I will be using this page as a workshop/blog to prototype a few ideas for TLP as well as works, check back if you would like to collaborate — if you've received link here through PM, consider it my interest in collaboration. This is dry-dock development rather then Trope Idea Salvage Yard material.
Prototypes
Up for Half — Have you ever bought a pizza only to share half of it with somebody? This is a proposed administration methodology whereby two tropers can be main editors of a draft, sharing maintenance responsibilities and if one of them chooses so, can put his share up for adoption by another.
In Theory and Trope — from In Theory and Practice, a trope that acknowledges that while some concepts are only theoretical in Real Life they are ubiquitous in fiction. Originating from Predatory Big Pharma
discussion.
The Sliding Scale of Comensualism and Mutualism vs. Amensalism and Antagonism — "by the people, for the people" vs. "It had to be done, no matter the costs!". Supertrope to:
Collectivism vs. Individualism — A dichotomy that explores the differences and relationships between team players or communities and leaders and single minded authorities.
Sacred vs. Profane — Miracles, divine signs and the promise of safe haven in a world riddled with misery, corruption and war. Eywa in Avatar; Water or The Green Place in Mad Max Fury Road; Veteran toward Boy at the end of The Road. Hope still in Pandora's Box.
Re-form vs. Status-Quo
- Re-form
- To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; To put into a better form or condition. To abolish abuse or malpractice in. To put an end to (an abuse or wrong).
- Reform advocates for making significant changes or improvements in an existing system or structure. It's often driven by a desire for progress, addressing inadequacies, or responding to evolving needs.
- It seeks to challenge established norms, often aiming for more inclusivity, fairness, and efficiency. Reformers believe that adapting to new circumstances is essential for growth and improvement.
- Status-Quo
- The existing condition or state of affairs. The state of things; the way things are, as opposed to the way they could be; the existing state of affairs.
- The status quo refers to the current state or condition of a system or society. Advocates of the status quo argue for maintaining things as they are, emphasizing stability, tradition, and the preservation of existing values and structures.
- It's rooted in the belief that the current system has proven its worth and that changes may lead to unintended consequences or disrupt stability. Supporters of the status quo are often wary of sudden or radical shifts.
The Aesopiad — The Hero's Journey with many Aesops on display.
Mamazone Prime — A female character shown to be in a leadership position to a group or community of other women, or even men. Major Houlihan for the nurses in MASH. Queen bees for... well, bee hives. The Borg Queen and her expy Janeway.
Typhoid Terry — An Expy of Real Life Typhoid Mary — an unwitting superspreader of a disease or virus.
Patient Hero — A character whose actions affect all the other characters through branching correlation like a domino effect. Put another way, a character whose absence wouldn't have made the arc, story or even work possible. Palpatine, Cassian Andor, V from V for Vendetta, Nameless from Hero2002.
Patient Nero — A character who has sparked rumors, spread flame wars and ignited literal fires. If the setting has pitchforks and torches he might of been the first to pick them up.
Everybody Was Kung Food Biting — Characters shown feeding themselves with their bare hands. They can use cutlery but there must be a component of haste, violence or savagery in the way they do it. (May be Chairs, I admit).
Euro Bash or From Prussia With Mauve — A story that is set during a historical conflict predating the cold-war... or after it.
Block Hustler — The friendly neighborhood con-man, hustler, fixer, wise-guy or, even worse, drug dealer and hit-man. If somebody doesn't know him, they know a guy that knows him.
Curious Corner Creep — The creepy character just around the corner. The stalker, the the frequent flying follower, fanatic and the secret admirer of doubtful integrity or dubious character. May lead to:
Near, Here and Oh Dear — An impending threat to a character is close. Seen outside through windows, maybe even violently knocking on the door, or worse, already walking throughout the house knocking things over.
Wife Beater Homerun Hitter — The domestic abuser with a track record.(Wrote this for Truth in Television as well as Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped)
The Trouble with Transfigurations — A trope stemming from Woman Were-Woes, would involve many kinds of fantastic transformations and extend to all genders.
Class Action Swimsuit — A character intentionally does specific body language or re-arranges the clothes on their body, to gain the attention of another.
Oblivious to Obvious — A character who is none the wiser after information has been pointed out to him by a Captain Obvious through many means such as Spelling for Emphasis, Lampshade Hanging and even Read the Freaking Manual.
Eggspert — A character that is only considered an expert by simply having done something one time more than anyone else — especially when they've done it only once. All medicine doctors know how pregnancy and birth works, doesn't mean they've all done the procedure or went through the experience themselves. Named after "Hatch a plan" where "No plan survives contact with implementation".
No Crook Norm — A character that is believed by most other characters to have done something and is being investigated or persecuted for it, yet, the viewer/audience knows he is innocent or might otherwise lean toward that belief — of course, it is extra interesting when the character in question exploits this against the audience and the other characters so that he actually gets away with it. Inspired from Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech.
Dubious Deeds Done Dirt Deep
Our Stereotype Is A-Typical — Frankly, I've seen soooo many tropes born out of this concept... might as well not fight it and make an index of them... it has led to:
Our Revolution Will Not Be Trivialized and:
Our Blood Runs Thicker — Family and the welfare of it is more important than society's rules and laws. Sibling trope to:
Able To Walk With Cain — Sibling rivalry and disputes that hinder the involved parties' progress in life.
Docile Disciplinarian — An authority figure who only does things with a soft touch. Someone who believes a slightly raised voice in an argument is going too far. Might be Too Rare To Trope.
I've had a teacher that was like this, was unfortunately bullied by some of her students and belittled by her colleagues — didn't help that she was of small stature and equally unimposing in voice and character. A veritable rabbit if she were to be anthropomorphized. Was the teacher that thought me the meaning of altruism... by example. She actually spawned this next trope:
Beating the Benefits Into You — An In-Universe An Aesop character that bullies and harasses other characters claiming they are doing it for the victim's benefit — at the border between amensalism and antagonism.
Metaphor Made Mundane — A metaphor is explained by somebody so that even a laymen can understand it.
Topical Trivia Teacher — A character that randomly turns teacher to the other characters (and sometimes the audience). Overlaps with Layman's Terms and is Super-Trope to Fold the Page, Fold the Space.
Oxygen is a corrosive gas, in the same family as fluorine and chlorine...
...hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid.
Essentially, that's why we're breathing helium down here.
Because oxygen at any level higher than 2.3 becomes toxic.
He He: Power of Price Persuades You — The telemarketing gag, discounts in overload, terrific merchandise presented as within reach of average Joe, leading to possible purchase to find just how much the price is right.
Generalists are Generally No Good — Characters who poses several skills and are pretty much capable of anything are considered overachievers, despised for their various accomplishments, and one character flaw is enough to bring them down.
Insufferable Specialist — yes, without going into too much detail, Bunny-Ears Lawyer covers this to the letter, even though the Trope Namer reference might be obscure to some... (I mean, this
◊ used to be the picture... Is that... that nerdy Stargate guy? Michael Shanks? but in an actual legal procedural series... that's a toughie...).
Prone to Purple Prose | Predilection for Purple Prose | Pure Purple Prose ... 'nuff said. — Sometimes Less is More Well, This Is Not That Trope.
- Not sure this is the proper discussion to Take a Third Option in discussing this but here goes:
Given that there are so few acknowledged fables to be Aesop's, and later writers collecting them, repurposing some of them and publishing as Fables, such as Creator.Jean De La Fontaine. It gives reason to repurpose An Aesop, or even to create a new trope — Aesop's Fountain or Aesopic Fountain where moral messages were attached to a work by other creators/curators other than Word of God. — and in the body of Word of God, Word of St. Paul, Word of Dante, this would be a sort of St. Thomas's Disclaimer, Thomas No Doubt if you will.
— That seems like a large-scale version of Accidental Aesop.
— It is, in the way that it is meant to diminish/stop the association between Aesop and the multitude of tropes that invoke it by name.
— How do we know that a moral was unintended by a creator and attached by readers? According to the page, Aesop did tell his stories with morals in them, but left them unstated so the audience would figure it out themselves, and explicit statements of the moral were added to later versions. How can we tell the difference?
— Preface: modern critics and analysts say that the reason the message is understated in Aesop's work is because he might of planned that the message could be up to a degree of interpretation based on retelling, making the beats on the anvil only obvious through repetition, so to speak. It is La Fontaine who repurposed the stories and made the message outright stated at the end, in a Golden Moment way, because he wished to make the fables didactic to children, a sort of western counterpart to the Far-East's Confucius and Buddhism teachings because he might of found, given their age and time, that the Christian Bible is a bit Anvilicious to young minds.
Please note, I am using "might" to indicate Death of the Author.
Further branching possibilities.
An Aesop — message is understated.
A Fountain — message is clear as crystal.
Interpretative Piece | Hermeneutic Hour — message(s) is/are up to a myriad of interpretations.
What I personally like about those, is that they can all coexist in the same work.
Note: Might come across as a sort of Author Tract on my part because I've held some lectures/writing-workshops where this, wellspring, heh, of a concept was discussed exactly this way. And it kind of ties neatly into Fridge if we think about it.
Raison D'etre for tropes: Socratic Squabble, Plates Platonics, Descartic Discard, Kant Touch This... I can go on, but safe to say Philosophy Useful Notes needs an upgrade...
Needs AIDS+ — as in Needs Advanced Insight of Dependable Substance, Positively so...
Tis The Season to be Trolling — A character that dislikes the holiday season.
Came from this joke here: "I know 'tis the season to be jolly, but wouldn't it be better if this tra' la la la la a little later? Like sometime in December?"
As for the merit to this existing is that the concept of trolling actually comes from folklore where a troll would disrupt elves, gnomes or dwarfs from their purpose of bringing about the festive season.
— Trolls, elves, dwarfs? What do these have to do with Christmas?
— Well, the mythology expanded so that children could be entertained by Cristmas-like stories and pre-existing folklore elements.
Constant Complaining Mistaken for Entertainment — a character that complains a lot and his antics are treated as funny, not serious, entertaining even... because nobody would complain that much and mean it.
Sexy is Alluring and Beauty is Dissuasive — Two Tropes in Aggregate exploring how a woman's looks can be alluring with a bit of makeup and dress applied but natural beauty while it exists, might cause the woman who has it to turn down proposals and go to lengths to hide it... maybe:
Makeup Distorts Portrayal — where makeup can make:
- beauty look sexy or grotesque;
- grotesque look beautiful or sexy;
- sexy look beautiful or grotesque;
Persona-Locus Segregation — tough one to explain, for now! Safe to say it is a foundational narrative concept in a character's development with regards to the setting it happens in.
Orwell was Right — as in, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four was right about society degenerating into a persecuting police state.
Huxley was Right — as in, the author of Brave New World was right about society degenerating into a self-satisfaction seeking state.
Gibson was Right — as in, the author of Neuromancer was right about society degenerating into a glittery maze inhabited by rats.
Tolkien was Right — as in, the author of The Lord of the Rings was right about society degenerating into a struggle between those who seek to pervert it for higher gains and those who seek to preserve whatever good parts of it there still exist.
Trivia
Known for GTA — as in Known for Genre Tied Author — where a Creator - writer, producer or actor is known for a specific genre.
L'Ecole Francais or L'Ecole Cinematique — where the dominant characteristics of the European schools of film-making are leaning more toward character driven, independent and small budget productions.
The Three Production Problem — where it is commonly said that a film's production goes through three production phases: Pre-Production, Proper-Production, Post-Production. Basically, once by the writer, then by the actors and director and lastly by post and editing.
Game oriented
Mandatory Makeshift Mapmaking
In the early days of computer games, one copy of a game was sometimes shared among a group of friends, leading to some instances where some of them, without access to the official guide, improvised their own — this has literally lead to many user groups and early gaming sites hosting them so that other players need not make their own.
Developers and games that spawned the phenomenon during development simply couldn't afford to make comprehensive guides and strictly relied on the player to figure things out as part of the appeal of the game. In choose your own adventure style games, map making was a common trick — these days, there are exploration/survival/walking-sim games that include this by default.
This phenomenon has actually made a game's guidebook redundant in some instances and their content even less useful, thus making, Makeshift Mapmaking, uh, Mandatory...
But why Mandatory? Because in Scounting, skills like mapmaking & mapreading are fundamental skill, and somewhat required in Ur-Example Colossal Cave.
Today, because of digital distribution, some games do not even come with guidebooks, maybe a digital document that only points out the very basics of a game. Relaying on the community instead to start making the guide themselves, often, around digital distribution sites, wiki platforms if not dedicated sites by the developers or fandom representatives. There are even 0-Day publications and sites that have editors highly accustomed to this type of journalism.
This technique has actually allowed developers and storytellers to focus on crafting more immersive experiences and re-balance games and instead rely on the player-base to document their findings themselves... sometimes pointing to bugs and required re-balancing issues in the process — most often describing the game narrative and gameplay from an impartial and objective perspective. Some communities have even gone to great lengths and taken it upon themselves to stitch game maps together to supplement their strategy guides and articles.
There are games that provide actual map interfaces so the player can place points-of-interest markers on them — if they are not outright provided by the game itself. Or an actual in-game quest/mission guide-book/journal/diary thing to document in-universe progress and achievements.
However, it must be stated that this phenomenon has a Broken Base — between players that do not wish for any kind of interference or aid from the game, preferring a more self driven exploration of the environment, maybe with minimal Show, Don't Tell, and the other extreme that prefers as much GUI++ than you can shake a cursor at. There is a compromise, since some game developers have learned about this and have included photo mode, or no-interface options in the settings.
It can even be argued that TVT itself is an example of this, with various Headcanon, Analyses and Fridge fodder going around.
Note: I have done a few of these maps myself, mostly for games I've played in my youth... so this is very much an instance of Author Appeal for me.
There are, of course, non-game examples too, where a character in a story keeps a journal of some kind and is a literal narrative devicenote - See Grail Diary from Indiana Jones / The narrated journal of The 13th Warrior.
Even Meta examples exist, where members of fandom have traced the journeys of characters throughout a narrative and its setting - See Map of the Fellowship's Journey in LOTR / Time Traveling in Back To The Future.
Note: Mentioning these so I can draft branching, similar tropes that would cover them.
Degrees of Peddling Bacon — A McGuffin, Chekhov's Gun or otherwise mundane item that is obtained from a store or merchant throughout a story or in a game.
Common as Cream — The common denomination item with regards to its value. The 20$ bill as opposed to the Penny. (Boring, but Practical covers this though)
Hare for Bear Skins - An item that can be stockpiled just to get another exceedingly more valuable item.
Potentially Perilous for Paladins — A quest that poses more challenges to a character class than it does for others. Somewhat related to and in-between Randomly Generated Quests and Character Select Forcing.
Abandonware Index — Listing of games that have been abandoned by developers and are now in public domain. Listing can include games that are still maintained by the community, are mod-able or have been picked up for remake or remaster.
Missed opportunities ? or What Could Have Been
Look Sky Walker — A character distinguishes himself through showcasing mastery of a skill or ability.(cannot find the TLP thread that gave me the idea, this name and laconic would of been my contributions).
Angered by Another's Apathy — this is sort of true about me because it has me feeling this way in regards to this next one (though not an enemy):
Half-Baked Niceness — An argument in TLP for this relationship: Narrow Niceness < Improvised Politeness < Half-Baked Benevolence.
This is itself meant to highlight the concept and relationship of spoken, acted upon and attitude or intent of the character that utters it.
Half-Baked as the saying: "a half-baked cake is only half-great" which ascribes to an optimistic rather than pessimistic world-view.
Something narrowly nice is something a character can say < talking about them Yanks or the weather we're having is improvised politeness < opening a door for a lady but removing it from its hinges in the process is half-baked benevolence.
* I admit I'm striving for Added Alliterative Appeal and the currently emerging Assonance And Consonance trope.
But OP seems to be ignoring my reasoning above... The Great Wall of Text Ya doesn't help, also OP seems to be engaging into equal lengthy discussions passing the The Same, but More Specific by a significant margin — it may very well be my second bomb ever.
