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. 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
Does this qualify as an example from HarsherInHindsight.Music:
- Eric Prydz' single Pjanoo
comes across as possibly racist due to outdated Braids, Beads and Buckskins image of Native Americans in the video, creating Soundtrack Dissonance to what is a chillout Ibiza track. As of 2015-2016, the track, which 8 years earlier was seen as enjoyable with a fun video was later the subject of criticism from the "woke" individuals in society.
Edited by Merseyuser1 on Oct 11th 2021 at 9:04:56 AM
"Racism didn't exist until those wokes retroactively created it by criticising it" is a weird take. No, that's not Harsher in Hindsight.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it....Not loving that wording.
But yeah, that'd be Values Dissonance if it wasn't only 13 years old. Not Hindsight at all.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I think this got hidden in the page change, so I'm gonna repost it here:
This is from Final Fantasy XIV - Disciples of Magic about the character X'rhun Tia. I'm not super familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, and it looks like some context might be missing from this example, but even if that's not the case, appearing in a trailer doesn't count as an Early-Bird Cameo, right?
- Early-Bird Cameo: He first appears as in the Red Mage job reveal trailer, 6 months before Stormblood was even released.
The description of Early-Bird Cameo doesn't seem to exclude previews, but we're inclined to say that they're — at the very least not enough, since, y'know, every movie ever reveals most if not all of its main characters in the trailers, and that doesn't quite seem like the thing the article is talking about.
Maybe if X'rhun appeared during a trailer focusing on a specific non-Red-Mage part of the game, he'd count. That example text doesn't tell us whether or not that's the case, though.
Edited by wingedcatgirl on Oct 11th 2021 at 4:13:48 AM
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Is this fitting for Surprisingly Realistic Outcome?
In Rise of the Phoenix Nezu decides to fire All Might from Yuei after the USJ incident. All Might may be the symbol of peace, but he is still an employee of Yuei and he failed to show up on time to a field trip/lesson due to heavily prioritizing petty crimes other heroes could solve, making his failure to show up essentially a personal choice. Not helped that Nezu only hired him so he could scout a successor and All Might has little actual teaching skill, meaning Nezu had little reason to hire him in the first place. Finally, Izuku took care of the villains himself before All Might showed up, so All Might did not even minimize the damage.
From Forgot Flanders Could Do That
- The Simpsons:
- It's revealed in "A Streetcar Named Marge" that the Trope Namer is muscular, which isn't seen often. It's seen again at the beginning of the episode where he moves to Humbleton. When he moves back, people probably forgot again and then he showed his strength by defending himself against another muscular man. Because of the gratuitousness of Ned's topless self, this shades into Brick Joke as well; the writers probably just thought it was funny.
Mostly speculation, and a shoehorned attempt to make the trope namer an example. The example from the Movie might count.
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I think it might be a subversion of Ultimate Job Security rather than a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. IMO, in real life, the school would want to keep a big name employee for publicity's sake even if they screw up their jobs.
Hello.
I was having some problems with formulating an entry of Deconstruction for a work and was directed here. Is this the place to ask for help in these matters? I asked around and was directed here.
My issue is that I struggle to formulate the entry in a satisfying way that goes through both the "why" and "how" of how it deconstructs the tropes it does. Not helping matters is that it does so in a way that causes things to both overlap and crisscross all over the place, making it difficult to say it deconstructs just one at any given moment.
The work in question is Avesta Of Black And White with it deconstructing several tropes in regards to High Fantasy, most notably Black-and-White Morality. This is the best I have managed so far:
However, this is still only touching the surface. I struggle to fit in things like how it affects their society, with tropes such as Knight Templar, Always Chaotic Evil and Principles Zealot being not only common, but straight up enforced by the setting. Or how everyone can tell someone's alignment by just a glance and how some few individuals can mess with this system by being able to mask their alignment.
Then there is also the issue of how Good and Evil in the setting is defined according to the morals of a divine will, creating a kind of commandment that both good and evil has to live by lest they risk divine retribution. There are in fact some of the evil characters that go for a more Pragmatic Villainy approach just to limit the damage they cause without violating the commandment. Even the local Planet Eater Generic Doomsday Villain, even though he causes untold devastation and death just by existing, is more a mix of hard logic and childish naïveté who wants nothing more than to see the peace and beauty in things but can't due his nature. There are also those times when siblings are born of opposite alignments, forcing them to destroy each other while still loving one another.
Even things such as the Heel–Face Turn is a definable concept here with it being seen as a Fate Worse than Death.
And then there is the issue of how the Big Bad factors into this equation. We know how the heroes will eventually win and all that? Well here basically, she only exists as a sort of moderator for this whole system whose sole purpose is to be the final obstacle for the side of good, meant to fail and die by their hand after which the whole things resets and starts over, keeping the war going. This means it also targets the Evil Will Fail trope as well.
And even all this I still feel like I haven't covered everything with how it handles the trope, and then there are all the other tropes it deconstructs as well, but this was the most prominent one and the one that is causing me the most headaches trying to formulate.
I hope this is the right place for this and that you could offer some help regarding this.
Edited by matteste on Oct 12th 2021 at 2:13:39 PM
I think that's fine as a stand-alone example. If you want to talk about how it affects those other tropes, you can make seperate examples for them like
- Heel–Face Turn: Deconstructed (text goes here)
You don't want examples to be a Wall of Text, so sometimes you have to leave details out/put them somewhere else
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FOR MARIA
I don't want it to turn into a Wall of Text either, but due to the way I write I find it hard to be concise, hence why I find myself struggling. There is also that I constantly feel like the information is incomplete and that I need to flesh it out further to get the point across which doesn't exactly help my case.
Again, you can flesh it out using other trope examples. If the Deconstruction of Black-and-White Morality is a major theme, it'll manifest in other tropes you can use to explain
Hoping third time's the charm.
From The Extremist Was Right:
- In Dragon Age II, supporting material seems to lean into the direction that escalating the conflict between the Mages and the Templars into a full rebellion was ultimately the right thing to do, as the status quo only kept weakening the mages' position. There was a lot of collateral damage, but depending on the actions of the next player character, mages can undergo a near-180 in public perception. Particularly notable is flavor text revealing that Meredith was not the first Knight-Commander to misuse the Right of Annulment; the events of the Annulment of the Antiva City Circle twenty-five years after the Right first became available paints a grim picture of what likely would have happened to the Gallows if Anders hadn't intervened.
I'm a bit concerned about it in general, because it relies a lot on player perception and it seems to be used as a Audience Reaction, because there's hardly anything in-universe that is justifying the actions taken. The trope itself says the people whom everyone thought were completely right and in-universe it's noted that many, including mages, denounce this character's actions. The supporting material (i.e. comics and supplementary novels) also have that the character is dead, because some events that occur do not occur in a universe where they live.
Overall, this seems more like someone trying to convince others that the actions were right, when they moreso fall under Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters (already listed under). Thoughts? CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
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It is not a major theme, it is THE theme. Everything from the characters to the worldbuilding is structured around the deconstruction of that trope. And the problem with using other related tropes like you suggested is that many of them are not deconstructed, rather they come about as a result of a the deconstruction of the first one.
I think that is a big reason why trying to break this down is gonna get wordy no matter how you turn it as you basically have to give a recap of the whole series mythology.
If those tropes come about as the deconstruction of the first one, you can still give them their own examples and make sure their description connects them to the deconstruction. Your current deconstruction entry is fine length-wise
Edited by Libraryseraph on Oct 12th 2021 at 11:22:37 AM
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FOR MARIAExample Indentation in Trope Lists is the relevant policy page.
If it's all one example, then you may be better off breaking it into paragraphs:
- Trope: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda
But if it can be divided into sub-examples, then each of those can get its own subbullet. e.g:
- Trope: [overview of how this trope is used in the work]
- specific example 1
- specific example 2
Edited by Twiddler on Oct 12th 2021 at 1:02:36 AM
for what page?
found this example on Orphaned Etymology under real life:
- As noted in the Reality Is Unrealistic page, some people like to claim that things set in the Soviet era where the characters exclaim "My God!" or the like are an example of this trope since a common stereotype for the Soviet Union is complete atheism. Even ignoring the fact that such terms would still linger as holdovers for a long time to come (and the fact that atheists are perfectly capable of using religious swears, even if they don't believe in them), there's also the fact that the USSR never became completely irreligious. Despite attempts at its inception to enforce atheism, the sheer cultural and political influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, in general, made it impossible to ever completely implement. Then Stalin reduced the anti-religious regulation to get the Russian Orthodox Church on his side in World War II. And though Khrushchev tried to re-implement said regulations, from the Brezhnev era onward they were again relaxed. A 1964 kids cartoon taking place in Soviet times has an old lady blessing the protagonist with a cross sign, and no one seems to have had any problems with it.
- Also, words can sometimes change their meaning over time, but remain unchanged in their form, appearing absurd and anachronistic in old texts. "Paging" was once the act of sending a page to fetch someone in a crowded room, for example, centuries before the invention of the internet. In post-feudal eras, the term 'paging' continued to be used to call for someone who may or may not be present in a room. The same use of the term to summon someone over an intercom has lasted from before pagers were invented to long after they've become obsolete.
correct me if im wrong, but this is a long, rambly non-example, right? you can't have Orphaned Etymology in the real world. someone not wanting you to use certain words doesn't mean those words have lost their history.

a good picture?
![[up] [up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png)
I think they're talking about Girl Meets World.
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