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 Nostalgia Critic Awesome Moments Web Original
On the Nostalgia Critic Awesome Moments page, there is a bit of conflict over whether this example from the Blues Brothers 2000 review should be included: "The Critic's constant tearing into Blues Brothers 2000 for being a severe downgrade of the original. He even goes out of character at a few points, one in which he interrupts his "Fuckital" ad to show the statue of The Blues Brothers atop the Hollywood Blvd. Theater to show how the original movie is such a symbol of Chicago." Some people said this shouldn't be included because in the skit, there was a Black Comedy bit where one of the characters overdoses on the "Fuckital" and is implied to have died, with them saying that it shouldn't be an awesome moment because the Critic was more concerned with a bad movie than someone else's life. While in-universe, it may be the Critic being selfish, from a meta perspective, the creator, Doug Walker was making a statement about the movie's poor quality and calls out how it fails to live up to the original film. So should it be included?
Edited by costanton11openInclusion of DesignatedHero in VillainProtagonist
26 Dec, THEKHAN added an example in Villain Protagonist. As the own example admitted that this was an example of Designated Hero(aka-a character that, despite his lack of heroic qualities is, where the history is concerned, a hero), i removed this with "Designated hero = not a villain" as edit reason. 1 Jan, THEKHAN readded the example with the following edit reason: "Yeah right. Stop defending a badly made plot by a high school misantrophe, would you? She and her entire race are villains, full stop. Full stop. The fanbase and the author itself claims that it has no real villains, but that's only really because the Drow are the creator's pets and are evil for the sake of being evil, but unlike the Dn D drow nothing about their society requires them to do any of the shit they do"
openreporting review
This review
is about the work's TV Tropes article, rather than the work itself. I think I reported it way back when (I assume so, since I can't click the flag button) but there's been no change. Can I report it again somewhere?
openIs someone trying to ban-evade through me?
If someone PM's you telling you to add some trope examples, but that person has been suspended, is that person trying to ban evade through you? I've heard of ban evading, and I think this person is trying to do that through me, but I'm not sure, so I came here to hopefully get an answer. I have not responded to these PM's (I've been sent at least two such PM's from the same person), because I know this person has been suspended and I'm not about to get my own self suspended a second time.
Edited by mouschilightopenthis is probably going to sound weird... can we make People Sit On Chickens?
Can we make an Administrivia page that explains how just because something is uncommon, it's presence in media is not necessarily a trope. I explicated this just now in a TLP draft with the People Sit On Chickens thing (people commonly sit on different kinds of chairs, this person sits on a chicken instead, is Not A Trope). Like people don't often have Irish Accents, but simply having one is not a trope. There are ways for an Irish accent to be used for storytelling purposes, but just having one is not. I think having an administrivia page to say "Uncommon does not equal Trope" would be useful, because I think a lot of people think both that 1. being unusual in real life makes fictional appearances notable and 2. since Too Rare To Trope implies that things that are uncommon but not rare can be troped, they are automatically tropes.
Also, Too Rare To Trope does not cover this. The TLP I am specifically talking about is called Non-Binary, and is currently "This Work Has A Non-Binary Character" — that is not rare, in modern times it is not particularly uncommon, but the OP is saying that since non-binary characters are not as common as male and female characters, it is a trope. Obviously, how common something chairs is compared to an equally chairs similar thing has no effect on it being less chairs in itself. It's like doing nothing but sitting, but on chickens this time. (Now, if you're doing it to hide the chickens or to incubate their eggs, or because it's a giant mutant that you've trained in order to ride...)
openMLP the Movie cleanup
Saw this on What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?.Film and... it's just silly. (And what does Robbie Rotten have to do with anything?)
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): Between the multiple examples of Getting Crap Past the Radar, a Downer Beginning with scary petrification, an Implied Death Threat, a Not-So-Safe Harbor where the heroes were almost Made a Slave, a depressing sequence of Canterlot's population enslaved, drowning (Robbie Rotten lampshades it here
), a severe Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure, a severe Disney Death (almost on par with Disney itself), and a Family-Unfriendly Disney Villain Death, it's easy for parents to wonder if this movie is appropriate for young children.
openFranchise Original Sin - Final Fantasy
Tropers.Another Duck removed a large section of the FranchiseOriginalSin.Final Fantasy page, for reasons that I dispute.
His edit reason was: "This isn't a flaw that's been exaggerated or left unchecked in later games. It's always been there, and overall character design has been a positive trait of the series."
The two of us then disputed this in P Ms and got nowhere. I'll try to summarize the arguments.
Firstly, the second point he raises is something I argued against with cited examples of journalists, editorials, forum posts, and comments which hold mostly negative opinions on the series' character designs from FFX and beyond. Naturally, FF is a very widespread series, so you'll always have people who disagree, but the onset of complaints en masse didn't start until FFX. Duck retorted this by saying that he could also find links of dissenting opinion to refute me, but when I asked that he do so, he refused for lack of time.
On the second point, I explained that the reason the issue about character design was overlooked in previous games is because in-game graphics did not match the design of the characters due to technical limitations. When the hardware caught up to the art in FFX, that's where the complaints started. He replied "The artwork of FFVII and FFVIII, for instance, isn't that detailed, and it's reasonably accurately represented in the FM Vs. The artwork of the games prior to that, including the character portraits, is far more detailed" which, again, is addressed in the example itself. Tetsuya Nomura's original art style was specifically chosen to be simple because of the graphical limitations of the PSX console, but in later games, he went much more heavily into detail because the hardware could keep up. Incidentally, this is also why people have complained about his REDESIGNS of the FFVII and FFVIII characters in the remakes, sequels or spin-offs such as Kingdom Hearts.
He then asked me whether or not the issue in question "overshadowed" other aspects of the game, and said that the Laconic's wording means those aspects must be "overshadowed". I said that I don't agree with his interpretation of either definition, to which he called my argument "semantics", and when I disagreednote Because he is literally making a semantic argument., he told me "I get the impression you don't understand what 'semantics' means".
Edited by NubianSatyressopenYMMV.MyLittlePonyTheMovie2017 Western Animation
SenorCornholio made very long entries to the YMMV page for the G4 MLP movie about They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot by outlining an entire alternate scenario for the movie/final battle, which i don't think is how that trope works, as well as a very long edit about Twilight's friends sucking with a lot of potholes.
"** The fact that Twilight's magic is completely limited in this movie ends up resulting in plenty of scenes where it could have helped them out, but didn't. As an example, after Twilight's screwing everything up and chewing out her friends results in her being captured, she could have stayed long enough to listen to Tempest Shadow's Villain Song, realized she failed friendship, used one of her various self-inflicted spells to escape (notice how the cage she's in only resists magic, but never prevents it), and declares that she'll save Tempest from what she became, all in time to meet up with her friends for the Final Battle, which also would have led to her realizing that friendship really did bring everyone together. It could have also resulted in a climactic battle with Tempest where Twilight tries to convince her that she's better than she thinks she is, leading to a Heel–Face Turn on her part like it does in the movie proper. But because she doesn't, she ends up as the Damsel in Distress that needs to be saved, and as an added kick in the teeth, her magic is stolen so she can't even try fighting anyway."
"** The Mane Five aside of Twilight can be seen as this, namely during their argument scene. Most of them did virtually nothing to help the situation involving Tempest Shadow and the Storm King get any better, either providing seemingly nothing or outright making the situation worse like with Rainbow Dash's impulsive Sonic Rainboom on Celaeno's ship, and especially Pinkie Pie's antics in Klugetown. And what's more is that they're exceptionally tongue-in-cheek about their screw-ups, like ruining several anthropomorphic creatures' homes and nearly getting five pirates and a cat man killed isn't a big deal. This leads to Twilight attempting to steal the Pearl of Transformation and arguing with her friends which, to be fair, the argument does make a point about how both Twilight and her friends messed up. However, after Twilight says her Wham Line, the five of them head off to leave Twilight alone, still fully aware that Tempest Shadow is after her, and only after she's captured do they go back to caring about her. When Twilight told Pinkie she'd be better off with without friends like them, maybe there was more truth to that statement than the writing staff realized."
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.MyLittlePonyTheMovie2017
In general the page also has stuff like "* What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Between the multiple examples of Getting Crap Past the Radar, a Downer Beginning with scary petrification, an Implied Death Threat, a Not-So-Safe Harbor where the heroes were almost Made a Slave, a depressing sequence of Canterlot's population enslaved, drowning (Robbie Rotten lampshades it here
), a severe Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure, and a Family-Unfriendly Disney Villain Death, it's easy for parents to wonder if this movie is appropriate for young children. Then at the same time, the show has done the same concepts many times before and still managed to hold a TV-Y rating, and the movie still manages to be as simple and sugary as well, so once again it all comes down to one's personal interpretation." which contradicts itself multiple times.
openNative Americans Liking an American President Equals Germans Love David Hasselhoff
I dont think it does. I like the entry itself, but its NOT Germans Love David Hasselhoff. They are from the SAME country? Why was it put there.
Its on Germans Love David Hasselhoff People.
openpermission to remove sbih entry
Edit: Ignore. They deleted it themself after seeing there was a discussion.
From Horrible.Comic Books. This is the entry in question:
- Kirkman's run on Ultimate X Men ended with him retconning almost every major change he had made, but it was still, sadly, not enough to wipe the long, dragging Magician arc from readers' memories. Kurt Wagner going batshit insane from his time in the Weapon X program could've been done as Character Development, but when coupled with his sudden off-the-wall homophobia and super-creepy Annie Wilkes-like behavior towards Dazzler, it just wound up being the final straw.
I'm bringing it here to avoid getting involved in an edit war. The above entry was deleted by another user because they misunderstood it as being about the entire run, but it was added again by someone else with only the first couple of lines switched around. As I mentioned on the discussion page before it was re-added, it probably shouldn't be on anyway. Apart from having pretty much no detail, all that it's about is a personal disagreement about the direction being taken with one character (and with only two aspects if it at that). Plus from what I've read, Kurt's homophobic tendencies, while more aggressive than before, don't come out of nowhere like the entry seems to suggest. Nothing about it implies horrible writing by itself, and even if it did that's still just one element. It certainly wont make sense to anyone unfamiliar with the comics anyway.
I also couldn't find anything suggesting that the story arc has a poor enough reputation to even warrant a place on the page in the first place. And the name of the arc (Magician) is incorrect.
Edited by supergodopenNo title
This example from CriticalResearchFailure.The Nostalgia Critic feels a little opinion-based to me, but I'm not sure. What do you think?
- In his Editorial, "Can Hype Kill a Good Film?", he makes some egregious errors about people not thinking films like Frozen are good, but overhyped. The biggest one, especially if you're a troper, is that he states that Hype Backlash is where people liked something already, but they turned away from it because it got so insanely popular in the marketing and people talking about it. That's actually the definition of It's Popular, Now It Sucks!. Hype Backlash is actually defined as when people hear all the praises of something so much, that when they finally sit down to watch, read, or try whatever it is, they don't see what the big deal is about. Such is the case with Frozen. Many people don't see what the big deal is with the film for several reasons; such as it being derivative of other Disney works, like The Lion King, being a major argument, the songs not being that great, fans of the film saying it shows a pro-feminist message or is about gay rights, which it outright doesn't and isn't (as said by the people who worked on it), people saying it's the best Disney film in years when it has several contenders (like Big Hero Six, most Pixar movies, Meet the Robinsons, etc), etc. Most people who don't constantly sing its praises just see it as "meh", as it's not necessarily a bad film, but it's also not as great as others claim for them. Doug seems to not have gotten the memo, though, as he's repeated the wrong information about the trope in some of his V-Logs, literally saying something along the lines of, "they already liked it, but the hype killed it for them." While there could be people that did like the film, but that happened, that's still not the right trope. Nowadays, many people who are curious about the film go into it with a grain of salt because of how overhyped it's gotten. It's definitely weird because you'd expect Doug to know what Hype Backlash is already, seeing as he's reviewed films as the Critic, and himself, where most of his opinions on why they suck can, partly, be chalked up to not getting, or hating, the hype around them. Again, The Lion King being a major one.
openAccidentally created a page without meaning to.
Can you delete a page you accidentally created. I was trying to create a separate Trope for page for a Big Hero 6 fanfic I like. It's called The Pulse. But as it turns out, there's a comic book series with the same title. (The comic is a Marvel series written by Brian Michael Bendis And It redirected me to a Fan Works page with the Comic Book and YMMV pages for the Pulse. The BH 6 fanfic itself is in no way related to the Pulse comic book. I just wanted to know if there's some way to delete the Fan Fic page. Here's the link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/ThePulse
If you can help me, it would be much appreciated.
resolved Removing a re-added MemeticLoser entry
I’ve already brought this to the ‘Memetic X Cleanup’ thread, but since that thread hasn’t seen much use in the past month, I’ve decided to also bring this here in the hopes that this can get resolved quicker.
Yesterday I found this Memetic Loser entry on the YMMV Mortal Kombat 1 page:
- Kotal continues this trend too. His sole mention in the game's story mode is a line where he lost to Raiden offscreen.
I had previously removed this entry as, while he may have been a Memetic Loser in the previous game, not only was Kotal not the only character Raiden defeated offscreen (two other characters, Sheeva and Motaro, were also listed among those that Raiden had defeated offscreen and even then it’s stated that Raiden had also defeated many others besides them, those three were just the only ones to get name-dropped) but the fanbase itself has not singled out Kotal’s loss specifically, in fact this throwaway line has barely even been talked about by the fanbase at all thus far.
However I saw that someone has recently re-added and reworded the entry without an edit reason. As the person who removed it initially, I obviously think that the entry should be removed again for the reasons that I’ve described, especially since no reason was given for adding it back.
Edited by CorvusIXopenScrappy misuse(?)
- The Scrappy: This show's incarnation of Velma is not only the most hated incarnation of the character but also one of, if not the most hated character in the Scooby Doo franchise by being a self righteous, grating, hypocritical, petty, and cruel Designated Hero with no redeeming qualities.
While the characters is widely hated by Scooby-Doo fans, I believe this is misuse as Scrappy must be hated by fans of the specific work and is about consistently hated characters not hated versions of otherwise popular ones. (Hence the Titans of Teen Titans Go! not counting despite the show getting similar backlash.)
If this Velma was hated by those who otherwise liked the show, I'd say she counts. But while I've seen implications of such, the show is such a negativity sink I can't tell for sure and am leaning to "hated by non-fans of the work" misuse.
I asked Scrappy Cleanup
but got nothing. Prior discussion on the matter was unclear given the version of characters grey area. The Scooby Doo thread
was also unsure, not saying if her haters otherwise like the show and saying this was more a definitional question than popularity one.
Thoughts on the matter? Would Overshadowed by Controversy be a better fit as it's seemingly impossible to talk about anything other than the character as opposed to the shows other merits/flaws? Can anyone confirm or deny if she's hated by those who otherwise like the show?
Edited by Ferot_DreadnaughtopenWMG pages for creators
So WMG.Lady Gaga has two sections: one for her music videos and one seemingly about Lady Gaga herself. I just had to remove a section about Lady Gaga having an Oedipus Complex for her real life father and there's another example about Lady gaga being a Satan-worshipper, which is some Illuminati-level conspiracy theory crafting.
Now, I know the section about her videos is fine as it's making guesses about her work, but this section seems like it's violating all kinds of Real Life Troping and gossip policies.
Is this ok? Should it be removed? And while this is the only page I cam across, should WMG pages for creators that talk about the creator and not their work be blanket-banned?
open TLP Editor editing other's drafts past basic tweaks
Aqua Eclipse has been editing other people's TLP proposals without regularly saying or stating what they are doing, and in some cases has made major changes to the proposal, when they are not the creator.
- here
on Gratuitous Chinese
- here
on Fighting Your Future Self
- here
on my own, Rough Overalls (it was formatting, but I'd have appreciated some notation in the replies)
- here
on Kiddy Coveralls, another I'm working on, though they stated what they did
- ETA: here
on Homeowners' Autocracy, where they added an example directly instead of putting it in the comments and said so
.
They were asked by War Jay 77 to stop editing in this fashion
. Twice.
At this point a reminder needs to be sent to abide by the TLP Guidelines of not editing other people's drafts without asking or explaining themselves—and even if it's a small typo or formatting, to still say something. TLP isn't the general wiki at large and the proposals aren't up for open edits until they're launched.
Edited by NethiliaopenPosting a link to content you've created
Hi. I just recently published a video on YouTube
that provides comprehensive coverage of all the known Dub Name Changes, Sudden Name Changes, and Inconsistent Spellings of the LEGO Adventurers toyline. I had hoped for this to be a useful resource for LEGO fans and I was considering linking to it on the toyline's article and/or the characters subpage, i.e. "For more in-depth coverage of all alternate names and their original sources, see this video."
However, I get the impression that this might not be proper etiquette and could be perceived as shameless self-promotion, which is definitely frowned upon. On one hand: yes, I am promoting something I've made... but on the other hand, I'm only doing so because I want it to be a helpful resource for others, and what good is a resource if no one knows it exists? So, before I add any links to this video, I wanted to check with Ask The Tropers and see what's the right thing to do in this situation.
Edited by PeabodySamopenFemale protagonist from P3P Videogame
So I was on the Persona 3 YMMV section and came across this entry, edited by Key Will Jay:
- The female main character herself is rather divisive. Some love her inclusion for providing an interesting "what if" scenario (and with the main theme of Portable being the butterfly effect, this also fits) and for her personality contrasting with the male main character while still keeping the "masking feelings" theme. They may also like how some of the less interesting Social Links get replaced with S.E.E.S. members. Others see her as unnecessary and believe she ruins the game's themes of overcoming despair and accepting death with said alternate scenario and personality, and dislike how SEES is made obviously friendlier in her route (a criticism fans of older titles sometimes level at newer titles in general). The memes and exposure surrounding her also induce Hype Backlash for non-fans and those that have played the console version but do not try Portable, calling her overrated. It was bad enough that when an alleged lead regarding a theoretical remake mentioned cutting out Portable content (which turned to be reality per the reveal of Reload), the fanbase split between those calling it a worst-case scenario and those celebrating the removal.
I’m not as active in the fandom but do people really fight over the female protagonist? Because I’ve never seen much divide over her. In fact, I’ve only seen people express their disappointment of her being excluded from Reload.
Edited by Superdude96openWhat do you do with a page mostly plagiarized? Live Action TV
I’m doing a plagiarism clean-up of Doctor Who’s trivia pages. I got tipped off a while ago that almost every page of the first Three doctors’ pages has examples (mostly under What Could Have Been) that have been plagiarized from either the show’s wiki or this comprehensive website
(which the wiki itself has cribbed from).
For example, several trivia examples from the episode “An Unearthly Child” (the very 1st episode of the series) had been plagiarized from it’s wiki article’s story notes.
- The first school scene was re-written to reduce the tension between Barbara and Ian. In the original script, Ian says, "When I've had a bad day, I come in here [the staff room], and I want to smash all the windows". Barbara retorts, "It hasn't been a bad day", and Ian remarks, "You're just naturally like that?" Barbara replies, "I hope not. I've had another kind of day. A very puzzling kind of day".
- Ian and Barbara's relationship was much more romantic in the original script.
- In the original script, the "PRIVATE" notice at the junkyard was originally supposed to appear significantly newer than the lettering on the gates. The junkyard was also supposed to contain "a broken-down old shed".
And while doing cleanup the trivia page for the episode “The Romans”
and it is seeping with plagiarism, up to and including Wikipedia.
So how should I go forward with this? I’ve been editing previous pages to remove plagiarism, but this particular page is compromised with it.
Edited by CanuckMcDuck1

Mewtwo now violates Repair, Don't Respond, and they and Kyurem are villains because there actions are excessive and I don't belvice they're treated sympathetically for it (for Mewtwo, until they realize there wrongness and stop). Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres are also not treaded sympathetically admitted to not being an example at the time, making it seem more like Continuity Drift or Franchise Original Sin than this? Thoughts on removing?
There's a dedicated Unintentionally Unsympathetic cleanup, but I still haven't heard back from my last inquiry a month ago.