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:
openDo Fan Nicknames belong anywhere besides a Trivia subpage?
In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), there is a character (one of King Ghidorah's heads) that fans like to call "Kevin". This isn't canon, but various pages related to the movie refer to the character as "Kevin". These references should be scrubbed, right? Example: the YMMV page makes multiple references to "Kevin" without acknowledging that it's a Fan Nickname.
Similarly, the post-Time Skip episodes of Zoids: Chaotic Century often get referred to as either "Season 2" or a Sequel Series titled "Zoids: Guardian Force". Again, not official, there is no split, so we should avoid referencing that, right? Example: the main series page itself is split into "Chaotic Century" and "Guardian Force" tropes.
Edited by PrimisopenLarge Scale Edits and no response Live Action TV
So troper Metal Shadow X is one of the most active editors of the Arrowverse. And I want to make it clear that I do not wish to diminish him or his contributions which, for the most part, have been pretty good. However, as of late he keeps making
tons of large-scale adjustments to all pages, constantly moving stuff and never discussing any of it.
While that by itself might not warrant any action, what tipped me off was him moving the Star Labs Page
to Team Flash
.
The biggest problem here is that he outright deleted some character folders and hasn't put them up anywhere else. I have messaged him this morning, but haven't received anything back. He did make 1 edit afterwards though.
What would be the best course of action?
Edited by ForenperseropenPossible fanfic page "ownership" issue
Happened to look at the Cut List and see that Muse Hysteria and its Trivia subpage are listed, with the reason of "fanfic is being retooled". The page looks like a stub, but all its content was just removed
by HotmanX32, who, it turns out, is also the author
. The story itself does seem to still exist
.
openExcessive gushing in YMMV/TheRageaholic ?
I'm specifically thinking about the the examples for Heartwarming Moments and Moment of Awesome, both of which mention the allegations against Michael Jackson, which is a bit of a contentious issue in and of itself.
Edited by Powoga
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
openTroper with poor grammar
I've noticed that tgibsonlabour45 has some issues with grammar in their edits to Danganronpa pages, especially punctuation and run-on sentences.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Subverted by her surviving the events of SDR 2 in hope arc but in spite of her flaws Mahiru is an extremely kind and selfless person who loves photographer because she loves seeing others smile and making them happen, when twilight syndrome framed her for covering up Natsumi's death she didn't run from it, she tried to make amends over the death of her school bully to her brother who was also a massive toxic bully, this of course ends up killing her coldly, the group especially Hiyoko are distraught and Hajime notes her kind hearted and forward nature and throughout the investgation is really saddened even both Fuyuhiko(Initially he's remorseless but later attempts seppuku out of his guilt over her death alone) and Peko (calling Mahiru's murder senseless and asking for the group to never let it happen again) seem to regret their actions and Hiyoko creates a memorial focusing on her pictures that while initially freaks the group out they come to really adore it as it shows how much her pictures made others happy(Fuyuhiko even has a hide to find scene where her looks at a picture with him and Peko where he reflectfully notes that its the first time he's ever seen a picture where they both look like equals and wonders when Mahiru took it.
- Karma Houdini: Completely averted, every game had a legit killer surviving and its true that Fuyuhiko was as guility as Peko in Mahiru's murder but firstly he is badly injured to the point of losing an eye and his eye for an eye thing comes back both ways as Peko dies, in addition after the second trial he goes as far as Seppuku to show the group that he's truly sorry to the point of death for what he did to Mahiru and drops the whole asshole lone wolf thing and becomes a highly reliable and kind hearted member of the group, arugably the most useful after Hajime Chiaki and at times Nagito. He truly earns his survival.
- Alas, Poor Scrappy: Hiyoko died in an attempt to honour Mahiru, she also died completely scared and alone, while Hiyoko was far from a great person its pretty hard not to feel bad as she tells Sonia in a flashback "i can do it because Mahiru taught me", bully or not she was a scared kid dealing with her only friends unfair murder and to make things worse she was trying to change and only died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, if Fuyuhiko and Peko didn't coldly take out Mahiru she'd still be alive [The missing period is not an error from me incorrectly copying and pasting.]
I sent a notifier, but they've made so many edits that it's going to be hard to fix all of them.
Edited by ZuxtronopenPrincess1988
Princess1988 has been vandalizing and/or blanking literally every page they have edited so far. The only reasoning I can find is what they left on TearJerker.Lilo And Stitch (the page itself, not the edit reason):
resolved Edit War on YMMV for Codes and Geass: Embracing Your Inner Megalomania
On April 12th, 2021, while reading the forum on Questionable Questing for the fanfic "Codes And Geass: Embracing Your Inner Megalomania", I came across a user under the belief that the author of the fic, Tropers/Trickster_Priest, was applying Ron the Death Eater to the characters of Nagisa Chiba and Shogo Asahina.
- Ron the Death Eater: Like many other fanfics, Chiba and Asahina fall victim to this. Contrasted with canon where, while the two are shown more distrustful of Zero after he abandoned them during the Black Rebellion and appeared unapologetic when he returned, and only betrayed him when given sufficient evidence to suggest he crossed the line, the Geass Order massacre for Asahina and the doctored evidence Schneizel provided for Chiba, here they are depicted as disloyal and belligerent from the outset, not helped by Trollouche going out of his way to antagonize them. For specifics though:
- Asahina is made out to be against Trollouche's leadership from the start, to the point he secretly aids an attempted coup d'etat and alliance with the Chinese Federation, and then subjected to a Uriah Gambit as punishment, said gambit resulting in his death due to Kewell emerging in the Siegfried.
- Chiba regularly badmouths Trollouche, stirred up unrest against the Britannian members of the Black Knights, and attempted to convince Tohdoh to stage another coup while Trollouche was comatose, only failing because Tohdoh had Undying Loyalty to Trollouche and C.C. was listening in, the latter of whom Chiba attacks upon discovering her listening in, only for C.C. to nearly kill as a means of putting the fear of god into her, and only spares her due to Tohdoh promising to kill her himself if she continues her treasonous behavior.
- Butt-Monkey: Ohgi, Asahina, and Chiba all are on Trollouche's shit list because he remembers who was responsible for the betrayal in canon.
- The Chew Toy: Trollouche goes out of his way to provoke people he doesn't like, particularly Chiba and Asahina of the Four Holy Swords. YMMV as to whether he's justified in blaming them for the events of the original timeline or not.
- Rather than step on landmines by commenting in the forums Trickstar Priest, I will just put this here: you are bashing Chiba and Asahina like many other fanfic writers. And remember, please don't remove this just because you disagree.
After adding it, Tropers/shadowwolf75 decided to immediately remove it, their edit reason being:
- Hi, I'm not trickster and you are still wrong; the difference here was Lelouch being more aggressive in calling it out because he remembered they were trouble before, they had NEVER liked him in canon and fucked him over later, and thus it does not fall to the extremes of Ron The Deatheater
- This is a YMMV trope. There are users in the forum who see this to be the case as they call out Trickster Priest for bashing. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you can remove a subjective trope, since you are only a single person. Take it up with trope repair threads if you absolutely must. Otherwise, remove it again, it's officially an Edit War.
While that initially appeared to be the end of it... Trickster Priest edited the page themself using the fact they were the author as justification in blatant defiance of "The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours". They additionally accused me of being anirock and doing this just because they didn't agree with "me".
- I however, am Trickster. And you are misrepresenting the situation and ignoring the nuances. And pulling this because I disagreed with your interpretation in the thread on QQ is especially galling.
This has escalated into a full out Edit War, and rather than do something stupid like restore the entry again or argue with Trickster Priest, I decided it prudent to take the matter to ATT, as Trickster Priest is blatantly ignoring Administrivia, and this is not the first time they have done so. And rather than argue as to why the trope doesn't apply, they instead accuse me of misinterpreting things and being a sockpuppet account for a different user with similar objections. So I am requesting ATT to step in to resolve this dispute.
Edited by RebelFalconopenWeapon of Choice
This is a question about policy, not a specific example. We have Weapon Of Choice and a load of subtropes relating to specific weapons. If a character has a preferred weapon, what trope should be put on the character page - Weapon Of Choice itself, or the relevant subtrope?
openexample arguing with itself Literature
The Dune example under "Literature" on War for Fun and Profit is arguing with itself. I don't know anything about the series beyond half-paying attention to the movie and TV Tropes examples. Could someone who does know please fix?
open Life is Strange: True Colors problem
So recently Life Is Strange: True Colors had its trailer release. Unfortunately, as usually happens with unreleased works, the page is dealing with issues regarding what is considered speculation and what isn't. Specifically, two Tropers are edit-warring over context.
Dark added three tropes (Aura Vision, Color-Coded Emotions, and Psychic Powers) with the edit reason, "Adding some tropes very definitely shown in the trailer."
Alphaeater hid them all for not having citations.
Dark un-hid them with the reason, "Ah, the fun police are here."
Alphaeater outright deleted the tropes with the reason, "Do not unhide hidden entries without fixing them."
Dark re-added them all. "I did, by changing the "in this game" to "in this game's trailer" but I guess that's just not good enough, so here. Also, one of the ones you deleted literally has "based on the trailer in it", so why was that one also deleted?"
Alphaeater hid the Color-Coded Emotions entry with the reason, "Where / how do these colors appear? How are they associated with emotions?" Note the example itself reads Based on what's seen in the trailer, red is anger, blue is sadness, yellow is joy, and purple is fear.
Dark added more context but with the reason, "Context clues. Also, very petty move, holding the entry for 20 minutes to prevent editing. Jesus effing christ, dude, go hall monitor somewhere else."
Since then, other Tropers have added Tropes to the page. Alphaeater outright deleted some and hid others out for being ZCE—although they didn't leave an edit reason explaining their deletions.
Following this, Dark added a note to the top of the page: "Remember to add a citation, even if it's blatantly obvious from context clues, or the hall monitors with nothing better to do will hide your entry!" Their edit reason: "please go away or do something actually useful, like adding context despite the entry being perfectly readable and comprehendible without the extra wording."
So we have an edit war going on, and honestly I'm finding issues with both Tropers here. Most obviously Dark is being pretty rude and petty in their edit reasons, and I'm going to go ahead and delete the petty note on the page. On the other hand Alphaeater is sometimes not communicating their reasons for deleting entries—and these deletions seem unnecessary, as they can simply hide them until proper citations are added.
openMore from Unbuilt Trope Literature
(The original entry is two bullets at the bottom of LONG list of "teen dystopia" sub-genre entry)
- The Hunger Games itself is a Trope Codifier for the YA Dystopia Novel note Though The Giver and Uglies both predate it, it started the trend more properly , and has many deconstructive elements, thanks to its author being very fond of deconstructor fleets. After all, the dystopia depicted isn't that much worse than the resistance, the Love Triangle is a ploy for attention by the villains, and most of the second book is spent exploring how the main character's psyche has been affected by the events of the first rather than a further adventure.
Ignoring how it's include as Trope Codifier (But is it? The note only claims it "started the trend more properly", not how it codifies the genre), the fact that it outright say "its author being very fond of deconstructor fleets" make me think it's more of "early deconstruction" than actual Unbuilt Trope.
Edited by KuruniopenCharacter Agenda-Based Editing? Live Action TV
Civil War is known for being a film with a very strong Broken Base, and Melbell 18 made several edits
to Captain America: Civil War that seem to be biased in Tony Stark's (himself a massively Base-Breaking Character who is notorious for inspiring Draco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater reactions) favor.
Do I have permission to reword the language and remove some of the more accusatory changes?
Edited by AlleyOopopenJHD's impatience
I've avoided an ATT report because this has been largely restricted to the fora, but nothing has really happened after two hollers, so I figured it's worth another report.
JHD has a habit of impatience in the Projects fora, which results in them either berating people for not focusing on what he considers important (without taking any initiative himself) or taking unilateral action despite a lack of consensus. Some examples:
- In the So Bad It's Horrible cleanup, they kept asking if we should remove some listicles from Horrible.Other and the Music subpages. The discussion didn't reach consensus, but when their attempt to revive it was overlooked, they just removed the lists unilaterally
instead of just reviving the discussion. (They did eventually make a spinoff thread to properly discuss the issue.)
- In the Deader Than Disco TRS, they got snappy
about not receiving constant updates on how many wicks were left, despite that being visible from the Related tab. Note that they weren't really doing much wick cleaning themself.
- They've had a history of impatience in the Wick Check Project especially. Their early posts in the thread were first a lot of double-posting about their progress
doing a Deader Than Disco wick check, and once they decided they weren't good at doing wick checks, they got fairly pushy
about us doing that wick check (they've admitted that changing that trope was the main reason they joined the site). Then after deciding they didn't have time to work on the Ho Yay wick check (which is fair enough), they were still ignorant
about exactly how to fix the trope despite previous failed TRS threads, which again, is fair, as they can't solve everything. But they seem very reluctant to even try. And now today they just tried to cutlist the newer Ho Yay wick check
because "It's dead, and will never go anywhere" despite nobody else giving up on the effort and people working on numerous other threads at the same time. Once again, they just decided to make a decision based on their own feelings about a situation rather than actually discuss an issue properly.
He was brought up earlier
for his somewhat judgmental ATT questions, but I didn't think it was that big of an issue because he seemed to be listening. But he's still continuing to be disruptive, even after multiple warnings to stop this hasty behavior. Their role in the projects is less contributing to the effort and more yelling at other tropers to contribute because they gave up on trying to help, despite the fact that these are collaborative efforts and we've given him many tips on how to contribute.
openConcern over Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby Videogame
While helping with the That One Boss and That One Level cleanup
, I came across some questionable examples on Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby, and in the process I've found myself concerned about the page and its subpages in general.
I had no doubt the reason the game even had a page was because of the general Surprise Difficulty reaction it gets, but the memes of how hard it is - and the demonization the pitchers got as a result - have bled into all but one subpage, even though difficulty aside, it's a simple Winnie-the-Pooh game with no plot.
My main concern is how I should deal with this. Like I said, the issues are quite prominent, but I'm worried about if the pages aren't big enough to warrant a thread on Projects: Short Term, and what I should do instead if they aren't.
Edited by BrashBusteropen Disproportionate Retribution
So Ferot_Dreadnaught has been removing a bunch of examples from DisproportionateRetribution.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic on the grounds that it needs to be In-Universe or intentional. The problem is that the trope itself never states that it needs to be In-Universe or intentional only that some for retribution to be disproportionate to what happens. So I don't think that these removals are valid.
Edited by Ordeaux26openFunny Moments
Can Funny Moments for a comic also include funny commentary from the creator's personal weblog, or does it have to be in the comic itself?
openPage ownership issues and rudeness Webcomic
PrincessPandaTrope and I are the only two people who frequently edit the page for the Sonic the Hedgehog fan comic Ghosts of the Future. I'm starting to understand why nobody else wants to edit the page. She keeps sending me PMs after I edit, saying that she's "very disappointed with" me for not phrasing things exactly the way she wanted.
One example would be my latest edit, where I removed the word "very" from a lot of edits, since it's a word that usually doesn't do any good. Saying "the house is very big" doesn't actually give you any more exact info about how big the house is than if you just say "The house is big."
She PMed me and said that I should have replaced it with a more descriptive adjective instead, without explaining why she couldn't do that herself.
She also said that I was giving the middle finger to the comic's creator, Evan Stanley, by replacing "very [adjective]" with a plain "[adjective]". She said that I was misleading people about the content of the comic this way—as if I had changed an exact measurement to one less exact or accurate.
And then there's the time when she asked people to cut down the wall of text
in one entry, and then when I did that, she asked me to explain why I deleted things
. I tried to be polite, but I wondered why she even asked for help if she expected people to follow rules she never bothered mentioning.
(Then, in an act of Edit Warring, she put back things I'd taken away.)
It feels like she's decided that my only task is to fix the grammar and spelling mistakes she keeps making again and again. It also feels like she's got this idea of how the page must be written that she assumes everybody else knows and she therefore chooses never to tell people about.
To be frank, she's acting like she's Knuckles the Echidna and the GotF page is a Chaos Emerald. ('Cause she's acting like its guardian, geddit?)
Short version: This troper is rude, keeps edit warring and has page ownership issues, and it's getting very tiring.
Edited by MichaelKatsuroopenCreator vs Web Video
I've asked this several times but never got a definitive answer. Should Creator.Ryan George be moved to WebVideo.Ryan George? It's only troping his Youtube channel (which is also titled "Ryan George"), plus the only other work he's done with its own page is also web video work.
I have a similar question about the Creator.Pro ZD page, as it's largely troping his web video sketches, but unlike Ryan George, SungWon Cho is a creator with works in multiple namespaces since he's also a voice actor. However, his videos are eligible for YMMV items that a Creator page usually shouldn't have. So what would we do in this case? Keep it as one page or split Creator.Sung Won Cho for the actor himself and WebVideo.Pro ZD for his skits?

Supernaturaldramas Fan has been doing some bizarre things in some Smallville and Buffy the Vampire Slayer pages.
On the Characters.Buffy The Vampire Slayer Scooby Gang Originals, they deleted several entries on a character with no reason given (they were already restored by another troper).
They created the Analysis.Smallville page and copy-pasted some argument between users from another Wikia site.
They also created the Synopsis.Smallville page just to put a PSA for people not to skip the first 3 seasons, which is not what Sypnosis pages are for.
They put the same PSA on the main Smallville article, which I removed myself for being out of place.
They're also posting both that Wikia argument and the PSA on many of the Smallville discussion pages.