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
You read my mind... ahem. Only leaving the tropes that are essentially actiony and girly is absolutely something I'm for. Your list seems about right. I'm not 100% sure about Female Fighter, Male Handler, since only one half of the duo is a girl, but I'm not kicking any shins because of it.
Awesome! Before I trim the index, where should the other tropes in the list go, if they shouldn't be deleted?
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Maybe keep them under a "Related tropes" header that is not indexed?
Trailblazer of old tropes. (She/her)So on Getting Eaten Is Harmless, there's this bit in the description:
This may result in explosive indigestion. When the hero himself simply proves to be inedible, it's Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth.
Any suggestions what should be done? Cut it, rewrite it, move it back to Swallowed Whole, leave it be? This is the entry that removed it
and the associated troper added it to the other page
and it appears to have been done unilaterally; there is a discussion
but it makes no mention of moving the paragraphs, only clarifying fatality.
Just sorted out Action Girl: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Main.ActionGirl&page=8#edit45279162
The description for Crime of Self-Defense includes the following paragraph:
"Also, similar to the before mentioned double-standard, it's much easier for a woman to win a self-defence claim than it is for a man, especially when the attacker was male, both in real life and in fiction. This is because women tend to get more sympathy than men and courts will often instinctively want to give the woman the benefit of the doubt (due to their naive belief that Females Are More Innocent). For example, a woman who kills her abusive husband can get acquitted if she can convince the court of how terrified for her safety she was. Meanwhile, if you're a man who kills his abusive wife for the same reason, good luck with trying to get the court on your side."
The Real Life aspect of this claim does not seem to be based in fact
, at least in the US and the UK
. According to statistics from the ACLU
, "The average prison sentence of men who kill their female partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced on average to 15 years, despite the fact that most women who kill their partners do so to protect themselves from violence initiated by their partners".
Edited by MonaNaito on Aug 23rd 2025 at 12:42:08 PM
fwiw the Crime of Self-Defense example was added in one edit
back in 2022 (with a few tweaks since then). is it still worth it to send a notifier?
I prefer to not sent notifiers for something that happened over 9 months ago.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupBumping again
as it's been several more days.
I agree it fits Swallowed Whole better. Is there a reason why it was removed?
There was no provided reason; I already mentioned it was done unilaterally. The paragraph was there, then one day someone just... moved it without an edit reason. The only bit of attempted discussion — done by the same troper two weeks prior — makes no mention of this being the intended change, only really saying "distinguish it from Getting Eaten Is Harmless by saying this trope is only in effect if the eating is fatal" and that they'd implement it if there was no protest, then it got one "protest" comment a few months later
. Removing entire paragraphs and moving them to another article certainly doesn't sound like clarifying fatality.
Evil Reactionary ends with:
No Real Life Examples, Please! Otherwise, we'd just say "every fascist who ever was" and be done with it.
That's... misleading. Whatever "fascism" is these days (I honestly have no idea what this word even means now, it's mostly used as an insult), it didn't use to be about nostalgia gone mad (which is the core of the trope). Cut the last sentence?
Edited by Veanne on Sep 1st 2025 at 8:17:28 AM
Maybe this:
Edited by petersohn on Sep 1st 2025 at 5:21:49 PM
Fjón þvæ ég af mér fjanda minna rán og reiði ríkra manna.![]()
Ehh, kinda? The idea that society has "degenerated" in some way and needs fascism to purge it of the undesirable elements of modernity or progressivism that led it astray is a fairly common fascist sentiment. This isn't new to the definition of the word; "fascism is reaction" is a quote attributed to Mussolini.
The sentence doesn't particularly need to be there (it could be moved higher in the description instead, there's a bit that already mentions the trope in relation to Nazis) but it's not inaccurate.
Edited by MonaNaito on Sep 1st 2025 at 1:27:53 PM
As said, reactionary was always "reaction" to perceived progress to turn the clock back to how it was "before", contrasting conservative which was about freezing the clock at how it was (current discourse destroyed political vocabulary).
Fascism is reactionary by nature. It was born as a reaction to the Red Years, two years of constant protests, strikes, and great growth for the left-wing parties in Italy. It always aims to "restore the past".
To say fascism lost meaning is one of the most wrong things I've read in a while. No, fascist hasn't become an insult. They're very much around, to the point they're back in governments (including Italy, much to my chagrin)
Edited by GearFriedTheKnight on Sep 1st 2025 at 7:40:40 PM
''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."Whether the there are actual fascists in government, or it's primary used as an insult or whatever is not the topic of this thread and in fact is among the banned topics of the forum. That being said, the trope in question doesn't disallow real life examples because fascists would appear in the example list, or even be the primary item in said list. It's disallowed because categorizing real people as heroes or villains is against the wiki rules.
Fjón þvæ ég af mér fjanda minna rán og reiði ríkra manna.I would note that, while fascism is reactionary by nature, there are and have been quite a lot of reactionary viewpoints and political systems before the development of fascism in the early-mid 1900s, and there are still plenty of reactionary movements that aren't fascistic.
(Broadly, I'd characterize fascism as a movement based on a rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, statism, glorification of militarism, action, and obedience, and xenophobia — reactionarism is only one element.)
So on that basis, while the sentence isn't wrong, it also misleading by acting like a broad category ("evil reactionarism") and one subset of that category ("fascism") are synonymous.
Yes - two groups of people may overlap, but that doesn't make them one group (same for groups of beliefs).
I'd say petersohn's proposition is the best - simple, to the point, no pesky definition problems. This is not a political discussion site, this is a fiction discussion site. Which doesn't allow calling people villains.
Summing it up, the "fascist" sentence is kind of a landmine. It sits there quietly until someone steps on it and then there's a huge mess and torn off legs flying. This is why I'd cut it.
Yeah, let's change it to the catch-all "as a morality trope, No Real Life Examples please," as petersohn suggested.
A few weeks ago, I brought Police State up in TRS
because of a description mismatch — specifically, it talks about an oppressive police force rather than a police state as the term is commonly understood — and, after a while, was directed to bring it up in this thread, instead. I figure that its description should be changed to reflect the usage of the trope (i.e. an oppressive state where the government uses the police in an invasive, totalitarian manner) and perhaps expanded.

My thoughts, from the existing list:
Thoughts?
EDIT: Pagetopper, suggestions for paring down the list of Action Girl subtropes. I removed character archetypes which aren't necessarily combat focused, and incidental tropes like Kicking Ass in All Her Finery.
Edited by Azorius24 on Aug 21st 2025 at 7:22:44 PM
"The only thing which is certain, is that something will happen".