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Newsletter / News 2022-03

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tropereportrebootlogo3.png

Where do you go to read the latest about new tropes?
What about old tropes with new names?
How can you find the best but least linked tropes out there?
Worry no more: Trope Report is here.

Trope Report is a monthly newsletter that intends to showcase works and tropes from all corners of this website. It also aims to keep the troper hivemind updated with pertinent trope changes and discussions.

As March is the month of leprechauns, women empowerment, Hinamatsuri dolls, Ash Wednesday celebrations and White Day chocolates, we have decided to incorporate all of those elements into this month's newsletter.

Quite a few major changes have been happening on the wiki this past month. Big tropes like Meganekko, You Gotta Have Blue Hair, Awesome Mc Cool Name, and Loads And Loads Of Characters are undergoing major changes at the Trope Repair Shop, so be sure to check out our Changelog section for more information regarding those tropes.

Another thing that has changed on the wiki is that the admins have given us two new features, TLP history and the Queries drop-down feature. The former gives you the ability to see a user's TLP history and which drafts they bombed/hatted, while the latter tracks all of the queries you have made on Ask The Tropers, Trope Finder, Query Bugs, and Wishlist. Additionally, both Queries and PM have email notification options in case you want to get notified of new PMs and query replies via email.

As usual, we hope that you enjoy what we have put together for this month's newsletter and that you find something that interests you. Happy troping!

~MacronNotes

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Tropes and Works

    Trope Spotlight 

Obscure Tropes

This section highlights older tropes that need a boost.
  • Ah, March. The month of St. Patrick, of pots o' gold, and of good old-fashioned Irish luck. Luck can take all sorts of forms — it can result in you getting that new job you really wanted, in a chance blizzard that delays a test you didn't study for, or even in activating a MacGuffin. Chance Activation is a trope about just that — someone accidentally activating a new mysterious object when nobody else could get it to work, oftentimes in a stroke of luck... or misfortune. Despite being around since 2010, this trope ironically hasn't been very lucky, only appearing on 14 articles and with less than 200 inbounds.
  • Want to see if your potential love interest likes you back? Just get them to do something you both enjoy and watch the sparks fly! Testing The Love Interest is a trope about a character "testing" their love interest or friend to see how romantically compatible they are together. Despite being on the wiki since 2011, the trope only has 14 wicks and 513 inbounds.

New Tropes

This section brings attention to recently-launched tropes that could use a little help to really get rolling.
  • It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, and you're awake, yet cannot move an inch. You feel a heavy weight on your chest, and see frightening images in the corners of your eyes. There's no doubt about it; a Sleep Paralysis Creature has made you its latest victim. The real phenomenon of sleep paralysis has been interpreted by many cultures and societies as frightening monsters terrorizing someone in the dead of night. Whether they just hover around the bedroom, press upon your chest, or even give you nightmares, it's guaranteed that you won't have a good night's sleep with them around. While this trope has its origins in ancient folklore, it was recently launched on January 5th.
  • Gashapon, also known as gachapon, are toy vending machines popular in Japan where you insert a coin to receive a random toy. Gacha Games take that basic idea and apply it to video games, especially on mobile platforms. Specific collectibles, like playable characters, weapons, and items, are locked behind banners, and oftentimes the only way to obtain them is to pay money to pull on the banner. However, since the collectibles are Rare Random Drops, it can take a lot of cash before one can get what they want. Multiple popular gacha games such as Granblue Fantasy, Fate/Grand Order and Genshin Impact entice players to pull with a large cast of appealing characters that serve as useful assets in regular gameplay. While this genre of video games has plenty of popular titles with millions of dollars in revenue, the page was recently launched on January 29th.
  • This year's Ash Wednesday falls on the 2nd of March. The day before that is Shrove Tuesday, and is observed by many Catholic countries. New Orleans has Mardi Gras, Rio de Janeiro has Carnaval, and Venice has Carnevale. All wear wacky costumes as the partygoers celebrate with revelry and eat pancakes and fatty foods to save up for Lent. Want to make a costume extra special this Shrove Tuesday? Edible Theme Clothing has got your back. Launched on the 5th of February, a food-based costume, like dressing up like a King Cake in The Big Easy, a Carmen Miranda-style fruit hat for the samba-enredo number, or an 18th-century-style tiramisu layer cake at the Masquerade, provides endless possibilities for a little indulgence before the Lenten season rolls in.

    Work Spotlight 

New Work Page Spotlight

This section covers newer work pages that could use a little help.
  • Unpacking is a video game that's about exactly what its title suggests: unpacking belongings after moving to a new home. It's a simple, relaxing concept that leads to satisfying results once everything is where it should be, while also keeping a large amount of player choice over what goes where. The game also features a large amount of non-verbal storytelling that players may figure out from the protagonist's possessions. The game was released in November of last year to glowing reviews from audiences and critics, including a nomination for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival. Despite all of this, the page would benefit from more tropes, as its narrative style lends itself to many Implied Tropes.
  • Warped! is a Nickelodeon Kid Com about a boy who works at a comic book store. Premiering on January 20th, the show already has about 8 episodes out, giving plenty of potential trope fodder. However, the page has not had any new tropes added in a while, and with a decent number of Zero-Context Examples and no subpages beyond trivia, it could use a lot more love and care.

Older/Obscure Work Spotlight

This section is intended to highlight works that may no longer be in the zeitgeist — but that doesn't mean they're any less tropable.
  • Vice: Project Doom is an Action Game developed by Aicom and published by Sammy that was released in 1991. The player character is Detective Quinn Hart, who intends to stop the B.E.D.A. Corporation and its leader, Damian Hawke, from selling a mysterious yet dangerous drug known as Gel. The gameplay itself mostly involves platforming, but there are also some vehicle and shooting gallery stages. It's one of the few games on the Nintendo Entertainment System with full cutscenes between levels, but it also manages to pump lots of adrenaline while playing and has some kickass background effects.
  • P.C. Pinkerton is an animated British show that aired on The BBC during 1988. The show is set in the quiet, sleepy English town of Cleybourne. The titular character is Bob Pinkerton, a police constable (a position which the show's title references) who lives with his wife Jill, his daughter Jane, and his son Peter. He often goes on patrol (sometimes at night), often helping children and other people. It overall has a very comfortable atmosphere from its era and should be ideal for your younger children.
  • 3Tones is a 2009 music-based Match-Three Game. You match a combination of musical note blocks that are shown on a line at the bottom of the screen. As you do so, they disappear from the game board and your score increases. You can use multiple power-ups that show up randomly or when a meter fills up to gain an advantage. There are multiple play modes including Career (beat a specific objective before the song ends for a badge), Arcade (see how long you can last before the tray is full), and Puzzle (make specific matches to clear out the game board). With quality gameplay, 30 songs from different artists, and potentially your own soundtrack, it offers many great block-matching pursuits.

Works That Need a Page

This section takes a page from the List of Shows That Need Summary. It is intended to spotlight works that people have been talking about enough to link around the site, but don't have a page yet. If the work page link turns blue after this, then we know we've done our job!
  • Bonnie Tyler is a Welsh pop-rock singer who rose to prominence in the '80s thanks to hits such as "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out for a Hero". Despite both of those songs (and their respective music videos) having pages on the wiki, she has yet to receive one. Luckily, anyone who wants to make a page for her has plenty of material to crosswick, as she has 30+ wicks.
  • Back when Valentine's Day was the big holiday going on, you may have wondered how other animals show their love and lust to each other. The documentary Dancing With The Birds focuses exactly on this: specifically, the weird and wonderful ways that jungle birds attract mates, from painstakingly building large structures from twigs to moving their bodies in ways that make them not even look like birds anymore. Wouldn't it make sense for such a weird and wonderful film to have a weird and wonderful page?
  • May you be interested in morbid and mortifying movies? Then ABCs of Death 2.5, a movie of many stories, may be miraculous to you. It features the many contest entries that were made for the "Letter M" segment in its predecessor, but weren't enough of a morbid making to make it into the movie. While its fellow monsters of movies have their own pages, this one doesn't.
  • Blue Gate Crossing is a Taiwanese coming-of-age drama film released in 2002. Best friends Kerou and Yuezhen are 17-year-old high school girls. Shy Yuezhen fancies Shihao, their school's handsome, popular swimming champ, and she convinces Kerou to play intermediary. Unfortunately, Shihao ends up liking Kerou and isn't interested in hearing about Yuezhen. Complicating matters is that Kerou starts to question her sexuality as she realizes she has feelings for Yuezhen. It's a sweet film about adolescent romance, with much emphasis on the importance of friendship.

Non-English Work Spotlight

The wiki may be in English, but that doesn't mean non-English media are any less important! This section focuses on works that may have a language barrier to deal with — but are worth it if you do.
  • Live A Live is a Role-Playing Game by the Japanese developers at Square Enix that suffered from No Export for You treatment for a really long time. It has seven chapters, each taking place in a different time period (Prehistory, Imperial China, Edo Japan, the Wild West, Present Day, Near Future, and Distant Future), with protagonists and atmosphere to match. Once they're all finished, another chapter is unlocked. The turn-based battle system stays consistent throughout the game, as you have to move the characters around and take advantage of your and your enemies' positions. There's tons of variety and some very touching stories to be found, and not long ago a Nintendo Switch remake was announced with way superior graphics and voice acting.
  • Angry German Kid is an Internet video featuring German actor of Polish origin Norman Kochanowski. He plays Leopold Slikk, a kid who messes around with his computer equipment while waiting for Unreal Tournament 2004 to start. When it does start, he manages to win and destroys his keyboard, leading to his loss and even more rage. It's super nostalgic for many and likely to cause laughter, and don't forget to check out the rich parody scene of it as well.
  • Yet Another Merge Game is, well, Exactly What It Says on the Tin (also an Idle Game) by the German developer VeproGames. A merger appears every few seconds (later it's a few mergers every second) that bounces around the game field. If it comes in contact with another merger, they merge (as indicated by the name) and produce 5 times as much Matter every second, which can be spent on upgrades to decrease spawn time and increase starting merger tier, max merger count, and a chance to get 2 seconds of Matter with each merge. Later on you get to interact with more mechanics like Quantum Foam, Energy Cores, and Molecules to really make production jump. The gameplay systems are deep, while the aesthetics are pleasing, and it's not too CPU intensive thanks to the LESS&MORE update.

Creator Page Spotlight

Works would be nothing without the people who make them. This section highlights authors, artists, actors, musicians, and everyone else responsible for trope creation and proliferation.
  • Angela Carter was a British scholar, known for Magical Realism books such as The Bloody Chamber and The Passion of New Eve. She was outspoken about her feminist ideals, and often wrote female characters who defied the typical roles of the times. At only 35 wicks and around 800 inbounds, her page would benefit from some more attention.
  • You probably know Margaret Atwood as the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, but what about the rest of her works? Her page is completely absent of tropes, despite the fact that a lot of her books that have yet to receive pages — such as Hag-Seed and Bluebeard's Egg — could provide good content. As such, her page currently sits at less than 100 wicks.

    Image of the Month 
This section brings you the best selections of the past month from Image Pickin.
This issue's featured image comes from Salon, and illustrates Peking Duck Christmas.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pekingxmas.png

If there's one trend that defined Image Pickin' this month, it has to be the cleanup to the Pages Needing IP sandbox, a months-long backlog that really needed taking care ofnote . Other tropes that received brand new pics thanks to this cleanup include Interactive Comic, Crossover Alternate Universe and The Von Trope Family.

The pic, illustrated by Ilana Lidagoster, really thrives on its simplicity. It gets all the necessary parts of the trope across, showing a normal Jewish family having Chinese food on the third night of Hannukah. Yet, there's also a certain calm atmosphere to it, thanks to both the muted color palette and the general mundanity of the situation. It's going that extra step what ultimately gives this image the edge over everything else this month.

Projects and Discussions

    Forumwatch 
Hey guys! Welcome back to Forumwatch! In this section, we'll be telling you about what's going on in the forums — interesting discussions that may be going on in Wiki Talk, some fun forum games, or lively debates going on in On-Topic Conversations, you name it!
  • Last issue, we told you about the new Trope-tan revival effort. But she's not the only old site feature people are dusting off. Have you heard of the Encounters/ namespace? No? Well, this thread seeks to change that and reinvent this ancient, unfinished wiki project to make something new.
  • Have you ever seen a trope change names, get cut, get disambiguated, or some other major change? Were you not aware of the change because you aren't active in the Trope Repair Shop? Do you wish there was a unified place where all these changes were listed? This discussion in Wiki Talk is considering making a unified timeline (or series of pages) to chronicle all of the TRS changes over the years. If you would like to share your thoughts, come on over!

    Trope/Article Changelog 
This section covers renames, removals, redefinitions, hard-splits, merges, and wick cleaning. We'll try to keep you alerted to any major changes to the site, including perpetual projects and Wiki Talk decisions that you may have missed, but if you want to be a part of the process that affects so much of our wiki, then head over to the Trope Repair Shop on the left-hand side of the forum.

    Pages Needing Help 
This section highlights articles indexed on the Pages Needing Wiki Magic policy page and sub-pages. Such articles are, at best, under-performing and below wiki standards. At worst, these pages are in violation of the wiki's rules against stubs. If you're an editor, try checking out some of these under-performing trope and work articles to see what improvements you can make to the page.
  • March's birthday is Mark Metcalf, whose role as The Neidermeyer in Animal House was the Trope Namer. However, their article only has one paragraph, which tells us very little about the types of work he's done (film vs television vs Broadway) and attempts to replace a bulleted list of roles in chronological order by summarizing the roles in a few sentences. They don't have any trope examples listed, despite being linked on Dad the Veteran, Method Acting, and The Neidermeyer. We have a page image, which is characteristic of one of their roles, not a good headshot of the actor.
  • In January of this year, El Deafo (a Graphic Novel published in 2014) was adapted into an animated Miniseries by Apple TV+. Unlike most works with Apple+ adaptations, however, our article on the original is in very poor condition. The story is a (slightly fictionalized) Autobiography describing the childhood of Cece Bell, who lost her hearing due to meningitis. However, the description of the work is very brief, not explaining anything about the setting or the main characters. About half of the trope examples had to be commented out because they lacked context and there's been zero Crosswicking. If you liked Doug or Arthur, this story uses very similar concepts with the focus on common childhood fears, Imagine Spots, and finding value in the things that make you different from others.
  • So, how do you know if a certain work is worth checking out? Well, you read a review! Reviews are a critical analysis of another work done by critics. Some check out reviews to see if a work is good or not, while others read them out of morbid curiosity. Unfortunately, our article about Reviews as a whole is just a genre page with a too-long description rambling about different aspects of reviews. It doesn't index any subgenres, like Review Blog or Video Review Show. It has the "See Also" aspect underneath a list of reviewers in the Creator namespace. It also has less than a dozen Wicks and has a Needs More Love disclaimer at the bottom.

    Project Spotlight 
Looking for a project to dedicate some time to, but not comfortable jumping into large threads? Here are some smaller projects, or more recent discussions, in need of a few more hands.
  • Since being made as a sandbox and then promoted to Administrivia, Tropes Needing TRS has been a popular page to add all sorts of underperforming and problematic tropes. However, the page itself isn't without problems, suffering from bloating issues and shoehorned entries. If you'd like to help clear out the "backlog's backlog", stop by this short-term projects thread.
  • Seasonal Rot, Sequelitis, and Dork Age recently underwent TRS changes. To help with cleanup and maintenance of these three YMMV items, the Seasonal Rot / Sequelitis / Audience Alienating Era Cleanup Thread has been created to handle all three of them.
  • The One Piece franchise is approaching its 25th anniversary this July. The pages are prone to misuse, complaining and shoehorned entries. If you want to help with the cleanup efforts, please consider joining the One Piece cleanup thread.

    Know the Contributors 
  • Piterpicher is the head honcho of Older/Obscure Work Spotlight and Non-English Work Spotlight. Those are the kinds of works he's interested in, but he's primarily a gamer. (Editor's note: he also made our snazzy new logo!)
  • crazysamaritan writes for the Pages Needing Help section, keeping an eye out for stubs and crosswicking.
  • FernandoLemon writes for Image of the Month and Work Spotlight, and can most commonly be found at the Image Pickin' forums.
  • Satoshi Bakura writes for Forumwatch. Their passive nature and busy college schedule often leaves them watching pages and forums without actually participating unless their interest has been sufficiently piqued.
  • Mighty Mewtron writes for the New Work Page spotlight. She probably hasn't seen these works before coming across their pages, but she likes to be involved in the growth of the wiki. Beyond the Trope Report, she's most active in the forums, TLP, and the pages for whatever work she's obsessed with this month.
  • War Jay 77 contributed to the Trope Spotlight, Forumwatch, and Project Spotlight sections this month. She is also the Herald of Projects: Long Term/Perpetual, and spends much of her time refreshing on the forums, ATT and TLP for new things to respond to. It's also her birthday month, and she hopes to finally be able to enjoy St. Patrick's day this year.
  • gjjones writes for the Project Spotlight section. He also frequently spends his time working on projects whenever they are necessary, cleaning up wiki entries and participating in the ATT and Trope Repair Shop threads.
  • 𝕋𝕒𝕓𝕤 writes for the Obscure Trope Spotlight and Changelog sections.
  • The spring hen you see here, plakythebirb usually writes for Works That Need a Page.
  • Excessive-Menace writes for the New Tropes section. They mainly spend their time lurking and editing the wiki, as well as participating in ATT and writing for the Trope Pantheons project.
  • The Mayor of Simpleton wrote for the Changelog and Forumwatch this edition. He mostly participates in the Project Threads, TRS, ATT, Trope and Wiki Talk, and occasionally Image Pickin'.
  • Cutegirl920fire is a pig gal who helps out with the Obscure Tropes and Works sections. While she tries her best to contribute to the Report and the wiki as a whole occasionally, she's usually busy with stuff such as simping for Marie-Antoinette, playing Fate/Grand Order, and working on her stories.
  • Alnair 20 Aug 93 writes for the Obscure Works and Tropes sections.
  • MacronNotes contributed to this month's Changelog section. She spends most of her time on TRS, Long/Short Term projects, and TLP. She is also the herald of the Wiki Talk section on the forums.
  • Magnumtropus wrote for the Project Spotlight this edition. He normally participates in cleanup and wiki maintenance threads.
  • Twiddler makes sure our grammar is in order.
This edition of Trope Report is brought to you by Lisa Lionheart, the doll that proves an excellent role model for your daughter as opposed to the vacuous, sexist dolls of today. Get yours now, as supplies are sure to last!

Interested in becoming a contributor, or have suggestions for works or tropes to feature? Pop by the thread and let us know! We don't bite. (Much.)

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