Is this an example?

No, Keith Relf is the main lead vocalist of The Yardbirds. In fact, Eric Clapton and Paul Samwell-Smith only sang co-lead vocals (I'm saying co-lead because they literally shared the lead) on "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", and no other song in The Yardbirds discography. Otherwise, they just sing backing vocals.

That's what you put then. That explanation is very good. It gives the context and background necessary for someone who isn't well up on the Yardbirds (like me) the information they need to know why and how it's an example. Just cut the "No," from the beginning of the first sentence and the "In fact," from the beginning of the second one and use that as your example entry.

In fact that's a good way to figure out what to put in an example to make sure it's not a ZCE: write it as though you were answering to the question "How is this an example?"

edited 6th Feb '15 8:48:47 PM by Madrugada

Is Lingerie Scene just a scene of character in her lingerie or a scene with a character undressing to her lingerie?

The description seems to imply that it's specifically for undressing scenes (which I feel would be a particular trope in itself), but the fourth paragraph suggests that it covers "lingerie as substitute for nudity" is also an example. So wearing lingerie during a sex scene or an intimate/private scene seems like it would also fit. However, bear in mind that by itself, lingerie is not a trope.

Meanwhile, I have another question. Subverted Big Damn Heroes and/or The Cavalry is a pretty good fit but I wonder if there is a more specific trope (and if not, I'm wondering specifically whether it's BDH or TC). (Linking to the Sandbox page I'm working on, even though it's a useless stub, because there is no Literature page for this work yet.)

I feel that certain aspects of this situation might also approach "Shaggy Dog" Story/Shoot the Shaggy Dog/Kick the Dog or something related, but bear in mind that this whole situation happens within the first 18 pages (and the story starts on page 5), so SDS/STSD might be a stretch.

Vernor Vinge's The Witling:

• Yoninne Leg-Wot and Ajão Bjault are hiding in the wilderness of an unfamiliar planet, and the natives are closing in. They've called for backup, and they're pretty confident that the ferry's landing jets will scare off the natives—but then the ferry crashes. And the natives aren't the least bit fazed by the explosion. And they almost definitely made the ship crash using their psychic powers.

edited 9th Feb '15 11:17:05 AM by SolipSchism

I'd say that's a subversion of The Cavalry rather than one of Big Damn Heroes, unless the ferry is crewed by main characters. In The Cavalry, the people being rescued are the main characters/heroes, in Big Damn Heroes, the rescuers are the main characters/heroes.

The Cavalry: "Things look bleak for our heroes...

...Wait, what's that? Did I hear a bugle?

It's The Cavalry, riding in to save the day! Maybe they're some minor characters who've banded together to mount a rescue, or maybe they're the local Men of Sherwood, or maybe they are characters Not Quite Dead after all, but ultimately [the Cavalry] exist[s] to storm in at the last minute, save the heroes and convert a Downer Ending into an out-and-out win for the good guys. "

compared to

Big Damn Heroes: "Any time the heroes/antiheroes get to save the day in a big, awesome manner. "

edited 9th Feb '15 11:15:41 AM by Madrugada

That's where I was leaning too.

Ah, that makes the distinction clearer. Yes, given that exactly one of the would-be rescuers has a couple of lines over a sketchy comm link before they all crash and explode and die, they're definitely not Big Damn Heroes, subverted or otherwise. A clear-cut case of The Cavalry, subverted.

edited 9th Feb '15 11:18:32 AM by SolipSchism

In Las Vegas, Monica Mancuso is a loathed and hated owner of the casino the characters work at. She is considered a Caligula. Her death involves her standing atop her casino in a dress with wing-flaps and is taken off the top by a powerful gust of wind. She flies down the Las Vegas strip and crashes into a shoe store, dying likely from the impact. And one of her workers, who was at the store, is more interested in the shoes Monica lands nearby and wonders if they have them in her size.

Would this be both Cruel And Un Usual Death and Undignified Death?

I'm not sure it's either. The core part of Cruel and Unusual Death is less about the unusual, I think, and more about the cruel, and generally that really means cruel on the part of the author, as well as (if applicable) whoever's doing the killing In-Universe. I'm not sure falling off a building is really horrible enough to be a CAUD.

It could be an Undignified Death, but I think the name of that trope is a little nonindicative. If we were actually using "undignified" by its real-world definition, then sure, especially considering that someone who knew her was more interested in shoes than in her boss's death, but the Laconic of UD says the death is "hilariously embarassing", and in this case it's kind of the circumstances after her death that are funny, notsomuch the death itself. Falling off a building and landing on/in another building doesn't strike me as being inherently funny. (Although if I read you right, you said she flew down the street with her dress's wing flaps? That might be... something else entirely, but I'm not sure what. If the entire sequence is treated as a comedy, from the falling to the flying to the crashing to the employee wondering about the shoes, then it probably counts as a UD.)

Seems related to Disney Villain Death, but that relies on a few other details that I'll let you decide on since you're familiar with the work—I suggest taking a look at that page. It might not fit, though, since I think a Disney Villain Death requires that the characer fall offscreen and not be seen landing, though their body may be seen afterward.

edited 11th Feb '15 8:09:33 AM by SolipSchism

Would it change things if I added when she flew, the soundtrack included part of the Wicked Witch's theme from The Wizard of Oz?

Now I'm starting to think it might just be Black Comedy (or, if the show is usually less glib about dark subjects, a Black Comedy Burst).

I have another one-or-the-other question. This is either Evil Matriarch or Obnoxious In-Laws (or maybe both). As with my last one, I'm providing a lot more context here than I actually would in a write-up, just to make sure the situation is crystal-clear. It's a little convoluted with pronouns because I couldn't remember all the characters' names, but it should be clear enough. Feel free to ask for clarification. Huge spoilers for Marchlands, if anyone was planning on watching that show:

When Marchlands begins, Ruth's daughter, Alice, has been dead for six months. The story begins in 1968. Almost everyone believes Alice wandered off, fell into a creek, and drowned, but certain details do not add up for Ruth, and she is not convinced. As such, she's deeply troubled and has not been able to accept her daughter's death. Most of her family is frustrated with her ongoing depression but sympathetic; her mother-in-law, on the other hand, shows virtually no sympathy and constantly harangues Ruth. When the woman finds out that, in a moment of desperation, Ruth spent a completely sexless night with another man, her own husband urges her to keep the knowledge to herself. Instead, she immediately tells her son—Ruth's husband—that Ruth slept with another man (claiming that, even though Ruth says they didn't have sex, she knows because "I can always tell"^note On a tangentially related note, this foreshadows the fact that she knows her own husband is having an affair). The revelation nearly causes Ruth's husband to leave—just get on a train going anywhere and never come back, but Ruth is able to catch him and stop him from leaving.

The "evil mother-in-law" characterization gets even more explicit when she finds out the true circumstances behind Alice's death: Her husband was watching Alice, and brought her to his mistress's house while they dallied. Alice walked in on them having sex, and the mistress screamed at Alice to get out; frightened, Alice ran out of the house and into the woods, where she fell into the water. By the time the father-in-law found her, she was already dead. When the mother-in-law finds out (her husband confesses to her), she bullies him into keeping it a secret in order to keep him from ruining her life with gossip and scandal, which he does until his death. As a result, it isn't until 2010, 42 years later, when Alice's ghost leads Ruth to Olive Runcie, a childhood friend of Alice's, that Ruth learns the truth about everything, and is finally able to let her little girl go.

edited 11th Feb '15 3:38:47 PM by SolipSchism

"What Now?" Ending has an entry about The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but it refers to the end of a Half-Arc Season, instead of a season finale. Does it still count?

In the Green Lantern film, after Hector Hammond is infected by Parralax's energy, he telekinetically attacks a student while having an emotional breakdown as he starts to gain superhuman abilities.

The students all panic, there's a beat, and then he deadpans "Class dismissed."

This sounds like it's in the same vein as "Check, please" after a calamity in a restaurant. Would that fit under the Check, Please! trope? Possibly playing with?

The Hecate Sisters

• Lyta herself embodies all three — as she married and conceived in the Dreaming, a world of fictions, she remains a maiden in technicality. After she gives birth to Daniel, she's clearly a mother. Once Dream takes her husband and child from her, she is prematurely a crone. She invokes the Furies by her very being, as well as by choice.

The description of that trope is hard to parse and the Laconic is supremely unhelpful, but from what I gather, that's a fair interpretation. The Justifying Edit at the beginning needs to go, though. And that Real Life example below it, which violates "Keep It An Example" and directly addresses the reader, which is bad writing.

There are a number of examples on that page that aren't actually the Stock Phrase "Check, please", and a number of those don't even directly reference a check or a restaurant. That aside, I do think it's in the spirit of the trope: You have weirdness at a place of business or public interaction, and afterward, character casually or ironically drops a line implying that there is no weirdness.

There are several other examples on that trope's page of one character fitting all three roles, although one of them was Word of God and thus would fit even if it wasn't legit, but I think it's a fair interpretation. The one you've cited... Well, I'm going to ask for more context, because none of the stages are actually described. It says she's a maiden because she didn't actually technically have a baby, she's a mother because she had a baby (which, while true, does not describe how she fits the actual character archetype, which is about more than just popping out a kid), and she's a crone because her child and husband were taken. I don't really get what the last sentence is meant to convey, either. So basically, every single stage is described, by extension, via whether or not she has a kid, which is severely oversimplifying the trope.

Still waiting on input for my question.

edited 17th Feb '15 10:29:30 AM by SolipSchism

I'd say no on the The Hecate Sisters one. They're character archetypes, not based simply on marital status. It's also an ensemble dynamic— one person is going to have a hard time interacting with herself to be an ensemble.

Solip, your question is giving me problems. While it seems like the Obnoxious In-Laws might fit, my reading of that is that the in-law status has to be integral to the obnoxiousness. Evil Matriarch is kind of a clumsy fit as well, because the mother-in-law doesn't sound like she runs the family, and that's implied by "matriarch". I'm not sure that either one is a clean fit, but I can't find one that's better.

Potentially helpful clarification:

Re: In-laws—they are both the husband's parents.

The father-in-law could definitely stand to be more sympathetic to Ruth in the beginning, but he becomes more sympathetic as the show goes on, presumably because of his mounting guilt; he's a basically decent man who made a terrible mistake and it's tearing him up inside. It's not exactly clear when, chronologically, he had his conversation with his wife where she bullied him into keeping the secret, but I think it's late in the events of the show.

The mother-in-law definitely tries to prioritize her son's well-being over Ruth's, she's just such an insufferable woman that it doesn't make much difference and no one really enjoys being around her.

Re: Evil Matriarch, she isn't ostensibly in charge, but she is certainly overbearing, and effectively rules the family by manipulation and guilt. She bullies her husband into keeping Alice's death a secret, she is generally horrible to Ruth in too many ways to count, to the point where Ruth avoids confrontation with her out of fear, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that most of her son's dickishness—while ultimately his responsibility—is attributable to her influence, until he eventually realizes that his mother is toxic and that he has more responsibility to take care of his wife than to obey his mother.

So she's hardly a literal matriarch, but she has more power in the household than anyone else, until her son reevaluates his priorities and decides to try to help Ruth overcome the tragedy instead of just waiting for her to get over it.

That sounds like she's an Evil Matriarch — she does effectively run the family. But not Obnoxious In-Laws: she's an obnoxious person who also happens to an in-law; she'd be just as obnoxious if she weren't.

Fair cop. I'll write up a proper example context as soon as I can streamline those Walls down to something manageable. Thanks!

Edit: Although. It occurs to me that, from the perspective of Ruth (since they are her in-laws), they could be an Exaggerated case of Obnoxious In-Laws—Her father-in-law caused her daughter's death, and her mother-in-law covered it up, leading to over forty years of mourning before she finally uncovered the truth. But that's just an observation, not saying I'm actually going to shoehorn that in.

edited 17th Feb '15 1:55:48 PM by SolipSchism

Here's the part of Obnoxious Inlaws that makes me tend toward "no" on it:

edited 17th Feb '15 2:19:59 PM by Madrugada

Ah—Well, with the exception of the "tries to set their child up with someone else", she does fit quite well, but her husband doesn't fit at all.

Then she is and he's not. Both in-laws don't have to qualify; many of the examples are of one or the other.

I'd agree on The Hecate Sisters being character archetypes, not based simply on marital status. I'd also like to agree that it's an ensemble dynamic and one person is going to have a hard time interacting with herself to be an ensemble but the page says, "Even though they are the same being, they seem to know and think different things, so they bicker." There is even one example where one person is all three that has personality to it.

• Also, in A Spell For Chameleon, the first book in the Xanth series, he manages to put all three into one woman—the titular Chameleon changes from Wynne [Very pretty, but dumb, either child or whore of the trio] to Dee [average looks and intelligence, mostly fitting the mother category] to Fanchon [ugly and intelligent, highly crone-ish] with the lunar cycle.

That line doesn't make amy sense, and the example is poor as well. I've read the book and she's not The Hecate Sisters. She's "extremely beautiful and very dumb in every way ( not just sexually naive)", "plain verging on ugly and extremely smart", and "in the middle on both scales." And again, it's not an interaction dynamic.

I think that line i n the definition was probably added by someone who wanted to shoehorn in a one person/three personalities example.

edited 17th Feb '15 11:45:03 PM by Madrugada

Yeah, having also read the book, Chameleon's transformation is explicitly stated to be a kind of see-saw relationship between intelligence/age (taken as a unit) and attractiveness—the two fluctuate with the phases of the moon. As one increases, the other decreases. Maturity, sexual or otherwise, does not factor into it except tangentially.

edited 18th Feb '15 9:27:26 AM by SolipSchism