Trope Idea Sounding Board

I might have an example or two. It's worth a shot.

Made Artifact Name, found some cases of overlap between Artifact Title and Artifact Name due to them being the same thing... like Iron Man's armor not being Iron anymore.

Artifact Name might only be applicable to vague nouns... Character Names are constant?

Unless the character gets married? That might be a thing, The Maiden Name Debate affecting a story title... Which usually doesn't happen as most characters aren't referred to by full name on titles, and the ones that do, usually aren't women who are old enough to get married?

So Artifact Title Object might be a valid idea?

Wouldn't Artifact Name be the supertrope to Artifact Title? The title of a work is the name of that work.

Edited by Twiddler on Feb 22nd 2021 at 5:01:40 AM

Hmm... I never thought of it that way...

But the dividing line of "Work vs. Not-Work-Item-In-Universe" between Title and Name is distinct enough that they're effectively separate tropes, especially given our focus on "works" being an important category.

If we were Wikipedia, with its broader, non-work focus, I'd lean more to your idea, though.

I'm feeling quite strongly about this...

I was thinking about making a genre index for Kaiju films / works. At first glance, it seems like that's exactly what Kaiju is, the description certainly makes it seem like it's about the genre, but it's being treated as a trope and the examples are just "[work x] contains a kaiju" or "references a kaiju". Like, every example is like that.

Now, I think having a Kaiju trope is perfectly fine, but one can't help wonder what the point of the Rent-a-Zilla trope is if Kaiju already covers "kaiju exists" examples. "Kaiju in a non-kaiju work" doesn't really strike me as that meaningful of a distinction when Kaiju is already so broad.

Is it worth it making a TLP draft for a Kaiju genre index, or should we do something with the existing Kaiju and Rent-a-Zilla tropes? I kinda prefer the latter, but I know that'll take ages to accomplish.

Rent-a-Zilla is definitely a problem page. For the longest time I thought it was "obvious Godzilla reference", but that's actually Not Zilla. The actual description suggest it's a "gratuitous Kaiju" trope along the lines of Gratuitous Ninja, but I'm not sure how well that's borne out in practice. And then there's factoring in Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever, too.

Edited by nrjxll on Feb 22nd 2021 at 10:22:52 AM

- I thought you were the sponsor of Kaiju Works TLP, but that's someone else...

See, my understanding had been:

• Kaiju — the genre.
• Rent-a-Zilla — kaijus in non-kaiju works.
• Not Zilla — expies of Godzilla, specifically.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever — a small thing is made huge, runs amok and must be stopped.

And Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever mostly seems to keep its identity, but the other three definitely blend together something awful. That's probably something to take to the repair shop, I think.

Yeah, I think "gratuitous kaiju" is Too Rare to Trope.

These distinctions make sense to me.

Rent-a-Zilla's name remains a problem though. It definitely gives the impression that it's specifically about Godzilla expies.

Kaiju and Not Zilla are different enough as they are and only really overlap because Godzilla is the Trope Codifier, Trope Maker and Trope Namer of Kaiju tropes. Rent-a-Zilla is the one that could confuse people, tho.

Thinking about nuking "New" Name No More for being too broad or something, and starting up this in its place, following A Guy's commented idea. Anyone advocating for no nuke or this being a bad idea?

Deliberately Ironic 'New' Name

Edited by Malady on Feb 23rd 2021 at 4:53:48 AM

Is Gimmick Song a tropeworthy idea? I'm working on the Malinda Kathleen Reese page and I realized that a lot of her YouTube songs are based on certain gimmicks, and that's without mentioning the entire Twisted Translations song library. Then there's YouTuber Andrew Huang, who has made videos like "Singing without the letter E" and "Raps in 5 Languages". It's a very YouTube-y musical genre for sure; I'm not sure if other artists have similar songs, but it does feel like it could be a tropeworthy concept.

There might be worth splitting gimmicks into categories, like Deliberate Orthographic Choice, for No E's...

Which is already has a Super-Trope, Constrained Writing...

Constrained Writing might be able to cover it; I don't see much reason to split unless a ton of examples come forth.

It could work, but gimmick is a bit vague so we'd need to discuss that further. Would this include Song Parody i.e. "Weird Al" Yankovic's library? What about the Jacksfilms songs where he writes a song based on lyrics his audience submits? Maybe this is a Missing Supertrope that could encompass specific kinds of songs, including Song Parody?

Yeah, those might all count too. For me it's just sort of like "Person writes a song around a very specific concept or theme or joke".

I'm considering making a trope for characters in crossovers and/or adaptions whose designs have a noticeable physical difference than in their original work, but are still recognizable as the original character. I'm not sure if we have this already, though.

This would include things such as Endermen in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate having shorter limbs than they do in Minecraft or Parappa being thicker in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale than in his home series.

Sort of a "Looks Different in the Adaptation" sort of thing?

If you're unsure about whether there's a trope for this already, you might want to bring it up in the Trope Finder.

They did, IIRC.

Would the idea of splitting off the idea of Vampires only feeding off evil humans into a Vigilante Vampire trope be worth a shot. It would be a split from Serial-Killer Killer.

In the case of vampires. It's meant as a variation of friendly neighbourhood vampire albeit them still having to fulfill their hunters. Rather then a vigilante killer taking it on other criminals.

This could also include other humanitarians. Maybe Vigilante Humanitarian?

That title only works if you're aware of I'm a Humanitarian. Otherwise it just sounds like, well, actual Humanitarians who are also Vigilantes.

How about Cannibal Vigilante?

Ooo, I have an example for this one!

Something like this would also stave off misuse for You Don't Look Like You, which I've seen be used for minor design differences rather than the major changes it's supposed to be.

It's only cannibalism if vampires, ghouls and so on are considered the same species as humans. You're right, that would be bad.