Young Midwesternernote who mostly edits and creates "playing with" pages for tropes, although I've also become fairly active on the Trope Launch Pad lately. 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. My profile pictures on this site are typically pictures of crows or ravens, which I'll switch out every now and then, but expect it to be Khonshu on occasion.
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.
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.
open/close all folders
Tropes applying to me (WIP)
- Animal Motifs:
- Well, crows and ravens, of course - they're clever animals, and 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).
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 Bilingual Bonus (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 A Lizard Named "Liz". 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).
- 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
Unlaunched tropes I'm working on:
- Mistaken For Drunk (grabbed) [1]
- Other than that, I have a few ideas brewing!
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)
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!")
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
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".)
