What it says in the title. EDIT: Link to auxiliary sandbox page
Some trope descriptions suffer from problems. Some possible ones:
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!. A paragraph starts explaining element X of the trope, then it wanders off to explain element Y. Two paragraphs after that we're back at element X again. Nary a conjunction is in sight.
- Too long. Stuff that should go in analysis, or maybe in another trope, or maybe nowhere, going in the main space. Too much scrolling required before you can get to the examples.
- Fan Myopia. Some "this is how it happens in WRESTLING!" dissertation is taking up half of the page on a trope about white t-shirts. We already have a thread on that one
- discussion about the general phenomenon goes there, specific candidates to deal with go here.
- General lack of balance and order. Something is emphasized at the expense of the other aspects of the trope, even though it has no right to be. Consequences of the trope come first, then related tropes, then a mention of the Trope Codifier, then common scenarios where it comes into play...
- Failure to answer the fundamental question up front: What is this trope? Not what it "might" be or what can "possibly" happen - what is it?
- Not enough meat. Juicy stuff is missing, like: When is the trope likely to turn up? Why would an author use it? In what ways does the audience often react? Which tropes are related to it and how?
- Spelling and grammar issues.
- The first line which makes honest-to-god sense is below the fold. e.g. Example as a Thesis that makes you go "huh?" instead of "ooooh".
- Bad Writing. Purple Prose, pitching the trope, Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma.
- Egregiously Fan-Myopic quote.
- Jaywalking.
Bring up trope pages here so we can work on them. If no one does in a while, I'll try to dig something up.
edited 22nd Sep '11 10:48:59 AM by TripleElation
It probably needs a separate thread, sandbox what'll be reworded and what the content of the analysis page will be, and then switch out and close the thread project thread.
That's my thought on the matter, anyway.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.The closest thread to discuss this is the Ensembles Cleanup thread
. We can go there.
Edited by alnair20aug93 on Aug 1st 2023 at 3:29:13 AM
ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔So I heard that the description for Hotter and Sexier needs a rewrite due to being to bash-y. Here’s a proposed rewrite:
How does it look?
She/Her | Currently cleaning: N/ALight Feminine and Dark Feminine
This doesn't seem to make sense. I looked in the history and it used to say:
The TLP draft
says the same thing.
It was changed in 2015, apparently unilaterally. If there's no objection, I'd like to change it back.
Looks like it, thought that could be a mouthful to bring back the original; Make it shorter and sweeter.
ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔New-Age Retro Hippie has a lot of interesting historical discussion about actual hippies, but it's rather bloated. Does anyone else think this would be better suited for an Analysis subpage?
Offscreen Inertia's description is a rambling mess that goes into some weirdly detailed analysis of specific works and genres, wedged in between lists of a ridiculous number and variety of allegedly related tropes.
Jesus how does a description like that get so bloated?Reminds me of Commie-Nazis description
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverWeird Sun has this section in its description.
- The Sun appears much larger in the sky than it does in real life.
- Sun in fiction sometimes has visible rays. In real life, sunray-like effect can exist with a phenomenon called Tyndall effect. However, in fiction, rays can be present in various ways:
- They're sector-like and cover the whole sky.
- They're triangular and only extend within a short distance from the sun, making it have a bit of spiky appearance.
- They have solid lines as rays, often black-colored. Also known as Solrads.
- They leave only a few yellow or yellow-white rays even in places where the air is clear.
- The Sun is plain yellow or orange-yellow even when it's high in the sky and showing it doesn't cause eye irritation.
- It's getting darker already when the Sun is starting to go down to the horizon instead of getting dark some time after setting, even when it's not very cloudy.
- Solar eclipses in fiction are never partial.
- The Sun (and other celestial bodies) are shown to move from right to left in shows set in the Northern Hemisphere. This happens most often when stock footage of a sunset is played backwards to show a sunrise.
- It has a face and may talk.
- It wears sunglasses
I'd like to change or remove the bullet points about solar eclipses (that's its own trope, and the sun is not weird because it doesn't do something unusual) and moving from right to left (because in space no one can agree on which directions are "right" and "left")
More generally, however, the page describes itself as a subtrope of Artistic License – Space, but I think it's inheriting the problem Artistic License pages often have of becoming a way to nitpick about Acceptable Breaks from Reality, and I'd argue that it's at least as much a subtrope of Alien Sky, where the sun is weird as an indication that the setting is not Like Reality, Unless Noted and therefore no artistic license applies. Weird Moon shares this problem, too.
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOEdited by Amonimus on Aug 15th 2023 at 1:23:09 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupIt does:
"Generally, only nigh Omnipresent Tropes, Acceptable Breaks from Reality or No Straight Examples, Please! tropes should have aversions listed as examples. If a work simply doesn't use a trope, it is by definition not an example of the trope."
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWanted to replace the second of Shoot Out the Lock with this.
While there is some Truth in Television here, it requires a high-powered gun at close range, which causes lots of very dangerous shrapnel. Weaker firearms, mainly pistols, are ineffective against standard padlocks, though fiction tends to overlook that.
I don't have anything against the MythBusters reference but it ruins the flow of the overhauled version.
^ That's fine to me.
Do we need the advisory notice on Sarcastic Confession? There's a lot of tropes that would be a bad idea to do in real life and the note just takes me out of the description. I don't see why a warning would be needed.
Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 18th 2023 at 8:35:49 AM
Macron's notesI'd like to change or remove the bullet points about solar eclipses (that's its own trope, and the sun is not weird because it doesn't do something unusual) and moving from right to left (because in space no one can agree on which directions are "right" and "left")
More generally, however, the page describes itself as a subtrope of Artistic License – Space, but I think it's inheriting the problem Artistic License pages often have of becoming a way to nitpick about Acceptable Breaks from Reality, and I'd argue that it's at least as much a subtrope of Alien Sky, where the sun is weird as an indication that the setting is not Like Reality, Unless Noted and therefore no artistic license applies. Weird Moon shares this problem, too.
I agree with nearly all of that. I don't agree that it's a subtrope of Alien Sky because Alien Sky is explicitly a trope about cluing the characters (and the audience) into the fact that they're are no longer on Earth... and if they are on Earth then something deeply screwy is going on (such as it being a different dimension or timeline or they've time travelled into the future, and so on). A Weird Sun is often normal for the characters, so it won't always overlap with Alien Sky.
It might be worth adding a sentence to end saying something along the lines of "See Total Eclipse of the Plot for when it's an eclipse that's unusual" or similar. I agree that these tropes might all need a better overhaul in the long run.
I'm also not sure about the sentence that says "Unlike Weird Moon, the occurrence of these is rarer, except in animations where they're more common." This is basically saying "it's rarer than Weird Moon, except when it's not". I get what it's trying to say, but it could probably be worded better than that.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 19th 2023 at 10:21:36 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Mmm, I phrased that ambiguously without meaning to - I don't think Weird Sun is necessarily a subtrope of either Alien Sky or Artistic License – Space - but the emphasis in Alien Sky is also on signalling the audience that the work is not set on Earth. The trope should apply whether any of the characters are outsiders or not, the same as the classic overheard-background-anomalies trope Zeppelins from Another World.
(The paragraph that mentions character reactions is questionable anyway because I don't think there's any special relationship between Alien Sky and Arbitrary Skepticism, but I digress.)
I also question whether Weird Sun actually is any more common than Weird Moon - the page just seems to be focusing on cartoon suns being inaccurate, over discussing any reasons why cartoon suns are stylised.
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NO

we're not cutlisting anything!We need to agree on what parts of the description need to be overhauled,we might need a separate thread yet
have a listen and have a link to my discord server