Is this an example?

Gonna post this here again so it doesn't get buried and to hopefully gain some insight into the matter:

"Hello again, and thank you for the earlier response. I apologize for putting this here but it seems that the What An Idiot cleanup has died a bit and I wanted some more opinions on this as well as to get feedback to improve future entries.

A while ago I made an entry in the What an Idiot page on Steven Universe for an episode titled "Bubbled":

This has been deleted multiple times, but I've never really seen any clear context as to why this doesn't count as an Idiot moment (while this has been brought up on the forums before, the response is just "cut it" with no explanation, which doesn't explain what the issue with the entry is). Steven is a half human and it's been shown that he can and will die in space. Steven is also the only thing keeping that bubble that is giving him the oxygen he needs to live up...and when it gets to the point that he doesn't have enough oxygen in the bubble from later expelling his opponent, he blacks out. So surely trying to convince your opponent that you're the general that killed their leader figure (that they view as godlike) when they're clearly antagonistic and unstable is a stupid move, right? He's also met antagonists who don't respond to his pacifism well at this point and he's talking to someone who's been raised on a wildly different worldview and someone he's lied to about the whereabouts of their general multiple times. "

I was also wondering about a possible example of Dirty Coward. I wanted to add this to the Paranatural Characters page but wasn't sure if it counted:

• While Ritz will gleefully injure animals, insult Stephen about going to public school, and let Stephen get ambushed by the Delinquent Trio, she tries to back out of fighting him once Paige declares her gang's intent to stay out of it so she can root for him.

EnsembleDarkhorse.Pokemon:

• Heck, Cipher as a whole can be considered this for being some of the darkest villains in the franchise thanks to the whole "Shadow Pokémon" concept, and many wish to see them return in a future title. To wit, before them were Pokémon thieves and Eco Terrorists, and only Ghetsis has come close in terms of sheer unbridled villainy. Some of their admins stand out more than others, however, even if they don't quite reach Miror B.'s level.

I intended to cut since the whole team is collectively too important a character to count. Objections? And if The Scrappy only apples to individuals, why not Darkhorse?

Are there examples similar to Cipher in the form of Team Galactic, Team Rocket, etc.? As a group it could likely work in that context.

But since the group is collectively the main antagonist that's too major a role to count as a Darkhorse, right?

Cipher should be cut since they're the main antagonists of the Orre games and therefore too major to count.

@WaywardTotodile, I don't think anything we've seen so far has implicated Ritz as a Dirty Coward. It doesn't seem that she's afraid of fighting Stephen, only that she considers it beneath her. She dodged his first attack with ease and laughed at him.

• You Got Guts: Paige takes a liking to Stephen after he defiantly shouts that he'll take on Ritz and the trio all at once. Consequentially, she opts to have the trio sit out so she can root for Stephen as he fights Ritz.

The two relevant pages of Paranatural, for reference.

HumanPopsicle.Literature:

Taken for Granite being used as the magical variant of Human Popsicle, still isn't Human Popsicle, right?

Also, Time Dilation isn't either?

Lastly, this, doesn't count, since he's just chilled, not fully frozen?

Howdy @Twiddler, thanks for your input on Ritz. I appreciate it immensely. So I looked at You Got Guts again to try and get more clarity, and while it says it's a Stock Phrase (which to me means that it pretty much must be verbatim), I'm also seeing variations of it such as "you have such spirit" and "you got pluck". However, Paige doesn't appear to say anything close to that:

So I'm going to surmise that it doesn't fit You Got Guts since she doesn't really say anything that seems close to the phrase, but I'd love more input on the matter.

Edited by WaywardTotodile on Mar 24th 2019 at 11:58:24 AM

Would this count for Status Quo Is God for Series.Monk.

• Any episodes that deal with Monk either finally getting better or actually moving on from Trudy's death will all be reset after the end of the episode.

Give specific examples.

Well, one episode has Monk actually getting better and have better control of his ocd. However, the episode plot dealt with the presumed fake death of his wife Trudy and the experience regress him back. Another has Monk talking too an actor who was going to play him in a movie and who had a problem with getting to into the role. After the actor drudge up the painful memories of Trudy, Monk has a breakdown. There's also episodes where Monk may start dating again but they all end badly.

Edited by WhirlRX on Mar 24th 2019 at 2:33:57 PM

re: Human Popsicle

Reading the trope description, I think the second example is in the right ballpark, but the first one isn't. And maybe the trope needs a trip to TRS, because the title focuses on the "frozen" part when the description focuses on the "one-way time displacement" part.

Considering that Monk's OCD and inability to get over his wife are core character traits, I'd say that counts. Although I don't remember if Monk eventually gets over Trudy in a season/ series finale, so that might warrant some looking into.

Regarding You Got Guts, from No New Stock Phrases:

The context of the Paranatural moment fits the use of You Got Guts, it is only missing the actual utterance itself. Given that it fits the spirit of the phrase, I believe that is the most important part. Tropes Are Flexible and all that.

So what I want to know is if this is a correct way to approach the use of Stock Phrases.

This was deleted in YMMV.The Rising Of The Shield Hero.

Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped:

• Fake rape accusations are very real, and are indeed damaging. They not only ruin the accused's reputation, but it can seriously sour their view on the world and in other people. And they aren't always lucky enough to prove themselves innocent.
• At the same time, bad experiences and being screwed over by vindictive people should not cloud the characteristics of other people. For every toxic person in the world, there is always someone out there who is nothing but kind hearted.

The reason by troper Eagal: Examples fail to demonstrate that A: They are anvilicious, and B: Their lack of subtlety improves the story.

I feel the reason is wrong. But considered the drama with the False Rape deal of the anime, i want to make sure.

Male Spoiled Sweet — genuine example, or shoe-horn?

(two examples, two posts — to make it more readable)

See also the old TRS discussion. Spoiled Sweet TRS.

• Richie Rich, the Poor Little Rich Boy, takes the premise and runs with it, becoming one of Harvey Comics' flagship characters specifically on the basis of being good-hearted, charitable, kind, clever, and generous to a fault, averting the negative stereotypes associated with the super-rich — crossing over with Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Witch, likewise inversions of common bogeymen of their day. A rare Gender-Inverted Example.
  • Lonely Rich Kid is a contrast trope to Spoiled Sweet.
  • Spoiled Sweet are teen, young adult girls who are rich, pampered, sheltered, naive, optimistic and genuinely nice to everyone and usually very popular with abundance of friends. How does a small boy with no friends fit here?
  • Charitable — is he A Wealthy Philanthropist? Uncle Pennybags (wants to have fun with other kids?)
  • Kind — is he a Nice Guy? Cheerful Child?
  • Being clever is not really a requirement for Spoiled Sweet.
  • Just a note: Comparison to other rich characters is irrelevant when writing an example.

• A Gender-Inverted Example in the form of Blackadder Goes Forth's Lieutenant George, an idealistic young soldier in the trenches of World War One, loyal, well-intentioned, amiable, and intensely naive. A Cambridge man, not quite nobility but still born of money, knowing all the right people, which helps him not at all in a foxhole, where he's oblivious to the point of willful ignorance of the horrors surrounding them, in stark contrast to the middle- and lower-class Blackadder and Baldrick (respectively) of the season. While Played for Laughs and heavily mocked through most of the show's fourth series, this same innocence is played entirely straight in the last moments of the Grand Finale, when the regiment finally goes over the top for one last desperate charge.
  • How is he pampered? Who spoils him? How is he sheltered? Naive, optimistic, popular? Spoiled Sweet are not Upper Class Twits or Butt Monkeys (which is a vibe I'm getting from the write-up). If you read the description of Spoiled Sweet with in him in mind, how does he fit?
  • How would the setting invert the gender/sex stereotypes? Soldiers in WWI portrayed as shallow but nice young women? I don't see it.

Putting this up because I never got an answer. Can I put this in for Shield Hero?

• Internet Backdraft: To say that the series garnered some controversy would be a hell of an understatement. Some critics who took notice of the anime's pilot episode went on an uproar over the use of a False Rape Accusation as a plot point, calling it ill-timed or in bad taste. But what really broke the dam was when the website animefeminist.com refused to review it and instead chose to post links to organizations that help victims of sexual violence. Some fans became furious with animefeminist for their attempt to be political when they should have simply reviewed the anime.

That's a misuse of the trope. Internet Backdraft is when a particular hot button issue among fans is completely obscure to the world at large, so when someone trips over it innocently, it explodes in their face. The trope is named after a phenomenon in firefighting: a backdraft occurs when you open a door onto a contained fire. The sudden rush of oxygen-rich air into the room causes it to reignite.

Given the discrepancy between the trope definition and its application in examples, I think we may have a lot of misuse. It's worth noting that TV Tropes is not a place to document controversies in general. Someone getting mad at a reviewer for their opinion has absolutely nothing to do with the work itself and should not be added as an example of anything (unless we have an article for the reviewer).

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2019 at 11:15:57 AM

I'm going to try to catch up on a few of these while my work computer chews through some data loads. I'm going to go backwards so I don't run into the problem I've had before of re-answering questions.

~XFllo #8066 and #8067:

I'm inclined to agree with your analysis on the Richie Rich example. I don't recall him being a Friend to All Living Things or similar paragon of sweetness, purity and virtue, but the most experience I have with the comic is a few newspaper strips or whatever. I lack any detailed knowledge.

I agree with the other one as well. It feels like a shoehorn. How is he "spoiled and pampered"?

~Whirl RX #8065:

I feel like there has been a cleanup effort for Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped recently. The problem is: who says they need to be dropped? How do we distinguish a "good" Aesop from a "clunky" one? I can't speak to the details of this one because I have no idea about the work, but to use the trope at all implies that the wiki is taking a position on the validity of the moral lesson, which we shouldn't.

~Twiddler #8064:

This example illustrates the problem with stock phrases as tropes: it's possible to take them so literally that we confuse the phrase for the trope it represents. The example as presented absolutely fits the spirit of the trope. It only lacks the literal words, which I think still lets it count.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2019 at 10:28:41 AM

Catching up on a few more examples that were vaguely or not answered...

~MaLady #8057:

Taken for Granite can create a Human Popsicle situation, by a broad reading of the trope. It isn't just about freezing, and any examples that talk about someone being frozen without it being used as a way to bump them forward in time are misuse. The character is in some way suspended from aging and rendered incapable of perceiving the world, and then they are freed or awoken a significant amount of time in the future.

~Wayward Totodile #8051:

My final word on your What An Idiot example is that if it keeps getting deleted then there is clearly a weight of opinion against it and it's probably not worth adding. WAI is subjective, after all.

~MaLady #8050:

"Schoolgirl by day, hooker by night" seems like a valid example of Naughty by Night, although I'd look for a more specific trope about prostitution. The emphasis of the trope needs to be that they are into kinky stuff, not that they're moonlighting. If she's working because she's into it rather than because she wants or needs the money, then it'd be valid.

On the other one, while writing erotic fiction is certainly something that would shock her neighbors, is she doing the things she writes about? The trope seems to require some sort of active participation, not just having (or writing) fantasies.

~gjjones #8046:

Following up on this, a Berserk Button is a character quirk: a specific, peculiar action that reliably sends someone into an uncontrollable rage. If the thing that angers them would anger anyone in a similar situation, it doesn't count. If they get provoked to anger on a specific occasion, but it doesn't recur, it doesn't count. They also need to become uncontrollably angry. The example doesn't really clarify this, instead taking a more pithy style that I often see for Berserk Button: "Don't do X to Y or you'll regret it." Unfortunately, this contributes to misuse by obscuring both the explanation of the example and the meaning of the trope.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2019 at 11:40:19 AM

~Ano Baka Desu #8044:

What trope has it been added as an example of? From the article itself, I see that it's in Broken Base. Again, that trope requires that a substantial portion of fans argue on both sides of the point. If it's universally despised, or if there's a group of vocal opponents and everyone else doesn't really care, then it's not an example. It also needs to remain an ongoing argument after many months or years.

~Ferot_Dreadnaught #8040:

Never Live It Down is about a character becoming known among fans only for a particular misdeed, rather than any of the other things they've done in a work. A creator should not be subject to the trope unless it's all fans generally know about that specific person or company, and it seems like it would be something that would run afoul of our rules on subjectively troping RL.

#8027:

So, this is another Broken Base example? Please specify in your post. The ROCEJ comment should absolutely be removed. I cannot speak to the validity of the example otherwise. It seems like it might count, as it describes an irreconcilable split among fans.

Wrong topic. Take it to Image Pickin'. Also, if you're going to post something like that, put it in a folder. Some people are at work or school and can get in trouble.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2019 at 11:56:53 AM

don't know where that is...