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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.
    • Wrong: Big Bad: Of the first season.
    • Right: Big Bad: The heroes have to defeat the Mushroom Man lest the entirety of Candy Land's caramel supply be turned into fungus.
  • A character name is not an explanation.


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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. We don't discuss Complete Monster or Magnificent Bastard examples; please don't bring them up.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jul 17th 2025 at 8:59:01 PM

DustSnitch Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#4426: Oct 5th 2017 at 10:03:22 PM

Considering that doesn't discuss the network at all, no, that is not an example of Screwed by the Network.

Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#4427: Oct 5th 2017 at 10:22:54 PM

[up] I cut it.

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DustSnitch Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#4428: Oct 7th 2017 at 5:50:15 PM

Superpower Lottery is about when one character wins "the lottery" and is explicitly far more powerful than any other superpowered character in the setting. This Superfriends example mentions Superman as an example of this, but goes into quite a bit of detail about how underpowered Wonder Woman and Aquaman are compared to the source material. Is it appropriate to cut that stuff out?

  • Superfriends was made of this. You had Superman with Silver Age power levels doing things like fly his way out of a black hole and then you had everyone else. Wonder Woman really took it up the ass, since this was before her massive power-up to demi-god levels. Outside of occasionally wrapping people up with her lasso and giving others a ride in her invisible jet, her main role was to get grabbed around the waist by the episode's big hulking male enemy - even circus animals got in on this. This show is also where Aquaman got most of his bad rep in the minds of an entire generation. In stark contrast to how his powers have developed in the comic books, in the cartoons his Aquatic Telepathy was iffy at best. Half the time it had no effect on particularly exotic marine life or could be easily blocked or overridden by enemies and he would sometimes even wonder out loud if his powers would work!

alnair20aug93 🍊orange fursona🧡 from 🐾Furrypines 🇵🇭 (Long Runner) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
🍊orange fursona🧡
#4429: Oct 8th 2017 at 8:28:03 AM

I don't know if this is What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic? or something else:

  • The 2006 Marie Antoinette film with the queen living in luxury while completely oblivious to the status around her and wearing pink fancy clothes could be an address to the socialites such as Paris Hilton, and the reality show stars at the time.

ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔
SebastianGray (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#4430: Oct 8th 2017 at 12:27:51 PM

The Ordinatus from Warhammer 40,000 have been added to the Wave-Motion Gun page with the following example:

  • Some of the Ordinatus war machines take this form. The basic concept of the Ordinatus is "Alright, this sort of weapon works best against what we're facing, and we're gonna need a whole fucking lot of it", and when the sort of weapon needed is plasma for armor, or sonic weaponry against fortifications, among other possibilities, the end result is one of these. The plasma one (Ordinatus Armageddon) fired globs of plasma large enough to melt Imperial Titans, and the sound-based one (Ordinatus Mars) liquefied an entire fortress in a couple shots. Of course, some others take different forms if the problem isn't best solved with a continent-scorching gun.

I do not believe that they fit the trope, which as I understand to mean as a large weapon that fires a continuous beam of massive power rather than just a massively powerful gun. If this is the case then Mars definitely doesn't fit and Armageddon could but probably doesn't as it is a massive Plasma Cannon. I wanted to get some other opinions on the issue.

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#4431: Oct 8th 2017 at 7:06:20 PM

Those seem like the artillery equivalent of Big Freaking Gun and/or Tank Goodness (AKA Cool Tank). I don't suppose we have Big Freaking Artillery and/or Cool Artillery, do we?

edited 8th Oct '17 7:07:51 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4432: Oct 8th 2017 at 7:32:14 PM

As I previously admitted on Ask the Tropers, some of the Truer to the Text entries about cartoons based on comics spend so much time listing times that the shows didn't remain true, that it became hard for me to tell which entries should count, and which shouldn't.

edited 8th Oct '17 7:32:35 PM by dsneybuf

MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#4433: Oct 8th 2017 at 7:51:44 PM

I have a possible example for Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance. The trope is Our Werebeasts Are Different.

Background: The game introduces a character and a generic class that are the same type of demon. Referred to in the games subpages as Wererabbits. The character in question, Usalia, has some theranthropic traits, mainly being forced to go berserk whenever she goes for extended periods of time with consuming curry. The reasons I ask is.

  • Usalia's "Transformation" is the result of a curse placed on her, and has a minor effect, mostly affecting her stance and her face.
  • The wererabbits themselves seem to be a case of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism. The males appear as bipedal rabbits, the females (or rather the two female wererabbits that appear in the game) look like Little Bit Beastly women (with rabbit ears.) Usalia is the only one with anything that could be considered a transformation.
  • A side note: the only time I've seen the term used in relation to the game so far on its its pages on This Very Wiki and Usalia's own page on the Disgaea wiki, I have not seen any instance of the term "wererabbit" in the game proper yet, (the generic class drops the were- prefix in the English text). So the only other possibility is that a slight Dub Name Change (and that by extension the term was used or seen in Japanese).

So I ask if Usalia applies to this trope, if the wererabbis count for this trope (or alternatively if the criteria of this trope can be stretched to including any species that is called were[animal])?

edited 8th Oct '17 8:11:01 PM by MorningStar1337

MathsAngelicVersion Ambassador of Eurogames and Touhou Music from Gensokyo Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Ambassador of Eurogames and Touhou Music
#4434: Oct 9th 2017 at 12:02:49 PM

I don't like defending Vegan Artbook, but I think I've found a few shaky examples on StrawmanHasAPoint.Vegan Art Book. Isn't Strawman Has a Point supposed to be "hey, this supposed strawman has a strong argument", not just "I happen to agree with the non-strawmanned version of the strawman's position"?

  • When Dolly brings out sources to justify her views, Shawn rejects it due it coming from a biased vegan source. This is supposed to show how Shawn has been propagandized by the meat, egg, and millk industries and is close minded to alternative information. However, the truth is he is right to be skeptical of results that come out favoring veganism. Often times these vegan sources have sketchy data and information put together to skew toward's the author's stances, and it's often times reviewed by people who share their mindset as well.

The example's claim about sketchy data from vegan sources may be right (I haven't looked into it), but Shawn isn't saying that Dolly's data come from biased sources (unless you, like the troper who added it seems to do, infer that anything pro-vegan must be unreliable). He's blatantly saying that he'll only trust studies paid for by the meat/egg/dairy industries, which are likely to be biased. He's not making a good point.

The label is fitting in a different way. I doubt that Right for the Wrong Reasons counts.

AnotherDuck No, the other one. from Stockholm Since: Jul, 2012 Relationship Status: Mu
No, the other one.
#4435: Oct 9th 2017 at 1:09:40 PM

Yeah, those aren't correct. They're certainly strawmen, but they don't have any kind of point the examples pretend they have.

The latter would qualify if a vegan (according to her) has previously been shown eating or using those things she says vegans don't eat or use.

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dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4436: Oct 9th 2017 at 1:45:33 PM

Copied and pasted from that Ask the Tropers thread, the Truer to the Text entries I still find questionable, or at least questionably-worded:

edited 9th Oct '17 1:45:56 PM by dsneybuf

AnotherDuck No, the other one. from Stockholm Since: Jul, 2012 Relationship Status: Mu
No, the other one.
#4437: Oct 9th 2017 at 3:42:40 PM

I think it's generally a bad idea to begin describing an example by listing all the reasons why it might not be an example, especially if it looks like someone attempted an All Blue Entry.

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dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4438: Oct 9th 2017 at 4:02:51 PM

Does it look like I should delete the whole entries, or just those lists?

Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#4439: Oct 9th 2017 at 4:16:47 PM

Is this an example of O.O.C. Is Serious Business? On Steven Universe S5E5 "Dewey Wins".

  • Steven usually needs time to process events after going through major traumas like when Jasper captured all the Gems, Bismouth, and nearly being killed by Eyeball and almost dying in space — so the fact he's acting like noting bad happened during his time on Homeworld is not like him at all.

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AnotherDuck No, the other one. from Stockholm Since: Jul, 2012 Relationship Status: Mu
No, the other one.
#4440: Oct 9th 2017 at 5:16:05 PM

[up]Maybe? Not sure. A bit lacking of context.

[up][up]Clean up and see what it looks like?

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sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#4441: Oct 9th 2017 at 5:18:33 PM

[up][up]Has that episode even actually aired yet? Last I heard we just had a two minute preview clip.

[down] In that case, should it have an active page at all? I thought this issue had come up before and the pages aren't supposed to be there until they actually air.

edited 9th Oct '17 5:30:29 PM by sgamer82

Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#4442: Oct 9th 2017 at 5:22:47 PM

[up] It's just the clip. "Dewey Wins" is supposed to air sometime this Winter.

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dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4443: Oct 9th 2017 at 5:58:00 PM

[up] x3 I can't tell whether or not the entries related to the DCAU Batman and Superman cartoons exaggerate by calling them Truer to the Text than every other TV show with either character, even the ones that hadn't come out yet.

edited 9th Oct '17 5:58:30 PM by dsneybuf

Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#4444: Oct 9th 2017 at 7:06:27 PM

[up][up][up] Wasn't that only for leaks?

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dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4445: Oct 9th 2017 at 8:47:32 PM

OK, regarding the Truer to the Text entries I questioned, I removed the lists of libertiesnote , though I also commented-out some that might or might not sound like hyperbole — can someone help me decide one or the other on those?

Silverblade2 Since: Jan, 2013
#4446: Oct 10th 2017 at 9:10:44 AM

I feel like Actor Allusion znd Casting Gag deserve to get a cleanup thread considering the insane amount or examples that are just "It's not the first time this actor plays someone who..."

Anyway, on Trivia.Ducktales 2017

=> The first David Tennant and Jim Cummings might be good but the rest is shoehorned.

  • Casting Gag:
    • We have an attractive reporter named Roxanne Featherley, who's voiced by Kari Wahlgren. Sandra Jimenez might know a thing or two about that.
    • Gyro Gearloose is not the first character Jim Rash voiced who's not as nice as from the source material.

=> Both sound like mild coincidences.

edited 10th Oct '17 10:36:35 AM by Silverblade2

Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#4447: Oct 10th 2017 at 10:34:20 AM

So what do I do with the O.O.C. Is Serious Business example?

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dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4448: Oct 10th 2017 at 3:00:37 PM

Manny20444 un-hid the Truer to the Text entries for the '90s Batman, X-Men, and Superman cartoons, but didn't reword them, so I still kind of fear that they seem like hyperbole.

Monsund Since: Jan, 2001
#4449: Oct 10th 2017 at 6:44:48 PM

If someone is kidnapped and forcibly has their entire memory of their life's history rewritten does that count as Brainwashed and Crazy?

dsneybuf (Not-So-Newbie)
#4450: Oct 10th 2017 at 8:26:43 PM

A Sailor Moon arc fitting that description made it onto the page, if that means anything.


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