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Ask the Tropers:
open How to write a character who was abused? Literature
Okay, I have this character in mind that I want to write. His name is Valentino, and yes, he's Italian. When he was younger, his parents were alcoholics, and they accumulated a lot of debt, so they sold him as a Indentured servant to a wealthy family. There, he meet Johann, the grandson of the wealthy couple, who believes Tino is a girl because he was forced to wear a maids uniform while he worked with his family. Anyway, whenever Valentino was at his parent's house, they mistreated him. Like, a lot. His father sometimes beat him for not being a girl, like his father wanted him to be, and his mother would force him a small closet whenever she had guests over, and told him that if he made a sound, he would be beaten. Johann, who is three years older than Valentino, wrote to him often during the year. (He visited his grandparents during the summers, but stopped when his mother past away when he was twelve.) Valentino never received these letters, because his parents take them and hide them from Valentino until they stopped coming. Valentino never forgot Johann, and is sad because he thinks Johann forgot about him. When Valentino turned eighteen, he joined the navy and served a term (six years). When he revisits his parents, he is forced to clean out the attic, where he finds all of Johann's old letters. Valentino has enough of his parents and mails himself in a crate to his old friend. So, that's his backstory. Anyway, the problem I have is that I intend having Valentino be this innocent, fun-loving person, almost as if he's reliving his childhood, but I don't know if that falls in line with his backstory. I'm not a psychologist.
openFlynnbulwinter/darkelfwizard Literature
I have good to believe that a couple of "tropers" named Tropes/Flynnbulwinter and Tropers/darkelfwizard has been using the site as self-promotion for their indie fantasy book series,Anthologies of Ullord as Nikki Flynn and Edwin Dantes.
In the Ullord main work page, you could see in the edit history, that these people edited the pages themselves and putting elements in the trope pages.
They have not seem to stop, with them editing their own pages months ago. The Anthologies of Ullord are basic paint-by-numbers fantasy, which make this situation more odd. A troper suggested this to me after the High Crate "event."
I hope you would respond in kind,
S.V.
open Hey, I'm pretty much completely new here..., Literature
So where do I go to learn how to properly formatted page, because I noticed that a certain franchise, and I'm a decent fan of doesn't have a page on this wiki at all... and I would like to change that, but I don't want to break any rules or get myself in trouble simply due to being a complete newbie.
openHow to use the "Freemium" trope? Literature
Should it be under the trivia tab or on the main page of a work? Or, since it's Literature and not a video game or referencing a video game, is there a better trope to use?
The context is that the work is free to read online, but people who pay for VIP memberships to the site it's hosted on get early access to chapters/are ad-free/etc. It wouldn't be used as a trope that pertains to the story itself or to storytelling, so I feel like it should be under trivia. However I've seen it on the main page of other works and it isn't on the list of tropes on the main Trivia page.
open Time traveling Dumbledore army Literature
so as shown in Harry POA Hogwarts and by extension Dumbledore has at least one time turners and apparently when they use a time turner they duplicate themselves I should also note that it is an established fact he is the only one Voldemort fears so with that in mind why doesn't he just create an army of himself i know in stories they say you seeing your future self will create a problem but whatever problem that is can't be worse than wizard hitler
open new royalty girl in winter kingdom? Literature
Hello All, In an ideal world it would be a book about a girl who somehow becomes a queen/(some form of power position) and must rule in a winter land, with a night full of monsters and magic. She isn't sure who she can trust, etc. So I have a very specific tone for the book I'm requesting. I'm looking for a mix between 'The Little White Horse' and 'A Game of Thrones'. Now let me explain, I would like the beauty and suspense of TLWH and from GOT I would like only the north. By that I mean only the feeling of Winterfell and beyond the wall. I'm looking for some creepy/suspense/horror/beautiful/fantasy/magic book, preferably with a dash of romance. You will be my friend for life if you can find me this obscure wish book. (I feel like I should just write this myself heh). Thank you fantastical people!
openNo Title Literature
Kakai
has grammar issues, with all the most recent edits being difficult to read. I can't remember for certain but I think I PMed them about it once before the form letter PMs came into effect.
Also, found earlier this month they completely re-did the description for Literature.Safehold which myself and another troper had to clean up, and changed the page image for Literature.Apprentice Adept. I'm not necessarily opposed to the change of description (unless there's a procedure for that which wasn't followed) but the grammar issues are in there, too. The page image was just to a smaller version of the image already present, which I think is allowable w/o an image pickin' thread post, but mentioning it to be on the safe side.
EDIT: Yeah, I did PM Kakai about this back in early June and it was a form-letter PM.
Edited by sgamer82openFound a page that needs a revert Literature
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=FanFic.BetterLeftUnsaid#
- looks like the page got overwritten by accident. Can a mod hit the revert button? (it doesn't appear I can do it myself).
openMark Twain YMMV Literature
Please unlock the YMMV for Mark Twain. I intend to crosswick an approved CM entry for a work which does not exist on the wiki.
- Complete Monster (King Leopold's Soliloquy): King Leopold presents himself as a vicious hypocrite and sanctimonious tyrant who subjects the Free State of the Congo to horrific depravity. Having countless people killed and entire regions depopulated, Leopold demands high taxes and production rates from his supposed subjects, cutting off limbs or even castrating others who cannot meet them. Having people tortured and murdered in huge numbers, Leopold notes one of his mistakes was to have sixty innocents crucified and remarks fewer people would care if he'd them skinned. Uncaring of anything but lining his pockets, Leopold shows his only sympathy is to himself, indifferent to the half-million corpses he has left in his rush for money.
openNo Title Literature
I was surprised at how few tropes the Maze Runner series had, until I tried to add one myself and found out many more of them are there, just hidden, with this message at the top of the individual edit pages:
"Zero Context Example entries are NOT allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them."
What's the point of this? I've never seen it on any other pages I read or edited. Some of the "commented out" tropes DO have examples, and even if they don't, sometimes it's not even necessary because you can tell that someone is an Action Girl without listing every single Action Girly thing she's ever done. Can this be removed?
Edited by TheMoonopenQuick apology about a dumb edit Literature
Hello! Apologies if this isn't the correct place to put this.
I just wanted to apologize real quick about a dumb series of edits I made on the new trope Tourist Bump. I had changed the Twilight example based on a previous wording, only to see too late that it already got reworded by someone else. It wasn't my intention to screw it up like this; I tried changing it back but I screwed it up even more. I'm sorry about this mess; please feel free to change it back. I could even try doing it myself if necessary.
openNo Title Literature
Do earlier drafts of works that are changed significantly when they are finalized matter for trope entries?
I'm asking because in Carrera's Legions I removed the entry for A.K.A.-47 as not being the trope, guns renamed for trademark reasons, but simply using different names for equipment that's pretty much modern day (or even recent past) equipment IN THE FUTURE!.
enderheisenberg, who added the AKA-47 entry in the first place, re-added it after my removal (Edit War in and of itself), and added the line "These were direct conversions from early drafits where the story takes part on earth." That doesn't seem like it actually makes the entry an example, but there's enough uncertainty on my part that I thought I'd ask before taking any action.
openNo Title Literature
Literature.Tom Swift and YMMV.Tom Swift both include a section on an MSTed version of one of the books, claiming it to be from Mystery Science Theater 3000. As far as I can determine it's not from the show, it's a Fan Fiction MST-ing of the book. As such it seems like the whole thing should be deleted, or at least moved to a Fan Fiction/ page. Anybody else have an opinion on this?
[1]
: In the paragraph re the MST fanfic "Dale Goes Nuts!" by John Nowak and Matt Plotecher:
- This particular fanfic is less grim ... and shorter than their later MSTing of the dime novel "Tom Swift and his War Tank." [link goes to the same page as the link on our Literature.Tom Swift page]
Furthermore, the page itself has the note "This MiSTing is [c] copyright 2001 by John Nowak and Matt Plotecher."
Edited by randomsurferopenNo Title Literature
Looking for an opinion on certain creator edits before I, er, make some -
By and large, I figured the best policy creator-wise would be to leave the work page alone, myself, being obviously biased and, well, it's for the readers to decide what's appropriate to put there.
But here's the case I'm wondering about: what about errors on matters of fact (i.e., not opinions or views about the work, but statements about things described therein that directly contradict the work itself). I get people finding the books through the trope page and would rather not have 'em potentially doing so under false pretenses, so...
Cool? Not cool? Other thoughts?
openUsed Future clarification Literature
I need someone to attest if this trope even applies to given situation:
In Missile Gap
, the US government has its resources stretched to a near-breaking point. Most of the equipment, vehicles and what not that is available for civilians comes from the 50s, while the story is set in the 80s (or at the very least tail end of the 70s). And here comes my issue. It isn't exactly "future", at least in a clear, obvious way. However, the story is a serious Mind Screw
- by default, it is a far future, since the whole story is set millions of years in the future, with all characters and the world itself being just a snapshop (probably) of Earth in the wake of the Cuban Crisis and the consequences of that event in the new place; more importantly, characters in-universe are aware of this
- the story itself heavily employs the used gear aesthetics, especially since from in-universe perspective, characters expect new gizmos and design, rather than being reduced to reusing what should be send to a scrapyard decades ago
So... does Used Future work, or there should be other trope used to cover this?
Edited by StaniszopenNo Title Literature
How do I ask for troper attention to a work? as far as I can tell, I am the only one who has done any work on The Spellmonger Series in almost a year. It needs more work, but I can't do it all by myself
openNo Title Literature
You know how you're not supposed to use potholes to change trope names? Literature.Gadsby does this to nearly every single trope it has in order to be self-demonstrating (the book never uses the letter 'e', so any trope with an 'e' in its name is changed). Not to mention that the example description themselves avoid any word with an 'e', which makes some of them unnecessarily hard to understand.

I want to add an example to The Social Expert for a character from Warhammer 40k. Here's the problem.
Should I link to Warhammer 40,000 or to the book itself as a redlink? Should the example be under Literature or Tabletop Game?