Trope Idea Sounding Board

Ohhh. Art style and storytelling style, then?

Yeah.

For a bit, I've been thinking the "standard monster scare pose" should be a trope. I'm a bit surprised I couldn't find it. Basically a monster has its arms raised either above its head or on either side and in front of its face, fingers curled to emulate claws. Usually accompanied by a snarl.

Example:

Unless this was already covered by an existing trope that I missed.

Primal Stance is close-ish. But not quite close enough. I'm raising a skeptical eyebrow at its use as a pothole in the "Real Life" folder on Game Face. The pothole text reads "Hunch over. Bare your teeth. Raise your hands up in position that makes you look like you're about to grab whatever's in front of you. Watch pets and people cower and run as you approach them."

I proposed making a trope out of the gag of someone's head getting stuck in a tuba. Macron Notes suggested expanding the concept to include peoples' heads getting banged with cymbals. Twiddler pointed out that they've seen gags with people getting their whole bodies stuck in drums, usually head-first. I've collected a few examples accordingly. I'm still having trouble thinking of a description, and it's going to annoy me if I start seeing hats on a descriptionless draft if I start it right now with what I've got. But now I'm remembering War Jay's experiment and it's got me wondering what would happen if I start that draft right now, missing description be darned, as another Schmuck Bait draft to analyze. If the schmucks who hatted War Jay's schmuck bait draft don't read descriptions, would they even notice if there IS no description to read?

Of course I would turn it into a serious attempt once there is a decent description, either recording the number of hats gotten without a description and saying those hats don't count, or nuking the draft and starting a new one to reset the hat and bomb counter.

Edited by Miss_Desperado on Jul 25th 2020 at 9:21:49 AM

If you are having trouble with description start withe basics and hopefully people might help later. It's ok to at least startout with a paragraph and work on things as you go. It doesn't have to look launch perfect. I usually outline my tropes like this.

What the trope is:

Why people use the trope and where you will often see the trope:

Related, super tropes, sub tropes comparison tropes:

And yeah I still think broadening it to Musical instrument Gag or something would be best but it's just my opinion.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 25th 2020 at 9:52:49 AM

"...and hopefully people might help later..."

From my experience, that help is rare even when users are encouraged to assist.

well that's why I said hopefully, as it's far from guaranteed.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 26th 2020 at 9:55:57 AM

I'm thinking of a trope about "real music" vs. "fake music", as portrayed by works. You know, where the popular but antagonistic singers are all singing about superficial subjects like money, popularity, or attractiveness, and their songs are heavily produced and often written by someone in a record studio somewhere, while the plucky underdog hero sings about "more important" things and gets praised for being "real" and sometimes there's an artist who changes their style as a result of the protagonist inspiring them to be themselves...

^ The closest we have to what you're describing is Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow, as far as I know.

Edited by Unnerving_Posterior on Jul 26th 2020 at 11:13:25 AM

Lately I've been playing around with two TLP ideas that I think have potential:

Manners Monster: Basically a character — often supernatural — who serves as the "scarer" of Scare 'Em Straight and the Space Whale of the Space Whale Aesop. The main purpose of these characters is to discourage bad behaviour like sucking your thumb or raiding the cookie jar when your parent aren't looking, commonly threatening to inflict some form of Disproportionate Retribution upon the audience should they ever act upon them.

This kind of character shows up in nearly every culture, the Krampus being one of the most well-known examples.

The Great Outdoors: The common, old-fashioned sentiment that spending one's free time outdoors in the sun (and only in the sun), doing activities such as camping, playing sports, hiking, and the like, is the ideal and "legitimate" way of having fun and seizing the day. If you spend most of your time playing video games, watching TV, or even bring electronics to a camping trip, you're not doing it right.

Edited by Unnerving_Posterior on Jul 27th 2020 at 9:03:17 AM

I will be very surprised if we don't have that last one.

Hmmm...is my idea covered by Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow? In all my examples the protagonists are also pop singers, just more "genuine" about it.

^ Not saying it's already covered by Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow. I'm just pointing out a related trope that crossed my mind upon reading your trope idea.

Edited by Unnerving_Posterior on Jul 26th 2020 at 11:56:12 AM

Yeah, it just reads similarly. I'm just worried my idea wouldn't be distinct enough, but it might be worth a shot anyway.

I think this is the key takeaway from Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow:

Depending on how many examples you have, it could be lumped. If you want to try making it a draft, the example of this I added on Anime.Carole And Tuesday is a genre-free 'variation' of that.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 27th 2020 at 1:07:19 PM

Yeah, that's the core of mine, too. I'm just unsure since, like I said, none of my examples are of rockstars- every character is singing pop.

I'm thinking works like Camp Rock, Rags, and while it's not pop but jazz, La La Land.

Two of those are already listed as examples. I think the name has come up before for being comparatively narrow.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 27th 2020 at 1:58:26 PM

Alright then, I guess that settles it.

As described here, I want to draft a trope about LGBT characters also tend to be social outcasts or "weird" or "quirky" in ways unrelated to their sexuality, and often their sexuality may be portrayed as just another aspect of their "quirkiness."

What I'm trying to figure out is the scope because this manifests in different ways for different sexualities. "Weird" lesbian (or lesbian-coded) characters tend to be goth or punk or artsy or some other gender-non-conforming presentation that doesn't fall into Lesbian Jock. "Weird" bisexual female characters tend to be more along the lines of Manic Pixie Dream Girl because their bisexuality is part of the male-oriented fantasy. "Weird" asexual characters may be seen as childish, or have interests that "make up for" their lack of sexual interest. I think the "quirky bisexual woman" aspect seems to be the most promising if I want to narrow it down, but I worry how many examples I'd get if I kept it broad. But this definitely feels like something.

Thought: goth/punk can be seen as more hostile or associated with cynical characters, which can be tied to traits like Does Not Like Men.

True, not sure if enough goth lesbians that don't also fit Butch Lesbian appear in fiction. My first thought regarding that aspect was a character who isn't actually a lesbian but has a story where everybody thinks she is (Janis Ian). Her best friend is actually gay and is basically the other school outcast, but I think he's covered fine enough by Camp Gay.

A trope like "LGBT characters also tend to be social outcasts or "weird" or "quirky" in ways unrelated to their sexuality, and often their sexuality may be portrayed as just another aspect of their "quirkiness."" can work even without specifying the exact quirk. The trope would be about the correlation, not the quirk.

However, be mindful that allowing straight examples on such correlative tropes often is not a good move - you'll end up with every quirky LGBT+ character listed, even these where it's purely a coincidence. For such tropes, limiting examples to "Please limit examples to justifications, lampshades, and Played for Laughs." like Most Common Superpower does is sometimes an option.

I was thinking about including straight examples, but only if the character stands out as the quirky one while also being one of very few (or even the token) LGBT characters (or the only one of a certain LGBT identity even in a Cast Full of Gay, i.e. the only trans or bi character of the bunch). That way it would emphasize the association of these traits with one another.

Perhaps it is also important to consider what people think of "quirky".

Is it about being Acceptable Targets? Is it about simply not conforming to the societal norm? Is it about having/being something that people rarely do?