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.
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.
The day of love has come this month, Valentine's Day. For the Americans, there's also Presidents' Day and the Super Bowl, and for both the Americans and the Canadians, there's Black History Month and Groundhog Day. While the bunnies are also cleaning up the aftermath of new year celebrations, let's get to the news itself.
There is now a code of conduct for moderators, along with a cleanup thread to deal with rushed or bad TRS cleanups. A certain forum game concerning countries was also revived. Precision F-Strike has been renamed to Breaking Point Swearing, and Slender Man Stand In has been disambiguated between various tropes, five to be exact.
With the summary of important changes and notable events finished up, the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads are back now after a few changes. Drop by there to propose a character you believe is one of them. If you were a regular of the old threads, it is recommended you take a close look at the new rules and adjust to them.
Even more importantly, laconics have now been restricted to tropes, works, Useful Notes and Just for Fun pages. Laconics for other page types are not allowed for various reasons. For example, recaps can't have laconics due to being a short summary of an episode, and a laconic in that case just serves as a recap of a recap, or a summary of a summary.
More on everything just mentioned below.
Happy troping as always!
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Tropes and Works
Trope Spotlight
Obscure Tropes
This section highlights older tropes that need a boost.- "Attention, soldiers! Your unit deploys tomorrow to [redacted]. Your officer, and only your officer, will be informed of your orders once you are underway." These are Sealed Orders. By not informing a unit of what they're to do, secrecy is maintained at the cost of the officer having more difficulty in asking for clarification about his orders. This trope was launched in 2009, but has been kept under wraps to the point of only having 16 wicks.
- Valentine's Day is coming, and with it comes a lot of sweets and candy. It's not just humans who enjoy sugar, though, and if you want to tell someone you love them this year, you should give your Team Pet a bar of chocolate — after all, Mascots Love Sugar. This trope is about cute pets and mascots having a huge sweet tooth, but only sits at 19 wicks after launching in 2009. Show the page some love this holiday.
New Tropes
This section brings attention to recently-launched tropes that could use a little help to really get rolling.- Valentine's Day is a special day for romance, but whether you're single or want to make your movie date extra special and intimate, why not pick an action- and horror-packed film for a big bonanza of Valentine's Day Violence? Released on the 30th of January, it could help spice up the movie landscape on a Dump Month full of romance films.
- Dying is an inevitability; it's how you die that is highly variable. So what is A Good Way to Die? For a warrior, it's almost always going to be an Honorable Warrior's Death. To go down fighting in an intense battle, to perish in war, is a highly sought-after end for them. The posthumous reward for such a death is often entry to a Warrior Heaven. While an old trope, it was only launched recently on December 30, so it could certainly benefit from more publicity.
Work Spotlight
New Work Page Spotlight
This section covers newer work pages that could use a little help.- Core Keeper is a multiplayer sandbox game taking place in a procedurally generated underground world. Players are dropped into the center of the map, where the Core is, and in preparing to escape, they explore outward through different biomes, collect items, build up their base, and fight bosses that scale based on the number of players. The game is in Early Access on Steam, but there's already plenty of content, which holds more potential tropes alongside the dozen currently on the page.
- Hi-Fi RUSH, a rhythm-based action game, follows a young man who acquires a robotic arm and an extra beat-based feature the company didn't intend to give him. He joins a resistance movement to defeat some Corrupt Corporate Executives that want to recall him as a defect. The game has been released fresh from assembly on January 25, and there are plenty of tropes to scrape up.
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.- Belial is a series of point-and-click Flash games released between 2010 and 2011. In Chapter 1, players take on the role of the eponymous son of Lucifer and Eve, who is thrown into Earth and gets his tail, wings and horns ripped out after losing a fight against Satan when trying to reclaim what is rightfully his. It features two endings, which branch off into separate games: going back into Hell to raise an army leads into Belial: Chapter 2, while staying on Earth to unlock the demon's true form, Baal, leads into Belial: Chapter 2.5. Though there were plans to continue the series as a Metroidvania (titled Belial: Art of the Devil), only a demo has surfaced since then, with the project having being quiet for years.
- Tender Is the Night is a 1934 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, and considered his Magnum Opus. It tells the story of psychiatrist Dick and Nicole Diver, fictionalized versions of the author and his wife, Zelda, who live in the French Riviera during the later years of The Roaring '20s. Amidst their dysfunctional marriage and Nicole's mental issues, Dick starts an affair with young actress Rosemary Hoyt and slowly descends into alcoholism. The page for the work could use some more wicks, examples and additional context for some of the examples it already has.
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!- Ever wanted a guidebook for a game that doesn't exist? Then Psycho Undead is for you! This guide for a fictional third-person shooter Zombie Apocalypse game has interesting concepts and stunning art, and is bound to be a treat for anyone who loves zombie works. While the full book is out of print, the work's creator has thankfully uploaded the majority of the work to Pixiv
, so it shouldn't be too difficult to have enough tropes for a page. - Doobus Goobus is an animator (in the "loosest sense possible") and voice actor on YouTube and Newgrounds. He's known for his comedy and parody sketches, all drawn and animated in a crude yet charming style. He's collaborated with other notable content creators like Caddicarus and Solid jj, but still doesn't have a page here.
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.- The Mystery of the Druids is a German point-and-click adventure game released in 2001. It focuses on two characters, Scotland Yard officer Brent Halligan and anthropologist Melanie Turner, as they try to solve a case regarding some cannibalistic murders that may have something to do with ancient druidism. Though the game initially debuted to negative reviews, with the memetic cover art being its only legacy, a review by MandaloreGaming has caused it to gain a small cult following.
- Antimatter Dimensions is an Idle Game by Finnish developer Hevipelle. It follows the polynomial growth model where the first Antimatter Dimension produces Antimatter, the second Antimatter Dimension produces the first, the third produces the second, etc., with eight AD tiers in total. Once you have enough of a specific dimension, you can get a Dimension Shift to unlock a new one, a Dimension Boost to get a multiplier, or an Antimatter Galaxy to improve tickspeed upgrades (those improve the rate at which the game performs ticks per second, effectively acting as another multiplier). With enough Antimatter, you may unlock the Infinity layer with new upgrades and features, and even more when you progress further. It's well-balanced, super fleshed-out, and often requires a strategy to progress efficiently. The Reality Update came out in December and chances are that the work page will also be expanded for all the information regarding the new mechanics and content.
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.- TierZoo is a YouTube channel that teaches zoology by explaining animals as if they were playable builds in the "hit" MMORPG Outside, then ranking them in a tier list. These feature slick editing—mixing videos of real animals with elements of games such as Super Smash Bros., Dark Souls and Pokémon—and are bound to teach you some animal facts that you never knew before (and possibly make you rethink having chosen the human as your main). The channel can be found here.
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 Kuboyama And The Saga Of The Lucky Dragon, and illustrates Blue Tropes.
This issue's featured image comes from Kuboyama And The Saga Of The Lucky Dragon, and illustrates Blue Tropes.
Occasionally, Image Pickin' will get caught up in a new trend, where multiple threads are opened to tackle a series of problematic pages. We've covered one such case last March, which was completed not too long afterwards. We've also discussed before how images that come from works are preferred by the community over images that don't. One noteworthy example of this happened about a year ago, when we discovered that Paint the Index Red had an unsourced photo as its pic, and a thread was created with some replacement suggestions. But what everyone neglected to notice at the time, and what kick-started this latest IP trend, was that this was also the case for every other color index. Soon, paintings became the new norm for these pages, and this one is our winner for having an interesting backstory.
Finished in 1960, the painting was part of a series by American artist Ben Shahn, composed of several temperas, gouaches and brush-and-ink illustrations, a large part of which can now be found at the Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art. These were featured by Richard Hudson in his book Kuboyama and the Saga of the Lucky Dragon, which tells the story of the the titular fishing boat, whose crew witnessed Castle Bravo, the first of 23 nuclear tests by the United States at Bikini Atoll. The story mainly centers on Aikichi Kuboyama, the boat's radioman, and the only member of the crew to die from radiation, with the picture showing his wife worrying that she might lose him. Shahn being famously anti-war, this piece is a poignant yet depressing (blue is the color of sadness, after all) reminder that War Is Hell.
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!
- The Discussions about moderation thread now lists the code of conduct for the mod team.
- One of the most important parts of Trope Repair Shop work is the cleanup portion, when applicable tropes that have gone through changes have all uses on the wiki changed to match the consensus in TRS. However, recently it has become apparent that some of these cleanups have been rushed or sloppy, with misuse of tropes often being kept under new names or tropes, and other bad examples also being kept around when they should be deleted. The On Overzealous Cleanup thread in Wiki Talk is currently discussing this trend, and coming up with ways to help fight it. If you'd like to pitch your thoughts as to how to help, come on over!
- Nearly a decade ago, there was a thread called Country Elimination Game. It has been dormant since then, with the most recent post published a year ago. As a result, a new, more broadly themed thread called Elimination Game, Mk. II was created. Each round begins with 25 entries based on a certain topic, and tropers can upvote or downvote two or three entries in each post until only one entry remains. See the rules first, then come join the game if you're interested in playing it!
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.
- As previously stated and announced on the 15th of January, laconic subpages for index, character, creator, recap, and Administrivia pages have been banned, and existing subpages for these articles will also be cut. These decisions were made due to various issues, including redundancy. Wiki Talk thread here.
- Hundred Percent Adoration Rating was renamed to Universally Beloved Leader due to misuse, since the trope is specific for authority figures, while other characters are covered by Loved by All. TRS thread here.
- Animation Lead Time was renamed to Production Lead Time and moved to Trivia because it was determined to be background information rather than a trope, and because it isn't animation-exclusive. TRS thread here.
- Archived Army and History's Crime Wave were merged under the name Historical Domain Crossover, and the combined trope will include non-villainous portrayals of historical figures in addition to villainous ones. TRS thread here.
- Audience-Alienating Ending's definition has been expanded to cover misuse because the misuse was determined to be a valid Audience Reaction on its own. TRS thread here.
- Authority Grants Asskicking is having a new trope, Rank Scales with Asskicking, spun off it for when a leader is stronger than their underlings, or when strength scales with rank. TRS thread here.
- Badass Baritone will be split between "deep voices signaling an authority figure" and "deep voices signaling a physically strong character", with both tropes being unisex. TRS thread here.
- Buxom Is Better was renamed to Buxom Beauty Standard because the fact that it's an In-Universe Examples Only trope for when characters in a work think large breasts are more attractive was frequently overlooked, leading to creepy gushing. TRS thread here.
- Cam Whore was redirected to The Oldest Profession because it was determined to not be a trope on top of being a Zero-Context Example magnet. TRS thread here.
- Cloud Gaming was moved to Useful Notes because it was determined to not be a trope, but still be worth documenting. TRS thread here.
- Everythings Better With Penguins was disambiguated because of a lack of tropeworthiness. TRS thread here.
- Everythings Better With Plushies was disambiguated between The Merch, Girls Love Stuffed Animals, Toy-Based Characterization, Security Blanket, and Sentimental Homemade Toy (which is a subtrope of Toy-Based Characterization), and examples are being moved accordingly if they fit. TRS thread here.
- Fake Balance was disambiguated between other pages about video game balance due to concerns about complaining and redundancy. TRS thread here.
- Innocent Cohabitation is being renamed to From Roommates to Romance and retooled into a trope for sexual tension between roommates. TRS thread here.
- King of the Dinosaurs was renamed to Terrifying Tyrannosaur due to misuse to refer to any instance of a T. rex (which isn't a trope) instead of just scary depictions of them, as well as expanded to include tyrannosaurs other than T. rex. TRS thread here.
- Meddling Parents was redirected to Overprotective Dad (which was previously turned into a disambiguation page after the trope that formerly used that name was moved to Boyfriend-Blocking Dad), because Meddling Parents was determined to be redundant with other tropes on top of being heavily misused. TRS thread here.
- Mega Twintails was disambiguated due to a lack of inherent meaning, with any possible meanings covered by other Hair Tropes. TRS thread here.
- Oedipus Complex has had a Trope Transplant done by moving the current definition to another name and reusing the Oedipus Complex name for a Useful Notes page based on the actual psychological term. In addition, the trope that was originally called Oedipus Complex has been renamed to Child Supplants Parent and expanded into a gender-neutral trope for a child trying to supplant a parent's role in the family. TRS thread here.
- Precision F-Strike was renamed to Breaking Point Swearing because it was frequently misused for any instance of the word "fuck", including being used as a Pothole Magnet, when it's supposed to be used for when any profanity (not just a specific word) is used in a sudden way that indicates that O.O.C. Is Serious Business or that the tone of a work is getting more serious. TRS thread here.
- Relationship Voice Actor was disambiguated between other casting pages because the main concept was determined to be meaningless on its own. TRS thread here.
- Results Not Typical was redirected to This Product Will Change Your Life due to a combination of a lack of wicks and concerns of redundancy. TRS thread here.
- Rich Idiot With No Day Job was disambiguated between Secret Identity, Idle Rich, Millionaire Playboy, and Crimefighting with Cash, due to misuse that neglects the requirement of a Secret Identity. TRS thread here.
- Slender Man Stand In was disambiguated between The Blank, Creepily Long Arms, Expy, Humanoid Abomination, Stalker without a Crush, and possibly other tropes. This is due to heavy misuse raising concerns that it's not a naturally occurring trope. TRS thread here.
- Staring Through The Sword was sent to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard due to a combination of a lack of wicks and ZCE issues. TRS thread here.
- Sunday Leaked Document was cut due to a lack of wicks. TRS thread here.
- Tri-County Area was redirected to Everytown, America due to a lack of wicks and a lack of meaning. TRS thread here.
- Two Chicks In A Kitchen and Two Guys In A Garage were both cut and sent to the salvage yard. Both are related advertising tropes that were unable to thrive. TRS thread here.
- Wrong Wire was merged with Wire Dilemma due to a lack of wicks and redundancy concerns. TRS thread here.
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.
- Happy birthday to Makoto Ishii, a Japanese seiyuu with major roles in works such as Tears to Tiara, Shangri-La, and Another Eden. Sadly, he has no tropes or trivia regarding his roles and his page description consists of one sentence.
- The Something Like... Series is a series of LGBT young adult novels, with each book told from the eyes of a different character. There are nine main stories and three collections of side stories, but only the first two main stories have pages. The main series page could use a longer example list for tropes appearing in multiple books.
- Our Love Is Different is a trope about a character believing that their Casanova love interest really loves them despite the latter being involved with multiple people. This trope is over 10 years old but only has 17 wicks.
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.
- Five-Man Band is one of the oldest and most controversial tropes on the site, due to its once-required 5-trope role format and the prevalence of indentation-breaking example trees. Now that The Chick has been done away with, people are likely to find this trope all over the site, and may be wondering how to handle some of the worst examples. The Five-Man Band Cleanup thread is currently working to rewrite valid examples into the correct format, as well as to clear away misuse and ZCEs all over the site.
- Victoria is an extremist novel that's causing problems on this wiki due to the far-right political beliefs it promotes and its examples being full of shoehorning. The page has more than 400 wicks that need to be examined, so if you would like to help out, come visit the Victoria Cleanup.
- Wednesday is a Netflix show, based on The Addams Family, that has been trending for a few months. Trending shows typically attract more complaining and misuse, especially in regards to shipping, due to their more vocal fanbases, and Wednesday is no exception. If you want to help clean or remove questionable examples, come visit the Wednesday cleanup.
- Last issue, we reported on the newly split Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard cleanup threads, designed to tackle problems such as misuse or rewrites. Of course, as two large and easily misused tropes, vetting examples remains a necessity, which is why the proposal threads have both recently been re-opened. With new rules and regulations in place to prevent future issues, the Complete Monster Proposal Thread and the Magnificent Bastard Proposal Thread are the places to go to suggest characters and vote on who counts for each trope. Just remember to read the newly updated opening posts for details, first.
- Since the 1940s, Marvel Comics has published over 27,000 comic books. In September 2022, a cleanup thread was created. One of the goals of this thread is to disentangle tropes and characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe adaptations from pages about their source material. If you want to help, please visit the Marvel Comics cleanup and maintenance thread.
Know the Contributors
- FernandoLemon writes for Work Spotlight and Image of the Month. He has no plans for Valentine's Day.
- 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, someone who tries to find love in a hopeless place, 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 Forumwatch this edition. He mostly participates in the Project Threads, TRS, Trope and Wiki Talk, sometimes ATT, and occasionally Image Pickin'.
- callmeamuffin is currently making loads of Valentine's Day letters he wants to deliver. He also wrote for this month's Forumwatch and Project Spotlight.
- Yindee contributed to the Trope Spotlight section.
- MacronNotes contributed to the Pages Needing Help section 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 and is a guest contributor of this month's Pages Needing Help. She is often found assisting with cleanup threads and wick checks, and watches over TRS. She's also celebrating her birthday this month.
- GastonRabbit contributes to the Changelog, since he mostly moderates TRS, and adds changes after giving the go-ahead to make them.
- Purple Eyed Guma is a guest contributor for Work Spotlight. He can be found dividing his time between Image Pickin', Projects, TLP, and even Forum Games.
- Cutegirl920fire wrote for the Obscure Work Spotlight this month. With a few exceptions, she's not into romance, so she'll eat all of the Valentine's chocolate she can get her hands on this month.
- Twiddler makes sure our grammar is in order.
- Cardboard Bot, the birthday boy this month, wrote the description for this edition.
- alnair20aug93 made the logo for this month's issue.
This edition of Trope Report is brought to you by the Wonka Chocolate Factory. This Valentine's Day, don't just settle for any old store-bought chocolate or candy hearts; instead, step into a world of pure imagination, pick up some sweets straight from the factory of the world's best chocolatier, and try your luck at getting a golden ticket!
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.)
and let us know! We don't bite. (Much.)