Trope Idea Sounding Board

I'm surprised we don't have that already, good idea

Everyone Claps, named after the fake-story clapping meme but could also be Everyon Claps For The Heroes; basically, whenever the protagonists do something noteworthy or emotional, the supporting characters and extras stop and cheer, as if this is something everyone really cares about, even though it's often just, like, personal romance drama. Drew Gooden mentioned it happening in his review of Little Italy, for example.

I already have a new trope idea: that comedy dialogue trope where someone says something is "[large quantity], or even [not as large quantity]". Do We Have This One?

Unfortunately, I can’t think of more than two examples right now.

EDIT: Asked in Trope Finder

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on Feb 14th 2022 at 10:27:14 AM

I was thinking, since works that fail one way or another, thus putting a franchise on hold indefinitely is called a Franchise Killer, what about franchises that get an installment that's successful enough to renew support for them? EX: Metroid Dread is being credited with saving it's franchise after the infamous Metroid Other M. Someone told me that, since the opposite of Genre Killer is Genre Relaunch, how about Franchise Relaunch for works that saved their franchise? ^^

Win Back the Crowd

But is that the official opposite of Franchise Killer?

"Greeting Cards For Everything." A sister trope to Specific Situation Books and Merit Badges for Everything for gags where a store-bought greeting card perfectly captures an oddly specific situation, usually related to apologies or odd relationship dynamics.

Had this idea a while ago but was reminded of it rewatching Big Mouth where they had greeting cards celebrating the love between incestuous conjoined twins.

shocked we don't already have that and fully support that idea. i don't have any ideas off the top of my head but something is telling me Family Guy has an example

ETA: not quite what i had in mind but this could work, right?

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 15th 2022 at 1:50:50 PM

I don't think that fits this trope as it's depicting a very standard "happy birthday" card. The gag in question is for greeting cards about oddly specific situations, or for very specific relationships.

EDIT: Bit it, made the TLP.

Edited by mightymewtron on Feb 16th 2022 at 3:15:10 PM

I think we need a supertrope to Rocky Mountain Refuge to cover other mountains, but can only think of two examples:

• In the Tripods novels we have the White Mountains (formerly the Alps) which is one of the few strongholds of free humans left since the Tripods can't maneuver up there.
• From the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "The Dogs of War:"

  Mila: Actually, they don't really believe you are dead. Oh, you should hear the stories: "Damar is alive!" "My cousin saw him on Kelvas Prime." "He faked his own death." "He is plotting a new offensive from his secret mountain hideaway."

  Garak: You never told me you had a secret mountain hideaway.

  Damar: I was going to surprise you.

^ I think that in the Legacy of the Aldenata books, most human forces end up forced into mountain refuges around the world during the Posleen invasion because the aliens in question are built like centaurs and can't handle mountainous terrain very well.

Unrelatedly, a question of my own. I was considering drafting a trope for how people with Elemental Powers usually have matching personalities (the fire guy is brash and hot-headed, the ice guy is cold, aloof and reserved, the earth guy is calm and thoughtful, etcetera), and while example hunting I came across Personality Powers, which covers what I had in mind but also a whole lot more besides. My question is, then, does this seem like something worth making a distinct subtrope for?

I have a trope idea, which I recently posted a suggestion for on the Trope finder page "Awakening to Meta-reality", wherein a character learns of an underlying reality which has been supporting the reality that they have become accustomed to. I brought up examples that overlap with the Lotus-eater Machine trope (The Matrix; Inception; and, S 01 E 07 of LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS), however I also cited the 'Riverworld Series' and am now also citing, having only remembered after the fact, any other series with an afterlife (or even 'pre-life) concept, in addition to S 1 E 06 of the newest series of 'The Twilight Zone'. I was also going to add SCP-2718, but decided not to as I'm unsure if it adequately qualifies under it. Is there a similar trope that's already present that I'm just not aware of already?

Edited by oryang7 on Feb 16th 2022 at 11:09:50 AM

- Power Stereotype Flip exists...

We don't have Power Stereotype?

But why just restrict it to Elementals? Sneaky teleporters, manipulative mind controllers, Clock King-s...

Edited by Malady on Feb 17th 2022 at 5:30:28 AM

^We do have that already — like I said earlier, Personality Powers already covers all situations where some kind of thematic match exists between a character's powers and their personality. My question was if elementally-themed personalities are enough of a cohesive set to split off into a subtrope.

I was thinking about a weird concept that I don't know if it should be a trope or not.

It's about when a character's appearance in fanworks or even official products is entirely based on an istance where they were Off-Model in a way or another. Some examples I can mention rapidly here are the color schemes of multiple Transformers toys in recent years being based on scenes from the cartoon where the characters were slightly miscolored or how the theme song for Power Rangers Super Megaforce briefly shows a CG render of the SPD Red Ranger helmet with visible breathing holes because they used the helmet from the Disneyland character version of him as a base.

- Maybe if there's clear opposites like the Four-Temperament Ensemble, fire opposite water, earth opposite air...

^You mean stick to only using examples where a clear set exists with multiple characters? That's not a bad idea, actually. I may just do that.

I'm thinking about a Trivia trope that basically says "oh, this one artist on this one thing does Rule 34 too" to circumvent the misuse on Bleached Underpants. I know doing this sort of thing probably needs a TRS discussion (the part with Bleached Underpants, I mean), but this is just a concept.

Wait, wouldn't something like the proposed trope just be People Sitting on Chairs?

Well, we already have He Also Did. Probably at least some of the misuse is "He Also Did porn". Anything left after that?

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Feb 17th 2022 at 5:51:47 AM

...Now that I think about it, a trope like "He Also Did porn" would probably go under The Same But More Specific.

Would a trope for a character being born on a holiday be a good idea or is that too chairsy?

I know we have Significant Birth Date, but that requires significance be attached to it, like a very patriotic character being born on Independence Day rather than a character being say, unlucky enough to be born on Christmas.

if it lacks any significance, it's just chairs.

there may be something to an "inconvenient birthday angst" trope where a character spends a non-trivial amount of time complaining about the poor timing of their birthday/a major plot point revolves around the poor timing of their birthday, but that does not need to be holiday specific, i.e. an american character who has some angst over how their birthday is on 9/11; or a character who bemoans the fact that their birthday is on May 17th and they have 4 older siblings whose birthdays are on 5/10, 5/03, 4/26 because they feel like by the time their bday comes around, no one has any energy for it.

having a bday fall on a holiday may lead to that (they feel like their loved ones prioritize the holiday over celebrating their bday or wrap the latter into the former), but the idea above is obvs broader than that and retains narrative significance

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 18th 2022 at 5:11:12 AM

I noticed a while ago that Bomb-Throwing Anarchists has a great description that starts by contextualising the trope in its historical origins... but then you get to the bottom and the only trope it can offer for contrast is Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything.

I feel like there's a little conceptual space left over between "indiscriminately violent" and "completely ineffective", but ironically I'm not sure if I can think of enough examples to figure out if they constitute a trope of their own. (I can find a few adjacent tropes - Commune, Velvet Revolution, Actual Pacifist.) Weird, and rather discouraging. Reading the examples of Bomb-Throwing Anarchists and Anarchy Is Chaos for subversions and aversions to see if there are any commonalities.

while i agree there is a range of depictions between "violent" and "ineffectual" I think the issue is that there are so many in between variations that no consistent pattern is likely to turn up enough for it to be a trope in its own right. Stereotypes are a type of trope due to their repeating portrayal w/ a consistent meaning and for better or for worst, revolutionaries are often stereotyped as either violent or ineffectual or heroic, that's why those tropes exist. In-between depictions are likely to be captured by one of the Shades of Conflict tropes or Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 18th 2022 at 6:28:53 AM

Would this be one for Censorship Tropes or The Only Righteous Index of Fanatics!:

Bonfire Of The Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities was an event that took place in Florence, Italy on 7 February 1497 when the new ruling classes did a mass Book Burning and burning other things they considered immoral.

It's a well-known historical moment that lead to a movie being named for it as well.

This has lead to a painting of the event, and when this does appear, expect it to be used for Satire. Typically found in a Crapsack World that's full-on dystopia. Less common in Crapsaccharine World settings.

If it's used for Parody, expect even the most innocuous thing to be burnt, even if it's not something rich people would use.

In some circumstances, major Artistic License – History will be taken to provide a simpler narrative; in others, it will be a Fantasy Counterpart Culture analog of the event.

Not to be confused with Book Burning or Breakup Bonfire, which are separate tropes.

It may have some overlap with Let the Past Burn if In-Universe, the dictatorship wants to forget that the good times pre-dictatorship ever happened, and also with Burn Baby Burn as well.

Examples:

Live Action TV

• Medici, a Rai 1 Italian series (not a Netflix Original despite what the bumpers before the show would have you believe, featured the Bonfire of the Vanities in the Grand Finale episode "The Fate of the City", set during the Napolic wars as the fate of Naples comes to a head. It's more than an incidental cameo, as it's very plot-relevant.
• The Borgias episode "The Siege at Forli", Season 2, Episode 7, uses this as a major plot point for the episode, and attempts to depict it as accurately as it can, despite the show being known for a lot of Artistic License – History; but it also makes major historical blunders, as there is no known primary source that states that Botticelli was a follower of Savonarola. There is also no evidence that plainly states he committed painting(s) to the fire. We unfortunately do not know much detail about what went into the fire, and whether paintings were thrown in.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed II features Girolamo Savonarola as one of its antagonists, and the bonfire scene shows up in the game.

Real Life

• According to various sources, there is no contemporary account that names Botticelli as a follower of Savonarola. There is also no evidence that plainly states he committed painting(s) to the fire. We unfortunately do not know much detail about what went into the fire, and whether paintings were among these. The popular conception of this occurrence comes from a mixture of sources, which lead to the assumption that this may have happened. These sources are:
  • Accounts that the bonfires occurred during the period of Savonarola's influence
  • Accounts of Savonarola's sermons against impious depictions of the Virgin and the saints. Savonarola was not entirely against images, but did seem to take offence at depictions of holy figures that were too infused with aesthetic consideration. For a wonderful account of this, and artists' response to Savonarola, Marcia B. Hall's The Sacred Image in the Age of Art is thoroughly recommended.
  • Surviving descriptions of Botticelli's brother Simone, being an ardent follower of Savonarola. These descriptions come from Simone's Chronicle of events between 1489 and 1503 which survive only in extracts and secondary accounts. These descriptions takes us a little closer to a firmer link between Botticelli and Savonarola, but are still ambiguous enough to make the association between the painter and friar uncertain. Raffaella Zaccaria's extremely useful summary of Simone's life on the Italian national biography website, reveals a sixteenth century source describing Simone in Botticelli's workshop, and discussions concerning Savonarola:
  • Lorenzo Violi, in his Giornate or Book of Days (sixteenth century), writes that Simone Filipepi was often present in Sandro Botticelli’s workshop for meetings and discussions between the supporters and the opponents of Savonarola and that he recorded many of those discourses in his Chronicle. Violi adds that he read Simone Filipepi’s book and that it was bound in boards.