Playing With Wiki: General Cleanup and Writing Help

PlayingWith.Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom...

Is that Downplayed, Meaningful Name? And also One Name Only?

Is Overly Long Name a requirement and therefore it's not Downplayed but a different trope?

Edited by Malady on Nov 29th 2021 at 3:58:42 AM

Re: Character Development Yeah, this one is just off. Character development doesn't require a character become better or worse, just change over time. I believe the implication would be that an aversion would be Static Character and that there is no inversion, but I'd like a second opinion on that.

Re: Bathroom Confusion// You're right, that's not a downplay. I reworked a lot of the article for similar misuse.

PlayingWith.Amicable Exes:

If Sex with the Ex is an Amicable Exes Sub-Trope as it says, then the "beneficial friends" example shouldn't be here? Or should it be rephased to note the Sub-Trope somehow?

If Sex with the Ex is Friends with Benefits + Amicable Exes, then it should be removed, but not sure if that's the right equation.

PlayingWith.Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: A lot of the entries mention how the audience feels and if I’m not mistaken, audience reactions can’t be played with.

I think I could rewrite them myself. After all, Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist is about a protagonist who’s intended to unsympathetic. How audiences actually feel about the character is another thing entirely. That’s why Unintentionally Sympathetic is a thing.

Edited by antenna_ears on Jan 13th 2022 at 11:38:19 AM

On The Dog Bites Back, the "Basic Trope" says it's about an abused character taking revenge on their abuser. While the rest of the page goes under the villain underling definition the main page uses, this is still something that bothers me

Yes, the subverted and averted entries for example need help.

I made a playing with entry for a trope I launched, what do you think? PlayingWith.Sleep Paralysis Creature. I think this is the kind of trope that cannot be Enforced beyond saying "the writer wanted to put it in" though.

I think enforced would be something like having the writers use the Sleep Paralysis Creature to create horror or drama or to establish something.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jan 14th 2022 at 12:42:00 PM

I often see the Enforced Trope line as a quotation (from an unseen writer or exec). "There's a merchandising opportunity here", "This episode needs to be scarier, so let's write one in", etc. It can be a humorously petty/inappropriate reason if you want.

Thank you! But what abou Lampshade Hanging? As far as I could tell this is a term from the wiki for when characters metalinguistically aknowledge a trope to revigorate the audience's will of disbelief and thus avoid clichés and the such, but what should be done here?

For that one, all you have to do is have the character acknowledge the trope in some way.

PlayingWith.Did You Just Have Sex lists "Bob doesn't exist" and "Sex doesn't exist" as aversions.

That just seems like an attempt at humor that probably doesn't belong.

By that logic Bob not existing also averts every character trope.

I mean, I find it kind of funny for the absurdity of it, but they need to go.

PlayingWith.Damsel Errant looks to be mistaking the trope for some combo of Decoy Damsel and Honey Trap.

Found this in PlayingWith.Mood Whiplash

• Deconstructed: Due to this trope, the old man and knife cop are both Scrappies, because they made Bob's day Hell.
• Reconstructed: However, they are later appreciated as Ensemble Darkhorses who changed the Status Quo for once. Also, Best. Villains. EVER.

These are acting like the trope is an Audience Reaction.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2022 at 12:11:12 PM

An absolutely irritating habit

EDIT: Just a few days ago I had to prune a few "meta-examples" from PlayingWith.Darker And Edgier

Edited by randomtroper89 on Mar 1st 2022 at 12:43:28 PM

Dual Age Modes, Toon Transformation, and Next Sunday A.D. all have bad and incorrect formatting.

PlayingWith.Clock King describes "Ludicrous Precision at future foresight". The trope is about someone "extremely precise", but not about the predictions.

Something about PlayingWith.Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness doesn't feel quite right.

I feel that "Alice says big words and Bob doesn't get it" is to vague. I think "Alice could say that exact same thing in smaller words" works better.

That's Layman's Terms. Very closely related.

PlayingWith.Dying Town's "Straight" example is a mammoth Wall of Text, elongated by Hastur Hastur Hastur from 2020-2021:

• Straight: Ever since the Widget Factory sent all its jobs overseas to Ruritania 20 years ago and closed its doors, the town of Troperville has become poor and rundown. Most people live in shabby old trailer homes and slumlorded rental units, drug and alcohol abuse are rampant due to the stresses of poverty, as are violent crimes, gangs, homelessness, The Oldest Profession, and Domestic Abuse. The school could best be described as a Sucky School, the nearest grocery store is miles away (meaning people subsist mostly on TV dinners, fast food, snack foods, and soda pop from the nearest convenience store, rather than anything particularly nutritious), and there are far more renters than homeowners. Very few people have access to high-speed Internet (having only DSL, dial-up, or no Internet at all in their homes), and some people don't even have any kind of phone, let alone a high-end smartphone. The few jobs that do exist are almost universally low-paying with nonexistent or awful benefits, and are usually acquired through a few local temp agencies, all of which are known for their exploitative practices and tendency to cut off anyone who justifiably protests their poor treatment by the agency. The biggest employer is a factory that is primarily supplied by a temp agency and is notorious for keeping people as temps indefinitely with hollow promises of conversion, has numerous serious safety hazards and multiple citations by safety and health authorities, outdated equipment that constantly breaks down or malfunctions stitched together with whatever parts they can find to get it up and running again, and a notoriously corrupt core of administrative staff from the same few local families, plus a revolving door of more professional hires who quit within a few years once they tire of the dysfunction, or desperate new college grads who are just happy to have a job. Almost everyone in town is collecting some form of government benefit money, which is barely enough to get by (and in many cases, simply not enough.) People try to leave as soon as they get a chance, though many do not have the resources to do so - the only halfway decent chance you have is through the military, and plenty of veterans wind up back here anyways. The average life path for women involves getting pregnant at 16, dropping out of high school, maybe having a Shotgun Wedding to her baby-daddy, and signing up for as much in benefits as possible, while men either get a low-paying job or apply for disability benefits, which several local attorneys conveniently specialize in.

I don't think Playing With should be this long, should it?

Yeah, playing with is for quick little scenarios...

PlayingWith.Standard Female Grab Area's Exaggerated-s look more like Justifieds?

If part of the trope is about how inexplicable it is, that is.

If she is just mysteriously silenced and stuff, then that might be exaggerating?

Edited by Malady on May 4th 2022 at 5:29:50 AM