Do you have trouble remembering the difference between Deathbringer the Adorable and Fluffy the Terrible?
Do you have trouble recognizing when you've written a Zero-Context Example?
Not sure if you really have a Badass Bookworm or just a guy who likes to read?
Well, this is the thread for you. We're here to help you will all the finer points of example writing. If you have any questions, we can answer them. Don't be afraid. We don't bite. We all just want to make the wiki a better place for everyone.
Useful Tips:
- Make sure that the example makes sense to both people who don't know the work AND don't know the trope.
- Wrong: The Mentor: Kevin is this to Bob in the first episode.
- Right: The Mentor: Kevin takes Bob under his wing in the first episode and teaches him the ropes of being a were-chinchilla.
- Never just put the trope title and leave it at that.
- Wrong: Badass Adorable
- Right: Badass Adorable: Xavier, the group's cute little mascot, defeats three raging elephants with both hands tied behind his back using only an uncooked spaghetti noodle.
- When is normally far less important than How.
- A character name is not an explanation.
- Wrong: Full Moon Silhouette: Diana
- Right: Full Moon Silhouette: At the end of her transformation sequence into Moon Princess Misty, Diana is shown flying across the full moon riding a rutabaga.
Other Resources:
For best results, please include why you think an example is iffy in your first post.
Also, many oft-misused tropes/topics have their own threads, such as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome (here
) and Fan-Preferred Couple (here). Tropers are better able to give feedback on examples you bring up to specific threads.
For cleaning up examples of Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard, you must use their dedicated threads: Complete Monster Cleanup, Magnificent Bastard Cleanup.
Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 18th 2023 at 11:42:55 AM
Officially intimidated
I don't think the example fits either, not even as a subversion.
135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300
She / Her
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Besides the indentation issue, that reads as a shoehorn to me.
Professional Wick Checker
I found this on Film.The Goddess Of Fortune, is this an example? I don't see any stereotypes here; this is just like saying minorities existing, in general, is a stereotype in itself. Should I cut it?
- All-Stereotype Cast: The protagonists' circle of friends: we have a gay couple, a Turkish immigrant, her trans daughter, a black girl, a man with anterograde amnesia...
Went through the YMMV page for Epic Rap Battles of History, and I think a few edits that may be misuse of certain tropes (in particular, Designated Villain, Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and Unpopular Popular Character). The edits are as follows:
- George Washington is called out as a hypocrite for owning slaves while William Wallace is shown as Mel Gibson's Braveheart which gave him a Historical Hero Upgrade. The real Wallace was a feudal lord and a warrior who owned serfs and would certainly not suffer republicanism of any kind and degree. This prevents the battle from being a fair fight since Washington can't fully attack Wallace and call him out for his hypocrisy or remind him that Robert the Bruce was the real Braveheart. Additionally, Washington's overall character is given a rather undignified portrayal compared to the heavily idealized Wallace, with his hideous artificial teeth made very prominently visible throughout the battle to the point of becoming distracting.
- Mansa Musa vs Jeff Bezos clearly portrays the latter in a worse light than the former, even having Bezos boast about his own misdeeds while neither he nor his opponent mention Musa's (aside from him accidentally killing his mom). Musa even accuses Bezos of being a bad person for somehow widening income inequality as a contrast to his own generosity, which is apparently supposed to taken as a justified statement on his part given that Bezos has no retort. This is despite the fact that Musa was a literal slaver and despot (he personally owned so many slaves that over 12,000 of them accompanied him on his pilgrimage) while the worst things Bezos has ever been accused of are dodging taxes and paying below-average wages to some of his workers. Musa also brags about his philanthropy, and Bezos never bothers to retort by citing the billions he's also given to charity. Bezos has certainly committed questionable actions more than deserving of criticism and mockery, but the battle frames him an extra unflattering light compared to his opponent, who was a worse person by pretty much objective every metric, and most egregiously has Bezos himself go along with his opponent's criticisms in a borderline Card-Carrying Villain fashion (he outright compares himself to Sauron). This is almost certainly down to Bezos being an important figure of the present while anyone Musa wronged died nearly a millennium ago.
- Ray William Johnson is a fairly divisive YouTube creator, to say the least. However, he was able to stand his ground as an actor for the show, with many people considering his eight-second Boba Fett performance to be the best part of the third "Adolf Hitler vs Darth Vader" match, and a number of people considering his raps as Goku to be better than Superman's in the eponymous "Goku vs Superman".
- In season 5, the excellent portrayal and characterization of Julia Child and Catherine the Great finally made the fanbase amends with the ERB team for their previous lackluster female / male vs. female battles and/or accusation that almost every female characters appeared has elements of Slut-Shaming in their verse.
- Despite the majority consensus being that Cleopatra won her rap battle, Marilyn is just as likely - if not more likely - to be brought up when discussing the rap battle. Some have even gone so far as to argue that Cleopatra's only good line was the infamous 'Miss Carriage' line and Marilyn in actuality had better lines throughout the whole rap battle.
Edited by WiryAiluropodine on Feb 12th 2023 at 12:05:41 AM
I agree with Alley Oop on Yuna being a Yamato Nadeshiko but the whole "If you squint very hard" should definitely be removed as ironically it needlessly undermines the example.
Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.
She / Her
(x3) I don't feel it describes how at least almost all of its cast members are stereotypes, so I'd cut it.
Unpopular Popular Character sounds like misuse to me because it doesn't explain her being unpopular in-universe but well-liked out-of-universe. As for Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, I'm unsure if it can count for content creators either. I also agree the second one sounds like Author's Saving Throw, at least before Word of God/Word of Saint Paul became a requirement.
Lastly, in regards to the Designated Villain ones, I feel the examples you brought up count as Designated Hero instead while the others are just misuse. This is because they don't discuss the part about a character who's supposed to be a villain but isn't (if that's the right way to describe it).
On the Titanic page:
- Rose reveals at the end of the film that Cal committed suicide after losing his fortune in the 1929 Stock Market crash. ("Or so I read.")
The last line is potholed to ...Or So I Heard, but for that trope to apply, it would have to be implied that Rose caused Cal's death in some way, right? Since that's not indicated to be the case, am I right that the pothole should be cut?
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
Yes, that's misusing the page title as a Stock Phrase.
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable
Thanks, I'll remove it.
Does Remake Cameo count for adaptations also?
Specifically, I was wondering if Casting Gag or Remake Cameo is the better choice for this entry for The Last of Us (2023):
- Casting Gag: Ashley Johnson played Ellie in the games. Here, she plays her mother.
Edited by eroock on Feb 11th 2023 at 7:23:27 PM
I go with Casting Gag.
I've been stopping by here a lot lately, haha
From YMMV.The Last Of Us 2023 (spoiler tag mine)
- Improved Second Attempt: In the game after Henry shot Sam, he kept pointing his Gun at Joel, muttering "What did you do?" and "It's all your fault!", insinuating that he blamed Joel for Sam turning and Joel tried to defend himself by stating that it was no one's fault, and it is a shocking subversion when Henry suddenly turn the Gun onto himself, showing that he was talking to himself. In this version of the scene (episode 5), he uses the first person ("What did I do?") throughout, making the scene much clearer.
By my understanding of the trope from skimming it's definition, Improved Second Attempt is for when something that was disliked or disappointing is redone by an adaptation or remake in a way that is better received by audiences. The original version of this scene is, to my knowledge, considered very good, so I removed it with the following edit reason:
However, it was subsequently restored with the following edit reason (again, spoiler tags mine):
The user who added and the user who restored (different people, fwiw) seem to be saying that the second attempt is "improved" because it states explicitly something that the original left ambiguous, with nothing related to audience reception, which doesn't seem to match the trope description's criteria. Am I right, or is the trope's definition just outdated or something?
Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Feb 11th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
^ Just noting that the user who entered and restored the entry are one and the same (Phanthom Singh). I only moved their entry from the recap page to YMMV. Haven't played the game, so I cannot comment.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. In that case I suppose this technically makes this an edit war? I'll take it to ATT
She / Her
(x5) From my understanding, Remake Cameo only involves remakes.
♀ | Small ripples lead to big waves
I found this on Mario Is Missing!:
- Polar Penguins: Reading newspapers will bring up news stories about penguins ending up in different parts of the world due to Bowser melting the south pole.
I almost removed this because it seems like "penguins exist", but then I realised that since it's about penguins being associated with the South Pole specifically, it might count with some rewording.
the Retromancer
Maybe, but it requires knowing the context of the work.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
It doesn't mention where these penguins are found, so I don't think it has the necessary context. A penguin in the desert would also fit that description, but wouldn't fit the trope.
She / Her
(x3) Maybe cut because it doesn't mention the part about penguins being associated with cold climates, though it might just be zero-context instead of misuse.
low-poly Shinri
As the person who launched Improved Second Attempt, the examples involved don't necessarily have to have been hated in the original, but there should be at least a notable audience reaction that is negative on it (so if a story element has many strong fans but is also a Broken Base, it too can count).
As far as I'm aware, nobody had issues with that particular aspect in the original game, even if the show is considered to have done it even better. So yeah, not an example as it currently stands.
So i found this in The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder for the Juneteenth episode.
Designated Evil: The episode treats the fact that having a statue dedicated to a slaveowner as morally wrong when tons of men who were slave owners in America (especially several founders) have them.
Considering that there has been times a statue has been taken down because of bad things the person did, owning slaves is still bad.
he/him
Agreed.
Designated evil is defined as:
"a writer paints the solution to a problem, committed by a protagonist, as indisputably wrong or evil, but either doesn't make an alternative action clear, or shows the audience that the alternative would have been ineffective."
I'm not quite seeing how that fits here?
Just a guy.
On Trivia.Hatsune Miku Project Diva:
- Franchise Killer: A one-two blow of most of the franchise's long-time talent leaving the company and subpar reception of X seems to have done the series in for what appears to be the foreseeable future. All games following X were simply ports of Future Tone and updated ports of Future Tone with a few extra bells and whistles attached, with many noticing the quality of any new content added in Mega Mix being lacking compared to past games. It doesn't help that SEGA (and the majority of the fanbase) has changed over to Project SEKAI as their favorite VOCALOID title of choice, leaving what's left of the DIVA series to languish in obscurity.
I don't know about you, but I feel the fact that there were games following X at all means this probably shouldn't count. Especially given that Mega Mix is a new title (even if it is just reusing Future Tone's engine, it still has a new visual style and several new songs much like previous games. Whether or not they are lacking is irrelevant).
Edited by Tylerbear12 on Feb 12th 2023 at 8:22:02 AM
On Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs:
Natter aside, this doesn't seem like a subversion, since Tropes Are Flexible and the description mentions that this trope could apply to other mass extinctions. It would be a subversion if it seemed like Cthulhu was going to kill the dinosaurs, only for a random meteor to do it for him.
Edited by NitroIndigo on Feb 11th 2023 at 7:59:53 PM