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:
openPandering to the Base misuse(?)
YMMV.RWBY had Pandering to the Base cut citing
"Actual pandering would be doubling down on the aspects that most fans obsess over, not responding to critics."
If reversing direction in response is the opposite kind of pandering to PTTB, I believe these might also be misuse.
- Since Wish (2023) was the Disney Animated Canon film earmarked to serve as the centennial Milestone Celebration for the Walt Disney Company as a whole, there was a lot of this going on, which many critics argued was to the film's detriment.
- Even before the closing credits featured images of characters from most of the previous Canon films there were tons of other Easter Egg references, often obvious ones, to them, such as Asha's friends The Teens being visual and personality analogues to The Seven Dwarfs, one woman with a strong resemblance to Wendy Darling whose wish is to fly, Asha herself wearing a cloak and bow near-identical to The Fairy Godmother, and Valentino the goat describing an imagined Zootopia - all in service of a purported backstory for the Wishing Star that appeared in Pinocchio and The Princess and the Frog, and perhaps more recognizably the company's Vanity Plate. This ended up confusing some audience members since it isn't clear if it actually takes place in the same universe as any or all of these other films (keeping in mind there are many reasons they cannot all share a universe), and even engendered controversy regarding the ending in which Asha does become her world's Fairy Godmother, as some interpreted it to mean she is the same one as Cinderella's...despite Asha not being white. Other viewers (particularly professional critics) said the references were just distracting and served to point up how uninteresting the story and characters of this film were by comparison, because...
- They are deliberately a Cliché Storm of "typical" Disney animated feature tropes: A Plucky Girl heroine with a Disappeared Dad and an Award Bait "I Want" Song in a European Fairy Tale-inspired kingdom who goes on The Hero's Journey, Talking Animals (one of whom serves as her Sidekick), a nonhuman Cute Mute sidekick, an Evil Is Hammy villain wielding Sickly Green Glow magic and a Villain Song, a Setting Introduction Song, Crowd Songs, a big emphasis on wishes/dreams coming true, etc. Between this and all the Easter eggs, for many viewers it played more like a parody of Disney films but without any deconstruction or spoofing of said tropes, or a Mockbuster. A few tropes worked against the story: If the people of Rosas are missing a vital part of themselves by giving up their wishes, why is their Setting Introduction Song so happy? Why do they need a Fairy Godmother when they're going to actualize their own desires? And then there were Disney fans who were upset at the tropes not included, such as a romance for the leading lady because what's a "classic" Disney fairy tale (re: pre-Frozen) without a romance?
- King Magnifico was explicitly promoted as a "classic" villain in the vein of Maleficent or Scar - charismatic, completely irredeemable, complete with a Villain Song - after a decade or so of Disney antagonists either being initially benign characters revealed as Evil All Along in the third act, or not actually wicked but misguided and easily redeemed. Unfortunately, the filmmakers fumbled the character by still giving him a sympathetic backstory, a wife he loves, and an understandable if questionable motivation for not granting or at least returning the captured wishes...and not even having him do anything truly wicked until after Asha somehow calls Star down to Earth, whereupon he's a case of Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. A lot of viewers ended up feeling sorry for him and his fate when they were not supposed to, or at least feeling that the filmmakers wasted a potentially fascinating antagonist just so there could be a "classic" villain again.
This sounds like a reversal of direction, the opposite of PTTB. Also if most of it is explaining why it failed to do so despite efforts, I'd say misuse as YMMV cannot be played with, unsuccessful attempts are just not examples.
- One criticism leveled at Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker: Not only does it bring back the original trilogy's Big Bad and declare that he's been behind everything all along, but it also makes him Rey's grandfather, undoing the previous movie's decision to make her The Unchosen One. Many critics have noted that it undoes/downplays several other elements of The Last Jedi that upset what they call a Vocal Minority of the fanbase, e.g. Rose Tico is Demoted to Extra and the core new characters are together for most of the story whereas they were split into groups in the previous film. Other critics (who, of course, call fans of the hotly Contested Sequel the Vocal Minority), claim that it doesn't go far enough in undoing the sweeping changes TLJ brought to the series in the name of "subverting expectations"note Which themselves may have been the result of criticisms that TFA hewed too close to A New Hope. TLJ also drew on the KOTOR games, which are possibly the most popular example of a non-traditional, deconstructive Legends work outside of the Thrawn trilogy.. What is interesting about this is that both sides of the Star Wars Broken Base see The Rise of Skywalker as an example of this, but which demographic they see it as pandering to varies depending on which side of the TLJ debate they're on. A rare few other reviewers, meeting in the middle, say that the film tries its hardest to pander to both groups, which predictably satisfied neither.
Again, reversal rather than double down, and widely seen as failed effort.
I know PTTB is due for TRS. Do we want to wait on dealing with these before that? Or is this misuse and OK to start cutting?
openEdit war to remove/WGS misuse?
Characters.Duck Tales 2017 FOWL
- Wrong Genre Savvy: While [[GenreSavvy well-versed in adventure tropes]], [[spoiler:Bradford]] ultimately falls into this. He operates under the assumption he's the villain in a ConspiracyThriller, as opposed to a TwoFistedTales-style adventure series set in a FantasyKitchenSink. This makes him more of a NoNonsenseNemesis than the rest of the RoguesGallery since unlike them, he is ''not'' a showboating CardCarryingVillain, instead preferring to work behind the scenes and abide by PragmaticVillainy. It also causes him to shoot himself, most notably in the GrandFinale. [[spoiler:His grounded and coldly logical view of the world would have perhaps netted him a victory in the more cynical story he thinks he's in, but the fact he's in a show all about [[ThePowerOfLove the importance and power of family]] blinds him to the loophole that leads to his defeat.]]
The troper who added this previously added Genre Savvy as a separate entry which I removed as misuse (GE is savvy with/from in-universe fiction, Bradford is instead Taught by Experience as it comes from his real-life within the show experience). Is it edit waring to remove the pothole?
On the topic, I've seen some Wrong Genre Savvy removed due to lacking the in-universe fiction criteria, but not widely enough it seems like a hard and fast rule like with regular Genre Savvy. Can I get some clarification about that?
openI think this removed example is valid
Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
- Special Effect Failure: In Sue Nahmee's flashback of her as a child, they have the child's actresses' face covered by her adult actress and key frame it. It looks noticeably choppy and doesn't match the movement of the original actress. It doesn't help that The George Lopez Show did the same thing and made it look better despite a 20-year gap in editing technology.
I don't think this was an intentionally bad special effect. They do the exact same messy keyframing with her adult self's head over the robot body in the climax. I have heard a lot of debate over whether the flashback's effects were supposed to be a joke, but given the movie's low budget and Direct-to-Video nature, I think the effect was actually intended to look good.
openCan overriding other tropers' entries in favor of your own entries count as an Edit War? Film
About a couple years ago, I added this example of Numerological Motif to Saw VI:
- Numerological Motif: Being the sixth Saw film, there are several allusions to the number six throughout Saw VI.
- Overall, there are six traps in the film, including the opening trap and all the five traps in William's trial. This is further cemented by one of the film's taglines: "6 chances. 6 lessons. 6 choices."
- One of the traps in itself, the Carousel Trap, has six victims.
- Jill is seen holding an instruction envelope from the box with the number six written on it, likely implying that there were six of them inside the box.
- The film's "Hello Zepp" rendition, "Zepp Six", clocks at six minutes within the six-minute climax.
Later, on January of this year, Ze Trope Guy 999 added
the following example of Arc Number in the same page, the sub-bullets of which, while fewer and less elaborate, are similar to those of my example.
- Arc Number: Six, as befitting the sixth entry.
- There are six victims on the Shotgun Carousel.
- Jill Tuck’s box is revealed to have six envelopes in it - the sixth one containing a photograph of Hoffman.
I'm planning to combine the two entries, mostly using my descriptions but also including some minor facts mentioned in ZeTropesGuy's entry, into a single example of Arc Number, as I had noticed the latter entry today and realized that Arc Number fits better for the film's symbolism of the number six than Numerological Motif. The end result would look like this:
- Arc Number: Befitting its status as the sixth Saw film, there are several allusions to the number six throughout Saw VI.
- Overall (without counting the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0, an updated version of the first film's Reverse Bear Trap that has considerably less screentime than the other traps), there are six traps in the film, including the opening trap and all the five traps in William's trial. This is further cemented by one of the film's taglines: "6 chances. 6 lessons. 6 choices."
- One of the traps in itself, the Shotgun Carousel, has six victims.
- Aside from the five envelopes she gives to Hoffman, Jill is seen holding another instruction envelope from the box with the number six written on it (revealed in the climax to contain instructions on how she has to set up the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 on Hoffman, likely implying that there were six of them inside the box.
- The film's "Hello Zepp" rendition, "Zepp Six", clocks at six minutes within the six-minute climax.
However, I'm worried that the fact that I'm overriding much of ZeTropeGuy's entry with mine could lead to an Edit War if I don't address my planned edit properly. Can this edit really be considered Edit Warring, or is it completely fine to do?
Edited by Inky100open"Non-visual" webcomic? Webcomic
So, Webcomic.Bill Nye The Russian Spy is a page.
And it describes itself as a "non-visual" webcomic and the only link is to the text-based Archive of Our Own.
I assume we don't allow fanfics to be in the webcomic namespace if someone calls it a "non-visual webcomic" so I would just move it to fanfic... but honestly, the page is created and maintained by a vandal and troll
so I don't know if that's even valid. Their edits are generally so uniformly detached from reality that I can't in good conscience make a page for this work using their words, and I'm not going to read the fic just to make the move and ensure that their edits are accurate.
Thoughts?
openPoor punctuation
KiraKiwi410 has a habit of putting spaces before punctuation on wiki pages. Examples can be found here
, here
, and here
. I've taken it upon myself to clean up after them, but they keep doing it. Strangely, they use good punctuation sometimes. I wonder if they're doing it on purpose, it's just a compulsive habit, or they're editing on mobile, as that can sometimes mess up punctuation.
Edit: They've done it again
openDoes this page need a cleanup? (HeartwarmingInHindsight) Anime
The bottom of the page has this note:
IMPORTANT: Do not include examples that are Foreshadowing, nor moments that came just a handful of episodes later. Those are clearly intended heartwarming moments later in the same work.
However, some users have bluntly disregarded this, the vast majority of the anime folder examples consist of stuff that is obviously foreshadowed.
Should it all be removed? I mean, disregarding the entries about voice actors, the blind photographer and the ones relating to Real Life people. I wanted to manually remove it myself but I fear it would start an edit war.
openYMMV misuse
- Designated Hero: While Mace Windu isn't without his heroic moments, he has also proven himself to be a bit callous and thoughtless of the feelings of others. In Attack of the Clones, he beheads Jango Fett instead of disarming him and his face afterwards seem to suggest he doesn't care that Jango was a person (though in his defense, he was defending himself), and in The Clone Wars he doesn't apologize or try to explain himself to Boba Fett (and by that point, he knew that Boba saw him behead Jango), instead basically telling him to get over it. Later on in the series, when dealing with Ahsoka, as he ultimately concedes to Tarkin's demands to excommunicate her and then when she proven innocent, rationalizes the whole ordeal as a great trial by the Force that was meant to happen to make her a great Jedi (which, while possible, feels as though he is trying to deflect blame). Lastly, in Revenge of the Sith (despite having treated him cordially through The Clone Wars) he is distrusting and rude to Anakin, giving him orders to spy on Palpatine, someone Anakin viewed as a close friend and mentor for many years, while at the same time openly talking down to Anakin in front of the council and telling Obi-Wan and Yoda that he doesn't trust him behind Anikin's back. For an altruist keeper of the peace, Mace's conduct towards others can feel bit unbecoming at times, making him feel more like a prick who barely cares for others unless if it benefits his cause.
YMMV cannot be downplayed or played with so misuse.
I deleted the original version as someone else removed it
from DesignatedHero.Live Action Films arguing the work treated it as Necessarily Evil rather than ignore the unheroic parts. Should it be removed?
openPossibly racist part of Hollywood Cuisine?
Here's the part I'm talking about:
- Indian: Tends to be so spicy it burns a hole in the diner's guts (somewhat Truth in Television).
It's the part in parentheses that I'm not sure about; claiming that it's true that Indian food "burns a hole in the diner's guts" doesn't sit well with me. That said, I'm not Indian myself, and I'm aware that the whole trope is about stereotypes.
openAdaptational Badass/Wimp Misuse
Hello all, I had a concern about the use of Adaptational Badass on Baldur's Gate III - Tropes A to E. I've already brought it up in the Is This an Example forum and got one response, which agreed with my points but suggested I get more opinions to be safe. The only Baldur's Gate thread I could find seemed to be dedicated to just discussing the game itself and not the main page's tropes, so I felt uncomfortable posting there and am hoping it'd be acceptable to get opinions here instead.
Additionally, I'm also realizing that Adaptational Wimp sees a lot of the same misuse. I haven't brought that up in the forum, but I'm not sure if I should bother if I'm just going to reiterate my points here.
Even allowing for the flexibility of adding non-character examples to character tropes, "badass" in context of the trope does not mean "added functionality, or different mechanics for the spell to operate under." As Canuck pointed out on the thread, some of these AB examples don't even seem to be more powerful than the tabletop. These tropes seem to be a dumping ground for people to point out the ways in which the video game differs from a tabletop game.
The example on cambions being much more powerful in BG3 than in regular DnD is also just outright false. There is (according to the example itself) a player handbook that lists cambions as potential infernal patrons, so this is not unique to BG3, and outside of Mizora and Raphael (who, again pointed out in the example itself, both have unique reasons to be more powerful than an average cambion) they are depicted as being much less powerful summonable allies.
In a similar manner, the example of Adaptational Wimp for vampire spawn admits that Astarion's siblings match the tabletop version of vampire spawn much closer and that canonically Astarion has unique circumstances to make him weaker/less useful. There is also in-game dialogue acknowledging that most vampire spawn are just as deadly as their masters.
tldr; I want to cut all but the Boo example from Adaptational Badass, and all but the archdruid example from Adaptational Wimp.
Edited by OctoyaopenConcerning Hazbin edit
Under YMMV.Hazbin Hotel, Zardonix made this addition to Base-Breaking Character:
- Season 1's Arc Villain Adam, the first man on Earth and leader of the Exorcists, is the most divisive character in the show for many reasons. Those who love him find him to be a hilarious, cool, yet still threatening adversary for the main cast to face. Others find him to be a flat, one-dimensional villain whose comedic moments are too grating even if intended due to his non-stop swearing and dickishness, which prevents him from being taken seriously even when he's at his most menacing. His non-stop swearing in particular is seen as almost playing into the criticism that detractors make about the Hellaverse overusing swearing and putting it into one character. The decision to make him white has also attracted much criticism. With Eden likely being in the middle east like the rest of the Bible, making Adam white has been pointed out to be an odd decision, especially considering making the first human a white man has some unfortunate implications. While some have tried to justify the choice i.e. His real face supposedly being meant to resembling his va.
Besides coming of as to focused on the complaint side for BBC (which means both side are equally presented), this has baggage concerning enough I'm bringing here.
Would portraying Adam/such an evil and jerkass character as a non-white ethnicity not have issues itself?
Hazbin cleanup is discussing the issue
, suggesting it's a nonissue within the fandom so misuse.
openClomplainy Edits
Lilybelle
has been making complainy edits related to Disney's Wish (2023). In addition to the edits done to the movie's page itself (a specific example would be this really long Character Shilling example
, they have also edited a Ron the Death Eater entry to include more complaints about main character Asha, bolding the word "many" in "many detractors" and adding in the word "ungrateful".
openI edit warred by mistake.
So, this is a weird. I removed
this from Trivia.Snow White 2025:
- Troubled Production: Despite not having been released yet, this film has been marred by a lot of negative press, mainly having to do with drama both on and off the set that some would perceive as "woke".
- Much of the trouble centered around comments made by and about Rachel Zegler, who was already getting some flak for being non-white actress playing a character who had "skin white as snow." In an interview from the D23 Expo in 2022, Zegler brought up that she'd only seen the original film once and hated it, described the Prince as a "stalker" who would be replaced with a new character named Jonathan (played by Andrew Burnap), and said that Snow White's arc will involve her learning to become a strong leader instead of looking for romance; she also teased the possibility that Jonathan might be written out altogether. Director Marc Webb has also alleged that she'd been hard to work with on set, saying that she mocked him for directing The Amazing Spider-Man and demanded as little screentime with Burnap as possible. These comments and allegations have painted Zegler among detractors as a "spoiled brat" who wants to promote shallow view of feminism that prioritizes power over love.
- Upon the film's announcement, dwarf actor Peter Dinklage denounced the original story as bring "backwards" for its depiction of "seven dwarves living in a cave", prompting Disney to issue a statement that they're working with members of the dwarf community. Dinklage subsequently received criticism from said community, interpreting his comments as him speaking unduly on their behalf and costing them roles. In July 2023, a leaked photo from the set revealed seven stand-in actors of different genders and ethnicities (only one of whom had dwarfism), leading to speculation that the dwarfs would be replaced with seven "creatures" with different magical abilities. The storm died down somewhat when an official "first look" still was released that October, which revealed that the Seven Dwarfs will be in the movie (albeit rendered with CGI).
- When the film was delayed by a full year to March 2025, the 2023 actor and writer strikes were cited as the reason, but insiders speculated that it also had to do with not only the PR fiascoes, but also a ballooning budget and executive wariness over the company's disastrous box-office take in 2023, where even the much-hyped The Little Mermaid (2023) performed below expectations; not counting money saved through U.K. tax rebates, the budget was estimated to be around $330 million, surpassing the alleged one of Avengers: Infinity War, meaning it would have to gross over $500 million just to break even. With Rachel Zegler having since backtracked on her earlier comments, the dwarfs now known to be appearing, and reshoots taking place in mid-2024, it seems to imply that the Disney higher-ups felt they had a sinking ship on their hands and are now doing everything they can to save it.
I removed them because the first two are mostly just complaining and the third one is mostly speculation that I couldn't find any actual concrete information on. Now I still stand by that but then I thought "Hey those looked familair." So, I looked through the history but couldn't find anything. Then I remembered that the page had been cut before for being made before we had a trailer. So, I did some digging and found this post where I claimed to have removed some similar but not identical entries
(to be fair at the time most people agreed that it was misuse).
So, yeah between the page being cut, real life stuff happening since then, and the slightly different entries. I had forgotten that I had done it before. That is no excuse, however, and I would like to report myself.
Edited by BullmanopenMost Writers Are Writers is about... what exactly?
The trope Most Writers Are Writers is just confusing to me. From what I've read in the description, it's meant to be a flexible trope to either showcase characterization pertaining to the writer profession and/or how it affects the plot, or even a Chekhov's Skill. But a lot of the examples I've found on the page itself is of "This character's a writer/novelist/screenplayer" with no mention of anything as to why that's relevant. This seems like a chairs magnet to me, and it either needs a clean-up, a rework or a splitting.
openSelf-demonstrating pages?
I posted the old description
for Summer Campy in a "entries that made you laugh" thread, and someone suggested bringing it back as a self-demonstrating page. I would like to do that, but can I just go ahead and make it, or do self-demonstrating pages have to be approved before they can be created?
openDub Induced Plot Hole Question
I tried in the forums and got no answer: Is A really Dub-Induced Plot Hole, REALLY there if the dub was cancelled halfway and it never adapted the parts that would have resulted in the plot hole?
We all know by now not adapting Crocus and Little Garden would create plot holes so huge it was for the best the 4Kids dub of One Piece was cancelled halfway through.
So I think this a kosher example, this isnt an actual example from the page, but put it here so I can add it.:
- In an effort to remove all traces of Enel being G-d, Chopper wonders how can a King be evil and if such a thing is possible in the Cartoon Network broadcast... Ignoring that he suffered under an evil King in his backstory.
And this isnt:
- Plot holes that would have happened if the 4Kids dub lasted longer:
- The Straw Hats' knowing the giant whale Laboon turns out to be the primary reason Brook decides to join them; the 4kids dub ended before he had the chance to appear.
- Meeting the Elbaf Giants, Dorry and Broggy, on Little Garden provided the motivation for Usopp to finally start improving himself. It's also how he convinced the Gatekeeper Giants of Enies Lobby (Season 5) to turn on the World Government and briefly team up with the Straw Hatsnote The giants were former members of the Elbaf Pirate crew. When they were caught by the Marines, the Marines lied that Dorry and Broggy had been caught too, but if the Giants served as Gatekeepers for 100 years, the Marines would let them all go. Learning via Usopp that Dorry and Broggy were just fine and they'd wasted over half a century of their lives made them instant and very angry allies., that later scene didn't show up in the 4kids dub.

So I have been wondering if one of the examples that was deleted in 13 Reasons Why 5 years ago was reasonable or not despite the weird edit reason. Here are two examples before it was deleted (trigger warning: SA):
- Must Not Die a Virgin: A very disturbing example. Not long before killing herself, Hannah, now severely depressed, gets in a hot tub with a known rapist. She is fully aware how this will play out.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Fuck you, Bryce. FUCK YOU!
A troper named harrietvanger deleted the two examples with the reason being "not in the book!