Per Ask The Tropers, this thread will be used to reduce the number of old, poorly written drafts on the Trope Launch Pad
. We don't want to discuss on the drafts themselves because that will bump them and mix them with active proposals.
Sandbox for the project: Trope Launch Pad Discard Project
Sandbox for discarded drafts but viable ideas: Trope Idea Salvage Yard
The first sandbox page above contains drafts proposed in the thread that are still pending and drafts that we've decided to leave alone, either with no action or a bump.
The second sandbox page is for awful drafts but viable ideas. According to moderators, badly written but interesting/tropeworthy drafts should remain on the TLP. Rather than allow low-effort drafts to clog TLP, though, the salvage yard was opened to keep just the ideas behind them, in one place.
On this thread, we will mention which drafts we think are unworkable, add enough bombs, and discard (nuke) them. Discarding requires at least 5 bombs. Among the features of "unworkable" drafts:
- There have been no edits for a very long time, or at all
- The draft is low-effort, containing atrocious spelling and grammar and/or little to no examples, e.g. NEVER saw THAT coming (!), Nut-Chuks
- The draft was seemingly created so the sponsor could complain
- The topic is People Sit on Chairs, Too Rare to Trope, a search query created by mistake, etc. and therefore not tropeworthy
- The topic is already sufficiently covered by one or more tropes or is a duplicate of a better-written TLP draft
- The draft is problematic in other ways, such being closely tied to a page that has been historically problematic, e.g. Fetish Fuel, Complete Monster
- There's no discussion currently occurring in the comments to improve the proposal
If we decide to discard a draft after discussion via this thread, whoever does so must provide the discard reason in the comment section of the draft, for transparency's sake. Those looking at the discards section won't think it was nuked for no reason.
Also, check out the sister project, Trope Adoption Drive, where good drafts put Up for Grabs or abandoned can be grabbed, given a bit more improvement, and launched.
Edited by Tabs on Mar 24th 2022 at 12:02:43 PM
Contractually Obligated To Socialize: discarded for being redundant
One Hit Equals Defeat: Oh. Wait. Is this HP to One? Like, narratively the same?
Remote Controlled Tank Boss: OK, yardable.
Test It On A Mook: I'm surprised we don't have such a trope. Professor Guinea Pig contains the sentence "This puts them in favorable contrast to the Obviously Evil Mad Scientists, who test their Phlebotinum on any innocent humans they can strap down to the table", but nothing closer. Can yard.
The Busybody: Um, I forgot if I was ever part of the discussion.
she/her
As far as I can tell, One Hit Equals Defeat is "one side of a fight is a One-Hit-Point Wonder; even the slightest scratch will end the fight". I'm still going to bomb it for redundancy.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
If you write up the draft, I could provide some examples.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Sounds like a plan. I'll try and make the write-up later.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
It's not my best draft ever, but here.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
~Basara-Kun, please remember to add reasons when discarding stuff.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Moved Appearance Angst (was Feet Angst) and The Undead Have No Human Rights (was Zombie Payback Time) into the Yard.
Alright, some more revisited drafts. This takes us up to the end of page 45.
A chain of watchers I can only hope that whatever story uses this trope is easier to follow than that draft.
Fat Clumsy Sidekick Plucky Comic Relief perhaps? Abandoned for years.
Relationship Chart Functionally this is just Love Chart, but it could be a super trope since it extends beyond romance. Though it’d probably be better to take Love Chart to TRS and try to get it expanded, since I really don’t see a particular need for two of these….
Burning SceneryThere’s on-thread recent discussion to retool it as “Fire as Chaos” but the idea is also in the Yard. Keep or discard?
Multiple Checkers Jump Win Having a hard time seeing this as much more than chairs, since it’s basically trying to make a trope out of “character is good at checkers” even if checkers isn’t really relevant to the plot. I’m not feeling it, but I can’t be arsed to raise the pitchfork either.
Hiding The Persecuted Underground Railroad.
Unexplained Amplification One-sentence draft and no examples.
Unreal Real Time One of the lowest-effort drafts I’ve seen.
Inverse Question It’s less a trope than a bit of goofy wordplay.
Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab on Feb 23rd 2020 at 10:32:25 AM
Requesting bombs for Back to Back Poster since I have restarted the concept.
she/her
I discarded it.
Fair enough, comment rescinded.
Didn't mean to sound slightly hostile. I have tried to get one cut for the ZCE reason but of course it was declined in discussion. 
*blinks*
Heh, no worries. I guess we have different ideas of what constitutes "slightly hostile," because I didn't take it that way.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
I say we discard Burning Scenery, as it's agreed that the current state of it is poor, and the idea was yarded (by me).
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Okay, Mothball List part 2:
- Back To The Basics just needs a good sponsor.
: The unresolved discussion is if this is a worthy split of Potty Emergency. I'm on the fence.- Beneficial Drawback has no mothball reason; the description on draft is minimal, but it has 4 bombs for...reasons I'm not entirely sure about.
: A short draft that could very easily be a complaint magnet. I vote we torch it.- Big Star Small Town: No mothball reason. It's such an old draft, it might be covered, but I'm not sure if it is. If not, it needs a sponsor, or maybe to be yarded.
: The mothball reasons are Xfllo and Tabs disagreeing over whether or not the idea is different from Mustache Vandalism. Even if it's splittable, the draft needs serious work, so at best we probably have to yard it.- Bounty Squad: "Workable" is all we have as a reason. The draft is so old and I'm not entirely sure what the trope is, as the examples range from "character gets targeted by multiple bounty hunters" to "team of bounty hunters with any morality exists". So I guess it's workable, but...needs a lot of work.
: A salvageable idea saddled with a low-effort draft. Easy bait for the yard.- Calculator Spelling: Since the mothballing, some work has been done on this draft, but it still needs a sponsor.
: An interesting idea, but only one example exists on the draft; should we yard it?- Chop Chop Suey: The mothball reason only points out that the draft has a bomb. It seems like a workable draft with a good idea though, so we might just need a sponsor.
- Class Interrupted: I think this is a solid idea in need of a better draft, perhaps a retool to include all unnaturally-quick classes, whether it's justified by an interruption or just because the plot demands a 5-second class.
: A perfectly launchable draft needing a sponsor to do the deed.: No mothball reason. It's a stub draft full of ZCEs. Potential ideas have been brought up but never acted on. I say we yard it.- Coach Dad: Spear Counterpart of Stage Mom; is it worth a split? I think so, but we need a better draft.
- Collective No: I was worried about this one and I still am, because I don't know what the narrative purpose behind it is.
- Competently Disadvantaged: No mothball reason. It's an old draft in need of new life if it's to launch; the idea seems to be that someone lacks a skill other people have, despite being otherwise super competent.
- Constitutional Monarchy: Should be a Useful Note.
: Comments agree this is covered by Truth-Telling Session; why was it mothballed? No reason is given.- Costumes Go Together: No consensus on whether or not it's worth a split, so we need to decide that.
Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 25th 2020 at 6:35:47 AM
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
I discarded Better But Blander (complaint magnet) and Billboard Graffiti (Too broad to be meaningful by itself, and I think it's basically the same thing as Mustache Vandalism besides).
Beneficial Drawback's bombs are mainly from people who think it's the same thing as Cursed with Awesome or similar. It's come up here before at least twice.
Calculator Spelling: I know I'm in the minority judging by hat/bomb count, but I want to know where the trope is? It's a neat party trick you can do in real life, but I'm not seeing any meaning or purpose. Just because something happens in some stories doesn't make it a trope.
Chain of Evidence is...how pretty much any investigation is supposed to work, by following evidence and seeing where it leads. I say discard it.
Collective NO is a trope, but it's basically "group shoots down stupid suggestion in unison" or "group does a Big "NO!" during a catastrophe''. It's either a gag or a drama beat.
Contagious Confession is Truth Telling Session. Bombjour, bad draft!
Eh, I've adopted Clear the Table (now "Sweeping The Table") and spruced it up as there wasn't a ton left to do. So I guess that's soon to be out of the way.
Short-Term Projects herald
Relationship Chart feels like a "missing supertrope that if launched will render the subtrope the same but more specific" to me.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
Human Bean
About Consitutional Monarchy, what if we just discard it? It's not like it has that much of information being lost, and since you say it could work as Useful Notes rather than a trope, I can't see the point of even salvaging it, IMO.
Oh, I reread your old post War Jay 77, I just meant to write a thing like "These are from page 42 of the TLP discard project", "these are from the mothball list", since some didn't write that. Not more of importance btw, now everyone is writing that.
Edited by gc10 on Feb 22nd 2020 at 7:17:13 PM
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Ah, gotcha.
More or less, yeah.
.Honestly, I think Constitutional Monarchy is better left to Wikipedia if it’s not going to be treated as a trope (and I don’t think it should be). I know that Useful Notes are intended to help better understand tropes, but I think this is veering into “explaining anything and everything a person might theoretically see in a story” territory.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Mm, possibly. I'll admit I can't see much point in it either, but if we have to have it it should be UN.
Big Star Small Town isn't covered, or at least earlier discussion failed to identify the existing trope. Yard?
The closest I found to that idea is From New York to Nowhere.
Edited by ElBuenCuate on Feb 22nd 2020 at 1:36:01 PM
honestly I don’t know that there’s much functional difference between those two tropes. Putting fame into the equation doesn’t fundamentally change what the trope is about.
I'd like to make the Schools Of Magic draft myself tbh, but I don't know enough about the games to make examples for them...
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness