Note: If a newly launched trope was already given a No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only designation while it was being drafted on the Trope Launch Pad, additions to the proper index do not need to go through this thread. Instead, simply ask the mods to add the trope via this thread
.
This is the thread to report tropes with problematic Real Life sections.
Common problems include:
- Conversation on the Main Page
- Flame Bait
- Squicky content
- Impossible in Real Life
Real Life sections on the wiki are kept as long as they don't become a problem. If you find an article with such problems, report it here. Please note that the purpose of this thread is to clean up and maintain real life sections, not raze them. Cutting should be treated as a last resort, so please only suggest cutting RL sections or a subset thereof you think the examples in question are completely unsalvageable.
If historical RL examples are not causing any problems, consider whether it would be better to propose a No Recent Examples, Please! (via this forum thread) for RL instead of NRLEP. If RL examples are causing problems only for certain subjects, consider whether a Limited Real Life Examples Only restriction would be preferable to NRLEP.
If you think a trope should be No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only, then this thread is the place to discuss it. However, please check Keep Real Life Examples first to see if it has already been brought up in the past. If not, state the reasons and add it to the crowner.
Before adding to the crowner:
- The trope should be proposed in the thread, along with reasons for why a crowner is necessary instead of a cleanup.
- There must be support from others in thread.
- Any objections should be addressed.
- Allow a minimum of 24 hours for discussion.
When adding to the crowner:
- Be sure to add the trope name, a link to where the discussion started, the reasons for crownering, whether the restriction being proposed is NRLEP or LRLEO (and in the latter case, which subject(s) the restriction would be for), and the date added.
- Announce in thread that you are adding the item.
- An ATT advert should be made as well (batch items together if more than one trope goes up in a day).
In order for a crowner to pass:
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- There must be a 2:1 ratio
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
- Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP index
- Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page
Sex Tropes, Rape and Sexual Harassment Tropes, and Morality Tropes are banned from having RL sections so tropes under those indexes don't need crowner vote.
Crowner entries that have already been called will have "(CLOSED)" appended to them — and are no longer open for discussion.
After bringing up a trope for discussion, please wait at least a day for feedback before adding it to the crowner.
NRLEP tag:
%% Trope was declared Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: [crowner link]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
LRLEO tag:
%% Trope was declared Administrivia/LimitedRealLifeExamplesOnly via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: [crowner link]
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
Notes:
- This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take those conversations to this Wiki Talk thread.
- Do not try to overturn previous No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only decisions without a convincing argument.
- As mentioned here, the consensus is that NRLEP warnings in trope page descriptions can use bold text so that they stand out.
- The [[noreallife]] tag doesn't currently work. This is a deprecated tag that was introduced many years ago — originally, it would have displayed a NRLEP warning banner when you edited the page. However, there's been some staff conversation (Feb 2024) about what a new technical solution might look like, so we'd advise against deleting these from pages, at least until we have a decision as to whether it'll be fixed or replaced.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 8th 2024 at 10:49:13 AM
mightymewtron
Angry babby
from New New York
Since: Oct, 2012
Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Angry babby
#11777: Jul 8th 2022 at 1:07:16 PM
A real-life Calvinball example would have to be an instance of a real-life game that explicitly has no rules (or where the rules aren't revealed to the audience). Maybe such a thing exists, but none of those examples qualify as such. They're just weird games.
Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 8th 2022 at 4:07:59 AM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Redmess
#11778: Jul 8th 2022 at 1:12:16 PM
Presumably some children's games are effectively this, but I don't see why it would be worth mentioning.
Optimism is a duty.
bwburke94
Friends forevermore
from uǝʌɐǝɥ
Since: May, 2014
Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
Friends forevermore
#11779: Jul 8th 2022 at 7:34:51 PM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'm aware of one, but it's tradition not to take its name in vain.
MissConduct
(Lucky 7)
#11780: Jul 10th 2022 at 7:09:09 AM
Noticing Faux Action Girl, which is a characterization trope (and a complaining magnet to boot), although it doesn't have any RL examples isn't officially NRLEP. Shouldn't it be?
TheUnsquished
Filthy casual
from Southern Limey Land
(Life not ruined yet)
Relationship Status: Married to the job
Filthy casual
#11781: Jul 10th 2022 at 7:45:42 AM
I think we only NRLEP tropes if the Real Life section is causing problems. Since there isn't one...
(Annoyed grunt)
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11782: Jul 10th 2022 at 9:47:50 AM
Agreed with doing nothing for now with that particular trope, as there is no Real Life folder. If it starts attracting Real Life examples, we can go after it then. Let us know if it does.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11783: Jul 10th 2022 at 10:22:32 AM
Awesome Anachronistic Apparel is not just about wearing outdated clothing:
"This isn't just a distinct visual look, but a subtle (or very overt) statement that this character is enamored with the bygone style and perhaps even time period. They have a different world view than most contemporary people (though not necessarily the one from their chosen period of dress) and aren't afraid to defy convention by dressing unconventionally. When done well, this trope shows it's not the clothes that make the man or woman, but the wearer who gives what ought to be a desperately out of place Halloween costume a natural style and appropriateness. Somehow, it seems natural that the man in a cowboy suit is opening a bank account, and the woman in the Kimono is working at a particle physics lab, or the man in a bowler hat is slaying zombies."
None of the examples in the Real Life folder really address this aspect, just being about people wearing out of date clothing. There are also numerous general examples, examples that are natter based, and ones that trope real people. Cut all.
Real Life
- A major part on why the British Royalty are such a major tourist magnet; despite the UK being an advanced, global power, there are many important historic ceremonies still practised where the Royals dress in elaborate costumes that would remind modern people of Disney fairytales.
- Helena Bonham Carter often appears in costumes that resemble outdated fashions.
- The cravat, which is now relegated to formal use since most people find it either too old-fashioned or for stodgy teachers/politicians.
- Bow ties, with or without a cravat, are also perceived as being notoriously difficult to tie (even though the actual knot is the same you use for your shoes). In an age when many men refuse to bother with even an ordinary necktie, a bow tie is simply beyond the pale, and rarely seen except as part of a tuxedo ensemble.
- In real life, Zoot Suits never truly went away, so they're not entirely anachronistic, but experienced something of a revival in the 1990s before retreating back to their urban, Black/Hispanic roots.
- Anything to do with ninja or samurai, at any time, anywhere. Especially since ninja outfits were invented by someone other than actual ninjas, who dressed as peasants to blend in.
- Lampshaded and parodied, yet still works with superhero capes. As well as the short shorts contrasting with the tights' color i.e. Underwear of Power.
- In Japanese superhero TV shows (e.g. Super Sentai, Kamen Rider) the pastel scarf replaces the cape (though three Sentai teams have used capes, and Knight and Femme from Kamen Rider Ryuki wore capes as well).
- A whole section could be done about this solely about hairstyles, particularly '80s Hair and the duck's ass mullet.
- Zorro costumes are inherently cool.
- Fedora hats, which fell out of mainstream fashion before The '60s but have lately come into vogue with the hipster crowd. On a similar note, thin ties.
- Though it's worth noting that the hat hipsters call a 'fedora' is actually a trilby.
- G. K. Chesterton's cape and swordstick.
- Trenchcoats. Add a fedora for good measure. Justified and no longer conspicuous if you're in the rainy season of a rainy climate.
- Of Corsets Sexy.
- Arguably the entire reason for Steampunk fashion, though in its drive to be awesome, it ends up with a fair amount of Anachronism Stew. It's a pastiche of roughly 1850s-1910s fashion, with a generous helping of Sci-Fi mixed in.
- Waistcoats and pocketwatches (though the latter has seen a modernised revival in the form of smartphones).
- Long, over-the-elbow gloves for women; often called "opera gloves" (no prizes for guessing at what event they were worn), these were standard accessories of ladies' costume for evening wear (and often daytime wear) from the late 1880s through the late 1950s; they also showed up in the Regency era. Other High-Class Gloves styles count as well.
- Dita Von Teese is the walking embodiment of this trope. The lady is seriously into vintage fashions, especially those of the 1940s and 50s. And it's not just her clothes either; she furnishes her house in 1950s style right down to the appliances, and drives seriously cool vintage cars.
- Tom Waits has not changed his style since he started performing in the '70's - and his style was outdatedly cool even then, as he dresses sort of like a 1930s hobo. Take this '77 performance, for example. The backup band is all in polyester and outrageous mustaches, and Tom looks exactly like he does today, except considerably less wrinkly and more attractive. Also a good example is his stint on Fernwood Tonight, a cheesy fake talk show from the '70s.
- Prince and The Revolution did this in The '80s, in Rummage Sale Reject style. And it worked.
- National costumes from all parts of the world tend to fall into this territory and are often entirely made up in a much later period than what they are supposed to represent, as the national pride rears its head. Needless to say, they usually tend to come across as far too colourful and elaborate to have been remotely affordable before the late 19th century.
- The Swiss Guard full-dress uniform◊ looks like a cross between a clown costume and medieval hose and tunic combo. The everyday working uniform◊ is somewhat more restrained in colour but equally old-fashioned in detail. The design is also directly descended from the outfits worn by their predecessors in Medieval/Renaissance Europe.
- Exception: The Barong Tagalog, the Philippine National attire for men, is very regularly seen in most formal occasions and government meetings even when the attire itself predates the Philippines's discovery. It was created using thin fabrics and is a very necessary answer to the West's thick and heavy 3-piece suit because of the Philippines' hot and humid weather.
- While the traditional kimono as known today (and its variants) can be traced to the late 19th-early 20th Century, its origins can be traced to Chinese-inspired clothing around the Nara and Heian periods.
- The Swiss Guard full-dress uniform
- The League of S.T.E.A.M. are often written about and interviewed as leading examples of steampunk style.
- Cowboy outfits are actually a subversion: Real cowboys in the American Midwest still wear outfits similar to what one would wear during the 19th century (though to what extent depends on the activities they're performing), due to practicality reasons. They often stand out when venturing abroad.
- Fezzes. They were the height of fashion in 17th century Turkey; anyone who wears them nowadays is either trying to seem quirky, or just likes the style. Or they're cosplaying the Eleventh Doctor. Or it's a reference to Tommy Cooper.note
- They can also be used to follow a person in a crowd.
- Justified Trope: the Ottoman Empire once wanted to define its culture more clearly, in opposition to Europe's culture. So they picked a style of hat from Morocco, a territory they did not currently own (so they wouldn't be playing favorites), and decreed that the fez would be the official hat of the Ottoman Empire. Europeans wore them when they wanted to be decadent Orientalists. Then it became a Dead Horse Trope in the early 20th century when Turkey suddenly no longer wanted to be Ottoman, and Ataturk made a famous speech about how rotten the fez was and why Turks wouldn't wear them any more. In short, don't wear a fez if you're in Turkey unless you want to make a very dangerous political statement.
- Vic Reeves is basically a clothes horse and so can pull off any style he wishes but he tends to look best in outdated tweed suits, New Romantic outfits with lots of lace round the collar and cuffs, a very frilly cravat and velvet (usually purple) jacket or a waistcoat with almost anything.
- French mathematician and politician Cédric Villani always appears in public wearing a massive purple ascot tie and an assorted large spider-shaped amber brooch in addition to his unkept beard and shaggy neck-length hair. He isn't nicknamed "The Lady Gaga of Maths" for nothing.
I'm not quite sure what the Real Life folder for Low Culture, High Tech is supposed to be doing. Here are the main points behind this trope:
"While you don't need to know how a gun works to know how to use one, the society as a whole must be able to support the thinkers and builders of such a device for it to see widespread and sustained use. Not so when you have Low Culture High Tech; this is a faction, culture, or race that uses technology far in advance of their scientific and cultural knowledge, often for warfare.
"Typically, the primitives will only use a fraction of the technology's potential and not know all of its abilities. At best they will be able to maintain the equipment without knowing how to repair it should a major malfunction happen. It's highly possible that the original creators, or a group with sufficiently advanced science (even just curiosity and a working knowledge of the scientific method), can pull the rug out from under these primitives by either confiscating, hacking, or better using their pirated tech against them.
"It's worth noting that a civilization doesn't have to be at stone age or Medieval levels of technology for this trope to apply. They just have to routinely use tech far in advance of their ability to comprehend. A story set in 21st-century Earth could have this trope apply if the planet were given Imported Alien Phlebotinum. Even space faring peoples can have Low Culture, High Tech if they use stuff they don't understand.
"Lastly, we want to draw attention to the following from the first paragraph "far in advance of their scientific and cultural knowledge". It's important to point out that not only are they using things they don't understand technologically, but for which they haven't considered the cultural, social, or ethical ramifications. It's one thing to give a hunter-gatherer society an Energy Bow, but giving them a cloning device? Their society may crumble from the onset of massive Cloning Blues, not to mention the ecological disaster of the massive population growth. It's because of this that many aliens (and future humanity) tend to subscribe to an Alien Non-Interference Clause or a You Are Not Ready attitude."
The Real Life examples seem to describe civilizations that had backward elements to varying degrees with a few more advanced technologies. It's not clear that any of the other aspects of the trope described above are present in the examples, though, such as misunderstanding what they're using. It also describes things like theoretical society constructs. I'm inclined to cut all as misuse.
Real Life
- When it was in power, the Third Reich was regarded as this trope embodied, by British and Francophone sources on one side and by the educated classes of German society on the other. German society before the Nazis had been very conservative and classist. The Nazis, however, disregarding the British proverb which said "it takes 3 years to build a ship, but 300 years to build a tradition", judged everything by power as the universal medicine. They could build advanced weapons and industrial machinery, motorways, modern architecture, and public TV stations, and for this reason they felt no obligation to listen to anyone else. They could afford to throw any cultural developments not suited to their ideology into the garbage as "degenerate and Jewish art".
There was no surprise in the fact they were hated for it and treated like primitives suddenly endowed with power and technology. The nouveau riche attitude of the political leadership, with men like Robert Ley, Christian Weber, and Hermann Goering ruling their departments and flaunting their wealth like Mafia bosses, only made things worse. In more practical terms, the Nazis took the same attitude to Jewish scientists like Albert Einstein and rejected their research in favor of promoting hare-brained ideas in physics and other fields simply because non-Jewish Germans came up with them. Among the results of that bigotry were that many of those scientists fled to nations like Britain and the United States, which gave them the advantage of the skilled personnel needed to develop nuclear weapons. The ones remaining were forbidden to utilize Jewish scientists' work too.
- Global commerce can cause this too, resulting in places like Nigeria, where there are more people with cell phones than people with mains power — they rely on charging stations for rent on street markets and wi-fi password hacking.
- Also kind of a hobby of most of the major powers in the Cold War, who were arming their various Third World allies with ultra-modern weaponry in an effort to stymie the other side. Of course, after the Cold War ended most of those alliances fell apart, leaving a lot of guns in some rather questionable hands.
- Political scientist Basam Tibi termed the desire of fundamentalist organizations or societies to gain access to sophisticated technology (especially weaponry) while totally avoiding any social modernization whatsoever "the dream of incomplete modernity".
- The idea that humanity in general is Low Culture, High Tech is a common thread of many primitivist and anti-industrial thinkers.
- This was a key part of the ideology of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. In his manifesto, he alleged that the behaviors and social organization needed to run a modern industrial society clashed with basic human instincts written by thousands of years of natural selection, producing most of the social ills of the modern world in the process. Therefore, he felt that humanity was biologically unsuited to any mode of organization and technology more advanced than hunter-gatherers, and used this as justification to launch a terrorist campaign aimed at airlines, universities, and industrial and high-tech concerns.
- New weaponry combined with outdated doctrine, training, or strategy can make a war very nasty for both sides. The American Civil War saw the mass-introduction of muzzle-loading rifles in place of smoothbore muskets, made possible by the invention of Minié ball ammunition which was small enough in diameter to easily ram down the barrel, yet could still create a good gas seal and properly engage the barrel rifling because of its expanding skirt. This made the rifles able to fire at the same rate as smoothbores, but with a much better chance of hitting what they were aimed at. When these more accurate weapons were incorporated into old-fashioned formations and movements which had been based on the need for massed vollies in order to hit anything, the result was often swathes of men being mowed down on both sides. The reason for the rather unsophisticated (even for the time) tactics employed in the Civil War was that the armies consisted almost entirely of raw conscripts. Normally a European-style army during that period would consist mostly of thoroughly-drilled line infantry, lots of cavalry, and very effective artillery. Furthermore, the chief mode of employment for line infantry would be to fire one massed volley at the enemy and then charge with bayonets. The point was not to spend much time under the enemy's fire. Because generals on both the Union and Confederate sides had mostly infantry of at-best suspect quality at their disposal (and the low quality and experience of the officers themselves made any coherent movement on the battlefield difficult) this kind of charge was pretty much out of the question; most times it was tried, it ended in complete disaster for the attacker, e.g. Pickett's infamous charge at Gettysburg. So with really no other options, generals in the war were forced to just line their troops up right in the opposing side's fire and hope their own men outlasted the enemy. European officers embedded with the American forces were appalled by what they saw, but there was very little practical advice they could give with the limited resources available.
- World War I was a deadly new kind of 20th century war featuring machine guns, rapid-fire artillery, tanks, poison gas, airplanes, submarines, dreadnaught battleships, and more. The belligerents, however, included a bunch of monarchies, empires, and colonial powers whose policies and motivations were still very much carried over from the 19th century. Each went into the war thinking they would crush their rivals, and that victory would help them hold back the tides of socialist, pro-democracy, or pro-independence movements in their realms. Ultimately the Russian Tsar would be overthrown by a socialist revolution, the German militarist government and Kaiser would be defeated and replaced with a new Republic, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires would be broken up into numerous smaller states, and the British and French empires would experience a Pyrrhic Victory which contributed to the eventual loss of their colonies.
- Korean (and to a lesser extent, Chinese and Japanese) culture can be considered this when it comes to aviation, with the highly hierarchical "respect your elders" Confucian-influenced culture being in some cases lethal in airplanes. The co-pilot has to double check everything the captain does and vice versa, yet co-pilots often are afraid to correct their captain's mistakes, as the captain is their elder. This has actually led to crashes. Korean Air has acknowledged this and is attempting to fix the problem with new pilot training.
- American ex-military junior pilots sometimes also have this problem. They are among the best in the world technically, but they can occasionally fall back on their conditioning to respect a chain of command.
- Conversely it's sometimes said that the safest co-pilot to have in the cockpit is an Australian, because they are culturally least likely to recognise any hierarchy except that of professional competence, and are thus more likely than any other nationality to tell an erroneous captain what he's doing wrong.
- This was likely the cause behind the horrific double-Jumbo crash in Tenerife in the 1970s, still the worst in aviation history. The captain responsible was THE public face of KLM as well as being one of the senior flight instructors, and he seems to have bullied the co-pilot (whose job hung in part on his captain's approval) into accepting an airways clearance as a takeoff clearance (when the airport was bedecked in fog and a Pan Am 747 was taxiing up the runway, unseen, in front of him). The rest is history.
- What happens when traditional "sons, not daughters" societies as in the Middle East, India and China gain access to prenatal gender testing and abortion? Despite laws actively trying to prevent it, the birth ratio is as skewed as 100 male to 90 female newborns in some places. If there were no laws against it, the ratio would probably be even worse. China in particular struggles with the demographic fallout, as there is now a whole industry built around human trafficking and forced marriage.
- This is in some ways how Karl Marx defined capitalism. Humanity has developed to universally fulfill needs, but the culture, government, and organization of society had not caught up to the sheer ability to produce and provide for those needs in spite of that. So a revolutionary change must be made in order to bring human society up to the standards that technology and industry make possible. Whether he was right or not is still under debate: though the biggest trial of communism in real life, the Soviet Union, ultimately failed to achieve communism, Marx never considered Imperial Russia to be a valid location for the revolution, as it lacked the necessary industry for it to be ready - essentially, communism was an idea to be executed in a society that's sufficiently technologically advanced to be post-capitalism and post-industrialism a la Star Trek or The Culture.
- The Islamic State has access to modern weaponry (assault rifles, missile launchers, explosives, even some stolen tanks), yet want to reshape Muslim society into The Theme Park Version of seventh century Arabia (which results in most of their victims being other Muslims). Reality has also ensued when it comes to how their society worked: children in schools weren't taught math or science, and while their fanaticism and sheer numbers gave them an explosive head start against the fractured and poorly motivated Iraqi Army, that momentum was lost when they were bombarded from the air. A big part of this is that they genuinely believed they were starting the last war, and the world only had a few years before the final apocalyptic battle at Dabiq where Allah would step in and defeat their enemies for them; there simply wasn't any point in planning for the long term.
- India has a space program and is a nuclear power. Yet, 63 million of its people don't have access to clean drinking water and 732 million people don't have access to toilets.
- On that note, more people have cell phones than indoor toilets.
- On that note, more people have cell phones
- India's neighbor Pakistan has even more nukes than its neighbors India and China but is also one of only two countries that still has endemic polio, the other being war-torn Afghanistan. This Medal of Dishonor is largely thanks to shoddy infrastructure and resistance to vaccination by Islamic fundamentalists.
Steam Never Dies is a specific trope that illustrates the use of steam trains in an anachronistic setting. Best I can tell, the Real Life folder contains stuff about steam trains without the anachronism aspect — things like theme parks that have steam trains — as well as examples that aren't really examples — like descriptions of the last example of a steam train in a country. It's also got plenty of sub and sub-sub bullets with natter and such. I'm very much inclined to cut all.
Real Life
- The warning sign for a level crossing without gates or barriers is a steam locomotive in many countries.
- There is a vaguely sensible reason for this: modern trains don't really have any kind of instantly-recognizable silhouette that makes for an obvious symbol.
- Deliberately averted in Germany: when the symbols on all traffic signs where simplified in 1992 the outdated steam locomotive had to go and was replaced by an electric multiple unit coming at you. Ironically that sign is also displayed at level crossings of preserved steam railroads.
- Some rolling stock would probably count: Wooden livestock cars used to transport animals were retired in the 1970s. The advent of automatic continuous-brake systems made cabooses (known more descriptively as "brake vans" elsewhere) largely obsolete, but they hung on until the early 1980s when the last unbraked freight wagons were retired. In North America they also housed the train's workmen, now such trains only need just two or three people to run them. The last car on such a train nowadays is equipped with a flashing taillight (called a FRED, EOT or ETD) attached to the rear coupler.
- And the handpump cars: they are now replaced with special trucks that can run on rails (a sort of modern-day Galloping Goose).
- It was well into the turn of the millennium before the last 1950s-era British Rail Mk 1 coaches and the diesel and electric multiple units based on them were finally put out to pasture. Many of these coaches were originally built with heating systems designed to draw on steam from the locomotive's boiler, which resulted in the decidedly Schizo Tech practice of building steam boilers into diesel locomotives to heat the coaches in winter, and it wasn't until well into the 1970s that the last of the passenger locomotive stock was converted to electric heating. It might well have been even later were it not for the Alleged Boilers - all the different designs, made by different manufacturers, were all equally unreliable,note and accounted for more failures than all the other parts of the locomotives put together (and some of them were pretty bad). Some steam heat locomotives (reassigned to freight duties), and coaching stock with dual heating (steam and electric), remained in service for another decade or more.
- The last Cravens steam heated coaches were withdrawn from Irish Railways in 2006, drawing their steam from a boiler contained in a heating and luggage van (HLV)or a generating steam van (GSV) which also provided electricity. Some of these vans were built from old BR mk1 stock, and these have now found themselves back in the UK supplying steam and electricity to mk1 & 2 stock on heritage railtours.
- North American rail passenger operators had similar Schizo Tech issues with steam heated coaches. As national systems, Amtrak and VIA Rail inherited their passenger car fleets from a wide variety of freight roads who each had their own ideas on how to heat and cool their coaches. Some were still using steam even in 1971! They had generally weeded these units out by the mid to late 1970's in favor of Head End Power. Steam heat lasted until the 1990s on VIA Rail.
- North American rail passenger operators had similar Schizo Tech issues with steam heated coaches. As national systems, Amtrak and VIA Rail inherited their passenger car fleets from a wide variety of freight roads who each had their own ideas on how to heat and cool their coaches. Some were still using steam even in 1971! They had generally weeded these units out by the mid to late 1970's in favor of Head End Power
- Russian and Soviet trains used one (wood-fired) boiler per passenger car for decades, to allow the car to suit any type of locomotive. Many passenger cars still carry an on-board boiler, or samovar, to facilitate the re-hydration of packaged foods and tea.
- In Real Life, one can find the occasional steam train still (or again) in operation even in well developed countries, such as a tourist attraction or a museum piece. Or sometimes they temporarily de-mothball a steam locomotive kept in reserve in case of emergency and roll it to and fro, to keep the bearings from decay.
- This is especially true in the UK, where a combination of Dr Beeching closing down a large number of railway lines and Barry scrapyard (which was one of the main locations steam engines were sent to be scrapped) being willing to wait while preservation societies got together the money to buy engines, means that there is a large number of steam run preservation lines across the country that run steam engines as a tourist attraction. Most of them have more than one working steam locomotive.
- In some places in the United States of America there are several companies or freight lines reviving steam power for a cheaper alternative to diesel/electric freight trains, in some cases they run off burning natural gas or are filled with preheated steam to run off until the steam eventually cools - this often happens near power plants or huge factories - but it doesn't appear to be dead just yet.
- Of particular note in the USA is The Strasburg Railroad, an actual operating short line that uses restored and preserved steam engines almost exclusively.
- Of particular note in the USA is The Strasburg Railroad
- While steam locomotive operations in Denmark ended in the late 60's and early 70's, both the Danish national railway company, DSB, and various preservations societies have preserved and continue to run. And as late as 2000, two steam locomotives were polished up and carried the coffin of Queen Ingrid from Copenhagen to Roskilde, where she was to be buried next to her husband, King Frederik IX. The King himself had been a Rail Enthusiast, and when he died in 1972, his funeral train had been headed by a pair of DSB Class E steam engines per his own request.
- Long Runner boiler manufacturer Babcock and Wilcox has just released the 42nd edition of "Steam: Its Generation and Use", the longest continuously published engineering text of its kind in the world, the first edition of which came out in 1875. Of course, how the steam is being generated and what it is being used for would be completely unrecognizable to people just a hundred years ago. (B&W now makes boilers for nuclear applications, as well as more traditional fossil-fuel ones.)
- The Purdue University's sports team, the Boilermakers, has a steam locomotive on their team logo. This is a reference to the origins of the nickname: in the early days of college football, Purdue is rumored to have cheated by paying workers at the local locomotive works (and others) to play for them. Purdue insists that the nickname derives from its days as a heavy-lifting engineering school, but even then, the link to steam power (what do you think they were engineering in the 1890s?) stands.
- The Hancock Air Whistle was a product that enabled diesel or electric locomotives to retain the steam locomotive "sound" despite lacking the steam to drive the old style whistles. The few railroads that made use of the whistle were concerned motorists might not realize a more modern horn was a railroad warning device and/or persons living near the tracks might complain about the new horn sound.
- The LNER Peppercorn Class A1 Tornado is a modern British steam locomotive built by railroad fans. Built following blueprints of the the formerly-extinct Peppercorn A1 steam locomotives of the late 1940's, Tornado is officially the 50th member of her class, and is fully up to specifications for running on modern railroads.
- And in a move that would make the Reverend Awdry proud, it rescued stranded passengers after a snowstorm disabled the third rail powering commuter trains operating out of London Victoria Station in 2009.
- In a somewhat related note, fans of Top Gear will notice that Tornado is the same train that was used for the Race to the North in season 13, where the Tornado (with Clarkson as one of the crew members) is pitted against a Jaguar XK120 driven by James May and a Vincent Black Shadow ridden by Richard Hammond.
- And in a move that would make the Reverend Awdry proud, it rescued stranded passengers
- There are multiple projects to follow the example of Tornado in "resurrecting" a disappeared class of engine, including the LMS Patriot Class, GWR Grange Class, two different groups each building an LNER Class P2, and across the pond, a Pennsylvania T1 with which it is tentatively planned to break the steam-powered speed record. And that's just a sample of the projects underway.
- Oddly enough in the United States of America, a new 4-4-0 or two tends to pop up every couple of decades even in the post steam era. The Disneyland Railroad can be argued to be the start of this, building two new engines in the 1950's for the park. In the 1970's the National Park Service bought two new 4-4-0 locomotives from O'Connor Engineering (a Hollywood camera company with ties to Disney) for use at the Golden Spike site in Utah. Then in the 2010's a new company called the Kloke Locomotive Works dusted off the O'Connor plans, and built two more locomotives from them which are now used on tourist railroads. The Nevada Northern Railway has noted their first locomotive was a 4-4-0 that matches the O'Connor replica plans too, and while they haven't committed to it; the idea of building a replica of that engine has been bounced around as well.
- In Russia, some steam locomotives and maintenance infrastructure for them is still kept mothballed for use in case of wartime power/oil shortages. Some steam locomotives are still in commercial operation.
- The UK kept building new steam locomotives well into the 1960s while most of Europe was going over to diesel or electric locomotives, mostly out of economic necessity. Oil had to be expensively shipped in from overseas, and overhead electrification required a huge up-front investment that was completely off the table in the early days of British Rail; what hadn't been wrecked by German bombs had been run ragged supporting the war effort. But what Britain did have was plenty of coal. Some initial plans projected that steam would last into the 1980s.
- Some Youtube Rail Enthusiasts have informally campaigned for Mike Rowe to visit a heritage railway and clean out a steam engine. In other words, to show part of the reason why steam died out.
- Many countries have steam specials, which are special trains pulled by a steam engines on main lines as a special event.
- The idea of reintroducing steam locomotives, built to modern standards using modern technology, is occasionally talked about as a solution to steadily increasing oil prices. However, most people proposing these reintroductions forget or neglect to take into account that no matter how efficient the engine itself is, steam-powered engines require twice the amount of infrastructure - they have to be supplied with water and fuel. The supposed cost-effectiveness is negated, especially in arid regions where water is in very short supply. Electrification is generally agreed upon to be the better solution.
- They also forget a couple of other important points. One, that the steam engine depended on the availability of large numbers of people willing to do dirty jobs for little money, and they aren't around any more. Two, that the thermal efficiency was appalling, and not susceptible to improvement. Innumerable devices to improve efficiency were tried, but the invariable result was that the efficiency gain was small, while the maintenance requirements increased enormously, and it just wasn't worth it; the same would still apply to any new-design locomotive. In effect, not only does Steam Never Die, but The Rocket never died - the failure of any change to that basic design meant that even the latest and most advanced steam locomotives were still recognizably just The Rocket writ large.
- There is another aspect: While coal is indeed more plentiful than liquid fuels and coal cannot be used for internal propulsion engines (Rudolf Diesel initially intended his engine for coal dust - neither he nor any of his successors could get it to work), however, Coal can be converted into liquid fuel via the Fischer Tropsch process which has been known since the 1920s. While its energy efficiency is atrocious, it is still more than made up for by the better fuel efficiency of internal combustion compared to steam. Indeed, many countries that for one reason or another had no access to oil used exactly this process, be it Apartheid South Africa, Nazis with Gnarly Weapons or East Germany, though the latter also kept using steam engines almost until the very end.
- On the other hand, steam still has its uses at sea, where water is in abundance. Those big supertankers shifting vast volumes of liquefied natural gas? They use steam engines fueled by burning some of their cargo to get around.
- Interestingly, many modern trains, especially passenger trains, are propelled, indirectly, by steam power. Electric trains, after all, are propelled by electricity, almost all of which is generated by boiling water to drive steam turbines. So many of the most modern locomotives are powered by steam, it's just that the steam engine is located inside a power plant many miles away.
- And most if not all nuclear power plants are steam-driven reactors.
- Steam turbines are what remain common in electrical power generation (most forms of power plants work on the base premise of "use X to heat water, to make steam, to push turbine, that generates electricity". The rest use an energy source to push the turbine directly) and on large ships. Large steam turbines can be very efficient but they work best running at one fixed speed. That's perfect for an electrical generator, and a ship can use gears or fancier turbines to allow a choice of a few propeller speeds (or use a generator, electricity, and a motor). But direct propulsion of locomotive wheels requires varying speed, and so steam turbine locomotives were rarely successful.
- Several steam locomotives have served for an exceptionally long time before retirement, which has helped keep them preserved and operating into the 21st century.
- The Hungarian State Railways 424 class served from 1924 until all steam engines were retired in 1984. Their sheer simplicity kept them around long after other steamers had become too expensive to keep around.
- The New South Wales Z19 class served from 1877, when New South Wales was a pre-Federation colony, to the end of steam in 1972, five years short of a century of service.
- Union Pacific No. 844 was never officially retired after it entered service in 1944, a unique achievement for a locomotive on a Class I railroad. It even outlasted the diesels meant to replace it (including one that took it's number for a time)! On one occasion, the 844 was headed back to its home terminal when a diesel-powered freight ahead of it suffered a breakdown. In much the same manner as the Tornado above, 844 was able to save the stranded freight train without tying up the mainline for hours waiting for a rescue loco.
- Likewise, their "Challenger" 4-6-6-4 #3985, restored to operation in 1981 and currently in storage pending another restoration. In 1990, by request of the American President Lines shipping company, 3985 hauled a 143-car container train (almost 9,000 feet long and over 7600 tons) under its own power from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to North Platte, Nebraska.
- UP has also (as of May 2019) finished the process of restoring "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 #4014 to operation just in time for the 150th anniversary of completion of the first North American trans-continental railroad line.
- Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) 4-6-0 'Camelbacks' served from 1901 until 1954, a pretty solid fifty years.
- Perhaps the ultimate examples, Cass Scenic Railroad Shay #5, delivered in 1901. It's been climbing Cass Mountain for more than a century, first hauling logs and now tourists. The Mount Washington Cog Railway has some steam locomotives that have been in service even longer.
- German class 52, known as the war locomotive. While Deutsche Bundesbahn in West Germany retired them ten years after the Second World War, these simple and durable engines seen good use well into the 1980s in East Germany's Deutsche Reichsbahn and Polish PKP (as class Ty2). The latter operated them even in early 2000s. And Russian Railways still keep some of them (class TE - captured locomotive) in case of war.
- As late as 2014 they could be found working on a short line serving a coal mine in Bosnia. They used to run the trains the full distance on the mainline, but now leave the (lighter ) wagons in a yard for collection by the state railway. Other mines in the area used USATC 0-6-0T engines from the allied side of the war, some locally built.
- The Hungarian State Railways 424 class
- Northwestern Steel and Wire, a steel mill in Sterling, Illinois, had a history of using secondhand steam locomotives to move scrap metal and new steel ingots around the plant property—they were sent to the mill to be melted down, and management figured they still had some life left. The last one was retired in 1980, about twenty years after the last main line steam was retired in the US, and is now on static display behind the house of the company's founder, now a museum.
- North Queensland cane field tramways were still using steam until the late 1970s, due to reliability issues with the earlier diesels introduced in 1972, which had the crews back on steam for half the year. They had truly lived their life by then, in one case up until at least 1980. Some of these locomotives were built as battlefield locomotives during the First World War.
- Invoked in amusement parks, which typically have a train that takes visitors on a tour of either the park, a small section of it, or a small section of scenery. The train is almost invariably pulled by an electric, diesel or gasoline engine designed to look like a steam engine (often complete with a coal bin full of painted wooden coal).
- Tweetsie Railroad in Boone, North Carolina, not only uses two authentic steam engines (one from The Edwardian Era and the other from The '40s), but they also use actual coal fuel. It helps that the park is located in Central Appalachia, a region of the United States known for coal mining.
- Except in the case of Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, where both theme parks run actual preserved locomotives on their in-park tracks, though they have been converted and no longer run on coal, now running on oil (Bunker C at Knott's, and recycled cooking oil at Disneyland). In fact, the Disneyland Railroad was one of the first attractions designed for the park.
- Busch Gardens in Williamsburg Virginia also uses real steam locomotives: they're modern narrow-gauge replicas of real European locomotives and run on oil instead of coal.
- The Gold Coast, Queensland theme park Dreamworld, until recently, had its monorail system supplemented by narrow-gauge steam locomotives form the Queensland cane fields, converted to gas firing and equipped with silly Wild West accessories in a similar manner to the Mantua Fat Boy model trains, such as huge pilots and funnel-shaped spark-arresting exhausts.
- The Rebel Railroad, since expanded into Dollywood, is an amusement park in Pigeon Forge, TN partially owned by Dolly Parton. It operates with 36" gauge steam locomotives originally built for the White Pass & Yukon Railway.
- Many countries still have some steam engines in working condition in reserve, for emergencies. In case of a natural disaster or war the electric grid might be off, oil might be in short supply, or diesels and electrics might be rendered useless by the EMP of a nuclear attack, but in an emergency you can still chop down a few trees and get water from a nearby river.
- Sweden dragged its last "strategic reserve" locomotive from its shed and sold it to a preservation society in 2016.
- Sweden dragged its last "strategic reserve" locomotive from its shed and sold it to a preservation society in 2016
- Developing countries have been known to doggedly keep steam going for decades beyond developed countries, such as some African countries during the 1970s oil crisis (or during economic boycotts, such as the aforementioned South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe), noting that their infrastructure needed significant upgrading to provide the technology base to support diesels. The combined cost sent them back to designing new steam power for some time. It helped that there is little oil in southern Africa but plenty of coal.
- Queensland Railways, which still owns most of the Ipswich Railway Workshops that are not held by the Queensland Museum, use the space to maintain a respectable fleet of heritage rollingstock, known as Heritage Fleet; this includes old style railmotors, steam locos including a Beyer-Garratt articulated locomotive, and plenty of heritage stock for them to pull, as well as some items for other preservation groups, including the Mary Valley railway's locomotives, Sunsteam's Savannahlander railmotor, and the Queensland Museums' A7V Sturmpanzerwagen, Mephisto.
- China probably takes the cake for "shortest time between last steam and first high speed train". Steam trains last ran in regular revenue service along main lines in December 2005. The Shanghai Maglev opened in 2004 (making that time negative two years) and in 2008 the first high speed line opened allowing steel wheel on steel rail trains to run at up to 350 km/h. Just three years after steam "died". And some steam locomotives are still in service as tourist attractions as well as a rapidly dwindling number of industrial / mining sites.
- Taken to extremes by high speed rail's Trope Maker, Japan. The first Shinkansen ran in 1964, and the last steam locomotive dropped its fire in 1976, for a time gap of negative twelve years.
- The Vale of Rheidol Railway in Wales is the only place on British Rail where steam survived past 1968, as it wasn't considered economical to custom-build diesel locomotives just for that little narrow gauge line. It opened in 1902 and has been running ever since, currently with three steamers built in 1923 and 1924. It does have one diesel, but it's not as powerful as the steamers.
- Although operated primarily for tourists, the Wolsztyn line in Poland is the only railway in the world with scheduled steam services. For a price, tourists can even learn to drive the train themselves.
- The Wikivoyage article on the topic appropriately titled "steam" gives a few more examples.
- Dampflokwerk Meiningen in Germany is fully capable of constructing brand new steam locomotives from scratch and is one of the only facilities that can make a new locomotive boiler to modern standards, including the one for Tornado mentioned above. It was kept in service maintaining steamers for East Germany and is now owned by Deutsche Bahn and contracts work to maintain museum locomotives and the occasional new build.
- Germany also has the "Harzer Schmalspurbahnen" (HSB), a narrow gauge railroad running mostly steam locomotives as part of regular public transport.
- A variation of the steam locomotive, the fireless, is still in use. Essentially replacing the boiler with a pressure vessel that is filled with steam from an outside source, these engines were used in mines, chemical refineries, ammunition factories, and other areas where smoke and/or sparks were not permitted. Some are still in use at industrial plants with a supply of steam, such as power stations, sugar mills, and breweries, and are being promoted as an eco-friendly substitute for diesel-powered shunters, which spend most of their time sitting around between jobs, idling their engines.
- The Nevada Northern Railway when it petitioned the federal government to allow it to discontinue its rail passenger service in favor of a bus line, was required to keep one passenger steam engine and its matching cars in storage as a back up for the bus service. This engine, Nevada Northern 40 was kept for many decades on property in the back of the railroad's shop and fired up on occasion for special events. When the railroad closed, the property was transferred to a new museum organization which then restored 40; and repatriated two other steam locomotives 93 and 81 back to the property for restoration as well. Now the railroad is known world wide for its extensive restored steam-era engine shops, and the three steam locomotives that have ran the line in preservation; with 40 itself being recognized as the Nevada State Locomotive.
- A local legend passed around on the Nevada Northern was that to keep 40 safe for many years, the railroad staff would hook it up behind a diesel train at night and hide it in the local copper mines before corporate inspectors arrived on property so that they could lie to them claiming they had scrapped the old steam engine. Then once the corporate inspectors left 40 would be retrieved from its hiding place in the mine and brought back to its place in the back shops ins storage. This legend lead to the locomotive getting the nickname "The Ghost Train of Old Ely." Although most historians believe this legend to be false, it still makes for a great tall tale surrounding the locomotive.
WarJay77
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
(Troper Knight)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
#11784: Jul 10th 2022 at 11:43:03 AM
So, I declared Forced Creativity to be NRLEP in the TLP, but I'm not sure what category it belongs in.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
TheUnsquished
Filthy casual
from Southern Limey Land
(Life not ruined yet)
Relationship Status: Married to the job
Filthy casual
#11785: Jul 10th 2022 at 12:58:11 PM
Well, you mentioned at the end about not wanting to gossip, so NoRealLife.Gossip And Stereotypes?
(Annoyed grunt)
WarJay77
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
(Troper Knight)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
#11786: Jul 10th 2022 at 1:00:12 PM
That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to double check.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11787: Jul 10th 2022 at 8:14:30 PM
Gaia's Vengeance is a not really possible in real life. also it's attracting speculative troping.
Edited by namra on Jul 10th 2022 at 8:15:33 AM
the Retromancer
#11788: Jul 10th 2022 at 8:23:23 PM
I've read the folder and I don't see what any of these have to do with Gaia's Vengeance.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
How sweet it is
#11789: Jul 10th 2022 at 8:42:51 PM
I did pull one example due to a dead link.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11790: Jul 11th 2022 at 5:07:15 AM
Agreed. That whole folder, best I can tell, can go as being not this trope. It’s full of trivia with minimal to no tie to the actual trope definition.
AmourLeFou
You'll never find out who I am
from Colorado
Since: Apr, 2021
Relationship Status: One Is The Loneliest Number
You'll never find out who I am
#11791: Jul 11th 2022 at 8:20:12 AM
All the real life examples on Lactating Male are general.
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11792: Jul 11th 2022 at 9:38:25 AM
Those can all go as far as I'm concerned. Chop away.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11793: Jul 11th 2022 at 12:13:07 PM
Cartoon Cheese has a small Real Life folder with one general example and two that don't really fit the trope (light yellow as opposed to the standard yellow-orange, mild flavor) — the first one even says "probably the closest thing to Cartoon Cheese in real life." Cut all.
Real Life
- Emmentaler cheese is probably the closest thing to Cartoon Cheese in real life. It's the Swiss cheese after which so-called "Swiss cheese" is named, it comes in wheels, and it's full of holes. It's not as bright a shade of yellow as in cartoons, however, and has a pretty mild taste & smell.
- In Sweden, this type of cheese (1 (yellow), 2, and 3 together) is a very common type.
- Jarlsberg, from Norway. The recipe has Swiss roots and it looks similar to Emmentaler, with a color ranging from off-white to light yellow. Like Emmentaler, it's pretty mild-smelling.
Level Ate is about fictional settings made out of food. It has a small Real Life folder with two general shoehorned examples that don't fit the trope. Cut both.
Real Life
- From an insect larva's point of view, the place where it was laid as an egg is probably going to be what it is going to eat. Be it a leaf, an apple or a decaying animal.
- This is the lifestyle for parasites everywhere.
Food Eats You is about food becoming sentient and devouring people. The examples in the small Real Life folder are shoehorns or general examples. Cut all.
Real Life
- This is known to occasionally happen to hunters who are after dangerous prey. One example.
- Everytime an animal is able to eat the meat of a predator that would normally hunt said animal.
- The most common example may be a scavenger finding the dead body of a bigger predator.
- Another example includes a human and a predatory animal, since with weapons, a human can easily kill for example a lion, but without, the lion will most likely kill the human.
- Pineapples eat you while you eat them
Eat the Evidence is a trope about criminals eating contraband to avoid being arrested. The examples are misuse, general, or trope real people like fictional characters. The sole exception in Sun Tsu's book can be moved to Literature.
Real Life
- The British Special Operations Executive during World War II made code books out of rice paper so they could be eaten if necessary. The paper was thought up by Jasper Maskenlyne, a famous magician who would create dozens of gadgets for the British, including a special boot issued to commandos that contained a compass, a little map, and a garrote wire. Apparently, bedrolls made of similar paper were also used; they were soaked in vegetable oil to make them waterproof, and as an added bonus it made them taste better if you had to eat them.
- In Real Life, a man named Antonio Vasquez beat two men up with a sausage, and feed it to a dog, destroying the evidence. He was caught when he left his pants at the scene with his wallet. Despite this, the plan worked, due to the charges against him being dropped.
- Watch this man◊ cleverly snatch and eat what may or may not have been a note implicating him in a bank robbery.
- In a sad but amusing incident of a man attempting this, the mortally-wounded captain of a French ship captured during the Napoleonic Wars attempted to do this to his code papers. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong set of papers and instead chewed up his own commission.
- Sun Tsu in Ancient Art of War tells of a spy who's given battle plans written in silk that's enclosed in a ball of wax. The spy is instructed to swallow the ball and proceed to a location, sneaking past the enemy; once there, the ball will pass through his digestive system and out the other end. The spy doesn't know it, but the plans are phony and his whereabouts are leaked to the enemy so they will capture him and think the phony plans are real.
- At various South African diamond mines there used to be (and probably still is) an X-ray machine through which all workers have to pass on leaving to ensure that they did not seek an unofficial bonus to their paycheck.
- Before X-ray machines were invented, a daily cavity search was a part of black miners' routine - the white miners just had to empty their pockets and boots.
- Played for Laughs with this t-shirt design.
- A related example, a man once tried to beat a DUI by eating his own underwear in the hopes that it would absorb the alcohol and defeat the Breathalyzer.
- Steve Brill, a man famous for foraging on plants that grow in natural parks and other public places in New York and encouraging such activity, was once arrested for such activity back in 1986 due to violating "nature preservation laws", but the charges were dropped when he (naturally) ate the evidence (i.e. the plants he picked), creating a public relations debacle for the authorities. He's become the official spokesperson for natural foraging ever since and is tolerated by officials.
- A hang glider instructor whose passenger died apparently swallowed the flash memory card from an onboard video camera documenting the incident.
- More than one street dealer has won the Darwin Awards (or at least a trip to the ER) for doing this with their entire stash of illicit drugs.
- A retired police chief acting with the Crimestoppers eats the evidence to protect the identity an anonymous tipster in a drug trial after the judge ordered public disclosure of the tip, on account of there possibly being enough data to reveal the tipster's identity. He's currently held in contempt of court and may be jailed, but he says that while he is unhappy with the outcome, he is ready to be put in prison among prisoners who would doubtless want revenge so that future tipsters to Crimestoppers won't be scared off by the possibility that their identities might be revealed.
- At least one spy in The American Civil War resorted to this rather than let the documents they were carrying be confiscated by the enemy.
- One story about why moon cakes are served for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival revolves around the conspiracy to launch a revolt against the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty then ruling China — the cakes would be made imprinted with coded instructions on when to launch attacks, then sent as gifts to the recipients who would then see the codes and get the signal, and then afterwards the cakes would be eaten to destroy the evidence. Thus the Yuan Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Ming.
Post-Stress Overeating has a Real Life folder with two general armchair diagnosis entries that may or may not be accurate. Cut all.
Real Life
- A lot of people suffer from this as an outlet for emotional distress, the equivalent for other people that is smoking and or drinking.
- In clinical terms, frequent use of this behavior as a coping mechanism can be called Binge Eating Disorder or Bulimia Nervosa. Frequent overeating can also satisfy the self-destructive criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder.
- ADHD (in all 3 forms) can cause this, as eating delicious, yet unhealthy foods increase the below-average dopamine levels that those with ADHD suffer from. ADHD has been noted to cause obesity, especially when combined with a stressful school/work life as it's a disorder that affects learning and organization skills. On the other hand, some with the disorder Forgets to Eat instead.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11794: Jul 11th 2022 at 12:14:44 PM
There's a squick-inducing Real Life folder for Fed to Pigs, including some unsubstantiated entries. I'm fine with crownering it.
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11795: Jul 11th 2022 at 1:54:59 PM
should we crowner gaia's vengeance?
AmourLeFou
You'll never find out who I am
from Colorado
Since: Apr, 2021
Relationship Status: One Is The Loneliest Number
You'll never find out who I am
#11796: Jul 11th 2022 at 2:04:37 PM
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.
The real life folder for Egg-Laying Male:
Real Life
- Mouthbrooding species are animals (mostly fish and frogs) who hold their eggs in their mouths until the eggs hatch. In some species, the male is the one to carry the eggs. Too general. Cut.
- In Basel, Switzerland, in 1474, a rooster was tried for witchcraft and sentenced to death after being suspected of laying eggs. At the time, a rooster laying an egg was considered a demonic sign. Keep.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11797: Jul 11th 2022 at 2:17:09 PM
I’m definitely fine with cutting the first example.
The second example I could go either way on. The rationale to cut would come from the fact that while the rooster was convicted in court of laying an egg, it was only suspected of doing so and couldn’t really have done so. In other words, Impossible In Real Life. I’ll defer to whatever you think best here.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11798: Jul 11th 2022 at 2:18:53 PM
I’m fine with crownering Gaia's Vengeance. Though if we can cut all the examples as misuse, that’s fine also.
#11799: Jul 11th 2022 at 2:21:55 PM
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to crownering Fed to Pigs for squick.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11800: Jul 11th 2022 at 3:49:19 PM
Just crownered Anachronism Stew, Gaia's Vengeance, and Loophole Abuse per earlier posts on the thread.
Projects: Long Term/Perpetual:
Real Life Maintenance - NRLEP/LRLEO Crowner (19 Feb 2024)
18th Feb '24 11:27:30 PM
Crown Description:
Vote up to either forbid all real life examples (No Real Life Examples Please) or forbid real life examples for specific subjects (Limited Real Life Examples Only); vote down to Keep Real Life Examples. To add a trope to a No Real Life Examples Please index or the Limited Real Life Examples Only index, its crowner option must meet the following criteria:- Stable 2:1 ratio needed for NRLEP or LRLEO
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple of extra days to see if more votes come in.
Total posts: 15,955
Well, since any real life examples of New Rules as the Plot Demands are shoehorns, I'd say go ahead and remove them.
Edited by TheUnsquished on Jul 8th 2022 at 3:33:50 PM
(Annoyed grunt)