A Dutch Asparagusnote , Grammar Nazi, Semantics Nazi, Spelling Nazi, and all round nice guy. Arrived here at the start of 2010 and can't seem to leave. May or may not have made valuable and trivial contributions.
Tropes to be (just names and ideas I had, they may already exist under different names):
- Off The Reservation: A lead character, who is not supposed to, leaves his post to pursue something.
- Superlative Decay, the attempt to increase interest in something by describing (aspects of) it with loads of superlatives: "Every day when they go to work, they risk their lives." "This is the deadliest profession of the world." Whereas in reality they minimise risks so it's become and almost, but not quite, risk free job. Airplane pilots, for instance. See almost any documentary on the Discovery Channel. If it doesn't use superlatives or words like 'extreme' or 'most' every other sentence, you're probably not watching a Discovery documentary.
- Plenty Of Time To Rush, where the action is at its peak, and someone being followed, or knowing they have probably just or not enough time to do something, pauses for a considerable length of time to look back at the pursuers, or look vaguely and blankly away from the task at hand, for no good reason, other than to increase the tension with the audience, who rightly think: "Oh, no, now they will fail, given what we know about the time they have!" (Needs better trope name.)
- Split Second Camera Angle, where the action is shot from numerous angles at extreme close up, each shot staying not long enough for the viewer to establish what exactly they are looking at or who is who in the frame. Often done with fights, maybe because with all the modern CGI fights with people walking walls and flying, a realistic fight by stuntmen would look tame by comparison, no matter how gruesome.
- Democracy Dictator: Probably a Discredited Trope already, where The Hero encounters a non-democratic society and will immediately try and succeed in introducing the concept of democracy to the huddled masses, who lap it up so enthousiastically, that even the ruler will adopt it with little or no resistance, regardless of any circumstances. Often an American travelling to historic Europe. Captain Kirk was one of these.
- Hamboree: When several, if not all, actors are LargeHams, so Hilarity Ensues. See for instance Mel Brooks. Note, these are not second rate actors who can't do better, but proper Actors with a script full of Ham.
- Spartoon: a cartoon made on a shoestring budget, where before quality was the norm: scenery is sketchy and repeated, fewer than 25 images are visibly used, all in all it is disappointingly lacking. Tom And Jerry suffered a lot of this after the '50s.
