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
(Since it was pointed out that this thread exists)
A couple of somewhat-related character archetypes listed in Tabletop Games that I am wondering if they are tropeworthy or not:
- rpg.net has identified the archetype of the "Lesbian Stripper Ninja" - the classic character most male gamers (and many female gamers) have created at some point in their gaming lives, usually when they were about 15. The Lesbianstripperninja has certain key elements to her, namely, she always tempts men with her semi-nudity but never puts out (because the teenaged male player would be uncomfortable roleplaying sex with his friends' characters), but does put out with female Non Player Characters (because the teenaged male player thinks lesbians are t3h h4wt!!!); she is extremely stealthy, deadly, and agile; and is invariably scantily clad. Typically she will be East Asian in appearance, or if not, a Drow Elf.
- Related to this is the archetype of the "Invincible Sword Princess", which refers not to the stereotypical teenage fetish aspects of the Lesbian Stripper Ninja but to build characteristics that focus on making her a Fragile Speedster Glass Cannon (although the Lesbian Stripper Ninja and Invincible Sword Princess are often combined) - she hits hard and is rarely hit herself, but if she does get hit, she's likely to go down. This character build archetype can be male, but is more steretypically female. The term "Invincible Sword Princess" itself comes from Zhang Ziyi's character describing herself in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
We'll need examples (preferably that aren't someone's RPG character) if these are to be tropes - off the top of my head, the only one that comes to mind (aside from the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon example in the entry is the premade character Bright Snow in Legends of the Wulin, who is described as an "Invincible Sword Princess" in the text (when I have the time, I'll look and see if I can find more). Not sure if we need a better trope name too.
- Related to this is the archetype of the "Invincible Sword Princess", which refers not to the stereotypical teenage fetish aspects of the Lesbian Stripper Ninja but to build characteristics that focus on making her a Fragile Speedster Glass Cannon (although the Lesbian Stripper Ninja and Invincible Sword Princess are often combined) - she hits hard and is rarely hit herself, but if she does get hit, she's likely to go down. This character build archetype can be male, but is more steretypically female. The term "Invincible Sword Princess" itself comes from Zhang Ziyi's character describing herself in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Started a TLP for Master of Disguise, Disaster of an Actor
. Name could probably use some tweaking, but for now it'll work as a placeholder to get the idea across.
I was searching for a trope about a character questioning their own sanity when seeing something out of place, bizarre or even outright creepy but unable to determine whether it's real or a hallucination. Similar to No More for Me but that one involves being under influence of some foreign substance, which is not what I want.
A fellow troper suggested me tropes It's Probably Nothing and Just Ignore It but neither of those is dealing with questioning one's own sanity. I was hoping for something like Am I Going Insane? or Am I Seeing Things?.
There are certainly notable examples but the only I can think of now is in Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.² where the heroine after seeing a semi-transparent Bioweapon Beast holding a little girl hostage, the monster notices the heroine and fades out into thin air, the heroine remarks: I must be losing it. Maybe I should go back to bed.
As I'm not good at making trope pages would somebody mind launching a TLP for this one?
Gaslighting seems related to that, but I'm unsure if we have a trope for just questioning one's sanity. We have the normal Sanity Slippage as well as those other tropes you mentioned. Not sure if it's quite worth splitting "actually going mad" from a character just believing they're going mad. There's also Cuckoos Nest but that seems to be a specific kind of plot.
Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 12th 2021 at 4:23:13 AM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I feel as if their idea is more related to falsely thinking one is undergoing a Sanity Slippage, rather than actually undergoing such.
This would be a Sister Trope to Mistaken for Bad Vision
, where somebody sees something weird and blames their eyes, not their brain, for playing tricks on them.
Or something less punny: Disbelieving Their Eyes.
Edited by Malady on Jan 12th 2021 at 5:36:09 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Thought of two ideas while at work:
- The Dissenter Is Always Right: Sort of the inverse of The Complainer Is Always Wrong, where the character who disagrees with everyone else ends up being proven right, albeit often Right for the Wrong Reasons.
- Unexpected Kindness: A character's kindness ends up surprising another character, usually because they expected them to be...well, unkind. Maybe it's just what they're used to, or maybe that character had been a dick in the past, or maybe the other character did something wrong and wasn't expecting them to be so forgiving. The point is, a character makes a show of kindness that isn't anticipated by the person they're being kind to.
So I noticed we have a trope for Training Montage, but we have none for a Training ARC, effectively an extended training montage in a story that, for example if it's a show, can last an episode or an entire arc. I feel like it's worth a shot adding it.
The closest equivalent is Training from Hell, but that's only IF the training is unnaturally difficult, not if it's just a training arc over all.
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Both seem tropable.
You know that scene where a character sees that their love interest handles a child or children well, and they're suddenly much more attractive? The implication is that they're good with kids so they would make a good parent. It's more specific than Friend to All Children.
I know what you mean. It happens a lot with male love interests since the media doesn't expect men to be nurturing, at least not to the level of mothers. There's also that thing where people carry around a kid when they go cruising for dates, invoking that trope.
The Invoked Trope version is Pick Up Babes With Babes.
If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.- Conflicting Commands: A character is given two commands, from different sources, that aren't compatible with each other. One version is two characters arguing while ordering a character to do things:
"Alice, pick that up!"
"Don't you dare pick it up!"
"Do it!"
"Don't do it!"
Etc.
I've seen it a few times but specific examples are eluding me. I think it happened in iCarly once.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallYou know that one breed of Final Boss that appears most often in Eastern RPGs, especially Japanese ones? Those ones that take a page from Sephiroth and Kefka's One-Winged Angel forms and are almost always some form of deity or Eldritch Abomination with extremely elaborate, often angelic designs that serve to highlight their godhood, or at the very least their delusions of such? (But mostly to tell the player "This is totally, absolutely, %100 the very definitely final boss, liek, for real! Look how final boss-y it is, dammit!")
Yeah, that
kind of Final Boss.
Seeing as it's common enough to the point other works have mocked and parodied it, such as Dorkly Originals's RPG Parody series
◊, Episode 18
from the fifth season of The Amazing World of Gumball, and the finale
of Final Fantasy VII Machinabridged, I believe this is pretty tropeworthy. What do you guys think?
Edited by Unnerving_Posterior on Jan 17th 2021 at 4:11:08 AM
I don't really know how that's really any different from, say, Angelic Abomination, Physical God, or One-Winged Angel. I feel like that's covered enough already.
On another note, I'm surprised we don't have this already: Physical Program, when computer programs/viruses are represented with physical bodies (some times humanoid, some times not).
Edited by Makir on Jan 17th 2021 at 1:36:11 PM
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- What relation to True Final Boss?
How's this as a description of Physical Program?
"In real life, programs are lines of code and data made to execute a function; in fiction they tend to be something more. The Physical Program itself is completely made of data, but posses a physical form in which it can wander around Cyber Space. They can touch, hear, and even speak.
As a rule of thumb, an Artificial Intelligence inside a robotic body is NOT a Physical Program, that's just a robot with sentience. A Physical Program's body is made up of data and may not even be able to wander out the system it inhabits.
While there are obvious exceptions, this trope tends to appear in two different categories:
- The Helpful Program: A program which is helpful, or necessary, to the system's functions. An example would be an Anti-Virus Program given form.
- The Malware: A malicious program that can harm the system it's on. It can come in many varieties, from a virus, to Corrupted Data of a regular program, to a Glitch Entity. In a work in which Physical Programs are able to enter the real world, The Malware is much more likely to do it."
I've also considered Living Program instead of Physical, though I'm not sure yet.
Edited by Makir on Jan 18th 2021 at 11:50:09 AM
Okay, with the recent recreation of Boong-Ga Boong-Ga, I'm wondering if we could launch a Kancho trope, as it's a stock practical joke in Japanese and Korean media. I can think of two other works that do it: In Naruto, Kakashi uses his "Thousand Years of Death" Jutsu on Naruto, which turns out to be a Kancho that uses chakra to send the reciever flying. There's also an episode of Kim's Convenience (a sitcom about a Korean-Canadian family who owns a convenience store in Toronto) where the Values Dissonance of this is discussed.
Rock'n'roll never dies!
Gaijin Smash discusses it, too. We have Wedgie, so a Kancho page should be fine, too, as it's basically an East Asian counterpart to that.
I wonder if we can have an article on recurring fighting game character archetypes such as the Shotoclone?
Another archetype I can think of is that one fighter who specializes in Grapple Moves, like Zangief and Android 16.
Edited by Unnerving_Posterior on Jan 19th 2021 at 3:19:52 AM

You've got a Shoehorned First Letter, but inverted as it's the last. And it's already there!
Edited by Malady on Jan 5th 2021 at 6:34:05 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576