Have an idea for a new trope, but don't know for sure if it's a good idea? Did Trope Finder give you similar concepts, but not exactly what you wanted? Are you just looking for a focus to a broader idea?
You've come to the right place!
On this thread, you can share your ideas with the masses before making that TLP draft, so if there's any lingering uncertainty about the validity of your idea or you just want some help pinning down a good idea, ask away and help others out, too!
A related sandbox I need to pitch is the Trope Idea Salvage Yard. If you've an idea but can't personally work on it, you can add it to the yard and let someone else create the draft. Or you can browse it yourself if you need more draft ideas, whether or not you feel they should be mentioned here first.
Got ideas for non-trope pages you need help with? Never fear, the New Page Workshop Thread
is here!
With that out of the way: Let's discuss some ideas.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 27th 2022 at 1:49:11 PM
Re: expanding the halo idea
: I think it's much neater to reduce it to the halo symbolism. Bowser's ability to walk on Solid Clouds isn't depicted as akin to angel imagery in the games as far as I remember, nor is it necessarily exclusive to him in those stages.
That might work if you remove the "always." There are also times where characters have to go on a spacewalk to repair the ship.
Then again, it's rare that characters will start by tinkering with wires before realizing they can only solve the problem by going on a spacewalk.
Of course, if a huge chunk of the ship has been blown off, it's hard to imagine that being solved by a spacewalk, but perhaps easier to imagine it being solved by tinkering with wires.
The key part of the trope seems to be that the wires themselves weren't damaged, so you wouldn't think tinkering with them would solve anything, but it does.
Edited by FSharp on Jun 27th 2024 at 4:46:06 AM
I don't just Wiki Talk the talk. I Wiki Walk the walk.Sounds Mid Air Repair-y?
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Remembered what the other one was:
Missing Character/Child Search Party: A major child character—or other—either runs away or is kidnapped—usually around the end of the movie—and other characters look for and usually call out their name while frantically trying to locate them (usually at night too).
I think of both Dennis the Menace and My Dog Skip almost immediately—and something like No Reservations probably counts too. See Spot Run also briefly does it too. There are other examples I'm sure too.
I have an idea for a trope titled
There's no shortage of phobias, neuroses, disorders, and mental illnesses in this world. And in some cases those conditions, be it an Absurd Phobia or a legitimate Freudian Excuse, can be very crippling and cause someone to fail at a goal or objective.
Some people decide they want to be cured of their afflictions. And whether it be a case of There Are No Therapists or they simply cannot afford one or simply that they feel a self-designed approach would be more pragmatic, they design and...inflict...their home remedy on themselves.
Be it self-administered electroshock aversion therapy, locking oneself in a tight space to confront Claustrophobia, or lashing oneself to a tall structure to tend to agoraphobia, these people come up with some very...imaginative...and potentially lethal forms of self-administered therapy.
This is not something that should be attempted in real life, but in the world of fiction it has equal potential for comedy or drama, and is equally likely in either case of actually proving effective.
Compare Self-Harm for a trope where someone hurts themselves without any intention of treating a condition, fear, or disorder.
Contrast Deliberate Injury Gambit where someone hurts themselves as part of a plan, not to treat a condition.
Examples:
Live-Action TV
- House, M.D.: Deconstructed over the course of Season 5. House keeps hallucinating Amber, and in his efforts to self-diagnose and treat the hallucination he tries Insulin Shock, which works only temporarily. Then he tries to detox, only to realize in the end of the season that his experiences of detoxing were, in fact, another hallucination and he'd been still taking Vicodin, openly and without being conscious of it. The hallucination of Amber is only finally banished for good when House actually checks himself into rehab for forced detox under the supervision of professionals.
- Leverage:
- "The Top Hat Job" has Eliot hidden in a magic case to get smuggled into a location. Sophie remarks that it's good that he's not claustrophobic. Eliot says he used to be as a kid, until he decided to cure it by locking himself in a woodshed behind his house for a couple of nights.
- Also "The Top Hat Job", Parker, hearing Eliot talk about his cure for claustrophobia says that she was afraid of the dark, but cured it the same way. Cue a Flashback of a pre-teen Parker telling her friends she's ready as she shuts herself in a trunk...in a six-foot deep hole that her friends are now filling with dirt. Cut back to the present, where the rest of the Leverage team look at Parker with concern.
And I need examples.
Any examples and help would be appreciated.
Added some relevant tropes to crosswick.
Edited by QPCwB on Jun 27th 2024 at 12:28:17 PM
Memetic Agent: A psychic trap that is triggered when someone thinks of something specific, including hearing a description of it. Inspired by BrownNote.SCP Foundation, but I think it's a stretch to count "thoughts" as Brown Note. Close to The Scottish Trope and Poke in the Third Eye.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupIn most versions of the concept I've seen in fiction, the knowledge, thought, or mental concept is in itself actively harmful to know or think about.
I've mostly seen it referred to as congnitohazards, although I am not sure how much that is a widespread term and how much that is people making references to the SCP Foundation.
Edited by Theriocephalus on Jun 27th 2024 at 5:20:44 AM
Could that be covered by Go Mad from the Revelation?
3 No specific mood, just a spell (magic or psychic) where the condition for activation is "when someone says, thinks of, or sees a specific thing". For example Harry Potter – Lord Voldemort's name in later books, Candle Jack's name, or images of Bughuul are triggers that alert the user to the victim's location. Can also be useful to automatically break CCTV cameras.
Edited by Amonimus on Jun 27th 2024 at 1:26:31 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
"Says" sounds like Speak of the Devil. "Sees" sounds like Brown Note. But "Thinks of" might be a new trope.
Of course, some Brown Notes could be harmful because of their effect on your thoughts.
Edited by FSharp on Jun 27th 2024 at 6:34:14 AM
I don't just Wiki Talk the talk. I Wiki Walk the walk.I found one example for my Self Inflicted Therapy draft. I just need two more.
So I've been thinking about proposing a trope called Only One Who Can Fit, where a group of characters need to get into or out of a certain location, but they can only do so by crawling through an Air-Vent Passageway or similarly cramped opening, and there's only one of them who's small enough to fit through it, so that person has to go on alone.
Seems like a pretty solid trope to my eyes ... but then it occurred to me, there are also scenarios where a group of characters will need someone to wear a certain disguise or outfit, and there's only one of them who's got the right build to fit the clothes. And I'm not sure whether that works as another variety of Only One Who Can Fit, or if it'd be better off as its own trope.
Huh, then we really need to get that trope some more wicks, 'cause it didn't turn up in any of the places I expected to find it (definitely need to add it to the Air-Vent Passageway description, if nowhere else).
BTW, here's another idea of a trope I had mostly forgotten up to now.
- Trope Name: Commemorative Stamps
- Laconic: When a government recognizes a work by issuing stamps based on it.
I got the idea for it by reading that the Canadian government made stamps of Anne of Green Gables
. I can name a few other works which had similar government issued stamps.
Tropeworthy or nah?
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I feel like I remember seeing a Self-Therapy TLP...
Violence Dissonance (YMMV): Audience doesn't feel the body count or bets with high stakes were appropriate by the characters. For example two teammates resolving a dispute with a battle that is dramatic in context but makes them both look stupid. Or heroes doing a stealth mission while taking out the mooks in the way and audience thinks ot was entirely unnecessary.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

^ I mean, it might be something, but I think I might need to see an example of how you'd trope it, first.