Is this an example?

IMO:

^^^ (Absentee Actor) No, not as written. Can't tell, though. Why are they absent?

^^ (Reimagining the Artifact) Sure it is. Tropes Are Flexible.

^ (N-Word Privileges) No, it is more than that, the reason they can or can't use the name is important.

edited 20th Jan '15 1:43:24 AM by rodneyAnonymous

@Captain Pat: From the Playing With subpage: "Two characters who weren't close before become friends when one of them becomes a Gender Bender". That seems simple and broad enough, doesn't it?

edited 20th Jan '15 3:11:55 AM by MarqFJA

^^ rodneyAnonymous: I'm not sure why they were absent. Tried looking it up. But anyway, yeah, apparently Absentee Actor requires them to be COMPLETELY missing from the episode, so I guess it's not an example.

You really shouldn't need to go to the Playing With subpage in order to figure out what the base trope is.

But yeah, that seems to be the core idea.

On that note, would "Alice GenderBends to a male and dates the heterosexual Barbara" be an example? Basically Gender-Bender Friendship as Gender Bender Romance.

The example that comes to mind is (an admittedly parodic one) from a non-canon Doctor Who special, "The Curse of Fatal Death". The Doctor regenerates into a female body and the special ends on a very obvious Yes They Definitely Will note as the now-female Doctor and the very-male Master walk off arm-in-arm, dropping obvious innuendos all the while.

Double-posting just to make sure watchlists get updated, since this is totally unrelated to my last post.

I have a question related to the actual topic of the thread. I'm going to provide way more context than I would in an actual example write-up, just to make absolutely sure this fits.

Trope in question: Gut Punch.

The Zones of Thought trilogy is notable for its bad guys being Consummate Liars and Complete Monsters who have no qualms about torture, rape, murder (both premeditated and on a whim), genocide, and large-scale deception, with every type of gambit you can think of thrown into the mix. So viewing it as a series, one would expect the villain of the third book, Children of the Sky, to be par for the course. He doesn't really come across this way at first, though.

There are two villains of A Fire Upon the Deep, one of which is an Eldritch Abomination and sort of lurks just outside the core plot as a massive, undefeatable enemy that might catch up with the good guys and annihilate them all if they don't reach their Game-Breaker, "Countermeasure". But the closer-to-home villain who gets most of the limelight is Steel, who is quickly established as a deceptive, murdering, Uncontrollable Rage-prone Complete Monster, and does not disappoint.

Likewise, in book two, A Deepness in the Sky (which takes place in a totally different time period and shares only one character with the other two books), Tomas Nau is the villain, a similarly deceptive Complete Monster who is a slightly more convincing liar to the characters around him, but who doesn't fool the audience one bit, since very early on the reader sees him orchestrate a genocide with cold calculation and then immediately start planning another. To cement his montrous status, throughout the story, he also maintains a horrendous game of brainwashing a girl to forget that he raped and murdered her mother in front of her so that he can have her as a sort of willing concubine, then after a few years letting her discover footage of the event, wiping her memory again, and repeating the process.

In contrast, the villain of The Children of the Sky, which is a direct sequel to the first book, is Nevil Storherte, who we don't even realize is a villain until about a quarter of the way through the book (up until that point, he comes across as a naturally charismatic leader and a sympathetic ear to one of the main protagonists), and even once he becomes an antagonist, he comes across as just being a slightly pompous and power-hungry manipulator. He uses deception and propaganda to engineer a nonviolent coup against the then-leader of the humans (the story has two races, Humans and Tines) to take her place. Later, it turns out that several violent kidnappings from earlier in the story were orchestrated by Nevil, but it's strongly implied that Nevil's allies are deceiving him as well, and he may not have blessed off on the violent nature of the kidnappings, though the abductions themselves had his approval.

All in all, there are three villains in the story; there is the Obviously Evil Vendacious (who is the only one of the three to have been around in the first book, and he was a Complete Monster even back then), the blusteringly overconfident but business-savvy buffoon Tycoon (whose "villainy" is mostly due to his arrogance and gullibility; he's dangerously proud, and basically complicit in most of the violence, but mostly that's because he's been deceived about previous events), and the power-hungry Nevil. The three of them are conspiring to overthrow Queen Woodcarver, but it's very obvious from early on that none of them trusts the others. For most of the story, it's implied that Nevil is an asshole and Tycoon is an idiot, but most of the true evil is Vendacious' doing.

This is quite suddenly shown to be false when, late in the book, in an attempt to kill a character who can ruin his plans, Nevil fires a Wave-Motion Gun into a crowd of civilians, killing quite a few of them. He publicly claims it was a bomb smuggled in by his enemies, but the reader knows the truth, and in confidence with someone who knows what he did, he has the gall to be upset about the deaths of his "brothers and sisters", playing it as if it were the target's fault for being in a crowd of civilians. To the reader (or, I suppose, to me), it's a massive Gut Punch, because up until this point, Nevil's antics have mostly just been dickish, politically unscrupulous, and complicit with violence, but not violent in and of themselves, and never the sort of thing that he would know could result in a massacre of civilians. This action definitively shows that he's not above mass murder to get at his enemies—especially since, in context, it's pretty clear that he could not have been sure that his target was even there when he fired; he fired on pretty shaky evidence.

...I guess that's the gist of it.

My question is, given all that context, would Nevil firing into a crowd of civilians count as a Gut Punch, for the book, if not the trilogy?

edited 22nd Jan '15 2:37:15 PM by SolipSchism

Unless I'm missing something, probably not. If it were the first book in the series, then it would definitely count, but it sounds like the tone of the series is pretty well established by this point. Almost certainly a Moral Event Horizon, though.

edited 23rd Jan '15 4:50:33 PM by KyleJacobs

Badass Transplant

For the Dresden files, could one consider the Mantles of the Fae for some people as this? Such as Fix, Lily, and Molly? Harry, I'm hesitant to include since he has so much badass already and I don't know if this is like Megaman getting the Z-saber. Though, he did gain new ice magic he really wasn't showing before becoming the Winter Knight.

Or would Soulfire count?

Also, does it have to be a willing transplant? Spoilers for season 4 Grimm, Juliette gains hexenbeast powers after the ritual to re-Grimm Nick. It is even said those who are made Hexenbeasts tend to be stronger than natural born ones.

Does Chaotic Evil cover Insane Lunatics Who Randomly Kill Every Kid They See For Fun (ILWRKEKTSFF), or can they be any evil alignment?

Chaotic Evil doesn't cover anything that is not explicitly given an alignment in canon. See The Great Character Alignment Debate.

^^ You might be looking for Axe-Crazy.

~Kyle Jacobs, I would agree, except that you can consider works within a series to be works in their own right as well. In the context of the series, it's actually quite a mild event by comparison, but looking at the book as a self-contained story (which most novels are, despite whether they take place in the context of a larger story), it's a very sudden, dark turn in the story; in fact, if I'm not mistaken, it's the first time in the book that a human dies "on-screen", as it were, instead of having the death related third-hand by other characters.

So to be clear, I'm not suggesting that it's a Gut Punch for the series. But could it be considered one for the novel?

That does change things a bit. I would say yes for the book as a standalone work, definitely not for the series.

Coolio. Now I need to rewrite that into a much more concise example. :p

EDIT: Done. If you're not on hiatus yet, feel free to vet the rewrite I put on Gut Punch. I also copied it to the work page for Zones of Thought, but it's partially spoilered over there. (Left it unspoilered on Gut Punch since it's a spoileriffic trope anyway.)

edited 27th Jan '15 1:55:21 PM by SolipSchism

I'm not sure if this is an example, or what form of Playing with a Trope it would be if it is.

From Webcomic.Doctor Cat, the trope is Frivolous Lawsuit.

Backstory... the REASON for the lawsuit was not frivolous: the patient thought his doctor (who is a cat) left a mousey toy inside his chest after surgery, and so was suing for malpractice. The RESULT of the lawsuit rendered it frivolous, though: because both the doctor and lawyer were cats, all the patient got for his lawsuit was a bag of catnip.

That doesn't seem like an example to me, if only because of the lack of context. I would not count the "result" as frivolous; that is not the trope and in a cat world that could count as something.

Well, the patient was human and has no need for catnip, but yeah.

The best I could think of myself is maybe it could count as an Inverted Trope - instead of a character suing for a frivolous reason and getting millions of dollars, they sue for a really good reason and get nothing of worth.

edited 2nd Feb '15 4:22:33 AM by wrm5

I'd say no on the Doctor Cat thing. In a world where cats can be doctors and lawyers (and presumably other professions as well), a bag of catnip as the settlement in a lawsuit isn't particularly out there. It's not an inversion, either. What makes a lawsuit frivolous isn't the value of the settlement.

• A pretty frustrating example happens with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Cho Chang. Late in the book, Cho's friend, Marietta Edgecomb, attempts to rat out Dumbledore's Army to Umbridge. This causes her to have almost permanent boils in a pattern to read SNEAK on her face. When Cho finds out about this, she defends Marietta by pointing out that she did it out of fear that her mother would lose her job, which is a very reasonable fear. Since Marietta had little characterization, we have no reason to think this isn't true. She then points out that Hermione should have warned them that the sign-up sheet was jinxed. Harry claims that it was brilliant, but Cho wasn't wrong. Warning the members of the DA that the sign-up sheet was jinxed would have given them incentive not to tattle, and considering that Marietta's attempt led to Dumbledore fleeing Hogwarts, it clearly did more damage than good. Despite that, Cho and Marietta are in the wrong because, in JK Rowling's words, she loathes a traitor.

This example in The Complainer Is Always Wrong is correct?

Aside from calling it a frustrating example, it seems like a solid example to me. I wish it weren't so very very wordy, though.

It would be good for Family-Unfriendly Aesop, but it never gets around to saying what Marietta Edgecomb did contrary to the group. Because being a traitor isn't the same as being a contrarian (Pettigrew and Snape became traitors without disagreement). Unless Cho is supposed to be the example, in which case, there's no kharmic punishment mentioned.

That's a good point. Cho sounds like the complainer here, and there aren't really any reprisals against her. Marietta wasn't really complaining, she was taking action. If you could take the two of them as a unit, maybe, but that's stretching it because, well, they aren't a unit.

I have been suspended over Zero Content Examples, and although I am trying to be careful, I have to admit there are occasions where I misunderstand. For example, when it comes to just using a song title without explanation, I avoid that now unless the trope is a One-Word Title or a One-Woman Song or something like that.

I have been informed that my work on Five Live Yardbirds was what led to the suspension. Just to be perfectly sure of where I went wrong, I'm just going to post the tropes I added, and hopefully I can get some advice on what I can do alternatively if there are indeed Zero Content Examples.

• Blues Rock: Undeniably one of the more notable early examples of it.
• Cover Album: Every song from the album and every bonus track bar one ("Honey In Your Hips", written by Keith Relf) are blues and R&B covers.
  • Covered Up: "Smokestack Lightning" became such a Signature Song for The Yardbirds that most people identify the song with them, rather than Howlin' Wolf. To a lesser extent "I'm A Man" as well.
• Cut And Paste Translation: This album wasn't originally released in the US. Instead, the band chose to include four songs off this album onto Having a Rave Up.
• Face on the Cover: The whole band posing for the front cover of the album.
• Live Album: A revolutionary album in the style.
• One-Woman Song: "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Louise".
• One-Word Title: "Respectable" and "Louise".
• Step Up to the Microphone: Eric Clapton and Paul Samwell-Smith sing co-lead vocals on "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl".

Well, asking for help seems like a good start. First, clarification on "what is an example". Tropes are recognized by their examples, and are sometimes seen before the trope name. Because of this, it is important to be clear what an example is, rather than when or why the example is. As long as the examples have clear context, we can read them and understand how they apply to the trope, instead of hoping the anonymous author is correct, not Shoehorning or outright wrong.

We have several policy pages, especially How to Write an Example, and it is important to remember that the rules used there also apply to any Pot Hole.

Secondly, the "cover" tropes violate Example Indentation in Trope Lists.

That said...

• Blues Rock: Because this is a music genre, it doesn't seem to be crosswicked as a trope at all. I'd say don't put it as a trope.
• Cover Album: Which songs are tributes to which bands? "Every song except one" sorta answers the first, but doesn't answer the second question at all. Pick one example to start with. "Smokestack Lightning" was a tribute to Howlin' Wolf. Also, which album is it; Tribute or Single-Artist?
• Covered Up: This is a YMMV trope, it does not belong on the work page. "Smokestack Lightning" was a tribute to Howlin' Wolf, but it became a Signature Song for The Yardbirds, overshadowing the orginal band. ((There was good context here, but I felt rewording would clarify it. It doesn't go under Music.Five Live Yardbirds, it goes under YMMV.Five Live Yardbirds))
• Cut And Paste Translation: ((Incorrect example; No translation))
• Face on the Cover: The album cover shows the band behind bars.
• Live Album: The "revolutionary" doesn't tell me what Live Album means. Where was it recorded, what concert was it at? Who was the audience?
• One-Woman Song: "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" doesn't seem like an example. No woman is named "Little Schoolgirl". Apparently "Louise" is sufficient context, although I would prefer seeing where the name came from; ex-girlfriend, magazine, mother, sister, etc.
• One-Word Title: "Respectable" and "Louise". ((This is perfectly fine))
• Step Up to the Microphone: What do Eric Clapton and Paul Samwell-Smith do when they're not lead vocals? The missing context is their typical band role.

Thanks for the advise, I can see where I went wrong now more clearly and will definitely remember this for now on. I'm also going to fix it up as soon as my ban is lifted. There's really nothing I can say in my defence other than the Step Up to the Microphone section. Above the trope section, there's a list of band members with the instrument they play next to each member. Eric Clapton has guitar, backing and co-lead vocals in his entry, while Paul Samwell-Smith has bass, backing and co-lead vocals.

edited 6th Feb '15 7:15:39 PM by bluesno1fann

Hmmm. Does any member have "lead vocals" listed? if not, it may not be an example of Step Up to the Microphone at all, if those two handled the lead vocals most of the time between them.