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Ask the Tropers:
openPossible Troll
So a user by the name of bradyreino recently added some blatantly untrue things to the Total Drama main page (edits found here
) and while myself and another user removed them, is this something we should keep an eye on?
openRepeat AutoEroticTroping offense Webcomic
I ended up coming across the page TearJerker.Sonic Into Across And Beyond, as the main page has come up in the related query for another work I follow.
This would not be a problem if not for the following two reasons:
- The sole contributor to the article is Motorbike User 43, who is also the author of this fic.
- This person has already been suspended before
for Auto-Erotic Troping.
Though I hate to throw another user under the bus (they've consistently reacted very poorly to being called out for policy violations, self-flagellating rather than trying to improve), I draw the line at behavior indistinguishable from ignorance.
Edited by TrocyteVopenLaunched trope listed as nuked?
I launched my trope Lady Luck from TLP the other day. The page itself looks fine. But if I look at history in TLP, the draft is listed as nuked, not launched. And the trope isn't showing up in the tab of recent launches. What gives?
Edited by pyroclasticopenEdit war
On My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S9 E25 "The Ending of the End – Part 2" DragonMaster408 removed
Heroes' Frontier Step then BrianKT reverted it
then DragonMaster408 removed it again
and then BrianKT left an edit reason on the page "So Discord kick-started Equestria's counter attack in the most epic way possible not to amend for his mistake and because he truly cares about his friends? Was it still for selfish reasons?" without readding it, seems an edit war has erupted.
openNo Title Film
13 days ago I removed the following from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
Now, it should be noted that the movie's failings aren't all Shatner's fault. We can also thank Executive Meddling for all the forced "humor", while the 1988 WGA strike short-circuited the screenwriting and the infamous Special Effect Failure was due to ILM being too busy with a few other projects to work on the film.
Still, the basic concept was Shatner's idea (although making Sybok Spock's brother was a Harve Bennett decision), and he knew about the studio's humor requirements before he even began work. Gene Roddenberry himself had expressed strong reservations about the pitch; he had good reason to be concerned, as he had previously written his own story
about the crew meeting God and hated the result. (Though it should also be noted that Roddenberry's own counteroffered idea was, as it had been since the second movie, for the Enterprise crew to go back in time and either stop or commit the JFK assassination.) But Shatner persisted with the idea of Kirk beating God. Star Trek and religious topics have always been uneasy bedfellows; Roddenberry's well-documented atheism practically forced the series to always turn whatever "God" it ran into (the being in this movie as well as the Q Continuum) into Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. Deep Space Nine is the only series to pull it off, and Trekkies are divided on even that. Nevertheless, many fans prefer to ignore this entry entirely and simply go from the fourth movie directly to the sixth. Frontier is also the only one of the original films to have never been given a Director's Cut; Shatner has always wanted to do it, but Paramount Pictures likewise refuses to let him.
This movie isn't a total write-off, though: Star Trek V also features plenty of Character Development scenes between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (the Bookends with the three camping are quite enjoyable), a brilliant backstory scene involving McCoy and his father, and has a collection of well-imagined individual sequences such as Coming in Hot with a shuttlecraft. Consensus is that while Shatner's storytelling abilities might be a bit on the weak side, he certainly had an eye for good setpieces. Josh Marsfelder at Vaka Rangi, and his commenters, have much more to say about what is right as well as wrong with The Final Frontier
.
I left the following edit reason:
12 days ago The Amazing Blachman
added this:
With the following edit reason:
openStrawman Has a Point query
Recently, I noticed that an instance of Strawman Has a Point in Calvin and Hobbes was deleted, with this being the stated edit reason:
I personally disagree with this removal. For context, the entry was about a Story Arc where Calvin is presented as wholly in the wrong for not reacting well to an assignment; but while he does handle it in about the worst way possible, the narrative never addresses that the assignment itself (gathering fifty leaves, each from a different species of tree, then putting them in a collection and labeling each one with both its tree's common and scientific names) is downright unreasonable to expect a first-grader to do, which vindicates at least some of Calvin's resentment at having to do it.
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
openComplaining and poor grammar on Music
Radiant Dawn Lord has made a few very complainy edits, with grammar and wording issues, to YMMV.Music 2021. The most recent one, which was made today, is this one:
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Aside from Maddie being forced to take the role as an autistic character and was very sad about it, the character Music herself suffers from this. Her sister, Zu, just sees her as an unhuman-like burden, and all those supposed "treatments" she gets when she stims are actually restraining techniques that are SO BAD they can potentially hurt, or worst-case kill, Music. It's really not hard to feel sorry her, character and actress. Seriously, Music and Maddie should have deserved better, and should have been not made as caricatures not just for autistic people, but also for disabled people in general.
Others include the following (these have since been rewritten):
- Pandering to the Base (just this alone, with no additional context)
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Music, oh so much. If this film actually received any help from REAL autistic people, Music would've not only had more screen time, but would've also been portrayed as a much more reasonable and sympathetic character who'll actually have a very cement supporting relationship with her sister, rather than as an immature Hollywood autistic burden she was being portrayed as.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Obviously, this film would have been more meaningful and inspirational if the main character, Zu, actually spent some time in the film getting to know her sister, Music, and understand her needs so both Music and Zu can have a decent character development plot. But, instead, this is just about Zu, and only Zu, trying to cope with own struggles of alcoholism, drug dealing, and trying to deal with her "poorly behaved" autistic sister, and not much else.
I have previously sent a notifier for the poor grammar on these past edits.
Edited by ZuxtronopenSelf Promoting Troper?
This one is a bit weird, and I'm not sure It's strictly bad, it's just... weird and I wanted to probe the hive mind about it.
Charles Phipps is clearly Creator.CT Phipps (He makes no secret of this, it's his forum signature), which, fine, authors can be tropers and trope their own works. The part that gets weird is whenever he write an example in a trope page about his work, he'll always plug the work name "by C.T. Phipps". For examples:
- This is the policy of the Vampire Nation in Straight Outta Fangton by C.T. Phipps. (...)
- This is the case for vampires in the Straight Outta Fangton books by C.T. Phipps. (...)
- Gary Karkofsky in The Supervillainy Saga by C.T. Phipps is a prime example of such. (...)
(See basically any trope page one his creator page's related to tab
)
Now, this isn't strictly wrong at all. It's just that we don't usually list the author of a work in an example unless it's relevant and there's no policy for or against it afaik, and even then that's not a big issue, what makes me bring this here is that it's clearly being done by the author himself so it kinda enters this weird Shameless Self-Promotion territory and I'm not sure if it's something that needs to be addressed. And again, I wanna emphasize that this isn't like he's sockpuppetting or anything, he's pretty open about who he is. I'm not accusing him of violating actual policy or anything underhanded, it's more a question of form.
I removed the one in Stronger with Age at first coz it felt weird to have just the one example that listed an author, but undid it coz I really wasn't sure how to proceed.
Edited by GhilzopenTV Tropes as a Reliable Source of Information
I've recently seen some folks around other sites criticizing TV Tropes as a poor source of information (in the same way Wikipedia is frequently called as an unreliable source by people). In fact, I myself have been accused of adding false/erroneous information to the site (and I know for a fact that I've made my share of mistakes before - and fixed them).
Regardless, of it got me thinking. Since TV Tropes is a Wiki (and thus considered a reputable source of information by certain people), how do we control the veracity of information added to this site in edits, especially regarding obscure shows and behind-the-scenes info? And SHOULD we monitor this kind of stuff?
In theory, somebody could add false (or even damaging) info to a page for an obscure TV show with little traffic (or to a similarly little-visited page for Useful Notes or something similar), and it could remain there for years if nobody knows enough to verify the info. Heck, a person could probably even make a page for a show that doesn't exist and claim it's lost media, or even add an example that never actually occurred in the slightest.
I'm not saying we need to add a citations system or anything, but I am wondering if there is something that can be done about people trying to add false/damaging information (other than some editor randomly stumbles on it anywhere between a few days to a few years after it got added and removes it), especially since doing so could be beneficial to the reputation and integrity of this site.
I've browsed TV Tropes for years, and the site's become a lot more formal over that time, so maybe improving ourselves as a reputable source is the next step? Misinformation is a seriously problem on the Internet, after all.
openContemplating Cut Lit for this page
The Headscratchers page for ''The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack'' questions nothing about the show itself and rather focuses on its supposed cancellation/ending, in a complaining matter. I'm not sure though if it's completely justified to send to the Cut List, as it does ask questions related to the show, albeit not its in-universe content.
Edited by TVGuy2001openThis Troper talk on Headcsratchers and WMG
Are we allowed to use "I", "me", or "myself" on Headscratchers and WMG pages? I always thought that was the norm since these pages are more subjective in nature than those with trope examples.
openTropes of one work on the subpages of another
I'm having a disagreement with Spectacular Troper over the content on Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail and the other fanfic pages made by the same author. They've reverted some of the edits I've made, so I wanted to bring this here so that it doesn't become an edit war.
Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail has a lot of trope subpages, which list not only examples from the work itself, but also examples from its sequel and prequel, which already have their own pages. I want to move those examples to the pages of those works: SpectacularTroper does not. Is it okay to move those examples?
openWhat if an AlternateUniverse had an AlternateSelf?
The MCU animated series What If…? (2021) has stories set in alternate universes than the MCU main one. There is an entry for Alternate Self, listing characters with divergences from the originals. I removed it saying "Trope misuse. Original and alternate must meet.", but then it was restored by Asherinka, who said "There is no such requirement according to the trope page. All variants in the MCU are valid examples of Alternate Self."
On a surface reading, he's right, the trope does not explicitly demand original and variant to meet. However, it can be understood by context: the description is about the comparisons and identity conflicts between both, and all the examples are about meetings of original and variant. And besides, just common sense: if "alternate version of a character" was in itself a trope, with no meeting required, it would be completely redundant with Alternate Universe, as everybody in such a universe is a variant of someone from the main universe by definition (barring some limited exceptions, like canon foreigners).
I don't want to start an edit war over this, so I would like to hear someone else's opinion.
openRegarding Sister Floriana and the case of stolen artwork.
So on this ATT thread
, there was a discussion regarding a now-permabanned troper's problematic edits which included alt-right apologism among other things. One of the things mentioned is a fanfic called Sister Floriana, and upon further investigation, there was the issue that the work was stealing art from a Japanese Twitter artist named Diva
, whom neither gave the fanfic writer permission to use their art, nor do they endorse the content of said fanfic.
Well, after taking a look myself, I found that Diva's artwork does actually belong to a work. It's called Little Nuns, and it's a webcomic of sorts which deals with the Moe hijinx of said nuns. It's very wholesome and does not contain any political stuff behind the scenes that the fanfic contains.
What are the policies for works stealing artwork directly from other works? Because Sister Floriana is sounding alarm bells over potential violation of rules on principle.
openQuestionable Deletion?
On saw this paragraph was deleted by Johnny Be Bad on Big Mouth with no edit reason.
- Incels and the Men Going Their Own Way movement are shown as the manipulative hate groups that they are, preying on ignorant and impressionable young white men and middle school boys and showing them self victimizing techniques and later using their "victim" status as an excuse to blame all of their problems on women, minorities and LGBT+ people.
Because these type of examples usually cause a bit of a conflict, i wonder if it's a justifiable deletion.
Pls stop calling everything Harsher In Hindsight
openRequesting assistance with cleaning up the Series/BigBrother pages Live Action TV
So... I'm not sure this is the place to bring this up (I don't use forums much if ever), but I've been meaning to for a while now...
I edit for the show Survivor a lot, and someone brought up the point that you aren't really supposed to bring real life into reality tv shows.
This is a bit of an issue where Big Brother is concerned. I am mainly referring to the U.S versions, as they are the bulk of what's discussed.
On top of that, a lot of the entries are what people call... bad. Many entries are blatantly written during the season, with tense not being updated in the slightest, and a wholeeeeeee lotta entries are just wrong, particularly audience reactions.
I'd fix this myself but
1) I do not watch or even have the capability of watching Big Brother, and am restricted to what the wiki + internet will tell me (which is not all that much) + what is blatantly wrong (which is a lot).
2) New stuff keeps getting added and I can't keep up.
3) Some of the stuff that sounds too ridiculous and/or conspiratorial to be factually accurate is actually correct. For example, these:
- Creator's Pet: Frankie of 16. They even delayed a challenge for a couple of hours to save him from elimination.Broken Base: Is Big Brother 21 a good season? Due to the unique combination of having one of the worst pre-jury sessions in the history of the show, along with a great jury phase where nearly every pre-jury villain got what was coming to them week after week, only to end with the season's unofficial heroes getting evicted just before the finale for the season's Manipulative Bastard to win, and then promptly get called out on his racist behavior... yeah, Big Brother 21 is polarizing, to say the least.
To give an idea of some of the issues happening here, I'm gonna post some images.

- Just blatant misuse here, though I do wonder where it goes (Julie Chen is the show's host)Click if you need to see the transcript Big "OMG!": A few days before Double Eviction night, CBS Chairman Les Moonves - Julie Chen's husband - was fired in the wake of several accusations of sexual harassment against him. At the conclusion of DE night, Julie signed off using her married surname for the first time in the show's history. Within the hour, Twitter exploded.

- This is somehow an Adorkable entryClick if you need to see the transcript Raven is very lovable and dorky and she's also the type to get easily excited over things. She shows to be enthusiastic and perky come every eviction vote with Julie. Raven was also the one who wanted temporary tattoos after the "Inked & Evicted" challenge ended. Her showmance partner Matt chose a temptation where he was made to dress as a ballerina. Raven is a dance teacher, so, naturally, after the challenge ends, he gave his tutu for her to wear for fun. However, her adorable personality is later on tainted and viewed in a more negative light as she reveals that underneath her cutesy persona, there lies a very nasty and violent personality. She's not as cute when she's bullying people or exploding in anger at others. The fact that she constantly embellishes stuff about her real life does not make her the least bit endearing.

- Under Critical DissonanceClick if you need to see the transcript Season 20. Fans love it because it's gotten back to unpredictable gameplay, but there's a lot of ego in the house this season and controversial behavior both on the televised episodes and especially on the live feeds.

- Under Never Live It DownClick if you need to see the transcript Averted - Jade Goody would have never lived down the bullying of Shilpa Shetty in Celebrity Big Brother or her stints on the previous Big Brothers if she were still alive. Which is, in hindsight... very saddening. Goody's vile behavior was punished on the most extreme level- her body withered and developed terminal cervical cancer. She spent one month married to fellow houseguest Jack Tweed. And what makes this so eerie is that Goody developed this cancer when she appeared on the Indian version of Big Brother, Bigg Boss... after she previously harassed an Indian actress... two days into the playing.....almost as though she fell victim to a spiteful Indian curse coming onto that show.

- Deleted this example of The Scrappy already, but it's a worth posting as an example because it has pretty much everything you shouldn't do.Click if you need to see the transcript Swaggy C is hated for being an arrogant douche 90% of the time, and showmancing Bayleigh 10% of the time. As soon as that guy opened his mouth he quickly became one of the most disliked African American contestants in a VERY long time. Though like Rachel he did get some woobie points after revealing his backstory where his mom left him at three years old, and his dad died when he was in high school. He even got a Take That, Scrappy! from Julie Chen who showed him his intro video showing he didn't want to be seen as the jerky, smug, alliance leader. He's also a sore loser given that he refuses to talk to Tyler the one who orchestrated his backdoor on the outside.
And thennnnn there's the Character pages, which consist of pretty much everything the viewers want them to.
I seriously have no idea what goes into character pages normally, but I'm pretty sure it ain't any of this.

- (Also contains speculation and assumptions)Click if you need to see the transcript Too Dumb to Live: Why did Derrick choose to become aligned so close with Cody? Because Cody's too stupid to think Derrick could possibly be a threat. He's thought of pretty much no major moves by himself. To wit: Cody won an early Head of Household. He used it to target Brittany, who had no intention of getting him out. He never stopped to question whether or not she'd actually target him. Joined in on voting out a lot of people who would have taken him further in the game like Christine and Nicole. Not once stopped to think that Derrick had never faced the block until the final 50 minutes of the game, missing the obvious red flag of that and how he was just following Derrick's word. When confronted with the chance to bring Victoria, who would have gotten him a guaranteed win, to the finals, he chose to take Derrick. Guess who won?

- The What An Idiot page for this show is somehow nicer than the character page.Click if you need to see the transcript Idiot Hero: Cody comes across as one of the dumber and less intelligent houseguests of the season. He has proven time and time again that he is not smart in terms of strategy and he strongly depends on Derrick in the strategic department. Cody won the Final HOH of the season, which meant that he was able to choose or decide who he wanted to take to the Final 2 with him. His options were either the biggest threat and most dangerous player in the game yet his closest ally and friend (Derrick) or the most useless, terrible player in the game who is considered to be the ultimate floater who got dragged to the end but whom Cody doesn't personally like (Victoria). Who does Cody ultimately end up choosing to take to the Final 2 with him? That's right. DERRICK. Cody actually took Derrick, the most dangerous player in the entire game, to the Final 2, somewhat feeling confident that he could beat him, instead of actually taking Victoria, the ultimate goat, someone whom he 100% knows he could have beaten. When it came time for the jury to ask the two of them questions, Cody was both shocked and surprised to hear how the jury really viewed him, which was basically as Derrick's loyal lapdog or puppy. It was at that point that Cody realized that he made a half a million dollar mistake and realized that he had no shot at beating Derrick. Cody ended up losing to Derrick in a near unanimous 7-2 jury vote. Cody, did anyone tell you that Big Brother isn't about loyalty when you get to the Final 3 and even more, the Final 2? You're in a game to win $500,000! What. an. idiot.

- Click if you need to see the transcript Bait the Dog: Frankie appeared as though he would be a likeable, upbeat and happy gay houseguest. Turns out that he is really extremely narcissistic, hateful, vile, attention seeking, and self absorbed. Shouldn't we have all remembered Andy from last season?


- Click if you need to see the transcript Jerkass: Mixed with Bait the Dog - it starts off as a nice and well-mannered house, but once Paul enters the fray, all hell breaks loose. It also rivals BB 15's rotten apple cast. Big Brother 15 gave us bigot city, Big Brother 19 gives us Spoiled Brat city mixed with Crazytown. All the thoroughly nice people except for Kevin (and arguably Mark) are gobbled up before the game reaches the halfway point. So many of them are gonna have to go into hiding post-season and freeze out their detractors on social media. If your name isn't Cameron, Megan (Public service announcement: please don't harass the PTSD sufferer, or you're scum), Jillian, Dominique, Ramses, or Kevin, you gunna get it!

- Good lord this is long...Click if you need to see the transcript The Bully: Many of the houseguests used intimidation tactics and bullying to further their games. But this had more to do with having a group or mob mentality more than anything else. Houseguests such as Paul, Alex, Christmas, Josh, Cody, Jessica, and Raven had no problem partaking in the bullying of other houseguests which caused a lot of animosity and tension to rise in the house. Paul was the centrepiece of pretty much all of the bullying in the house as he was the one who was encouraging and inciting it for the most part. His targets were primarily Cody and Jessica, but he would also use other houseguests such as Josh to also bully them as well. Cody and Jessica bullied people such as Christmas, Alex, Paul, and Josh at various points in the game. Cody verbally attacked and physically threatened Paul after he had nominated him in Week 5. Cody also bullied Josh in Week 6 that he was going to physically beat up Josh outside of the house and make his life a living Hell. Jessica also did her fair share of bullying when she humiliated Josh in front of everyone after not voting to keep Jillian by calling him a crybaby victim. Josh ended up crying hysterically afterwards and the other houseguests had to comfort him. Jessica also personally attacked Josh numerous times by fat shaming him (calling him fat ass, widdle-waddle, fat f-ck, etc) and insulting his intelligence by calling him a moron and the dumbest person she's ever met. This also resulted in Josh crying and the houseguests having to comfort and support him. Christmas also did her fair share of bullying but most of it was towards Cody and Josh. She attacked Cody by calling him a disgraceful marine and questioning has military service. And Christmas would also act as a Big Sister Bully to Josh whenever he ended up doing something that she didn't like or approve of. Alex bullied people like Jessica, Cody, Elena and Kevin unnecessarily. She constantly bashed them behind their back and antagonized them by starting fights and conflicts with them. Josh also frequently resorted to using intimidation and bullying towards other houseguests such as Cody, Mark, Elena, Kevin, Jessica. He has personally attacked all of them, insulted them and has resorted to banging pots and pans in their faces in order to torment them all while singing a circus tune. Raven also got into the mob mentality of bullying when she yelled and attacked Jessica by calling her endless derogatory names and consistently cursing at her and Cody during the house fight that took place in Week 5. At some point, everyone has come across as a bully and this is definitely a season where bullying took centre stage in the game. The last recent season to showcase bullying to this strength was Big Brother 15.
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 PrimisopenEdit war on Captain Planet YMMV Western Animation
Last month, Sedaver added this
to Captain Planet and the Planeteers under Harsher in Hindsight. I removed it after taking it to the clean up thread
, noting in the edit reason that it violated the ROCEJ. Today, I found that they had readded it, with this edit reason:
This entry was meant to refer to the Capitol Riot itself, not Trump.
Edited by fraggleloveropenYMMV page turned into self-demonstrating
Recently, the YMMV page for Darkseid was completely rewritten to be from his POV. I'm pretty sure this was done because he recently got his own Self-Demonstrating page and the YMMV was changed as a result.
However, we've been trying to stop self-demonstrating writing from leaking to the subpages (such as the clean-up we had for Deadpool). Since this is recent enough, can we get a page revert to how it was a few days ago?

So...I noticed the page for A Time to Kill was made years ago by erforce, who's account was deleted a while ago. Overall, the way it was all written sounds weirdly apologetic to the two white supremacists while overtly critical to Carl and the protagonists of the film.
I'll be very honest; I'm unfamiliar with the policy in regard to entries with tropes like Black-and-Gray Morality, if any, so I will need the perspective or knowledge of fellow tropers on this one.
I was looking through the page, and then I noticed the entries done for Black-and-Gray Morality, and I noticed this:
* What the men did to his daughter was undoubtedly reprehensible, but did that give Carl Lee the right to take their lives? If it had been a black rapist getting shot, would there be as much discussion? What if it had been your child? Well, much depends on the personal standpoint.
I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with this entry, aside from the obvious whataboutism, but there's something that seems a bit off.
I'm also thinking, upon second inspection, it's not just the entries for that trope that are the only problematic thing about the way this page was written. Again, alot of this was edited by other tropers, but I do know that it wasn't really altered so much as it was broken up into smaller entries from what Erforce originally had written. There's more than what I've listed here, but that can be seen on the page itself.
Overall, what should be my next step of action with this? More importantly, what does everyone else make of how this page was written?
Edited by Stardust5099