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 is for:
- General questions about the wiki, how it works, and how to do things.
- Reports of problems with wiki articles, or requests for help with wiki articles.
- Reports of misbehavior or abuse by other tropers.
Ask the Tropers is not for:
- Help identifying a trope. See TropeFinder.
- Help identifying a work. See MediaFinder.
- Asking if a trope example is valid. See the Trope Talk forum.
- Proposing new tropes. See TropeLaunchPad.
- Making bug reports. See QueryBugs.
- Asking for new wiki features. See QueryWishlist.
- Chatting with other tropers. See our forums.
- Reporting problems with advertisements. See this forum topic.
- Reporting issues on the forums. Send a Holler instead.
Ask the Tropers:
openVideo showing odd thumbnail
I recently uploaded a video to the site, but for some reason it showed a thumbnail of color bars (which did not appear at all in the video I uploaded). Is there any way to fix this? (The video I uploaded was Jax's Arm Rip Fatality from Mortal Kombat 2 for the trope An Arm and a Leg. It can be found here
.)
openRejected Trope Titles
Any chance I’m the first person to suggest a humorous Darth Wiki page full of rejected titles for real tropes?
e.g. Skywalker Syndrome.
openLegless object show characters
So, this problem retains to character sheets for object shows. Me and Whaterva have decided on what to do last night, but I'm just going to ask right now. So Whaterva has been putting the trope "An Arm and a Leg" in sections for characters who lack legs. Now, the trope in question actually relates to the mutilation of limbs. If the character in question lost their legs to an injury, that's fine. However, to bring you a couple cases, Slurpy's lack of legs is an unknown case, and Nabla's case makes zero sense if you know that she was given Sudden Anatomy by Oodle. We've decided to just replace the trope with an inversion case of Armless Biped until a new trope launches for legless characters, but what do you guys think?
Edited by RabbitTopeBallopenQuestionable YMMV Wording Film
YMMV.Jason And The Argonauts has some complainy entries for Narm and Took the Bad Film Seriously. I don't know if it's accurate or not, but should they be commented out or removed (haven't seen the movie so I can't reword them)?
openNarm & Bathos Film
I've got a problem figuring out which one to use. I know what those tropes are and what they do, so it's not the problem with definition - is to figure out which one "fits". But first, a bit of explaination.
Spoor, a movie I've just finished, has a Hysterical Woman as the main character and she has few very, very grating rants throughout the film. It's not only annoying in-universe, but it's just hard to watch her increasingly inane ranting, too. The character, due to such behaviour being her norm, is considered to be the "typical crazy grandma" in-universe... only that in the finale it is revealed it was for the most part (she's still insane) a play and deliberate mislead, both in- and out-of-universe: in reality, her rants were done as a cover-up for the fact she's a murderous lunatic and misdirect the people around her. Lucid enough to perform elaborate murders, yet still very insane Eco-Terrorist, living in her own imaginary world.
So with that covered, I'm thinking if the scenes with her ranting fall under Narm or Bathos. Prior to the reveal, it's just extremely narmalicious (and even after it's still eye-rolling), but with the reveal, the ranting was in fact deliberate and intentional, so the initial reaction it generates from audience can't fall under the definition of narm... but does it qualify under Bathos, given it's not exactly comedic?
I guess I'm explaining it poorly, but it's one of those situations that's not exactly about fitting pegs to the right holes.
openCrossing must be intentional?
This was deleted from CrossesTheLineTwice.Western Animation:
- "Tanks for the Memories": Rainbow Dash's entire Wangst at her pet tortoise having to hibernate in the winter.
Cleanup
argued it wasn't supposed to be funny so is Narm instead. My questions:
- Does Crosses the Line Twice have to be intentional? (And is this misuse as it fails to explain how it crossed it a first time?)
- Was it supposed to be 100% serious? It was an allegory for death, but that it only last the winter suggestion they didn't want to go all in on the subject. The episode also had more comedy, including moments juxtaposed with Rainbow's Wangst, than "The Perfect Pear", which treated the subject of death 100% seriously.(Asked MLP cleanup.
)
openMark Twain YMMV Literature
Please unlock the YMMV for Mark Twain. I intend to crosswick an approved CM entry for a work which does not exist on the wiki.
- Complete Monster (King Leopold's Soliloquy): King Leopold presents himself as a vicious hypocrite and sanctimonious tyrant who subjects the Free State of the Congo to horrific depravity. Having countless people killed and entire regions depopulated, Leopold demands high taxes and production rates from his supposed subjects, cutting off limbs or even castrating others who cannot meet them. Having people tortured and murdered in huge numbers, Leopold notes one of his mistakes was to have sixty innocents crucified and remarks fewer people would care if he'd them skinned. Uncaring of anything but lining his pockets, Leopold shows his only sympathy is to himself, indifferent to the half-million corpses he has left in his rush for money.
openJustEatGilligan/factual error issue.
From Just Eat Gilligan:
- The series How It Should Have Ended is pretty much dedicated to pointing these out. Examples are The Lord of the Rings (blindfold the eagles and fly them straight from Rivendell into Mordor), Predator (if the Predator doesn't attack unarmed people because it's not good sport, just ditch all the weapons) Star Wars (don't wait until the Death Star has gone all the way around the planet that the rebel base orbits, just blow up the planet - in the original video, or lightspeed around the planet to the appropriate side -in the updated version, and you'll have a clear shot at the base), and Avengers: Endgame (Take a Third Option by sacrificing Red Skull for the Soul Stone instead of having Natasha/Black Widow or Clint/Hawkeye be the sacrifice- though this ignores that the movie specified that the sacrifice had to be someone who you loved, which was why Thanos sacrificed Gamora instead of a random mook, and obviously Natasha and Clint don't remotely love the Red Skull).
The rest are valid but the last one has issues.
- If it's arguing the solution is factually incorrect despite portraying it as such in work is it not an example (most JEG examples are also unintentional)?
- If an intended/discussed example is valid is arguments against it Natter?
- Is there anything such errors can go under? (Cowboy BeBop at His Computer only applies to the work the error is about.)
open Image deletion Videogame
A little while back, wingedcatgirl deleted
the image for OneManArmy.Video Games. Permission to restore?
openQuestion about Narm
I noticed that on Narm's subpages (like Narm.Five Nights At Freddys), theres a Flame Bait banner. However, Narm itself has a YMMV banner, and isn't in the Flame Bait index. What's up with that?
openNarm trope Anime
Is it okay to put a description like "Many of this character's moments become Narm due to the way they're animated/portrayed", or does it have to be a specific moment you put as the trope?
Edited by Okami90open[Resolved] Narm Flamebait?
Narm's subpages have the Flame Bait header on them even though Narm itself does not and they aren't listed anywhere else, and I've been wondering how does that work.
Edited by AmonimusopenWeird wording on a work page (and YMMV page) Film
I found a weird sentence with weird wording on from Furie and its YMMV page. Here are some examples (spoiler warning):
- Fourth Wall Farewell: The film ends with Hai Phuong agreeing to teach her daughter martial arts. She closes out by telling the daughter some of the tenets that she had to internalize during her own training, and her head snaps to the camera when delivering the final line of the movie.
- Narm: The film ends with Hai Phuong promising to teach Mai martial arts. Hai Phuong begins telling Mai some of the lessons that she learned during her own training while they're resting in a hospital bed. So far, a fairly touching moment between mother and daughter. It only gets laughable when she snaps her head to the camera in order to deliver the final line of the film in a moment so out of place and jarring that it's hilarious.
What do they mean by snaps their head to the camera? I never heard that sentence. Does this make sense or not?
Edited by BubblepigopenNeed help on Clothing Damage.
On the Clothing Damage page, there is a part that looks like this:
In Star Trek: The Original Series Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Starship Enterprise has his shirt ripped in fights in six episodes ("Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Miri" "Court Martial", "Shore Leave" "Amok Time" and "Gamesters of Triskellon") and ripped outside fights in "The Naked Time" (where Mc Coy]= thinks it's the best way to administer a hypospray) and "Miri" again (where he rips his own sleeves to show he has the disease). The rips in "Court Martial" and "Shore Leave" are exactly the same. This was parodied in the Futurama episode, where Shatner simply tears his own shirt right before a discussion, into the same pattern. Delirious's first mask was cut by Matt Sydal, who turned Delirious's own wooden stake against him. He's also had masks damaged by Jimmy Jacobs, Hang Men 3 and Bryan Danielson. Good thing Daizee Haze likes sewing. In OVW, Jillian Hall went mad and turned on Alexis Laree, beating her down and ripping off her shirt. While Laree was face down on the mat, she then ripped apart Alexis's bra and tried to lift her off the mat to expose her to the crowd, who, being full of Laree fans, heavily booed Hall for this (The referee got a towel to preserve Laree's dignity) Pretty much the point of the Tuxedo Match for men and Evening Gown/Bra & Panties match for women.
I am not sure how to fix it.
resolved Is this mf a Love To Hate villain? Web Original
https://hate-sink.fandom.com/wiki/Patrick_Star_(Paka)
This is Patrick Star, from Paka's Dark SpongeBob Parodies. It's more than obvious he's a Hate Sinknote while some people may not trust FANDOM much because of some mistakes they have from time to time, they clearly discuss
every character before adding pages related to the Moral Ranking Wiki, Heroes Wiki, and Villains Wiki, since the series itself presents him as an irredeemable and dislikable, violent and cold asshole who wants nothing more than to kill SpongeBob and Junior (a baby clam, btw) at all costs (and he also basically represents the abusive husband in a toxic relationship when the sponge took the clam to his house, doubling his hatable points), whether is by killing people, threatening them at gunpoint, and -spoilers if you didn't see the animatics- making SpongeBob digs his own grave in a graveyard while having Junior in a cage.
Yet even with all this hatable and unsympathetic traits, he also has some Evil Is Cool moments when he kills an entire gang all by himself, all of the things he does to get to Sponge and Junior actually shows him how much of a clever and manipulative son of a bitch he is that accompanies his brutality (and this is Patrick, by the way), and, after the events of Part 2, he's shown to have the regenerative and cloning powers like his The Bikini Bottom Horror counterpart, which he uses to beat the crap out of and kidnap Mr. Krabs and asphyxiate Bubble Bass by making him gulp one of his parts by force, killing him and latter making a clone of himself be created, also Paka does a really good job at voicing him.
Apparently, I also saw that Hate Sinks can indeed also be "Love to Hate" characters, so he may also count.
Also sorry for all this Wall of Text.
Edited by UzarNaimBer15openCan This Really Be Considered Narm, Or Is It Misuse?
I was looking through the pages for the fan fic The Sun Will Come Up, and the Seasons Will Change and I noticed that in the YMMV page, a user put in this entry:
- Narm: Nora is revealed to be a neo-Nazi in her debut when she walks across the snow, and the cut of her shoes leave swastikas in her footprints. It's meant to be a shocking moment, but the image of a hate symbol being molded into the bottom of someone's shoes with the purpose of actually leaving footprints in that shape comes off as so sudden and over-the-top it rolls into hilarity.
I know this kind of stuff is subjective for each troper, but reading over it...I don't know, something about it feels really off to me. I might be biased here as I'm a huge fan of the fan fic in question, but reading the scene in its actual context, I couldn't find anything in the fic itself or its writing that made the scene in question come off as unintentionally hilarious or over-the-top like the troper who made the edit claims. Plus, as weird as this sounds, I found out through watching a documentary that there actually are such things as companies that make the exact kind of boots with little swastikas molded onto the soles, so it's not something that was just pulled out of their imagination. Something about the wording feels really off to me too, but I'm admittedly not an expert on these matters, so for all I know I'm probably reading too deep into it. What do you guys think? Is this a misuage of Narm, or is it actually following the trope page's rules?
Edited by TwilightPegasusopenTrope for Taking the Edge out of a character or idea
Do we have a trope specifically for a writer who more or less takes an originally pretty offensive and/or controversial approach to a subject, but brings it back in a cleaner, less offensive format?
The example in question:
Kamen America.
The writers were a little infamous before making the above indie comic due to a series of "satire" books called the Wall Might series. Basically a My Hero Academia parody with Donald Trump and Right wing characters fighting left-wing straw-men. One of the villain groups in this series were blatantly racist/homophobic caricatures of Marvel Characters at the time, and was (according to them) supposed to be a satirical critique on forced diversity in mainstream comics. They had parodies of Miss Marvel, Ice Man, Captain Marvel (the character who would spin off to become Kamen America), and more that were just plain offensive and edgy.
Years later they took the Captain Marvel parody from this comic and spun her into her own series Kamen America, and showed a stark change in their writing style. While still over-bearingly conservative to narmy degrees, it lacked the offensive, edgy cringe that made people hate their guts and slowly became an golden child of the indie comics circles.
One of their recent arcs introduced the Zennregers (power rangers parodies) who are...basically the same as the above group being "a critique of "woke/forced diversity" in media" that, while eye-rolling, lacks the blatant racism and edgy "humor" of their older works.
I thought Lighter and Softer, but didn't fit, Same with Bowderlize, but I'm not sure. Don't want to get smacked with the edit lock stick if I pick the wrong one.
Any ideas?
openInsight so as to avoid Edit War
On the YMMV page
for The Haunting of Hill House, I added the following Narm example a while back:
- Episode 3 begins with an unsettling scene of someone crawling into a young Theo's bed and snuggling up to her. She thinks it's Nellie, but when she turns, no one is there. The music goes eerie, and the camera creeps in to Theo...who then asks aloud, to no one, "Who's hand was I holding?" As though the audience needed to be told why the scene was scary.
alexrae250
later added a note to it:
- The line is in reference to an extremely famous scene and line from the original novel, in which Eleanor and Theo cling to each other in terror at the sound of a mysterious something approaching them, only for Theo to realize that Eleanor has been across the room from her the whole time and was not in fact holding her hand. This line was not added for the audience's sake, but because an adaptation of Hill House would be incomplete without it.
Which seems like a justifying edit, IMO? But I don't want to commit an edit war by deleting this bit outright, so I wanted some thoughts.
Edited by iamconstantineopenWhere can we discuss YMMV-tropes?
Such as "Catharsis Factor", "It Was His Sled", "Narm"?
Edited by Kuprin

Hey there, I thought of some ideas for good video examples, but I might need help with trying to upload just that specific scene and not the whole work.
Work: My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) Example of: Wham Line
Work: The Phantom Menace Example of: Impaled with Extreme Prejudice
Work: "Lesson Zero" Example of: Nightmare Face
Work: "Heroes and Monsters" Example of: An Arm and a Leg
Work: Return of the Jedi Example of: Shock and Awe
Work: Spaceballs Example of: Luke, I Am Your Father
Work: Attack of the Clones Example of: Big Badass Battle Sequence
Think anyone can either help me or upload these video examples themselves?