sonic songs and RPG battle themes of varying intensities) make for good driving music." This explanation was actually accepted by my friends, though one of them still thinks I'm silly. I did pull the "fake-out a friend by only telling them it's from a video game ''after'' you've played it for them" with Crush 40's Knight of the Wind, and her reaction was akin to "Wow, that's awesome!" So hey...

This lurker's brother has learnt both "To Zanarkand" and "Brothers" on the piano. He intends to play both for his music teacher who is firmly stuck in the beep-boop videogame and anime music is J-Pop age.

When my mother found out that I was listening to video game music, she asked why on earth I'd want to listen to something like that. I just plugged in some speakers. dreamenddischarger is just like that. (Though I'm not sure it stuck; she once walked in on me playing ''{{Okami}}'', wondering "what movie you're watching" because the soundtrack was so pretty)

This troper's band instructor wasn't amused when I said that my favorite music was Videogame music. So I showed him up by playing some arranged Megaman music without giving the source. He admitted he liked it after I told him what it was. (Of course later, he didn't care much for my original Famitracker songs, so I guess a lot of it is just taste.)

Thankfully averted with my mother, who otherwise despises videogames--I was playing some of the Halo 3 soundtrack over speakers when she came in, and she absolutely ''loved'' the music, even after I told her where it was from! It helps that the Halo music is some of the best VG music I've ever heard.

Also, even among people who are fans of video games, it's sometimes difficult to find anyone who agrees that they can actually be a valid form of ''art'' in the same sense as a good film, book, or painting.

A bit more understandable, as what art is is somewhat vague. In other words, some people ''would'' consider games as much an art as films, just because they don't really consider films an art in the first place.

Relatedly, there are those who think that ''all'' books are inherently superior to films, television, and video games simply by virtue of being books.

Perhaps they just have difficulty finding games that are as good as "real art"?

Yes it's extremely hard to find games that stupid and utterly horrible, unless you meant art that's not Modern Art but instead things like renaissance art, you can find some games of that quality with a bit of looking.

While we're at it, this troper is tired of people bashing modern art. Was there weird stuff like thorwing paint onto the canvas seemingly randomly? Sure, but this was only one of the types of work that artist were producing at the time (called abstract expressionism). There were also the cubists, minimalists, surrealists, photo-realists, and the entire realm of graphic design. If modern art hadn't happened, art now (including video games) would not look the way it does now. As a side note, the Modern period is over and we are now in the Post-Modern period. Most fine art these days tends to incorporate recognizable forms again (people, animals, etc.), just in strange, new ways.

What's wrong with throwing paint onto the canvas randomly? Who says that's not valid art?

This troper would like to chime in with the above in regards to the common pejorative use of "abstract art", used in reference only to a vague charicature of non-figurative modern art. Not only does it have the same problems the above troper mentions, but it neglects the fact that abstract art can be found in all cultures and dates back thousands of years, some of the more famous examples including Celtic knotwork, Islamic geometric artwork, and Chinese caligraphy.

And on that note, computer art. Both 2D and 3D. No, the computer does ''not'' do all the work for you. ''No'', there is no "make a pretty picture instantly" button. Here's a notion: try looking through a Work In Progress thread on a site like Zbrush, or [=CGSociety=], or Concept Art; then tell me how goddamn easy it looks.

I'm not even going to TRY and convince people on video games, I'm still convincing my classmates that WRITING is a form of art.

In an episode of the Tyra Banks Show, Tyra and the wife of a ''WorldOfWarcraft'' addict "help" the addict quit by shredding up his copies of the game. First of all, you don't need the discs to run the game; you only need them to install the game. Secondly, the addict's wife has never heard of cancelling a [=WoW=] account, and this combined with the former means the addict, for all you know, may very well be still playing.

Hey, it's Tyra Banks. She's not famous for her gorgeous set of problem-solving skills or her firm, round logic.

That was a good one

This troper wants to bitch-slap anyone who thinks video games are mindless hand-eye-coordination tests with copies of ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' and every turn-based game (strategy, RPG, or otherwise) and text adventure in existence.

This troper has found that (at least with strategy games) that actually seems to work, apparently thanks to some kind of inherited legitimacy from chess.

I managed to convince my granduncle - a competitive chess player in his heyday - the sit doen and play the first five missions of Advance Wars Dual Strike with that exact argument. A week later he'd bought his own console and a copy of every GBA/DS Advance Wars game, and he's now an ardent (and skilled) player of "the modern man's chess".

Checkmate

This troper gets sick of her parents snarking on some of her video games, she quit playing ''{{Persona 3}}'' in front of her folks after the whole "They shoot themselves in the head, doesn't that send a bad message?" was said one too many times - despite the nearly two-hour long explanation of the game's very strong Jungian and Tarot Motifs that justifies everything, and not to mention the complaints about the characters swearing (they're teenage kids dealing with {{The End of the World As We Know It}}, not swearing would be ''weird''). However, her mother and grandmother gained PSL for Snake.

You have my sympathies.

This troper had some similar experiences when playing the ''{{Xenosaga}}'' games in front of family members, especially during the fights with Citrine and T-elos.

I have the same problem. I like [=RPG=]s, but since my dad and brother think japanese animation = Pokemon (don't ask how they came up with that) I have to play when they're not around (until recently I had the house to myself on certain days due to my college schedule).

Jaabi: I ''intentionally'' tried to time a battle showing in {{Persona 3}} when my parents would walk by his room, just to see if they'd notice the Evoker use. It never came to pass. However while playing {{Persona 4}} my mother commented on Chie's battle animation, saying "she looks like she needs to go to the bathroom". I found it amusing. (Though she complain about the swearing once. *sigh*)

I was once yelled at for watching X-Play's review of Persona 3 in front of my mom, due to the whole "shooting in the head" thing.

Rebuttal for the whole shooting in the head thing: ask her how is she still here after watching/reading Romeo and Juleiette.

This troper gets very annoyed whenever his older sister thinks that every RPG game I play follows the same style as {{Pokemon}}, just because you take turns battling like in {{Pokemon}}.

Imagine trying to explain it to people when you really do play Pokemon.

Nintendo has been plagued with with the "kiddy" stigma for years, and it's not just any {{Troll}} saying this. A good portion of people who play games but don't hang out on internet message boards will generally tell people that Nintendo's games look too kiddy for them to play, never mind the fact that the late Gamecube titles and Wii titles (Mario, Zelda, etc) have been going on a more darker route that could probably scare little kids.

Well, Nintendo, sadly, justifies this stereotyping with most of Wii games (which perhaps solely coined the term "shovelware"). ''However,'' people seem to have forgotten about Nintendo 64, which had the likes of Conker's Bad Fur Day and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, where your enemies could die with blood splurting uncontrollably from their necks, complete with the sound of them choking on their own blood. And the sequel featured full-blown limb removal and ''blowning holes in monsters!'' Now ''that's'' playing with power, motherfuckers!

Oh man, Ninty. Hey, guess what: ''Metroid Prime'' is for kids only because it's a Nintendo exclusive, apparently. It can never compare to the deep deepness of ''Halo'' because it's made by that kiddy company.

EternalDarkness. That is all.

A friend of this troper's family seemed to think ALL Nintendo handheld games were for kids, and actually mocked him for playing DS before asking if she could use it with her six-year-old son. I say yes, and warn her to swap out the gamecard for MarioKart or similar, as I'd been playing the rather edgy Valkyrie Profile last. She laughed it off, loaded up the most recent save, and managed to pass the level I was on, defeating a named character in the process. Watching the after-battle cutscene, she happily tells her kid "I bet he'll join us now!"... seconds before the character in question visibly stabs himself in the throat and dies onscreen, followed by the horrified and very not 'cartoony' grief of a party member. I must admit to a smirk when the horrified family friend realized I'd tried to warn her.

Speaking of "kiddy" games, try telling some of your fellow gamers that you actually like a cute fest every once in a while. I like ''Conker's Bad Fur Day'' and ''Eternal Darkness'' as much as the next person, but I also adore ''HeyYouPikachu!'' and ''YoshisStory''. This is badwrong. ''BADWRONG''.

Cute things are badong. And I stand for the opposite of badong. Gnodab.

Sadly, even other gamers can display that kind of wall banger ignorance toward perceived "kiddy" games. ThisTroper stopped shopping at GameStop long ago after getting strange looks from snooty-looking cashiers one too many times when asking to buy a Pokémon game. And ironically enough, he's actually struck up conversations with non-gamer Target cashiers about the very same games with no such disdain.

This troper should mention, though, that he struck up a conversation about how awesome Pokemon is with the cashier when he went to pick up his reserved copy of ''Pokemon [=SoulSilver=]'', so there is hope.

This troper had a full-blown debate with his cashier about which generation was better. We both agreed it was Generation 2.

Hey, and let's talk about enjoying single-player games while we're at it. Let it never be said that gamers are immune from thinking LonersAreFreaks; every game ''ever'' needs to have a multiplayer aspect these days, it seems, or else it isn't as good. Even when, in cases like {{Metroid}}, it really doesn't fit. And let's not even get started on those of us who actually like the ''SuperSmashBros.'' single player modes more than the multiplayer ones.

I know what you mean. I can't tolerate online multiplayer; there are too many idiot teenagers who scream "cheater!" if they lose.

Also agreed. Some of us simply cannot stand to always play against someone who knows all the glitches and exploits, thinks everyone has to play in that way, and puts you down for either hating it or not using it yourself.

Not to mention that it seems more and more now that people are naturally assuming whatever big game is coming soon will have or MUST have online multiplayer. Have people forgotten what it was like playing alone at their own pace?

My teacher, who plays multiplayer games like on Xbox Live, told us that he'd be happy to whoop our buts online. When I metioned that I don't play multiplayer games, he said,very rudely, "What do you play then, Final Fantasy?" Well, yeah, Coach. I do.

Made even funnier when the fact that there are quite a few iterrations of Final Fantasy made to play against other people like Dissidia Final Fantasy which encourages you to play against someone else (it IS a fighting game), the Crystal Chronicles series (fun if you have more people) and XI which is an MMO. God forbid they mention tactics (which even for a non-multiplayer game, it still racks up quite a following for competitive teams).

Agreed - I can't stand multiplayer because everybody is on their absolute '''''worst''''' behaviour. If I want to play multiplayer, I'd rather they be right next to me - people are much better behaved when they're within range of your fist, or your foot. Or when they're hooked up to the same power supply as you. RageQuit in a game of ''{{HAlo}}''? The fucker just keeps on screaming and you reward him. RageQuit when they're next to you, you shut the game down ''with'' them and they don't get to keep on playing.

Sort of related to the above example, but oddly medium-ignorance-within-said-medium. The majority of WoW players who aren't on roleplay servers (and many even on those) will tell you you suck if you don't do it their way. They laugh at you if you play for the lore, or if you don't view 99% of the game as a grind from 1 to 80 so you can find a guild and start hardcore raiding, or if you spec "wrong". So what if I want to level my paladin holy? It's not the most efficient way, but does that mean you have to laugh at me for not "doing it the right way" and leveling ret? So what if I want to play a fire mage despite not being a big full time raider? If I'm not constantly out of mana and my rotation works when I do my occasional five-man, you have no reason to tell me I should respec ice/arcane just because it's "better". What if I ''don't like'' ice or arcane?

The problem is that a lot of folks who want to do things "their way" also wish to participate in endgame activities, with the expectation that guilds should just go along with it. It doesn't work that way; you conform to the group, not the other way around. Applying to a guild with a 20/20/31 spec, poor glyph choices, poor gear, and a bizarre rotation will only show the guild that you have absolutely no clue what you're doing unless you have the theorycrafting skills to back it all up. My only recommendation to such folks is that they spend some time reading up on their class at Elitist Jerks, where most of the mathematics gets done.

I never said anything about applying to a guild, nor about wanting to participate in endgame - people are justified in being irritated at soloists who try to do that. I'm talking about soloists who honestly are not interested in these "higher" things but are expected to meet their standards anyway. Which brings up another point that often gets laughed at: being guildless and liking it. Or not even ''wanting'' to participate in any endgame dungeons save for the occasional five man PUG once in a blue moon. Both of these traits get the minorities that have them sneered at. Nothing is quite like joining a fiveman PUG for trial of the champion to kill some time and being told to respec because the player's choice of talent tree isn't perfectly efficient. Or playing without addons - again, not in endgame content, just leveling - as that also apparently makes someone an idiot or freak.

Or roleplaying, for that matter. Most people think it's all ERP.

This troper is not a WoW player but has friends who are, and for the longest time didn't know mages had spells that weren't ice.

This troper needs to work on explaining what makes ''{{Tetris}}: The Grand Master'' more than "just ''Tetris''," besides these gameplay videos. He's had someone in the TroperIRCChannel basically say that simply dedicating oneself to improving at ''{{Tetris}}'' is taking SeriousBusiness too far. He and a few other ''TGM''-playing friends are considering making a series of videos intended to introduce outsiders to ''TGM'' without having to direct said outsiders to videos of players going BeyondTheImpossible.

In a bit of a subversion, however, he introduced one of those videos to this fellow troper, who immediately thought that TGM seems like a very cool game. When Ray mentioned the Tetris Guideline and its role in keeping the TGM series dead, said troper agreed that the Guideline was stupid for suppressing such an awesome game.

In my opinion, ''{{Mother}} 3'' is one of the greatest stories ever told, and I rank it up with classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. However, when I tried to tell my mom, she flat out refused to believe it. The arguement went on for several days, and I even tried to get her to play the game (it didn't work). A few weeks later however, I got back at her by convincing my extremely bookish and entireley game-ignorant grandfather of the game's validity as a story, and she grudingly conceded defeat.

This troper, wanting to be a video game musician, has a hard time trying to explain to anyone how video game music can be incredibly artistic and expressive. Indeed, there's those crazy fans who constantly preach about how good the Yamaha XG soundcard of the PSX is and those who believe more in "three bleeps and the bloop", but come on! I tried to tell my parents how the works of ''Sim City 4 Deluxe'' by Jerry Martin were used in many commercials and TV programs, as well as {{Sierra}}'s soundtracks for various games and stuff by Kechii Suzukii were incredibly well done and not all "bleepy and crappy sounding". Got laughed at for all that. And then there's this time I'm working on a MIDI file with my keyboard and my parents said I was doing "fake" music. Just what qualifies as music anyway?

Inform them that the 2008 Summer Olympics used {{Halo}} music at times.

This troper's mother firmly believed that all video games were Murder Simulators (even {{Pokemon}}!!) and would take up all his spare time. That is, until she played Wii Play.

She also has a lot of trouble understanding character development, as she walked out on ''ThePacifier'' because the kids were brats. She is also of the opinion that even one instance of sex, gore, or ''swearing'' makes a movie poisonous, regardless of any other potential merit in the story.

Your mother is a cretin.

Wii Play? Doesn't that have minigames where you shoot ducks, drag fish out of their natural habitat into a thin, unsurvivable atmosphere by a metal hook, and shoot at pictures of your friends and clones of you and your friends along with the aliens that are trying to kidnap them (even dozens of feet above the ground)? Though you admittably can't kill the clones, as far as I know. And smashing seemingly alive scarecrows to pieces with rampaging cow-like creatures, with extra points if you destroy the ones that are self-aware and animate enough to try to escape? I don't understand why your mother thinks a game where you knock out animals in order to tag them and track their migration patterns, or very, ''very'' carefully avoid knocking them out so as to make friends with them and help them become strong enough in sanctioned, nonlethal fights to defeat the people who ''would'' kill and enslave them (or worse) is so much more of a MurderSimulation. Especially since they started putting ribbon contests into the games.

Sounds like the kind of person who doesn't think The Simpsons is dark. After all, it's got bright colours!

(OP here) Actually, she doesn't fall victim to the AnimationAgeGhetto and applies the same standards to all media. They're incredibly stringent standards, but at least she's consistent.

This troper's father is under the impression that video games rated M are bad and cause you to become a crazy serial killer. Her mother, on the other hand, thinks she's mature enough to handle them. :)

^But personal stories aside, this actually plays out quite a bit in popular culture. The idea that people who play M games will go on a killing rampage because they've been desensitized to killing is still lingering in the culture. For instance, the kids at Columbine were fans of {{Doom}} and that was cited as a cause of them shooting people up. Now, the problem is that the shooting happened in 1999. Doom had been out for ''six years'' without any incident. And the morons who claimed Doom helped incite violence also claimed that the original Doom was hyper-realistic (for 1999). But ''it isn't even 3-D, when video games had transitioned to being 3-D at that point.''

Heck, games were starting to become 3-D about three years before that shooting incident.

This trope is largely averted by this troper's family - his parents read him and his siblings ''TheLordOfTheRings'' and ''{{Narnia}}'' when we were six or seven. A few years ago, the present his dad (who's 57 by the way) requested for Christmas? The complete series of the ''ReadOrDie'' TV show. This troper's mother had friends who played D&D in high school, though she never played herself, so she knew what it was; when we were little she rented us the anime of Swan Lake and taped all of ''Cities of Gold'' and half of ''Ducktales'' when they were on TV. This troper's dad is ''also'' responsible for teaching me how to analyze media - I distinctly remember him, when I was 11 or 12, watching commercials, and saying "Notice that's the price without anything extra" or "See the small print? It only works like that if..." I'm a second-generation geek (fourth, on the mother's side).

This troper has mostly averted this with particularly well-educated parents who played DungeonsAndDragons, listened to heavy metal back in the day (although they dislike thrash for valid reasons), and enjoyed some of the old computer games of the 90s generation (such as ''{{DooM}}'' and the {{Sierra}} series). I'll take the time to explain a game that I play to them if they're curious. One just has to be patient.

This troper once struck up a deal with an English teacher; find a single video game with "adequate" literary value, and I would get enough extra credit to skip a test. That night, I E-Mailed her a ROM for ''{{Mother3}}''. Easiest A ever.

*high-five*

This troper has an iPod playlist that includes CrowningMusicOfAwesome from games like ''FinalFantasy'', ''MegaMan'', and so forth, almost all of them remixes. There's not a single 8-bit bloop or Atari beep to be found. My father, who ''listens to the same styles of music as me, so long as the source isn't a video game'', refuses let me play it, even though I have things other than video game music. I'm considering rigging up a program to play short melody clips from random songs from my iPod to see how many he can correctly identify as video game tunes or not. I predict, at best, a 50% score.

My mother seems to think that ALL the videogames I play are violent First Person Shooters and then claims to have watched me start shooting as I enter a room in one of the Metroid Prime games. The only {{FPS}}es I own are the metroid Prime series that have next to zero friendly targets, so shooting anything that moves is a valid tactic. Apart from the Metroid Prime games, the worst game I probably would have played in front of her was Bully, a game famous for the fact that no-one dies and for the fact that every student has their own, unique story and none of them are repeated on screen at the same time. Also, if you want Public Medium Ignorance, look at Australia. You know Left for Dead 2? We got a delayed version because the original version contained "infected humans with a rabies-like virus" that wasn't acceptable to our Censorship boards, so Valve went overboard and not only cut out all the blood (insert jokes about a Half-Sandvich fueled Heavy punching out all the blood of [=L4D2=]), but made the zombies fade as soon as they were off screen. There is also the matter of not having an R rating for video-games because the decision HAS to be unanimous and ONE person is blocking it.

I remember dealing with someone who thought that ''TheBible'' better than all those "sex-and-violence" video games. You want violence? Exodus - II Chronicles is full of it. Sex? Song of Solomon is flat-out erotic poetry.

This troper was going to say maybe he meant the Bible's sex and violence is edifying (although for my money so is video games'), but no, I'm probably too optimistic, he really could just ''not know it's there''.

Most people who have heard of Cave's shmups only know of them through their {{True Final Boss}}, and thus assume that every Cave game is complete hell every second from start to end on every difficulty level. Thank you, I'm gonna go closet about my shmup hobby now.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that in most danmaku games, you have a tiny hitbox, and a lot of danmaku isn't really going to go at you. Of course, if you keep quiet about those, it's rather easy to impress people.

On a similar note, I've seen a few people scoff at so-and-so shooter just because it isn't BulletHell; if you play most any arcade scrolling shooter from the late 80's or early 90's, you may find that those can be just as difficult without having a lot of bullets on screen.

The reason being that, unlike in BulletHell shooters, your hitbox is your entire graphic, and while there are fewer bullets, most of them are aimed right at you, or at least in your general direction.

The automatic question directed at this troper whenever he is playing any game, at all: "Are you winning?"

My dad does that too, but he means it to be funny. He'll even ask that if I'm reading a book or writing an essay.

The automatic question this troper asks anyone who's doing anything at all: "Are you winning?" Whether they're playing a game, working, or not on a computer at all doesn't really matter.

AAAAAAAGRHRHRH that was said to me so many times. "Game => Win/Lose!" NO.

Read this article for your daily dose of wall-banging.

From this troper's father: "Can you stop playing that baby game now? Of course it's a baby game. Look at those graphics! They're just little pixely blobs. What? Hah, there's no way this could have a good story. It's so old!" Game we were arguing about? ''{{Mother 3}}''.

This Troper's friend thinks music from video games are not supposed to be listened to outside of games. When I ask her to explain why she thinks that, she could not form a coherent sentence. I then told her, "I'm not going to listen to you until you give me a proper reason why I shouldn't be listening to this."

This troper gets a headache when it comes to tagging music files of video game soundtracks. 10 times out of 9, the artist is tagged as the name of the company that published the game, as if it didn't matter at all specifically who composed the soundtrack. That is the same thing as using the record label for the artist name on non-soundtrack songs.

This troper has dealt with some intra-medium ignorance, since gamers can tend to be StopHavingFunGuys about ''TheSims''. I've been told numerous times that it's not a game (which, technically speaking, is correct; it's more of a toy) and that it's a waste of time. Because "real" video games (which apparently have to involve beating stuff up, or at least be winnable) are such a better use of time. My favorite is, "But why would you want to make little pixel people do things you can do in real life?" Depending on how you play the Sims, there's a lot of time taken up by doing things you ''can't'' do in real life, like being a SpacePirate or marrying your favorite fictional character.

My dad is convinced I'm obsessed with zombies. Why? Because I play PlantsVsZombies. The hilarious part is that it's the only zombie-related media I consume, and it's not even a typical zombie game, and yet to my dad I will NeverLiveItDown.

Does he like any MichaelJackson song or video? It doesn't have to be ''Thriller'', just tease him relentlessly about being a fan of zombie musicals until he gets your point or it stops being fun.

My mom thinks all video games are ''GrandTheftAuto'', All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles (Or ''DragonballZ''), and everything on the internet is porn. It's gotten to the point where I can't play P3 with her in the house.

I don't blame her for that last one...

"What's a {{Tatsunoko|VsCapcom}}?" ({{Facepalm}})

This Troper has recently fallen in love with a certain FPS that she is currently trying to convince her parents to let her buy. They seem convinced that a game that contains any sort of violence is not only automatically a bad game, but also playing said game will make me a deranged homicidal maniac. Even though they let my siblings play Call of Duty.

Hey. New troper here. I was pissed off a while back when 1. a grandmother in a GameStop assumed I worked there because I'm young and there and 2. asked me if GTA: Vice City was an acceptable Christmas gift for her 12-year old grandson. I told her that no, that would not be a good gift for a twelve year old, and when she said "But it's just one of those bang-bang, shoot-'em-ups, right?", I wanted to breathe, count to ten, and calmly bite her head off.

Averted and played straight to me. My brother likes the same video games as me and my parents seem to not mind my gaming, with me (As a 13 year old at the time) buying Left 4 Dead 2 right in front of her even when the Target employee said that it was very violent. I still felt uncomfortable when my dad came downstairs while I was playing Fallout 3, but he never seems to mind.

This troper wants to FacePalm every time he tells someone he likes video game music and they say think all video game music is Mario.

My parents have pretty much admitted that they will never understand or approve of my love for First Person Shooters, no matter how old I am. (I'm 16, if you are curious.) They still let me play them, but they often try to limit my time. I've tried to explain how my taste in games isn't harmful in any way, but my protests fall upon deaf ears. Does anyone have a solution to this?

{{Speedrun}}s in general ("What's the point of speeding through the game like that? You're missing all the cool stuff! You won't get any enjoyment from the game this way!"), and tool-assisted speedruns doubly so ("You're using a slowdown computer program rather than your skills?? That's CHEATING!!!" - which is a lot like saying that car race drivers are cheaters for using vehicles rather than their legs. And implies that making a good tool-assisted speedrun doesn't require skills of any sort...) Just go check out {{YouTube}} comments. Oh ''Lord''.

Anyone who ''ever'' has people insist that ''all'' JRPGs are just a copy of ''FinalFantasy''?

I've noticed that whenever one of my younger cousins is around and watching me play games, he continually makes reference to "the bazooka" as either the thing I should be using or the thing he used when he played something else earlier, as if explosives are the answer to every single problem that ever comes up in video games (nevermind that they usually are). I find it especially funny because, since I haven't bought a WorldWarII-era game in a number of years now, the bazooka isn't even ''in'' any of the games he watches me play.

DownloadableContent. It's the modern ExpansionPack and it is well received for those that want to get some more content to their favorite game(s). But good luck trying to tell many gamers that it is more than just "overpriced cash cows hidden on the disc waiting to be unlocked".

This troper had trouble explaining to his dad why, when he was a kid, he watched cartoons for the plot and didn't find them funny. It wasn't until his dad examined his own childhood and remembered that he used to watch ''ClutchCargo'' as a kid (which is a story-driven cartoon), and that he'd seen some ''JonnyQuest'', that he realized that story-based cartoons were out there, and it was possible to enjoy a cartoon for its story. Sigh. On the other hand, maybe he was just a little unusual in that regard. But with the growing popularity of story-driven anime and anime-influenced western cartoons, maybe not.

This troper loves anime, but he also loves western cartoons. Many times, he's been chortled at by fellow anime fans who think all animation should be anime or else it's "just crap to keep little kids quiet, brah!" To them, anything that isn't DarkerAndEdgier, HotterAndSexier, and doesn't feature extended story arcs is automatically "kiddy trash" and seem to treat it as though it were a failed attempt at making something deep and complex, even if it belongs to a completely different genre or was created before television, like the great ''LooneyTunes'' or ''TomAndJerry'' shorts. In conclusion, if you're at an anime club meeting and somebody mentions ''TotalDramaIsland'', do not, under any circumstances, ''dare'' to suggest that it's pretty fun and is not offensive to their clearly ''immensely'' sophisticated minds.

Anime clubs are horribly dire for that. I joined one in my highschool, and got into a huge argument with a senior member about how "All Disney Films were garbage" and he also hated superhero cartoons with an irrational passion. Even ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries''. From then on, I hung out in the back far away from him, letting out my nerdrage as snarking against his beloved and badly made moe nonsense.

This Troper's anime club has no problems with western cartoons, they apparently watched ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'' before I joined, and we managed to work ''{{Gargoyles}}'' into the line-up this quarter (though I suspect it was more the fact that the club is full of tropers, and everyone just wanting to see David Xanatos do his thing.)

The goddamn snobby jerks who think that cartoons or animation aren't 'real' art. Because clearly it's just cheap, childish, shallow hack-art only drawn by people who couldn't learn how to draw ''properly''. It's not like those mediums still need to follow the exact same principles, like anatomy, motion, composition, symbolism, postive/negative space or anything like that. It's not like making good cartoons or animation takes years of hard work. It's not like you use the same paints, inks, watercolours and pencils. If you're not making life-realistic work, you're just a stain upon 'real' art.

This also applies to graffiti. Apparently, the fact that some people break the law to draw on walls utterly erases all artistic merit and skill, because we all know certain kinds of art were never heavily frowned on before. I'd like to see these snobs try to paint their masterpieces without being caught by the cops.

Its not that its illegal that destroys the merit its that your defasing someone elses property without their permission. If someone owns a building they have the rite to say no please dont turn my wall into your masterpiece. go paint your own walls and show me and then that would be art if you do it to someone elses wall its vandalism.

I appreciate the artistry of graffiti... which is why I support things like graffiti parks, so it can be done ''without'' trashing other peoples' property.

The whole thing can be summed up fairly accurately by the phrase "it takes knowledge to tell, but it takes ''wisdom'' to listen."

This Troper's family finds new and increasingly more awesome ways to avert this. We've listened to all the {{Halo}} soundtracks in the car multiple times. Me and my father have actually sung along to Re: Your Brains together. We've gotten laughs out of me blowing limbs apart in Fallout 3 and have played games together many times. My mother found it awesome to watch me run down the sidewalk carrying a car in {{Prototype}}. Me and her have tried to beat StreetsOfRage 3 together a few times, and beat the other two together. My parents and I have similar tastes in music (barring my mother liking country music), and all three of us have dark senses of humor. Oh, and I made my dad into a Browncoat.

The VivaLasVegas stereotype of gambling and assorted other hedonism made famous by the "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan means that when this troper discusses her trips to Las Vegas with others they're often surprised to learn she goes to enjoy the casinos' stage shows (with dining and spas as a lovely daytime bonus), especially the CirqueDuSoleil ones. Ironically, a recent tourism campaign for Vegas was focusing on such classy-fun things like restaurants and shows to attract non-gamblers, but the economic downturn cut that short.

This troper has been attempting to convince everyone he knows that Vegas is a great vacation spot if, and only if, you're not a hedonist. They rip you off for the hedonism, as they're the only place that does it, but have amazing and cheap shows, cheap food, cheap hotels, interesting buildings to walk around in, etc, as their entire purpose is to entertain you so you don't realize how much money you're spending on gambling. If you don't gamble, it's incredibly cheap for the value.

PennAndTeller work there now because they have total creative freedom. 'Nuff said.

The existence of the SciFiGhetto means that most if not all science fiction will be equated with (and more often than not, dismissed as) the most popular or well-known examples, which in general tend to be those examples which adhere less strictly to actual science. Essentially, tell someone you like science fiction, they'll assume you're a ''StarWars'' fan (or possibly ''StarTrek'' and / or ''Series/DoctorWho'' as well).

Fantasy is in its own ghetto too. It was once described by the popular Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem as "not science-fiction, but just fiction: gryphons, dragons, abracadabras, white magic, black magic, green magic and God knows what else (...) In my opinion both and fantasy are simply escapism." This opinion is apparently shared by most of the sci-fi writers.

That ghettoization cuts both ways. {{David Eddings}} is quite dismissive of Sci Fi as a genre in his Rivan Codex. Never mind that there are authors who quite cheerfully write in both genres.

Quite often in the same story, especially since the definitions overlap enough that some, like StarWars, are hard to classify. Most bookstores this troper has been to have both in the same section to avoid sorting it out.

This troper tends to use the term 'speculative fiction' to cover both categories more thoroughly, especially because it keeps her older family members from dismissing "that fantasy stuff" out of hand.

My best friend hated sci-fi, because all he saw was StarWars and StarTrek. I then gave him Firefly, and he's an addict.

Such Public Medium Ignorance can become quite puzzling when it translates into complete misjudging of the importance of said medium on the ''economic'' scale. For some people (including news media), it seems that video games (or comic books, or animated shows, etc.) are just a minor, inconsequential niche market not worth mentioning. Yeah, right... when video games are a matter of ''billions'' handled by several competing multinationals, comic books are keeping ''huge'' editing houses afloat, and {{animated shows}} are major exports for countries such as Japan, USA or France.

As someone who has hopes of working in the comic industry. The comics themselves barely make any money at all, they break even on average but quite often actually lose money. The real money is made in merchandise and liscensing.

If something (especially in more recent times) becomes somehow associated with furry, then logically it ''must'' be someone's kinky animal porno fetish by default. After all, they're all having sex with animals, right? Older examples are more exempt from this as this impression is a more recent cultural phenomenon.

It's not only just furries in general that get this, but god forbid you draw a furry character in a certain way. Draw furries fat? You automatically wanna screw anything that is a blob of blubber. Make furries muscular? You're a fat bastard who wishes they were skinny. The list goes on.

This troper, having far too much time on his hands, actually thinks of ways to explain them to people and has done the research. The reason most people think anime is for kids or hentai, for instance, is because that's what the American audience has shown they like more (in sales, anyway), which just causes the mindset to expand. The reason people think Nintendo is for kids is because they remember old-school Mario and Zelda, and don't bother to look at what's currently going on. The situation with various musical genres? Well, there's little research I know how to do on that one, but I simply say that some people like some music, others don't. I, for instance, hate rap. However, I don't immediately belittle anyone who does like it for the very reason I've stated.

...Hooray for you?

Well done!

I have a theory with the music. Radio DJs play what they think will attract people's attention. Rap songs and/with IntercourseWithYou is usually a very good way to attract notice (Ex. "I Kissed A Girl"). Since much of America's music is received via radio, people in America think that most music is in the above category.

This troper gets annoyed whenever someone refers to SecondLife as a "game". If talking to people using 3D avatars and exploring vast and various regions is a game, then Facebook is one hell of a game.

Conversly, this troper gets annoyed whenever someone refers to SecondLife as something other than a "game". If talking to people using 3D avatars and exploring vast and various regions is ''not'' a game, then my World of Warcraft is one hell of a life.

Can we just agree on Life Sim?

In a similar vein, this troper get's annoyed whenever someone refers to SecondLife as having a large playerbase or being vaguley important. Seriously guys, stop talking about it already. No one cares. Even people who play/talk through it.

SecondLife is not a game, it is a toy, like The Sims. In theory one can play games within it, of course.

I usually call it a game for simplification for those who haven't heard of it. Virtual worlds are kind of MMOs' girly airheaded cousins anyway. I also generally say I play it, because I'm not sure what other verb to use.

When it comes to MMOs, "hobby" is the best term I can think of. Seems like it'd equally apply to SecondLife.

Good luck explaining your interest in art to those who think that a.) All Art Is Paintings and b.) Art is either those paintings created by the Ninja Turtle names, or them weird splattered paintings that my kid could do! I'm not even the biggest fan of Abstract Expressionism (and even then, not all "weird" art is Abstract Expressionist in the first place) but I wanna pop the jaw of anyone who thinks that their kid could do any art that isn't hyper-realistic or non-representational.

This troper left Deviant art after more than one person expressed their opinion that "Photography isn't real art!" I'd like to see them put forth the effort to take a good picture.

Related to the art theme above, this troper goes berserk when she hears people commenting that "Art is easy". This is due to the stereotype of art colleges having a lower standard in what students they take in, but the general public fail to realise just how much time, thought and emotion goes into creating a work of art, regardless of medium.

This troper can attest to the fact that most people do not understand internet roleplaying. "So, you just type to people pretending to be elves? How is that supposed to be fun?"

I found a way to deal with that - I tell people that for over a year now, I've been co-writing a dark fantasy that deals with issues such as rape in a disturbingly realistic fashion, as well as other lower-key but still serious issues such as trust and betrayal. The story is also far from stagnant despite its length, with multiple intertwining plots and CharacterDevelopment out the yin-yang, to the point where a character who started as an immature kleptomaniac is now on of the most loyal, dependable characters in the narrative. Once I've got their interest and possibly explained some of the plot, ''then'' I tell them the format. (DeptHeavenApocrypha if you're wondering.)

I explain it as improvisational theater, only over the internet.

This troper got lucky with his parents. Thanks to his father being a big music geek (particularly 70s progressive rock such as Rush, Jethro Tull, pre-Collins Genesis and pre-synth Styx), his music tastes are understood (if barely tolerated when it comes to heavier thrash metal and death metal), and his love of video games and manga aren't an issue thanks to his parents being surprisingly intellegent on the subject. In fact, it took just one short explaination to get his mother to understand manga: "They're Japanese comics. The book is printed in reverse because the Japanese language is read right to left and flipping the art hurts more than it helps."

Uh… Isn't Japanese right to left?

Heh,do you think they'll ''care''?

This Troper Actually, it was a typo.

Actually, Japanese ''is'' written left-to-right. However, in manga (and more than half the time outside it), it's written top-to-bottom, in columns that are read right-to-left. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Right if you don't get it. Then hit Ctrl+Alt+Up to get back to normal. Or just write a couple of sentences on a piece of paper, then turn it 90 degrees clockwise.

You might want to rethink that first sentence...

Different troper here. Japanese characters are written (aka. stroke order) left to right, top to bottom, and sometimes the characters are written from left to right as well.

I'm not into {{LARP}}, but I could still see the stupidity of my mother's friend thinking people doing it are "escaping into fantasy" and implying they have problems with reality one way of another. Trying to explain it just got me a "well, there's still something wrong with it".

Oddly, it would actually have been more rational to say, "[=LARPers=] are dorks." ''That'' is simply saying, "It doesn't meet my expectations of the dignity one should maintain." That's completely reasonable—disputable, but a rationally tenable position. "They're escaping into fantasy" is attempting to claim there's a pathology present, when there isn't. An odd case where rude is not the same thing as irrational.

Doesn't matter that the whole reason we watch movies, play video games, read books, etc. is to do that very same thing. And nobody considers those things pathological. For this troper, a 'whatever floats your boat' attitude is the way forward.

I've come to respect LARPers (and cosplayers as a corollary) more recently, because I realized that they have the balls to show what they like on their person. Almost all other nerd cultures can somewhat hide there fandom because it doesn't require other people to experience.

This troper is sick and tired of explaining to people what ''SecondLife'' is and gets more annoyed when some of them ask how the "game is played." Apparently, trying to say that ''SecondLife'' is a glorified version of a chat room and my space with sandbox capabilities where you can do other stuff besides "play" doesn't seem to stick. This troper has a friend who believed SecondLife was a game due to seeing the HUD (showing HP, MP, and spells) I was using to role play.

This troper doesn't have any stories, but I just want to say that I'm so very sorry for all of you. Have a hug!

This trope is largely averted by this troper's family - his parents read him and his siblings ''TheLordOfTheRings'' and ''{{Narnia}}'' when we were six or seven. A few years ago, the present his dad (who's 57 by the way) requested for Christmas? The complete series of the ''ReadOrDie'' TV show. This troper's mother had friends who played D&D in high school, though she never played herself, so she knew what it was; when we were little she rented us the anime of Swan Lake and taped all of ''Cities of Gold'' and half of ''Ducktales'' when they were on TV. This troper's dad is ''also'' responsible for teaching me how to analyze media - I distinctly remember him, when I was 11 or 12, watching commercials, and saying "Notice that's the price without anything extra" or "See the small print? It only works like that if..." I'm a second-generation geek (fourth, on the mother's side).

This troper has mostly averted this with particularly well-educated parents who played DungeonsAndDragons, listened to heavy metal back in the day (although they dislike thrash for valid reasons), and enjoyed some of the old computer games of the 90s generation (such as ''{{DooM}}'' and the {{Sierra}} series). I'll take the time to explain a game that I play to them if they're curious. One just has to be patient.

This Troper often digs through Google News to read up on how the mainstream press covers her geeky pursuits (namely comics and animation.) Aside from "Not just for Age Ghetto}} kids/Demographic}} boys anymore!" blabber, she's regularly torn her hair out over:

Grammatical weirdness, such as anime/manga being capitalized or Japanese-romanization-does-not-work-that-way accents on the "e" in "anime."

Well, technically, it ''is'' pronounced exactly like the French word for "animated", which is ''animé''.

Anime/manga being referred to as a style or genre.

Redundant definitions of anime/manga, like "Japanese manga comics" as opposed to "manga, Japanese comics." Or the painful(ly common) "Japanese anime comics called manga."

"Graphic novel" used as shorthand for "any comic about something serious."

Or "any comic with a page count higher than 2."

"Graphic novel style" being applied to a film with absolutely no connection to the comics medium. Apparently it means "any sufficiently glossy-looking action film."

(Also, ''damn'' does this page use SarcasmMode a lot. Way to get our snark on, tropers!)

This troper is utterly sick to death of having to explain to people that yes, she actually does enjoy doing bits of recreational maths. Whenever she tries she's simply met with "Isn't that just dull number crunching with lots of big formulas? How could anyone enjoy that!?" Needless to say, she's virtually given up on trying to tell people that it's a genuine intellectual pursuit with an incredibly deep aesthetic that, in her opinion at least, rivals that of art and poetry and music. The fact that maths 'education' is so horrendously bad doesn't help, but don't get her started on that.

This troper is... guilty of this trope: I'm more of a "casual" geek (if there is such thing in the first place...) so, many things that may seem "normal" for most tropers (comics, anime, manga, videogames, webcomics) are, in most cases, unknown to me. I would detail more my situation, but I'm afraid of screw it up spelling wrong some names or titles...

This troper's mother has a bad case of this. Anime? Silly kid stuff or violent porn, with no valuable story either way. Non-manga comics? Likewise, though with less porn (obviously because Americans are not perverted at all). Video games? Mindless twitching that will atrophy my brain and drop my grades, and possibly violent trash as well. Science fiction (especially the licensed variety) or anything from the "young adult" section of the library? Cheap bad writing with no intellectual value, possibly with violence and sex to make things worse. Bit of a wall banger as my mom's seen several {{Miyazaki}} films, read {{Persepolis}}, and played a couple of {{Zelda}} games. Argh.

Now that I think about it, my dad is sort of an interesting case: Comics, animation, or anything involving superheroes can't possibly be taken seriously by him. This is sort of averted with video games though: he's kind of an avid computer gamer, mostly favoring TurnBasedStrategy games and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. When TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast and ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink were new, he was the first of all of us to beat either (and for a time even owned a Zelda II t-shirt). And I found I couldn't play BioShock around him anymore... because I was getting too annoyed at him pointing out items I missed. The superhero thing led to a funny-in-retrospect moment once while I was watching TheDarkKnight, and he happened to come in during a scene that was just Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent, and Rachel Dawes having a discussion over dinner:->'''Him''': What are you, watching something deep for once? #QUOTE#'''Me''': *shrugs* Batman.

This Troper is in the strange situation of being a "realism" fanatic, but totally misunderstood about it. Finding simulation games to play is difficult enough with people trying to ruin your fun by saying "realism sucks - I want laser beams and dinosaurs in every game".

Suprisingly averted with this troper. Her friends are the ones who got her hooked on comics, anime, and manga, her English teacher and parents are geeks, and nobody cares that she listens to Middle Eastern music alongside country, pop, and Broadway soundtracks - in fact, her music teacher is impressed with her versatility. If she tried explaining to her boss (she's a volunteer at the local library) just why the library needs ''InuYasha'', ''FullmetalAlchemist'', ''OnePiece'', and ''RamnaOneHalf'', though, she'd probably get blank stares from her boss and kicked out of the city by the neo-conservatives who think that all anime is hentai and have little kids reading FMA because all Japanese stuff is "Pokey-mun."

Since we're on the topic of public ignorance, Neoconservatism is, specifically, the branch of the American conservative movement that believes totalitarian governments should be abolished, by force if necessary. It is generally much more intellectual and cosmopolitan than other branches of conservatism, because its founders, thinkers like Irving Kristol, were former Trotskyite intellectuals disillusioned with Communism but who retained their desire for a worldwide, liberating revolution. That's also where the movement gets its association with Zionism and support for Israel — most of its founders are Jewish, including Kristol, although many of its current exponents are Catholic or Evangelical, as well. Using "neoconservative" as a term of abuse often has overtones of antisemitism, see, e.g., Pat Buchanan and Cindy Sheehan, who probably agree on precious little else.

This troper feels like the luckiest bastard in the world after reading this page, as his mother just accepts my love of cartoons, both Eastern and Western, adult- and child-oriented (though she doesn't get it, per se), and she even asked for a copy of the ''CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'' soundtrack after I played it in the car. On the other hand, I also saw Alan Moore's ''LostGirls'' on a display table in a Barnes and Noble, next to ''Ultimate Spider-Man'' and other more mainstream comics. I drank very heavily that evening.

This troper used to be an art teacher, and it annoyed me how many students, parents and other teachers just thought that art was a throw-away class full of easy A's. My first class I asked all the students to take out pencil and paper for because they needed to take notes. Barely any of them did. Explain to the students that this will be on a test in two weeks and they need to understand concepts that will be used in the artwork we make. Lo and behold once the test comes around the students were surprised and didn't think that art had tests. The other teachers thought that I was being too hard on the kids, and that art was supposed to be fun. I even had a parent yell at me that I was demanding too much of her daughter in an art class. Her daughter always was talking and was a disruption, but to that parent art class is a time where the kids can relax and not have to worry about school. I would stop students from doing homework from other classes in my class, because they weren't working on their project, and other teachers thought I was just berating students for making good use of their time. Once I explained that I wouldn't have had a problem if they were done with the assignment, but they aren't, the teachers still thought I was just being too hard. This was a high school art. And this is also why I said that I used to be an art teacher.

I don't think I've ever taken a written test in any art class that didn't have something to do with appreciation or history. You also don't sound like the most empathic teacher ever, so maybe it wasn't that "the plebs just didn't get it..."

This troper spent all her free time in the art room when she was at school, and would like to state that the above troper clearly had an absolutely cushy art class, because hers required a great deal of reasearch, planning, and sheer ''work''. And her teachers were certainly empathic, wonderful people.

Aversion: most people I know are very open and interested in listening about my miniatures wargaming hobby, especially when I start with a general description of the htroy of the hobby, then the background material of the games, and then proceed to the actual miniatures.

As for this troper... Everything. Just everything. No one understands me. And no, not in that emo teenager shit. Just the fact that whenever I start to talk about things I personally like, the person I'm talking to draws a blank. And yes, I am NOT hyperboling. I literally haven't made any friends in the last several years that even remotely understands what I'm really into. It's fucking depressing and lonely to always want to talk about what you love, yet never be able to share.

Well what ''do'' you like?

Mostly averted here, as my mother loves instrumental music no matter what the source (video games, movies, you name it!) and supports me playing games since by playing them I learned English the easier way (so much that at the age of 11 I couldn't even read my own language, but could understand and read English pretty well). However, my older brother still declines to play older 2D games because they look "crappy" and the only time he forgives 2D graphics in these days is in point-and-click genre, but that's for a different reason entirely. Unfortunately, played straight with her male classmates, "What's a Mega Drive?", "Sonic? Who's that?", "FinalFantasy? Is that like CallOfDuty?" My inner nerd wants to rage sometimes...

Averted here as well, more or less. My dad is a ''HUGE'' sci-fi fan (blowing me and my brother clear out of the water in terms of knowledge and history on the genre), and when me and my bro were younger, all three of us would sit down to watch Beast Wars and ReBoot. We also all liked basically any animated DC show out there (as well as the inherent corniness of the older Marvel ones)--as for anime, we watched Dragonball Z as a trio, up until the end of the Namek saga. After Goku ''missed'' with the spirit bomb we threw our hands up in the air and called it quits, more or less. The typical "Being on the internet isn't social enough" (as well as the "You only play games" gem) ''is'' pulled by both of my parents, but the patriarch, again, is more sensible and lenient, being a programmer, having followed computers and the internet since they started picking up steam (he's played everything from DOOM to Duke Nukem to Wolfenstein--he knows a game when he sees one). When it came to our video games, 'M' titles were perfectly fine (all of us had a good chuckle over how ludicrously fake the blood in Mortal Kombat 4 was), and the deal with scary/gory movies and the like came down to "View at your own risk". When it comes to books, though, it's seriously a wonder how most of my English 12 class got past kindergarten. I occasionally still encounter the foolish fools who are foolish enough to question the authenticity of video game music, but I just shrug them off. Have fun with your screamo, brah, I'm just going to enjoy the entire Last Ninja trilogy's soundtrack. You know, the series composed by professional musicians? Actually, that's a bit harsh. I managed to convert my screamo buddy to Last Ninja stuff. ^_^

"John, whatchu listen'n to?" "It's an orchestral piece from the KaraNoKyoukai series." "What's that?" "Kara no Kyoukai is a series of films d-" "No, the orca thing." "You mean the ''orchestra?'' You've never heard of an ''orchestra?''" "They ain't even got no drums!" One of them once let slip that she had thought Shakespeare was famous for writing the first book.

For the record, of my 20 coworkers, I am quite literally the only person who remembers ever watching anything intentionally imaginative. And after watching hundreds of anime series, everything from Star Trek to X Files to Firefly to Doctor Who, and hundreds of fiction and fantasy novels, they respond with "John there likes StarWars." It's like being an astronomer in a world where no one believes in the sky, and refuse to look up for any reason.

"So, what do you like?" "I like trains..." "Like ThomasTheTankEngine?" "Yes but-" "Ha! You're immature!" "I've watched it since I was five, and anyway, the inner workings of the railway are fairly realistic so-" "So you're just in denial!" "No I like to watch it because it's very nostalgic for me, and brings back memories..." "...you're immature!" *facepalm*

This troper has learned that saying she's interested in "space" is not always a good idea, because a lot of people lump every possible thing that has something to do with space into the same category, from nonfiction books filled with technical drawings to extremely fluffy SpaceOpera.

This Troper averted it with his dad, who listens patiently to his explanations of almost every game he plays and even his "Internet Family." His father also strangely enough picked up an enjoyment of new music like Slipknot, The Vines, and Rancid. The same man who, on a regular basis, came down to the basement and destroyed my friends and I in GoldenEye 007. The trait is not shared with my mom, who decries any game I play, any book that I have to explain as "strange but awesome, just listen..." and how my "Internet Family" are just pedophiles despite talking with them on the phone often. She enjoys Chevelle though. Odd.

This trope is the reason This Troper never, ever, ever professes his opinions in public.

Mostly averted with my Family. My parents had to view / check out anything they didn't deem age appropriate. Like a teen game for a ten year old. My Dad doesn't care if I can explain to him it is in somehow beneficial to learning (like Comparing HalfLife2 to 1984). Since I turned seventeen my parents don't care about what I veiw as long as it doesn't effect my behavior or grades. Played straight with my mother and animes, since all Japanese men are perverts. Like Americans Aren't?

I have been on the receiving end of this so many times it is like my second career. But the biggest cases for me were these.

My sister used to needle me a lot about my loe for seemingly childish things (namely games, action figures, and, of course ANIMATION). It got better after a while, but it really didn't ge tover the hump until I got her and several family memebrs to come to Origins with me. She went in thinking that "tabletop games" ended with Monopoly, and came out with a suitcase full of swag and an autographed card from a game designer (I forget who) who she beat at his own game demo. On her first playthrough. Now she only bugs me about animation in jest (and often blames her kids' addiction to same on me) and I still have yet to beat her at Kung Fu Fighting. Damn it to hell.

But wait, I have an even better example. When I was in my junior year of high school, I transferred to a fairly small parochial school due to needing more focus than the public school could give me (later I was diagnosed with adult ADHD). Once in English class, I got in trouble because of a picture I had printed out and pasted on the front of my writing folder (everone had one, and we were encouraged to personalize them). I was told that the image appeared demonic and that I had to remove it. The picture? The main character from {{Tekkaman Blade}}. Now, Tekkaman Evil I could understand, and I tried to explain the character, and how he was an actual Space Knight. No dice. From then on, depsite countless other students geting into far worse (including rumors of an attempted ''orgy'' by some younger students) I was considered the subversive. This trope was averted thankfullyby a few of the other teachers, who were much more understanding of my quirks and nurtured my imagination (although I did get called out on my short story about werewolves that was kinda graphic...and the "Classmate Erotica" scandal involving the twins...)

Not exactly a story from this troper's life, but I'm not sure where else to put it. Someone's apparently writing a book about adults rediscovering their childhood. From the description, the book doesn't seem judgemental or mean about adults wanting to do things meant for younger people, and I respect it for that, but one of its examples of adults doing childlike things is "The average age of video game players is twenty-nine and rising." Apparently, they're not aware of RatedMForMoney or other video games not appropriate for children. I have less (actually, no) respect for Heartless Bitches International, but they have another example on their red flags list; listing as a bad sign for a romance "men who have juvenile hobbies such as comic book or action figure collections. This is a huge sign that they're not all the way grown up." Guess they've never heard of ''{{Watchmen}}''.

This troper's mother doesn't understand why she's "so obsessed with that ''death'' stuff". This troper likes wearing black, but her clothes are closer to librarian than goth. Even after she explained that ''DeadLikeMe'' is not morbid, her mom gave her weird looks. This troper has learned not to complain about how ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' isn't real vampire literature, because she'll get asked about why she is reading such classics as ''Carmilla'' and ''Dracula's Guest''. Probably the dumbest thing this troper ever did was leave her copy of ''GoodOmens'' next to her grandmother, who would make the Pope feel guilty about neglecting his prayers. She had to explain that the witch mentioned in the blurb was not a sympathetic character (technically true if you word it right; Agnes is dead for most of the book, so she's not really a character, right? Okay, so I lied. The alternative was getting a lecture about morality. So sue me.)

My mother is now ''absolutely convinced'' that I'm obsessed with vampires and that my choice in reading matter is the literary equivalent of MurderSimulators. Okay, I own a copy of ''{{Dracula}}''. It's because it's a ''good book.'' Then she overheard my cheery discussion with my brother about how much I wanted to see ''Film/{{Watchmen}}''. Yes, the hero is a violent psychopath! That doesn't mean I am! And I've just plain-old given up on trying to explain my obsessive love of ''TheDresdenFiles'' to her, since last time she glossed over my actual point in favor of pointing out that I'd just casually used the phrase "nigh omniscient" in casual conversation and "Normal people don't talk like that." (Oh, and that it also has vampires) Thank you, mom, I'll be sure to bear that in mind. Let's not even get into the fact that I read StephenKing. She also once Googled "anime" assuming that she'd get, and I quote, "pictures of cute animals." It's definitely for the best that she has no idea what I watch...

Isn't that just for dorks with no lives or girlfriends?

Why are you even ON this website, anyway?