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:
openNo Title Literature
Chris Hart was massively changed, apparently by the man himself, to be nothing but an advertisement. Do I report something like that here or is there a more admin-y page?
openNo Title Literature
Requesting that Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries be inducted into the Permanent Red Link Club.
The page on Mein Kampf only has three examples and a description of the book - it could exist as just a mention on Adolf Hitler and we don't need a page on the work itself.
The Turner Diaries is a little more complex: it is a work of its own but it is a work solely created to preach and encourage racial hatred. While most of the examples are well-written and obviously not encouraging of its content, it could still convince some people that we support it simply by having a page on it.
openNo Title Literature
So, a Mistborn video game
was announced today. Considering that the series now consists of a trilogy, a stand-alone sequel taking place centuries later, and a video game, with more novels planned but not yet announced, it seems like a good idea to turn the Main.Mistborn page into a franchise page and split the individual works onto their own pages.
However, that's obviously a major change, and I don't want to make it unilaterally. So where should I bring it up? Here? TRS? Special Efforts? Just go ahead and do it myself?
openWhere to put some LMM examples? Literature
Lucy Maud Montgomery's page
has a few examples from the Chronicles of Avonlea books. It's specified that all examples from books that have their own pages don't count. The thing is, the Chronicles books are explicitly in the world of Anne of Green Gables, even if Anne only makes a few cameos. So what do we do?
Option 1. Move the Chronicles examples from Maud's page to the Anne page and add a note to Maud's page listing all 11/12 (it's complicated) books in the Anne series, all three Emily books, etc.
Option 2. Split off all miscellaneous Maud short stories into their own page, including the Chronicles books, preserving Maud's page for the authoress herself and recurring tropes only.
resolved Moving character to a different page Literature
I'd like to move Shen Jiu's character profile from Characters.The Scum Villains Self Saving System Demon Realm And Other Characters over to Characters.The Scum Villains Self Saving System Four Main Sects. Currently he's just under Other Characters, but I think he should really be under the Qing Jing Peak section as he was literally the leader of said peak before his (presumed) death, at which point he exits the story. (I'm explaining this to clarify that there are no conflicting affiliations or anything so I don't know why he's been placed under Other Characters.) Am I allowed to go ahead and move him?
Edited by Zaperexresolved Validity of an example Literature
Wasn't sure where to put this, didn't seem like it belonged in "Is this an Example". I was adding something to ThenLetMeBeEvil.Literature and happened to find this:
- Fagin in Oliver Twist is such an anti-Semitic caricature that Dickens himself grew ashamed at the remonstrations of several Jewish acquaintances, mended his beliefs, and wrote much more sympathetic Jewish characters in the future. However, since Oliver Twist was so popular and has so frequently been adapted, the adapters have had to deal with the Unfortunate Implications somehow. Some of them have used this, depicting Fagin's villainy less as a stereotype and more as an understandable response to the grinding poverty and degradation he would have suffered due to the relentless classism and anti-Semitism in England in the period.
The whole example is basically complaining about Fagin being a Greedy Jew stereotype, which, fair enough! But the example
- doesn't even get to illustrating the trope until halfway through.
- isn't actually an example for the linked source material but rather about unnamed adaptations.
- is violating Examples Are Not General by not specifying any adaptations in particular.
So I think this should probably be cut. Agreed?
Edited by StarSwordopenHypothetical Casting Literature
I'm wondering if I could make a Hypothetical Casting page for Once Upon a Studio: Version 2.0, with it being a full-scale reimagining of Disney's 100th anniversary short film, but I think I should ask how many credits, roughly, would be needed to accommodate that page. The credits are already listed under Fan Works, but I'm hoping to move them to a dedicated Hypothetical Casting page for the fanfic itself.
Edited by IronSpider24resolved Figuring out how to alphabetize strange example Literature
So, the work Orson Scott Card's Empire is listed on the work page as Orson Scott Card's Empire, however, every source I can find lists the title as simply Empire. I presume this was originally done to prevent confusion with other works of literature with the title Empire, however, currently, there are no other works in the Literature namespace with that title; Empire currently redirects to Empire which is itself a disambiguation page.
The reason I ask is because I was attempting to alphabetize a page and wasn't sure if this page should be put under "O" for Orson or "E" for Empire, which is, as far as I can tell, the proper title for the novel.
Thank you in advance for your help!
openNo Title Literature
There's a bit in Livy's _The War With Hannibal_ where Scipio Africanus shames a guy called Masinissa into doing what he wants (briefly) by lecturing him on self-control, which leads me to wonder, does controlling someone with a speech on self-control constitute irony?
openDeleted examples with weird edit reason. Literature
So I have been wondering if one of the examples that was deleted in 13 Reasons Why 5 years ago was reasonable or not despite the weird edit reason. Here are two examples before it was deleted (trigger warning: SA):
- Must Not Die a Virgin: A very disturbing example. Not long before killing herself, Hannah, now severely depressed, gets in a hot tub with a known rapist. She is fully aware how this will play out.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Fuck you, Bryce. FUCK YOU!
openPage move request Literature
I've been thinking that the page for the Black Lagoon book series should be moved to The Black Lagoon which seems to be its official name, and it would help avoid confusion with the Black Lagoon anime. Is this something I can do myself or do I need permission from a mod first?
Edited by Javertshark13openNo Title Literature
I'm not sure where to post this, but I just had to express my appreciation about what an amazing, astonishing resource resource this website is. I'd bookmarked it for fun and for research. Andd then I saw...myself! I was listed as the author of the UNDEAD series, along with a description of Betsy the Vampire Queen and, purely on an unconscious level<g>, a bunch of the tropes I had infused the UNDEAD series with (Fluffy the Terrible, Our Werewolves are Different, A Chat with Satan, etc.). Finding myself here (not to mention several of my books) made my month! Thank you again!
open Kid's book about dragon hunting Literature
First off, this is definitely not Dragon Slayer's Academy. I remember this one being a standalone book I read in the 5th grade, I believe? About 11 years ago.
I remember two of the main characters. A boy who was a Paige and bullied by the other Paiges for getting the job of fighting the dragon, with one of them sitting on him. The other was the princess who disguised herself as a boy named Bill to go kill the dragon; I believe this was because her father promised that whoever killed the dragon would get to marry her, but I might just be blending other stories with this one since it's been a while.
open Not the fall that kills you Literature
Is Richard Mayhew's fear of heights not because of the fall, but because he doesn't trust himself in Neverwhere an example of Not the Fall That Kills You?
open Hoist by his own petard "indirectly" (Hamlet Spoilers) Literature
[Post writing this out edit: This can basically be summed up as "Does it count as Hoist By His Own Petard if the person who dies only dies as an indirect result of their actions/plotting?" and i'm specifically talking about Hamlet's death.] Would Hamlet's own death count as a case of "Hoist By His Own Petard"? Laertes was driven to murderous intent against hamlet because Hamlet's plotting resulted in the deaths of Laertes father and sister. It was killing ophelia that was the breaking point, and Hamlet had continuously pushed Ophelia towards madness as part of his scheme to feign insanity. Had Hamlet never driven Ophelia to madness he would not have died himself. So does this count as an indirect case of "Hoist By his own petard"? or is does it have to be a direct action that causes the death? (For those curious btw i'm actually writing a paper on this trope and how it applies to both Hamlet's character and the play as a whole) While i'm asking, would polonius's death also count as Hoist by His Own Petard? I'm pretty sure not because he was straight up stabbed, but he was stabbed because he was spying on Hamlet for the king. It's even more of a stretch than whether or not hamlet counts as HBHOP.
openOn the page for Zabibah and the King. Literature
Should we recreate this page? The book itself is more like a historical curiosity than a classic in Iraqi literature since it was written by Saddam Hussein (under the not so clever pen name of S. Hussein).
Edited by Albino_Axolotlopenftl-capable alien species female protagonist merging consciousness with whale/ship/alien Literature
ftl-capable Space whale/living ship/alien species female protagonist merging consciousness with whaleshipalien (too long for title)
Sooo I've been through many of your tropes that rang with what I'm looking for. The only one I haven't found (that's in the title) is the merging cousciousness. Looking for the book for a friend, but I'll definitely read it myself when I get the title, because it sounds pretty awesome.
So then the somewhat vague description I have is:
A book about a girl and a strange alien species that are ftl capable. Humans ride the alien species by entering them and merging their consciousness. In the end the girl completely lets go of her consciousness and becomes one with her spacewhale. Yes, so I spoiled it for me too. The human society doesn't know of the transformations pilots undergo and it was found catalogued under juvenile/childrens book in a library.
Well it's vague, but thanks for hearing me out. If you have any clarifying questions, please tell me and I'll pass them on. My friend read the book when she was young, so maybe the answers won't be as clear as you are hoping for.
openNo Title Literature
Anyone familiar with The Crystal Star feeling up to, well, fixing it up a bit? I've never read it myself, but there seems to be a consensus that it's pretty bad. However, the page's description really seems like a Take That! to the book, and doesn't provide much information other than that the page's writer thought that it was bad.

There are two of these authors who write most of their work collaboratively, and I want to make a list of their works.
Should I make Creator pages for both of them and copy the same list onto both, or am I allowed to make one page for both of them, to reduce redundancy? I feel reluctant to only make a page for one of them.
(Another problem is that they have self-published their works under one imprint, and traditionally published with another.)