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Ask the Tropers:
openComplaining?
The troper Aspie_Gamer has made a few contributions lately that seem to be very complain-y in nature:
- Two
edits
to YMMV.James Rolfe, the first about Rolfe's supposedly "piss poor time management", and the second a Narm entry that appears to be misused (complaining about James being emotional about a playground toy being moved).
- This now-removed entry
on Horrible.Video Games Other that states that the words diversity, equity and inclusion "have quickly become synonymous with token racism, sexism, and anything but being genuinely progressive in the eyes of many consumers over the past several years", before going on to complain about Take-Two "virtue signalling". This was brought up in the cleanup thread and a rewrite was given due to the politically-charged nature of the edit.
I can't seem to find anything else, and I'm not asking for him to be banned, but I am a bit worried.
openSpider-Man stuff
Revolutionary_Jack has been adding a lot of entries to Spider-Man YMMV pages that don't have a general fandom consensus to be on the YMMV page, such as Steve Ditko's Gwen Stacy being a Love to Hate character and modern readers preferring her to any other version of Gwen. Entries that are legit are very long-winded and nattery, and they also deleted a Spider-Man 3 Vindicated by History example due to the film "not being a classic" even though its reputation has improved post-ASM 2 and the Editor's Cut salvaging a lot of the movie. The following examples are just from the Spider-Man 3 YMMV page but similar examples can be found on other Spider-Man pages, including main, subpage, and trivia pages.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/el.php?findfor=Revolutionary_Jack
"* Misaimed Fandom:
- The symbiote influenced Peter is supposed to be Peter Slowly Sliding Into Evil and the narm and lameness of "Emo Peter" is definitely an Intended Audience Reaction. But given that many audiences had grown fatigued over Raimi's portrayal of Peter as a serious Extreme Doormat Hurting Hero in the previous films (even if Maguire himself was praised for his performance and screen presence), the fact that the one time we see Peter acting somewhat closer to his more rounded comics' portrayal such as him talking back to his landlord and giving Harry Osborn a piece of his mind, it's shown as a case of a Symbiote turning him evil, makes many fans express frustration about Raimi's misreading of the character as a suffering superhero monk.
- Many fans especially feel this way about Peter negotiating a higher salary from Jameson. In the comics this happened at the end of the Master Planner arc (considered among the all-time greatest stories in Spider-Man mythos), and it was portrayed as a Hell Yes moment. The movie makes it seem like this is his Start of Darkness even if what Peter is doing, calling out Eddie Brock for his unethical work and fighting against Jameson's exploitation, is entirely legitimate."
"* They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- A big sticking point for some fans, even if the character on the whole was praised, was the Retcon that made Sandman into Uncle Ben's killer. It's not the first time a superhero film did this (Tim Burton's Batman did the same to Joker, and it was criticized even then by many reviewersnote It was an element that DC Comics, normally receptive to introducing elements from adaptations, absolutely refused to incorporate into the character since it drastically undermined the appeal of the Batman-Joker rivalry) but many audiences felt it drastically undercut and ruined Peter's origin from Spider-Man 1 (since if the burglar Peter specifically didn't let escape kill Uncle Ben, and it was his getaway partner who did it in panic, then that means that Peter isn't actually responsible for his Uncle's death and his entire guilt was misplaced, which ruins the crucial theme from his story). Many also saw it as an inability for Raimi and Sony to create a nemesis who wasn't a free agent unconnected to Peter's story and life simply so that they could rehash simple beats. A tendency at Sony Pictures which continued in The Amazing Spider-Man Series and which the hacked Sony emails had one of Marvel's own executives call them out on.
- As a number of fans note, the Symbiote was never Spider-Man's Superpowered Evil Side nor did it turn him into evil, and definitely ''not'' emo. The original Symbiote was a sentient suit that liked Spider-Man and became a case of a Stalker with a Crush. It ended up taking Peter out as Spider-Man while in his sleep, and Peter worried about gaps and lack of control parted ways with it, which made the Symbiote a crazy jealous ex, who saw new host Eddie Brock as "sloppy seconds". The change in dynamics to a more simplistic Jekyll and Hyde story annoyed many for cheapening a great concept, as well as creating frustrating drama since Peter acts like a jerk to his loved ones but since it's not really his fault, all his actions can be blamed on Gollum Made Me Do It (which as many note was a beat that applied to the villain of Spider-Man 1 and something which Peter didn't entirely accept there)."
openConcerning Troper
I have some concerns about Maddoxsort and I unfortunately do not know how to approach them.
- The moderators and administrators are to be viewed as apathetic Hanging Judge types. They will not sympathize, only criticize. They will not just micromanage, they will cauterize you like a viral infection. They are relentlessly predatory and will immediately gobble up anybody who causes a negative commotion on the wiki in the slightest. It will always be a Hopeless Boss Fight against them, and the sooner you admit this, the better off you'll be.
And this:
- Overall, this wiki is exacting as heck. Every time you make an edit, it must be useful. If there's no practical reason to add something and you do so anyway, it's already wrong. Like that image you wanted to add on a recap page? Forget it- it's in the way. (Or at least wait a few years until the opposition clears out) If it so much as smells like it's politically charged, it's a full-on declaration of war. If you add content with personal bias or sexually suggestive undertones, it's gonna get swabbed away. And if someone can find a reason to dispute one edit, they find reason to dispute them all. Which leads to a waste of time you could be spending more constructively. And it often leaves me wondering, "Why do I even bother?"Exactly. They say they want you to edit, when in reality, you're just some cog in a machine that you don't get to run. A cog who just contributes a waste of time. And that's just sad.Look, but don't touch.
What I am more concerned of, though, is that Maddoxsort admits on their Troper page to being the creator of Eureka Seven: Paradox Makers—or at the very least, very closely involved in the creation of it. They're pretty much the only Troper to have edited the page, which in and of itself is fine. As we've discussed on ATT before, creators may edit pages for their work. Some of their edits have issues like ZCE and trope misuse, but my main concern is that they are Auto-Erotic Troping on the YMMV page. Maddoxsort has added Author's Saving Throw, Adorkable, Holy Shit Quotient, and Fanon, and in pretty...self-congratulatory ways.
- Holy Shit Quotient: Claire bumps into Gidget by accident. Just seeing one of the most lovable Gekkostate alumni doing great is a really pleasant experience.
- Fanon: This story is basically an expansion pack to the Eureka Seven history tailored for the fandom based on feedback. It's not pandering because the writer has a clear vision of what they want to portray and they aren't wavering from that path.
What brought my attention to this Troper was the edit of another one, Robert TYL, who could also use a talking-to about using YMMV pages to mock works. All their edits under Narm are links to pages from the Webcomic with descriptors like "Here be an action-packed human vs. mecha battle as sketched by an 8 year-old with an aneurysm" and "illustrated by a toddler who found out a ballpoint pen can, in fact, be used for art." Maddoxsort has deleted two so far, with the reason "The jokes are not appreciated, you asshole. At least now I know which ones to redo."
I am unsure of how to broach this situation. I see rudeness in the Troper page and Auto-Erotic Troping, but also Robert TYL breaking the "don't be a dick" rule.
openEdit war on YMMV/Caillou
Back in January, Boomerang 123 added examples for
Misaimed Fandom and Narm about PBS Kids' announcement that Caillou would be leaving the channel. I brought them up to the Complaining thread
and, as recommended there, removed them
.
Earlier this month, the same troper added both examples back
.
openOverly protective of the DCEU. Film
Somewhat preemptive, but Deeed is being way protective of the DCEU and edit-warring to do so.
The worst example so far is on IdiotPlot.Live Action Film, where they pulled an entry without an edit reason. A discussion post was made by someone else asking for an explanation, and then it was restored after I pointed out that it was deleted without explanation (which, you know, is vandalism). They did then participate in the discussion... after re-deleting the movie, and rather than give an explanation, they linked a bunch of youtube links and said "no, it's totally explained." So they are using the discussion... but upon further thought, that might be worse since they're ignoring it.
Also unacceptable:
- Deleting link to a narm subpage
- Again, deleting an entire movie without explanation
. When it was restored, they then neutered an example into what's at best a ZCE, despite being near-universally considered laughable.
Now again, this is preemptive as though he's edit-warring, he's at least checking discussion pages and responding, even though his responses are unsatisfactory.
Edited by LarkmarnopenInky100 is still showing problems with Trolls
Inky 100, who has been brought up here three
times
before
, continues to show a constant issue of excessively Entry Pimping the Trolls franchise. Here's some various problematic pages:
- Analysis.Trolls: Blank page.
- DarthWiki.Trolls and SugarWiki.Trolls: Both used to list YMMV items in the respective namespaces; the Sugar Wiki stuff can just go on the main YMMV page.
- DrinkingGame.Trolls: Too short, and has some odd stuff such as "Whenever you get a Squick, Narm or Tastes Like Diabetes feeling". The same applies to the other Trolls Drinking Game subpages listed on the bottom.
- FanficRecs.Trolls: Blank.
- FanWorks.Trolls: Only a single work listed, which is far too little for a Fan Works subpage.
- GravityIsAHarshMistress.Trolls: This page singles out every example of the trope, which seems excessive.
- Haiku.Trolls: Another blank page.
- LogoJoke.Trolls: Too short to have a separate subpage.
- Memes.Trolls: Again, too short.
- Pantheon.Trolls: I very highly doubt that this page was actually approved, especially since it's a stub.
- Quotes.Trolls and Quotes.Trolls World Tour: Are Quotes subpage supposed to have spoiler tags?
- Radar.Trolls: Another overly-short subpage that seems like 100% misuse under GCPTR's new restrictions.
- ShoutOut.Trolls: Again, seems too short to deserve a separate subpage. Same applies to ShoutOut.Trolls Trollstopia, but ShoutOut.Trolls The Beat Goes On doesn't seem too bad.
- Timeline.Trolls: I am not a Trolls fan and have never seen any of the works in the franchise, but I doubt the timeline is complicated enough that it needs a separate subpage.
- WhatCouldHaveBeen.Trolls World Tour: Not too short, but I think its contents can still just go on WhatCouldHaveBeen.Trolls.
openEdit War Film
Rice Romp
added the following to Narm.Spider Man Trilogy on March 17th:
I removed it as it was deemed not to be an example by the Narm clean-up thread
Today he added this to the page which, is more or less the same example but with slightly different wording:
openProblematic Troper
Boomerang 123 goes easy on context and heavy on shoehorning and complaining.
On YMMV.Strange Magic, they added this:
- The Scrappy:
- Sunny is disliked for being an annoying simp towards Dawn and tries to mess with her free will to get together with her. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t even seem to care that he caused the movie's conflict.
- Roland is annoying and obnoxious even by villain standards. He’s not subtle about his intentions at all, is a complete rip-off of Hans and Gaston, doesn’t really do anything entertaining or intimidating, and his voice sounds like Nicholas Cage doing a bad Elvis impression. His comeuppance isn’t even satisfying or fitting, it’s just nauseating.
- So Bad, It's Good: The movie's jukebox musical concept is cheesy, but sometimes you can’t help but laugh at how unrecognizable the songs sound compared to the originals.
- Cliché Storm: A princess swears off love forever after a bad relationship and somehow ends up falling in love with someone along the way. Not to mention, the villain's whole motivation for destroying love has been done to death.
- Designated Hero: Sunny is supposed to Dawn's one true love, but he comes off as a bit of a jerk for trying to use a love potion on her and practically manipulates her into hooking up with him at the end, even though she clearly wasn’t interested.
- Arc Fatigue: About two thirds of the film consist of the characters singing pop songs or wacky antics. We don’t get any real action or character development until the third act.
Then, they added entries that sound like "things I personally wish happened":
- Ass Pull:
- Bog survives his castle being destroyed with only a small scratch. You’d expect him to have a sprained ankle or at least a stubbed toe.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Even people who liked the film wished the movie would give more depth to the two kingdoms being divided and why they refuse to live in peace. It was more like a "stay on your side" kind of deal.
- Marianne and Bog’s romance is praised, but it doesn’t get much development or focus. It would have been nice to see how their romance would affect their respective kingdoms, but by the time they start falling for each other, there’s only thirty minutes left in the movie.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sounds like Nicholas Cage doing a bad Elvis impersonation.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Roland is not subtle about his intentions at all.
- Dumb Muscle: He’s not very bright.
Looking through their edit history, I spotted more entries with insufficient context, at the very least, here
and here
, so I sent a context notifier, too. Since then, they made edits here
and here
; some of them lack context again. (I don't know these works, so I can't judge if the tropes fit.)
Also, a couple of days after I sent the complaining notifier, they added
this entry on YMMV.Ice Age 5 Collision Course:
- Narm: Many interviews with the cast members and spots called this, "the best Ice Age movie ever" and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
openTroper making low-effort cleanup posts
for as long as i have been active in the Narm cleanup thread
, a particular troper, Anddrix, has been posting long lists of examples there without stating what they think is problematic about the examples they're posting. i have seen them make similar posts elsewhere as well, but the Narm thread is the only place where our activity significantly overlaps.
this is a problem because they're making other people do the work of actually determining what, if anything, is wrong with the examples. posts of this type generally are not tolerated in the projects forums; the expectation is that, if you think there's a problem, it's on you to do the work to prove it. what's more, if they don't get a response to their posts, they repost them with no additional context until someone finally goes through the examples. this has been going on, as i said, for as long as i have been active on the cleanup threads, and honestly, im sick and tired of watching other people do the work Anddrix should have done before posting in the first place. it's unfair to everyone who posts according to the rules.
openFed up with negativity Film
The Narm.Star Wars, IdiotPlot.Star Wars, and WhatAnIdiot.Star Wars are filled with negativity. That's old news. The problem is that every time someone tries to clean them up, people always add the complaints right back.
I'm making this querry to gather opinions on whether I should ask for a lock on these three pages in order to clean them up. Knowing the SW fanbase, the lock will most likely have to be permanent.
Could I get hear people's thoughts on this motion?
openComplaining Edit Reasons
Bismuth83
seems to have a Single-Issue Wonk regarding an anime and Netflix's treatment of it as seen here
, here
, here
, here
, and here
.
openReporting Troper for Un-hiding Zero Context Examples
As I was requested to do so here
by TantaMonty, Scarlet Jersey unhid some Zero Context Examples on Narm.Marvel Cinematic Universe here
and here
, some of which they did not even add additional context to, like the Thor entries.
They also removed the Administrivia warning at the top of the page that said not to unhide Zero Context Examples without adding sufficient context, even though there were still other ZCEs on the page.
openDethroning Entry Removal Web Original
The DethroningMoment.The Mysterious Mr Enter page had this entry removed a while ago:
- legorunnerkid: My moment comes in his Nick-O-Rama review for Monsters vs. Aliens. Ignoring his akward and goofy rants on the animation, he complains about President Hathaway acting like a fool. Afterwards, he plays a clip of Donald Trump. Ignoring any of my opinions on Trump, this felt really out of place in a review for a cartoon. Not made better considering a couple of videos back, he says he doesn't like it when entertainers become political (Extra Credits and Chadtronic) but yet he acts politically here. I came to watch your review because I wanted to see what you thought about the show, not what you think of the president. And if someone who is a Trump supporter watches it, I feel they may not be welcome to the channel because of that scene. I try to be really nice here and try to not complain like a madman, but I feel that most of Enter's fanbase doesn't care about politics or at the very least, are not going to watch a video for his political views. If he is going to be political, it should at least be what the entire video is about.
openEdit warring in YMMV Dragon Ball Super Anime
I removed a bunch of entries from the YMMV page of the Granolah's arc from Dragon Ball Super, since they were violations of policy (adding a Broken Base entry just days after the arc had ended, for example, alongside a It Was His Sled entry, and an Audience-Alienating Ending entry when the entire arc is days old). I also removed some entries that read as too much complaining instead of actually showing an audience reaction, particularly concerning Narm, Ass Pull, Franchise Original Sin and Fan-Disliked Explanation.
troper AMassiveOvereditor
(Which originally added most of these entries) added a bunch of entries back, with the exception of the entries that negated policy. What should be done in this case? I feel that rather than reflecting the views of the audience itself, the page just merely centers on the views of this specific troper. Not to say that there isn't examples of Narm and Ass Pull (I left some of those and after some days I thought that maybe I should have added back the Black Frieza entry in Ass Pull), but I feel that the page as a whole is too negative, which is a common problem in the Dragon Ball Super manga pages.
openYMMV Entry Restoration Videogame
The 2017 video game Mass Effect: Andromeda features a character that is supposed to be a powerful, violent, intimidating female warlord from a Proud Warrior Race. The voice of the character in question sounds like, to be blunt, a very stereotypically effeminate gay male, to the point where it sounds like a parody. Think Family Guy cutaway portrayal of a gay male, except it's supposed to be taken seriously. It's legitimately not very clear that this character is supposed to even be a female. Because of this and the character fighting in an extremely poorly animated and choreographed scene, this character has been overwhelmingly ridiculed and mocked by players and fans.
It turns out the person who provided the voice recordings for this character is transgender. DGCatAniSiri removed a Narm entry from the YMMV page, claiming that such an entry is transphobic. There was no mention of transgenderism in the entry.
I've sent a message to DGCatAniSiri explaining that even if this claim had any weight, it's irrelevant. Explaining that YMMV entries don't become valid or invalid based upon whether the fan reaction was "right," and that they are perfectly free to disagree. After weeks, a follow up message, and more weeks, they still haven't responded, despite being active.
May I restore this entry?
Edited by HeartOfStoneopenEdit War Live Action TV
2 days ago RiceRomp
added Audience-Alienating Premise to YMMV.Ratched.
Yesterday Golden City Bird
removed the example citing in his edit reason that works that haven't been released yet can't qualify for "Audience Alienating Premise".
RiceRomp has since then re-added the example.
Also they've added a couple of Narm examples, that were confirmed to be
Zero-Context Examples, so I commented them-out, but they have uncommented them.
openFranchiseOriginalSin.StarWars Film
I want to start this by saying that locking or cutting a page should be used for worst-case-scenario pages only.
I've been trying to fix up FranchiseOriginalSin.Star Wars, and I've found that the page has many, many issues regarding the examples listed. It, of course, suffers from Complaining About Shows You Don't Like, as most Star Wars Audience Reaction pages end up like. Now, this in itself is a pretty fixable situation, because it's very similar to Narm.Star Wars, which we successfully cleaned out. Yes, it took months, but it was a satisfying conclusion.
But the Narm page was different, because that had 1-3 sentence examples that resulted in a simple cleanup objective of "remove misuse". It was very simple to fix the page. But with this page? No, my objective was to shorten the examples instead of cutting them. But the more I go into the page, the more I realize that nearly every example is a violation of Complaining About Shows You Don't Like, and it's frustrating. Just like Example Indentation or Zero-Context Examples, complaining is a fair reason to remove a bad example.
So here's the "Ask" part: What should be done with the page? If it's undeniably hard to fix, and just about every example is a heavy violation of policy, what can be done to help? I was thinking of maybe locking it, but it sounds too obstructive. Cutting is also an option if the cleanup proves unmanageable, but it's barely on the table.
So, what does the rest of the wiki think about the page?
openConcerning edit reasons about Israel/Hamas conflict
emlovele has made a few edits today with some pretty hostile and (in my opinion) dogwhistle-y comments about the ongoing military conflict in Gaza.
On Narm.Music and Narm.Live Action TV they removed some entries that I would actually agree need to go, but left these edit reasons:
"Watch a news report. Read a book. It’s not anti-Semitic to CORRECTLY point out that thousands of Palestinians have had their property seized ON CAMERA by the IDF. There’s nothing funny about it. I know this site is overrun with Zionists, but let’s be serious for a second."
"1. Again, there’s nothing funny about Israel murdering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with zero MSM coverage. It’s great that you guys think it’s something to joke about, but it’s like saying a song sang by Jews during the Holocaust is cringey or worthy of being laughed at. It’s not a funny situation. 2. There are hundreds of songs about men getting revenge on cheating women. Eminem’s Love the Way you Lie, anyone? “Ima tie her to the bed and set the house on fire”?"
In my experience, the term "Zionist" tends to be associated with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and their troper page further conflates "Zionists" with "genocide supporters". (It also helpfully states that they will refuse to respond to any messages or notifiers sent to them, so...) All of the things mentioned here were edits made today, and I haven't combed through their entire history, but it certainly is giving off a personal agenda to me even if the removed entries should have been cut.

I just want to go ahead and say I don't watch Supergirl so I have no two cents in this one way or the other.
So on Supergirl, there's a character named William who apparently is not liked at all by the fanbase. I suppose that in and of itself is fine to put on YMMV pages since it's a notable Audience Reaction, but there seems to be a problem with bashing rather than just stating. Specifically, Starbrand 1987 has made many, many edits just talking about how much fans hate William. (They also have several grammar problems like no punctuation and no capitalization, but that's beside the point.)
Here
Starbrand adds And The Fandom Rejoiced about William possibly dying. Here
they put in an entry saying that William flirting with Kara after she turned him down on an episode that aired on International Woman's Day...is Narm.
Most of it is here
on the YMMV page. Starbrand puts a large edition to an entry talking about how poorly-received William is, an entry about how his actor and Kara's actress have no chemistry, adding William and Kara's romance under Audience-Alienating Premise ("Not one regular supergirl media reviewer approves of the relationship."), basically accusing the writers under Trolling Creators, and several subbullets under The Scrappy that got deleted.
Forenperser has deleted some entries, but with the reasons "Stop this silly obsession already." and "Natter, poorly written and just plain obsession," I'm afraid this is going to get hostile soon. They were reported to ATT before
, but it seems they're still at it.
Edited by iamconstantine