Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
Ask the Tropers is for:
- • General questions about the wiki, how it works, and how to do things.
- • Reports of problems with wiki articles, or requests for help with wiki articles.
- • Reports of misbehavior or abuse by other tropers.
Ask the Tropers is not for:
- • Help identifying a trope. See TropeFinder.
- • Help identifying a work. See MediaFinder.
- • Asking if a trope example is valid. See the Trope Talk forum.
- • Proposing new tropes. See TropeLaunchPad.
- • Making bug reports. See QueryBugs.
- • Asking for new wiki features. See QueryWishlist.
- • Chatting with other tropers. See our forums.
- • Reporting problems with advertisements. See this forum topic.
- • Reporting issues on the forums. Send a Holler instead.
Ask the Tropers:
open Can you add character and nightmare fuel pages for these articles? Videogame
The articles are baby's nightmare circus jolly and dormitabis. And can you add images to them and more images to the five nights at treasure island character page please and thank you? If so then great
Edited by Luigiisbetter476openEdit War for Total War Warhammer Ogre Kingdoms Videogame
So, last night, krimzonflygon2 added back in an entry for Badass Beard on the Ogre Kingdom’s page for Total War Warhammer. He did this after the trope had been dewicked (since now it must be an example of Manly Facial Hair), with the edit removing the trope explicitly noting this. I’ve reverted the edit, and messaged him to kindly explain the issue, but could someone else also tell him, since he re-added in the first time after someone explicitly told him that Badass Beard is no longer a valid trope?
openSpoiler Removal Videogame
Flying Duck Man Genesis removed all the spoiler tags on Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest with the reasoning of "If this page has a warning for unmarked spoilers, than said spoilers really should be unmarked." Except that was a warning about unmarked spoilers pertaining to the game's predecessor, Donkey Kong Country.
open[Resolved] Trails Series pages Videogame
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - Second Chapter and The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - The 3rd have their own pages, but The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky also tropes them. Is the split project still ongoing or the pages should be merged back? (e: merged and redirected)
They are also indexed at VideoGame.Kiseki Series, but that page is a content-less redirect, so I have no idea why it shows up a the bottom. (e: that part's resolved)
Edited by Amonimusopen Did anyone notice the nothing harder spirit in smash ultimate? Videogame
In the 3ds version of smash 4 the classic mode spirit can go up to nothing harder and the spirit at the end of ultimate's classic mural has it at the end!
openPotential minor edit war over Air Marty Videogame
While editing the page for Air Marty, I noticed an entry that I could have sworn I deleted before. I finished my edit, taking the entry out, but I thought later to check the edit history. Yup, I did take it out before, but it was added back in by someone else.
The entry in question: Recycled In Space, with the provided context paraphrasing somebody who called the game Warioware on acid". I really don't think that's what Recycled In Space means (especially considering Warioware is already on acid), and after I took it back out I provided an Edit Reason explaining why, but in hindsight, I don't know if I should have done this, because I forget exactly what the reversion threshold is. And now I'm even less sure after scrolling down and seeing another thread related to the Recycled In Space trope, suggesting I have the definition wrong.
Knowing how I tend to misunderstand things, should I be pointing this out?
Edited by BaffleBlendopenUser 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.
openSonic's Dr. Eggman— a misuse of "Affably Evil" Videogame
(Very thorough post below, apologies for length)
Dear Ask the Tropers,
I want to discuss how Sonic the Hedgehog Big Bad Dr. Eggman might be better off as an example of Faux Affably Evil as opposed to Affably Evil, the latter of which is what most descriptions of him I've seen on this site describe him as (including some trope subpage-only cases, hence why I've come over to Ask the Tropers). Spoilers unmarked for ease of reading.
Here are the main entries regarding him:
- Dr. Eggman from Sonic The Hedgehog has his moments of this.
- In Sonic Adventure 2 he acted very pleasant and, though he came close to killing Sonic, he was shown almost regretting it, showing profound respect for him after all the years that they were rivals. He had also been seen getting along with Tails at the end of the game. It also showed that he had the deepest respect for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik.
- The best example was probably Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where he's shown acting politely and gently most of the time, especially in front of Elise (except for the whole kidnapping part, of course).
- In the ending of Sonic Generations: The classic version, having learned that he never defeats Sonic, ponders upon pursuing a career as a teacher instead.
- Affably Evil: Despite really wanting to Take Over the World — and occasionally going to some extreme lengths to achieve this goal — Eggman's a fairly pleasant fellow who usually treats his enemies with Villain Respect.
- In Sonic Adventure 2, he lowers his head in melancholy after seemingly killing Sonic, and later gets along with the heroes after teaming up with them.
- In Sonic Colors, he takes Sonic's advice regarding threatening him directly rather than going through a bunch of terrible amusement-park-related puns on the way — for which Sonic then thanks him.
- In Sonic Lost World, he saves Tails' life from the rogue Cubot, even though it isn't necessary for his master plan, and seems to genuinely respect Tails. He's a complicated guy.
Here's my counterargument.
He loves being what he thinks is the most civilized and enlightened guy in the room, plain and simple, and the trope subpages of quite a few different adaptations have already described their Robotniks/Eggmen as "Faux", despite how two of them (AoStH and the movie) were heavily comedy-focused.
Now, I'm sure there might be a couple cases out there of game-universe!Eggman being genuinely affable (maybe just during Olympic season or something, the Twitter Takeovers are more of a different kind of portrayal altogether), but these are too few and far between to be a defining trait.
Let's look at the alleged examples being most frequently cited:
- Sonic Adventure 2:
- The Misaimed Fandom entry I put on the game's YMMV page explains the "Gerald" bit in detail. Long story short, he looked up to his grandpa as a brilliant scientist rather than because of anything benevolent, and he's disappointed that Gerald went crazy trying to destroy the world since he takes pride in his own Pragmatic Villainy.
- The "admirable adversary" scene has him send Sonic to his death via explosive escape pod and then lowering his head out of respect… before immediately getting over it and pointing his gun back at Tails. His Dark Story recap also has him gleefully proclaim, "I finally did it! I've defeated Sonic! That annoying hedgehog is gone forever! He's nothing but floating chunks in space now!"
- He did get along with the heroes during the Last Story, but, y'know, no world means no empire so necessity and all that.
- The somber "you're right" response he gives to Tails' "we all did it together" was meant to fit with the equally somber tone of Shadow's death and Gerald's tainted legacy. As sincere as it sounds, it's just Eggman acknowledging the facts after being briefly lost in a moment of thought.
- Here's a Dummied Out exchange that was meant to happen after that, anyways:
Tails: "Where are you going?"
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): He's only gentlemanly to Elise because she has something he wants and he still tries to get rid of Sonic and friends in multiple ways. And he doesn't even give Elise a nice room or a meal.
- Sonic Unleashed: He keeps Professor Pickle fed with cucumber sandwiches on request. Yeah, a corpse is less useful than someone to interrogate, food makes a good bribe in case you don't have a lot of other time and options, and he got the recipe wrong anyways.
- Sonic Colors: The "Eggman changes his evil speech at Sonic's request" scene was most likely meant to be played for laughs given how the doctor does it begrudgingly. There's also this line he gives afterwards to Sonic: "I would say it's been nice knowing you, but it hasn't." Not even this game has a genuinely nice Eggman.
- Sonic Generations: The whole "teaching degree" joke was probably meant to be sarcasm from Classic Eggman, with Modern Eggman missing the point and only considering it because "I've always enjoyed telling people what to do!", causing his Classic self to Face Palm. Also Lost World and Mania happened because each Eggman went back to world conquest, so no.
- Sonic Lost World:
- It's stated in a Magnificent Bastard entry and supported by the game's ending that he only saved Tails to make sure his Enemy Mine with Sonic stayed on schedule. At best, I guess you can argue that he'd want to beat Sonic and Tails personally.
- A scene earlier into the game (the one where Sonic sets the Zeti loose) has him tell the Deadly Six that he's a "compassionate" man… with the rest of what he says being covered up by Sonic and Tails talking over him. Listening closely, this is what he says to the Zeti:
Eggman: "I'm a compassionate man, or else I would've dropped you into a bottomless pit by now!"
- The game in general seems to subtly emphasize how is Eggman a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk— he's back to stuffing animals in robots, he only sees the Zeti as useful lackeys for him, he doesn't care that the Cacophonic Conch's noises are "very painful" to the Zeti and only that the shell itself is "very rare", and he only saves Sonic's life so the hedgehog can get rid of the Zeti for him while he sneaks back to his Extractor device. And to top it all off, this line just oozes with Faux Affably Evil:
Eggman: "Finally, with the energy drained from the Extractor, I can rule the world! Pity about the damage done down there, but there's still enough left for me to conquer."
And considering how he's a very Opportunistic Bastard willing to pervert anything to get what he wants (e.g. Little Planet, Angel Island, an ancient pyramid, a planet, five planets, time and space, a guy's very reason to live, etc.), I think it's safe to say he'd even exploit a Draco in Leather Pants situation like this one if he existed in the real world.
Hence, why I think we should change this. My proposed plan here is to edit the main pages that matter and then edit those linked to it in some way. I'll deal with the latter once I've gotten the go-ahead for the former.
Thank you all for listening.
Many regards, Blurry
openAbout how Character Development tropes should be listed. Videogame
I've noticed that Sly Cooper's main character sheet has a Character Development entry covering Sly, Bentley, and Murray listed in a folder housing tropes shared between all three characters. However, because the three each develop in vastly different ways, would it be more viable to list each entry in their respective folders?
Edited by NotsofriendlyopenCharacter page dilema Videogame
I've had this page draft for a Character Specific Page on Jinx from League of Legends. Since Arcane released, she's had an ever-growing folder on that show's page coinciding with her video game appearances. Because both Arcane and any media adjacent to League are derived from the same lore and universe, I thought it'd be appropriate to merge material based on characters who's had a lot of exposure across the franchise. Similar examples have been for pages like Power Rangers Tommy Oliver and Danganronpa — Makoto Naegi who have had consecutive media appearances.
Edited by IkeaHanopenTropes for customizable player characters Videogame
I'm in the long-term process of working on pages for an interactive fiction game, and I need advice on how to deal with the player character. If a character is customisable and thus has variable stats, orientation, gender, etc. is it appropriate to list tropes like The Dandy and Lady of Black Magic on their page?
The tropes do apply to a PC with that kind of build but that seems like it would clog a page up with all the different "characters" you could theoretically choose to play, and a lot of tropes that otherwise wouldn't be relevant.
I've been trying to find guidelines for this sort of situation, but I'm not sure where they are. Does anyone have any suggestions?
(p.s. I apologise for the jumbled state of the pages I'm working on - I'm learning as I go so I'll go back and fix them when I have time)
openDifficulty Spike Videogame
For a ROM hack of a pokemon game, would I put difficulty spike just under the same spot as pokemon games in general or put it elsewhere on the page because it's fanmade? Same thing for That One Level (since pokemon has it's own page for such)
openExtremely small "Referenced By" page Videogame
So I recently discovered this 'Referenced By' subpage for the Halo franchise that appears on every single game's subpage bar as a redirect. It was created in February of this year by darkemyst and has only been edited three times since, with the last edit being in May of this year.
It also only has six examples and not all of them even seem to be valid, which has me thinking it should be cut. To list all the examples and my thoughts on them:
- Aldnoah.Zero: The Hypergate looks very similar to the African portal that leads to the Ark from Halo 3.
- This entry provides two image links on the page itself, one of which is broken and just redirects to the main page of Bungie's website (and they don't even own the Halo franchise anymore). I found a working image and frankly the similarities seem fairly superficial, though I suppose the argument could be made that it's a reference: Hypergate (Aldnoah)◊, Gate at Voi (Halo)◊
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Peter's laser pistols bear more than a passing resemblance to the Covenant Plasma Rifle from Halo: Combat Evolved, or also the laser pistols from The Black Hole (1979).
- The Expanse: While at first glance the Ring's design is reminiscent of a lifeless Halo, Manéo Jung-Espinoza's attempt at flying through it reveals that it actually operates more like the Supergates built by the Ori.
- Both of these entries openly admit that the similarities are vague and limited enough that it could be a reference to something else entirely, which makes them invalid IMO.
- Marathon: The Eternal Level name "These Caves Can't Be a Natural Formation" is a line from Halo: Combat Evolved
- The Marathon series pre-dates the Halo franchise which made me seriously scratch my head at this. I had to dig through our page on the former to find out that this is apparently a reference to a fan-made total conversion mod called Marathon: Eternal that was released after Halo. Not sure if that's valid.
- Quake: The Blaster in Quake IV can fire either single, extremely weak shots or more powerful charged shots in a manner similar to the Plasma Pistol.
- This is an extremely basic and generic gameplay mechanic that many, many shooters have adopted for many, many weapons throughout gaming history. Edit history shows that it was also in the above category of "the entry outright admits it could be referencing something else" until the last edit on May 10th 2021 - specifically, pointing out that it's equally similar to the "Dispersion Pistol" from Unreal.
- Minilife TV: In "Spirit in the Sky", Master Chief's helmet is one of the items in Chris's swag pile.
- This is possibly the only inarguably valid entry on the page and it's for a LEGO stop-motion web series sitcom I've never heard of.
openBizarre new page Videogame
Can we...look at this?
I have no idea how to approach this. It's just...I have so many questions.
openLinking to TheOneWith Videogame
Is it kosher to link The One With… on main page articles? Just want to know before I go editing some Sonic pages...
openAbandoned / Unpublished Game - Darth it? Videogame
Jimmy Jam never made it out of development and has been abandoned. Should this be moved to Darth Wiki?
Edited by ExxolonopenRemoval of an entry on the That One Attack page of Final Fantasy Videogame
Hello,
I noticed that my entry about Shiva from the Final Fantasy XIV "That One Attack" page was removed by keyblade333 a few months ago for the following reason: "Removing Extreme/Savage mechanics".
As far as I know, the main page of That One Attack doesn't specify that some categories of bosses, encounters or mechanics should be excluded. Bonus bosses (as Extreme and Savage bosses would fall into that category, as they are not required fights to advance the story) are listed on this page without any issues. Other MMORPG, such as World of Warcraft, have entries of optional encounters listed too. Thus, I fail to understand why my entry was removed.
I would like to know if I am missing something there that justify the removal of my entry, and ask permission to reverse said removal if it was unjustified.
Edited by NonoRobot
I MADE A BABY'S NIGHTMARE CIRCUS CHARACTER ARTICLE AND THOUGHT WHAT I WAS TYPING IN WAS FOR THE MODS BUT NO! PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO DELETE IT!