TLP workstation thread

Don't you at least need a temporary name before you take it there?

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

Yes, but it doesn't need to be a good name. For example you could name it "Opposite of Oh Crap" - just start the description with Needs A Better Name.

FYI ALL, big discussion underway on major changes to YKTTW

All right I put it on YKTTW

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

I could use some help with my YKTTW

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

Give it time :)

• Rotating Camera

We've got some simmering tempers regarding tropability here.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Oh my.... Here's my suggestion. You may not like it.

What I'd do is:

1. Work on the description and examples you already have in a text editor based on the feedback you got, attempting to address the concerns pre-emptively.
2. Discard the YKTTW
3. Wait a couple days.
4. Start over.

edited 20th Apr '11 9:03:23 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

I'd also recommend calling it Rotating Camera Mechanic or something to distinguish that it's video game specific.

Fight smart, not fair.

Or you could try my personal method for avoiding bickering tempers:

1. Avoid posting more than one response per topic, per visit.
2. Avoid visiting more than once per day.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Luck Manipulation Mechanic could use some input on which of the proposed names (if any) should be used for the main title.

Suggestions for description modifications or thoughts on whether the trope is ready for launching once a name is decided on would also be welcome.

Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!

• Body Rotation: A.k.a. evil character spins their head (or other body part) in full circles. In serious need of title brainstorming.

• Camera Locked Behind The Player: Wow, that's a mouthful. Needs agreement on what the proper title should be.

edited 27th Apr '11 1:03:33 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Enhanced On DVD I need some help with the name here as people have issues with it being too close to Better on DVD and probably help on other things.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I have a couple of threads I'm interested in taking to YKTTW. However I don't really know what I'm doing. I’ve looked around and haven’t seen any of these. If I’ve duplicated existing tropes tell me.

(Audience Reaction Trope) Why Don't You Warp Out? The ship is in danger. Maybe its a natural phenomenon. Maybe some bad guys are shooting at it. It could be a trap. The Captain has no motivation to stay in the danger. He's probably trying to get the ship out in one piece while klaxons blair and officers shout panicked status reports. People are getting thrown from their chairs.

And the audience is screaming "WHY DONT YOU JUST WARP OUT? We know you have an FTL drive. We've seen it in action. "

This happens when authors don't use a lampshade or show a legitimate reason why they couldn't warp out. Because FTL travel is essentially rules magic it can be dispelled by a character saying one line of dialogue such as, "The lady who chants in Welsh hit her head and is knocked out," "The phlebotinum field won't work because of the technobabble," or even "We need time to spin up the drives" It results in an entire starship seeming to dumb to live. Sometimes in fact being to dumb to live.

A captain desperately trying to engage his FTL drive and failing is not this trope.

Contrast no warp zone for a region of space, warp disruptor for a random effect that prevents warping or, warp scrambler for a technology designed to prevent FTL travel.

Examples Star Trek is probably the main offender. Most of the time they will explain how they got warp disrupted. The times when they don't however... The star wars movies don't often show people other than the protagonists trying to escape into Hyperspace. Somewhat justified in that it takes time to spin up the warp core. Still there are several occasions where a large ship comes under attack and at least spinning up the warp core would be a perfectly acceptable response. The star wars books explain that warships use warp scramblers. I'm going to need to gather more examples.

(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL trope - Supertrope of Warp Scrambler and No Warp Zone ?Maybe of Spinning up the warp core?) Warp Disruptor The good ship the Star Tripper is in danger. Lord Bad Guy is firing on it with his nasty death cannons. Fortunately the Star Tripper has an FTL drive that seems to be able to take it anywhere easily. Unfortunately something has just happened to that FTL system. Maybe Lord Bad Guy scored a direct hit on the warp core. Maybe there was an accident on the Star Tripper. Maybe they wandered into a no warp zone.

But now the Star Tripper can't just trivially run away from danger. Its been warp disrupted. It has to think its way out, fight its way out, or talk its way out of the danger. A hack writer might have it technobabble its way out. The point is that the threat is now serious. The audience doesn't have to ask "Why don't you warp out?" as the Star Tripper struggles for its continued existence.

The most common example of this trope is that the opening salvo the enemy fires will disable the FTL device.

This trope only comes into play when a ship would normally be able to use its FTL but can't right now. If a ship can never warp within a certain distance of a star or can only use static wormholes is isn't warp disrupted when too close to a star or not using a wormhole.

Comes from EVE online where a warp disruptor is a device used to prevent a ship from warping.

Star Trek (many times) Farscape (I'm pretty sure but can't give concrete examples.) I'm going to need to gather examples.

(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL Trope - Subtrope of warp disruptor) Warp Scrambler "Sir I'd like to report that the enemy ship is larger than us. They have more guns. They have shinier guns. We can't penetrate their shields."

"Take us to warp Mr. Helmsman. Get us out of here."

"Sir the warp drive isn't responding"

"Sir the enemy ship is emitting an phlebotinum field. The FTL won't work. We've been warp scrambled."

This is a shipboard device for creating a no warp zone or beam. It is used by warships to force the enemy to fight. It is used by authors to close the escape hatch an FTL drive leaves in every scenario.

Comes from EVE online.

Examples Star Wars books have ships dedicated to this role Babylon 5 the humans got accidentally warp scrambled by sensors I need to gather more examples.

(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL Trope) Spinning Up the Warp Core Sometimes your FTL drive needs some time to power up. It cant just turn on and work instantly. The computers need to chart a course. The engines need to accumulate power. Some things need to spin. In the meantime lets hope something bad doesn't happen to the ship.

Examples The millenium falcon escaping Tatooine Battlestar Gallactica ships are only able to jump once every 30 minutes or so. More examples obviously needed.

(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL Trope / Useful notes maybe?) FTL War Theory FTL is effectively Rule Magic. Whenever an author wants to go into detail explaining the mechanics of a battle involving FTL expect things to start getting wierd fast. There are some preestablish paths. 1 Ships don’t fight in hyperspace or at relativistic distances. Either ships use warp scramblers, have to spin up the warp core, or the audience wonders why don’t they just warp out. 2 Ships fight at relativistic distances using their FTL to propel faster than light weapons. They can probably do this while warping or in hyperspace. This eliminates the warping out problem completely because a ship doesn’t get out of a bad situation when it goes to warp. 3 The only FTL is wormholes and most of the major battles happen on the wormholes. Tactics revolve around fortifying wormholes, and using formations designed to travel through a wormhole and defeat fortifications. 4 Their is no FTL but ships can reach relativistic speeds. A direct hit with a pillow can result in equivalent damage to tons of explosives. Time dilation is in effect. Planets can get wrecked by high speed projectiles. Sand is a deadly weapon. Then authors start mixing and matching this stuff...

^Not very well written

(Science Fiction and Horror Trope) Fire and Forget Biologicals War is expensive. Troops need to be mobilized. Specialists need to be trained. Factories need to be geared up. People are going to die.

OR some scientists could develop a living weapon to do the fighting. Factories aren’t needed. The living weapon will just eat biomass (enemy troops?) and reproduce. Troops aren’t needed when Zerglings are growing out of pods. Specialists... The thing has everything it needs to know coded into its DNA. There isn’t even a need for a general to direct it. Just code its DNA so the enemy are tasty.

An ancient race creating some Fire and Forget Biologicals is often the explanation given for why the protagonists have to fight some awful monster now.

Fire and forget biologicals are prone to eating their creators.

Fire and forget biologicals are often used as proxys for a more advanced but dying civilizations to fight a young vibrant and numerous civilizations.

People who use fire and forget biologicals are generally either not very nice or horribly misguided.

Remember fire and forget biologicals don’t need further guidance once deployed.

Examples Spoiler - The mysterious voice turned the zerg into fire and forget biologicals by inserting a desire to kill other races (specifically the protoss). Fire and Forget Biologicals is a possible explanation for why the space jockeys had a ship full of alien eggs in something that almost resembled a bomber configuration. The headcrab missiles in Half Life 2. First the headcrabs kill any humans nearby that can't defend themselves. Then they turn them into headcrab zombies which procede to attack everything nearby essentially turning areas hit with these missiles into zombie contaminated messes. Lots of virus designed to kill off specific races. The Species monster is created when an alien race sends us the DNA code of a fire and forget biological designed to kill us. Almost there on examples, Im sure I can find multiple works with the virus variant if I look.

Dang, I couldn't even get the forum right. Somehow a lot of line breaks didn't register.

Not sure of the etiquette here... I have a few YKTTW's that technically pass the test for launch but have gotten very few replies. One of them, Plot Twist, I feel is incredibly important that we have (seriously, it's amazing we don't have it yet), but no one's really said much about it. On the other hand, nobody's said anything against them either. Should I just launch?

FYI, the other ones are There Are No Bedsheets and Series Familiar Face, which needs a better title.

Remember, YKTTW is not a requirement to launch a trope, just a very good idea.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

PakistanisWithPanters - Since its likely, with the death of OBL, that alot of fictional media will be mentioning it in the near future, and for the sake of completionism among the various military pages on the site, I'd like to suggest this as a project. Desperately Needs A Better Description, Up For Grabs, possibly Needs A Better Title.

Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves

Needs to focus more on humans, less on animals.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

How should the description of Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves be if it's going to focus on humans?

Hello, that's precisely why I'm asking for help. You focus too much on animals, and I can't do much better.

edited 16th May '11 6:46:13 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

I have a YKTTW called Mostly Non Anthropomorphic Animal. It's supposed to match the description for Intellecual Animal on the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism page, unlike the description of Intellectual Animal on the Intellectual Animal page does.

There is also a Trope Repair Shop Discussion about this called Doesn't Match the Description on the SSOA, Needs to be Split.

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The description of Intellectual Animal on the Intellectual Animal page says:

The character doesn't have to be a specific animal, merely be animal-like (four-legged carnivores are popular) and clearly not human (a Nature Spirit, a god, et cetera). They are usually an imposing animal rather than something cute. To reduce the sense of cartoonishness inherent in this idea, the Intellectual Animal may speak without moving their mouth and talk in a normal, serious voice.

In fact, this character tends to be a little cynical about humans or may even have outright contempt for most of humankind. The rest of the cast may have to earn their respect. If they do prove themselves they might choose to befriend the human, even going so far as becoming an equal partner and Sapient Steed or Mentor.

Do not confuse this character type for the Team Pet or the Mascot. They will not enjoy the comparison. See also Talking Animal. The Talking Birds are a subtrope.

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The description of Intellectual Animal on the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism says:

Intellectual Animal - An animal who clearly has thought processes, but usually doesn't talk. Intellectual Animal characters may talk to each other, essentially having their own language, but humans won't understand them. That is, unless they are a Doctor Dolittle or if the language is able to be learned. Their thought processes and personality is still very much like that of whatever animal they are. The cast of Watership Down and Garfield fit here. So do Mickey Mouse's dog Pluto, Snoopy from Peanuts, and Krypto The Superdog.

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Also, there are examples of Intellectual Animal who are also Civilized Animals or Funny Animals, and a few of them can actually talk.

Intellectual Animals who are also Civilized Animals or Funny Animals:

• Gromit from Wallace And Gromit
• Snoopy from Peanuts
• Ape the gorilla from George Of The Jungle
• Mr. Peabody from Rocky And Bullwinkle
• Brian Griffin from Family Guy
• Hobbes from Calvin And Hobbes
• Garfield

edited 16th May '11 8:24:07 PM by EdnaWalker

(Edna, the workstation thread is geared more towards Entry Pimping UR Ls for whatever YKTT Ws need help. Discussions of individual threads go in the actual threads.)

• First-person videogame camera...something

Apparently DQZ and I are at an impasse (not to mention odds, and possibly tempers) over what makes a good title on this one. Nobody else is chiming in, need some help.

edited 16th May '11 8:50:55 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Girly Boy, or the Spear Counterpart of Tomboy. I need help with the description, and adding related tropes.

Here is a discussion about a trope where a character is canonically stupid, but still occasionally shows shades of intelligence when Rule of Funny (or other things that don't move the plot forward) says so.

We can't agree on the title.

edited 20th May '11 3:25:29 AM by Aminatep

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.   

Putting out another call for input on Luck Manipulation Mechanic. It's up to four hats, and I believe has a pretty solid description and examples list, however there isn't a consensus on which of the proposed names should be used.

Anyone who could chime in with their name picks would be greatly appreciated.

Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!