So, it's been a trend for soft-split tropes to be split into multiple sections even when it's not needed and makes the page a hassle to navigate. In some cases, the trope in question is so large that hard-splitting some (or all) of the internal subtropes into their pages is more beneficial than letting them take over the page.
EDIT: Here’s the sandbox for this effort—Sandbox.Soft Split Cleanup
Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 4th 2022 at 10:16:08 AM
The problem with Nothing Is Scarier soft split is that a lot of examples are too flexiable to be clearly separated. They ended up getting shoehorned because they're either a combination of three categories, or even worse, don't really belong to any of them. This is also why the pages attracted so many duplicated examples. Take this from Chernobyl for example:
- Chernobyl usually pulls no punches when it comes to depicting victims of radiation poisoning, but the one person we don't get to see in full is Akimov. Which is probably for the best; Khomyuk interviews him, and later says that his face is just gone.
- Two of the most terrifying things in the whole series are a flooded basement and a debris-covered roof. What sells the scenes is the Geiger counter ticking away in the background, warning the audience that the characters at the location are being exposed to massive amounts of radiation just by being there.
IIRC this was in "Nothing at all" and "There all along" category, but this is decidedly not how the main Nothing Is Scarier defines them. The former is defined as "there really is nothing happening" (while here something definitely happened to him), and the latter has to have a He Was Right There All Along surprise (while this is an omnious background noise audience can hear from start). The categories really did not help to sort things out.
Edited by SpaceKABOOM on May 28th 2024 at 8:51:08 AM
The Anime & Manga folder in To Be a Master has the examples split into different demographics (shonen, Seinen, shoujo). Permission to remove?
Yeah, I agree, the Nothing Is Scarier split is unhelpful
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThe Beautiful Elite's examples are split into "Too Good to be True," "Dream Worlds," "Evil Versions" and "Jerkass Versions." Examples occasionally use these as type labels despite them not being defined in the description (which I've been editing).
I can't think of better place to ask this, so bringing it here. Creator.Bio Ware has strange soft splits in which its namespace racked up a significant amount of subpages to its name, instead of putting them into its work pages. Some of it include:
I'm sure Administrivia.Creator Page Guidelines discourages this when the works have pages (and yes, Bioware games all have pages), and this makes page navigation difficult when you have to travel from a Bioware game to Bioware creator page just to check whether it has YMMV on it. Narm.Bioware in particular is pretty strange as it already put most items to their work, but someone made a container page for it.
This kind of complicated splits usually create duplicated examples and I already found one: both YMMV.Dragon Age Origins and FranchiseOriginalSin.Bio Ware have examples about Witch Hunt DLC and a lot of editors seem to never realize there's an other page.
How about just removing most of this creator container pages and put them back to their works? Here's a list of pages with my thoughts.
- Awesome.Bio Ware: Cut and move
- Characters.Bio Ware: General creator page. There're a lot of interesting patterns here, so I guess it might stay
- HoYay.Bioware: Cut and move
- Quotes.Bio Ware: Don't know if this is a correct use
- Trivia.Bio Ware: Unsure
- YMMV.Bio Ware: Cut and move
- AwesomeBosses.Bio Ware: Cut and move
- DarkAndTroubledPast.Bio Ware: Cut and move, but perhaps move some to Creator.Bio Ware because it has a pattern?
- DarkerAndEdgier.Bio Ware: Cut and move. Some things are general example that should just be cut ("Dragon Age: Origins served as this not only for Bioware, but also the medieval fantasy genre as a whole.")
- FranchiseOriginalSin.Bio Ware: Cut and move
- Gush.Bio Ware: Unsure
- Memes.Bio Ware: Cut and move
- Narm.Bioware: Cut and move
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That question may be something to consult Ask The Tropers about, but I would think it may be a situation where the different work-relevant aspects are moved to those works' pages
What exactly do you mean by "overlapping" here? That may help with understanding the issue at hand
So, a couple weeks ago, some tropers (myself included) noticed that a certain group of tropes (ones regarding humanlike statues being Played for Horror) had a recurring problem with the description and the example list that weakened their core meaning.
Murderous Mannequin, Scary Scarecrows, Perverse Puppet, Creepy Doll and Demonic Dummy all started off explaining how we can find them uncanny, and how this is exploited in horror works...
Before suddenly reminding us how not all mannequins/scarecrows/puppets/dummies/dolls are scary or evil, and how some of them can even be friendly.
And all of those pages were soft-split between "scary humanlike inanimate things" (the correct use of the trope), and "non-scary humanlike inanimate things" (the misuses).
All of these soft-splitting in the descriptions and examples was added unilaterally by a single troper (the misused examples actually existed before this unilateral change, it's just that someome tried to "update" the pages to showcase this duality, instead of, y'know, remove the misuse?).
All of this required an extensive cleanup. While some examples would eventually be cut completely, some were moved to more fitting tropes: many "friendly" examples from Creepy Doll, Demonic Dummy and Perverse Puppet were still about living individuals of those playthings, and have been moved to Living Toys because of it.
Other times, some examples could form their own pattern, and got yarded for a new draft: Living Mannequin was recently launched to contain the misuse from Murderous Mannequin.
And that's the path I was taking. I cleaned up Scary Scarecrows, and collected some of the misuse from that page and put it into a new draft, "Silly Scarecrows".
Until, a couple days in, someone notified me that another troper, the previous year, made a draft with some overlap in concept and examples: "Sweet Scarecrow".
And they told me to go here, and that's where I need your help, I guess.
I'm not paid enough for this
Oo oo ah ah
That to me looks like it may be a situation for the Repair Shop, honestly. I'd also swing by Ask The Tropers regarding this, since, if a troper unilaterally added something to the description just to add a bunch of tangentially related examples, that strikes me as shoehorning on a pretty huge scale and probably needs some deeper discussion that, to me, seems beyond just the scope of this thread. If we're simply talking about the splits themselves, I 100% agree that they should be removed, but I worry that this issue is beyond that.
It's already been discussed here
. Even the mod who posted there doesn't think it needs TRS and I don't see the point of coming here.
^^^ I did not suggest you come here to resolve your TLP issue. I said that if you wanted to soft split tropes in the future, this is the thread where that's discussed. As those tropes collected the "good" examples into a separate category that could be split.
Edited by IronAnimation on Jun 13th 2024 at 12:03:57 PM
Sapient Pet is weirdly split between pets that masquerade around all humans, those that do around some but not others, those that are openly sapient and those that combine some types. Is this trope worth moving to No Straight Examples, Please! (in which case I think exaggerated, exploited and lampshaded examples should be allowed as they cover most of the split scenarios), are these actually necessary, or is this kind of thing better suited to Trope Talk?
Your goateed philistine is sashaying towards us. | 🧱the sub categories are essentially this trope combined with Obfuscating Stupidity. I think that could probably be it's own subtrope.
I definitely think the straight example is a trope, but wouldn't be averse to splitting off the played-with variants if it's not covered by other tropes already.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.The Idol Singer page has many anime/manga examples. Should they be moved to a sub-page?
Edited by deerhornsaresopretty on Jun 16th 2024 at 9:37:19 AM
The "in universe" examples on Damn You, Muscle Memory! don't seem to actually be in universe examples of the trope (which is specifically about control layouts), but examples of a separate trope about characters reflexively doing things against their best interest. Should this just be split?
That separate trope you mention sounds like Reflexive Response.

A lot of the examples that pertain to or use the words “Wait for It”, “Nothing at all” and “There all along” make no sense now. I’ll try and fix them, but I feel it has made the page more unintuitive rather than cleaning it up.
Edited by Yellow20 on May 29th 2024 at 1:04:09 AM
Y.20