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:
openSeverus Snape's Character Page Literature
Over the last three weeks, Warminadore has been making many edits to Severus Snape’s character page. It's become very apparent that they really, really don't like him, and it's starting to have a negative effect on the page as a whole. They've slowly been replacing short, succinct paragraphs about Snape's personality traits and his actions throughout the books with paragraphs after paragraphs of character bashing - with grammar that's often quite sloppy as well.
In chronological order, here are some of their edits to Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk, Nominal Hero, What You Are In The Dark, Villainous Underdog, Papa Wolf, Hidden Heart Of Gold, Byronic Hero, Not So Different, Like Father, Like Son, Love Redeems, Not In This For Your Revolution, Hyper Competent Sidekick, Evil Counterpart, Unscrupulous Hero, Bunny Ears Lawyer, Hidden Depths, Guile Hero, Dark Is Not Evil, and Darth Vader Clone.
Does anyone else think this is starting to become a problem?
Edited by TheCoolKat1995openTroper adding their own fanon to a work page Literature
Ian78668 is very much into the Alternate History story Player Two Start, having most of their edit history devoted to its work page. However, they seem to be adding their own concepts and ideas (usually about Don Bluth or Pokémon in some form) into the work page that aren't in the text itself. Even the author had to step in and take some of this out, only for them to add yet more of their own fanon. I sent them a few notifiers a while ago, and they seemed to comply at first... but just recently came back again and added yet more of their own fanon into it. Since I didn't want it to be an edit war, I sent them another notifier and bringing up the problem here.
Edited by harryhenryopenPossible vandal? Literature
There's been a troper by the name of Frag Wall who's been around for a little while, and they keep adding ZeroContextExamples to Cormac McCarthy pages, and has created a few stub pages that have since been deleted. Normally, I'd let it slide, but what makes me suspicious is that one of these stubs originally started with "Suttree is shit", which leads me to believe they're deliberately vandalizing the wiki. If I'm wrong, feel free to disregard this.
openNo Title Literature
Vulpul appears to have spent the last 3 days making a whole bunch of Stub trope pages and indexing them on Bizarro Fiction.
opentroping ymmv for your own works Literature
So I was going to remove an unapproved Magneficent Bastard on Red Room entry when I noticed something odd. The entry had been added by Charles Phipps whose also the author C.T. Phipps (i.e. the person who wrote the book).
This is not an isolated incident as they add ymmv tropes to every work theyve apparenlty written.
And so and so on. This is really large scale in terms of troping your own ymmv tropes.
openOdd Stuff on Arthurian Legend Literature
I want to draw attention to a rather bizarre editing conflict on Myth.Arthurian Legend.
More than three years ago, a troper called Methuselah added two new entries to the works list on Myth.Arthurian Legend. Here they are:
- Balla na Nathair Corónach, another pre-Roman tale, which also has versions once told/sung in Scotland, Cornwall, Ulster, Bretony, Galicia and Mann, was purportedly (i.e-attributed to him but most likely not written by him given his ficticious nature) written by Fionn Mac Cumhail to honor his Welsh rival (which is debatable considering the average Irish mythologian's attitude toward Arthur), and stylizes Arthur as a pro-Druid anti-Roman bastard (of mixed Roman and Welsh heritage) and nephew/heir of Emrys (his uncle Ambrosius, who is apparently a separate character from Merlin in the ballad) who married Guinevere to bring piece to Britain on the word of his adviser Myrddin (Merlin), although this peace later broke and Arthur avenges the breaking of the pact by attacking the Romans, and later burns the Guinevere analog for killing one of his pre-wedlock heirs. Other iterations are far more anachronistic.
- Reikningur á HátÃð Drekans, a semi-historical (in that it is mostly fable, although similar events did occur, although not during the period when the Welsh canon was being composed) account of a series of vengeance-raids by Celts and other native Bretons against Nordic settlements in Scandanavia. The oldest, least adulterated, and most clearly translated version was found in Iceland. It describes a Serpent/Dragon King (a coded title for one of the possible other inspirations of Arthur, who was allegedly a major Druidic leader) who led these attacks, occupied some villages for a few years, and even extracted tribute until the mid-Roman occupation. Later versions are also more anachronistic and incorporate more post-Norman Arthurian lore.
I consider myself halfway knowledgeable about medieval Arthurian lore. Yet I have never heard about these supposed Arthurian works. I checked some books, googled around, and found absolutely no information about these works. Though Google Translate suggests that "Balla na Nathair Corónach" is Irish and means "Wall of the Crowned Serpent" and "Reikningur á HátÃð Drekans" is Icelandic and means "Account of the Festival of the Dragon".
I also find that much of what is said about the supposed content of these works is hard to believe or does not make sense. For one, I am not aware of any Arthurian work from medieval Ireland; much less a "pre-Roman" one, given that Arthur is pretty much universally placed in time after the Roman occupation of Britain. The entries are also extremely confusingly written, lack focus, and are riddled with vagueness and self-contradictions. Because of this and because I couldn't find any proof for the existence of these works, I eventually deleted both entries. (This was more than two years ago.)
The entries stayed deleted for somewhat over half a year, then Methuselah returned and restored them, referring to my deletion as "vandalism" in their edit reason.
Next I sent Methuselah a private message telling them that I couldn't find any confirmation for the existence of these works, and asked them what their sources were or where I can get information about these works. They replied with a very condescending message in which they tried to present themself as some kind of expert on medieval literature and claimed that Balla na Nathair Corónach has been published in a book called The Celtic Heroic Age by John Koch and John Carey, and that Reikningur á HátÃð Drekans is a "fragment" of an Old Icelandic work called Möttuls saga.
Since then, I got myself a copy of The Celtic Heroic Age and, lo and behold, no Balla na Nathair Corónach. As for Möttuls saga, this is an Icelandic translation of a French Arthurian tale called Le lai du cort mantel (The Lay of the Mantle). I checked out a translation and several synopses, and (you know where this is going) found nothing which fits the material that Methuselah claims constitutes Reikningur á HátÃð Drekans.
I have decided against sending Methuselah another pm. I don't know if they are still active (their last edit was ten months ago), but in any case they have been lying about their sources (if they have any). My impression is that they're intentionally throwing academic-sounding language and work titles around so that others will believe they're an expert and won't question them.
Long story short: I want to delete both of Methuselah's entries for referring to inexistent works. But since I already deleted them once, I want to get consensus first to avoid an edit war. Do I have permission to proceed?
(I will send Methuselah a pm about this query.)
Edited by LordGroopenPage blanking Literature
The troper Seven Star Swordz Has blanked the page dream delusion, and reality.
Citing that their friend whose the author told them to delete it. Their friend going off the trope page (Phoenixion) is also edit banned. So if true that would be meat puppetry.
Edited by miraculousopenDurendal Literature
User Durendal_1138 is on a small crusade to edit out mention of some of Lindsay Ellis' recent defensive arguments in favor of Twilight.
Specific examples can be found on,
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.LindsayEllis
and
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.Twilight
the latter of which had a "charming" reason given,
"What absolute horseshit. Ellis pulled that from the deepest part of her ass, no one gave Twilight shit because girls liked it, they criticised it for the number of problems it had, including the fact that it was at times deeply sexist, racist and promoted abusive relationships."
One of the edits was added back in, but I suspect that unless somebody has a sit-down with Durendal, we'll just see this continue, especially taking into consideration their rather heated opinions.
openVictoria Literature
A lot of people have brought up the issues with Victoria where the trope page tries very, very, very hard to be 'balanced' about a book that promotes making women and racial/sexual minorities into second class citizens. As has been pointed out, this is disturbing since a page like Twilight reads far more harshly.
Should Catharsis Factor (talking about how much the alt right love this book because they get to watch minorities and women get put in their place) and Values Resonance (which is when a work is ahead of its time and begins to appeal to a group it wasn't originally meant for) really be on a page for a book that promotes stripping rights away from women, ethnic minorities, and gays?
Edited by Clanger00open Please ignore. Literature
Please ignore. I posted this the wrong place. As my apology, let me deliver a book recommendation: Bone by Jeff Smith. A wonderful comic for all ages.
Edited by MichaelKatsuroopenNo Title Literature
Troper Aurorula has made various edits on https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/TheGreatDivorce and related pages that demonstrate a failure to understand how the site works. It's taken me three hours to clean it up. I spoke with them in July of this year over previous inappropriate image use, referring them to the Administrivia Image Pickin' guidelines. Standards not being met include:
- Inserting inappropriate images all over the pages, including the Headscratchers section.
- Misusing headers and titles within Headscratchers that come off as patronizing.
- Several examples of Speculative Troping with a Wall of Text.
- Several Zero-Context Example entries, or pasting extracts from the author's work as context.
- Paragraphs of Word Cruft within comments tags/source code of the page, that turn the article into their personal development blog.
openWarrior Cats needs organization Literature
Hey there, so Warrior Cats has an organization problem, with various tropers setting up different pages in different ways (apparently over the years) without being aware of each other. We've got a bunch of essentially duplicate pages and aren't sure what the "right" way to organize all this is.
Sorry in advance for the wall of text.
Basically to explain how the work is set up: Warrior Cats is a book series consisting of just over 100 works at this point. The "main" series is split into six-book-long story arcs, and there's dozens of side books and stories (standalone extra-long-or-short books, graphic novels, short stories/plays posted on the official website, etc) - these side books consist of side adventures, perspective flips, prequels, etc. Altogether, this makes up one long consistent story, just pieces from different POVs, with lots of overlap between them (see this crazy image◊ which is an accurate, up-to-date depiction of how everything fits together). There's also a tabletop game that they included in the back of some of the books, and some games (browser games and an official Roblox environment).
So as far as the TV Tropes pages, originally it was just one long Literature page, Literature/WarriorCats. I also created a Recap page for the individual books since I felt it was the cleanest way rather than creating 100 work pagesmy reasoning there aren't always many examples, especially for the short stories, and the Funny, YMMV, etc subpages would be basically blank if needed at all. This would also make linking on trope pages cleaner as it can just link to Literature/WarriorCats - especially since several of the books are a perspecive flip that cover the same situations so the example would appear in multiple books. Other lengthy works like Animorphs have done similar.
Anyway, I've since discovered that other tropers have made individual pages for some of the books or story arcs, so we have essentially a whole bunch of duplicates going on, many of which are definitely out of date.
So yeah, what we currently have:
- Literature/WarriorCats, the original page containing examples from the whole series, which has often been used as the main page/the one linked to in examples on trope pages. It also contains Funny, Tearjerker, YMMV, Trivia, etc from all the books.
- Recap/WarriorCats with each book having its own recap page with examples
- Franchise/WarriorCats
- Pages for individual books or portions of the series, some of which have their own examples and ymmv, funny, etc pages. In many but not all cases, these are duplicates of the examples either on the equivalent Literature/WarriorCats page, or an individual book's Recap page.
- The individual six-book-long arcs: Warrior Cats: The Original Series, Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy, Warrior Cats: Power of Three, Warrior Cats: Omen of the Stars, Warrior Cats: Dawn of the Clans, Warrior Cats: A Vision of Shadows, Warrior Cats: The Broken Code, Warrior Cats: A Starless Clan
- Warrior Cats: SkyClan Saga, a messy grouping of some of the Super Editions, graphic novels, and novellas, covering a sort of side story arc about the exile & rebuilding of a missing faction. The page is missing some books relevant to it but that story arc has since merged with the main story anyway.
- Warrior Cats Prequel Super Editions, another messy grouping of some of the side books that take place around the same time as each other. They're not the only prequels, or the only books that take place during this time period anymore.
- Warrior Cats Novellas, a grouping specifically of the shorter-than-normal novellas that take place across the whole series. Theoretically they could fit on one of the previously listed pages or multiple, depending on the novella, and otherwise have nothing to do with each other
- Warrior Cats (manga), a grouping specifically of the "manga" side stories. Manga/WarriorCats redirects to this page. Note that there's some confusion as to what to label these as, since they originally were branded as "manga", then reprinted & had new come out as "graphic novels", and as of the last week or so they announced that they're also going to be adapting the actual first story arc into its own graphic novel adaptation (the existing ones had all been original stories rather than a straight adaptation of a book).
- Books/etc with their own pages (note that some are under Literature, one is under Comic Book, one is under Theatre): Bramblestar's Storm, Moth Flight's Vision, Tigerheart's Shadow, Crowfeather's Trial, Warrior Cats: The Rise of Scourge, Brightspirit's Mercy
- TabletopGame/WarriorsAdventureGame for the tabletop game at the back of the books
If I had it my way, I'd axe the separate arc/manga/prequel-super-edition/skyclan saga/novella/individual book pages, and move anything from those that's not a duplicate back to the main Warrior Cats pages or corresponding book's Recap page. Those pages are for the most part duplicates, out of date, and honestly hard to categorize the side books since there's so much overlap (see image I linked above).
I'd keep Franchise/WarriorCats, Literature/WarriorCats, the recap pages, and TabletopGame/WarriorsAdventureGame since that is technichally a separate thing that isn't part of the books' long story. And if I can think of tropes for the indivdual games then I'd give those their own pages, with a VideoGame/WarriorCats linking to them. I don't know if we'd need a Manga(or comic book or whatever)/WarriorCats or Theatre/WarriorCats pages for the graphic novels and short plays: for the books currently known as graphic novels I'm not sure what the proper namespace is for the books, they're not really considered a separate "work" by fans from the main series, and I don't know if/how to sort the existing ones which are side adventures vs the upcoming straight adaptation. The plays are very short things posted on the official site which have very few applicable tropes which I think is sufficiently covered by a Recap page.
But yeah, just wanted to check if there's a "right" way to organize this, and if we do go removing a bunch of pages, what the correct process for that would look like (if I've requested anything to be cut before it's been years.)
Edited by DawnwingopenWeird note on a trope page Literature
When editing HaveAGayOldTime.Literature, there is a note for editors at the top of the page:
"Order by surname/family name for items concerning a person; by title for a title; or by the important word of the term, e.g. "Have a gay old time" is about the word "gay" not "have" so it goes under g."
Since this is a trope page, all entries should be under work titles so the last clause will never apply; also, my understanding is that on work pages, Have a Gay Old Time would indeed be alphabetised under H (it's the first word that matters, with articles being the only exception).
Remove the note? Or was it consensus-approved at some point?
Edited by ViluiopenTroper edits with multiple issues in Ward Character pages Literature
Aenima has been making edits in the Ward character pages that either have bad grammar, consist of ZCEs, violate the spoiler policy, or all three. (This pattern seems to be shared on other pages they edit going by their edit history)
I sent them notifiers months ago, but after not editing for a while they've appeared again, but they seem to have not taken the notifiers to heart as their edits still show the same issues.
Edited by rmctagg09openNo Title Literature
Luna Mytth created the work page for Wizards Of Once, however literally all the examples they had put on the page were Zero-Context Examples.
I commented the examples out and sent them a notifier, they have since uncommented most of the examples without bothering to expand on them, and the ones they have attempted to expand on are so poorly written that they still don't provide enough context as to how the trope examples apply.
For the same work they also created an unindexed character page containing only brief descriptions of the work's characters and zero tropes. I sent them a notifier but they never responded.
Also the work pages title is wrong, the description on the page says the work is The Wizards of Once not Wizards of Once.
openConversation in the Page Literature
Jane Eyre has a massive entries-long discussion under Values Dissonance complete with use of the first person. However a lot of the points they bring up about the historical context for it are valid and interesting to note despite clearly violating page etiquette. It's clear that it needs to be completely rewritten. How should we go about doing so?
openSpoiling trope names Literature
For The Dresden Files. First Davilla keeps spoiling out the trope names of tropes their adding to the characters page. They keep doing this with this just one example.
Edited by miraculousopenNamespace question Literature
PrincessPandaTrope moved the Gameknight 999 Series, a series of unofficial Minecraft novels, to the Fanfic namespace. I had originally put them under the Literature namespace because while they weren't officially sanctioned by Mojang or Microsoft they were still published novels I found in the library, and are currently published under Simon & Schuster, the third-largest US publishing company.
What namespace would be correct?
EDIT: Fanfic.Diary Of A Minecraft Zombie is also under that namespace despite also being published for real.
Edited by lalalei2001openDeletions on Classical Mythology pages Literature
Classical Mythology has a long and often contradictory history, but recently I've noticed Drakos25 has been deleting some entries alongside moving things to different pages, without edit reasons (I thought the Maia folder was deleted from the Mortals and Demigods page by mistake and added it back, but on looking at their edit history it turns out they had moved it to the Titans page).
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Characters.ClassicalMythologyOlympians
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/el.php?findfor=Drakos25
Edited by lalalei2001
On the page for A Girl Who Brought Down the World, Hoota made the following edits, which seem to refer to her with her deadname and deadpronouns.
While I understand that Christine is already a controversial figure in more ways than one, I thought it right to refer to her using her preferred name and pronouns since the page for the Sonichu webcomic uses that name.
Should we continue to use the preferred name for Christine? I already reverted the edits this person made, but I'm still not entirely sure.
Edited by YuriHaru567