Is this an example?

That's a fair point. Though I have my doubts that it was the author's intent, but that'd be a whole other argument.

They're both wrong for completely different reasons. Someone started and escalated a fight for no good reason (which is wrong), that's entirely unrelated from transphobia (which is also wrong).

Should we conflate the two?

edited 27th Feb '16 6:48:03 PM by hellomoto

This has been disputed as an entry for Neo on her character page of the show, RWBY.

• Shapeshifting: Neo uses some power of hers to alter her physical appearance, which can range from costume only to her actual physical body. She was shown in disguise three times over the course of Volume 3, and she is finally shown using this ability in Heroes and Monsters, changing into her preferred outfit through an unknown, but certainly supernatural, means.

The points of contention are as follows:

• The show is telling us she is using the Shapeshifting trope to change her appearance.
• The show has made very clear she's changing appearance, but we don't know what trope is being used to change her appearance (Shapeshifting, Master of Illusion, or something else), so we shouldn't be troping what we don't yet know.

Can this trope be applied to her? Note, the Master of Illusion trope is already listed on her page, as follows:

• Master of Illusion: Seems to be one. Unlike Emerald who creates hallucinations (as in, the illusions are only visible to the target), Neo seems to create something akin to mirages/holograms (it is physically visible, but isn't actually real). She creates a mirror image of herself and Roman as a decoy for their escape in Volume 2, which disappears when Yang tries to shatter it. She repeats this tactic again during her battle with Ruby atop the airship, but where the real Neo is (if that wasn't the real Neo) or where she went while doing so is not clear.

There seems to be confusion in the fandom over how she's actually changing her appearance.

edited 28th Feb '16 9:11:14 AM by Wyldchyld

Based on the argument I read in the Discussion topic, it would appear that the question of how she's changing form is ambiguous enough to deny the use of the Shapeshifting trope for now.

edited 28th Feb '16 9:08:56 AM by Fighteer

The show never says Neo is a shapeshifter. Really, it doesn't talk about her much at all. We know she has the power to create external illusions and change the color of her eyes, but anything beyond that is up in the air. Hell, her disguise was simple enough that it could have just been a mundane clothes and hair color change (helped by that fact that she can change the color of her eyes to hide her heterochromia).

Maybe toss it under Master of Disguise and mention that exactly how she's disguising herself is ambiguous?

Yeah, it's definitely too ambiguous to say it's Shapeshifting. Master of Disguise is probably the best fit.

Don't forget to link this thread in your edit reason.

Gonna put my vote in there and say she's not shown to be a shapeshifter. It's just too ambiguous at this point.

edited 28th Feb '16 3:13:48 PM by AnotherDuck

Thanks for the feedback. Master of Disguise seems like a good approach to take. I've put this example onto her character page, which is just a slightly tweaked version of the original Shapeshifting write-up.

• Master of Disguise: Neo possesses the ability to alter her physical appearance, which can range from costume only to her actual physical body. Volume 3 shows her in disguise on three occasions and the process of her lifting the disguise is shown in Heroes and Monsters. The means by which she alters her appearance is clearly supernatural, but the exact nature of it is ambiguous.

edited 28th Feb '16 12:59:15 PM by Wyldchyld

A character has a weapon that fires blasts of compressed air, he does not have any innate elemental affinity at all. Does that still qualify for Blow You Away?

The Laconic for Blow You Away is explicitly "Wind-based Elemental Powers", so it doesn't count.

From The Mortal Instruments:

• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Clave. About partway into City of Ashes, we can already sympathize with Big Bad Valentine Morgenstern for wanting to overthrow them since they seem to be more focused on hindering the good guys (which, in theory, includes themselves) than they are in stopping bad guys. Actual Lawful Good Shadowhunters frequently find themselves in To Be Lawful or Good situations simply because the Clave is hopelessly bogged down trying to figure out the most lawful Lawful Stupid way of dealing with just about anything.

Sounds like an example, but it could be written in a less YMMV way, and I believe Lawful Good shouldn't be linked outside of cases that actually canonically use the D&D alignment system. It could also stand to go into some specifics over what exactly they do.

edited 29th Feb '16 12:11:25 PM by nrjxll

Never mind, I resolved this inquiry myself.

edited 1st Mar '16 8:51:09 AM by dsneybuf

Edit- Reading the trope page seems like the example I thought of definitely counts

edited 3rd Mar '16 1:39:27 PM by Hodor2

For a Student–Master Team, does it count if the student and master are a part of a team of about five people, but there is still a student/master relationship?

edited 3rd Mar '16 9:08:20 PM by Kingofsouls

The trope is about a student and master team, not about a student and master who happen to be in a team. I think it's important that the student and master make up a team of their own. They could be part of a larger team, but within it they act together, much like a squad is part of a platoon. The squad is a unit of its own even without the platoon, but still forms a larger group with other members of the platoon.

Would it be fair to say that in Zootopia that Bellwether is an example of The Dog Was the Mastermind? After all, at first it did look like Lionheart was the Big Bad, but Judy and Nick learn that Bellwether was the true mastermind and they didn't suspect her until she revealed her true colors. I'm only asking here because I want to make sure it fits the trope and I don't want to get in trouble for adding bad information.

I was playing Rune Factory Tides Of Destiny recently, and I ran into something that I think is a case of Even the Subtitler Is Stumped even though I suspect it was unintentional because they literally wrote that they didn't know and just mistakenly forgot to take it out. Here's my description. Does it count?

• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: A presumably unintentional one. At one point, if you talk to Odette, it'll show her singing beginning with "Tra la la," and then a line or two after in brackets, it says something to the effect of "[don't know without context]".

Seems like a fit to me. I don't know if you need to include the "unintentional" part. Though I suppose that or noting it was the actual translator not something in-game should be noted, given he context.

I have an example, but I'm unsure if it follows Foreshadowing or Tempting Fate, given that it takes a long time for the payoff to kick in.

• When describing his ability to change his appearance in the fourth Safehold book, A Mighty Fortress, Merlin Athrawes states that while this ability has its limits, anyone who meets the identity that would later be named Ahbraim Zhevons would never connect him with Merlin, even if they later meet Merlin. Like a Mighty Army, the seventh book, ends with the Wham Line of Aivah Parshahn, who has met both, referring to Merlin as "Ahbraim."

Also, while I'm here, I'm in a PM discussion with a troper about an entry on Characters.One Piece The Four Emperors Crews for Stupid Evil. I added it a while back, the other troper pulled it stating "Insane doesn't equal stupid, and Jack is clearly batshit insane." Though my understanding of the trope is that Stupid Evil doesn't actually refer to intellect, so that shouldn't disqualify it. My understanding of Stupid Evil is when a character performs heinous acts despite ample evidence that their actions are more liable to work against their interests than for them. If anything, insanity makes it more likely to apply, not less.

The entry refers to a character named Jack and his assault on a people called the Minks, who refused to turn over a man he was looking for despite their repeated claims he was not there. To head off an obvious objection: Later chapters actually reveal that the Minks were, in fact, lying to Jack, but there's no indication Jack knew or even suspected that.

Stupid Evil: The Minks are perfectly willing to cooperate with Jack in locating Raizo at first, if for no other reason than to avoid unwanted trouble. Rather than hear them out, Jack's response is to attack them and raze their city until they bring him something they don't have to give him.

Given the above recent reveals, there may be some tweaking necessary, like "until they bring him something they've repeatedly told him they do not have to give", but that's the entry as it was when it was removed.

edited 6th Mar '16 5:57:31 PM by sgamer82

I just saw a news segment and am looking for the right trope to call it. http://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/how-tootsie-rolls-saved-the-troops

During the Korean War in 1950, US troops were stuck at the Chosin Reservoir. The fuel lines of their tanks were cracked from the harsh winter cold. They were running low on ammo and called in for an ammo drop using the code name "Tootsie rolls". Because of some error, they were dropped boxes of real tootsie rolls. While confused, they quickly realized if they chew one enough to thaw it, the roll could be made into a putty and they used them to cover the cracked fuel lines. When they refroze, they could safely drive the tanks out of there and were saved.

Besides an awesome moment, I am grasping for the right tropes to describe this.

My immediate thought is MacGyvering

edited 7th Mar '16 6:23:30 AM by sgamer82

@2042: I saw the movie today, and no: she's too important prior to The Reveal. The Dog Is The Mastermind is supposed to be about the villain turning out to be what had seemed like a very minor character, such as a Recurring Extra.

edited 7th Mar '16 7:21:04 PM by nrjxll

Into the Woods:

• Irony as She Is Cast: Meryl Streep being in a Disney film not long after the made an infamous screed against the company's founder.
• True Companions: By the end of the film, the Baker, Little Red, Cinderella, and Jack have become this, having bonded over their tragedies and their killing of the Giantess.

The Mortal Instruments:

• Nay-Theist: Jace in particular, but the Clave as a whole is extremely agnostic considering that they are a group of enhanced humans whose gifts were very explicitly granted to them by an archangel. While they show a notable interest in angelology, and can name more angels than most people who are not professional theologians, they tend to steer clear of discussions about God. The Nephilim have no churches, synagogues, mosques, etc in Idris, and when seeking consecrated ground for their Institutes they are prone to using sites that were formerly mundane locations of worship. They also rely heavily on holy water, but do not produce it themselves, instead getting it from various mundane religions.

In Chapter 8 of Tiberian Eclipse, an exchange between humans and Equestrian ponies reveals very uncanny similarities between the humans' English language (the standardized language for the ISDI) and Equestrian language (that is, what is rendered as common English in the TV show, but is rendered as a completely alien language in-story). Below is the dialogue highlighting the similarities.

So... Same size of alphabet, implied to have same grammar, even the way spelling works is the same (that is, each word has the same number of letters in Equestrian as in English, if the example of "word" is anything to go by), and some Equestrian letters coincidentally resemble some English letters and somehow match up with those letters in certain words, although the phonetics are generally very different. Does this make the in-story version of Equestrian an example of Indo-European Alien Language? Note that we never get to know what Equestrian actually sounds like, so it's not a Conlang (Indo-European Alien Language is written as if it only ever applies to Conlang examples, which seems overly limiting).

edited 8th Mar '16 9:59:09 AM by MarqFJA

I found some non-romantic examples of Always Save the Girl- in one, one character uses a doomsday machine to save his brother. In other, a character decides to sacrifice the universe to save his grandchildren.

Are the examples in question misuse?

edited 8th Mar '16 6:23:41 PM by MagBas