Trope Description Improvement Drive

That's a great description, HMHC.

A month ago, I made a post here about Dark Messiah's description, and the discussion resulted in a Trope Talk Thread for Dark Messiah being created. I eventually made Sandbox.Dark Messiah Description Clean Up for 3 reasons: there were no objections in the Trope Talk thread to my proposal, 2 other tropers supported it, and while we seem to have agreed on Dark Messiah's definition^note Villain or Anti-Villain that presents themselves as a savior and preaches about creating a utopia, the description still needs to be cleaned up. I thought I'd bring up the sandbox here since this thread is about improving trope descriptions.

I did a quick-and-dirty rewrite of the Impractical Musical Instrument Skills description, all two (previously one!) lines of it.

Musicians who want to gain some fame or notoriety for their skills have a few options on how to go about it. Some spend a lifetime perfecting their skills at their preferred instrument, becoming among the best and most respected players in the world. Others take the path of songcraft, writing tunes that capture the hearts of listeners for decades to come...or at least long enough to be the summer's hot fad. Still others obtain fame through unusual circumstances, such as being a very young child prodigy at their chosen instrument.

Others, however, take the route of showmanship. They may or may not be supremely skilled musicians or songwriters, but they're a lot of fun to watch. Some become great performers via their charisma and stage presence, others through their ability to connect to the audience, and others through coming up with bizarre, creative, entertaining ways of playing their instruments. The latter category is our focus here.

Impractical Musical Instrument Skills describes nonstandard methods of playing an instrument in order to entertain the audience. This generally translates to various Cool, but Inefficient ways of playing, such as holding an instrument in an unusual manner or using it to produce sound in unusual ways.

While the sky's the limit with this trope, some of its more common manifestations include playing guitar behind one's head (or with their teeth) and playing piano with body parts other than one's hands. Naturally, Impractical Instrument Playing Skills very rarely constitute a musician's primary method of performing; they're awkward and impractical by nature and actually make the instrument more difficult to play. But that's also the point — this is less about music and more about showmanship. It wouldn't be memorable or particularly entertaining if it was common or easy to do.

May overlap with Artistic License – Music if the playing techniques aren't actually possible in real life. See also Everything Is an Instrument for the use of non-musical items in making music.

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab on Sep 29th 2020 at 7:54:16 AM

I want to add to Orwellian Retcon that for video games with online connection, patches make the trope easier to do in modern times.

What do you think?

That's absurd. Changes made in video game updates are not an attempt to erase history by brainwashing the populace.

Orwellian Retcon isn't that thing you said either.

it's about retconning the story, right? I know of an example where a game patch rewrote an early game story.

I suppose it can fit for a video game when a later patch changes the story.

Yes, Orwellian Retcon is about changing canon by changing the text of the existing work. Video game patches do indeed facilitate this; instead of having to republish and redistribute, the work can be modified on the user's system. The use of the word "Orwellian" is not here meant to imply "an attempt to erase history by brainwashing the populace".

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Sep 29th 2020 at 3:20:37 AM

Creative Sterility sounds more like "X can't think of anything new"...

Laconic and Description both talk about biological sterility, but I'm not seeing that much in the examples...

And I'm looking for the trope of Artificial Humans being unable to biologically reproduce.

This sentence in Eyeless Face's description seems a bit ROCEJ-violating.

More importantly, we as human beings normally use eye contact to connect with others on an emotional level (with a few exceptions).

Can I remove it? As an autistic person, I find this generalizing and a bit dehumanizing.

Edited by ccorb on Oct 2nd 2020 at 6:51:36 AM

As an autistic person, I also think that's dehumanizing and can be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Well, at least get rid of the link to The Rainman. As for the rest, it's basically true, right?

I reworded it as this:

More importantly, it is said that eyes are Windows of the Soul, so intuitively it is impossible to connect with something/someone that has no eyes.

The description for Secret Handshake seems to say that the trope is only handshakes used as passcodes for secret organizations and stuff. In reality, the trope (and examples listed on the page) seems to more about the elaborateness of the handshakes than the secrecy and can also include the kind of elaborate handshakes best friends come up with.

So, I feel like rewriting the description to include those. I havent actually come with what to put down specifically, but I feel like in this case the desc. slightly contradicts the trope.

Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 3rd 2020 at 1:23:41 AM

I think it's more "secret" because only a few close friends would know it.

I think it's okay to mention that most people use eye contact for communication and leave it at that. And yes, no Rainman references, please. If only we could scrub that work from the face of the planet...

I asked a on ATT that I've decided to bring here.

Triggered by a specific work that seems to be just listing any change in decision that was made during the creation process of a work (see Trivia.RWBY for just how long this section is getting), I'm wondering where this trope starts and ends for listing examples of changes that were made in the creative process.

The ATT thread suggested that if there's any change at all, it counts. My question is therefore... is this trope too broad? Given the creative process, every single work should have the potential to overwhelm the trope page (or Trivia pages) with so many examples that it potentially just becomes a meaningless list.

Am I missing something or is there a clarification that's needed?

Edited to add: Sorry, the trope was What Could Have Been.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 11th 2020 at 6:01:21 PM

What trope?

- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=92803&type=att

What Could Have Been

RWBY, I think is a special case, because we have so much info that normally isn't released.

If it's big enough to form a WhatCouldHaveBeen.RWBY, as a troper, I'm not opposed to the idea.

Eh, I don't mind either.

You're probably concerned that there's just too many examples in RWBY, but yeah, the best you can do is to make a separate page to list them.

Edited by 4tell0life4 on Oct 3rd 2020 at 9:04:54 AM

The description for Almost Famous Name is 1 sentence and 1 see-also, and it is too specific compared to the Laconic.

Any comments on my suggested revamp of Gag Lips?

Oh yeah, it's pretty good, sorry for not saying anything about it, but if you'd check the Gag Lips page, I've already implemented it.