Young Midwesternernote who mostly edits and creates "playing with" pages for tropes, although I've also become fairly active on the Trope Launch Pad and the forums (especially Yack Fest and the Forum Games) lately. On occasion I'll also expand zero or partial context examples, and I sometimes bring up examples and help out in the cleanup threads when I can. TV Tropes somehow simultaneously ruined and enhanced my life and I owe it all to them.
You can call me by my username or any derivatives of it (Punk, Crow... Punkcrow...), but my name is Tobias, or TJ. You can also write my username with/without a capital letter, it's fine either way.
I have several avatars relating to my interests, though usually, my avatar is of Milo Murphy (the one I typically use is from the episode "School Dance").
In my spare time, I also work on a story called Corvid of the Buckeye State that could often be described as World of Funny Animals meets Fantasy Kitchen Sink. I'm posting it on Toyhouse and Archive of Our Own (you can read it here
). Some of the general tropes for the series are seen in one of the below folders.
I'm also currently working on a Fanfic based on The Owl House.
Self-proclaimed king of inconsistent usernames. You can find the sites I'm on here: https://resite.link/volatilevulture
I'll probably put a "media I like", "tropes I like", and "pet peeve tropes/very situational tropes" section here sometime. Maybe more.
I have a troper wall now, if you wanna come vandalize it! I will try to respond to any entries as soon as possible.
Some notes for games like "Ask the above poster a question":
- Please don't ask me "same question" - I've since started answering my own question (under spoiler text) as well. You can usually ask me a similar question, though.
- I don't necessarily expect you to know everything I'm interested in, but if you're asking me questions about a specific work, I'd generally prefer it if the work was something I've talked about before. It's not a big deal if I end up being unfamiliar with it (I'll just let you know that I don't really know anything about the work), but I felt it was worth mentioning.
- I'll try to answer your question as soon as I can, and to the best of my ability.
- That's about it, really. Otherwise, just use common sense, and have fun!
open/close all folders
Tropes applying to me (WIP)
- Animal Motifs:
- Well, crows and ravens, of course - they're clever animals, and crows are ones I see quite often here in Indiana.
- Vultures are another one I typically associate with myself. I tend to focus on the positive rather than negative aspects of vultures in this case - for example, vultures are resilient, and I feel as if they represent new beginnings.
- Non-human primates, especially monkeys. I'm comical, pretty smart, and (sometimes) mischievous. Helps that my Eastern Zodiac is the monkey (and that I've gotten interested in primatology lately).
- Raccoons, since I stay up late, will eat almost anything, and at times I'm a bit on the sneaky side.
- Author Avatar:
- Since around late 2018-ish, my main mascot (as well as the main character in my series, Corvid of the Buckeye State) has been an anthropomorphic crow named Tobias Kilimnik. Tobias is usually wearing a Plague Doctor's mask, and he's got a lot in common with me, though he is quite a bit younger — he's primarily based on how I was in my early teens.
- To a lesser extent, Mr. Vulture Bones (a zombie/skeleton cowboy vulture with sunflowers growing out of him) has also been a recurring mascot of mine since mid-2021. He's an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who's very much so Affably Evil.
- Another major mascot of mine — who was first designed in late 2023 — is Lazarus Schwarzvogel, who's basically the punk crow himself. He's a leucistic crow who's an experimental / Punk Rock musician, primarily playing guitar and bass.
- In a more general direction, a lot of my characters tend to have at least some of myself in them, especially the more major characters of my series.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: I don't always apply myself as much as I should, especially when it comes to schoolwork. When I do apply myself, though, I'm usually pretty good at it (especially in topics like science and literature).
- Buffy Speak: Especially when I can't think of the words for what I'm trying to say. "You know, this thingy!"
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: I've got an odd sense of humor and I'm definitely not without my quirks, but I do take my work quite seriously when I need to.
- Eyes Always Averted: I can't make direct eye contact with someone for longer than a few seconds at a time. If they really want me to try to look at them, I'll usually end up staring at their forehead or something similar.
- Intergenerational Friendship: I have a lot of friends who are older than me, mainly because they're typically my parents' friends as well. It makes sense when you consider that my parents and I are frequently involved in local theater — something that tends to involve people of varying ages.
- Mistaken for Related:
- One of my mom's friends is commonly mistaken for my dad, something he usually goes with.
- My dad's friend, who's also my godfather, is occasionally mistaken for my grandfather. I've been told that he, my dad, and I went to see a movie together when I was about 5-6, and the person at the ticket booth commented on how cool it was to see the "three generations" watching a movie together.
- Older Than They Look: Despite being 19, I still look about the same as I did when I was 12-15.
- Plague Doctor: One of my common motifs; I own a plague doctor costume that I'm prone to wearing around Halloween in particular, I own some of the plague doctor Squishables, and my Author Avatar is typically drawn wearing a plague doctor mask.
- Signature Headgear: My ball cap which I got during a vacation to Colorado in 2021 — I tend to wear it in public regularly. When it's colder outside, I tend to swap it out for a plaid ushanka-styled hat.
- Sophisticated as Hell: My typical way of speaking. I'm prone to mixing large words and formal/directive terms with Buffy Speak, slang, and profanity/vulgar language.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Sometimes I'm friendly, and sometimes I'm cold and distant. I do genuinely care about those I'm close to, it just isn't very obvious most of the time.
Tropes applying to my art/general story
- Art-Style Dissonance: I have a fairly cartoonish art style and Funny Animals are the characters of my story, but the story itself deals with a lot of mature topics. See Mature Animal Story for more info.
- Animal Gender-Bender: Averted as often as possible - I often look at the differences between male and female individuals of a species before designing a character. One exception to that is a character of mine who is a male calico cat, but even that's a justified example, since he's also transgender.
- Animal Stereotypes: Constantly played with in just about any way possible, regarding my characters and the story they're in. I find animal stereotypes to be a pretty interesting thing to base a character on and then kinda go from there. That being said, this trope is deconstructed occasionally in that "animal stereotypes" are seen as the way that individuals of a species are supposed to be like (also see Fantastic Racism below).
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: My earlier art prominently featured anthropomorphic animals that were otherwise fully dressed, but didn't wear shoes. This is far rarer for me to draw now, but exceptions do exist.
- Either/Or Offspring: Any of the Funny Animals can reproduce with each other - no matter what their species is - but resulting offspring will only be of one species of the parent, which occurs at random. The only way hybrids can occur is if the two species can actually reproduce in real life, or if the hybrid is created through genetic engineering.
- Fantastic Racism: Discrimination based on species exists in this setting to some degree, whether based on a whole class of animals or even just individual species.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: A lot of mythical beings show up in this work. It's typically treated as an Unusually Uninteresting Sight and generally there's no real explanation as to where they came from.
- Four-Fingered Hands: My art style has some influence from a lot of classic cartoons in particular, so the characters are drawn with four-fingered hands. It's a lot easier to draw, too.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Most of the fully-anthropomorphic animals I draw are fully dressed, including footwear.
- Funny Animal: Pretty much the main thing I draw, because I was never really able to draw humans. Also, animals are just more fun to draw.
- Furry Confusion: Non-anthropomorphic animals of all species exist alongside the anthropomorphic animals, although it's stated to be for pretty much the same reasons why humans and primates exist together in the real world. This isn't really possible in real life, but it's best not to think about that too much.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Shows up fairly rarely, but it still occasionally comes up on some of the Civilized Animal / Talking Animal characters that are not fully anthropomorphic, if they aren't a case of Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal.
- Nearly Normal Animal: Some of the non-anthropomorphic animals, such as the stray cat that the protagonist of the story ends up adopting, are given some slight anthropomorphic qualities anyway.
- Mature Animal Story: Well, the art I draw of it tends to be perfectly G-rated most of the time, but the series is rated T on Archive of Our Own for a good reason. There's a fair amount of violence, substance use, swearing, innuendo, and other thematic elements (most notably abuse, grief, kidnapping, and mental health issues). And I plan to ramp it up a bit starting with the currently-in-progress episode 4...
- National Animal Stereotypes: Also pops up occasionally, but there are some particularly odd exceptions (such as a giant panda that's from Russia, and an orangutan that's from Ireland). Some of the straighter examples include a marbled polecat from Ukraine, a snow leopard from Pakistan, two polar bears from Russia, a kangaroo from Australia, and a bald eagle from the United States.
- Seldom-Seen Species: I seem to love this trope. Marbled polecat, bald uakari, cassowary, ludodactylus, quokka, bat-eared fox, olinguito, lionfish, coatimundi, wombat, and saiga antelope are just a few of the many species that show up in my series.
- Species Surname: There are plenty of characters in my story whose surname has something to do with their species. It's often part of their scientific name or genus, but sometimes it'll be a case of A Dog Named "Perro" (e.g. a goose whose surname is Gansnote ), some kind of A Pig Named "Porkchop" (there are two pigs who fit this; one whose surname is Hamhock, and another whose surname is Bacon), sometimes a variant of A Dog Named "Dog" (e.g. a duck whose last name is Mallard), or even A Lizard Named "Liz" (such as a woodpecker whose surname is Birch). Occasionally, A Dog Named "Cat" shows up as well (an opossum whose surname is Wolf is one example).
- Stop Faux-tion: Besides traditional cartoons, my art style also has several influences from Stop Motion animation (for instance, I tend to add some semi-realistic elements to my artwork, which in a lot of cases includes texturing of things like hair, fur, feathers, scales, or clothing). This is mostly because in my early teens, I was - and still am - a huge fan of stop motion films, especially the works of Laika.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Downplayed, because I'm not really a big fan of the more exaggerated versions of this trope, but I do tend to draw female characters with longer eyelashes.
- Toothy Bird: The birds (and other non-toothed animals) I draw tend to have teeth. Even if they aren't drawn with the teeth all the time, they'll usually be of the Sudden Anatomy variant. They might even be species-appropriate (I tend to draw vultures and certain birds of prey with sharp teeth).
- Our Griffins Are Different: One of the main fictional species in my setting. Some of the most common griffins are bird/mammal hybrids created through a lab's attempt to create a griffin from scratch; they're basically multiple donor clones made up of DNA specimens. Given that the vast majority of them are Flawed Prototypes, most of them... didn't turn out quite so well. Many of the "griffins" only have a passing resemblance to the mythical creature, and a fair amount of their designs contain some degree of Body Horror as well.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: I try to avert this, for the most part. A lot of animals that aren't seen as traditionally "cute" (such as opossums, lobsters, hyenas, and vultures) actually have pretty notable and often heroic roles. This is even deconstructed in some cases, such as by showing how some of the "ugly" or "scary" animals exist in a setting that sees them as inferior.
- World of Funny Animals: The series I write takes place in a setting where anthropomorphic animals exist instead of humans. That being said, there are still non-anthropomorphic animals of all species in the setting.
Tropes I've launched:
- Mature Work, Child Protagonists (grabbed)
- Intelligent Primate (loosely based on a discarded one-sentence draft called "Civilized Monkeys")
- Sinister Swine (also added the image caption)
- Police Pig (also added the image caption)
- Animal Occupation Stereotypes
- Abuse Discretion Shot
Tropes I suggested images for:
- Werewolves Are Dogs (from TLP)
- Resentful Outnumbered Sibling (from TLP; indirectly, reused from the old Outnumbered Sibling trope)
- Busy Beaver (from TLP)
- Cartoon Penguin (from TLP)
- Snowy Sabertooths (from TLP; also added the image caption)
- Silly Simian (from IP)
- Ball-Balancing Seal (from TLP)
- Innocent Awkward Question (from TLP; also added the image caption)
- File Photo Gag (from TLP; also added the image caption)
Tropes I suggested renames for:
- Assuming the Audience's Age (from TLP; originally "Assuming Your Age")
- Middle School Is Miserable (from TLP; originally "Middle School Sucks")
- Better Export for You (from TLP; originally "Good Export For You")
- Disowned Parent (from TLP; originally "I Have No Parent!")
- Meme Role Reprise (from TLP; originally "Voice Actor Shitpost")
- Constantly Spells Their Name (from TLP; originally "T-I-Double-Guh-Er Syndrome")
Tropes I suggested quotes for:
- Electricity Knocks You Out (from TLP; suggested after finding a direct quote from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
- Fell Asleep Driving (from TLP)
- High School Tropes (from TLP)
- Clothes for Christmas Cringe (from TLP, also expanded the description)
- Perverted Pig
- Hated Item Makeover (from TLP)
- Horrific Holiday [1] (from TLP)
- Couldn't Find a Tissue (from TLP)
- Character’s Most Hated Song (from TLP)
Other contributions:
- Cowardice Callout (Suggested changing the name to "Calling Them Out on Their Cowardice", though ultimately the name was shortened, and suggested changing the definition to something more along the lines of "The Reason You Suck" Speech instead of merely calling someone a coward)
- Suspicious Ski Mask (Proposed changing the name to its current title, as well as suggesting changing the definition to when criminals or people mistaken for criminals wear ski masks. Original definition was pretty much "when someone wears a ski mask".)
- Mistaken For Drunk (grabbed for a while and edited the definition) [2]
- Animal Goes to School (image caption added based on an image suggestion I had when the trope was still in TLP)
