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
Since it got no responses last time I brought this up, I'm mention it once more, then drop it:
In Worm, there's a couple supervillain characters (Bitch and Tōng Lรญng Tǎ) whose names as used by in-universe press are given differently (Hellhound and Ziggurat, respectively). Would these count as examples of Reporting Names? (If they do, do I make a Web Serial folder on Reporting Names for Worm, which would contain only the one example, or do I put it under literature?)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
No. Reporting Names is about Group A assigning a name for equipment from Group B because they don't know the actual name. Supervillains aren't equipment.
Alright then.
From YMMV.Steven Universe:
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Steven's line in "Adventures in Light Distortion" promising to pick up the Ruby Squad on the way back to Earth. He doesn't do it, and their next appearance is completely unrelated, leaving fans mystified as to why that line was put in.
Does this count? Steven doesn't really "promise" to rescue them, he just says they'll get them later. He had a lot on his mind at the time.
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No, the other one.
It's not strange in context if it depends on whether he does it later on. Delete.
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I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, but the Gems never rescued the Rubies.
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That is not a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment though, thats just a random nonsensical portion of the whatever that has no affect on the work if removed and such.
It would be a What Happened to the Mouse? and if intentional then it could be Noodle Incident. It could be Uncertain Doom as well.
edited 4th Mar '18 3:37:57 AM by Memers
Ah, gotcha. Went ahead and removed it.
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I wanted to add this to the Trivia page for Dottori-Kun, but I'm not quite sure if it's an example:
- Contractual Obligation Project: This game was only made to fulfill a Japanese regulation that arcade cabinets had to contain games.
Is this an example of Contractual Obligation Project, or is it not? The reason I'm asking is because I'm not sure if it counts as contractual.
edited 4th Mar '18 1:52:23 PM by Mickoonsley19
This is on the Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory page and not sure its right
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. Both dimension's Falcoms are playable. This causes a brief period of confusion when Nepgear introduces them to each other simply stating "Falcom, this is Falcom.".
Would it be an aversion to One-Steve Limit if its technically the same person? It is a My Future Self and Me thing sure but don't think its a One-Steve Limit aversion.
No, the other one.
If it's the same person, they're for the purpose of naming the same character, and as such should have the same name. So no, I don't think that counts.
Reminds me more of Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.
Is this too general?
Treasure Room - Real Life:
- This was common practice in ancient times for cultures that revered their royalty as gods or demigods. Their tombs would be filled with money, food, gold, jewelry, fine clothing, fine weapons, and often even their servants, soldiers, and concubines, which were all expected to be used by the spirit of the deceased in the afterlife.
Lost in Space
Yes, that is a general example.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Moved this out of Literal Surveillance Bug into Animal Espionage, because the former is for technological espionage tools, shaped like bugs, instead of the organic creatures serving in that way?
Am I right? ... But, if Literal Surveillance Bug is a subtrope of Animal Espionage, then shouldn't the former include organic examples? And the point of the trope being a Literal Metaphor, or something, around the word "Bug"?
- In Worm, Taylor eventually learns to interpret the data from the bugs which she controls. Even one or two bugs in a room are enough for audio surveillance to some extent, and just consider how many insects are around you right now.
- Even before that, she could keep track of where the bugs were. While this didn't allow for precise intelligence, it allowed her to track people within her power's range and determine the layout of an area.
So I was thinking of creating a page for The Eye of the Storm, and I was wondering; is Clancy an O.C. Stand-in, or a straight up OC? He's Sadie's dad, and in the show, he's never been mentioned.
edited 8th Mar '18 7:13:07 PM by Crossover-Enthusiast
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Officially intimidated
And you didn't fix the misindentation. =/
True, I'm assuming you fixed it...
You did! Thanks!
So, you agree with the move, though?
edited 8th Mar '18 12:57:28 PM by Malady
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
Officially intimidated
Yes. LSB is for devices modelled after bugs, while AE is for actual animals (including bugs) in use. 
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming, the Astronomy section should be moved to Theme Naming, right? 'Cause astronomical objects aren't works with sections?
IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming.Video Games, what's the theme here?
- The Halo games have these strewn about every level in campaign, including such Halo: Combat Evolved favorites as "The Gun Pointed At The Head of the Universe", "Breaking Stuff To Look Tough", and "I Would Have Been Your Daddy."
- While these are mostly idiosyncratic, the "I Would Have Been Your Daddy" level is named after something the character of Sergeant Johnson can say during the level, as a taunt to the enemies. The full line goes "I would have been your daddy...but the dog beat me over the fence!"
- Try to start the section titled "It's Quiet..." without saying aloud "...too quiet..."
edited 9th Mar '18 6:34:35 AM by Malady
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
I guess the theme there is just "long".
We shouldn't bunch up works like this, right?
You could probably do a first bullet of just Takahashi, then make each individual work entry a sub bullet.
- Gonna do that if no disagrees in a day...
—-
Infallible Narrator: confirmed as basically 'hyper-detailed narrator' in Description Improvement
So, these are wrong? What are they then:
- All the characters, including great philosophers and children, speak with similar intelligence, style and vocabulary in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.
- The Scarlet Letter is somewhat disturbing, since the small child of Hester (only about seven years old by the end of the book) speaks as eloquently (and with the same level of vocabulary) as the adults, who all happen to share the linguistic grace of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
- Moby-Dick: Ishmael may be better at writing than at whaling. This is probably intentional: he's a writer and occasional "marchant" seaman, only entitled to the Pequod's 777th lay.
- Averted, often quite painfully, by just about anything written by William Faulkner.
- In the medieval Scrapbook Story Catherine, Called Birdy, the narrator/diarist seems far too eloquent for a girl living in The Dung Ages who supposedly just learned to read and write (although her style seems to become more "literary" over time, even drifting into Purple Prose once or twice near the end).
- Cushman does however give a nod to the Unreliable Narrator when Catherine talks about how her uncle, who's been on Crusade, tells them about the wonderful animals he's seen: unicorns, and griffons, and so on — but when he gets to describing elephants, "a splendid big beast with a tail at both ends", she thinks he's making it up.
- Kevin Crossley-Holland's King Arthur trilogy has a similar problem where the books are supposedly the day-to-day writings of a teenage boy during the Crusades, but are just way too wordy and literary-minded for that to be plausible, especially considering all the emphasis on how laborious the process of writing was at that time. There's rarely any mention of Arthur reading anything, but his verbal education seems to be complete to the point that he never lacks for the right word to describe something.
I need some help on this. I don't know if subversion on tropes like Adapted Out are allowed. I mean, the trope basically says that a character from a source material would not appear in the adaptation due to time constraints, Adaptation Distillation or Pragmatic Adaptation.
And yet, there's this example under the Blood-C character page under the character folder David.
I don't know if this is a good example of this trope. The character, David, appears in the prequel manga Blood-C: Demonic Moonlight which set way before the anime and at the end of the manga, he died of old age. He's never mentioned in the anime. Also Blood-C is not even connected to Blood:The Last Vampire and the show just borrow some elements from the movie as a homage (like how the AU Gundam shows borrow elements from the original Gundam 1979 show). I think Blood-C is not considered to be an adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire.
So, should I changed this to Posthumous Character as the character is dead prior to the TV series? Or just remove it?