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Newsletter / News 2022-11

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Where do you go to read the latest about new tropes?
What about old tropes with new names?
How can you find the best but least linked tropes out there?
Worry no more: Trope Report is here.

Trope Report is a monthly newsletter that intends to showcase works and tropes from all corners of this website. It also aims to keep the troper hivemind updated with pertinent trope changes and discussions.

For Trope Report's November issue, we have pulled themes from National Novel Writing Month, Thanksgiving, National Princess Day, the Day of the Dead, and other seasonal observances.

Quite a few things have happened over the past month. We have a new namespace called DerivativeWorks/ for works in the public domain that have multiple works based on them. We also have a new policy page for Real Life Troping and an administrivia page for Notifiers.

Other notable changes are major TRS decisions that have completely overhauled well-established tropes like Paper-Thin Disguise, Cool Pet, Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer, Aluminum Christmas Trees, Armor Piercing Slap, Authority Equals Asskicking and Asskicking Equals Authority. More info regarding those changes can be found in our Changelog section.

Happy troping as always!

~MacronNotes

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Tropes and Works

    Trope Spotlight 

Obscure Tropes

This section highlights older tropes that need a boost.
  • National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, sees hundreds of thousands of writers take to their keyboards for the month of November. What results is chapters upon chapters of fresh literature. Naturally, these chapters vary in length, from the very long to the rather short. When they're as short as technically possible, One-Paragraph Chapter comes into play. Published in 2010, this trope covers chapters whose content fills a single paragraph at most.
  • In America, November is most associated with Thanksgiving, on which many traditionally have a feast with their loved ones. If someone eats too fast, their families may accuse them of having a Buzzsaw Jaw. This trope, in which a character eats so fast that their mouth essentially becomes a buzzsaw or similar, has existed since 2008 — but, ironically, it's practically starving, with only 28 wicks and a page of ZCEs.

New Tropes

This section brings attention to recently-launched tropes that could use a little help to really get rolling.
  • Determination is a powerful thing, and the desire to not stop until something is achieved is often admirable. Unfortunately, not all pursuits lead to happy endings. Detrimental Determination is when an undying will leads to a worse outcome for the Determinator and/or other people. Perhaps they end up harming others on their way or becoming a worse person as they proceed on their quest, or their goals were simply horrible to begin with, and it's clear that giving up is the better option in the long run for everybody. While the page was made on September 6, it has gained a lot of examples in a short amount of time, so increasing its exposure wouldn't be a bad goal to pursue.
  • As long as you can get behind a corner, the bad guys won't be able to find you. At least, that's how it goes in media. Safe Behind the Corner covers this suspenseful situation. Despite being a common occurrence, the trope was launched only on October 21 and has just 16 wicks. Check behind every corner and you might find some examples that have hidden away.

    Work Spotlight 

New Work Page Spotlight

This section covers newer work pages that could use a little help.
  • Horror doesn't have to end with Halloween. Enter Basketful of Heads, a 2019–2020 horror comic book miniseries by Joe Hill. The story follows college student June, who goes to visit her boyfriend on Brody Island, Maine, only for a hurricane to cut off mainland access just as a group of convicts escape on the island. Armed with an old Viking axe, June must protect herself from those who wish her harm. The work page would benefit from more tropes.
  • Bento Banana is an animated web series that parodies typical anime tropes through Sci-Fi and Dark Comedy. It revolves around the titular Bento Banana and his sidekick, an eggplant named Plumpy. The first three episodes parody fighting, romance, and tournament anime plots, respectively. As a new page, it could do with more tropes, which is easily remedied by watching the series here.

Older/Obscure Work Spotlight

This section is intended to highlight works that may no longer be in the zeitgeist — but that doesn't mean they're any less tropable.
  • Don't Look Back is a 2009 Adobe Flash game by Terry Cavanagh. Taking inspiration from the Greek myth of Orpheus, who descended into the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice, it takes on the form of a minimalist Platform Game. Fun despite its brief playtime, it's worth experiencing at least once for its beautiful ambiance.
  • Smoke Signals is a 1998 Coming of Age dramedy film that follows Victor and Thomas, two young men on the Coeur d'Alene reservation in Idaho. Following the death of Victor's abusive dad Arnold, who once saved Thomas's life, they set out for Phoenix, Arizona to retrieve Arnold's ashes. The movie is notable for being the first Native-directed, written, and co-produced feature-length film, leading to its 2018 archival in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry for being "historically or culturally significant."

Works That Need a Page

This section takes a page from the List of Shows That Need Summary. It is intended to spotlight works that people have been talking about enough to link around the site, but don't have a page yet. If the work page link turns blue after this, then we know we've done our job!
  • Nick Robinson is a YouTuber and former Polygon staff member best known for his documentaries, mostly focused on solving small mysteries. These span a large array of subject matter, from games he likes such as Phantom Dust, Super Monkey Ball, Driver: San Francisco, Rusty's Real Deal Baseball and Mission in Snowdriftland, to other topics like McDonald's, Domino's Pizza and Hideki Kamiya. Along the way, he'll often interview people in the know (frequently by flying to Japan) to try to get some answers. Despite the fact that his work often brings attention to lesser-known titles (especially on this wiki), he has yet to receive a page. If this content interests you, his channel can be found here.
  • Rock band Redbone was founded in 1969 by brothers Lolly and Pat Vegas, and only five years later would become the first Native band to reach the Billboard Top 5 with "Come and Get Your Love," a song that found new fans when it was prominently featured in Guardians of the Galaxy. Of Yaqui, Shoshone, and Mexican descent, the Vegas brothers and Redbone have been an inspiration for Native musicians in decades since.

Non-English Work Spotlight

The wiki may be in English, but that doesn't mean non-English media are any less important! This section focuses on works that may have a language barrier to deal with — but are worth it if you do.
  • November 18 is National Princess Day, a day that celebrates the princess in every girl, like Cinderella. Speaking of Cinderella, Erase una vez... is a Catalan 1950 animated (with live-action clips) Cinderella adaptation from Spain that unfortunately coincided with the release of Disney's adaptation. The film was never commercially released and has subsequently fallen into the Public Domain, although a black-and-white version can be seen at the Spanish Cinema Museum, and in 2015 the Filmoteca de Barcelona began a full-color restoration of the film that was released in 2022. The page has some commented out zero-context examples that could be expanded on, and more tropes could be added to the page, so tropers fluent in Catalan may want to see the film and help the page flourish into the Belle of the Ball.
  • Cinderella is known around the world, but many cultures have their own ancient stories that bear a striking resemblance to the European folktale. Tấm Cám, or "The Story of Tấm and Cám," is a Vietnamese fairytale about two half-sisters. Like Cinderella, Tấm is mistreated by her sister and stepmother, only for magical assistance that leads to happily marrying the king. That's where the similarities end, as Tấm Cám becomes much Darker and Edgier from there. Fans of The Brothers Grimm are likely to enjoy this dark tale.

Creator Page Spotlight

Works would be nothing without the people who make them. This section highlights authors, artists, actors, musicians, and everyone else responsible for trope creation and proliferation.
  • jmtb02 (real name John Cooney) is an American video game developer and chief executive officer of Armor Games. He is best known for titles such as Treadmillasaurus Rex and Exit Path, as well as for his mascot, a small blue elephant who appears in other games such as Achievement Unlocked and Elephant Quest. Currently, his page has only a small number of wicks and some of his other works could use pages.
  • Jon Proudstar is an actor and comic book writer of Yaqui, Mayan, Jewish, and Latino descent. His 1996 comic book Tribal Force has been displayed in the Smithsonian Institute for its portrayal of indigenous superheroes. Currently, he has a recurring role on the groundbreaking Native comedy Reservation Dogs.

    Image of the Month 
This section brings you the best selections of the past month from Image Pickin.
This issue's featured image comes from Monster Maker III, and illustrates Status Effects.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/status_effects_monster_maker.png
Clockwise from top: Petrified, Poisoned, Asleep, Frozen.

It's delightful to see a big trope finally be given an image. Awesome Music received one a few months ago, and even within this month, we had some popular ones like Most Wonderful Sound get one. But even though this wasn't a difficult trope to illustrate, this image won because it did it in a way that was very interesting visually.

Backstory time: the image comes from the manual of an obscure RPG for the Super Famicom by the name of Monster Maker III, itself based on a popular card game franchise. This was back when games came with manuals to explain the lore and game mechanics, and this one in particular was very glossy, featuring a ton of original illustrations. The artist behind this all? A manga artist known as Kugatsu-hime, who is responsible for all of the franchise's artwork.

Not a lot of Image of the Month winners get chosen through the Image Suggestion thread, but this one did. And even in a month where Big Bad—unarguably the biggest trope on the wiki—got a new pic, highlighting creators who would otherwise get lost in the shuffle is always such a treat that there was no way this wasn't going to win.

Projects and Discussions

    Forumwatch 
Hey guys! Welcome back to Forumwatch! In this section, we'll be telling you about what's going on in the forums — interesting discussions that may be going on in Wiki Talk, some fun forum games, or lively debates going on in On-Topic Conversations, you name it!
  • Have you seen a trope, YMMV item, or Trivia item you like that recently launched from the Trope Launch Pad? Do you want to gush about how great the concept, name, or anything else you like about it is? Then head on over to the Your favorite new trope, YMMV, and Trivia launches thread, where you can gush to your heart's content about the best new things that came out of the Trope Launch Pad.
  • For the Day of the Dead, many of us like to honor all the amazing people we've lost throughout the years, and here on TV Tropes, we do it through the General RIP Thread. If the news of a particular person's death shook you, this is the place where you can pay your respects.
  • Nvidia released the super-powerful GeForce 40 Series last month, with such features as the Ada Lovelace architecture, DLSS 3, third-gen ray tracing, and AV1 encoding. In honor of this announcement, members of Team Green can now talk in the Nvidia GPU users thread. If you're excited about the new cards and want to replace yours, or would rather tell us all about the card you currently have, along with the ways you use/plan to use your GPU, that thread is the place!

    Trope/Article Changelog 
This section covers renames, removals, redefinitions, hard-splits, merges, and wick cleaning. We'll try to keep you alerted to any major changes to the site, including perpetual projects and Wiki Talk decisions that you may have missed, but if you want to be a part of the process that affects so much of our wiki, then head over to the Trope Repair Shop on the left-hand side of the forum.

    Pages Needing Help 
This section highlights articles indexed on the Pages Needing Wiki Magic policy page and sub-pages. Such articles are, at best, under-performing and below wiki standards. At worst, these pages are in violation of the wiki's rules against stubs. If you're an editor, try checking out some of these under-performing trope and work articles to see what improvements you can make to the page.
  • November's birthday is the late Russell Means. A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, Means was a prominent indigenous activist with the American Indian Movement. His acting career began with a starring role as Chingachgook in The Last of the Mohicans. While not lacking in description, his page would benefit from listed roles and tropes describing his body of work.
  • People who are still in the Halloween spirit may find themselves reading the pages for the various World of Darkness tabletop RPGs... and find themselves boggled by the amount of natter that has infested them. The franchise's use of Grey-and-Grey Morality and the many editions of the various games through the years have led to the pages becoming hotbeds of Conversation in the Main Page. Would any ghouls and goblins out there be willing to fix these problems?
  • All-Knowing Singing Narrator is a trope about omniscient narrators who sing out the events of a work's storyline. Despite having been on the wiki for over a decade, the trope has no image or quote and the description is unclear.

    Project Spotlight 
Looking for a project to dedicate some time to, but not comfortable jumping into large threads? Here are some smaller projects, or more recent discussions, in need of a few more hands.
  • As mentioned in this year's September issue, Ambiguous Disorder has been renamed to Diagnosed by the Audience and made YMMV. However, many wicks to Ambiguous Disorder need to be moved and/or retitled, and many Diagnosed by the Audience examples on YMMV pages need to be rewritten to show how the audience reacts to such characters. If you would like to help lend a hand, come visit Ambiguous Disorder/Diagnosed by the Audience Cleanup.
  • The Ban-Evader Reversion Thread is devoted to reverting vandalism and other bad faith edits from users who have evaded their suspensions, on account of ban evasion undermining any trustworthiness a user may have had. Any edits which happen to be proven accurate by trustworthy users are often rephrased by said trustworthy users. Feel free to stop by to note any edits you have reverted or verified.
  • The Ambiguity Index lists many disambiguation pages that serve to distinguish pages with similar titles and tropes with similar concepts. These pages should be free of wicks from other pages, but many disambiguation pages attract wicks as a result of bad troping habits, such as failing to check pages. Come visit Ambiguity Index Wick Cleaning if you would like to help clear and move wicks that direct to these disambiguation pages.
  • Warp That Aesop is a Darth Wiki item where tropers are encouraged to twist a work in ridiculous, nonsensical ways to "find" an aesop in it. However, it suffers from many different kinds of misuse, including complaining about a work or creator in the form of an "aesop", meta content, a work's actual message, and acceptable Accidental Aesops. If you'd like to help clean this Darth item up, head on over!
  • The Disambiguating Works / Subpage Collision Discussion thread is for discussing a potential disambiguation of two unrelated works with the same name to prevent any subpage collisions. If you want to help, please feel free to stop by the thread.

    Know the Contributors 
  • FernandoLemon writes for Work Spotlight and Image of the Month. For International Men's Day, he will be raising awareness of suicide prevention.
  • War Jay 77 contributed to the Trope Spotlight section this month. She is also the Herald of Projects: Long Term/Perpetual, and spends much of her time refreshing on the forums, ATT and TLP for new things to respond to.
  • gjjones writes for the Project Spotlight section. He also frequently spends his time working on projects whenever they are necessary, cleaning up wiki entries and participating in the ATT and Trope Repair Shop threads.
  • 𝕋𝕒𝕓𝕤 writes for the Obscure Trope Spotlight and Changelog sections.
  • plakythebirb, who couldn't think of good November-related ideas and thus just wrote another October-themed entry, usually writes for Works That Need a Page.
  • Excessive-Menace writes for the New Tropes section. They mainly spend their time lurking and editing the wiki, as well as participating in ATT and writing for the Trope Pantheons project.
  • The Mayor of Simpleton wrote for the Changelog, Projects Spotlight, and Forumwatch this edition. He mostly participates in the Project Threads, TRS, Trope and Wiki Talk, sometimes ATT, and occasionally Image Pickin'. He is looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving with his extended family in November.
  • callmeamuffin generally writes for Forumwatch and Project Spotlight, and sometimes for Work Spotlight. Outside of Trope Report, you might find him participating in the Forum Games, Trope Repair Shop, and Image Pickin' forums. You might also find he removes wicks to disambiguation pages, but sometimes, they keep on reappearing again...
  • SkyCat32 is a guest contributor for the Project Spotlight this month. Sky can be found on multiple project threads, as well as the Trope Launch Pad.
  • Yindee, contributor to the Pages Needing Help and Spotlight sections, is taking this month to celebrate and amplify indigenous creators across media, with thanks to Chloe Jessica for the impetus.
  • MacronNotes contributed to the Pages Needing Help section and the description this month. She spends most of her time on Wiki Talk, TRS, and other parts of the site.
  • Berrenta assisted with the Changelog section for this edition. She is often found assisting with cleanup threads and wick checks, and watches over TRS.
  • Twiddler makes sure our grammar is in order.
This edition of Trope Report is brought to you by The Department of Death. The four-year Journey of the Soul is a perilous one, so why not put your money to good use and buy a travel package from us? Who knows, you might even be able to afford a trip aboard the Number Nine train!

Interested in becoming a contributor, or have suggestions for works or tropes to feature? Pop by the thread and let us know! We don't bite. (Much.)

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