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openLinks for Awesome Music
I'm aware that for Awesome Music, we ask to link official uploads of tracks. However, do we have any preferences regarding platforms? I'm asking such because I was planning on adding an entry to YMMV.Celeste, only to notice this commented-out note:
I checked the page history, and discovered that this was added
back in 2021. What I find odd, however, is that the user who added the note swapped out Youtube links for Bandcamp ones—even though the Youtube links sent you to official uploads from the composer's Youtube channel
.
So, do we have a preference regarding links to websites? I personally find Youtube to be a bit more convenient myself, but I figured it was worth asking about here.
Edited by jandn2014openWhat do?
I messaged a troper a few days ago because they put some trivia examples on a YMMV page. Though they promised to move them to the right page, that hasn't happened yet. I'd do it myself, but that feels almost rude, if only because I don't know if they actually do intend to get around to it or not. And sending a second PM feels like it would be picking a fight.
openInstagram posts
https://www.instagram.com/p/C17MFwcrRli/?igsh=MzY1NDJmNzMyNQ==
This is an Instagram post of a real-life polygamous family who played around with a "turn yourself into a vampire" AI filter and posted the pictures. Is there any space for this on the page Vampire's Harem? I'm guessing this probably falls outside our scope here, but I just thought it was funny and I might as well ask.
openShiver (2017) not showing up in searches
I don't know what's going on, but Shiver (2017) won't show up when searched for. Related pages will show up, but not the page itself.
openDisagreement about the Awesome/BobChipman page, don't want to risk an Edit War Web Original
Not too long ago, a troper called 309216364 (is that the ID of an already-banned troper or something?) deleted the single biggest entry on this page, about Bob's massive "Really That Bad" video series on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I will post here:
- During Part 1 of his Really That Bad analysis of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bob makes a comparison between the narrative structures of The Avengers (2012) and Batman V. Superman stripped of all but their most basic elements that underlines one of the main reasons the former succeeded where the latter failed: Avengers is straightforward, easy to understand and can be enjoyed without prior knowledge of the source comics or the preceding films because it doesn't lean on them to work as a narrative with its single Sequel Hook a post-credits shot of the Greater-Scope Villain, while BvS is a disjointed, convoluted mess that doesn't follow an understandable through-line narrative, paradoxically wants to differentiate itself from the source comics yet relies heavily on them for most of its emotional weight to carry and desperately tries to set up future films through gratuitous in-universe viewings of preview trailers. And he does all of this while giving every person or object with enough plot relevance a funny nickname, with plenty of Actor Allusions and character comparisons to go around.
- The entirety of his "Batman V. Superman" Really That Bad analysis. Chipman delivers his critique in a mature respectful tone, without insulting the filmmakers personally, and goes into detail acknowledging and addressing common arguments in defense of the film.
- Two of the best things he does is to effectively and succinctly fix the movie's greatest problems.
- The first being the 'Diana/Wonder Woman watching the teaser trailer for the Justice League scene', wherein Bob proposes letting Batman, the normal human who is discovering a lot of this new information for the first time, and whose perspective the audience has been following the entire movie, be the one to discover the existence of more metahumans. This not only gives the scene greater suspense and dramatic weight and a greater impetus for Batman to fight a perceived threat like Superman, it also gives a fantastic reason why Diana never showed up for a hundred years and was breaking into Lex Luthor's drives: She was helping cover up the existence of metahumans (and her secretive race) from people like Luthor.
- The second is the entire 'conflict' of the movie being forced and contrived and way too repetitive by the time the two people in the 'V' actually get down to versus-ing each other. Bob fixes the movie without any drastic overhaul or extensive retooling with two simple words: No Batman. The plot remains the same, with all the conspiratorial machinations and the populace distrusting Superman kept intact, but transfer all of Batman's actions and motivations to Luthor, thereby making Luthor a sympathetic, justified, heroic counterpoint to the detached, reluctant, destructive Superman, which would have greater thematic resonance and streamline the plot. For an added bonus, Bob suggests keeping Ben Affleck, with all his likability and charisma and on-the-ground heroism, as Luthor, which would provide even greater metanarrative implications and make the plot more compelling.
- To make what can only be described as a near definitive 3-part, four hour critique about Dawn of Justice, all the while maintaining his normal work responsibilities, is a feat of dedication that can only really be described as impressive.
As well as forgetting to delete the next paragraph that followed on from that (an observation about Bob possibly doing a "Really That Good" series on The Lord of the Rings) and leaving it orphaned, his reason for deleting the entire segment basically came down to "I don't think it's awesome and I don't like Bob". His cited reason from the History page:
Apart from the fact that this reason for removing the entry is entirely subjective (I thought "Really That Bad" was awesome, and I'm not even the one who wrote the original entry), it's also blatantly incorrect- there are several segments in Bob's series where he goes out of his way to be fair to the film and admit the things it did well and the ways it could have worked (even though it didn't), so the troper's claim that "he is entirely biased against the film in all aspects" suggests he edited it solely because of He Panned It Now He Sucks.
I could have just restored the edit myself, but I'm quite certain the guy will just delete it again, triggering an edit war situation. And since the last time I got close to an edit war I nearly got myself permanently banned, I'm not even going to get close to the possibility of it happening again. So I'm hoping there's some way to get a 3rd party judgement on this?
Edited by ArcaneAzmadiopenPointy-Haired Boss / Clueless Boss Overlap
Whilst working on a Character Sheet Sandbox and looking for tropes to add, I saw Clueless Boss linked at the bottom of the description for Pointy-Haired Boss.
Now, from my understanding, these tropes are quite different:
- Pointy-Haired Boss can be good or bad, uncaring, inexperienced, overtaxed or out of their depth, but always incompetent at the position they hold.
- Clueless Boss is merely unaware (or, well, clueless) of what his subordinates are doing, ordering others to do in his name, or scheming behind his back.
Except, on the Clueless Boss page, I found this example:
- Many, many examples on Not Always Working. For example:
- One story tells of a video game store boss who discontinued the store's biggest draw (customers being allowed to play the games before they bought them) because he didn't want parents dropping off their children while they shopped. After this costs them half their business, he fires half the staff and discontinues the weekly game tournaments which another employee points out brings in more money than any other day. He also discontinues new game sales and trade-ins and holds off on ordering new parts for old console repairs. Since the story's submitter relies on commission for older console repairs, he quits since he isn't receiving a paycheck. He also notes that the store went out of business a few weeks later.
Now, if my understanding is correct, shouldn't this be on Pointy-Haired Boss? Generally speaking, I think the tropes might accidentally overlap, or the first trope might have a non-indicative or non-intuitive name that might lead to these kind of mistakes. Not everyone knows of Dilbert, and the Trope Namer embodies several negative qualities whilst the trope itself has expanded to include incompetent leaders of all types.
Any thoughts?
Edited by GearFriedTheKnightopenWhat do you do with a page mostly plagiarized? Live Action TV
I’m doing a plagiarism clean-up of Doctor Who’s trivia pages. I got tipped off a while ago that almost every page of the first Three doctors’ pages has examples (mostly under What Could Have Been) that have been plagiarized from either the show’s wiki or this comprehensive website
(which the wiki itself has cribbed from).
For example, several trivia examples from the episode “An Unearthly Child” (the very 1st episode of the series) had been plagiarized from it’s wiki article’s story notes.
- The first school scene was re-written to reduce the tension between Barbara and Ian. In the original script, Ian says, "When I've had a bad day, I come in here [the staff room], and I want to smash all the windows". Barbara retorts, "It hasn't been a bad day", and Ian remarks, "You're just naturally like that?" Barbara replies, "I hope not. I've had another kind of day. A very puzzling kind of day".
- Ian and Barbara's relationship was much more romantic in the original script.
- In the original script, the "PRIVATE" notice at the junkyard was originally supposed to appear significantly newer than the lettering on the gates. The junkyard was also supposed to contain "a broken-down old shed".
And while doing cleanup the trivia page for the episode “The Romans”
and it is seeping with plagiarism, up to and including Wikipedia.
So how should I go forward with this? I’ve been editing previous pages to remove plagiarism, but this particular page is compromised with it.
Edited by CanuckMcDuck1open Curly apostrophes
This issue has been going on for sometime now. Many tropers, including myself, use iPads as well as Windows. Curly apostrophes (’) are the default on iPads, instead of the industry standard straight apostrophes (') aka 'typewriter apostrophe', we're all accustomed to.
I find it visually irksome and distracting to read through a lengthy page, where the unicode character marks suddenly keep switching back and forth between curly and straight. Its an unrealistic expectation to ask iPad tropers via messaging to turn off "Smart Punctuation" under general keyboard settings.
With the site recently converting all data to UTF 8, is there a way to force straight apostrophes (U+0027) here by default?
openMichael Eisner's Creator Page
Last month, Tylerbear 12 made a case
for Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg to not have Creator pages under the pretense that they're merely CEOs rather than creators. While I agree with their argument for Katzenberg to not have a page, I'd like to make a counter in regards to Eisner, as he's published three separate nonfiction books during and after his tenure at Disney, was the host of his own talk show entitled Conversations with Michael Eisner, and after his ousting from Disney, he created his own show in the form of Glenn Martin, DDS, which he self-funded.
openWhich examples are necessary and which examples aren’t?
- Brian Griffin has a nasty tendency to be a huge hypocrite.
- He claims he likes women for their personalities, though he only seeks short-term relationships with attractive yet unintelligent women.
- He frequently voices his strong liberal opinions, yet never acts on any of them.
- In "Dial Meg For Murder" he voices his opinion that the prison system has turned the innocent Meg into a hardened criminal, but it's obvious that nobody, including him, went to visit her during the three months she was in prison.
- He fights for animal rights, but is willing to kill cats and squirrels.
- He tends to be critical of or insult Meg yet usually does nothing to help her and is the only member of the Griffin family he goes out of his way to ignore, which Meg herself calls him out on in "Family Cat".
- In "Quagmire's Mom", he calls out Quagmire for blaming all his problems on his mother. This is coming from someone who refuses to accept his own failings in both his romantic and literary pursuits, constantly blaming others for them.
- He claims to want "true love" and a woman he can spend the rest of his life with. Despite this, several episodes (such as "Movin' Out: Brian's Song" and "Brian's got a Brand New Bag") show that Brian has some serious commitment issues. Stewie actually calls him out on this in "Married... With Cancer", pointing out that he's really just a "selfish horndog".
- In "The Finer Strings", he initally takes Lois volunteering him as Carter's temporary guide dog badly, claiming to hate the "one-percenter" attitude Carter has. But after getting a taste of the good life, he quickly embraces it, and becomes unwilling to let it go when Carter no longer needs him.
- In "Be Careful What You Fish For", he calls the cops on Stewie's neglectful daycare teacher, despite the fact he willingly ignored Stewie's suffering while he tried to score a date with her.
- In "Pal Stewie", he was jealous over Stewie getting a friend his own age, to the point where he hid a birthday party invitation from him. But after Stewie reaffirmed his friendship with him, Brian admitted he didn't have any big friendship plans in mind, rather than watching TV like usual (leading Stewie to call him out for his actions).
- In "Boy (Dog) Meets Girl (Dog)", Brian was desperate to win the dog show just so he could breed with Ellie, yet in "Brian: Portrait of a Dog", he refused to do dog tricks in another dog show, even though the prize money could have bought the family a new air conditioner, which they needed.
- In "Family Guy Lite", he had no problem using what he read in what he thought was a list of qualities Lois wanted in her ideal man to try and seduce her into cheating on Peter. But when it looked like she was having an affair with someone else, he begged her not to do it, claiming she would be betraying Peter.
- In "Brian & Stewie", it is a well-established fact that Brian is a left-wing gun-grabbing liberal stereotype, Stewie questions why Brian keeps a gun in his safety deposit-box and Brian admits to having it in case he ever contemplates suicide. This is extremely hypocritical of Brian because he believes in strict gun-control laws, which includes restrictions that do not allow the mentally ill or people who are a major risk for self-harm or suicide to possess firearms, which would include Brian himself. This is essentially a continuation of Brian's most common hypocritical trait of not following laws, morals, rules, or policies that he would enforce on others.
- In "Peterminator", he accuses Stewie of being in love with himself. Brian himself is a major Narcissist, to the point of sleeping with the robot double of himself in "Bri, Robot".
- In "Short Cuts". While ranting over being kicked out of Mort's pharmacy just for being a dog, he claims it's discrimination, comparing it to what happened with "those blacks" at the Starbucks. Stewie is noticeably unnerved by Brian's choice of words.
- In "Play it Again, Brian," he talks about how Peter doesn't deserve Lois (due to Peter paying Lois back with selfishness and neglect despite Lois being so giving towards him). While what Brian said was true, you have to remember that Brian had some good ex girlfriends that he didn't deserve either due to faults of his own (with Rita being a good example).
openIndex: Different namespace, same work name
If we have to coincidentally three works with the same title but different namespace in a single index all together, it can result in somewhat confusing look.
For example in Cute Girls Doing Cute Things you can see the index has "Love Live!" (in exact name) listed three times - the first-level bullet is under Franchise namespace, then the second-level bullet wick is under the Anime namespace, and the third-level one is under the Manga namespace. However, they all are displayed as "Love Live!", which can make it look a little bit confusing at first sight, if not for the fact you can highlight over them and reveal where the link redirects to.
Is it better to keep these alone, or would it be fine for me to suggest to put them with text labels in brackets to indicate the Franchise, the eponymous Anime in it and then the Manga adaptation of the Anime itself?
Edited by JustNormalMusicLoveropenNamespace button order
Namespace subpages are sorted alphabetically as far as I know.
So why is Visual Novel positioned after YMMV?
Edited by sohibilopenAbout PlayingTheirOwnTwin
Hello. Not too long ago, the Talking To Himself trope was disambiguated and some of the examples that were on the page were moved to other tropes like Acting for Two and so on.
Given that, I have a general question about the Playing Their Own Twin trope: Should we include examples from animated works (i.e. films, TV shows) or keep those examples under the Acting for Two trope?
Edited by gjjonesopenQuestion about a couple of Square Peg, Round Trope entries
I was unsure where exactly to ask this since a) it's something I'm unsure of but isn't exactly a trope example, and b) isn't something I want to do immediately regardless, so I'm taking it here.
I came across a couple SPRT entries about a month ago that I've been ruminating on, one that was added in 2011
and the other in 2019
, which respectively (in their current forms) are:
- Fridge Brilliance isn't "My favorite show is awesome and makes no mistakes". All series have plot holes and issues, even if insignificant, and trying to deny it with an "I Can Explain" won't change this. That'll just lead to invokedFan Dumb. A lot of people don't understand the line between Fridge Brilliance and Wild Mass Guessing. Fridge Brilliance is "Oh, X is Y because Z", Wild Mass Guessing is "Why is X Y?"
- Amazingly enough, the word Trope itself has undergone severe Trope Decay on this site. A trope is something that's objectively a part of the work. Audience Reactions and Trivia are specifically stated on these pages to not be tropes, since they occur either in the work's audience or other external materials, not the work itself. Despite this, it's hard to find a page for an Audience Reaction or Trivia item that DOESN'T refer to itself as a Trope (they even all have “trope” as the page type in the sidebar), and the YMMV and Trivia subpages for most works contain examples that say "This trope happens" or something similar. Even this very page, supposedly dedicated to correcting misused terminology, contains examples describing Audience Reactions and Trivia as "tropes"! And Playing with a Trope is something that can only be done to actual Tropes since Audience Reactions are very rarely "played" in the first place, so most examples on a YMMV page that are "Subverted" or "Downplayed" are inherently misuse.
The FB entry was originally natter according to the archive, but I don't necessarily think the phrasing/restructuring of the phrasing is related to the actual problem I'm personally seeing — that being that this sounds like its discussing another Audience Reaction entirely. Sacred Cow was the first thing that came to my mind, but that's not really speculation-related; the only thing I can gauge from the entry is that it's common for tropers to ask a question in the context of FB (like "X, perhaps?"), but I can't say that I've ever seen people use FB to justify plot holes. Mainly this entry is just really unclear.
The Trope entry...is a bit more complicated. I'm too lazy to fetch the exact archive dates now, but Subjective Tropes and (I think) Trivia Tropes used to be a thing for quite a while, before it was decided that neither were actually tropes. That aside, the page for the former says, and I quote, "this used to be the name for YMMV, tropes that objectively exist, but whose examples are subjective", something that the entry either ignores entirely, is simply written without the knowledge of, or is misinterpreted. The part about the sidebar was added a bit earlier this year, which I don't think is necessarily a bad addition—especially since the rest of the entry (particularly the last couple of sentences) are pretty complainy—but it makes the entry sound contradictory, even if it doesn't really "prove" anything one way or the other. "Inherently misuse" also sounds like Word Cruft.
So what should we do with these? Should they stay on the page or nah? Curious about what others think. Edited by Coachpill
openEdit war on Starfield's YMMV page.
On November 15th, troper Mr Dark Man removed this entry from the Starfield's YMMV page with this edit reason
:
"removed misinformation, Heel's rant was taken out of context. His rant actually happens after the character Hadrian reveals herself to be a clone. Some youtubers just edited it so that his rant happens after discovering the pronoun choice."
- He Panned It Now He Sucks: YouTuber HeelvsBabyface went viral in a rant against the game for having the option to select body type and pronouns instead of sex and gender, claiming that such a thing injects "politics" in the game and destroys immersion into the game world. Some gamers were not particularly happy with the accusation and threw it back at him pointing out that the option is really just an option and that it defaults to the most common pronouns to the body type selected, meaning you don't even have to select anything and accuse him of being outraged for the sake of clicks. Fanning the flames is that there are other YouTubers and sizeable portion of gamers who feel similarly to HeelvsBabyface, and it led to a mess that's best left to another site to document.
A month later, troper Who Needs A Mango re-added it
with the edit reason: "Out of context" my ass, he literally screams about "gender" and "California shit""
Two days later, Mr Dark Man removed it for the second time
basically with the same edit reason.
A few hours later, Who Needs A Mango re-added it for the second time
with the edit reason: "Re-adding since he literally shouts "FUCKING PRONOUNS!""
openListing every couch gag Western Animation
I don't really know where else to put this, but I'm wondering if CouchGag.Bobs Burgers is a proper use of the subpage. It lists every example (up to Season 10) of the show's Couch Gag (namely, the names on the store next door and the van), while most other examples of Couch Gag simply stop at a summary of the gag, and maybe give a few noteworthy (e.g. Lampshade Hanging) examples. For comparison, the reason CouchGag.The Simpsons is so lengthy is because the intro has multiple couch gags and their variants tend to be very self-referential and involved due to being an iconic Trope Namer.
So should we cut the Bob's Burgers page and just move it to a couple of examples?

I recently started listening to Off Book: The Improvised Musical, a podcast run by Jess McKenna and Zach Reino (also known from Welcome to Mountport, which their podcast inspired) where every episode is full-length, totally improvised musical. I’ve made a page before (SpongeBob SquigglePants), but I just started this very long podcast, so I don’t have enough information to add all the tropes, and I don’t wanna spoil it for myself. It would make the most sense to have a recap page so every episode’s tropes could be listed separately. I could start the page, but I’d have to update it very slowly overtime. If anyone here has listened to most/all of Off Book and would like to volunteer to start/contribute to the page, it would be appreciated. This podcast is too awesome and trope-filled to lack a page entirely (especially since Welcome to Mountport already has one).
Edited by HopHoppip