Trope Description Improvement Drive

... Trope Talk.

So, I start a new thread?

Yes.

Opened.

I remember back then, I only got help from that guy called crazysamaritan to rewrite a trope... Darn it, forgot the name.

The point is, I wasn't held back by any kind of bureaucracy beyond this thread.

There's a difference between fixing a trope description to better describe the actual trope, and unilaterally trying to expand a trope by changing the description with little consensus. The second one has never been acceptable- I don't know what trope you worked on here with Crazysamaritan, but I'm not being bureaucratic. I'm being blunt about how this is supposed to work.

If the trope doesn't currently include mockery, we can't just rewrite the description to expand it, unless people agree it's a good idea.

I agree. If the examples don't fit the definition given, then the examples are the problem, and the trope needs Trope Talk at best and TRS at worst.

Edit: I posted in the Trope Talk thread, particularly because of the discussed overlap with Would You Like to Hear How They Died? and the overly long Example as a Thesis.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 20th 2019 at 5:15:52 AM

Compensated Dating opens by describing it as "A recent development in modern Japan". We shouldn't be calling things recent, but I don't know what to change it to.

Maybe "A phenomenon occuring in Japan since the late 20th century" (there's an example from Ranma ½, so I think it comes from that time period)? I'm not sure if I would call it a development, though I'm not sure if I would call it a phenomenon either.

Edited by Piterpicher on Nov 25th 2019 at 4:09:51 PM

"Phenomenon," which is relatively value-neutral, strikes me as a better word than "development," which carries slight positive connotations.

If one cares to be as pedantic as possible, which I usually do.

We'll go with that, then.

e: ... Oh, it's locked. Well, to the locked pages thread.

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Nov 25th 2019 at 8:55:09 AM

I agree with Piterpicher's suggestion.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 25th 2019 at 1:44:09 PM

Are we also fixing laconics here? The one from Coitus Ensues is wrong as it describes Next Thing They Knew. Coitus Ensues is for sex scenes that halt the plot without any narrative merit.

- We have the Laconic Description Improvement thread for Laconics.

Wondering if we should link Dream Melody and Orphan's Plot Trinket 'cause I just scrubbed an entry of the latter for being the former.

Edited by Malady on Nov 30th 2019 at 6:59:43 AM

Angry Dance contains the sentence "Almost always Narm, and fabulously so."

I get what they're getting at, but we shouldn't be putting YMMV potholes in trope descriptions. Maybe something more like "Almost always played for Bathos"?

Ymmv stuff can be put in the description if they're related somehow to the trope.

That said, the wording used there assumes that "if it's played, the particular ymmv stuff will occur". Yeah, there are issues with that.

Pardon My Klingon is unpleasant to read. All the alien cuss words in the body are like a Sir Swears-a-Lot, and add to it the fact that each one is a pothole to the work it originates from, and it’s just a mess.

People seriously need to stop with this "let's make it sorta self-demonstrating" thing, IMO.

I think in this case no one thought toquestion it because of the Grandfather Clause.

I disagree.

They can be confusing sometimes, but I'd rather have us still keeping our fun spirit than becoming dry.

Of course, if the issue is "it's gone too far" then we can simply readjust it.

I actually agree that Pardon My Klingon's description is kind of hard to read; the self-demonstrating aspect ruins the text's flow for me. I'm fine with moving it to SelfDemonstrating.Pardon My Klingon and trimming the Main/ page's description.

I do not have an issue with Pardon My Klingon's intelligibility, and it seems consistent with a spirit of fun (a good thing).

This might be too much to ask, but I want to propose to add one other form of Muggle Power: "If you can't be them, enslave them!" I believe it fits the theme of "muggle supremacy" like the other forms listed there.

As that form is covered by Superhuman Trafficking and Mutant Draft Board (so they're subtropes to this), adding new examples isn't necessary.

What do you guys think?

I guess Pardon My Klingon's self-demonstration isn't the worst I've seen, and after thinking about it further, I suppose it's tame compared to a lot of cases. The "honor" of the worst I've seen belongs to a previous incarnation of Hostile Show Takeover's description (which was moved to SelfDemonstrating.Hostile Show Takeover), whose joke went on too long before actually defining the trope.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 7th 2019 at 7:27:00 AM

So, Beautiful Slave Girl is a girl growing up as a slave, so Born into Slavery should crosswick I assume...

Edited by Malady on Dec 7th 2019 at 5:49:21 AM