Trope Description Improvement Drive

Villainy Discretion Shot is the trope about villainous acts being downplayed or ignored, often co-ocurring with Offstage Villainy. Seems clear enough to me.

That's what most of the page seems to be going for, but this bit disagrees completely:

Given that Offstage Villainy isn't about "symphatetic", that bit is likely wrong.

Vain Sorceress needs a trim. It's not a good sign when a trope has a long description that ends in a note telling people what the trope isn't.

Age-Appropriate Angst's definition is nine paragraphs long and doesn't really concisely state what the trope actually is at any point.

Might as well put this here. We're trying to re-write the description for So Beautiful, It's a Curse to one with a neutral tone and no references to Mary Sue.

Description for Mocking Music is too short and lacks detail.

New First Comics has a pretty minimalistic description. In fact I don't think I can expand it myself because I'm not sure what it's supposed to be in the first place: a reboot? A retool? A rewriting of the original beginning?

Just came across 419 Scam,which is quite long I feel

edited 28th Feb '13 3:12:06 PM by Ultimatum

The description should only have what's need. The rest goes in the real life examples section or Useful Notes

"Take That!" Kiss is also suffering from excessively long description, but I'm not sure which bits I can ax.

Genie in a Bottle is a little lengthy,

All of this should go on analysis:

The modern depiction of the Genie in a Bottle seems to indicate that the lamp is in fact the source of the Genie's power. Without it, he or she is either weakened or turned human. However, the Lamp is also their prison. They must give wishes to whoever rubs their lamp, and cannot resist. They also cannot directly harm their master. See Literal Genie, however, for passive-aggressive means of rebellion; and Jackass Genie for less passive means.

This association of "genie" with "slave" means that we don't, generally, see free genies anymore, and that the intrinsic nature of genie "slavery" can be used as a plot point, as in Disney's Aladdin (You wished to be an all-powerful genie? Now you're stuck in that lamp!). Given the U.S.'s history with slavery, Western depictions of heroes who acquire genies will almost always free them in the end (provided that they're good). What the genie was imprisoned for originally is typically not mentioned.

Another interesting change is how the nature of wishing has become a kind of reality warp. The genie activates some kind of command written into the fabric of existence, and *poof*, the universe is that way. Just as a Genie is slave to the Lamp, the Wish seems to be something more complicated and powerful than they themselves are; they just facilitate its invocation. While they may have some magic tricks they can use for themselves, they cannot consciously use the same powers the Wish facilitates.

Since Genies are usually Shapeshifters, they usually also have a Red Right Hand such as blue skin, Supernatural Gold Eyes, appearing in a puff of smoke or some other feature that distinguishes them in any form. While today's image of a genie is fairly standardized and stereotypically Middle Eastern—a muscular, shirtless man, without legs, in a turban and usually with an ornate Arabic sword—this kind of standard visual preconceptions only seems to have arisen during the twentieth century; earlier depictions of genies by Western artists are very varying.

The djinn were originally spirits of dust devils, hence the term, and almost Always Chaotic Evil in the oldest stories. Whenever you see a dust devil, that is a genie in its natural element. In the desert of the Sahara, or the plains of West Texas, dust devils can be powerful enough to snatch up livestock and small children, and those swirling leaves tend to follow you around, hence the origin of the belief isn't as illogical as you might think.

This one is well enough known that Christina Aguilera's first song was called "Genie In A Bottle" and featured many (somewhat sexual) references to this trope.

edited 5th Mar '13 5:54:04 PM by Thecommander236

Nothing done on Mocking Music.

The stuff is now moved.

Cool.

New First Comics's description is rather vague, leading to a few Square Peg Round Trope in the examples.

I literally just mentioned that further up the page.

Apologies. I did skim through the last couple pages to check if it was already there; I don't know how I missed your post. I read it now, and I completely agree with you. But reading the trope page again, I wonder if it's actually a job for the TRS or something, since I think the title is poor as well.

edited 8th Mar '13 1:40:41 AM by nemui10pm

Is it just me or is 11th-Hour Superpower actually not a videogame-specific trope? Roughly 25% of the in-page examples are from outside games.

Not seeing the video game specificity.

And the difference between "game" and "work" matters how exactly? If it doesn't, then the video game specific trope would be The Same But More Specific of the non-specific trope, making the distinction pointless.

In-Series Nickname needs to have its description/definition fleshed out. I dare say that it might even warrant TRS'ing, but I'm not sure.

edited 10th Mar '13 5:51:36 AM by MarqFJA

@m8e: I think Septimus meant that he saw no reason for the page to be video game specific, not that he didn't see where on the page it claimed to video game specific.

Also, Stock Footage Failure has a really bad double-whammy of Example As Thesis and starting off with what the trope is not.