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Ask the Tropers:
openAre duplicate images on character pages allowed if the duplicate is another characters page?
For example, the character pages for Alice and Bob and Alice and Bob 2 use the same image for Alice. Would that be an ok instance of duplicates or would it be in the "should be replaced" category?
openCompression artefacts on PNG images (and possibly other formats)
I don't know if someone's asked about this before but I've noticed PNG images on here now have compression artefacts when they didn't before, making them look very ugly as a result.
openSingle Entry ReferencedBy subpages
Single Entry Referenced by... subpages... Should they be folded into their Trivias?
I've found at least these two:
- ReferencedBy.A Hero Of Our Time
- ReferencedBy.Mother Of Learning (Also unindexed)
openQuick apology about a dumb edit Literature
Hello! Apologies if this isn't the correct place to put this.
I just wanted to apologize real quick about a dumb series of edits I made on the new trope Tourist Bump. I had changed the Twilight example based on a previous wording, only to see too late that it already got reworded by someone else. It wasn't my intention to screw it up like this; I tried changing it back but I screwed it up even more. I'm sorry about this mess; please feel free to change it back. I could even try doing it myself if necessary.
openHindsight edit war
On YMMV.DoctorWhoS5E4TheEnemyOfTheWorld, justme13 previously added a Harsher in Hindsight entry that was deemed as misuse and complaining by the relevant cleanup thread and subsequently removed. Last week, justme13 re-added it with a rather defensive (and somewhat rude) edit reason.
openDifference between Recycled Script, Recycled In Space, and Whole Plot Reference
Specifically, I was thinking of how Shanghai Noon has a very similar plot to Rush Hour, but set in the wild west. Which if any of these would that count as?
openUser adding multiple folders without any information Videogame
About a week or two ago the user Ducksrulesoon 44 decided to split the character pages for Hitman (2016), Hitman 2 and Hitman 3 into three side character pages (in order, here, here, and here). However, while doing so they made several blank folders for NPCs without any special dialogue or characterization. They also forgot to link these pages back to the header of each character page (which I am in the process of doing), alongside on the side character pages themselves.
On November 23 the empty folders folders were removed by Dribbleondo, who added a commented-out not explaining not to add empty folders because it makes the page messy and incomplete. Earlier today Ducksrule readded the folders, replacing the notes by accusing anyone removing them of "vandalising the page" and that they're there because "this page is under construction". I have only linked the pages relating to 2016, but these apply to 2 and 3 as well.
openWhat should I do if I want to request an IP check?
There is a certain troper that I am concerned may be a sock puppet, and I was informed to ask for an IP check. Do I do so by hollering one of their posts or ask here?
openUnhiding zero context examples without adding more context.
On YMMV.Sam And Cat, Gammaween10 hid this Base-Breaking Character entry here:
- Goomer is this — some think he's cute and also pretty badass, but he also has an entry under The Scrappy below.
However, JumboJ99 unhid without adding anything or giving an edit reason here. Can I hide this again as this is still zero context?
Edited by Bullmanopen LawfulStupid vanished!
I edited a single entry on Lawful Stupid to remove natter and add a couple of examples, and the text of the entire page vanished! It's still THERE; Edit Page shows that nothing is gone. It's just that nothing is displaying. I've tried everything I can think of and nothing will get the page to display.
openEdit War on the YMMV page for Inside Job
So troper Johnny Be Bad deleted this example from the YMMV page for Inside Job:
Trans Audience Interpretation: Reagan is occasionally read as a transwoman for a couple reasons. The first episode establishes that she has a habit of saying "suck my dick" a lot for a woman, the fourth episode includes a robotic replica of herself that is notably more feminine, her diploma uses male pronouns and has her name written by hand, and, perhaps most notably, the 8th episode has Rand offhandedly mention that he tampered with her genetics when she was in the womb to make sure his genetics were dominant. That said flashbacks to Reagan's childhood in the finale seem to contradict this, unless Reagan transitioned extremely early or her memories have been further tampered with.
This was their justification:
- Don't strain your back reaching like that.
They then started this thread to discuss Trans Audience Interpretation. The general consensus of the thread was that Johnny Be Bad's edit reason was unnecessarily mean, but that the example wasn't valid to begin with.
Troper Sana Naryon then re-added the example with this justification:
- Trans Audience Interpretation is not a theory, it's an interpretation. I'll reach however long I damn well please, and I know for a fact a lot of people agree with me. Also, those What An Idiot examples are more about Rand being an idiot In-Universe, which is perfectly in character for him, instead of him acting stupid for no reason.
To me this seems like someone using the YMMV page to push their own personal headcanon. During the thread discussing this example, someone did a google search and found no proof of fans thinking Reagan was trans.
open Please help me find this show/episode Western Animation
I remember this older cartoon (maybe 70s-90s) it was this single episode I remember, but I cannot remember the name, I just know what happens. It was a character that got a brand new tv, and it was pretty big, I remember they took it out and it had all these packing peanuts. The entire episode was like a TV guide video like how to set it up, and eventually they set it up and they turn it on to football and all the players come running out and trample the character. If anyone can name it, that would be awesome, as I have a lot of nostalgia to this one episode that I cannot find.
openComplainy edits about the Pokemon DP anime
Tavernier has recently been making a lot of edits to Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl — Cast, specifically about the character Paul, many of which I feel are either highly nitpicky or demonstrate heavy negative bias against the character. I deleted several of them the other day for reasons listed here, but Tavernier quickly added multiple of them back with new reasoning and then some. So to avoid an Edit War, I'm bringing them up here. To expand on a few:
- Depending on the Writer: Paul spends his anime tenure Diamond and Pearl being all over the place. How much of a jerk he is, how much he respects others, how much he respects his pokémon, how much he respects his brother, his analysis of what actually happens in battle and what causes it—these all change from episode to episode without cause or warning.
I'll start off with this entry. This one wasn't readded after I removed it, but I still bring it up because it's factually untrue to an extreme degree. As I pointed out in my edit, Paul is a character who, unlike virtually any other character in the anime's run, was near-exclusively written by a single person — Atsuhiro Tomioka wrote about 90% of the Paul-focused episodes in the series, so if there's any trope that doesn't apply to him, it's Depending on the Writer. I feel like that's a rather big red flag of misunderstanding already. In all my years of dealing with debates about Paul, I've never heard even a single other person, no matter how much they hated him, call him an inconsistent character.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Paul's assessment of Azumarill's weakness wouldn't be such a sticking point if Azumarill's loss at Roark's gym weren't so blatantly engineered by the writers—Roark's Geodude was apparently trained to use Hidden Power such that it not only blocks Hydro Pump but knocks Azumarill down long enough that Geodude could get two free hits of Rollout in.
Tavernier also seems to be particularly hung over the Geodude vs. Azumarill battle in DP015, where Azumarill's Hydro Pump is overpowered by Geodude's Hidden Power and finished off by two Rollout hits. When I deleted the above entry, they added these instead:
- Ambiguous Situation: There are two competing explanations for Azumarill's loss to Geodude—Brock speculates that it's because Roark trained Geodude especially well, while Paul decides that Azumarill itself was just weak. The series does not judge in favor of either interpretation.
- Strong as They Need to Be: A key part of Paul's early Character Development and his conflict with Ash was his decision to release an Azumarill for supposedly being unimprovably weak after it lost in Roark's gym—however, the loss in question was the result of the anime putting Azumarill on the receiving end of this trope; after setting Azumarill up to dish out a Curbstomp Battle (with its type-advantage and Hydro Pump), the writers let Geodude stomp Azumarill instead and then had Brock Hand Wave it by speculating that Roark trained Geodude to beat Water-types.
This... doesn't change anything about my stance. Like I said in my edit, this type of thing happens all the time in the anime. Hidden Power beat out Hydro Pump to show that Geodude was stronger, and Azumarill was finished by Rollout because it wasn't strong enough to recover and counterattack. Frankly, it feels like they're trying to make the whole situation seem way more complex than it really is. Azumarill wasn't naturally powerful, so it easily fell to a Rock-type that had been trained to deal with Water-types. Paul, who at the time was still only concerned with power, deemed it worthless and got rid of it.
- Karma Houdini: Paul somehow gets away with badmouthing his Azumarill in front of Roark, who doesn't react at all. In earlier episodes, Gym Leaders and other officials would scold Trainers who did this.
I deleted this one for being far too small of an offense, so they proceeded to instead add an extensive list of Paul's misdeeds that didn't go directly punished. I will say that most of them are technically accurate, and I'm well aware that Paul's situation with karma is the main source of his Base-Breaking Character status. But again, my counterargument still stands: first off, every jerk rival had numerous petty douche moments that weren't called out. But also, according to the page itself, Karma Houdini is mainly supposed to be for finished works where the character never received any form of comeuppance, which does not apply to Paul in the slightest. Going over each entry individually in bold:
- Karma Houdini: From being unkind and a terrible sport to acts of abuse, Paul gets away with a lot of misbehavior in the early part of the series.
- In DP046, Ash, Dawn, and Brock are separated from one another and each happens to encounter Paul while trying to find the others. Each time, one of the heroes asks Paul if he's seen the others, only for Paul to tell each of them no in turn, which in the case of Dawn and Brock is a straight-up, certified lie. This isn't brought up at all when the heroes reunite. This was such a small act of annoyance in a completely nonserious filler that's it's a nitpick at best.
- The Hearthome City Battle Competition (DP050-DP052) offers a hearty helping of Paul's cruelty, none of which he gets punished for. This here's the big one. Paul's lack of immediate punishment during this arc is probably the single biggest source of debate behind him. However, regardless of how you feel about it, the fact remains that Paul did receive karma for these actions (albeit much later): that he lost to the very Pokemon that he abused and released in the Sinnoh League. It's Karma Houdini Warranty at bare minimum.
- Paul's vicious attempts to harness Chimchar's Defense Mechanism Superpower: throwing Chimchar into intense danger, having his own pokémon attack it, and even deliberately forcing it to relive its own trauma by putting it against a Zangoose.
- When the heroes and even a Nurse Joy insist Paul let Chimchar rest and recover from the suffering it has endured at Paul's hands, Paul apparently agrees, only to throw Chimchar into the next battle and reveal he was only pretending so people would get off his back.
- During one battle, Paul—whose attempts to put Chimchar through this training have been continuously thwarted by Ash—demands Chimchar attack Ash's Turtwig.
- When a traumatized Chimchar fails to activate its Defense Mechanism Superpower in the heat of the moment, Paul turns his back on Chimchar and the battle, leaving Ash to try and command both Turtwig and Chimchar and salvage victory. Paul later kicks Chimchar off of his team and spitefully tells Ash and Chimchar that they deserve the worst—each other—when Ash offers the chimp a place on his.
- In DP064, Paul takes advantage of the others' effort to relocate a flock of Gligar safely out of a city in order to capture the powerful Gliscor leading the flock. Paul's success causes the flock to disperse and makes the relocation effort vastly more difficult and dangerous, but once Ash confronts him about the chaos he's caused Paul shrugs it off and leaves. Paul is never held to account for the difficulties caused or lives endangered by setting the Gligar loose. For one thing, the part about "endangered lives" is just false. But also, while this moment might qualify for Lack of Empathy, there's no karma that could've actually happened here. Technically all he was doing was catching a wild Gliscor.
- In DP066, Paul needlessly insults rookie Gym Leader Maylene with such contempt that it puts her in a Heroic BSoD. He never apologizes or faces comeuppance for this decision to Kick the Dog. This is another nitpick. Yes, this was very rude, but if that somehow makes him a Karma Houdini then every jerk rival is one too.
- In the same episode, Paul's older brother Reggie acknowledges that Paul has always had a cruel streak, but Reggie—the closest thing to a parental authority figure in Paul's life—gives no indication of having ever tried to confront or punish Paul for his historic behavior. This doesn't even have anything to do with karma to begin with.
- In DP081, Paul taunts Ash's team by insisting that pokémon only lose because of the trainer—as if Paul didn't blame Azumarill's weakness for its loss at Roark's gym or tell Chimchar it should be ashamed for being knocked out by Cynthia's Garchomp. No one calls him out for being a Hypocrite. See above. This has nothing to do with karma.
- When Ash praises Staravia during the Tag Team Tournament after Paul's Torterra defeats Brock and Holly, Paul sarcastically asks Ash if they even did anything. While rude to say, it's not inaccurate as Torterra single handedly defeated both of their opponents. Downplayed though, given that it was Torterra's attacks blocking Staravia that prevented it from even landing a hit.
was deleted in favor of this Never My Fault entry:
- In a late battle of the Tag Team Tournament, Paul's Torterra single-handedly defeats Brock's and Holly's pokemon, and Paul dismisses his "partner" Ash's attempts to congratulate Staravia on the grounds that Staravia contributed nothing—Staravia was certainly trying, but it was also busy trying to maneuver around Torterra's wild and reckless attacks (it even got singed by Hyper Beam), a fact Paul does not see fit to acknowledge.
I actually do think this scene could qualify for both tropes (though less for the reasons stated and more because Paul proceeded to criticize Staravia for being too slow). But there's no reason to have deleted the Jerkass Has a Point one, since Paul did have a point. Staravia contributed nothing to the battle while Torterra won all on its own. The deleted bullet even pointed out the ways in which it was downplayed.
openWhat's the point of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome?
So I briefly looked at the cleanup thread for Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, since I noticed a lot of pages dedicated to the trope were getting deleted. Yet, the biggest most prevalent reason for examples being deleted tends to be among the lines of "this just happens to advance the plot", whether something is realistic or not. If literally any example of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome can just be deleted with the justification of "plot happens", then what's the point of this trope existing?
openImage Captions
Do image captions require the same discussion to be changed as images do? If an image caption was changed from what the IP thread originally set it as, is it permitted to change it back under the pretense of "changed without discussion", or does it require the opening of a new discussion?
openHyphenated pages
Several pages that were on Administrivia.Hyphenated Titles were moved to unhyphenated pages, but the original hyphenated pages weren’t cut. I submitted them to the cut list, but some of the cut requests were declined.
Edited by costanton11openJackpot21 edit war in Ladybug's fridge page Western Animation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fridge/MiraculousLadybug
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Jackpot21
Yep.
Though this time, hopefully this is a more straightforward case that won't turn into a shouting match.
So yesterday Jackpot was on the Ladybug fridge page and removed a few entries, a concept I personally find rather poor in taste. For some of the removed bits Jackpot gives a reason.
...
Alya already established herself worthy of being a heroine nor has Cholé been contrasted with the other heroes. Marinette and Adrien have had several slip ups that go ignored like Juleka, but even then that isn’t enough to say she’s a terrible liar.
...
TLDR on the first one, there are a series of fridge observations regarding Chloe B and her (fanbase aggravating) rise and fall in hero worth that compare and contrast and several of them, though not all of them, were removed by Jackpot. For example how Marinette's stress dreams in Sentibubbler where Chloe (and Cat Blanc) appeared could be because Marinette was more hurt by the Chloe fall than she lets on, or that she sees self-hypocrisy in giving Alya her miraculous full time (the latter part Jackpot keeps), and how one can contrast Alya specifically distracting Marinette's friends in another episode with a fake bad ankle, thus helping Marinette sneak off and drawing a comparison with how Chloe would act in a 'oh hey an Akuma, time to be Queen Bee' scenario in season 3 at several points. (This builds off several other fridges by several others, including myself, in contrasts with Chloe with things like her replacement's costume, the hero King Monkey and how his development contrasts with that of Queen Bee, and an entry of mine that Jackpot had deleted some time ago comparing Chloe's actions to that of the other temp heroes in one episode)
So, while I decided that my own entry on Juleka's noticeable secret identity slip ups was probably not worth fighting for, I restored most of what Jackpot had removed. The page is edited fairly often by myself and others, so these entries were all either by others or ideas I had submitted and had been edited by others into an new form over the course of other edits over the course of months (being tweaked with words and links by others to better the entry), noting to Jackpot where the Alya and Chloe comparison stuff had come from and a bit on how I don't see the problem in people having their own fridge conclusions you don't agree with.
Like people can think about stuff in the plot that isn't being said aloud that you don't necessarily agree with, and it can still be there.
So afterwards I have a bit of a spree of ideas and do a few more edit bits into Ladybug's fridge page, a few more ideas, a few expanding sentences for context, a few spelling corrections, some stuff like that.
Then comes the Edit War, where Jackpot removes a few of the same entries again. The removed entries the first and second time by Jackpot are.
...
- Trixx is in the Miracle Box when Luka rushes to retrieve Sass. It’s likely that Alya occasionally returns her Kwami to the box to throw off Shadow Moth, as was done in episodes like Hack-San.
...
Which I had expanded on after putting back with a point that she did just that to enhance the fridge argument.
...
there are two options: either Marinette, who initially seemed not too taken aback by her betrayal, was far more hurt by it than she let on, or
being removed from
- As for why Chloé is in the dream, there are two options: either Marinette, who initially seemed not too taken aback by her betrayal, was far more hurt by it than she let on, or it’s likely Marinette recognizes her hypocrisy in letting Alya keep the Fox Miraculous even though Shadow Moth knows her true identity while she benched Chloé for the exact same reason.
...
This entry below, which was one that, while I had created the original one, had been edited and improved by others since including Jackpot over the course of two months into the above form.
...
- Gabriel was the one to figure out a creative plan for Optigami when Nathalie was convinced it was a failure after the straightforward spying mission went nowhere. Gabriel is a designer by trade after all; he's a bit more creative than her.
...
And his other 'I had created the base idea that others had then expanded, tweaked, and improved on' entry.
...
- This episode continues Season 4's subtle contrast between Chloé's worthiness and that of other temporary wielders. When Alya sees a brewing Akuma event in episode, and Marinette requests a distraction, she immediately fakes a bad ankle to let Marinette slip away and prety much ensure she'd have no chance to use Trixx this time. Last season, Chloé took multiple Akuma attacks as a moment to be Queen Bee first and foremost.
...
This being Jackpot's argument for removing stuff I had put back.
...
This page is for pointing out certain details that aren’t addressed in the series, not for people to make their own conclusions. The entries I removed were either speculative, redundant, or are your interpretations.
...
Like...not entirely sure what the point of that is. Going 'this is a plausible reason why the Kwami was back in the box when he would otherwise not be', especially with an example of that happening in the series, feels like it covers that threshold.
Though given that four fridge entries, by multiple people adding and working on them, got removed twice in an editing sequence...more straightforward right?
I wanted to make an image pickin' discussion for Polly Wants a Microphone (since it appears to be just a parrot and a caption), but the image pickin' subforum is full right now, so I can't.
With that said, I noticed something weird in the page source. It says the image was selected per an Image Pickin' thread, but when I follow the link, it takes me to the Image Pickin' thread for Adaptational Heroism.
Was there an IP thread for Polly Wants a Microphone, and the editor just pasted the wrong link by mistake? Or did the editor mindlessly paste the link along with the "examples have been sorted out alphabetically" and "zero-context examples are not allowed" messages without checking?
Edited by MrMediaGuy2