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
Are the following examples being used correctly?:
From Red State:
- Career Resurrection: Sort of. While his mainstream career pretty much ended after Cop Out, this film saw the beginning of Kevin Smith's new series of self-financed road show films, allowing him to continue to make films exactly the way he wants to. He also claimed that working with Michael Parks made him fall in love with filmmaking again after Cop Out made him start to hate it.
From Ultimate Marvel Team-Up:
- Strawman Has a Point: Issue 2 starts with a recap of the events of the previous 2 issues, at the Daily Bugle, under the title "Spider-Man: menace?". Fredrick Foswell wrote: "... gaudy red and blue tights, referring to himself only as Spider-Man, jumped into the middle of the riot. Many witnesses describe Spider-Man behavior as mocking and obnoxious. 'It was like he was purposely trying to get the crowd even more riled than it already was', says pretzel cart vendor Cristopher Allen. 'When Spider-Man showed up, that's when things really started to get out of control'. 'I thought Spider-Man was trying to calm things down', said tourist Denny Haynes, 'but it's hard to listen to reason from a guy dressed in tights hanging upside-down from a street light'". And yes, all of that is coherent with the events seen, just casted under a different light.
From Trolls:
- Dueling Works: Merchandise sales are not the only place where this film had to deal with Frozen, as spin-offs of Trolls will be competing with Frozen spin-offs at least twice in the next few years. First, the holiday specials for both franchises will be released the exact same weekend in the United States note , and their sequels will come out three months apart from each other. Trolls won the first duel against Frozen because of the bad reception Olaf's Frozen Adventure received compared to the positive reception of Trolls Holiday.
No, the other one.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Correct. That's a generic "example" that should be deleted.
Does it look like they're dancing?
Officially intimidated
Anddrix: That example on Career Resurrection seems valid (he's STILL directing), but is rife with Word Cruft ("Sort of", "pretty much"). You should change the example so it starts with the "This film saw" part.
135 - 161 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300
Well, no, but, again, the example I cited above doesn't either, but he has counted for a long time now simply because of his rhythmic combo game.
No, the other one.
I'm not sure if that other character counts, but basing an argument that one character fits or not based on another isn't a good idea. That assumes there's nothing wrong with the other character being an example, and that both of them are exactly the same.
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Logic Girl
Does it count as Dancing with Myself if other characters are present, but they're not dancing?
For every low there is a high.
ValuesDissonance.Video Games, does this count, the pull is possibly actually due to an aversion of No Such Thing as Bad Publicity (Is it even an aversion)?
Redundancy.Live Action TV: Once Upon a Time:
Murder, treason, and treachery aren't redundant, right?
edited 7th Dec '17 1:22:26 PM by Malady
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
Officially intimidated
Usually, an aversion would only merit a mention if the trope would most definitely be present in the right time and the right place but isn't. So, at best (which is hardly something in this case), it would be a subversion, but I would opt to remove it altogether.
As for the Redundancy thing, I agree that there's nothing redundant in those words.
Unable to judge the Values Dissonance one, though.
edited 7th Dec '17 4:32:27 PM by MyFinalEdits
135 - 161 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300The following example:
- Irony: Despite wanting to be like Pikachu, Mimikyu is far more powerful than the Series Mascot, with stats that are higher than Pikachu's in every category.
Is this an actual example?
I'm not actually seeing how being wanted for both "treason" and "treachery" isn't redundant, honestly.
You can be treacherous to someone, but that doesn't require committing treason, the latter of which requires... Okay, maybe not requiring betraying a state, specifically. Hmm...
You might be right. ... But not sure, so not adding it back.
edited 8th Dec '17 7:30:26 AM by Malady
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
I would say it's not irony. It would be irony if Mimikyu's desire to be like Pikachu were based on being as strong as Pikachu. If I recall, Mimikyu just wants the attention the mascot gets.
Queen of Neith
Is this even an example of Values Dissonance that I found in the page for Rosemary's Baby.
- Also, the books Hutch writes are repeatedly referred to as adventure books "for boys".
Why Values Dissonance? I don't see anything wrong about adventure books for boys. Reeks of Political Correctness Gone Mad anyone?
Up in Useful Notes/Paraguay
Is hacker software an example of Trojan Horse? The trope page makes no references to the contemporary use of the trope name but I saw this trope used for such incidents.
Rubberband AI, another Examples Are Not General, except for the first indent, which refers to a work?:
- The Shoot Em Up Warning Forever is based off this trope, being nothing but a Boss Rush with the boss changing depending on how you beat it the last time, how well the different weapons worked against you, how quickly you beat it, etc.
- Rank was designed originally to avoid Unstable Equilibrium. When they started putting powerups into shooters, you'd get to the point where it was easy with the powerups, but impossible without them. So someone came up with the bright idea of making the enemies more aggressive if you powered up, so they would still be a threat to your powered ship, and then when you died, they would go back down to normal so you had a chance at recovery. Before, they instead had to balance the enemy power to what you'd have if you didn't die, meaning that if you die once you might as well restart. Hence, rank. This is not usually considered a bad thing, as making recovery from death impossible is considered worse. The real hate is only when it ratchets up too much when you powerup, meaning that not powering up in the first place was preferable. Fortunately this is rare, but...
No, the other one.
The first one is more about an adaptive AI, which isn't quite the same thing. It doesn't rubberband to where you are; it learns your strategies. Dynamic Difficulty is probably a better fit.
The second is, as I understand it, about a general rank system, rather than any specific game, so that doesn't count as an example. And there should be no subbullets in that list.
Trojans viruses are, as a concept, the same thing, but on the whole they're a generic "example".
edited 9th Dec '17 11:53:14 AM by AnotherDuck
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I was looking to add an example to Teacher/Student Romance, but I'm not 100% sure whether it's outside the scope of the trope.
- Kazuki Yamato of Sensei Lock On has crushed on Kyouko Kadokura since the day she became his teacher... in fourth grade. He swore when he grew up he'd make her his bride. Kyouko didn't think much of this, seeing only a Precocious Crush. Fast forward ten years, Yamato is twenty and in university, Kyouko is thirty-three, and he proposes to her. They settle as boyfriend and girlfriend and much of the series' events is Kyouko fretting about the age gap, particularly since she tends to enter "teacher mode" when dealing with him, while simultaneously being constantly charmed by his up front earnestness.
Also, given that he waits until adulthood to approach her, would that be an inverted case of The Jailbait Wait or is there another trope that could be applied?
edited 9th Dec '17 12:29:05 PM by sgamer82
No, the other one.
It doesn't fit the trope as defined during the run of the series, but it does fit in the backstory. It also plays with the concept, so it's clearly present one way or another.
While that might look like an inverted example, I'm not sure it is, since the connotations and motivations for it are different.
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Does that mean it can still go on the Teacher/Student Romance page?
I wasn't sure on The Jailbait Wait, since that's more about the older person waiting and Kyouko doesn't actively do anything. Looking at them myself, there are at least Precocious Crush (which The Jailbait Wait does refer to as "the opposite direction") and May–December Romance.
edited 9th Dec '17 12:42:59 PM by sgamer82
x4 - So, how do we handle examples that operate in effectively the same ways, while they use the same terminology?
'Cause I missed that the entry had 4 sub-bullets, 2 which are now removed.
Rubber-Band A.I. - Shoot 'Em Up:
- In Shoot Em Ups, which don't feature a player going up against apparently identical computer opponents, the feature where the machine becomes more efficient if the player does better is known as "rank" and is often an expected part of the game.
- Battle Garegga is a particularly guilty offender. You have to keep your shot power and number of Attack Drones low for the first five stages, as well as limit your shooting and avoid collecting excess powerups. Failure to do so would make enemies more durable and shoot more bullets, items fall off the screen faster, and overall make the game nearly impossible to survive.
- Raizing's games are designed to punish the player for playing them wrong. In this case, you are supposed to play the game for score, to give you extra lives so you could die more often to lower the rank. Fortunately, most of them aren't that bad... Battle Bakraid actually lets you beat it by playing the game traditionally for survival.
edited 9th Dec '17 2:08:01 PM by Malady
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
So it's been about 4 days, is there any chance I could get a response regarding the Trolls and Ultimate Marvel Team-Up examples I brought here x20.
No, the other one.
Yeah, it can still go on that page.
The first bullet should get gone. The games aren't in the same franchise, so they shouldn't be lumped.
that guy I guess
Early on in Chrysalis Visits The Hague, Saric (yay lack of Unicode support) organizes an expedition into the Everfree Forest to look for ponies who have gone missing in the recent-ish past, and they find a rather large (as in 350 trapped ponies) Changeling (do you capitalize it? I don't watch FiM) hive in a cave. I know that strictly speaking, it's not a Rescued from the Underworld scenario (they don't literally go to the underworld), but it has a lot of elements thereof: there's a harrowing journey into a confined, dark place where several hundred ponies are trapped by a character who's a demon archetype, and there's a Cerberus equivalent (though they're both pretty messed up — strictly speaking, none of the ponies are dead until after they get rescued, and the Cerberus equivalent is a malnourished, brainwashed pegasus with a single booby trap).
Does this count as Playing with a Trope, maybe downplayed or subverted? Or am I playing Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory games with myself?
Thanks.
Note: I already posted this in Ask The Tropers; I was told to go here with it.
Signatures aren't worth my time.
No, the other one.
Rescued from the Underworld is about going to a place where people don't live as usual. They're often dead, or their mind or soul is trapped in that world. It's not about some cave or other dark place, but an actual other-worldly place of some manner. If it's just about rescuing others from a "real" place, it doesn't count, even if it appears similar. Or at least, that's how I interpret the trope.
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Would the somewhat-rhythmic battle system of the game, despite a relative lack of actual dance, make the party members of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 count as Dance Battlers?
I know it sounds illogical, but the Dead or Alive version of Virtua Fighter's Akira Yuki has counted as one for a long time now (despite Bajiquan not being dancelike in the least) for that exact reason, and someone probably would've changed that by now if it didn't count.