I mean, maybe my wording was wrong, but at that point this really feels like arguing semantics. If a trope happens several times, then a trope happens several times, and once we start arguing creator intent, that opens the door to a lot more complicated moves than I feel is really necessary. Like, people are going to think different things about whether or not a trope is intentional - like for those ECM moments that got moved, I could think that they're intentional creative decisions, but if someone else feels like they're not and moves them, then that creates an entirely new discussion about whether or not something is purposeful, which wastes everyone's time with speculating over creator intent which we can never actually know. Basing whether or not something goes on the main page based on if it doesn't happen in some episodes just feels like a needless overcomplication when, in my opinion, it should just be "if it happens consistently, then it goes on the main page". People might disagree on what "consistently" means, but arguing that creative intent changes things just needlessly adds another layer to things in my opinion.
If there's no disagreement, I'll go ahead and take this discussion to the thread Synch linked, since that was already discussing Recap guidelines anyway
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Mar 2nd 2023 at 10:39:35 AM
I don't know if 'creator intent' is the best way to phrase it but I more or less agree with ^^^. Something that ties disparate instances together would convince me to group them together otherwise:
To illustrate, below are a bunch of hypothetical situations that would go on the main page if subpages didn't exist, but in bold is where I'd move them to personally:
- Boom, Headshot!: Alice kills a random mook by shooting him in the head in episode 5. Recap page for episode 5
- Boom, Headshot!: Alice's signature method of murder is shooting victims through the head. She does this in episodes 3, 6 and 8. Character sheet
- Boom, Headshot!: In a gory series, two deaths utilize headshots:
- Alice kills a random mook by shooting him in the head in episode 5.
- Ed shoots the Arc Villain, James in the forehead in the climax of episode 9, killing him.
If the show utilizes a ton of gory deaths, these would look 'unrelated', so I would think they go better as individual examples on the recap pages for episodes 5 and 9.
- Boom, Headshot!: Climactic battles tend to end with a headshot:
- Alice comes into her own as a fighter by shooting the attacking mook in the head during the battle in episode 5.
- Ed shoots the Arc Villain, James in the forehead in the climax of episode 9, killing him.
Now there's something connecting these two instances (a dramatic end to a fight), it's a better case for a 'main page' trope.
- Boom, Headshot!: Every firefight ends with someone getting shot in the head. Main page, since it happens all the time.
tl;dr again — it depends on how the work uses it and I don't see a lot of space for a hard-and-fast guideline. Like character tropes, it's kind of a 'you know it when you see it' type of situation. Maybe a recap counterpart to this thread
would be helpful?
Seems like the previously mentioned issue of "Recaps' YMMVs aren't indexed" is that they should be indexed in the main work's YMMV page, but aren't?
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576![]()
Okay, when it’s put like that, that does make sense to me. I think some kind of thread like that Characters thread you linked would honestly be a great resource that would solve a lot of the problems I’m having - we could even have the hypotheticals you mentioned in an OP to serve as the hypothetical guideline I was thinking about. Would that thread be okay to make? If we do that then I honestly think that would clear just about any concern I had.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Mar 2nd 2023 at 6:52:36 AM

Eh, maybe, or maybe it's just a trope that the series happens to come back to several times, perhaps as a result of the nature of the plots, perhaps out of the laziness of the writers. If it feels like an "intentional and consistent creative choice" I'm fine with putting it on the main page, but if it feels more coincidental, like a bunch of individual instances of what happens to be the same trope, then it should probably go on the recap pages.
That makes it sound like we shouldn't have hard-and-fast guidelines, but I should note that frequency may have something to do with whether something should be considered a trope that applies to a series as a whole or not. If something happens close to Once an Episode it's clearly an "intentional and consistent creative choice", but if a given trope happens in a lot of episodes but also doesn't happen in a lot of episodes, it's more likely to be coincidental.