Do you have trouble remembering the difference between Deathbringer the Adorable and Fluffy the Terrible?
Do you have trouble recognizing when you've written a Zero-Context Example?
Not sure if you really have a Badass Bookworm or just a guy who likes to read?
Well, this is the thread for you. We're here to help you will all the finer points of example writing. If you have any questions, we can answer them. Don't be afraid. We don't bite. We all just want to make the wiki a better place for everyone.
Useful Tips:
- Make sure that the example makes sense to both people who don't know the work AND don't know the trope.
- Wrong: The Mentor: Kevin is this to Bob in the first episode.
- Right: The Mentor: Kevin takes Bob under his wing in the first episode and teaches him the ropes of being a were-chinchilla.
- Never just put the trope title and leave it at that.
- Wrong: Badass Adorable
- Right: Badass Adorable: Xavier, the group's cute little mascot, defeats three raging elephants with both hands tied behind his back using only an uncooked spaghetti noodle.
- When is normally far less important than How.
- A character name is not an explanation.
- Wrong: Full Moon Silhouette: Diana
- Right: Full Moon Silhouette: At the end of her transformation sequence into Moon Princess Misty, Diana is shown flying across the full moon riding a rutabaga.
Other Resources:
For best results, please include why you think an example is iffy in your first post.
Also, many oft-misused tropes/topics have their own threads, such as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome (here
) and Fan-Preferred Couple (here). Tropers are better able to give feedback on examples you bring up to specific threads.
For cleaning up examples of Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard, you must use their dedicated threads: Complete Monster Cleanup, Magnificent Bastard Cleanup.
Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 18th 2023 at 11:42:55 AM
RE: Dragonfire 5000
To my understanding Crazy isn't mean to be literal.
Aversa wouldn't have joined the cult if they hadn't killed her parents, kidnapped her, erased her memory, then put in fake ones.
I would consider that different from a character being legitimately adopted and raised in an evil cult as here the character had parents of the cult's foes and was made a member against their will with magic.
The game's narrative consistently treats the Aversa character as different from the other members who are never described with words like enslaved/pawn and are treated as completely evil.
I think the Sailor Moon example is equivalent because in both cases, they only obey the villains and oppose the protagonists because of their memories being both erased and altered by the villain for their purposes.
Here's a link to the character being discussed.
Also if it is relevant, FE fansites describes the character as brainwashed.
RE: And The Fandom Rejoiced examples
Sure, no problem.
edited 21st Oct '17 8:28:52 PM by Monsund
No, the other one.
@jamescamera: All Abusers Are Male is when a work have that idea about gender roles, so a singular occasion doesn't present the whole picture. However, if there's nothing in the rest of the work that goes against it, it holds up.
edited 22nd Oct '17 12:43:24 AM by AnotherDuck
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I put up the following in Police Are Useless, but after rediscovering the trope I'm wondering now if Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop is a better fitting trope. Which trope fits best or are there parts that fit one while others for the second?
- The Last Podcast on the Left:
- The hosts often note times when police ineffectiveness is a major factor in how long a serial killer goes without getting caught. For example, in the Dean Coril series, they note the Huston police were underfunded and understaffed so much that, as a result, they actively avoided investigating things like homicides and shut down a victim's family when they provided a letter written by their missing son that they suspect was faked, but which Missing Persons took as evidence he was no longer missing.
- They also note occasions when a killer was caught by dumb luck or mistakes rather than anything police did. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, for instance, were only found out when Lake was held for questioning for an act of compulsive shoplifting by Ng, and police never suspected anything serious until Lake killed himself while in custody.
- Another issue the hosts bring up frequently is the fact that police precincts never speak to one another regarding local crimes, which causes killers to go on longer than if they just pooled information. This is understandable in the case of drifter killers whose crimes take place entire states apart or in times when long distance communication was not the norm. It's less so in the case of the Boston Strangler, in the 1960s, when police and district attorneys within the same city kept information to themselves in the hopes of being the ones who will crack the case.
- Marcus Parks gets especially worked up in the second Robert Pickton episode because of this trope. In the case of Pickton, not only did the Vancouver Police Department not investigate the disappearance of Pickton's sex worker victims and even ignore evidence of possibly up to four serial killers in the particular slum Pickton hunted in, they were plagued by petty infighting as they actively bullied and undermined the one cop who was trying to do something because his efforts and other successes made them look bad.
edited 22nd Oct '17 7:25:15 AM by sgamer82
No, the other one.
I think Police Are Useless is more accurate. They don't seem to be malicious, just not caring enough to do their job.
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The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
In first episode of Bro Trip 40,000: A Tale of Two Primarchs, a spin-off of If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Primarch Corvus Corax confronts the Masque of Slaanesh, one of the most dreaded Daemons in the setting, and the latter is terrified upon recognizing him as a "Child of the Anathema" ("The Anathema" is how the Daemons and Gods of Chaos refer to the Emperor of Mankind). The Primarch immediately responds with "The Master of Mankind to you, craven filth" (he's talking about the Emperor, not himself, for clarity's sake; "Master of Mankind" is one of the Emperor's many titles).
Does this qualify as an example of They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!? Or, to put it in another way, could They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! be done by having Character C insist to Character B that Character A be referred to with a specific name or in a specific manner, rather than A doing so for themselves?
edited 23rd Oct '17 5:53:45 AM by MarqFJA
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Lost in Space
Hmm, I'm not sure. Seems that it occupies a slightly different narrative niche to have a surrogate demand a proper form of address for their boss, but it's very close.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
No, the other one.
I think it falls outside. It's an entirely different name/title rather than about the type of address used with the same name.
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From Film.Jumanji Welcome To The Jungle:
- Denser and Wackier: The original film was more of a mix of comedy, adventure, and fantasy, while the sequel's trailers suggest it focuses more on comedy with some action.
Does anyone else think that since you must Never Trust a Trailer, it feels too early to write that all of Welcome to the Jungle has this tone? Apparently '90s moviegoers found the trailers for the original Jumanji too lighthearted, once they saw the actual film. Although, I don't remember Jumanji having anything as wacky as when a Welcome to the Jungle ad showed a man exploding after eating cake.
edited 23rd Oct '17 8:41:09 AM by dsneybuf
No, the other one.
Trailers are not accurate enough to judge a work by. Trailers are usually extremely condensed and quite often with the focus shifted towards brief jokes rather than plot arcs, unless the entire trailer is about the plot.
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- All Abusers Are Male: Akizuki, Kaho, and Mafuyu walk in on Dino uncomfortably huddled up on Maika's lap, while the latter cheerfully strokes his hair. Despite the obvious assumption in this situation, if any, seemingly being that the one who was not consenting was obviously Dino, the others all assume that it was him he was sexually harassing her and demand proof that he had her consent.
I was wondering if this counted as an example since I'm not entirely sure. And if not, whether if would count as any others.
Its not an example when Dino has a history of creepylike behavior toward Maika, its expected of him specifically to try to pull something like that. While Maika has a history of being extremely innocent with the other employees.
If it were Akizuki it would be more evenly questionable.
edited 26th Oct '17 5:53:02 PM by Memers
No, the other one.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Now that I've actually read the manga to that point, I have to say I disagree with that. He's never done anything creepylike towards her. He's had nosebleeds and stuff because of what she's done to him, but not on his own, and nothing she's objected to. It's blatant sexism to just assume he's done something to her against her consent, without a moment's thought. The thing is, both of the characters involved have shown that they'd be okay with something like what happened. There shouldn't be an automatic assumption that they have to call the police on him.
However, I'm not sure All Abusers Are Male is the right trope for it. It's really something like Always Blame The Male, or maybe the reverse of assuming that because he's a man, he's sooner or later going to abuse a woman, which I'm not sure which trope it falls under, but it's extremely common in anime and manga. Might fall under The Unfair Sex.
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Is this an example of Self-Contained Demo?:
- Bioshock Infinite. The two early game play demos 2010 - Fighting Saltonstall and a Handyman and 2011 - Exploring a novelties shop and Columbia take place in areas which are not found in the game.
I have never played the game however I have seen videos on its development. This example sounds like the sections were intended to be in the game at one point, but were ultimately scrapped. Thus it's not a self-contained demo. I deleted a similar Pokemon example before the trope launched because it was simply What Could Have Been instead of anything intentional.
Haven’t read the manga but in the anime he is a full on Masochistic Otaku and treated as such by everyone, even as he was introduced.
No, the other one.
Yes, but being a masochist doesn't mean abusing and/or molesting others.
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But pushing an otaku fetish on an unsuspecting victim however is completely in character and laying on the lap like that is a big one, either sleeping or the whole cleaning the ears thing.
OK, you two, discuss that on that series' thread.
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
Villain Protagonist
If Bob and Alex are dating and Alex is Ambiguous Gender, does that make Bob Ambiguously Gay?
edited 30th Oct '17 2:26:35 PM by PistolsAtDawn
No, the other one.
Not necessarily. Ambiguously Gay is more than just "happens to date someone who may be of the same gender".
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From Token Minority:
- Some Disney Channel shows include a rich, intelligent, yet conniving and selfish Latino as a token minority character. Some examples: That's So Raven, The Proud Family and Hannah Montana.
Do they count in the former two considering most of the cast are black? Plus, The Proud Family had an entire family of latinos.
- Rouge the Bat from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, as far as games are concerned.
I feel I'm missing something. She's a mammal so that can't be it. Is if because she's a bat? I am pretty sure the games rarely include echidna and foxes, yet Knuckles and Tails don't count.
On Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, someone replaced the trope Absolute Xenophobe with Final Solution in an example with this context:
- She wages an eternal omnicidal war against anything non-Sylvaneth and makes no difference between Fyreslayers, Ironjawz, Chaos Warriors or the undead.
Sounds more like Absolute Xenophobe to me, since it's directed at 'others' in general, not an attempt to wipe out one specific group.
He/Him
If characters who have been trapped without contact with anyone else for three thousand years (An assholish sourceror did it) speak perfect English but a character implied to be of a race of the same type as the gods, but being trapped since The Time of Myths (for trying to overthrow them before they created the races) initially doesn't (until hearing your character speak it), instead briefly using a language described as having traces of the old languages the races spoke, would that be a downplayed example of Eternal English or would it be (very slow) Language Drift?
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No, the other one.
If the characters trapped for three millennia speak the exact same language as people who weren't trapped, that's Eternal English.
The other language you speak of, having traces of other languages, I'm not sure about. Either not an example, or not enough context.
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Is this an example of Reused Character Design? On Save the Light.
- Hessonite looks quite similar to Centipeetle's superior◊ in her coloring book from "Monster Reunion".
"A girl enslaved mind, body, and soul" can be metaphorical and doesn't necessarily mean she's a prisoner by magic. I've seen the same phrase used to describe drug addicts, but that doesn't mean the drug addicts were enslaved through magic.
An indoctrinated cult member =/= always brainwashed and crazy.
The Sailor Moon example is not an equivalent because Aversa has no direct connections to the protagonists of the game, unlike the Sailor Moon character.
To avoid a long string of back-and-forths, other people should weigh in as well. Here's the post that explains the example being debated.
As for And The Fandom Rejoiced, I'm not sure it's kosher to just delete "base-breaking examples" since base-breaking examples still means a good deal of the fanbase is very happy, but I'll let others who are more well-versed with that particular audience reaction to chime in.
edited 21st Oct '17 8:04:16 PM by dragonfire5000