Oftentimes here in Trope Talk, we get questions about whether or not a given trope is tropeworthy enough, or is an example of the kind of non-tropes discussed in People Sit on Chairs. These threads are extremely frequent, and per discussion
in the TRS meta thread, this megathread was created.
This will be a centralized place to ask: is this article I found tropeworthy? Does it convey meaning or is it used to tell the story, or is it just something that happens to exist in a work? Ask here, and hopefully you will get the answers you need.
Remember, something that is "(people sit on) chairs" means it's happenstance or conveys no meaning. Something that also happens in real life, is common, is rare, or seems minor is not the same as being chairs.
As an additional note, keep this in mind when bringing tropes in, as noted by amathieu13:
Edited by Tabs on Oct 29th 2023 at 10:08:41 AM
Absolute Rainbow & the tales between worlds
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
How do we fix the wicks there?
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
We don't until the TRS opens
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
the Retromancer
What's the purpose of Completed Webcomics and Completed Fic? We don't index completed tv series and etc.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
He/Him
Yes, but webcomics and fanfics are infamous for sometimes becoming Dead Fics or going on long hiatuses due to personal troubles.
Shows/Movies usually get completed.
Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
To clarify, many webcomics and fanfics are created by sole creators themselves as opposed to a team as with films and television shows.
Many webcomics and fanfics have No Budget, especially given that many of them are created as passion projects rather than for profit.
Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 13th 2023 at 11:43:18 AM
Kirby is awesome.
Very Spooky
To be fair, TV series can be left unfinished if they get cancelled, but I can see how webcomics and fanfics are distinct, as those can simply get abandoned with no announcement whatsoever, in contrast to TV series, which almost always receive formal announcements.
To change the topic: I'm rather concerned about many of the tropes found on the Pleasant Animals Index and Scary Animals Index. While some tropes are definitely valid, there's some that seem to lack clear cultural connotations between an animal and whenever they're portrayed as good or evil. Right now, though, I'll bring up Wily Walrus as a particular example. There's a lack of consistency with the examples, and the description is similarly all over the place. Here's the Western Animation folder for example:
- Animaniacs: In the episode "Bumbie's Mom", a walrus lady complains when Skippy starts crying in the theater, and she's very rude about it. However, Slappy quickly shuts her up. Generic Jerkass
- Walter from Cyberchase is a crafty prankster walrus who guards the Ice Palace. He stalls the marching penguins and refuses to let them enter unless they solve a problem. Part of arctic setting
- DuckTales (1987): In part 4 of "Treasure of the Golden Suns", Scrooge and co travel to Antarctica to find the missing half of their treasure map and befriend a penguin girl after saving her from a hungry walrus (despite walruses living in the Arctic), and later have to deal with a prehistoric woolly walrus that has been frozen in ice for millennia, after accidentally freeing it. Feral monster
- Darkwing Duck: The walrus Tuskernini is a failed film director turned supervillain. He is also an Expy of the Batman villain The Penguin. He was meant to be portrayed as a glutton and the source of fat jokes, but evidently, this didn't work for the writers as only his debut episode portrays him like this. One comic based on the show introduced another villainous walrus named Paul Obtús, a chef. Fat Bastard
- The Futurama episode "The Late Philip J. Fry" has Fry, Bender, and the Professor briefly end up in a future ice age via Time Travel, and they get menaced by hunters riding on walruses. Feral monsters
- One episode portrayed an alternate version of the characters where Fry, Kif, and the others are elephant seals, (except Scruffy, who really is a walrus) but the idea is the same otherwise. Bender is given as The Rival of the other characters, is a great example of the negative walrus stereotypes (since the normal version of the character is a Jerkass in ways that translate well to the walrus stereotypes). This episode's use of the trope is unusually realistic in that it bases itself on the questionable sexual habits of Real Life walruses, with Bender controlling a harem and bullying all other males into staying away from the females and thus having no females of their own. Seems to be a more legitimate example of "walrus is associated with villainy and unpleasantness"
- Played with in Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. Emilia's One-Winged Angel is technically a walrus, but so throughly mutated it barely resembles one (and its source is just a wild animal). Either way very fitting for her malevolence. Given that it apparently barely resembles one, this is debatable
- Minnie the Moocher features a ghost walrus who isn't exactly evil, but very frightening due to being one of the many surreal, dark images in the cartoon. It doesn't help that the song he sings (which the cartoon shares its title with) is rather dark, being about a beggar woman who turned to drugs and was later found dead. Walrus is scary
- Double subverted with Rhonda, the walrus from The Penguins of Madagascar. She initially appears to be a Fat Slob and the source of much Toilet Humor. Her roommate, Marlene, is disgusted by her behavior. However, because Rhonda seems oblivious to how crude she's acting, Marlene and the other animals don't tell her, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Then, at the end of the episode, it is revealed that she was Obfuscating Stupidity all along, and she's actually a competent spy for Dr. Blowhole. More so a Fat Slob than anything else
- Pingu: A Nightmare Sequence has Pingu being hunted by a giant walrus/leopard seal/sea lion hybrid. Aside from his creepy appearance, said character first traps Pingu inside an igloo, and then it squashes and stretches the poor penguin like a doll. Finally, it takes the mattress of Pingu's animated bed and eats it as if it were a chocolate bar. This scene was considered so scary that the entire episode got banned from US television since its first airing. Feral monster
- It's even worse in the children's book adaptation. Not only is the walrus illustrated to actually look villainous, he outright states his intention to eat Pingu, right up to the classic "You'll never escape me!" line as Pingu runs away. The meant to be humorous stretching-Pingu-like-a-rubber-band sequence is adapted out, but whether or not that's for the better is anyone's interpretation.
- The Simpsons: In one Couch Gag, Marge, Lisa, Bart, and Maggie are penguins climbing onto an iceberg. Homer is a walrus who flops onto the iceberg, causing it to fling the penguins into his mouth. Not exactly "feral monster" but has similar connotations
- In one of the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, Dr. Hibbert owns an island where he turns people into animals. Homer is turned into a walrus. Seemingly not even evil
Homer: It's great! I haven't been this skinny since high school! - Sonic Boom:
- Willie the Walrus is a criminal who works for The Lightning Bolt Society. Connotations between being an walrus and being a villain don't seem to be there
- Zig-zagged with Lady Walrus. While she is one of the innocent townspeople whom Team Sonic must save from Dr. Eggman, there are times when the townspeople turn against Team Sonic, and she is quick to join them. Her most villainous role is in "No Robots Allowed" when she is part of the snooty homeowner's association that tries to evict Eggman for owning robots. Generic Jerkass
- Wally Walrus is Woody Woodpeckers stuffy archnemesis who constantly tries to put an end to Woody's fun. Grumpy Old Man'
- Dr. Rusell the (very boring) science teacher in the short-lived Fox Kids show Zazoo U is walrus. Seemingly just Grumpy Old Man
There's many different types of characters here: some are feral monsters (which I argue can be folded under Monstrous Seal), some have a Good Animals, Evil Animals thing going on with penguins, some are Fat Bastards, some aren't feral monsters but nevertheless portray walruses as scary, some are just Jerkasses, and so on. There might be a valid trope under here, but it lacks enough focus to have a clear idea at its core.
back lol
TV series being "left unfinished" is almost certainly the result of factors outside the creators' control. It's hard for a creator of a TV series to simply abandon a show out of nowhere; there are contracts and the like that need to be honored. As a result, tropes like Grand Finale, Cut Short, and the like apply to TV series while other tropes apply to single-creator works. (Literature and Video Games can straddle the line, Literature because it can be driven by a single creator that still has to answer to executives, Video Games because whole studios can have a more amateurish approach to things, resulting in Vaporware.)
Also, webcomics aren't usually broken up into seasons the way TV shows are.
If a network orders thirteen episodes of a TV series, that's all they're committing to. Once those thirteen episodes are produced, the project is finished - if the show does well, they might decide to order more episodes, but whether or not they do so, that initial episode order is no less complete.
Now, there may be plot threads or cliffhangers left unresolved at the end of the thirteenth episode, but that's the writers gambling that they can get renewed for another season. They knew going in that the current assignment was only for thirteen episodes, and chose not to wrap everything up by the end of it.
Somebody who exists
Not Allowed to Grow Up is essentially the exact same trope as Comic-Book Time, except that it requires the character who doesn't age to be a kid, which is The Same, but More Specific.
Guy in the back alleys.
... no? Those two are completely different tropes.
the Retromancer
Also trope similarities are for that thread, here is when a trope doesn't work conceptually.
Is Avoiding the Great War tropeworthy? It strikes me as a WWI specific version of Prevent the War. What makes trying to stop WWI tropeworthy? Is it because any attempts to do so will result in failure (or perhaps Alternate History)? But that's true of every historical war.
Edited by SharkToast on Dec 20th 2023 at 5:28:44 AM
I mainly fix indentation issues
Idiosyncratic Mecha Storage only has 20 wicks, probably due to the trope being too specific. Heck, even the image on the page doesn't really fit the trope description and laconic. It seems to be about Mechas that "kneel or curl up" to make it easier to store, but the image doesn't show Mechas doing any action.
Valdo
Very Spooky
Checked the TLP, and it seems like this was originally created in 2011, only to be revived and quickly launched almost 7 years later, which explains a lot. I do think the idea of "Humongous Mecha compresses for storage" has merit to it, but the page is in a very rough state currently.
Rookie Trope Repairer
Old Dog has 101 wicks, but as far as I can tell the trope simply amounts to "Old dogs exist in fiction" without any meaning being conveyed.
"As long as I have my comrades with me, I can do anything!" (She/Her) (Current Focus: Cleaning Hell Is That Noise misuse)
Wow. It really is as bad as you said.
I can see it being retooled into, y'know, the loyal old dog who waits for his master/lies down to die on his grave, leading to many Tearjerker/Heartwarming Moments, but as of now, it's complete chairs. I'm frankly surprised the Real Life section doesn't contain: "Truth in Television: some dogs are old."
Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on Dec 29th 2023 at 1:35:08 AM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Another possible idea is the "old and weak dog" who can't keep up anymore and is reduced to just laying around, but that can work for other pets as well.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
The page actually went through YKTTW, though I think 2010 was a bit before the wiki really tried to nail down the definition of a trope and made PSOC a thing.
Rookie Trope Repairer
That makes sense. The Chairs page dates back to December 2012.
Officially intimidated
That's the date for the allocation of the page in Administrivia. The page itself is much older. Its enforcement just wasn't as prominent back then as it is now.
the Retromancer
Is Fainting even a trope? That's just something that is common in real life. Breaking it up to Dramatic Sudden Fainting and its supposed subtropes would be better.
Edited by Amonimus on Dec 30th 2023 at 12:02:08 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
I've been bothered by that one for ages. It feels like a weird mixture of trope page and index right now, too.
Really, the only things I see salvageable from it are Faint in Shock (which already has a page) and possibly Anemia Faint as described on there, since that one is described as being common in romance manga/anime (not into that genre, so can't vouch for whether it's true or not). All the other variants are either sub-sections of Faint in Shock, or chairs.
EDIT: Or maybe rework/TLP something like Easy Fainting, for how fainting at dramatic moments is a lot more common in older fiction than we find realistic nowadays. Victorian heroines, of course, but Dante also describes himself in The Divine Comedy as fainting more often (often as a convenient ending to a canto) than seems strictly plausible, even for a guy who's literally going through Hell.
Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on Dec 30th 2023 at 1:10:20 AM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Well, there's also Fake Faint.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Very good point. Again, though, already has its own page and just makes the Fainting one seem even more of an index hybrid.
I've gone ahead and started checking wicks for Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry under Sandbox.Everythings Sparkly With Wicks. Feel free to help if you care to.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness