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:
openConcerning entry in the Ace Attorney Investigations witnesses page under Zinc Lablanc II
- Expy: Of Donald Trump, fat, vain, and sees himself as more worth than others.
I know Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment is in effect for anything regarding the 2016 election so I probably should have removed the entry already, but I'm asking for second opinions just in case. Even then, I see misuse of the trope itself.
Edited by AkoSiKuya23openAre Calvin's parents hated?
Someone just added this to YMMV.Calvin And Hobbes.
- The Scrappy: Calvin's parents were criticized early in the strip for being too harsh and needlessly sarcastic to Calvin. One strip even has them arguing on whether or not they're sorry for having him with his father wishing to buy a dachshund instead. Watterson himself addressed this, saying their reactions to Calvin's antics make them more realistic. While his mom has since been rescued for being the better Reasonable Authority Figure, his dad still has a hatedom not just for being a Jerkass to Calvin but also an Author Avatar for Watterson in the later years of the strip.
Last time I checked, Calvin's dad is really popular and well-liked due to the Running Gag of making up facts whenever Calvin asks him a question, to the extent that there's a subreddit called "r/Explain Like Im Calvin" involving people doing the above. So doesn't this disqualify them?
openBroken Ace Anime
Another trope and I are having a disagreement about whether or not Goku Black fits under Broken Ace. This is the entry in question:
- Broken Ace: When he was Zamasu, he was an up and coming Supreme Kai who was promoted from a regular Kai. His fighting talent was so great that he was only a little weaker than Super Saiyan 2 Goku, after he'd absorbed god energy and whose base from is stronger than Super Buu. After losing to Goku in a friendly sparring match, his sanity shattered and he becomes obsessed with Goku and spreading his form of justice. To that end, he murdered his master to get the Time Ring, takes Goku's body using the Super Dragon Balls, and then murders Goku and his family. Although Zamasu, now Goku Black, is stronger than he ever was before, he isn't sane anymore, especially with his rapid mood-swings. He is also still obsessed with Goku to the point of mimicking his mannerisms, fighting style, and techniques.
Snowy 66 comment out the trope under this edit: : Broken Ace is very specific. They need to be The Ace on the surface like a mask, but on the inside they're something completely different, either full of self loathing or a hidden villain. Black doesn't use The Ace persona as a mask, he completely shows his true colors.
Thing is, he kind of does giving that he stole someone else's identity, name, is still sore about losing a sparring match. He's also not sane despite trying to act like he is.
open Issue on the So Bad Its Horrible Animated Film page
Lately there's been this guy who keeps taking a particular film (Happily N'ever After) off the page under the pretense that "there are some people on You Tube that like it" and claimed to me (in a private message after I re-added the film) that it won an award (namely an Artios award, one that exists, but I've never heard of, quite honestly, and the award was an actress being nominated for a best voice actress award, nothing to do with the film's quality in animation and writing). What should I do about this? I'm fairly certain that he's taking it down only because he himself likes the movie (for whatever reason) and is taking offense to it being listed on the Horrible page.
Edited by kablammin45open Kinda like Little Nikki
I remember a movie where a mafia gang is going to execute a girl by letting a train run over her. Right as the train reaches her one of the men throws her off the tracks and gets killed himself, it was at night so I don't know who the actors were. The man is redeemed by this one good act and goes to heaven instead of hell. He comes back as an angel and tries to get his friends to redeem themselves, maybe, but they reject him. It was a low quality comedy movie, if I remember it right, with the camera quality of the late 80s to early 90s.
Edited by BitsAndPiecesopenIf it is not "Deader Than Disco", that what is it?
There has been a huge clean-up of the Deader Than Disco trope recently. Fair enough, but I wonder where certain cut entries could get a new home. Many of the earlier DTD entries could be moved to a different trope, but I don't know where this one belongs:
- Lil Abner: The strip fell into this pretty hard. For a couple of decades (40s-60s), it was the most popular comic strip in America by a mile, with an estimated daily readership of 70 million in the US alone (back when the country's population was ~180 million.) The strip produced omnipresent merchandise and even a few live-action films. Al Capp was called the modern-day Mark Twain. Characters from the strip, such as Daisy Mae, Sadie Hawkins, and Lena the Hyena were part of the Small Reference Pools. It also spawned an extremely successful spinoff character, the Schmoo, which was a cultural phenomenon in its own right. The main reason it died off in popularity was because of its complete alienation of the baby boomer generation. Al Capp became increasingly conservative in his later years, and the strip started taking regular potshots at the civil rights movement, hippies, and anti-war protesters, including an infamous feud with John Lennon. Perhaps even worse, in 1971, Al Capp got caught in multiple near-simultaneous sex scandals that led to many newspapers dropping the strip out of protest. Due to these two factors, the strip's popularity plummeted in the 70s, until it finally ended in 1977 by Capp himself. The result is that today, the strip is a footnote in the history of American pop culture if it's even remembered at all. Perhaps ironically, its biggest continuing legacy might be the concept of Sadie Hawkins dances.
It is not "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny, right? Because there is nothing in the entry about the comic being creatively impressive for its time. I believed that Society Marches On could be it, but it seems to about how writers seem to think that people in the future has the same values as people today. So...? I believe that someone in the clean-up thread mentioned Seasonal Rot. Could that work?
Edited by FuriennaopenEdit War in Characters.OverwatchSupport
YZQ added the following entry to Characters.Overwatch Support under Difficult, but Awesome:
- Another Difficult, but Awesome skill of [Lucio's] is the Sound Barrier. The skill takes a bit longer to activate after initiation as he jumps into the air and slams his weapon down on a surface to generate said barrier, during which he can be killed. Also, the shield itself decays rapidly, an issue when some ultimates can only be absorbed satisfactorily when the shield is at max strength (e.g. RIP-Tire). But, a Lúcio who can grasp the timing well will be able to shield his team from potential wipes.
I deleted it, leaving as an edit reason that while certainly awesome, Lucio's Sound Barrier doesn't take any better timing than any other defensive ult and no mechanical skill to speak of, rendering it not particularly difficult by the standards of the game. YZQ immediately restored it giving no edit reason.
Edited by HighCrateopenDraco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater
Can it co-exist together? I had in mind that a character exudes both good points and bad points. The character is considered on DILP when some fans felt like the good points were exaggerated, while the bad points was ignored. However, in the same time, the other camp gave the character RTDE when some fans felt like the bad points were exaggerated and the good points ignored.
What does this mean, a coexistence of Draco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater or merely Base-Breaking Character? Please note that the character itself isn't that hated, it's just their good qualities overexaggerated or their bad qualities overexaggerated, at the cost of the other one.
openNext of Kin (1982) Film
Has anyone here seen or heard of Next of Kin (1982)? Because I could really use a bit of help in writing its tropes page. This is mainly down to the fact that I have never actually had the chance to watch the film (though I have heard it's really good) but it also has to do with the fact that I have been getting virtually no real-life social interaction these days, and so I often find myself at a loss for words whenever I try to write something down.
Edited by Scifimaster92openTV Tropes Page for the Website Itself.
How come there isn't a page for TV Tropes where it enlists tropes that apply to this website? Whenever I type https://tvtropes.org/Website/TVTropes
it just leads me to a message displaying "We do not have Website / TV Tropes. We do, however, have:" instead of a page with tropes that apply to the website. Does it have to do with Irony or something?
openWeird Example on YMMV/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica Anime
This was under the Moe entry.
- Many fans claim that Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a feminist series, when in fact, Gen Urobochi had conceptualized the series through comparisons of girls' "hubris" and "self-righteousness" to Al-Qaeda, not to mention that the intended demographic was for an older, male audience.
I'm not sure what the point of the entry was (well besides the last part). But the point about its relationship to feminism is already mentioned elsewhere on the page (word for word in fact) and for some reason i see this entry as out of place. Should it stay?
openSo bad it's horrible entry
Posting this here for more visibility.
There was a recent entry on the SoBadItsHorrible.Literature page about Orson Scott Card's Hamlet's Father, which while morally questionable probably isn't terrible enough in terms of quality to be included there.
I mentioned why I think it doesn't belong on the discussion page. The troper who added it then removed it themself (but without leaving an edit reason). It was then readded by another troper. Should it stay or should it go?
Edited by supergodopenEdit War Western Animation
NWolfman
added the following example to Trivia.Toy Story:
- Old Shame: Not the film itself by any means, but the creators have acknowledged just how poorly the computer graphics have aged, going as far as to call it their "ugliest film."
Later JameyGamer
added an additional sentence to it containing a Circular Link within the example:
- Old Shame: Not the film itself by any means, but the creators have acknowledged just how poorly the computer graphics have aged, going as far as to call it their "ugliest film." Elsewhere, the infamous "Black Friday" reel that Lasseter screened for Katzenberg of course became an instant Old Shame to John.
N Wolfman later re-wrote the example like so:
- Old Shame: Not the film itself by any means, but the creators have acknowledged just how poorly the computer graphics have aged, going as far as to call it their "ugliest film." As for the actual film, there's the norotious "Black Friday" cut John Lasserer and co. made to appease Jeff Katzenberg.
And recently Jamey Gamer has changed it back:
- Old Shame: Not the film itself by any means, but the creators have acknowledged just how poorly the computer graphics have aged, going as far as to call it their "ugliest film. "" Elsewhere, the infamous "Black Friday" reel that Lasseter screened for Katzenberg of course became an instant Old Shame to John.
openCowboy Wizard In Space Film
I recently deleted a Small Reference Pools example from YMMV.Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, since Small Reference Pools is not a YMMV items. And I left behind an edit-reason explaining so.
Cowboy Wizard in Space
has re-added the example leaving this as his edit-reason:
"Although the trope itself is not specifically coded as YMMV, the entries are too subjective for the main page. I went through the entire YMMV index and was unable to find a YMMV trope that fit the opinions described, and so have added Small Reference Pools back in. If anyone finds a YMMV trope that fits the opinions below, feel free to change it; but for the time being, deleting opinions is against YMMV policy."
Edited by Anddrixopen A Helpful Suggestion
I would like to see a way to look at only YOUR Trope Finder, YKTTW, or YKTS entries- but I can't do something like that myself. It's really annoying that I can't check replies on my posts.
open''Fantastic Beasts'' character or ''Harry Potter'' character? Film
A major character from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was moved from the film's character page to a miscellaneous sub-page for the Harry Potter books because he was a part of the backstory for those books. Where does this character belong? For those that have seen the film, I'm talking about Grindelwald, who disguises himself and then acts as the film's main villain while being portrayed by the biggest name in the movie.
open Are there words for different formats of TV shows?
Most shows are like Seinfeld in that they focus on the plot of each episode instead of an overall narrative. This focus may vary in degree, but I find that in most cases, you don't necessarily need to watch the previous episode to understand most of a current one because it will probably have a self-contained plot that can be enjoyed as is. In contrast, a show like Game of Thrones is much more focused on the connective tissue between episodes and on arcs that span multiple episodes (or even seasons), while singular episodes rarely have any self-contained plot.
Are there tropes to distinguish these formats?
open Hordes of alien locusts aren ot so different
Isn't it weird how the Horde of Alien Locusts is depicted as one of the scariest and evilest (when sapient) types of villains in fiction, and yet it's also the one humanity could most easily be accused of itself? For example, here is a copied and pasted literature entry from the Humans Through Alien Eyes Example List:
Tolkien's unfinished book The Notion Club Papers* Which can be read in The History of Middle-earth: At one point a man experimenting with astral projection techniques (which allow him to travel through time and space and see other planets) comes across a place where what seems like a giant anthill spreads across the countryside, polluting and ruining it. He's shocked to realise he's actually seeing the (sped-up) history of Oxford.
openCinemasins Deadpool Film
Can someone please update the entry on Awesome.Deadpool 2016 with the sin tally before and after the bonus round? I'd like to know how exactly it changed, but I don't want to click the video myself.

a-wasted-life
has been pushing an agenda recently. They've been editing pages related to YTP creator EmperorLemon and have been posting calls to join a Twitter campaign to make a "Frying Dory" collab, since Emperor Lemon won't make one himself.
Edited by chasemaddigan