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:
open B99, s6 ep3. Live Action TV
In 'The Tattler' episode, we meet Mike Joseph, a musician wannabee.
(The rest is my opinion, based on body language.)
Initially, he is friendly with Jake, but when Jake shares how active & fulfilling his life is, Mike seems to become bitter because how his carrier isn't going anywhere.
He quickly shifts tones by insisting on talking about Jake's high-school experience as a rejected classmate & he somehow seems amused about the subject, at Jake's expense.
I've read the TVT page of the episode, but I don't feel like there is the trope I am looking for.
So, my question, after giving the context, is, What Is This Trope?
When someone you'd assume to be your friend, doesn't hesitate to lower your self-esteem by digging up all of your insecurities or flaws, just to feel less small about themselves?
And, even in contexts where their reputation isn't in danger, they just don't hesitate to bring into conversations what their 'friend' isn't comfortable with?
Edited by PassionFloweropenBad one-off edit Live Action TV
Tropers.imajakov's first and so far only edit, from about a month ago, was to add an entry to Series.House for the nonexistent trope "Genius Level Intellect." The entry itself didn't have any grammar issues and did accurately describe the show and title character, but, well... that isn't a real trope. They also wrote it out un-wikiworded as "Genius Level intellect" (complete with capitalization error)
Edited by Dirtyblue929open Can Father Brown's Mrs. Devine be added to the Damsel Scrappy category? Live Action TV
Hi! I'm not sure how long a character has to be on a show before qualifying, for Mrs. Devine was introduced this past January. As well, FB hasn't been cancelled yet. But she's definitely a Creator's Pet, in that we're constantly told how quirky-delightful and promising-sleuth she is...but she's not either of those. She's racked up three major investigative, utterly unnecessary mistakes already that could have gotten her and other characters killed or worse. (Her ridiculous "undercover work" in the season finale alone squarely puts her in the "Too Dumb To Live" department.) And if this season is any indication, she's going to be carrying even more of a dramatic load in S11 that's she's not even up to meeting. As well, any number of IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, and Facebook reviewers have noted her ineptitude/lack of credibility is one of the main reasons for the show's precipitous decline. So with a track record like that, does she qualify? (Heck, I can think of at least three other categories alone she fits in. 🤣)Thanks!
Edited by Decker24openReal Life troping - hosts and judges on reality shows Live Action TV
Bringing this to ATT following the mods' suggestion that we should gather more opinions before taking action...
For Reality Show contestants, our policy is that the shows build an artificial narrative (via manipulative editing etc.), which means that we can trope contestants as if they were fictional characters.
(Some exceptions may still apply, but that's a different conversation
)
However... pages like the main Characters.Ru Pauls Drag Race page aren't troping contestants. They're troping the show's hosts, judges and onstage assistants (e.g. the Drag Race "Pit Crew").
For Drag Race, some of them are drag queens, but none are explicitly "in character" while presenting or judging - or, at least, no more than any other gameshow host (judges like Alan Carr and Graham Norton on RuPaul's Drag Race UK are talkshow hosts as well, and we can't trope them as 'characters' for presenting their own shows, so why can we for judging something like Drag Race?).
With that in mind, the proposal is that:
- We cut "Characters" entries for any real person who's not a contestant
- NRLEP trope examples for cut individuals get deleted, whereas any other examples for them move to the main series page.
- This sets a precedent for judges, hosts, etc. on other Reality Show franchises, confirming that only contestants can be troped as characters (unless someone is explicitly adopting a fictional persona while hosting etc).
Please comment here
open Recap in folders Live Action TV
Is it usual for a recap page's recap to be hidden in a folder if it's long enough?
Just seen it here: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2E07 "Those Old Scientists" but haven't seen it before. The prior Lower Deck episodes are very long and detailed but aren't in a folder.
openCan we make a NightmareFuel page for LiveActionSeries/TomorrowsPioneers Live Action TV
I believe that Tomorrow's Pioneers is supposed to have a Nightmare Fuel page. I mean, it's a show that essentialy tries to make Child Soldiers,and It's also surprisingly gory
openSapphire and Steel Word of God Invoked Live Action TV
Paul A removed the "[invoked]" from the Distress Ball example where Word of God was mentioned on Sapphire and Steel, mistakenly thinking it was related to Invoked Tropes and not realizing it was to prevent the unsightly marker from appearing on the main page. I sent them a message explaining it, but they haven't responded and may not realize they had to re-add it themself. Can a mod please re-insert it, as if I did it myself I'd be edit warring?
Edited by NOYBopenTroper removing Creator namespaces from TV networks Live Action TV
On TroubledProduction.Live Action TV, Buttbuttinate edited two
examples
to remove the Creator namespace from CNN and Al Jazeera. Was this ever discussed or approved?
openAdding a quote Live Action TV
Is there a formal process for adding a quote to a trope page that doesn’t have one yet?
openEdit War of Sorts Live Action TV
In the character section for House of the Dragon, people have been adding Hate Sink under Criston's folder even though it has been agreed he doesn't fit. Or at least, I think it was agreed. The only reason I haven't reverted this is because I can’t actually remember if it was agreed that he wasn't a Hate Sink. This appears to be a ping-pong thing between Tropers, so I’m not sure any one suspension would work here.
openEdit war on secret invasion 2023 Live Action TV
Troper Hawkatana
is doing an rather strange Edit War on Secret Invasion (2023).
- On June 29th
. They added a Tainted by the Preview for stuff in the first episode. Which isn't allowed as that trope is for prerelease'
- It than got removed
.
- On July 1st
. They readded the entire text and moved it to Overshadowed by Controversy which requires a six month after air date in Order to count.
It's definitely strange. That they've ignored the trope description of both of these
Edited by miraculousopenWhich work/series is this example from? Live Action TV
(Crossposting/rewording from this forum post
, which I'm unsure was even the place for this question)
I need help figuring out from which similarly-named-work an example is from.
I recently added Series.Cobra 1993 and Series.Cobra 2020 (as redlinks) to Main.Cobra because there are 2 series called that, both of which garnered wicks on Series.Cobra (was a redlink), I then made that page as a redirect to the Main/ disambig.
Now I've converted all wicks for Series/ except for the one that I saw first of all, on the page for I Know Mortal Kombat:
- Subverted in an episode where a young man with no Real Life driving experience is confident he can handle the protagonist's car because it's the same model as the virtual car he uses in his favorite Driving Game; it turns out to be rather more complicated in real life.
There's no names which clarify which Cobra series this is from, so I'm asking for help to find which one it is please. Thank you for your time.
Edit: (v) Your reasoning seems sound, I'll go with that without bumping this, thank you!
Edited by BlackFaithStaropenComplainy InformedWrongness entry Live Action TV
I am not gonna touch on whether or not I agree with the general statement within that entry, I just wanna check, does the IW entry on this
page look a bit too complainy and overly long to any of you as well?
openIs this even a work? Live Action TV
Super Sentai Hand Off has its own work page. But I don't think it really qualifies as its own work- it's just a collection of 10-15 second stingers that have appeared at the end of the last episode of each Super Sentai series since the early 2000s. Does this really need its own page? I would generally classify each hand off as just a part of its respective just-ended series.
openNew short term project thread - Drag Race cleanup Live Action TV
A Drag Race cleanup
thread has now been created, pulling together feedback from previous ATTs and other threads.
This covers RuPaul's Drag Race and the wider Drag Race franchise of Reality TV shows, including Characters pages and other subpages.
One of the topics it'll be looking at is Fan Myopia in page descriptions and examples, so feedback from tropers who don't know the franchise is welcome.
Edited by Mrph1open Asiana Airlines/Vagabond flight coincidence (Harsher in Hindshight) Live Action TV
Hey guys. As you know on May this year there was a really unfortunate incident involving the South Korean airlines Asiana: Some man stupidly opened the emergency door BEFORE LANDING and it caused a massive chaos, anxiety and trauma for both passengers and staff involved.
And in the series Vagabond (2019) something similar had happened where the main villains caused an internal damage to the flight Cha Dal Geon's nephew was in which caused his and the passengers' death, including most holes being open in the flight and causing suffocation and air compression. What even hits the correlation TOO close to home is that the group of passengers in Asiana were a high school athlete team, much like the deceased Taekwondo school team. Luckily unlike what happens in the series, EVERYONE survived the incident, albeit with some injuries and a lot of Aerophobia.
But still what I want to ask is, do u think this incident would count as a Harsher in Hindsight YMMV trope for Vagabond?
openVideo tags Live Action TV
I’ve posted a video recently that was approved. However, I realized that I forgot a tag that I wanted to add on the video. Is it possible to edit a video’s tags after submission, or would I need to delete the video and then resubmit?
openUnintentional Sympathy in Star Trek Picard Live Action TV
The YMMV page for Star Trek: Picard features two examples of Unintentionally Sympathetic:
- The Zhat Vash was right all along! The Admonition is a message to synthetic life that there is other synthetic life willing to invade and destroy all organic life if called upon, in order to save their fellow synthetics. The Soong-type androids start to bring these horrors into the galaxy, and the only reason why nothing more happens is because it takes a while for them to come through the wormhole, allowing a small window to shut down the beacon. It's probable that anyone faced with the evidence would come to the conclusion that artificial life is too big a danger to allow to exist. Especially the Federation, who already ban genetic engineering of organic life because of the risk of starting another Eugenics War. What also helps is that "mad AI goes rogue" is one of the oldest plots in Star Trek history, appearing in no less than 7 episodes of The Original Series and only going up from there. If you lived in the Star Trek universe, there's wall-to-wall evidence that you should never trust a machine that can think for itself lest you want to be killed, enslaved, or both. Even Data wasn't safe from this as he'd become Brainwashed and Crazy and a threat to others a few times himself.
- One could also say the same for Control as in the later half of season 3 the Borg effectively highjacks Starfleet from within and plans to use said new “assimilated” fully organic drones as the seed base of a new even more advanced and dangerous Borg collective to threaten and ultimately rule the entire galaxy with until the end of time. Control would’ve had access to all the Enterprise NX-01’s logs including those of the incident involving the Borg and the knowledge that a “visit” from a very real bio-cybernetic threat easily capable of assimilating others, quickly adaptable defenses, and has access to technology far more advanced than anything Starfleet, the Federation, or even the surrounding powers currently had at their disposal isn’t so much if they show up 200 years from the logs being recorded but when! While that doesn’t excuse nor justifies Control’s actions, Control was originally programmed to help protect the Federation from any and all threats but when it tried to figure out a way the Federation could win against a confirmed future threat that, for all intents and purposes, had no vulnerabilities that could be exploited (at least for long anyway), combined with the limitations of Control’s own programming, preemptively wiping out all life in the universe was the “best” solution he could come up with to stop them and save everyone.
I could be wrong about this but I thought US is about characters that come off as sympathetic, even though the story doesn't want viewers to sympathize with them. Granted, the show kinda shoots itself in the foot by portraying the Higher Synthetics (insert Mass Effect reference here) as genocidal racists, but the entries for US don't do themselves any favors by portraying the Zhat Vash and Control as genocidal racists themselves.
What do you think about this? Is there a cleanup thread for this trope or something?

On Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2E09 "Subspace Rhapsody", NOYB for some bizarre reason decided to change all instances of "K-Pop", including wicks to K-Pop, to "K-pop" with edit reason "spelling from Wikipedia".