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
She / Her
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Not a problem. Also, I honestly don't feel the current All There in the Manual explains this well, though I feel it can be cut considering what you said. As for the Artistic License – Law thing, I'm honestly unsure if that counts, sorry.
While I agree the last part is complaining, I disagree about Never Live It Down since she said Ash was acting like a kid multiple times if my memory is correct. However, NLID requires the action to be done once. I also don't feel that's a proper example of Memetic Personality Change because what is being described is canon instead of fanon.
I'm not quite understanding where the artistic license is. How are you saying the situation would be different in real life? He wouldn't be charged for an incident that long ago? He would be charged when it first happened? He wouldn't be charged at all because Graves was trespassing? Some combination? The example should explain what is unrealistic.
Hm, while I'm looking at Artistic License – Law:
- In the British YA novel Guitar Girl, the protagonist Molly Montgomery comes into conflict with her manager Paul over wanting to leave her contact, with him saying he'll sue her for breach of contract. However as she points out: [reasons he's the one who broke the law].
If they're just discussing it, that doesn't fit, right? It's a depiction of someone being incorrect about a legal process, not an incorrect depiction of a legal process.
(Meanwhile I do feel like there's a possibility that "If you try it, it'll go worse for you than me" could be a trope which this would fit but I'm not turning up anything like that...)
She / Her
You're correct; Artistic License – Law involves incorrect depictions of the law or legal procedures, not a character in-universe making a factual error about one or the other.
I mainly fix indentation issues
From the YMMV of Gargoyles:
- Win Back the Crowd: Prior to this show, fans of the Disney Afternoon were beginning to complain that the block was moving too far away from the more "timeless" adventure and fantasy shows it had started with and relying too heavily on wacky, insta-dated contemporary comedies. Their complaints were more than assuaged when this show, the more thematically mature and downright awesome of all of them, came along.
This has nothing to do with the show itself.
Valdo
Owl House / Infinity Train / Inside Job Fan
Okay, I don’t fully know the law but the man was a stalker and he was killed in self defense. Aren’t there exceptions in real life for self defense deaths?
YMMV.Changeling Space Program And The Maretian: This isn't the format, right? It's writer style?
- Spoiled by the Format: The majority of the story is told in a limited third person (or first person in the case of Mark’s journal entries) rotating between characters. When the narrative shifts to a dry omniscient third person, particularly when laying out a large chunk of exposition, it’s usually a cue that something bad is about to happen.
Correct, those are intentional choices by the writer to highlight suspense and or foreshadow something.
Spoiled by the Format, which is a weird one, is about how you know just by how many pages are left (or minutes left when streaming) you can tell something about the ending (ex. can't be the ending, there are six chapters left).
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
She / Her
(x4) I feel that's misuse since it's talking about the creator as a whole and not the work itself. From what I can gather on Win Back the Crowd, it has to involve the latter.
he/him
Going down a rabbit hole on Author Avatar, we have this in the comics section:
- Warren Ellis does this quite a bit; sometimes the avatar's a writer, sometimes not. Pete Wisdom both in Excalibur, and later in Ultimate Human. Curzon, the British detective in his run on The Mighty Thor. Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan. The Wildstorm Universe has at least two: Planetary has Elijah Snow, and The Authority has Jenny Sparks.
Most of them are British (unsurprising for a British writer), almost all of them channel some of the snark associated with Ellis (although the Ultimate Human version of Wisdom, the Big Bad for that Alternate Universe series is nothing like that, and I feel confident in cutting that one).
But I think the bar may be a bit higher for using this trope - I can see a bit of it with Spider Jerusalem, a misanthropic writer who wishes the world was better - but...
How much evidence do we need? In this case the names are different, appearance is very different, life is different, no Word of God - some of them are a mouthpiece for his political views, none are infallible or beyond criticism, so...?
She / Her
That entry reads as zero-context to me, honestly. As for your question, Author Avatar doesn't state how much evidence is required, so I'm unsure. That said, I don't think there are enough similarities to count.
Hey everyone, I was the one who added this entry for Friday Night Funkin' that was removed a couple days ago due to the discussion on this page:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13543987200A54420100&page=958#comment-23928
- Hype Backlash: Since late 2021, the game and its modding community has been hit incredibly hard with this, primarily due to the fandom. While much of this is akin to the cycle that previous viral indie games went through, the sheer amount of drama and controversies that the fandom has been in (i.e. controversies surrounding the Whitty, Sky, and Mid-Fight Masses mods over alleged plagiarism, sexualization of the titular character by fans, and charting respectively), accusations of inappropriate behavior against some mod makers, the high amount of children in the fandom, and the massive YouTube content machine surrounding it, along with more subjective takes such as the varying quality of mod songs and accusations of "ruining" or forming unnecessary drama around other works (notably Pibby and Sonic.exe) by making mods based on them, has made the backlash especially pronounced. Another major backlash towards the game itself is the radio silence about upcoming chapters (with the Kickstarter stretch goal image being posted and mocked on Twitter every now and then), despite the necessary secrecy and development time required by the devs.
As you can see, this was a huge wall of text, but that was primarily because the original version I made was commented out for being a ZCE and the editor who removed it told me to add more context, even though I felt like that would make it seem more like complaining.
- Hype Backlash: Since late 2021, the game has been hit incredibly hard with this, primarily due to the fandom. While much of this is akin to the cycle that previous viral indie games went through, the sheer amount of drama and controversies that the fandom has been in and the high amount of children in it, along with more subjective takes such as the varying quality of mod songs and accusations of "ruining" other works by making mods based on them, has made the backlash especially pronounced. Another major backlash towards the game itself is the radio silence about upcoming chapters (with the Kickstarter stretch goal image being posted and mocked on Twitter every now and then), despite the necessary secrecy and development time required by the devs.
Is there a way I can add the entry without it seeming too dense/complainy? I'm neutral on FNF itself (heck, I created a few trope pages for mods back when the game was fresh and new) but the trope definitely does apply (and I find it fascinating how Hype Backlash has manifested towards it with the "ruining" complaints). I felt like the original entry was good enough but it was removed for apparently not having enough context.
Edited by geekgecko on Nov 25th 2022 at 8:50:00 AM
I fix my examples all the time
Found this example in Rated M for Manly.
- Naruto: A and his father the Third Raikage. Also, Might Guy, who can punch so strong that the shockwave assumes the form of a roaring tiger and hits immensely hard. Without using Chakra.
the Retromancer
Yes. Even if the trope wasn't about the entire work, the example doesn't explain a thing anyway.
I think the issue is that the backlash is less towards FNF itself and more towards its fanbase.
She / Her
(x4) While your rewrite is an improvement, that doesn't count like as an example; what you're describing is backlash due to the fanbase, not hype. However, the latter is a requirement for Hype Backlash.
(x3) Like the other Rated M for Manly examples you brought up, I feel that work isn't masculine enough to qualify. So, I'd cut it.
Doctor Who S32 HVBS "Night and the Doctor" lists a Retcon due to some events being contradicted in a later episode. Should Retcon be moved to that later episode?
he/him
The general rule is that recap, WMG etc. shouldn't say anything about later episodes, sequels etc. - not even with spoiler tags.
So, yep, I'd move it to the later episode's page, where the retcon actually happens.
I mainly fix indentation issues
From the YMMV of Gone with the Wind:
- Fair for Its Day: David O. Selznick recognized that Mitchell's flattering portrayal of slavery and race relations in the antebellum South were extremely questionable and deliberately tried toning them down for the film. He didn't entirely succeed, but there are some marked improvements over the source material:
- While the film is friendlier to the Confederate cause then most depictions are nowadays, it's also not a totally whitewashed portrayal. In one scene, Ashley and Rhett share their opinions on the war with other southern aristocrats. Ashley supports the Confederacy but laments that things aren't being peacefully negotiated while Rhett lays out in blunt terms that the South is screwed if they go up against the North. Both men are treated sympathetically while the other men frothing at the mouth for violent secession are viewed as privileged fools in over their heads.
- In the same scene, even the pro-war characters openly admit that the cause of the war is slavery, fearing that the north won't let them keep their slaves and thus will ruin their entire economy. It makes no attempt to deflect to some other reason such as states' rights. The issue of course is that the movie tacitly portrays the image that black people weren't particularly suffering under slavery...
- Despite the painful caricature that is Prissy, Mammy is still a surprisingly decent representation of a black woman. She's shown to be more intelligent, competent, and compassionate than a lot of the white characters despite her status as a servant. What's more is that the film avoided using Blackface - which many others had done to feature black characters - and cast race-appropriate actors. Hattie McDaniel even won an Oscar for the role.
- The film also refused to give the Ku Klux Klan the same treatment it had in the book. Rhett, Ashley and a few other sympathetic characters are in the Klan in the book - in the film, there are some vague hints that they might be, but their activities explicitly described as having anything to do with the Klan. It also omits the Klan pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment when Scarlett is attacked. Indeed, it has the black fieldhand Big Sam save Scarlett from bandits.
- The book also has Big Sam save Scarlett from her assailants.
- While the film is friendlier to the Confederate cause then most depictions are nowadays, it's also not a totally whitewashed portrayal. In one scene, Ashley and Rhett share their opinions on the war with other southern aristocrats. Ashley supports the Confederacy but laments that things aren't being peacefully negotiated while Rhett lays out in blunt terms that the South is screwed if they go up against the North. Both men are treated sympathetically while the other men frothing at the mouth for violent secession are viewed as privileged fools in over their heads.
So, according to the first bullet, these examples are improvements that the movie make to the original work. That sounds more like Improved Second Attempt to my. Thoughts?
Edited by SoyValdo7 on Nov 25th 2022 at 7:18:34 AM
Valdo
Don't think Improved Second Attempt fits, as Mitchell's book was wildly popular, so popular they made it into an expensive movie with all the day's biggest stars.
The Fair for Its Day entries are just halfhearted defenses of the movie, because the movie (along with the book) are one of the many reasons that people view the Confederacy in such a rosy light. I'd cut the whole thing personally.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
As sickening as the defenses are it is a correct use of the trope. It is a sickening trope after all. It's meant to be used that way.
Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.
I mainly fix indentation issues
My problem is that Fair for Its Day is for works that were considered progressive at the time, but are considered offensive today. However, it seems that Gone with the Wind was controversial and offensive from the very beginning.
The first bullet said: David O. Selznick (film's producer) recognized that Mitchell's flattering portrayal of slavery and race relations in the antebellum South were extremely questionable and deliberately tried toning them down for the film.
Edited by SoyValdo7 on Nov 25th 2022 at 7:47:39 AM
Valdo
Gone With The Wind was never exactly considered "progressive", what with it's shameless glorification of the Confederacy.
The one actual FFID entry that should be there is the casting of Butterfly McQueen, being an African-American in a major motion picture (adjusted for inflation, still the highest grossing film). Of course she had to play a servant, and wasn't allowed to attend the premiere due to Jim Crow laws, but still a big step.
Edited by laserviking42 on Nov 25th 2022 at 8:55:13 AM
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Dont forget Hattie Mc Daniel. I love her.
Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.
I mainly fix indentation issues
So, I tried to save the example by deleting most of the entries and cannibalizing laserviking42's post. Here the result:
- Fair for Its Day:
- The decision to cast African-American actors in a major motion picture instead of resorting to Blackface, like many other have done at the time, can be considerer a big step in 1939.
- Despite the painful caricature that is Prissy, Mammy is still a surprisingly decent representation of a black woman. She's shown to be more intelligent, competent, and compassionate than a lot of the white characters despite her status as a servant. Hattie McDaniel (Mammy's actress) even won an Oscar for the role.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Clarify some things.
Edited by SoyValdo7 on Nov 25th 2022 at 8:41:53 AM
Valdo