Trope Idea Sounding Board

We have Story-Breaker Power but an idea for a Sub-Trope or inversion being discovering / unlocking a power that's useful, but creates the conflict?

Story Maker Power as a suggestion?

For example, Ben 10's Omnitrix due to alien antagonists wanting to receive it or gather it.

It would need sufficient differentiation from MacGuffin though.

- Feels similar to Unique Protagonist Asset too. Differentiation will be key, indeed.

Also Apocalypse Maiden.

Do you think Insect Works (the works primarily focused on insects and other bugs (spiders and etc.), be they as the main theme, main antagonistic force, etc.) is a valid trope idea? I have multiple examples:

Edited by I--Vanya--I on Mar 14th 2021 at 10:33:34 PM

We have similar indices so why not.

I'd like to contribute:

• WesternAnimation.Minuscule
• WesternAnimation.Minuscule Valley Of The Lost Ants

At this point, my stance on new "[X] Works" indices is just "Whatever. This might as well happen." I don't know how specific they need to get, but they might be useful if you're into a certain kind of story.

I'll be honest, they do concern me at times, but only if the category seems so vague as to not really be meaningful. I took a doubletake at "Toy Media" because it seemed pretty random, but there's also a lot of works that could count for it, so, eh. As long as it's not too narrow or too broad, these sort of indices don't hurt anything I guess.

I had considered some kind of "Works About Bugs" index, along with ones about other types of animals: dogs, cats, horses, etc.

Animal Title Index exists and is almost Too-Long. 431 more entries left. I wouldn't mind scrapping it, and replacing it with [Animal] Work Indexes, because it's an a weird set of specifics.

It's like Species Title in that it's about living beings, but it's restricted to organic...

For a title, does it matter what kind of being organic/mechanic is in it, so long as it's "alive" enough?

Or, would Robots count under Animal Title Index, because In-Universe, they're sorta alive?

Might also be a thing to TRS...

Not sure if a "Chapstick Lesbian" is a good idea for a trope. It's an inbetweener for butch and lipstick lesbian. It feels "Chapstick Lesbian" is a better distaff counterpart for Straight Gay.

I think that's covered under Straight Gay, as mentioned in the description.

Yeah.

"Chapstick Lesbian" should be mentioned more on Straight Gay as well.

If we're not gonna give it a separate page, it might be a good idea to at least make it a redirect to Straight Gay.

Wait, is that actually a preexisting term? The original post just made it sound like something coined on the spot based on the other two.

Yep, it's a term. I've never even heard it on social media though. I guess it's not in the modern lexicon.

On a separate note, would a YMMV variant of Screw Yourself for when versions of the same character are shipped together by fans be tropeworthy? It could clean up the general examples on ScrewYourself.Fan Works.

Probably a good plan, yeah. Selfcest Yay Shipping or something.

Agreed. We should have a separate trope for fanon examples.

Dope. Copied a lot of the general fandom examples from ScrewYourself.Fan Works into a folder in my sandbox. Unfortunately it was hard to sift through due to a lot of ZCE and a lot of mentions of Rule 34 that felt far too gratuitous.

Since we have Fictional Country, Fictional Zodiac and a currently in TLP Fictional Constellations, would Fictional Planets be trope-worthy?

Huh... On first thought, I suspect that it would be just too ubiquitous - practically every "Not Earth" setting is this to an extent. Even the settings that are supposed to be on real planets are usually fictionalized to some extent.

The reason that Alien Sky, Fictional Zodiac, etc. are tropable is that they call out a difference between the setting and our world. There are tropes about different ways of portraying fictional planets listed on the Planetary Tropes index: Multicultural Alien Planet, Single-Biome Planet, Death World, etc.

Edited by underCoverSailsman on Mar 16th 2021 at 5:17:36 AM

Maybe Fictional Planets would work if it were applied to our own Solar System?

Here's a trope idea.

HYDRA-Analogue

Basically, a trope for evil, named organizations, based, more or less, on HYDRA. That is to say, an terrorist-conspiracy-esque N.G.O. Superpower, often with a vague animal theming, legions of fanatical grunts, underground bases, super-science access to seemingly bottomless resources and military-grade weaponry such as tanks, who typically fight a heroic organization rather than just a singular hero, often the over-arching threat behind lesser ones.

Examples include Marvel's HYDRA, Command & Conquer's Brotherhood of Nod, Mass Effect's Cerberus.

nah. given that HYDRA are Nazis with all the trappings that implies, nothing under that wouldn't be covered by Putting on the Reich, A Nazi by Any Other Name, or Those Wacky Nazis.

COBRA is an obvious candidate and fits none of those tropes, so I think it has some potential.

Personally I'm beginning to think these expy tropes are missing the forest for the trees. It may be better to trope it as an organization that fits all those traits that HYDRA codified, vs. one that is specifically based on HYDRA, because I have noticed that tends to invite bad comparisons/examples.

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 17th 2021 at 1:36:33 PM

I'd argue most of those organizations are based off of SPECTRE rather than HYDRA.