Trope Description Improvement Drive

Half of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits is dedicated to why is can be a Justified Trope, is this really needed?

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 17th 2021 at 10:04:33 PM

Nope. It's making the description too bloated for no reason, and honestly most of these are just a list of the ways this trope gets played in fiction. We already have the Playing With page for that.

Any way / need to rephrase the list into a single paragraph?

Heroic Second Wind has the same issue.

Trapped by Mountain Lions has this paragraph that doesn't make a whole lot of sense for an Audience Reaction:

Like we kinda get the "people sometimes think a subplot is irrelevant when it's not" idea but this is just a completely incoherent way to say it.

The third paragraph is also a lengthy description of the Trope Namer, which seems redundant with the example in the example list.

LOL, 69 has a note at the end of its stinger explaining where the joke came from. Is it necessary? I'm pretty sure most people could estimate that "nice" in this context means "haha nice sex joke."

I mean, TIL. I've always actually wondered what the specific source of that particular response (as opposed to equally valid things like "ha" or "lol") was.

Edited by nrjxll on Oct 21st 2021 at 4:15:59 AM

...and definitely not the French city of Nice.

Fun fact: the association between the number 69 and sex originated in France, but not necessarily in the city of Nice.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Oct 21st 2021 at 10:58:21 AM

The description of Living MacGuffin implies it involves a person. It should probably mention the use of animals as Living MacGuffins somewhere, as its laconic page and the MacGuffin index suggest living things in general are included in the trope. Can the description be broadened, or does it need to go through the Trope Repair Shop first?

Edited by N1KF on Oct 22nd 2021 at 2:20:58 PM

Impossibly Delicious Food has a sentence with five chained sinkholes.

Could someone explain what the functional difference is between Ancient Evil and Eternal Villain? Eternal Villain is a new trope, with a throwaway line about some Eternal Villains becoming an Ancient Evil, but since both tropes focus on ancient evils that continually exist, the throw-away line doesn't do nearly enough to set up either a true distinction or a true trope relationship if there is a distinction. It almost seems like an afterthought. It also rejects Orcus on His Throne eternal/ancient villains from being eligible, but doesn't truly explain why OOHT is a disqualifying factor — mainly because it doesn't do enough to properly establish what it's trying to define and describe in the first place (not in a way that's distinct from Ancient Evil, at any rate).

My gut feeling is that there probably is an Eternal Villain trope to be had, as a sub-trope of Ancient Evil, if the description and trope relationships are properly pinned down. For now, however, the Eternal Villain has a very poor description and definition, and very poor trope relationships. It also had no discussion in the draft about the quality of the description or trope relationships (just three comments suggesting examples and one comment suggesting a reference to Eternal Hero be added).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 23rd 2021 at 10:19:57 AM

Ancient Evil is Really 700 Years Old villain that Precursor Heroes may have encountered and they've never been heard since, until the present. Eternal Villain is an enemy of Legacy Characters or different continuities, they may not be old, but they cause trouble for more than one generation of heroes.

Since Eternal Villain is new, it may need a description check, if I even understood the intent correctly, it may not be distinguishable enough.

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 23rd 2021 at 12:26:01 PM

It doesn't help that the first paragraph is clearly cribbed from Eternal Hero. However, Eternal Hero also has a problem: the first paragraph divorces itself from King in the Mountain only to state at the end of the description that it's a super-trope of King in the Mountain. It can't do both.

So, Eternal Villain seems to have set itself up from the outset to be very confused about its purpose and relationship to existing tropes.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 23rd 2021 at 11:50:52 AM

For some reason, the description The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask has a lot of rambling about how the ruler's womanliness is a key gender dynamic to the trope to demonstrate the allure of a secretly lonely and vulnerable girl hidden behind the cold and seemingly unattainable sovereign, but how important is this to the trope, actually?

A lot of the examples don't really discuss about the "necessary" gender dynamic and focuses more on how the characters must put on a tough and brave front because that's what leaders do.

Should the description be rewritten to remove the "gender dynamic" part? Currently, the description reads like an unnecessary gushing over a particular female archetype, with lines such as "It would also make her less alluringly lonely," or "Who wouldn't love to make her laugh, and keep her company in her leader's loneliness?".

Honestly, that almost sounds to me like a case for TRS. Because on the one hand, yeah, that stuff isn't at all present in many of the examples, but on the other hand, it seems to be the only major part of the description offering a reason for why the trope is Always Female as opposed to something like "Mask Of Leadership". It's... confusing.

I am pretty sure that Screwed by the Lawyers is about any legal matter that hinders or ceases the production of sumfin', including, but not limited to, intellectual property matters. The description focuses a lot on IP issues, however.

It can be moved to an analysis page.

Edited by selkies on Oct 28th 2021 at 1:18:48 PM

I mean, if the gender dynamic is actually necessary to the trope, then it should probably remain in the main description.

Redirected from here. Become a Real Boy's description has too much overlap with Pinocchio Syndrome and could be rephrased to cut the motive (Pinocchio Syndrome) and focus on how that happens.

Also bumping about Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and Heroic Second Wind, should I cut the lists from the description?

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 29th 2021 at 8:17:16 PM

I agree, Pinocchio Syndrome should be about the psychological process, and Become a Real Boy about the actual event. That also allows for situations where the former trope only becomes into play after someone or something has been turned into a human.

Regarding Heroic Second Wind, the long list isn't necessary, but it has some useful wicks. If you have time to rewrite it into a paragraph (or two), then please do.

Face-Design Shield's description is so short it could very serve as its' Laconic as well.

Reposting from Is This An Example because this makes more sense here:

How long does a Long List have to be? Is it like Massive Numbered Siblings, where it's at least 5 items?

Same for an Overly Long Name and Long Title? Again, I've been working with them as >=5 words, but that's just me?

Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000 has by far the worst opening paragraphs I've ever seen for a trope. Potholes to specific games all across the intro that's wreaking of Fan Myopia (for instance, Bulletstorm is gushed about as having "style", when I'm like "literally what the hell is Bulletstorm?") This smug sentence starts paragraph 2: "Also, the names for these types of video games on TV tend to be rather unimaginative and generic with names such as "ACTION KILLTACULAR DEATHMOWER 5000" or simply "The Decimator", when in real life, they're often much shorter, punchier, sophisticated, and clever, like Doom, Half-Life, Halo, and Quake." I can say a lot of nice words about all of those games, "sophisticated" is not one of them. In general it seems really lionizing of violent video games, for example this sentence: "Very often, if the game is portrayed in a negative light, it can be a case of Do Not Do This Cool Thing for any actual gamers in the audience." - falling into that old (debatably dated) stereotype that all real gamers love bloody gorefest games, anyone who doesn't are No True Scotsman.

We're also thinking about working on this trope in TRS but that's neither here nor there.

Edited by MissConduct on Nov 7th 2021 at 3:04:19 PM

So the Trope Talk discussion for The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask leans towards keeping the Always Female aspect of the trope, but I still think it needs to be rewritten to make it less creepily gushy.

Credit to Wyldchyld for clarifying what this trope is supposed to be about, and whose post I partially used to write this description.

Edited by Adept on Nov 8th 2021 at 2:27:29 AM

The description of Deadly Graduation is about "assassin trainees, There Can Be Only One". Then near the end a vague a paragraph about killing a tied up animal as a test, which doesn't really connect with the rest of the page. I think the description could describe two cases in more detail, since the page already has these as examples: killing an outsider in a controlled environment as an "exam", and fighting your teacher as an "exam".