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openDo memes go on YMMV page if they existed before movie release? Western Animation
An entry on Pixar's Elemental was removed, with the edit reason being that the meme existed before the work was released.
But the majority of the memes on the YMMV page, such as the movie's predictability and a fan-animated video being mistaken for an actual movie leak, also existed before release?
Can I add this back?
EDIT: forgot to mention the entry and link the edit history page.
- "Excuse me! He said no pickles!"Explanation It's become a popular joke to have Ember say that Wade asked for no pickles on his burger, because their Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy dynamic would have prevented Wade to bring up the issue, himself.
open AC formatting issue?
Earlier I sent a private message to a usually reliable helper on this site about this:
"As of now, using the AC (with double square brackets) formatting make them appear as a separate link automatically from others. I think back then some of these look like just simply another stylish way to bold text, and an example of use is seen with GLaDOS's self-demonstrating page, and this is the most atrocious change thanks to how AC now forces a line break between the non-AC text.
Any idea how to help with this? And it's not just this page, a plenty of pages had AC text formatting."
The reply I got was "Ask on Ask The Tropers. I don't know what to do.". I'm not sure either what I could do with that, but the new AC formatting made it...rather uncomfortable for me to try to read through all of the text, especially since the AC formatting is used as self-demonstrated example of AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle.
Edited by JustNormalMusicLoveropenSuggestion of the replacement of Page Quote on "Nuclear Weapons Taboo"
I've already posted on the discussion page a month ago,
but there's no response, so I'll ask here: Can I replace the Page Quote on the nuclear weapons taboo page?
The current Page Quote is:
For me, this page quote puts too much emphasis on Japanese people's "victimizing" attitude about the WW 2, as well as the article itself. As a Japanese person, I should admit that this is basically true, but the page quote seems to give us the false impression that it is the SOLE reason that the Japanese raging against the Atomic Bombings (especially the line "guilt them over it". Isn't it rational to condemn the cruelty of the bombing toward the civilians, which killed them in a brutal way? "There are part of the war machine, so they're not 'civilians'" won't be an excuse).It's like you only focus on the opinion about Holocaust by the Arabs, who think the Jews are "playing the victim" and deflect people from the oppression of Palestinians. The main reason why the Japanese people making the depiction of the nuclear bombings "taboo" is not victimizing themselves in the war, but to condemn the actual cruelty of the nuclear bombings, which was horrible compared with the usual air-raids. This article mentions it too (very briefly though), so I wondered if there's more appropriate page quote. And I've found one
. Here's the translation made by me:
I personally think this is more fitting to the article and the actual taboo in Japan. Not only the statement mentions the cruelty of the nuclear bombings, but also the Japanese people's victimizing attitude on the war. The current one by Sawyer Wallace only mentions the latter one, so I think it's more appropriate in the "Quotes" page (Honestly, I wanted to remove it entirely, but I decided not to do it because it's a violation of the freedom of speech). Of course I can do it myself, but I felt like changing the content without asking anyone would cause trouble (and I'm not an historical expert. My Japanese viewpoint can also be biased too), so I ask here whether I can do it or not.
resolved ROCEJ violations?
Brendan Rizzo
's edits sometime veer into ROCEJ territory.
- Accentuate the Negative: Since RationalWiki is aimed at refuting pseudoscience and fallacious argumentation, and promoting skepticism, the site naturally has a bit of a cynical streak, to emphasize how much society gives such bigots and frauds undeserved respect. This naturally extends to politics, such that every country in the world is made out to be an awful place. Japan is particularly notable here. Yes, like all countries, it certainly suffers from systemic problems that neither the government nor its people are willing to acknowledge, but to hear the wiki tell it, the country is run entirely by bigoted authoritarian nationalists like Saudi Arabia or Russia.
- Have a Gay Old Time: If 4chan or Encyclopaedia Dramatica or any other troll site innovates an offensive slang term, or an innocuous word is used sexually in obscure Internet erotica and never in real life, add the example. Clearly, the original definitions have gone the way of the dodo.
- And That's Terrible: Useful Charts’s video on the family tree of the Roman kings has the host interrupt his summary of the Rape of Lucretia by saying that, despite Lucretia supposedly being the most virtuous of women, her killing herself specifically so that no woman to come after her can excuse their own promiscuity, even if she is raped, proves that this assessment is undeserved. Basically, he calls her a karen without ever using the word. This is rather strange, considering that most people don’t need it pointed out to them that ancient peoples were not as morally advanced in certain areas, and despite the series covering other ancient societies which were just as bad if not worse by modern standards without moralizing about it.
Most notably, the last one was brought up in the ROCEJ cleanup thread (which called for it to be removed), and it had the edit reason "Please don’t misunderstand me for one of those anti-SJW idiots. This sort of thing gives us moderns a bad name". I sent multiple ROCEJ notifiers a couple of months ago, which they haven't responded.
Yesterday, they added another quote that sounds rather inflammatory to Quotes.JustEatGilligan:
So...yeah.
Edited by UFOYeahopenWhich country index do VTuber agencies go on?
Which of the "Works by nationality" indices should VTuber agencies be listed under? Should it be where the agency itself is located, or where the individual talents are from?
I'm asking this because recently, someone put hololive not only on Japanese Media (where the agency is based), but also on American Media, Australian Culture, Austrian Media, Canadian Media, and Indonesian Media. They do have members from all of these countries, but it doesn't feel right for them to be considered (for example) Austrian because of the one Austrian member.
open What "counts" as an Alternate Self?
Given how the use of The Multiverse has becoming increasingly popular in fiction, especially in how it retcons previously unrelated adaptions to exist as alternate universes to each other, I think the main Alternate Self page needs to be edited to include the situations that "count" as this trope. This is because in the past I've had debates with people about the use of the trope, and those same people tend to only delete the trope from certain pages and then leave it alone in other pages. As a result this makes the use of the trope wildly inconsistent and only causes more confusion.
For example, recently someone deleted the Alternate Self trope from Spider-Man: Spider-Verse character pages that included links to the other Spider-Man/Marvel media that were shown to exist in Across the Spider-Verse on the grounds that characters simply appearing in those adaptions doesn't count. However that same person, even though I pointed out the hypocrisy, hasn't made any attempt to delete the use of Alternate Self in the MCU, SSU, Raimi and Webb films which are connected to the Spider-Verse films. This is what I mean by how the there isn't a clear consensus on how to use the trope, and as a result even if it's decided by a bunch of people what examples do count everyone else has no way of knowing that and will make the same mistakes.
Based on what the people deleting the trope have said, Alternate Self only "counts" when the AU characters appear in the same piece of media. So for example when MCU Spidey met Raimi and Webb Spidey, or with an Alternate Reality Episode. If that's true, then I think that should be made clear in the main Alternate Self page to avoid further confusion and misuse of the trope.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with using Alternate Self when a character appears in adaptions that have been confirmed to coexist as part of The Multiverse. The way I see it, it's no different when two previously unrelated pieces of fiction are confirmed to exist in the same Shared Universe, which can lead to tropes like Identical Stranger or Celebrity Paradox.
Edited by DarthDavros75openEdit War
ElJuaco added Alternate Self
to the Sony Kraven's character folder, HissingAurora94 deletes it,
Eljuaco re-adds it, HissingAurora94 redeletes it.
open Which way is better?
I may just be dumb here, but I looked through some Administrivia pages and didn't find an answer there, so I'm here now:
If you're on a trope list and you're troping a franchise where the franchise title is the same as the first entry in the series - so, for a hypothetical example, the franchise Franchise.Dead Rising has the same title as the first game, VideoGame.Dead Rising - I've seen the title of the first entry troped in two different ways, either just the title as is (so Dead Rising again, in this case), or I've also seen it potholed under the name "Original/First [whatever media]" - so in this case, it would look like "Original/First game". Basically, is one of those ways preferred over the other? Just linking the title as is or doing so in a manner that specifies it's the first entry in the franchise instead of the franchise itself? Can it go either way?
Edited by STARCRUSHER99openNo crosswicking despite being told via PM
I really didn't want to make a query about this, but unfortunately I (and a fellow troper who also kept an eye on this case) ran out of options.
Back in October 2021, Opabinia launched Exposed Embarrassing Purchase, but almost none of the examples posted in it were ever crosswicked. Yindee previously sent a Opabinia a PM about this, and two days ago I did the same. As of today June 19th, the trope has only 15 wicks, which means it's still in the Starving status. Examples like those of Me, Myself & Irene, Aggretsuko, A Certain Scientific Railgun and You (2015) have yet to be crosswicked, and if you check the TLP draft here
you'll notice that many such examples were already there, meaning that Opabinia neglected crosswicking them since the page's launch.
open I have no feminist agenda whatsoever
I've been looking at Damsel out of Distress page and noticed examples that don't really seem to be that: Elsa, Honey Lemon and Gogo Tomago are superheroines who get captured during a fight, but free themselves using their powers - none of them is ever really helpless, sees herself as a girl to be rescued, or even acts helpless (they're all slim, pretty girls, if Gogo is a tomboy, but superheroines all the time), so Badass in Distress, sure, but damsel? Only if we equate damsel with a girl. Especially that Elsa has no-one to rescue her, and while the other two are part of a team, the guys are busy fighting. Black Widow pretends to be a helpless damsel for intelligence purposes, so she's actually a Decoy Damsel (badass, too, but definitely fits Decoy Damsel). And Rey? Rey's training to be a Jedi, danger is part of the job. And there's this: "Nearly all of the female characters in Homestuck are at least as dangerous as the males; occasionally they need to be rescued, but no more often than the boys do."
So, my question is this: what's the difference between a Badass in Distress who happens to be female and gets herself out of the scrape as a matter of course - and a Damsel out of Distress? Because I thought it's more like the difference between Action Hero (a professional or experienced amateur of adventuring) and Heroic Bystander (who gets adventuring thrown at him and raises to the challenge). But it seems like it isn't?
openUnintentional Sympathy in Star Trek Picard Live Action TV
The YMMV page for Star Trek: Picard features two examples of Unintentionally Sympathetic:
- The Zhat Vash was right all along! The Admonition is a message to synthetic life that there is other synthetic life willing to invade and destroy all organic life if called upon, in order to save their fellow synthetics. The Soong-type androids start to bring these horrors into the galaxy, and the only reason why nothing more happens is because it takes a while for them to come through the wormhole, allowing a small window to shut down the beacon. It's probable that anyone faced with the evidence would come to the conclusion that artificial life is too big a danger to allow to exist. Especially the Federation, who already ban genetic engineering of organic life because of the risk of starting another Eugenics War. What also helps is that "mad AI goes rogue" is one of the oldest plots in Star Trek history, appearing in no less than 7 episodes of The Original Series and only going up from there. If you lived in the Star Trek universe, there's wall-to-wall evidence that you should never trust a machine that can think for itself lest you want to be killed, enslaved, or both. Even Data wasn't safe from this as he'd become Brainwashed and Crazy and a threat to others a few times himself.
- One could also say the same for Control as in the later half of season 3 the Borg effectively highjacks Starfleet from within and plans to use said new “assimilated” fully organic drones as the seed base of a new even more advanced and dangerous Borg collective to threaten and ultimately rule the entire galaxy with until the end of time. Control would’ve had access to all the Enterprise NX-01’s logs including those of the incident involving the Borg and the knowledge that a “visit” from a very real bio-cybernetic threat easily capable of assimilating others, quickly adaptable defenses, and has access to technology far more advanced than anything Starfleet, the Federation, or even the surrounding powers currently had at their disposal isn’t so much if they show up 200 years from the logs being recorded but when! While that doesn’t excuse nor justifies Control’s actions, Control was originally programmed to help protect the Federation from any and all threats but when it tried to figure out a way the Federation could win against a confirmed future threat that, for all intents and purposes, had no vulnerabilities that could be exploited (at least for long anyway), combined with the limitations of Control’s own programming, preemptively wiping out all life in the universe was the “best” solution he could come up with to stop them and save everyone.
I could be wrong about this but I thought US is about characters that come off as sympathetic, even though the story doesn't want viewers to sympathize with them. Granted, the show kinda shoots itself in the foot by portraying the Higher Synthetics (insert Mass Effect reference here) as genocidal racists, but the entries for US don't do themselves any favors by portraying the Zhat Vash and Control as genocidal racists themselves.
What do you think about this? Is there a cleanup thread for this trope or something?
resolved Moving removed Talking to Himself examples to Acting For Two
Before Talking To Himself was made a disambiguation, I added some examples of it to Trivia.The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee. When dewicking the trope started, it was removed here
. Would it be considered an edit war if I added those examples under Acting for Two?
resolved Possible Edit War in YMMV Page for Elemental? Western Animation
I only realized after my last edit
on YMMV.Elemental 2023 that I might've accidentally been part of an edit war on whether or not Fireboy and Watergirl should be linked despite not having a page yet. I was the first one to make the deliberate redlink here
, but The Jayman 49 removed it here
without explanation. Hqami then added it back
, explaining why it should remain redlinked, but then Matthew Guy 6131994 removed it again
without explanation, and that was when I accidentally re-added it without checking the edit history. Is this still an edit war even if it doesn't follow the ABA user pattern of adding/removing? And should there also be a commented-out note not to remove the deliberate redlink because of this? I sincerely apologize for accidentally getting myself into this, and will make sure that I read the edit history before making any changes.
open RecklessGunUsage
I have a question regarding Reckless Gun Usage. The description says it occurs when somebody unfamiliar with firearms handles it in an unsafe manner that endangers themselves or others. Some of the examples, however, simply don't fit this. Tommy Devito from Goodfellas is listed. Tommy is familiar with guns (he's been a gangster his whole life), he's just too crazy and irresponsible to care. P-40 pilot Wild Bill from 1941 is listed, but he's a military pilot whose familiar with guns and his aircraft, he's just also too crazy and irresponsible to care. There are other examples on the page in a similar vein. I think there's a lot of overlap between this trope and Artistic License Gun Safey, IMO. A lot of the examples do fit, such as the hobo in the Star Trek TOS episode "The City On The Edge Of Forever" accidentally vaporizing himself with Mc Coy's phaser.
openMisuse of italic markup
Over at AwesomeMusic.Veggie Tales (courtesy link to page's edit history
), FoxDog1234 added a zero-context example with a quote from the lyrics in script format in both italics and quotes. Since, per Text Formatting Rules, quotes in script format go in neither quotes nor italics unless they're a page topping quote,note Specifically, under "Quote Formatting", "Do not italicize the text of the quote itself, except parts of it for emphasis. Don't use anything else to indicate emphasis (except all caps and bolding, used sparingly); don't use apostrophes, underscores, slashes, [i][/i], or anything of that nature. Don't enclose the dialogue in inverted commas or quotation marks." I removed the quotes and italics while commenting out the example. FoxDog1234 went back and added context to the example, but also added back the italics (with additional formatting errors).
Permission to re-remove them?
openNot quite a straight example? Videogame
From the Video Game section of Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond:
' 'Psychonauts 2: According to Lili, Truman Zanotto is the only person who doesn't like the workplace-beloved mail clerk Nick Johnsmith, regarding him as a sycophantic Yes-Man. (Or in his words, an "obsequious little lickspittle".)''
This entry, while accurate, isn't quite a straight example - the reason is that Truman Zanotto is Nick Johnsmith, who is actually a deposed tyrant seeking revenge. Truman has "Nick's" brain inside him, while "Nick" has been rendered mindless. So in truth, the person "Truman" apparently doesn't love is himself.
While complicated, what does this detail make this entry? A subversion? Played with? Zig-Zagged? I'm not sure but it's not as straightforward as the trope implies.
Edited by DragonFaxopenDCAU Superman's personality Western Animation
Thetropemaster101 has sent me a message
about most recent edits for the character page for the Superman from the DC Animated Universe, and honestly, I have no idea what's he trying to do here.
He is very obsessed with explaining how different DCAU Superman is to his comic book counterpart, but his edits feel gratuitous at best, downright irrelevant at worst. What do I mean with this?
Superman's characterization has been all over the place in the comics, particularly in his identity as Clark Kent, but Tropemaster seems to think that the DCAU presents radical changes to Superman's portrayal.
- He is considerably less dorky as Clark Kent compared to most versions. In the comic books from the Silver Age and the Christopher Reeve movies; yes, Clark was a dorky nerd. In the John Byrne reboot and Lois & Clark, Clark is a lot more assertive.
- As mentioned above in Adaptational Angst Upgrade, this Superman is shown to be more short-termed, fearful, insecure, and cynical compared to more versions in addition to retaining his idealism. Apart from the fact that redirecting to other parts of the page is a huge no-no, Superman has struggled with some pretty dark topics throughout his history, such as political corruption, depression, loss of loved ones, detachment from humanity, etc.
- Also, like most modern versions, he prefers to be identified as Clark first in order to keep himself sane and believes Superman is a way of helping people. Again, John Byrne did it first.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just being too harsh on Tropemaster but I don't want this page to look like it's talking down to readers by explaining in excruciating detail how DCAU Superman is different from the Superman from the modern comics.
So, what do you think?
Edited by MasterHeroopenDeath's Head: seeking consensus to revert changes after fact check Print Comic
Two Marvel Comics pages, ComicBook.Deaths Head and Trivia.Deaths Head, have some 'detective work' statements/examples added by DaPolicia regarding the character's creation and copyright status. The same claims were added to The Other Wiki's page for the character.
These are largely updates to examples and text I previously edited or added, so I don't want to revert them myself (and start an edit war) without a consensus.
This is the core claim they've added:
- Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Multiple sources, including Simon Furman himself, allege that Marvel maintained Death's Head's rights by rushing out a one-page comic (commonly referred to as "High Noon Tex" after a line spoken by Death's Head in the strip) that was featured in various other Marvel UK comics before his Transformers debut, circumventing the company's agreement with Hasbro. However, artist Bryan Hitch's signature in the final panel reads "Hitch '88", indicating that it wasn't drawn until the year after Death's Head debuted in Transformers, and there's no actual indication that the strip was published until May of 1988, meaning that Marvel likely engaged in some other chicanery to keep Hasbro away from Death's Head.
The collected edition introduction directly states that "High Noon Tex" was created to secure copyright. There's a photo of the relevant statements here
◊ for anyone who want to read it.
IANAL, but as I understand it UK copyright law is based on evidence of creation, not just widespread publication. Ashcan Copy logic allows the creation of a quick, sketchy version of the work or character to confirm ownership. The intro says it was "subsequently" published and I don't think a 1988 signature on the final/published work is a "Gotcha!" to show the creators are lying.
With that in mind I'd like to:
- Cut Pop-Culture Urban Legends entirely
- Cut the "if Marvel hadn't done whatever they did" element from What Could Have Been, which also casts doubt on Marvel's claims.
- Cut the whole "A commonly-circulated story, corroborated by both Furman and artist Bryan Hitch and perpetuated by sources like This Very Wiki" section that was added to the ComicBook.Deaths Head intro, which casts doubt on the intro's original brief factual statement about the character's creation.
Even if there's more to the story than the official sources suggest, and Marvel isn't telling the complete and accurate history, I don't think it's our place to speculate in this way.
(If we get an official on-the-record statement from the company or creators that contradicts the original printed statements, that would be different)
Does that sound fair?
Edited by Mrph1openIs WheelJackDude just ripping off other peoples' contibutions to a Lalaloopsy WMG?
So for the WMG page for Lalaloopsy we start with the classic theory trope that "the characters were reincarnations of humans that died horribly". Of course my Perky Goth self wanted to contribute because typing out ways people died that corelate with the character they are now was fun to me, but I noticed particular entries from Wheeljack Dude that were suspiciously similar to others' contributions.
One of my older entries:
- Scarlet Riding Hood and her little sister Cape always went to the woods late at night without asking. One night they were brutally mauled by a rabid wolf.
One of Wheeljack Dude's older entries, added later on:
- Kat Jungle Roar and her sister Whiskers always snuck in a large jungle without listening to their mother. One day they are found dead after a hungry lion attacked them.
(I changed mine to be more interesting later on, but I still felt I needed to bring that up.)
And a more recent entry of mine:
- Similar to Storm E., the Buttonettes (Keys Sharps 'N' Flats, Strings Pick 'N' Strum, and Sticks Boom Crash) did horribly offensive songs and tormented their own fans. The stage they were performing on one night collapsed.
And then a more recent entry of Wheeljackdude's, again added later on:
- Penny Dots 'N' Blots did twisted and offensive artwork and murals, and tormented her fellow artists. The art studio that she was in collapsed one day.
And there's a bit more in the history for it-
I'm not sure if ripping off other peoples' entries to a WMG is worthy of a report, but I still felt I had to bring it up. Am I overreacting, or...?
Edited by RedBerryBlueCherry

This time, it's impracticaltroper for unilateral moves.
Basically, back in May, they moved the page for Jill Roberts from Scream IV
to a different page while we were in the middle of discussing what to do with it. They came to the CSP thread
, explained their reasoning, and admitted they should have left an edit reason. Today, I noticed they created Breaking Bad: Hector Salamanca without discussion or leaving an edit reason again, they merged characters from Better Call Saul into Breaking Bad character pages (I don't disagree with it, but again, no discussion occurred), and created The Walking Dead (2010): Gregory. I've pinged them to the CSP thread to explain themself but I figured I should bring it here too.