Playing With Wiki: General Cleanup and Writing Help

Cynicism Catalyst is a renamed trope and even the definition was slightly re-vamped and made more clear. Its playing-with sub-page was not changed I believe, and it strongly relies on the old name.

Any ideas on that? PlayingWith.Cynicism Catalyst.

BTW, PlayingWith.Bookworm had its hits and misses. I tried to correct mistakes and add some accurate entries, but feel free to check it.

Well, the most obvious thing to do would be to replace the basic trope with the laconic definition (or similar), "A traumatic event that makes a character more cynical than before", and go on from there.

Here's my take on it;

Basic Trope: A traumatic event that makes a character more cynical than before.

• Straight: Bob became a cynic after his sister Alice was killed in a car accident.
• Exaggerated: Alice was killed on her birthday in a car accident Bob caused while rushing to get her a present (still drunk from the party that made him forget to buy one the previous day). He's barely the same person he was before.
• Downplayed: Bob became much less trusting after he and his sister were mugged on her birthday by an Ungrateful Bastard they tried to help out earlier that day.
• Justified: The event with his sister left Bob traumatised; his new personality is a coping mechanism.
• Inverted: Alice's fate makes Bob realise how precious life is. He becomes much nicer and less cynical as a result.
• Subverted: Alice is killed and Bob looks like he's about to have a Freak Out...but this turns out to be his Establishing Character Moment as The Pollyanna.
• Double Subverted: Bob ends up being blamed for everything by his parents and this turns out to be his actual Cynicism Catalyst.
• Parodied: Alice suffers some minor nuisance (like a graze). Bob is still traumatized.
• Zig Zagged: How much Alice's fate affected Bob varies Depending on the Writer.
• Averted: Bob was always that cynical.
• Enforced: Bob is given a tragic backstory to avoid letting his cynical behavior make him less sympathetic.
• Lampshaded: "Bob's harsh, I wonder what made him that way..." "Probably a dead sister; Abusive Parents; stolen lunch money; something like that."
• Invoked: Bob's Evil Mentor Claire arranges for Alice to have a tragic accident to toughen Bob up.
• Exploited: Claire guesses that Bob's cynicism is down to some tragic event, looks into his past and finds out about Alice. She uses this knowledge to manipulate him.
• Defied: Bob vows not to let Alice's accident get to him.
• Discussed: "How's Bob doing?" "I'm worried about how this might change him..."
• Conversed: "Oh look, a cynical brooding character. I bet he'll have an episode devoted to whatever upset him so much".
• Deconstructed: Bob's cynical personality is the result of him selfishly pushing other people away to avoid being hurt in the same way again.
• Reconstructed: Bob has made (or makes) peace with his past, but the event still marks the point where his younger, more naive, self "grew up".
• Implied: Bob is seen brooding over...something. How much it has to do with his attitude isn't explored.
• Played For Laughs: Bob's guilt over the incident is shown as disproportionate and it being brought up brings up many Not So Stoic moments.
• Played For Drama: Bob is a tortured, sad, soul who hides behind bitterness. Said bitterness makes people who're unaware of his backstory distrust him and leads to many tragic misunderstandings.

edited 18th Apr '13 2:14:45 PM by Bisected8

(forget that comment)

edited 17th Apr '13 4:16:08 PM by spacemarine50

Looks good.

edited 18th Apr '13 1:46:02 AM by XFllo

Well, if nobody has any objections, I'll paste it in and let anyone who wants anything changed edit it themselves (I'll put a copy of the old one in the discussion, just in case).

Can somebody take a look at PlayingWith.Limited Loadout and see if they can come up with some more stuff than I did?

I added subversion and double subversion examples.

I'll see what I can add.

EDIT: I hope you don't mind, but I changed "Sergeant Rock" to "Bob". I thought using a trope name as a characters name might be confusing.

edited 20th Jun '13 12:15:16 PM by Bisected8

Still works. Thanks, guys.

PlayingWith.Planet Spaceship (I could only come up with examples for about 2/3 of them) and PlayingWith.Boarding Pod could use a little looking over.

Single-Episode Handicap had only Justified. I added a few examples, but it is still very incomplete.

I've tried adding a few. I'm exhausted right now, so I couldn't come up with anything else.

PlayingWith.Russian Reversal needs a major rewrite since TRS renamed it and redefined the trope to be about the basic transpositional pun instead of "In Soviet Russia yadda yadda yadda".

I just made PlayingWith.Death Of Personality in two sessions (I was feeling rather off when I started it, so I just submitted what I had so far and got back to it just now).

I'm not quite sure about some of the entries, so it'd be helpful if someone proof read it/gave a second opinion on the entries (and maybe added a Zig Zagged and Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste entry if they can thing of one).

PlayingWith.All Amazons Want Hercules is written in a manner that fits a character-specific trope; however, my understanding is that All Amazons Want Hercules, by dint of its own title and description, is when strong women prefer stronger men by default in a given work. Unless that understanding is wrong, this would necessiate rewriting each and every entry of this page.

edited 13th Dec '13 4:14:42 PM by MarqFJA

The examples on the main page do not support a work-governing requirement. Most examples are written from a character-specific viewpoint.

Seems like a problem with a not-clear-enough description and a somewhat-misleading title, then.

New question: Does PlayingWith.The Empire's Inverted, Subverted, and Averted entries look right? I've never been sure about whether non-evil emperor/empress-led monarchies can fit in any of those Playing With categories.

Some of these sound like they take the trope name literally.

Any suggestions on how to fix them?

Bumping, and also noting that Required Secondary Powers could use a Playing With subpage, though that may need to wait until I get sufficient feedback on the question about its definition that I raised on the trope's discussion page.

EDIT: As does PlayingWith.Tangled Family Tree, which is currently quite minimalistic.

edited 6th Jan '14 2:32:33 PM by MarqFJA

While My Country, Right or Wrong already has a Playing With Wiki subpage, I want to confirm the validity of an addition that I want to make to it.

In the trope's description, it describes a modification of the phrase and principle that the trope revolves around, where it becomes "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right". I was thinking of adding that to the subpage; does that count as Subverted Trope, or Reconstructed Trope?

Hi, I have a question. How exactly do you create a Recap page? I've looked in various wiki helps, such as Adminis Trivia, I can't seem to quite get the information I need. Thanks! FOP Troper

Messaging the troper ^.

Marq, on My Country, Right or Wrong: Considering that the original, complete statement was made by Stephen Decatur, in an after-dinner toast of 1816–1820 and was"Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!" then was later restated by Carl Schurz, in 1872 as "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.", I'd say it's the Unbuilt Trope form rather than a subversion. Maybe a Reconstruction...

edited 13th Feb '14 9:47:43 AM by Madrugada

I don't think Banjo-Kazooie needs a Playing With page, seeing as it attempts to make the work page Self Demonstrating...