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
Lots of coffee
I think a Contested Sequel can still count as Sequelitis as long as it's considered lower-quality than the previous installment. It might also be Tough Act to Follow.
Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 8th 2020 at 4:40:33 AM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Then it'd probably work. Fans still liked Warr but it's the weaker and less-popular series compared to the predecessor. I'm not sure if Mann is a Tough Act to Follow since it's agreed that it was still pretty flawed in some ways, so I think it'd be more about Warrs less-popular and smaller-scale status than Manns greater popularity and quality.
Edit: forgive the grammar, it wouldn't let me add apostrophes properly.
Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 8th 2020 at 4:44:12 AM
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
I AM KING OF THE BEACH!!
Is the Cobra Unit from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater an example of a Standard Evil Organization Squad?
I've never understood what that trope is.
I AM KING OF THE BEACH!!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I still don't lol
[nuked as pre-hidden example]
Edited by Albert3105 on Nov 8th 2020 at 8:51:56 AM
she/her
Reposting from one of the previous pages.
Older Hero vs. Younger Villain has this:
- Tangled: The Series has a 18-19 year old Rapunzel (or actually pretty much everyone in Corona) against a 14 year old Varian who has just made a FaceโHeel Turn.
Anti-Love Song has this:
- Apocalyptica's "Anything But Love" doesn't even pretend for a moment to be a love song. lyrically the song details a female character talking to the man who is going to rape her. She essentially tells him to be as cruel and evil as he wants ("Go on infect me, go on and scare me to death.") and make sure she is traumatized and scared. Because she'd rather that than have him love her.
Pretty sure the "older hero" has to be past their physical prime, while the "younger villain" is still at the height of their prowess for that to qualify.
From Characters.Pinky And The Brain for The Brain's character page, two examples of opinion in trope entries:
- Anti-Villain: If you interpret him as a Villain Protagonist, though he really blurs the line between this and Anti-Hero. After all, the rest of the world is portrayed as so messed up and idiotic, so him taking it over might actually lead to some form of utopia.
- Villain Protagonist: Could be interpreted this way, since his goal after all is world domination, though he's rarely out-and-out villainous.
Perhaps due to the way it's written, I'm not sure if this are really examples of the trope or not and should be on a YMMV page or re-written.
"Could be interpreted this way, since his goal after all is world domination, though he's rarely out-and-out villainous." World-conquering is in itself villainous.
Goku Black
Brain genuinely thinks that the world will be a better place with him In charge. So it would be valid entire. Just requires a bit of a rewrite
On World's Best Warrior, but I think it's "World's Best" Character? I'm saying that because 'bending is not just combat, it can be an art, etc.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra:
- Each incarnation of Avatar is the best bender in the world during their lifetime.
- Toph and Bumi were both considered to be the world's greatest earthbender(s) (mainly because a duel between them ended in a tie). In Korra, Bumi has long since passed, and Toph is indisputably the greatest earthbender in the world. Age has only made her stronger, to the point that she doesn't even need her hands to bend anymore. Since Toph invented metalbending, she might be the strongest earthbender ever and is in the running for strongest bender outside the Avatar ever seen.
- Amon is described as one of the most skilled and powerful benders ever, and certainly the strongest waterbender shown so far. He's possibly the strongest non-Avatar bender to ever live. The only thing ever shown to be able to break his psychic bloodbending is the Avatar State. His brother Tarrlok is also up there given that they can both bloodbend without a full moon.
- The Fire Nation Royal family is filled to the brim with prodigious benders and are the best fire benders shown in the franchise. In the original show, Ozai is described as the best firebender of his time, with only his brother Iroh coming anywhere close to him. In Korra, Zuko's grandson Iroh II is the most skilled one shown. He effortlessly can shoot lightning using the older technique (Mako uses the newer one) and got the Fan Nickname "Iroh Man" for using his bending to fly. Granted the Fire Nation is Out of Focus note for the show so there's not really anyone else to gauge him off of.
Lots of coffee
Are these Harpo Does Something Funny or is that only when the script is written with improvisation in mind since the beginning? I'm considering a trope for when theatrical performances change lines every now and then, but it isn't always obvious that it's the actors improvising (and I don't think the script outright encourages improvising for all of these), and I want to know if this is distinct enough from Harpo Does Something Funny.
- Ever since the end of the Bush presidency, Avenue Q always replaces his name in the line "George Bush is only for now" in "For Now" with some other contemporary reference. Examples include "Ebola is only for now" and "This show is only for now."
- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: The words given to the audience spellers can change per production (though some words are scripted to be easy or hard in order to get the audience members out by certain plot points), and the actor playing Panch is encouraged to come up with original and bizarre ways to use them in a sentence. Rona Lisa Peretti's description of each audience members is also improvised. Logainne's political rant in Act 2 also changes subject every production, with past subjects on Broadway including the Bush administration and Lance Bass coming out of the closet.
- Theatre/Spamalot: The Knights Who So Recently Said "Ni" are always renamed "The Knights Who Say [X]," but the thing they say can vary from production to production, and is often a Shout-Out. This can range from brief phrases to entire song verses or condensed versions of real-life political speeches.
- The Book of Mormon: Arnold's Accidental Misnaming of Nabalungi varies every performance. A comprehensive list can be seen here.
Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 9th 2020 at 9:21:26 AM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Apologies if this isn't the correct place to ask this; I was originally going to ask if a gun that seems unrealistic but actually exists and is usable would count as an aversion of Guns Do Not Work That Way, but looking at the page itself, does it even take examples? It looks like an index.
Jawbreakers on sale for 99ยข
It is an index, but with 261 wicks, it's one of those indexes people mistake for tropes.
Edited by ccorb on Nov 10th 2020 at 6:07:36 AM
Rock'n'roll never dies!
And Magic Bullets is a bad redirect. Disambig into Bizzare Ballistics, Projectile Spell, etc.
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
Currently Suspended
Can the Lady Macbeth trope also be used for male characters?
Found this on Super Mario Bros:
'* Actor Allusion: Bob Hoskins manages to give the Big Bad a Karmic Death being Hoist by His Own Petard and liquified in some form. Why does that sound so familiar?'
Since earlier script drafts had different demises for Koopa, usually involving the Bob-Omb, I'm not sure if this counts.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Characters.Harvest Moon Back To Nature often uses Adaptation Personality Change for the characters in relation to their Harvest Moon 64 counterparts. Is this actually valid? BTN is not an "adaptation" of 64, although they recycled a lot of the character designs and names from its predecessor, but changing their personality, backstory and relationships.
tropineasily: It's indexed under "Always Female," so nope.
Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Nov 10th 2020 at 3:46:30 PM
I was looking at Fountain of Expies and noticed it listed Romantic Vampire Boy as being an Expy of Edward Cullen. I question this because there were examples of this trope before Edward. In fact the trope page even points this out. It seems overtly simplistic to say a Romantic Vampire Boy is automatically an Expy of Edward.
Are these really examples of Wham Line?
- Jeopardy!: "What is Fedex?" is a perfectly innocent wrong Final Jeopardy answer that would have been forgotten if given by any other second place contestant...But not by Ken Jennings.
- Another one came in a Youtube video:
I'm helping!
>A scene is headed in one direction, then the line is uttered. Afterwards, the scene is going somewhere very, very different.
I don't think this is possible in a game show. People like to use Wham Line as "the line that whammed me with how surprising it was".
Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.
I disagree with both. The first one is just getting a wrong answer, not really a wham line. The second is pretty much troping real life.
How much worse does a sequel need to be to have Sequelitis apply? I'm considering adding this example to the YMMV page for The Cry of Mann but since the sequel series isn't disliked by any means, I'm not sure:
- Sequelitis: While Call Of Warr wasn't hated by any means, it got much less attention than Cry Of Mann and ran for a shorter amount of time, making it generally the less popular series. Featuring less emphasis on callers and having none of the original characters besides Ghost Lady helped to make it the less beloved, though still not disliked, series.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness