Who is Pittsburghmuggle?
I'm a Troper who lives in Pittsburgh, but born in Toledo, Ohio because someone had to be. I love wikis and the ability to crowd source information for all.
I came to TV Tropes (sometime before 2008) when a friend on LiveJournal complained that it was sucking up so much of his time. The first thing I looked up was something that had long bugged me about kid's shows - shows where a character thinks his birthday is forgotten. To my total shock, there it was: Forgotten Birthday. I've been a convert ever since.
I love movies, books and some TV. TV shows are far Better on DVD - I prefer my information through a fire hose rather than trickled week by week. I don't really closely follow (but don't have any problems with) Anime, comic books, or fanfiction.
My favorite genre is Science Fiction. I prefer the hard end of Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness. A story set on a spaceship does not a scifi story make. Yes, I will happy take a good plot with sound science that stands on its own universe even if the characters are boring and flat! I'm also a huge fan of Apocalyptic Fiction - but I don't follow it as much as I used to. Having kids makes the idea of scrounging for necessities rather sour.
A show or work is tops to me if it plays with its premise well. Some shows consider the premise to be a backdrop in front of which character development takes place, and I find that annoying. Take Falling Skies, where most of the show is what the characters think of each other and the fact that aliens have invaded is only truly developed in season finales. Then take True Blood — great characters, and the premise that vampires have come out into the open while other, still secret, supernatural beings are dealing with that, intertwines with the characters.
Yes, I know my name has "muggle" in it. Yes, I was a big fan of Harry Potter back in the day. The series is over now (the movies are nice, but story's over, folks!), and I've moved on - but the name remains.note
While I'm not really into Fan Fiction, I adore Wild Mass Guessing. Just little ideas about a piece of fiction are far more interesting to me than fleshing out a full story.
I got yelled at a few times for not running new tropes through YKTTW first, and I do now - but I find it annoying because more often than not when I do no one comments at all on them, positive or negative.
I don't hit the forums here much, and don't participate in discussions on guidelines, etc. I trust the Powers That Be - whoever they may be. When a rule comes down I don't like, I live with it. I'm far too busy watching and reading fiction and trying to contribute to the wiki to get caught up in the nuts and bolts. I've never been very good at that and am quite content being a foot soldier.
I miss Troper Tales, but I see why it had to go.
The moment I finish reading/watching a work, I:
- Read the Wikipedia entry on it.
- Follow the link to the Internet Movie Database entry (not for books, obviously) and read that (Primarily Trivia and Goofs).
- Read/Create the TV Tropes entry and do any editing/adding that needs to be done.
I have started the pages for the following Tropes:
- Blindfolded Trip
- Cartoon Juggling
- Conveniently Close Planet (My baby! First trope page I made here!)
- Inappropriate Speak-and-Spell
- Low-Angle Empty World Shot
- Misplaced-Names Poster
- Overly Cool Play Space (I can't believe it hadn't been mentioned on here before!)
- Pottery Barn Poor
- Selling the Show (I recognize its importance, but get tired of endless production praise on DVDs)
- Who's Watching the Store?
And thank you to everyone who has gone on to work on those pages. Each change makes me proud.
This Index:
- This Index Is a Joke (Oh, I love a good joke.)
The following Useful Notes pages:
- Earth (The only page for it said "Mostly Harmless", which - though funny - wasn't very useful notes)
- Mathematics (Didn't start it, but did an extensive reworking.)
- Mensa (I've been a member since I was 10.)
- Science (There wasn't a page for it)
- Toledo, Ohio (Born there. Of course I was born on Earth, too...)
- Pornography (There hasn't been a page and I felt there should be - after all you can talk about pornography without actually talking about porn - people don't seem to get that. I had read a fair amount on the subject and gave it a shot.)
Created the pages for the following works:
ComicsDocumentaries
Film
- 28 Days
- Abduction
- After
- Alien vs. Predator (Moved the film stuff over to a film page.)
- The Arrival
- Cloud Atlas (Moved the film stuff over to a film page.)
- The Compleat Al
- Cosmos 2019
- Exit (2011)
- Extraterrestre
- The Flight Of The Phoenix (The films, which have since been split into two pages)
- Ghost Graduation
- A Girl Named Sooner (I saw this as a kid. The scene where they killed bird haunted me.)
- Godspell (Moved the film stuff over to a film page.)
- Some extensive work on the Harry Potter films, sorting and moving the mass of tropes from the Film page to individual pagesnote :
- How I Live Now (Moved the film stuff over to a film page.)
- Iceman
- It Came from Hollywood
- I Think We're Alone Now
- It's a Disaster!
- Jack Reacher
- Juan in a Million
- Left Behind (2014) (Moved the film stuff over to a film page.)
- Love And Monsters
- Millennium
- Poseidon
- Repeaters
- Risen 2021
- Saturday the 14th
- Striking Distance
- Sudden Death
- Sweet Girl
- There's Nothing Out There
- Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann
- Trancers
- Traveling Salesman
- The Walk
- Windtalkers
Franchises
- Tremors (I've only seen the first two movies, but I get annoyed when tropes for an entire series lumped on the page for the first installment.
Board Games
Literature
- Dragon's Egg
- Eternity Road
- Hull Zero Three
- Manhattan Transfer
- Millennium
- Mission of Gravity
- The Practice Effect
- Replay
Live Action TV
- Between
- Childhood's End (Well... I started the barebones page a few hours before the series started)
- Dragons, Wagons & Wax
- Manhattan
- Night Sky
- Revolution
- The Stand (1994) (Moved the miniseries stuff over from the literature page.)
Toys
- Bella Dancerella (I was stuck on the couch with a fractured kneecap when my daughter started watching it, I had to do something!)
Video Games
- Richies Plank Experience
- Robot Odyssey
- SimCity (2013) (Moved the extensive stuff from the SimCity page to a new one for the game.)
- Three Sister's Story
- The Wiki Game
Western Animation
- The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (My favorite quote of all time is from this.)
"Freedom is not a license for chaos"
- Peppa Pig (With the help of my daughter!)
- Watership Down (Moved the animated film stuff over to a film/animation page.)