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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 Hátíð 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 Hátíð 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 Hátíð 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 Hátíð 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 LordGroopen potential Edit War with Bense in the Hobbit Literature
This other troper and I have been arguing. We can't agree on anything. The problem is that I am willing to keep entries on our debate neutral, and he keeps asserting his point of view as fact. The problem is that his views I just cannot bring myself to leave them be. They simply clash with all my interpretations of the book and I feel a little sick looking at what he treats as fact, since in order to be at peace with it I'd have to change my very moral compass, and I can't just do that on short notice!
openUsed Future clarification Literature
I need someone to attest if this trope even applies to given situation:
In Missile Gap
, the US government has its resources stretched to a near-breaking point. Most of the equipment, vehicles and what not that is available for civilians comes from the 50s, while the story is set in the 80s (or at the very least tail end of the 70s). And here comes my issue. It isn't exactly "future", at least in a clear, obvious way. However, the story is a serious Mind Screw
- by default, it is a far future, since the whole story is set millions of years in the future, with all characters and the world itself being just a snapshop (probably) of Earth in the wake of the Cuban Crisis and the consequences of that event in the new place; more importantly, characters in-universe are aware of this
- the story itself heavily employs the used gear aesthetics, especially since from in-universe perspective, characters expect new gizmos and design, rather than being reduced to reusing what should be send to a scrapyard decades ago
So... does Used Future work, or there should be other trope used to cover this?
Edited by Staniszopen"Meta" Take A Third Option Literature
Not even sure where such questions belongs, so asking here. Let's start with a backstory, cause I likely wouldn't be able to explain properly without it.
Two writers, both writing about the same topic (let's call them Alice and Bob for now) were arguing about one element of Alice-created world, which Alice considered "unavoidable evil", and Bob considered, basically, Moral Event Horizon.
They chose to dispute it by writing a short story (a non-canon crossover between their worlds), with each side taking turns and writing their parts from their characters' point of view, and defending their position. They never came to an agreement and... let's just say, those two are no longer friends.
But some time later, another author (let's call him Charlie) came to Alice and offered to write another short story, where that issue finally was resolved... by Taking a Third Option to the original conflict. Even "Alice" himself calls it such on his site (where he hosts all his works).
And here comes the issue. As far as I understand, "meta" examples aren't allowed at all? But in that case, what other way it may be mentioned? Aforementioned conflict and finding an alternate solution to it is the entire reason why the short story was written in the first place, but they don't share continuity.
openCreate parent universe trope? Literature
I built the Threadbare and Small Medium entries regarding series by Andrew Seiple set in the common universe of Generica Online. I occasionally find myself copy-pasting entries to both pages when I find a trope common to the universe in general. To use a mildly trivial example, the world has an in-universe Cap on class levels (due to the world being associated in some way with an MMORPG) that has in-story effects. I could list that the cap exists on both works pages, but it seems to make more sense to put it on a Generica Online page.
openCan't find my work page in the search engine Literature
Hi! I just posted a new work page (see link below). Yet when I type "That Irresistible Poison" into the search engine, I see a lot of pages unrelated to the book. The search engine does show the history page of my edits at the top of the results, though. Typing "That Irresistible Poison Alessandra Hazard" leads to just the history page of my edits, but not the work page itself. Does anyone know why? I already have the Page Type set to Work, and have Indexed it under Queer Romance, Queer Media, and Literature of the 2010s.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ThatIrresistiblePoison
Thanks so much!
openQuick apology about a dumb edit Literature
Hello! Apologies if this isn't the correct place to put this.
I just wanted to apologize real quick about a dumb series of edits I made on the new trope Tourist Bump. I had changed the Twilight example based on a previous wording, only to see too late that it already got reworded by someone else. It wasn't my intention to screw it up like this; I tried changing it back but I screwed it up even more. I'm sorry about this mess; please feel free to change it back. I could even try doing it myself if necessary.
openFire and Blood Designated Hero Literature
I feel like the YMMV for Fire and Blood calling Jaehaerys a Designated Hero is wrong and should be removed because 1) Jaehaerys did plenty of legitimately great things for Westeros. 2) It was Baelon who let Alyssa humiliate Vaegon in the training yard. 3) Jaehaerys sending Vaegon to the Citadel was something Vaegon himself was happy to do. 4) Saera and her male consorts were legitimately awful people and Jaehaerys treated his daughter very well until he learned of her many misdeeds. 5) Jaehaerys had a good argument as to why trying to bring back Saera from Lys would cause nothing but trouble and correctly guessed that his daughter wanted nothing more to do with her family. 6) Arranged marriages like the ones Daella and Viserra had are commonplace amongst Westeros nobility. And 7) Westeros is an inherently male oriented culture and Jaehaerys passing over Rhaenys as his successor, while sexist, would be the expected choice for him to make.
Edited by ChubzhacopenMark Twain YMMV Literature
Please unlock the YMMV for Mark Twain. I intend to crosswick an approved CM entry for a work which does not exist on the wiki.
- Complete Monster (King Leopold's Soliloquy): King Leopold presents himself as a vicious hypocrite and sanctimonious tyrant who subjects the Free State of the Congo to horrific depravity. Having countless people killed and entire regions depopulated, Leopold demands high taxes and production rates from his supposed subjects, cutting off limbs or even castrating others who cannot meet them. Having people tortured and murdered in huge numbers, Leopold notes one of his mistakes was to have sixty innocents crucified and remarks fewer people would care if he'd them skinned. Uncaring of anything but lining his pockets, Leopold shows his only sympathy is to himself, indifferent to the half-million corpses he has left in his rush for money.
openexample arguing with itself Literature
The Dune example under "Literature" on War for Fun and Profit is arguing with itself. I don't know anything about the series beyond half-paying attention to the movie and TV Tropes examples. Could someone who does know please fix?
openMore from Unbuilt Trope Literature
(The original entry is two bullets at the bottom of LONG list of "teen dystopia" sub-genre entry)
- The Hunger Games itself is a Trope Codifier for the YA Dystopia Novel note Though The Giver and Uglies both predate it, it started the trend more properly , and has many deconstructive elements, thanks to its author being very fond of deconstructor fleets. After all, the dystopia depicted isn't that much worse than the resistance, the Love Triangle is a ploy for attention by the villains, and most of the second book is spent exploring how the main character's psyche has been affected by the events of the first rather than a further adventure.
Ignoring how it's include as Trope Codifier (But is it? The note only claims it "started the trend more properly", not how it codifies the genre), the fact that it outright say "its author being very fond of deconstructor fleets" make me think it's more of "early deconstruction" than actual Unbuilt Trope.
Edited by KuruniopenWhen is Spider-Man and Superman gonna get a self demonstrating article Literature
Question supes and spidey had one, but now they dont could this change one day?
openSweeney Todd Literature
Hello! I'm someone who's familiar with Sweeney Todd despite not having seen the musical and only saw clips of the Tim Burton movie adaptation, but has found the penny dreadful the musical and film are adapted from.
However, something about one of the pages bothers me. Even though the original tale titled The String of Pearls is listed as the original source, there is no page/article regarding it by itself, if that makes sense.
Personally, as a literature enthusiast myself and someone who likes looking into stories and authors I don't know of and acquire them to read, I find it disappointing the book isn't a topic.
Is it possible to create a page/article concerning The String of Pearls, even if only to give the written story itself the credit it's due?
openFranchise Original Sin for Harry Potter Literature
The Harry Potter saga has acquired enough space to fit its own page for the Franchise Original Sin trope. While some entries are understandable, this one feels kinda odd.
- One of the more common critiques of Crimes of Grindelwald was the titular villain's plan, where he wants To Unmasque the World with the purpose of taking it over and stopping the atrocities of the 1930s-40s. While his imperialist ambitions are undeniably bad, the invoking of Holocaust and Nazi imagery and Grindelwald's legitimate argument about how the Statute of Secrecy ultimately does a lot more harm than good for both Muggles and Wizards ended up striking a chord with a lot of audiences. As a result, it made the "good guys" seem extremely selfish, because when you read between the lines, it acknowledged that wizards could have stopped World War II, the Holocaust, etc., but considered staying isolated and segregated to be more important than saving millions of lives. To an extent, the implication that wizards value their secrecy and privilege over Muggle lives was always there in the original series. Even when Voldemort's supporters were pretty much declaring open season on Muggles during the final two books, none of the good-guy wizards ever considered informing them of the truth despite them finding out what's going on being the best way for Muggles to protect themselvesnote For one thing, the Muggle government could have coordinated with the Order of the Phoenix by combining their resources, and the Muggle Military and the Aurors and/or the Order of the Phoenix could have worked together to track down and kill/capture as many Death Eaters as possible. This could have given the good guys a major advantage over the Death Eaters; even if they don't have magic, Muggles can still fight and kill wizards (and given wizards' general ignorance of Muggle technology, it being used to combat the Death Eaters and Voldemort could have totally blindsided them), and the Muggle population outnumbers the Wizard population. Notably, Dumbledore reaches out diplomatically to a tiny enclave of murderous giants who hate wizards and kill each other for fun, but never considers reaching out to Muggles despite knowing full-well that the Death Eaters want to wipe all of them out. In fact, the only explanation we ever get for why wizards even maintain The Masquerade in the first place is Hagrid briefly claiming that they don't want to use their magic to solve Muggle problems in the first book. While the apparent moral was pretty ugly, the story never really dwelt much on the relationship between wizards and Muggles, which made it easy to ignore or handwave. Crimes of Grindelwald just made it explicit how far their callous indifference went and made it part of the central conflict, rather than a mere implication. It also didn't help that the 1990s were generally seen as a pretty stable era, which made a noninterventionist policy feel somewhat defensible to readers, while the '30s and '40s (and, adding in Reality Subtext, The New '10s) were not.
What exactly is the complaint here? Is the writer complaining that the wizards (and by extension, Rowling herself) chose not to reveal the existence of the wizarding world, even though that was never on Rowling's plans for the series? I'm no Harry Potter expert, but I'm sure the characters and Rowling have explained plenty of times why revealing the existence of the wizarding world to Muggles would be a bad idea. What should we do about this?
openHow to use the "Freemium" trope? Literature
Should it be under the trivia tab or on the main page of a work? Or, since it's Literature and not a video game or referencing a video game, is there a better trope to use?
The context is that the work is free to read online, but people who pay for VIP memberships to the site it's hosted on get early access to chapters/are ad-free/etc. It wouldn't be used as a trope that pertains to the story itself or to storytelling, so I feel like it should be under trivia. However I've seen it on the main page of other works and it isn't on the list of tropes on the main Trivia page.
openPage with no existing work Literature
While clicking the Random Media button, I came across the page for Linda. The page has four examples on it, and the description of the work claims that it's a short story hosted on a Google Document. Clicking on the provided link shows that the Document was deleted at some point, and I can't find any other copy of it online. There's no linked account for the author, the history for the page doesn't show who made it in the first place, and only five tropers (including myself at one point last year, to my surprise) have edited the page over the past 8 years.
I would like to ask what's the best course of action for a page like this. Do you cut the whole page, or do you toss it into the Unpublished Works section?
Courtesy link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Literature.Linda
openRed links to the Back to the Future novel Literature
Lately, I've been seeing links to the article for George Gipe's novelization of Back to the Future as a Red Link, like so. However, the page itself is still intact. Worried about the page being cut, I took no chances and moved all of the examples from that page to the page for B to the F: The Novelization of the Feature Film in case. I checked the Recent Cuts page
, but it's not there. I checkd the Cut List page
, but it's not there either. Can someone tell me whether it's actually being cut or not?
openFlynnbulwinter/darkelfwizard Literature
I have good to believe that a couple of "tropers" named Tropes/Flynnbulwinter and Tropers/darkelfwizard has been using the site as self-promotion for their indie fantasy book series,Anthologies of Ullord as Nikki Flynn and Edwin Dantes.
In the Ullord main work page, you could see in the edit history, that these people edited the pages themselves and putting elements in the trope pages.
They have not seem to stop, with them editing their own pages months ago. The Anthologies of Ullord are basic paint-by-numbers fantasy, which make this situation more odd. A troper suggested this to me after the High Crate "event."
I hope you would respond in kind,
S.V.

Luke: The Plague Son of Nurgle
While doing some cleanup work, came across the above which appears to be an unstructured forum story told by multiple people in 2009 and interspersed with comments from anonymous posters. It's not referenced anywhere else on google besides tvtropes and the forum links themselves.
What is the criteria for a web original forum work being listed? Does it need to have an attributable author? Does it need to have evidence of a reader base? Is there some other criteria we use? Does it need to be something someone can actually pinpoint and consume with a clear line between the work itself and people commenting on it? Is there any kind of minimum length requirement?
When I came across this one, it didn't really seem to fit the "Literature" media space to me though I know WebSerialNovels do get classified under literature.
However, I'm not sure this forum story can even be classified as a novel so that's adding to my confusion.
The work page has 1 wick under "The Pig-Pen", 171 total inbounds, and looks to have been created on November 20, 2021 though the original 4chan threads look like they were all from November 2009.