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Ask the Tropers:
openViolations of FanficRecommendations template
I've noticed that many, many fanfic recs on the various Fanfic Recs/ pages don't follow the template listed on Fanfic Recommendations. Normally this isn't too bad - just swapping the order of the lines or adding the review button - but it's also pretty common for people to add a "comments" line and provide their (sometimes very long) thoughts and opinions on the fic, when that's apparently supposed to be reserved for reviews.
Since I don't think it's possible to move these comments to the proper place myself, what do we do about this? Delete the comments outright? Message the (active) tropers and warn them that the comments belong in a review, and, if nothing's done, will be removed after X amount of time?
I feel a bit bad deleting all this information outright, especially if it could go elsewhere, but moving it wouldn't be easy and all the comments are really bloating some pages.
openCan Trivia be played with? Videogame
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: I'm wondering if Trivia can be played with. Specifically, I'm asking in regards to Trivia.Super Smash Bros, as the Unintentional Period Piece has two bullet points; one which explains how the first three games are this (due to them being Museum Games that released before games could be regularly updated, and as such are limited to what existed at the time of development), and one which explains how the fourth and fifth games avert this by adding in new content from games which were concurrent to and/or released after Smash itself.
I looked at What Goes Where on the Wiki and Trivia and they don't mention it at all; compare to YMMV.Home Page, which does.
openLaconic troubles...
Laconic.Zeldas Honor was brought up in the Laconic improvement thread
for being distinctly unlaconic (i.e. way too dang long). We took a crack at trimming it down
, but Chrononaut 70 came back and added many of the unnecessary words back
.
Can't revert it ourself cause that's an edit war, pinging them in the thread
got no response so we think they just don't read their DMs.
halp
openFollow-up query to RedMoonAlgesco
The original query is long buried by this point, but consider this new query a "bump" of sorts because Red Moon Algesco is still displaying very bad editing issues. Most notably on Characters.Genshin Impact Archons (history here
).
Here's an example they added to Baal's profile, which is a clear violation of Example Indentation in Trope Lists.
- Jerkass: Baal is a very self-centered, arrogant and egotistic Archon who rules Inazuma as more of a ruthless Dictator than a proper Ruler. To summarize...
- Jerkass Gods: Compared to the mischievous Venti and the collected Zhongli, Baal is a massive Narcissist who holds her country in an iron grip and even initiates a decree to seize all vision-holders inside her domain. It is said that as of currently, it has been a year since she granted anyone an Electro vision. Reasons for this is currently unknown.
openEdit Warring on YMMV/Overlord2012 Anime
Leonidaz made some edits to the Overlord (2012) page on roughly 1/12.
- Memetic Badass: Ainz Ooal Gown is regarded as one of the most overpowered, invincible and badass villains and protagonists in Isekai history. An unusual case in that Ainz is indeed invencible and in-universe everybody regards him as the ultimate superior being, but in reality Ainz is far from being the unbeatable badass everyone thinks he is, he is just lucky to always meet foes weaker or dumber than him.
- Rooting for the Empire: It's rather hard to root for Ainz and the rest of the gang when they act like your typical Fantasy JRPG villains. The fact that they easily steamroll through any obstacle or foe, all the while acting over the top arrogant and snide at the other races and people around them does not help matters. You WISH the antagonist of the arc would actually smack the smirks right off of their faces just for a change of pace (though a bunch of them, such as the Eight Fingers, are even worse than them). The Tomb of Nazarick's over the top entrance and sadistic subjugation of the Lizardfolk (a peaceful community they went to war with just as an "experiment") has been seen as rather infuriating for readers. Though, after they were conquered, Ainz then ordered Cocytus to rule over them with the carrot and not the stick, showing that he's not a total sadist. However, Ainz later unleashed five abominations on a huge, mostly conscript, army and showed nothing but glee towards breaking the record of how many monsters were summoned at once, not even feeling anything about all those who his summoned monstrosities slaughtered. And then there's everything about Demiurge's "livestock". Seriously, many fans of Overlord would want a crossover with other series just so Ainz could face a challenge and be defeated JUST ONCE.
- Spiritual Adaptation: If you unfocus your eyes, you can almost convince yourself you’re watching an anime adaptation of Den.
- That One Boss: For the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick this title can easily be assigned to Victim, Guardian of the 8th Level. The irony of it all is that Victim is only level 35 and the weakest Guardian. His power comes from being able to sacrifice himself, which causes an onslaught of crippling status debuffs and movement lockdown effects, allowing the rest of Nazarick's forces to kill the invaders at their leisure. To emphasise this point; no Raid Party in Yggdrasil had ever gotten past it.
I removed the areas marked in bold, Spiritual Adaptation, and That One Boss because of the nature of these edits.
- Memetic Badass not only had misspelling, but it also reads as a Justifying Edit and conflicts with the trope.
- Rooting for the Empire has an unnecessary point at the end and has no reason to be there.
- Spiritual Adaptation reads as a ZCE since it doesn't explain how it is one.
- That One Boss is being used for an In-Universe example, so it doesn't make sense to include it.
After removing them on 1/13, said troper returned and added them back in without a message. I sent them a message notifying them I would be making this.
Edited by keyblade333openConfusing YMMV deletion
Last month, concernedalien11780 did some cleanup on YMMV.Big Mouth. Some of this was admittedly helpful, deleting natter or ZCE, but there was an entry from Author's Saving Throw that I had initially added and I don't know why it was deleted:
- After being criticized for their poorly phrased and under-researched definitions of bisexuality and pansexuality in "Rankings," the next season introduced a transgender character, Natalie, written in collaboration with transgender women to ensure she wouldn't be written offensively. Natalie is actually a season four highlight she also has a legal, yet teenage voice actress, Josie Totah, (a 19-year-old in a cast of primarily 30 and 40 somethings), who is also transgender herself.
Note that I didn't add that bit about her actress - I think it's kind of weird to highlight her as "legal yet teenage." That came from lifelover91, who also seemed to have some grammar and ZCE issues on top of gushy writing ("Natalie and Gina are the characters we love (and totally deserve)."
) Not sure if they warrant a separate query. Anyway, to make things clearer, the entry as I originally wrote it was:
- After being criticized for their outdated and transphobic definitions of bisexuality and pansexuality in "Rankings," the next season introduced a transgender character, Natalie, written in collaboration with transgender women to ensure she wouldn't be written offensively.
I think this is a valid entry because the creators have discussed wanting to better represent certain positions, they apologized for the Unfortunate Implications in their depiction of pansexuality, so when adding more representation to the show, they made sure to include voices of the community when writing the episode (as a trans woman is on the writing team now), as they were criticized for presumably not consulting pansexual people when writing "Rankings." In short: they were criticized for transphobic implications in their LGBT rep, so they took measures to avoid transphobic implications in future episodes.
I mentioned this on the discussion page
but have yet to hear any feedback. I'd like to re-add it, but I want to avoid an Edit War.
openCleanup needed on The Mask cartoon pages
Domino 710 added a whole bunch of really long and grammatically-dubious passages to pages related to the animated adaptation of ''The Mask''. For example:
“The Mask can be too strong towards any girls he comes across such as putting himself in a position with a girl so that he can kiss them only they are put off by him which makes him like Stanley unlucky with any woman he comes across but however he does get lucky later on due to the fact that he’s polite, kind and very sweet as well which makes most of the girls who are put off by him to be attracted to him.”
You’ll notice how it is just one run-on sentence with very strange wording. Stuff like this is all over the place, so I’d like to request some help in fixing it all up. Luckily, some tropers have already started (thanks for that!), but there’s still much more that needs to be done.
Edited by Loopytires55openChild Soldier Misuse?
Once again, on Characters.Ys VIII Lacrimosa Of Dana. I saw four examples of Child Soldier used for Ricotta, Reja, Quina, and the general Castaway Village folder. However, given that the trope talks about literal child soldiers trained and drafted for war, these examples on the character page are really overstretching it, because not only are these child characters not actually soldiers to begin with, but outside of Beast Raids as support skills, Reja and Quina don't get actively involved in fights, and Ricotta is actually a Jungle Princess who fights for survival rather than war.
Edited by DivineFlame100resolved A troper who keeps posting dubious tropes on the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Main Character section. Videogame
Someone named Frankie 3 keeps re-posting the same ill-fitting tropes on Tifa Lockhart's character page despite me and other tropers already having pointed out why he needs to stop doing it. Like for example, trying to pin the "Token Good Teammate" label to Tifa when the rest of the party aren't even evil people, at worst having some anti-heroic traits that don't even scale into particularly dark levels. And then there's him posting links to some random wiki to try and add proof of claim when it directly violates troping rule that pages are only for what is found within the work itself. What should be done about him?
Edited by 9thOutworldsManresolved self-promotion in tlp comments
so there's a tlp draft
being proposed. (full disclosure: I have my own issues with the proposal that are unrelated to my question and have made that explicit in the comments for the draft.) My question is: does the site allow self-promotion outside of explicit forum threads? the sponsor wrote in the comments that they have a youtube channel that discusses the trope they are proposing and then linked it in the comment. is that allowed? disallowed? allowed but frowned upon? Felt weird about it tbh, so i'm asking here.
open YMMV Pokemon Journeys/2019 Anime issue: Jackpot21 versus Franchise Original Sin Anime
...Yes, I know, but this is a trope I really stand for, stand on, and I want to fix it without starting an edit war.
Okay, so here's what Jackpot
removed.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/PokemonJourneysTheSeries
...
- Franchise Original Sin:
- Ash has had a co-lead before, most famously in the form of Dawn. At several points Dawn would take the lead as the focus character even in the midst of what might be considered an Ash focused storyline, such as during the Maylene episodes where she took a lead in roughly half of the four episodes. Fans have more problems with Goh doing this than Dawn due to it being perceived as more often and more intrusive to Ash's focus.
- It has been in Ash's nature at several points to have the course of the journey dictated by those around him more than his own, notably with May and Dawn's Contests and Serena's Showcases. However this is perhaps the first series where such a occurrence has been widely criticized and disliked by a sizeable and vocal portion of the fanbase, with Goh's goals tending to dominate a large chunk of episode over Ash's being a frequent issue with such fans. Possible reasons for this being Goh's captures often occurring in episodes that would have once been considered filler thus giving the fans a feeling that Goh gets more focus than he actually is intended to, Goh's goal being relevant more frequently than the female companions and thus aggravating fans more, or just the fact that Goh's status as a designated co-lead means that any imbalance in focus is more tangible to the fanbase.
...
This is Jackpot's given reason for removing it.
...
Dawn isn’t classified as a protagonist but as a traveling companion. The difference between her and Goh is that Dawn’s focus episodes were spread out and didn’t overshadow Ash’s journey, usually involved competing in Contests, bettering herself as a Coordinator, or had to do with her Pokémon, whereas with Goh’s focus episodes, they tend to happen every few episodes and would more often than not be about a specific Pokémon that he’d catch at the end of the episode. Also, how did Ash’s companions dictate his journey? Most of the Contests or Showcases were on the way to whatever Gym he’d challenge next. That’s far different from Goh dragging him around to whatever location he found out a specific Pokémon will be at or a specific event taking place. ...
I am very familiar with the Pokemon fanbase. I am aware of how the fanbase is and what the show is like for twenty years, and what it is now. I am aware of Goh is seen, and I am able to look at it historically.
Dawn was treated as a Co-Lead. In the opening of DP anime episodes, it is the 'adventures of Satoshi (Ash) and Hikari (Dawn). May, Iris, Serena, Misty, etc did not get this. The only one who gets that is Goh.
As to the point about direction, at several points in the series the company diverts their path to go to places that are contest or showcase based (For example, in Kalos Ash does this for some of Serena's later performances)
Also, and I suspect this is the most important, this is YMMMV. Your Mileage May Vary. I don't think the edit removal given really works as that argument is more for 'yes or no' tropes versus opinion tropes. Jackpot removed it more on 'I don't agree with it' lines, which strikes me as problematic for YMMV tropes, especially as Goh's issues brought up are a commonly held opinion on many sites like Bulbargarden and Spacebattles and the point of 'being something in the originals' is used in debate there and acknowledged as such.
Please help me return the trope to YMMV Journeys. I added it originally so I cannot without risking an edit war (while I added it back in August 21 so I have no idea if that makes a reversing edit two and a half months is the edit, remove, edit definitions or not.)
Edited by KrspaceTopenEdit War on YMMV/MushokuTensei
On YMMV.Mushoku Tensei, Tropers.Qubritz added the following
(bolded for emphasis) to a Broken Base entry:
- One of the most controversial aspects of the story is its very premise as a "Redemption Arc". The main problem with it stems from the possibility of "redemption" being used to justify horrible or terrible actions based on the idea that the perpetrator will "grow up" or "learn from it". This is further compounded by the fact that the behavior being condemned for is also "rewarded" in a sense, such as when Rudeus winds up marrying three of the women he once sexually-harassed, he and Eris wind up together despite her horrible abuse of him, and Paul winds up marrying the woman he had an affair with.
In retrospect, the entry should probably be reworded to further explain what the audience is split on regarding these points (basically, whether or not Rudeus deserves "redemption"note He is implied to have been a pedophile that masturbated to nude photos of his own niece before being reincarnated., whether the ending "rewards" people for crappy behavior, and whether or not it sends the wrong message about "redemption" in general). But, on top of that, the bolded section is a gross oversimplification of the actual issues with those characters. As I edited here
, the two are mutually toxic to each other.
Eris is introduced as a Spoiled Brat who is verbally and physically abusive to Rudeus when he is brought in to be her magic tutor. This is very much Played for Drama and not treated as amusing.
After he arranges a fake-turned-real kidnapping, she grows to like and respect him and from then on, the few times she does hit him, it is portrayed as the usual anime Tsundere/Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male/Pervert Revenge Mode anime hijinks and absolutely Played for Laughs, as it's clear that the two of them are really into each other and everybody pretty much expects Rudeus to bed Eris at some point Her father even explicitly gives him permission in a moment of Deliberate Values Dissonance. (They're both like physically 12 at this point, btw, although Rudeus was a middle-aged man in his past life. And absolutely still sees himself as an adult.) At the same time, Rudeus makes an attempt to take off and steal Eris's panties while she's asleep, and after her father does arrange for her and Rudeus to go to bed together, Rudeus ignores an uncomfortable Eris after she changes her mind and tells him to stop until she is forced to hit him. (And I repeat, Eris is about 12 at this time, while Rudeus is a 30-something implied pedophile in the body of a child.)
The "Eris is the unambiguous abuser toward Rudeus" aspect of their relationship literally doesn't last longer than the first full episode she's introduced (in the anime). The majority of their screentime features the two of them being basically flawed, awkward people, and one of them being too young to be attempting the relationship they have. Even if we accept that Eris is an abusive brat, and is still pretty violent after she catches feelings for him, he is still mentally an adult, while she is a child.
NOTE: I'd also like to state that, after my first edit, Qubritz agreed that "mutually-abusive" was a better way to describe their relationship. Then, shortly afterwards, he suddenly sent me a PM out of the blue asking to chat, which quickly turned sour after we had a disagreement about the portrayal of a fictional character, and he turned pretty hostile.
Then, after I blocked him, he re-added
the bolded section. Again, after previously agreeing that "mutually toxic" was the best way to define their relationship.
openFena = Wasted character? Anime
Ok, with Fena: Pirate Princess finally over, I gotta ask: does the titular character really qualify for They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character? Her entry in the YMMV page reads:
"Fena herself, despite being the main and title character. All throughout the series, Fena is rarely, if ever, allowed to actually do anything on her own, and it actively ignores opportunities to let her grow as a person or do anything that doesn't involve getting kidnapped, having the plot explained to her, or being saved by other people. Any attempt at letting her do something on her own is handwaved away, such as when she leads the party to where the coordinates are in the underground tomb, not because she herself does it, but because a mysterious voice said so. She's basically a Pinball Protagonist with little to no agency in her own series, and more than a few people noticed this.
"
1. Fena is the protagonist and by definition, she can't get wasted because we follow the story from her perspective. 2. TWAPGC is "this character was insufficiently developed or improperly explored", not "I didn't like the direction this character went through."
So, what do you think?
openWork pages that act as genres
I brought this up a few days ago on the Roleplay cleanup thread
, but since the pages in question have a lot of inbounds I'd like to get a bit more input before doing anything with the pages.
Roleplay.Jumpchain and Fanfic.Planetarily Annihilating Self Insertion are pages that describe subgenres instead of specific works. Neither of them are in good enough shape that I feel comfortable putting them on the TPL (Jumpchain uses a lot of niche jargon that isn't explained and doesn't actually list any works of that subgenre, while Planetarily Annihilating Self Insertion is mostly extolling the virtues of a specific fanfic writer and is otherwise very bare of description).
Is it alright to cut the pages?
openMe's A Crowd not looking so crowded
Just checked the subpage, MesACrowd.Film, the last time I saw that being several months ago and... what happened all the examples? The entire list has been neutered to two entries...
I checked the Edit reason and it seems like half of the stuff has been relocated to Self-Duplication. Which is fine, but a further line below claims the "other" half of the examples are moved to Bio Duplication, a trope that... uh, doesn't seem to exist.
Also, is there a rule for borderline page blanking without enquiring the rest of the forum? Or maybe I missed out a forum announcement or something?
EDIT: Also its just the film's subpage, I checked the Me's a Crowd pages for Anime, TV series, Video games, books, none of them seems edited
Edited by RobertTYLopenMisuse on LethalJokeCharacter page Videogame
I saw a recent query about an edit on Lethal Joke Character, so I checked out the page to see what it was about.
I found that
- The trope description clearly says that this is a video game trope, and lists a number of related tropes that would apply to non-game contexts.
- Despite this, the example list has a entire section for "non-gaming examples", which is apparently large enough to be sub-divided into folders.
- One of the non-gaming folders is "real life". How can there be joke characters in real life?
This is of course rampant, systematized misuse, but what should we do about it? Does this warrant taking the trope to TRS (with the possibility of broadening the trope), or would a cleanup suffice? Unfortunately, I'm very pressed for time myself right now or I would already have started cleaning up, but I thought I'd at least report it.
Edited by GnomeTitanopenNo Title Western Animation
Hi!
I was reading the Recap for Transformers Animated S1 Ep 13 "Megatron Rising Part 1", & I don't know about anyone else, but the example for "Hypocrite" sounds a lot more like "Ungrateful Bastard", with Sari (in her quote), & then Bumblebee (defending her after she ran off), calling Optimus this.
Now, Optimus blowing up at his team for most, if not all, the same actions he himself took that stranded them on Earth to begin with, would be a better example for "Hypocrite".
openFilm/TheBatman concerning edits Film
Edit: Was tired when I wrote this this morning, edited to explain their edits.
Jeyeraj has some concerning edits on Film.The Batman 2022 and Characters.The Batman 2022. In the movie Selina decries that Rich Privileged White guys are the ones running Gotham. I'm not gonna say that black people can't be racist against white people (I don't like that prejudice plus power definition outside of academia), but this really doesn't feel like that. In the universe of the movie, that's an objective fact, most of the people in power are privileged white people. I'd need more to say she's racist towards white people. He insinuates in his edits that this makes her a bigot. Finally he insinuated that the Riddlers were occupy wall-streetesque, when I felt they were more QANON ajacent..
I just also found an edit where he posted about the Videogame.Ready Or Not and Kotaku's criticism of the games school shooting level. He talks more about the article than the game itself in the edit, which is trivia at best. His criticism of the article definitely seems to be political in nature.
There's also this edit on Film.Black Widow: %%"Their" or spoilering the pronouns would give away the reveal that Taskmaster isn't a man, as the film presents her until the reveal.%% (They are talking about taskmaster). And in that edit they changed the pronouns of the example from "their" back to "his". Taskmaster in the film is a women. I felt like it was perfectly valid to use "their" pronouns to disguise the gender.
I definitely feel like he's editing with an agenda.
Edited by jjjj2resolved Potential edit war over the same example
In this query
, I reported Stellavore for removing an example with a rude edit reason
that had more to do with the trope name being changed than the example itself. The example was restored
, and Stellavore has removed it again
.

I've been noticing this happening lately in pages I made. Even though the Red Link page says to leave red links for works in so that it's easier to crosswick later, people keep editing them out.
For instance, in the Spiritual Crossover page, a Red Link for Hawkgirl was removed, and then in the Split-Personality Switch Trigger page, two links for Outlaw Kid - a character with 45 issues to his name - were removed, with the only justification being that it was a red link. One of them even linked to the Red Link page itself in the edit reason, despite the fact that this action would seem to indicate they didn't actually read said page.
Either that, or the policy changed and no one bothered to update the Red Link page.
Edited by DBZfan102