TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Ask The Tropers

Go To

Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help. It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread for ongoing cleanup projects.

Ask the Tropers:

Trope Related Question:

Make Private (For security bugs or stuff only for moderators)

WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
Unsung Since: Jun, 2016
2019-10-05 23:11:06

In comedy you'll often have the sympathetic (or Unsympathetic) protagonist going through a Humiliation Conga for laughs, right?

HarpieSiren Since: Jan, 2001
Unsung Since: Jun, 2016
2019-10-06 09:55:29

Generally speaking, though it doesn't have to be Played for Laughs. Humiliation is lighter than trauma, which makes it easier to play it for laughs, but either could be taken seriously, and if the comedy was dark enough you could see Trauma Conga Line played for comedy as well. But I don't think there's any reason either needs to specify 'hero' or 'villain'.

reppuzan Since: Dec, 2014
2019-10-06 12:28:29

For context, the example I was thinking of is the first chapter of My Hero Academia.

It's the capstone of one such conga for protagonist Izuku Midoriya. After being outed as an Un-Sorcerer, he's been bullied and ostracized by his peers for the past ten years for wanting to become a superhero without a superpower. In the span of a few hours, he's humiliated in front his entire class, has his prized notebook scorched and tossed out a window into a fish pond, is told to go jump off a roof, and is nearly murdered by a fleeing supervillain who wanted to use him for Grand Theft Me. Then he has a Hope Spot when he meets his idol, All Might, and asks if it's possible for someone like him to become a hero. All Might tells Izuku to give up on his dreams because it's too dangerous for someone without a Quirk to enter superhero work.

On his way home, Izuku realizes that his actions also freed the villain All Might was trying to capture and that said villain was in the process of murdering his Childhood Friend and bully, Katsuki Bakugou. After rushing in to help, but failing to do much of anything, he's once again rescued by All Might and chewed out by the nearby heroes for making the situation even more complicated. By the end of all this, he's fully ready to give up on his dreams until All Might chases him down again.

Edited by reppuzan
Top