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:
resolved Cold Duke of the North trope? Literature
Since really getting into Korean webtoons in the last two years, there's a certain character archetype that shows up in like 90% of romantic fantasy novels and I'm surprised it isn't here yet so maybe I've just missed it. Its become so common that people have even made jokes memes about him and different series have started calling the trope out even when playing it straight.
That man is the Cold Duke of the North! He has short black hair cut, red or blue eyes (and if they're red its distinct to either himself or his family), and a love for black clothing with bits of jewelry hanging off. He is also known for being an *incredibly* well-built hunk of man meat and yes we the reader will always see him with his shirt undone or off at some point to make sure we know how stacked he is. Despite appearing emotionless to everyone around him, his heart will thaw usually on first sight when he sees our lovely lady protagonist, who he will remark is "interesting." The guy has a tragic past and a reputation as a cold-hearted butcher of the battlefield, and his northern domain is akin to Winterfell in both temperature and regular monster invasions which he has take point in fending off for the rest of the Empire. His cold demeanor means a significant chunk of the story involves communication problems in the central relationship with the female lead that any normal person could resolve through a five second conversation. Also it means the vast majority of stories starring one of these fellows as the male romantic lead features a contract relationship at the center of it that everyone thinks the female lead is bonkers for entering into because of his fearsome reputation.
Do we not have this a trope that already covers this specific main character archetype?
openCan I trope my autobiography? Literature
I'd like to create a trope page for my self-published autobiography Andy's Nature: Asperger's, Obesity and the Supernatural. Would this be allowable? If so, could I link it to my You Tube channel? The channel is linked to my website, which in turn is linked to the book's Amazon page, and I understand commercial links are forbidden on TVT.
openPoorly-written page Literature
I see a lot of bad writing in A Girl Who Brought Down the World, such as misusing the spoiler tags. Are the spoiler tags the only problem that you notice, or does the page itself need a bigger cleanup?
Edited by MitchellProductionsopen Jana Whitaker in YOLO (internet girls #4) Literature
does she cut or she depressed? (ie. there's a part in yolo that says something like "why would jana post about almost cutting herself?" she gained a lot of weight, and the status updates the winsome threesome report on her, are very upsetting?)
openLiterature/Survivors, Too Dumb To Live Example Literature
On Literature/Survivors, there is this example of Too Dumb to Live:
"The other dogs, from Lucky's point of view (and probably the readers' as well). Individual dogs' antics include going back into a house they just established was filled with carbon monoxide (especially since it had caused the one dog to become unconscious and they had just rescued her), swimming too far out in the river after Lucky had just warned them about it being deep and fast, and one dog trying to put a collar back on after he'd gotten it caught on a bush and nearly choked himself to death."
Now, there are... problems with this example. One, in the book proper, the Leashed Dogs (pet dogs) agree to hold on to one memento as a reminder of their longpaws. (human owners) Of course, this means returning to the houses to get them. Daisy, the one who lived in the house that now has a gas leak, holds her breath as she goes in, knowing the second time around that she shouldn't inhale the toxins. Two, while I don't recall enough to talk about the example with the river, I do know that in a later book, Lucky is actually grateful that the Leashed Dogs kept their collars on, as it saved one dog's (Mickey's, who was the one who almost choked to death in the first place) life.
So, what should we do about this example? In fact, the page could use a little cleaning up, with the series still having new entries being written.
openFanfic Rec pages formatting Literature
Is there a consensus on how to format a Fanfic Rec page besides the basics? LunaSlashSea has added a lot of three or even six full paragraph spaces to fic rec pages that aren't used on other pages, as well as divider lines (----) between every fic. It looks fine on the page itself but when going into the editor it's kinda messy, mainly for the big gaps.
FanficRecs.Hades and FanficRecs.Hadestown have those attributes, while FanficRecs.Slay The Princess and FanficRecs.Doki Doki Literature Club don't, for comparison.
Edited by lalalei2001openUniverse and Book With Same Name Literature
i've been trying to flesh out some pages for You Could Make a Life, which is a literature universe. it's a very large verse full of 16 (and counting) novels that share characters and settings, with frequent crossover between them all & a firmly established canon. some works are published via traditional self-publishing, and others are posted online using Archive of our Own. while they are in the same universe, they are not all part of the same series, and there are many different series within it.
the issue i've run into while making pages is that the universe shares the same name as the first novel in the series, You Could Make a Life by Taylor Fitzpatrick.
i would like to make a page for the universe itself, separate from the novel You Could Make a Life. does anyone know how i should go about this? i'm currently working off You Could Make a Life. thank you!
openHow can I add an alternative linkable title for a work? Literature
Specifically, the Scum Villain's Self-Saving System. Right now I can only link to it by typing out the full whopping The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong which is just kind of silly!!!! The Scum Villains Self Saving System is already long enough and should work just as well.
openNo Title Literature
Characters.How To Train Your Dragon just got a lot of Repair, Don't Respond violations added by Socrates The Mudwing. I am not familiar enough with the subject to fix it myself, though, although I did message them.
openNo Title Literature
So I have a question that I probably should have asked a long time ago.
tl;dr is it possible for the few tropes that were banished to Darth Wiki to be in-universe and linked on a trope page?
(long version)
I launched a trope page about a non-fiction book about professional wrestling called Ring Of Hell, and on the original version of the page, one of the tropes listed was Dethroning Moment Of Suck. This was of course before DMOS was banished to Darth Wiki and made no link.
But the reason DMOS was listed on the page is because the author of the book invoked the trope himself, and came very close to calling it out by name. He claimed that "tribute shows" for deceased wrestlers were inherently phony, inherently sleazy, and "possibly the most sickening aspect" of a wrestler's death...
I thought that "possibly the most sickening aspect" line as written by the author himself was enough to make it an in-universe example of DMOS and readded it to the page - linking directly to the Darth Wiki version of it after the main wiki redirect was deleted.
So I guess I'm asking "What do?" Is this legitimate or not, and if not is there a different trope that could be used in place of DMOS?
openNo Title Literature
A guy is
Edit Warring with non other than Fighteer himself in the Consider Phlebas page.
WTF.
openNo Title Literature
This was a long time ago, so maybe the statute of limitations or whatever is up on this, but aerojockey left a rude editor's note on Characters.TheKingkillerChronicle
on June 18th last year. Specifically:
%% note
%% the entries for Felurian are deliberately lower-case, reflecting the orthography of her dialogue in the book.
%% if, for some reason, you think you would like to make everything "consistent" by capitalizing these entries,
%% please ask yourself whether you want to be "that guy" who shits on any tiny bit of fun he sees
%% thank you
While I was cleaning the page today (still needs more work), I deleted the rude part but left the rest.
Edited by Discaropen Articles on the Black Lagoon series (except not the anime) Literature
By this, I mean a book series by Mike Thaler about a boy named Hubie (his name isn't revealed for a while), who hallucinates or dreams that his school's faculty members, bullies and even holidays and school events are scary, only to find out they're not as bad as he first thought. It's family friendly, and the body horror is somehow utilized in a family friendly way. Although sometimes it can be perfectly macabre for the early-phasers. For instance, a kid named Freddy Jones gets burned alive in the first book! And one book even says "The rug is red. That's so the blood won't show.", proving Thaler was definitely right about the "Imagination is the most powerful nation" thing. Oh and even the teacher herself gets a dose of the horror in one book lol
I'm just curious to know if it's there in article form. And sorry if it sounds more like a review, I tend to infodump a lot lmao
Edited by GastonRabbitopenNo Title Literature
I ordered a book called Rasp which is related to the bookseries Halvgudene the other day, but it hasn't come yet so won't write about it until then. But I'm wondering about something... if all the important characters in the book are also in Halvgudene, would it be possible that if one click on "characters" on the future Rasp-page that it takes one to Halvgudene's character page? Or even better, straight to where the information on Rasp herself is? Thanks ^^
Edited by killikimopenNo Title Literature
In the flowers for algernon page I added an trope instance of bring my brown pants
- Bring My Brown Pants: One of the few times it's Played for Drama. Charlie has a tendency, especially as a kid, to shit himself whenever he gets frightened, which doesn't take much considering he's retarded. This just leads to more pain and suffering since then Rose decides she has to spank him, somehow thinking that disciplining him will stop him from being retarded.
- Bring My Brown Pants: One of the few times it's Played for Drama.
openNo Title Literature
Apologies if this has already been asked and answered somewhere.
I have noticed there are Works pages concerning articles of fan fiction. What are the rules for this? (or at least, accepted best practice). Does a fan work have to be especially popular or meritorious to deserve a works page of its own? Does it have to have accepted literary excellence? I'm asuming the rule about not reccomending your own works of fan fiction applies here? (no using tvtropes for self-publicity). I'm interested as to how this works. Thanks in advance!
openNo Title Literature
I was thinking of making a work page for [1], but then I found out it already existed. Anyway, I did some sprucing up (namely: picture, caption, publication details) , but the thing is, it's indexed under Literature instead of Comic Book. I would gladly move it under the correct index page but, A) I'm not that good with that kind of repair work, and B) I didn't launch the page myself so, I don't think I've got that kind of authority over it. Anyway, my point is, I think it should be indexed under Comic Book, not Literature. Any thoughts?
Edited by BasterdopenEditing Etiquette for Large-Scale Edits Literature
Having recently caught up to the English release of a particular Light Novel, I went to its Tv Tropes page and noticed it was quite lacking, and figured I'd help fill it out myself as the series isn't very popular.
However, rather than make edits in pieces I decided to make a copy of the latest version of the main page and work on it over time little by little with google docs; automatically saved, backed up and easier to keep track of changes or notes that way.
The question being, when I finish at some point and start moving the changes over to the main page, would it be preferable to do so in batches with appropriate Editing Reasons? I fear if I just slapped the revamped main page edits into the site at once, a mod could think I'm messing around and I definitely don't want to give that impression.
I'm going to take a few days at minimum on this little project anyway.
openAnyone here read the Natalie Cooper series? Might need assistance. Literature
To explain, it's a Halo fanfic saga written by an author named ilmiopassato. I've made a page for it since December last year, though with the saga being 8-stories long, it'd be a huge workload adding trope examples and plenty of tabs for the page by myself.
I'll link the page for the saga here:
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/446883/ilmiopassato
If any tropers here have read the series and are willing to help, shoot me a DM as soon as possible.
Edited by Hawkster94

A user going by the name AdmiralDT8 has vandalised Loyalty Among Worlds and deleted the YMMV and the Trivia articles for that fanfiction. It is unknown if this is really AdmiralDT8 himself doing this or the work of a troll. If it turns out to be the former, then this is a funny case of Dear Negative Reader Profile here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/AdmiralDT8
Edited by GastonRabbit