Checking the meanings of these tropes

I'm going to be wick-checking soon to ensure tropes are being used properly, but before I do so, I want to ensure the meanings of these tropes are correct.

Villainy Tropes:

• Harmless Villain: They're a villain, but don't pose any real threat to the heroes.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: They want to be villainous, but keep on failing, and you feel sorry for them.

• Redshirt: Someone who gets killed off and is a nameless extra.
• Mooks: Evil soldiers, often Flat Character, who exist solely to be killed by the hero.

Geography Tropes

• The Mountains of Illinois: Mountains in settings where they shouldn't be
• Artistic License – Geography: The geography is either wrong due to not doing the research, or done for Rule of Cool or Rule of Funny

Morality Tropes

• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Neither side is good or evil.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The characters have a morality that's not readily understood. Common to Eldritch Abomination and Human Aliens (??)
• Black-and-White Morality: One side is good, the other is absolute evil and Complete Monster.

Alien Tropes

• Starfish Aliens: The alien does not look like a regular alien, has strange morality and is a form we cannot comprehend.
• Eldritch Abomination: A monster who has a form that no-one can readily see or understand (is Pennywise the Clown one of these as It?)

Continuity Tropes

• Alternate Continuity: The work is mutually-exclusive to the main one and still canon (but cannot be reconciled with the original). Sometimes "same characters, different setting" (e.g. with Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure). It doesn't interact with the main continuity except for the occasional crossover. The DC Cinematic Universe and the ArrowVerse are alternate continuities, as neither interacts with the other, but Geoff Johns said they could do in the future. Basically - alternate continuity is mutually exclusive.
• Alternate Universe: A world similar to ours but with key differences. Examples include The Flash (2014).
• Continuity Reboot: All old continuity is null and void, the work starts from scratch.
• Alternate Timeline: The backstory is the same, but the continuity is different (Does this overlap with Alternate History?)
• Alternate History: As above, but with real-world events.

How much can these overlap? A work can simultaneously be a Continuity Reboot, Alternate Continuity and Alternate Timeline all at once? (Why don't we have an FAQ on this sort of trope?)

Episode Tropes

• Innocuously Important Episode: The episode is important to the Story Arc in a subtle way
• Standalone Episode: No connection to the Story Arc; often a Breather Episode
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Subplot runs alongside main one but has nothing to do with the main plot.

Characterization Tropes

• Demoted to Extra: They're there, but insignificant to the story.
• Out of Focus: The characters are there, but in the background.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: A character gets all the attention.

I would appreciate it if anyone can help me with this before I go wick-checking.

OMG, I was just posting a reply and I wiped it out by accident. You're mostly right with a few clarifications.

• A Harmless Villain is one that, due to the medium and/or rating, can't do things that are actually dangerous or violent. They are at most inconveniencing or embarrassing.
• An Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain is often a failure because they are outclassed by other threats, not just because they themselves are incompetent, although the two can go together. Compare Minion with an F in Evil, who's a henchman instead.
• A Redshirt is often killed off to establish the severity of the threat the heroes face.

On those geography tropes, The Mountains of Illinois is kind of redundant with Artistic License – Geography and Television Geography. Not sure why we need three tropes for the same concept.

On morality, grey-and-grey is when there's no clearly good or evil side; everyone has a point and everyone does questionable things. Blue and orange is when a morality is so alien that it's difficult to communicate meaningfully with or about. Black and white is when good and evil are clearly defined. Complete Monster is by no means necessary or unique to black and white morality; it can be found in all works.

Starfish Aliens can be bizarre in appearance, senses, thoughts, reproduction, and/or language. An Eldritch Abomination is something so alien and incomprehensible that merely looking at it or communicating with it can drive a person insane.

For continuity tropes, it's worth noting that Alternate Timeline is a subtrope of Alternate Continuity in which there's a clear point of divergence in the canon's history between the two continuities. One continuity -> splitting event -> multiple continuities. Alternate History is unrelated to continuity tropes; it's when there's a clear point of divergence between a story's history and real history (example: Hitler didn't become Fuhrer).

Given that the various continuity tropes tend to enjoy supertrope-subtrope relationships, it's entirely reasonable for more than one to apply. An Alternate Timeline is by definition also an Alternate Continuity. A reboot is also an alternate continuity. An Alternate Universe can exist within one continuity (as in Mirror Universe episodes) or it can be created when two continuities are given a crossover — they then become explicitly part of the same multiverse.

edited 26th Feb '17 1:52:37 PM by Fighteer

For the episode tropes, you're basically correct. It's worth noting that Trapped by Mountain Lions plots are not only unrelated to the main plot, but are largely irrelevant and seem to be included mainly so the audience knows that those other characters haven't simply dropped out of existence.

Finally...

• Demoted to Extra: They were a part of the main cast, but get shoved off into the background until they might as well not be there. Note that this mainly applies to sequels and adaptations, whereas...
• Out of Focus: They lose focus during a season/story arc so that other characters can get spotlight episodes.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: A set of characters comes to dominate the focus when they weren't originally intended to — this can happen when an ensemble cast has a subgroup that becomes particularly popular, or when the creator(s) develop favoritism for particular characters.

edited 26th Feb '17 1:59:05 PM by Fighteer

Back when we were actively trying to fix the You Fail/Is Crying and Artistic License tropes, we decided that Artistic license tropes could have subtropes for recurring, specific patterns of license being taken. Mountains Of Illinois is one of those.

Thank you, Fighteer for your explanations. I really appreciate that.

Now I need to start wick-checking, before deciding what articles qualify for which tropes (and avoiding edit-wars).

How would Spotlight-Stealing Squad relate to Breakout Character?

Breakout Character is a single minor character who becomes unexpectedly popular and is promoted to the main cast.

Spotlight-Stealing Squad is when an ensemble cast develops a sub-group that is particularly popular or that the writers particularly like. You could think of it as the multiplayer version of Breakout Character.