I suggest indexing "Test of true love" as a trope. It's an ancient Western trope that poses to a character the test-question: "If your lover were physically repulsive to you, would you love him/her anyhow?" A love that passes this test is essentially spiritual rather than carnal, and remains "pure" or "innocent" despite erotic indulgence.

Traditionally, this test was posed by means of a magical enchantment that makes someone physically repulsive (as in the fairy-tale, "The Frog Prince" and "Beauty and the Beast," or in Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale"); that enchantment is lifted as a reward for passing the test.

However, in modern variations, this test has been posed by more realistic means, e.g., by cross-dressing: for example, in Young Americans a straight guy falls for a cross-dressing girl despite believing her to be a guy, and is rewarded by her revelation of her true gender.

This trope seems to have distinctively Western cultural premises, including mind-body dualism that makes it good to love someone for his or her soul but bad to love someone for his or her body. It seeks a loophole in the Christian view that sex is sinful; it seeks a return to Eden, in which sex was innocent. It would be interesting to learn whether, and to what extent, this trope may occur in Asia. If it is truly alien to Asian cultures, then Asians are unlikely to recognize it without help, so all the more reason to index it as a trope.

Over the past few weeks, I've had the persistent problem with this site (in the latest Firefox) that pages using non-ANSI characters such as em-dash (a very common character with a code somewhere in the 8000s) display garbage instead of the character. This seems to have been caused by a change in the page template, such that the header declares the wrong encoding (ISO-8859-1 instead of UTF-8). Forcing FF to ignore the encoding used in the Content-Type, and use UTF-8, fixes the problem; but it's tedious to have to do this for every page load, so could we please have a server-side fix?

Hello there, TV Tropes. I was wondering if anyone agrees that Zombie Panic in Wonderland (For Wiiware) deserves its own Tropes page? I can accredit quite a few tropes with it, but since I'm new here, I'm not sure I know how to start a new page altogether. And, this game simply Needs More Love. So, any advice or help would be wonderful.

There's something peculiar in Babylon 5 that happens several times. I tried to find it in those numerous tropes but couldn't. I wonder if you guys have a name for this "manouver". :)

On several occasions, the show cheats about perfect speech or a set of words with extraordinary results. However, we never get to hear these speeches and words. It feels like cheating. :)

Examples:

1. In Coming of Shadows, Refa has had a group of linguistic specialists working on a speech for weeks. He claims it's perfect. Londo is supposed to present it but due to turn of events, he never gets a chance.

2. In Geometry of Shadows, Technomage Elric claims that they know "Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever, seven words to make them go without pain." He never reveals those words.

3. In Paragon of Animals, we hear this really touching and heart-warming Declaration of Principles for the new Alliance, written by G'kar, and they really make a big deal out of it. However, at the end of the episodes, G'kar presents Sheridan a new version, saying that he had improved it. Sheridan takes one very short glance at it and utters in amazement: "It IS better." We never get to hear the new version.

I'd like to suggest indexing a new term "Phantom Penis." (I've also heard it called glass, ghost, or invisible penis.) A phantom penis is usually seen in hentai. This is where the penis is not drawn yet penetration is fully shown. The word penis is also censored while references to other genitalia is still allowed.

The most prominent game I've seen to do this is Tottemo Pheremone.

WARNING: Example images are graphic. NSFW!

http://www.archive-hentai.com/tottemo-pheromone-cg-series.html

One of the things about phantom penis is that it's subjective at times too. The penis can be visible so long as it isn't obstructing view of the vagina or anus. So it isn't a censorship method, but stylistic choice.

How do I create a new trope here? Cause I can think of one that applies to several things I seen...

One idea I've been thinking of as a possible new trope.

In Mes en Scene a setting can be a character in it's own right just as important as the characters. If we can accept it we can consider the real city or town could be an actor unto itself that plays an imaginary setting.

I got the idea after reading someone pointing out all of the mistakes the producers made about Seattle and Tacoma in Ten Things I Hate About You when in reality Tacoma and Seattle play the imaginary Northwestern City after all the way they pan the camera the high school (played by a school in Tacoma) is on the top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle.

Other examples I would give for what I'm trying to get at is how Habyfield in Derbyshire plays Royston Vasey in League of Gentleman, Rosalyn Washington plays Cicily Alaska in Northern Exposure and Portmeirion in Wales plays the Village in The Prisoner.

Thoughts?

Question: About how many tropes are there, total? My guess would be >300, but one can never be sure. Can't count it myself because i'd easily lose count, and my attention span is eratic... and also reading the tropes themselves would be too tempting.