This sandbox was created by participants in the TLP Discard Project thread as an attempt to salvage trope ideas scavenged from deleted or unviable drafts.
Sometimes a draft is unfixable, but the idea is decent. So we're making a depository for anyone who wants to browse and adopt one of these trope ideas (or just use them as a starting point). As a secondary function, this page can also be used to deposit ideas that you yourself may not have the time or knowledge to successfully draft. Just don't abuse the privilege.
Anyone is free to add to this list, or adopt ideas from it. Note, however, that if your idea is coming from a deemed-to-be-unworkable draft, please post a link to the old draft if possible.
Finally, keep in mind that this is a salvage yard, not a personal storage unit. If you have an idea that you aren't comfortable with someone else potentially taking over, don't post it here.
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Ideas with no source draft
- "Identically Colored Bars", like Life Meter and Mana Meter not being visually distinct, such as in VideoGame.The Haunted Ruins, VideoGame.Cute Knight 1, and VideoGame.Epic Battle Fantasy 1.
- Possessions As A Trophy, where a murderer or kidnapper starts using their victim's possessions simply as a prize. One example is You, where Joe starts wearing the watch of the man he murdered.
- Hollywood Depression, when media doesn't show correctly how depression works.
- Hollywood and any mental health issues have similar problems.
- "Function Text": Part of a object's description in RPGs, that describes their use. A further refinement based on their specificity might be possible, such as "Restores a small amount of Health" vs. "Restores 10 Hit Points". Basically the opposite of Flavor Text. Might need to occur in tandem for Flavor Text to not be the general idea of a description. See VideoGame.Epic Battle Fantasy 1, where in-battle item descriptions are more precise than ones in the store. And VideoGame.Cute Knight Kingdom, for Function Text that sounds like Flavor Text, such as an Artist's Smock that actually does protect against painting accidents, unknown until it happens.
- "Shout Out By Name": Directly naming someone as a Shout-Out, such as in Shout-Out's current page image. Possibly take that image and use another one for Shout-Out.
- "Effect Trigger Percentages lower than / at 50% / greater than": Deliberate setting of effect activation chance to happen less / as / more often than naught. Seems relevant as it has big effects on planning and stuff.
Ideas with a source draft
- A trope about a character's reaction to hair loss. Source
. - Characters who give thanks profusely/excessively. Source.
- A trope about characters standing on chairs (or other objects) in order to deliver an important or emotional speech. Source.
- A character has been bullied to the point where they no longer even try to resist the bully due to broken spirit. Source.
- Characters suffer an isolating communication breakdown, often during an apocalyptic scenario. Related to Impeded Communication- distinct? Source
- A trope about a character bleeding from the ears due to a loud or harsh noise, possibly related to Brown Note. Definitely related to Ear Ache. Inspiration
- A Useful Notes or just generally education page on Cryptozoology. Source
- "Fire As A Shorthand for Chaos": Clunky placeholder title aside, the trope would be about how the presence of fire indicates a setting is in a state of chaos and destruction. Idea came from here.
- A trope in aggregate about heroes have Playing with Fire powers tying into how fire is considered powerful and heroes are commonly Hot-Blooded. Would need to ensure that it doesn't quickly decay into "every heroic character uses fire". Source.
- Nervous Squiggle Mouth: Animated or comic character has an curved zig-zag line for a mouth to indicate nervousness. Source
- A woman wearing a hoopskirt jumps into water and uses her skirt to float, or uses the dress as a parachute. Source
- "The Killjoy" or "The Spoilsport": A trope about a character who is determined to be as miserable as possible AND spoil the fun of everyone else. Just don't call it "the funsucker" for hell's sake... Source
- A trope where works make fun of horror movies (etc.) for having incredibly stupid casts. NOT "people in horror movies are stupid" — that's Idiot Ball or Plot-Induced Stupidity. Source
- Flushing the antagonist/monster out of hiding as a strategy. Source.
- Kidnapped by a Relative: Someone that is...kidnapped by a relative, which would have different motives and repercussions as if its done by a stranger. Source.
- Trade Gone Wrong: The trend in fiction for trades to always go wrong somehow. Source.
- Xenophobe's Inn: A Trauma Inn in the xenophobic village in the middle of nowhere Source
- Adaptational Ability: Basic proposition: an adaptation gives a character some capability, be it superpowers or mundane, that wasn't present in the original work, such as ability to speak a language they couldn't originally. Source.
- Personified Doubt: Ever have doubts deep-down about some idea of yours, and imagine them being expressed by others? This is for characters, often a form of Imaginary Friend, who seem to represent these doubts on someone else's part, as a form of foil. Source.
- Self-Inflicted Amnesia: A character purposely gives themselves permanent amnesia to hide dark secrets or get rid of painful memories. Source.
- Benched In Hospital: "character gets injured and this causes them to get benched for a while, because they're at the hospital/in recovery" Source.
- Satellite Family: A subtrope of Satellite Character for family members, used to characterize another character as family-oriented or to make them more relatable. Source
- Someone is shoved against the wall. Since we already have the trope You're Insane!, the title and scope of this draft, Are you out of your mind?, could be retooled to be about the action of slamming someone up against the wall.
- The army forms an aisle while yelling encouragement at one heroic unit, volunteered to storm the castle, go on a suicide mission, or heroic sacrific. Source: This seems like it could be something trope-shaped, but the examples and description are lacking. Also, the name "Cat Call Advance" is terrible.
- Death by Debris: Character gets killed by getting hit with flying/falling fragments. Source draft has neither description nor examples.
- Male Bob Haircut: A male character wearing his hair in a bob cut. Appearance trope about a feminine-looking bob haircut on a man. Needs a fresh start-over draft if someone wants to restart it as a genre- or setting-indicator instead of solely an appearance trope.
- The concept of a Casanova or Celibate Hero disliking porn because they're "real men" could be a trope. Inspiration
- A character is bullied to breaking point and they no longer try to resist. Source.
- This Needs Salt: No New Stock Phrases, salting food is People Sit on Chairs, more specific ideas in the comments might be worth a draft
- putting salt on non-food to indicate that the character is about to attempt to eat it
- salting food that normaly isn't salted
- using an ridiculous amount of salt/ salting for an ridiculous long time when thinking about something else
- pulling a salt shaker out of Hammer Space
- having a character salt a ridiculous big pile of food to show that that character is planning to eat it all(maybe followed by an Ambulance Cut)
- salting food underwater
- having a normal cartoon animal turning into a Funny Animal to salt some food and then turning right back to normal
