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:
openOveruse of capitalized letters, bold and italics
Hello everyone,
Just to be sure, what is the actual policy regarding the use of capitalized letters, bold and italics? I encountered a troper who seems to have an habit of adding examples with a lot of those, which leads to entries where you suddenly HAVE SENTENCES THAT READ LIKE THAT. Which is fine in some instances (like Self-Demonstrating Article of characters), but feels like bad wiki writing everywhere else. As far as I know, the occasional italics or bolding is fine to highlight something, but I fear we may have an issue when it becomes an habit (and there is no specified Issue Helper reason dedicated to that as far as I know).
Edited by NonoRobotopenMove from CriticalResearchFailure?
Critical Research Failure Is now a redirect with examples being cut or moved. I asked cleanup about this example
but haven't gotten any response in weeks.
YMMV.The Conversion Bureau The Chatoverse
- Critical Research Failure:
- Contrary to what "New Universe Three: The Friendship Virus" claims, men are not responsible for 98% of all violence and rape.
- Also, the increase of oxytocin would increase nurturing... in anyone within your "group" according to nationalism. Enough of it increasing worldwide would cause such an up-spike in tribalism that about five wars would break out at once.
- She has stated that her interpretation of Celestia, who is basically the omnipotent god empress of Equestria, is more in line with Lauren Faust's original version of the show, despite Faust herself directly stating that Celestia is not actually a goddess.
The Clesetia entry can be moved to Undermined By Reality. The oxytocin thing might fit Artistic License – Biology. The 98% I don't know as they are such a controversial author I'm not sure if it's meant to be taken seriously or not, the oxytocin thing I have similar but lesser questions about. Thoughts about this?
openWonk/complaining?
WarriorsGate added this to WesternAnimation.My Little Pony Equestria Girls:
- Contrived Coincidence: The films and specials are an awkward mix of supernatural high school thriller and wacky sitcom, with plot conveniences (Pinkie Pie spontaneously guessing Twilight's backstory in the first movie; the fake-out with the White Void Room in Rollercoaster of Friendship) that work as jokes in a comedy but do not work as legitimate plot developments in a story that takes itself seriously, leaving the sub-franchise in some nebulous void between the two.
This is largely identical to an Uncertain Audience example they added but was cut per cleanup
(entry was just about attempt to appeal to one audience poorly, UA is attempts to appeal to multiple audiences that undercut each other). This one is definitely too complainy for a non-YMMV.
It's inaccurate in that the stated examples are Played for Laughs (EG has enough legit dramatic moments you can tell the difference) and EG does not take itself more seriously than it's parent series Friendship is Magic (EG's target audiences is just a bit older that FIM's prepubescent, EG's writers stated how it would be different if it was targeting more mature audiences). Further discussion involves debating semantics about how "serious" and "maturity" are used/apply.
This is looking enough like wonk I'm bringing here.
openCritical Role Unfortunate Implications edit
So, there was this edit on the main UI page regarding one of Critical Role's recent campaigns: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Main.UnfortunateImplications#edit32437068
The person making the edit claims that the poster is the only one who has this complaint, but there's a whole ass Kotaku article about it: https://kotaku.com/critical-role-marquet-third-campaign-asian-cultures-col-1848500055
I don't know if it still falls under UI since CR isn't actually racist or anything (I personally don't see any issue with their campaign), but there was a legitimate controversy. CR themselves actually had to issue a statement. Maybe rewording it to make it more neutral or simply transferring it to the work itself under Broken Base?
openRL troping and non-trope additions
I don't feel like waving mod fiat wrt Edit War today. The Useful Notes and Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot and maybe Stout Strength and Lightning Bruiser entries on Steven Seagal should go.
Clarifying edit- was this 🤏 close to removing those entries myself, but the UsefulNotes.Judo and UsefulNotes.Karate deletions would be very technically an edit war, and the "maybe" tropes are worth discussing.
Edited by TabsopenNo Way Home: What An Idiot Film
I noticed that WhatAnIdiot.Marvel Cinematic Universe Films (specifically for Spider-Man: No Way Home) has a moment where Spider-Man tries to Save the Villain by preventing a bunch of old bad guys from dying while fighting other versions of himself. Could this really be considered a stupid thing to do? It felt like Peter was just being an All-Loving Hero since he practices Thou Shall Not Kill. While it DID have consequences, he was ultimately successful in saving all of them, albeit with help from his counterparts. It seemed like Dr. Strange was just holding the Jerkass Ball by showing the villains No Sympathy. They could've worked together, but Strange complicated things by claiming You Can't Fight Fate.
Edited by 227someguyopenEdit war on Characters.TormentTidesOfNumenera
Self-report and checking in because I'm not sure who's correct. MaLady changed the redirect Smart Guy to The Smart Guy on Characters.Torment Tides Of Numenera 1/22 and I changed it back, citing that, to my understanding, redirects are still allowed to preserve the grammar of a sentence, and while the direct link is generally preferred where possible, it's only required when it's the title of an example. Malady changed it again today without discussion.
I also have a strange feeling of deja vu, but I'm not sure if it's from this specific example or just a similar issue on another page entirely. I mention it because I'm wondering if I've edit warred on this subject elsewhere without realizing it.
The example in question:
Changing it to "[the] First Castoff's The Smart Guy" seems like odd phrasing, so I'm just seeing if we can change it back or else rewrite the example in such a way that using the direct link in the text works better, while avoiding edit warring.
Edited by UnsungopenCharacter sympathy in Superman and Lois Live Action TV
I deleted the Unintentionally Sympathetic entries, which included Jordan and Lois, from the YMMV page of Superman & Lois because I personally believe that they are meant to be sympathetic in their respective situations.
- Jordan is treated as unreasonable for being upset that his girlfriend Sarah kissed someone else, but he has the right to be angry that he was cheated on.
- Lois is seen to be in the wrong for not reporting that Lucy had a vision in line with what Ally preaches, treating it like she only shared the parts of the story that would let her go after Ally. Considering that Lucy supposedly had said vision after a drug overdose that nearly killed her it makes perfect sense that Lois didn't say anything about it. Reporting that her sister had a genuine vision of another version of herself, which near anyone would think would be a result of the drugs or the near death experience, would have seen Lois laughed out of the room by any editor. Not helping are the other stunts Lucy pulls in the scene, like blaming Lois for their mom leaving and revealing she's pulled this at Ally's behest, which makes it look less that she's bothered by Lois' supposedly hypocritical journalistic integrity and more that she's interested in getting back at her sister out of resentment over completely imagined slights.
Lois' example is pretty self-explanatory, but I think Jordan's needs to be elaborated on a bit further. I've watched the show and I don't see Jordan being that angry over Sarah's cheating. Yes, he was upset and mildly betrayed, but he was later consumed by guilt that Sarah was honest with him, while he can't tell her that he has superpowers. In fact, he wants to tell her because he admires her for her bravery and honesty (I'm paraphrasing), but Clark tells him not to because the secret isn't actually Jordan's to share. Jordan's brother and Natalie Irons even compare Jordan and Sarah's secrets, which strikes me as a false equivalance for the reason I've stated above. One secret is simply infidelity, while the other could put an entire family, maybe 2, in danger. This could be Informed Wrongness or something.
But still, I want to know what you guys think.
openTrope deletions off music creator page
Lord Gro and I have had an amiable PM discussion on a particular topic, though we haven't reached an agreement, and I'd like to bring the matter up for broader discussion. There is a forum thread
here which may apply, but it hasn't be active for a couple weeks now. If the discussion should be moved to the moribund thread, let me know.
This involves the troper's deletions from Creator pages, specifically Johannes Brahms, in which almost all the tropes were cut. I can understand some of the removals, as they referenced Brahms's personal life with no mention of his music or career. Some however involved Brahms's musical career, which I'm not in favor of. Specific examples:
- Eccentric Mentor: Brahms had one in the form of Robert Schumann, although Schumann wasn't so much eccentric as mentally ill, eventually committing himself to a mental hospital after a series of suicide attempts and dying there at the age of 46.
- Flame War: The conflict between Brahms' supporters and Wagner's was a 19th Century version, including over-the-top magazine articles insulting and condemning the other side.
- Mentor Archetype: While on the jury of a composing competition, he saw great promise in a young man named Antonin Dvorak, and arranged a meeting between Dvorak and his own publisher.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill For Awesome Training: Brahms was a professional musician from early youth and it's fair to say that constant hours of playing the piano meant that he wasn't always the most charming and polite person in the room.
- Worthy Opponent: For Brahms it was Richard Wagner, although it's more that their respective fanbases considered each to be the Arch Enemy of the other. Brahms actually liked and admired a lot of Wagner's music, even though he disliked Wagner's cult of personality; Wagner did not exactly return the compliment, but he did send Brahms a copy of Das Rheingold.
Lord Gro's position is based on this page
and this passage was cited from there in the deletion note: "Please resist the urge to apply character tropes to Real Life people."
This is a more restrictive implementation of the approach than I'm comfortable with.
Thoughts:
- there's a possibility that one (or more) of the entries above may cross the line on this issue, but the deletion reason should be different. Okay by me if so. The Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training example may fall into this category. It's also possible one or more of these veers towards ZCE territory, which I'm happy to try and fix.
- the passage "Resist the urge" is not synonymous with "This is forbidden."
- this approach only leaves the narrow possibility of troping works and nothing else instead of (in this case) music-career-based non-subjective issues, which I would argue are fair game. Without going into detail, that concept was conveyed to me in our PM discussion as to what should be done.
- I'm not clear on what the policy is regarding including Trivia-oriented entries for Creators. Should they be put in at all, and if so, do these go on the main pages or somewhere else? This may involve other cut entries besides the five listed above.
- perhaps a minor point but worth mentioning. Having the approach applied this strictly can result in stripping the Creator pages clean, leading other tropers to delete the pages under the mistaken idea that all pages with few or no tropes should be cutlisted. I've seen examples of this kind of thinking before at the site.
My wish is to reinstate the entries in the first folder. It might not technically be an edit war if I do, but I don't want to do this ill-advisedly.
Thanks!
Edited by BoltDMCopenFilm/TheBatman concerning edits Film
Edit: Was tired when I wrote this this morning, edited to explain their edits.
Jeyeraj has some concerning edits on Film.The Batman 2022 and Characters.The Batman 2022. In the movie Selina decries that Rich Privileged White guys are the ones running Gotham. I'm not gonna say that black people can't be racist against white people (I don't like that prejudice plus power definition outside of academia), but this really doesn't feel like that. In the universe of the movie, that's an objective fact, most of the people in power are privileged white people. I'd need more to say she's racist towards white people. He insinuates in his edits that this makes her a bigot. Finally he insinuated that the Riddlers were occupy wall-streetesque, when I felt they were more QANON ajacent..
I just also found an edit where he posted about the Videogame.Ready Or Not and Kotaku's criticism of the games school shooting level. He talks more about the article than the game itself in the edit, which is trivia at best. His criticism of the article definitely seems to be political in nature.
There's also this edit on Film.Black Widow: %%"Their" or spoilering the pronouns would give away the reveal that Taskmaster isn't a man, as the film presents her until the reveal.%% (They are talking about taskmaster). And in that edit they changed the pronouns of the example from "their" back to "his". Taskmaster in the film is a women. I felt like it was perfectly valid to use "their" pronouns to disguise the gender.
I definitely feel like he's editing with an agenda.
Edited by jjjj2openCharacter-specific page
I'm planning to create a character-specific page, largely because all other options were exhausted and second, it's so big that it exceeds 40k character bytes. Problem is, there also exists an Alternate Self of that character who is equally important as him. Do I include him as well since they share the same identify?
openAre these valid Creators Pet entries? Live Action TV
Found these on the YMMV subpage for Once Upon a Time
- Creator's Pet: The four mainstay "villain" characters on the show have all had this accusation thrown at them:
- The producers have openly stated that Regina is by far their favorite character, and their first question about literally any plot idea from the writing staff is "How can we make it about Regina?" This really started to be a problem around Season 3 when the show started treating Regina as a hero, which made her seem like an Easily Forgiven Karma Houdini to many fans. And it got even worse in Season 4 where she wanted to force the Author to write her a new happy ending. And with the 100th episode in Season 5 it's taken Up To Eleven: you would expect the 100th episode to star the main character (Emma), but nope, it's Regina. The finale does go some way into addressing fan concerns though, although Season 6 just broke the base on the matter all over again. Accusations worsened beyond what was thought possible after she is crowned "the Good Queen" over every realm in the series finale.
- Hook has been accused of this because, due to his position as Emma's official love interest, he has gained a more prominent role in the stories than Henry, Snow, or Charming. In Season 5, every main character, including several who have no motivation to do so, choose to risk traveling into the Underworld to bring him back to life, contradicting the previously established rule that the dead cannot be resurrected. Not helping matters is that the resolution to that plot ended with a literal Deus ex Machina that revives him which occurs in an episode that kills Robin permanently and in a way that prevents revival. This occurred after it looked like Hook would stay dead. Love him or hate him, there's little doubt that Hook has received much more preferential treatment from the writers than just about any of the other men in Emma's life, be they former lovers (Neal) or potential love interests (Graham and August).
- And of course, there's Rumplestiltskin / Mr. Gold, who some fans feel has long worn out his welcome by the fifth season and should be considered irredeemable at this point, but who not only continues to stay on the show and in important roles, but more often than not seems to get off scot-free for all of his evil deeds, if not flat-out rewarded with even MORE power. Whether or not he redeemed himself by the series finale is a major point of contention.
- Following her promotion to regular status, Zelena became viewed as this by fans too. While the fifth season gave Zelena her own redemption arc and did a decent job in fleshing her character out enough for more fans to feel sympathy for her, there were a number of fans who questioned if she was being forgiven too easily even by the standards of this show. She has at least expressed remorse for the things she did to Regina, but hasn't actually done the same for all the other people she wronged. Since Zelena's crimes include: manipulating Neal into trading his life to resurrect Rumple, abducting Snow and David's infant son as soon as he was born to use in a magical ritual, potentially killing him, and murdering Robin's lost love Marian in order to masquerade as her, then having sex with Robin (which can be considered rape by fraud) thus producing their daughter — it can be jarring for viewers to see how easily the group accepted Zelena's change without much fuss.
Thing is, I'm not too familiar with the fandom but the show's YMMV entry states that the characters in these entries are Base-Breaking Characters so could someone more familiar with the show's fandom check to see if these entries should be cut? Thanks
open Drafts that don’t get crosswicked
I can come up with a number of tropes that get launched from the TLP and don’t get crosswicked for a while, such as Single-Season Country, Poisoned Drink Drop, and many more. If nothing is done to these pages for a period of time, they’ll eventually fade to dust.
As someone who takes the time to crosswick pages after I launch them, I think it’s really annoying and unfair to people like me who put in the extra work to make sure the page is just like any others.
I didn’t go to the Projects: Short Term forum and start a cleanup thread because I don’t know if this is a big enough problem to warrant one. I think we should always PM the launcher and ask them to crosswick their page, and after so many warnings, action gets taken.
Is anyone else annoyed by this? I think, at the very least, you should be required to add the trope to Pages Needing Wicks if you’re not going to bother to crosswick them yourself.
Edited by MylesHenryVigilSropenLilybot
So, as I do, I dewicked another Not So Different wick tonight, at VisualNovel.Piofiore No Bansho. Then I checked the history, and noticed that almost the entire page worth's of edits tonight has been done by Lilybot and their edits are... a bit concerning, as they're deleting several tropes about a specific character, demanding people not add a "spoiler character", and claiming that "talking about how a love interest feels" is too biased— even if it's literally mentioned in the work itself.
I need to sleep so I don't have time to dig through the history and figure out all the tea. This is just what I noticed when checking five minutes ago.
openAssPull misuse?
The following (spoiler-heavy) Ass Pull example was deleted from YMMV.Sly Cooper Thieves In Time as it had the following Foreshadowing:
- Ass Pull: The reveal of Penelope's Face–Heel Turn comes out of nowhere nor fits what's been established. She wanted to eliminate Sly Cooper (and possibly Murray) for holding her genius boyfriend Bentley back, it being implied she only "loved" Bentley out of planning to use him for making billions in weapon designs and/or world domination, and is shown to be a massive scheming sociopath. The previous game portrayed Penelope as a straight-up Nice Girl even compared to the other thieves Sly teamed up with, guilt-ridden when Murray was captured due to her plan, and despite seeing Bentley's genius firsthand only showed romantic feelings toward him after he rescued her from pirates. She even held a genuine crush on Sly for most of the game. Even in this game, Sly had retired from crime by this point and thus wouldn't be holding them back; in fact, Penelope giving time travel to Le Paradox causes Bentley to regroup the Cooper Gang and leads directly to Sly un-retiring, the opposite effect of what she supposedly wanted. While there was foreshadowing such as her disappearance prior to the beginning of the game and the mouse emblem throughout the level where the twist is revealed, nothing in this game or Honor Among Thieves hinted she's angry and bitter at the Cooper Gang instead of being held against her will and forced to assist Le Paradox.
- Foreshadowing: There are several hints that she is the Black Knight:
- The title of the episode itself "Of Mice and Mechs" is a subtle hint of what the chapter is all about: Penelope, a mouse, created the machines and turned against the Cooper Gang.
- The Black Knight's armor has what looks like an icon of a mouse on it, which turns out to be Penelope herself.
- When Bentley researches information on the Black Knight, he finds no information. In the same Episode beforehand, Penelope is brought up again as Bentley wonders where she is once again. Penelope is in the medieval era, disguising herself as the Black Knight.
- This isn't the first time that Penelope went under an alias with the word "Black" in the title. The last time was in the third Sly game under the alias "The Black Baron".
- The text color of the Black Knight is purple, the same color of Penelope.
The Ass Pull wasn't their Face–Heel Turn which was foreshadowed, but it was their motives and personality behind it which contradict everything shown/established about them the prior game and seemingly the flimsy explanation this game gives. Is that not enough to count? Character Derailment and Fan-Disliked Explanation are already listed under their respective pages covering this, those or and anything else a better fit for this issue?
openLimits for TLP adoption?
I want to see if there's any old drafts in the TLP that I can give some attention to, but ones from ten years ago are easier to access than ones from ten months ago due to the "last page" button. So I have to wonder: what's the procedure for necro-bumping an ancient draft for the purposes of taking it on yourself? Considering the original sponsors of drafts that old might not even be around anymore.
I don't have any specific ones in mind at the moment, I'm still looking.
open NSFW Webcomics
There's a NSFW Webcomics index, which is pretty much self-explanatory. I proposed on the Launch pad to have by extension an index of all the other kinds of work that are NSFW
. The draft got merely 6 bombs and general disinterest and skepticism. Many argued that it could potentially violate 5P rules, I personally can't see why (since it's intended to be a list of pages already existing on Tv Tropes and not some generic list of nasty works), but that's besides the point. My concern is: if an index about all NSFW works present is deemed inappropriate by tropers, shouldn't we by extension reevaluate the presence of NSFW Webcomics as well?
openIs it natter?
I've been skimming through Justice League episode recaps, and some of the entries in them use indentation when they just expand on the first un-bulleted example.
- America Won World War II: Vandal Savage chose to plan a massive invasion of America after learning about the outcome of World War II, particularly when his future self also warned him to ready the Third Reich for a massive US/UK/Canada/Resistance movements seaborne invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. While the success of Operation Overlord in 1944 was definitely very bad news for Germany, wouldn't a specific warning not to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 before neutralizing the Western enemies first have been a higher priority?
- The laptop he sent back in time could have arrived years before 1945 (the Martian says it). Savage had enough time to set himself up as a revolutionary scientist, prove his new weapons, and then remove Hitler. Since there's no mention made of the Soviets, one could assume he never invaded the USSR, and was instead focusing on the center of Allied supply lines, the US.
- Also, Savage shut the laptop off while the message was in mid-sentence, implying that there may have been more to it.
- Artistic License – History: When the League make it back to 1944, they end up in Caen, where American forces are being beaten back by German forces with their new War Wheels. Thing is, Caen was in the British sector during the Normandy invasion and subsequent campaign. A more appropriate location would have been Carentan, which was firmly in the American sector.
- That being said, the US First Army landed at the Cotentin Peninsula, just 54 miles from Caen, in our history. So while American forces are a little odd, they're not completely unbelievable.
- It could also be that since this is an alternate history version of the war, American and British forces were assigned different sectors than what they were assigned in real life. So for example, the British could have been the ones who stormed Omaha and Utah beaches, while the Americans stormed Gold and Sword.
- Anti-Climactic Unmasking: As Lex is being chased through the Watchtower by the rest of the League, he stops in a bathroom and muses that at the very least, he has a rare opportunity:
Luthor (in Flash's body): If nothing else, I can at least learn the Flash's secret identity. [removes mask, looks in a mirror, then frowns] ...I have no idea who this is.
- The director's commentary reveals that they'd been wanting to do this joke for a while, since there's no way that Luthor would know everyone in the entire world. Flash is neither from the same area nor remotely famous.

In the past, I’ve noticed that when the page name changes, all reviews associated with a given work are left in a difficult to access limbo.
When this happens to me, I just copy and paste the subject and body of a given review into a new review on the new page . I am generally hesitant to do this to reviews I did not write myself. But I also don’t want them to be lost forever.
Would it be against policy, if I did it but then left a comment crediting the original author?
Edited by SpectralTime