I mean, when they spray the stinky stuff, is there never splashback?
I assume this has to do with the Smelly Skunk discussion related to your TLP draft
. From the trope description of Smelly Skunk:
Answer: because for the most part it's true.
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Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
And it's also just what people associate skunks with.
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Maybe Smelly Skunk should just be changed to "perpetually smelly skunk" and only refer to when a skunk smells without spraying? "A skunk smells at some point" just seems like chairs.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
How is it chairs-y? Just on the Smelly Skunk page alone, it's clear that there are narrative reasons and consequences of skunks spraying their stench.
I mean if it's a trope that "skunk uses it's smell", then shouldn't "venomous snake bites person" or "shark bites person" or "bee stings someone" also be a trope? You can't just make every natural weapon an animal has into a trope.
Can shapeshift (probably)
I think the idea behind this trope in particular is that skunks are usually guaranteed to smell bad and spray an unlucky character, even if in real life it's not like it's using its spray 24/7. The old name Everythings Smellier With Skunks did actually have the issue of just being a list of skunks.
With snake bites and other animal defenses, we already have tropes that make the danger of them, well, tropes (Snakes Are Sinister, Wicked Wasps, etc).
Silver and gold, silver and gold
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And Scary Stinging Swarm and Threatening Shark. So yeah these stereotypes do in fact result in tropes.
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Angry babby
The tropeworthiness comes from telegraphing a la Chekhov's Gun. If a skunk appears in a work, it's universally expected to use its spray ability, or at least have such an ability acknowledged. It thus represents the danger of being sprayed.
Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 1st 2024 at 1:53:38 PM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Exactly What it Says on the Tin. Why, oh why, are skunks near-consistently portrayed as just being constantly smelly? It’s pretty obvious that they spray something, and obviously people who know they smell have actually seen one in order to identify where it was coming from, so they’ve seen that it was spraying something.