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openIs this natter or word cruft?
Several weeks ago, I made an edit to our page for The Binding of Isaac regarding which parts of the game do and don't meet the qualifications to be considered a Brutal Bonus Level… it's not exactly straightforward in this case. Specifically, this edit right here
. (I wanted to ask about it sooner, but I couldn't for… reasons.) I went pretty in-depth on how Chapter 5 does count as a Brutal Bonus Level for the first 11 or 12 playthroughs, since you have to go out of your way to go there and the game normally ends before then, but once you've formally unlocked Chapter 5, you have to go there to reach most of the game's endings that are available at that point (unless you take one of a handful of later-unlocked routes that circumvent it), and the most "basic" endings available at that point happen at Chapter 5. (Contrast this with, say, Bullet Hell in Enter the Gungeon, which always qualifies for Brutal Bonus Level because, while you can end the game there, you always have the option of ending your run at the Forge right before it or going to your character's Past instead.) However, I have some reservations about the quality of my edit… I'm not sure whether or not I went off-track into Natter or Word Cruft territory by explaining the complicated situation as thoroughly as I did. I'll share what I said and request feedback.
- Brutal Bonus Level: All of the floors past the standard ending point in Chapter 5 count as this, retaining the full-heart damage of the Womb floors while mixing in tougher enemies and obstacles. These include the Chest, the Dark Room, the Void, the Corpse, and the Ascent (plus Home).
- Chapter 5 (Sheol
and Cathedral
) itself is a downplayed case, as it actually is a bonus level before the game has been beaten 11 times (i.e. beating Mom in Chapter 3 for the first time, then clearing Chapter 4 10 times). While beating the game 11 times is the formal criterion to unlock Chapter 5, it's possible to get there before meeting that requirement by using a level skip (such as We Need To Go Deeper!) or getting into the Devil or Angel Room of Womb II. However, once Chapter 5 has been properly unlocked and the Chapter 4 endings are exhausted, Sheol and Cathedral become the standard end-point for a run that doesn't end with the player character dying. The only ways to not enter Chapter 5 on a successful run after unlocking it are to bypass it entirely by warping directly to the Dark Room via a Sacrifice Room or to get into an endgame chapter before Chapter 5 (which means either entering a portal to the Void in the Depths, Womb, or Blue Womb or getting into an endgame that branches away from the main route before Chapter 5 (i.e. Corpse
or Ascent). However, Chapter 6 and the aforementioned Void, Corpse, and Ascent do count as Brutal Bonus Levels regardless of game progression, since they all have special criteria that must be met during a run in order to enter themnote the Chest and Dark Room require Isaac to have taken the correct item (the Polaroid or the Negative, respectively) after defeating Mom and then go to the Chapter 5 that matches that item (Cathedral or Sheol, respectively); the Void requires finding its portal after defeating an endboss, Corpse requires accessing and defeating Mom's Heart in Chapter 3.5 (usually but not necessarily with the Knife Pieces from Chapters 1.5 and 2.5), and Ascent requires taking the Polaroid, Negative, or Faded Polaroid to the Strange Door in Chapter 3 and then obtaining Dad's Note in the special Chapter 3.5 accessed in this way, and not meeting any of those criteria will result in the game ending at Chapter 5.
- Chapter 5 (Sheol
openQuestion on what Useful Notes are supposed to cover.
So, if I'm not mistaken, Useful Notes are supposed to be about explaining complicated real world topics to help media consumers understand context when they see them in works and for writers to help them write difficult topics better. A while ago I came across UsefulNotes.Cult, and the last half of the page is entirely dedicated to offsite resources for more on cults, often about how to recognize real cults and how to avoid joining them. Many of the books referenced are out of print and/or expensive, and many of the links to websites are dead or the sites are inactive, but right now I'm more worried about the "largely for helping people avoid joining cults IRL" angle, because I looked through some of the other Psychology UN pages, and there's others that have problems too. From least concerning to most concerning:
- UsefulNotes.Alcoholism And Alcohol Abuse - This page is entirely written as a help page, but I'm torn on what to do on it because alcoholism is almost never portrayed correctly in media and thus is one of the more warranted UN pages. You could also argue that it's closer to the illness pages like UsefulNotes.Depression or UsefulNotes.Personality Disorders (which I think in general are written much better than the other ones I've listed) and thus has merit to stay as is or close to as is.
- UsefulNotes.Trigger - Most of this is pretty alright, and it has merit to be a UN page as it is technically fanspeak, but it definitely gets a little... heated - "Due to the seriousness of this trigger, it is good Netiquette and being a decent human being to offer at least some warning of suicide, of ruminations on suicide and suicidality, or on things that are guaranteed to be severely depressing and bring out such emotions." This kind of language shows up a couple of times here and other similar pages. Notably, this kinda conflicts with the message we have at the top of this page that says don't add trigger warningsnote and the "guaranteed to be severely depressing and bring out such emotions" part conflicts with what we say later that not all people who are suicidal will be triggered by depictions of suicide. Are we not decent human beings anymore?
- UsefulNotes.Victim Blaming - This page says it's about trying to prevent victim blaming in fiction, but is that really a problem? How often do people unintentionally blame victims in their writing? This is just self-help (and possibly soapboxing) disguised as writing advice. Much of it is just a list of examples of victim blaming, and aside from the weird ones (how is blaming a child for wetting the bed "victim blaming", wetting the bed is a victimless non-crime), I think all of these are fairly obvious from explaining the concept. Also, both this page and the next are very vague on who in situations are "victims" and who are "perpetrators"note for instance, if a car hits and injures a jaywalker they had no chance to avoid, who is the victim? Failure to prevent isn't always a fallacy., and that's confusing at best and a problem at worst.
- UsefulNotes.Abuse - This page doesn't even pretend it's connected to anything related to works of fiction. It's largely about telling abuse victims it's not their fault and how to help yourself/friends get out of abusive situations. There's also this very concerning section in Disability Is An Excuse For Jerkassery: "Furthermore, it is not bigoted or ableist to say that there are certain disorders (primarily Cluster B personality disorders and certain types of bipolar disorder) that should absolutely bar you from dating unless they are properly managed, which means sticking to all prescribed medications and therapy regimens without deviation. Again (because this cannot be stated enough), if you have a disorder that has an extremely high correlation with being toxic or abusive and you are not taking the proper steps to manage it, you have no business being in a relationship." Uh, no, this is actually ableist as hell. This perpetuates the stereotype that the mentally ill (especially people with the "scary" mental illnesses) are a danger to society unless they're sedated into submissionnote not to mention how, especially to someone who, oh, I don't know, is bipolar in a depressive phase, this section might come off as saying that they should avoid any relationships, with anyone, altogether - don't forget that the page isn't just about abuse between romantic/sexual partners, but also toxic friendships, toxic family dynamics, child abuse, elder abuse... this can absolutely send the message that people with mental illnesses should just entirely isolate themselves to avoid their inherent nature to abuse others, and, I'm no expert, but I think that's not a good message?.
We Permanent Red Link Club'ed Useful Notes Suicide Prevention because we decided we weren't qualified to give medical advicenote and because most of the suicide hotlines we were linking to were country-locked, it wasn't fair to visitors who lived in countries where we couldn't find an active suicide hotline. UsefulNotes.Suicide, for what it's worth, is in pretty good shape following its cleanup and locking.. What is our stance on giving self-help on UN pages?
Edited by MissConductopenCreating subpages are free will ?
Pretty self explanatory. Some subpages like Cyberpunk.Video Games and AnimeAndManga.Scenery Porn look very long enough to have their own subpages back. Its okay to re-create a subpage without discussion ?
openSelf-Demonstrating Character Pages
Hypothetically speaking, how would one go about making a new self-demonstrating character pages?
openMultiple Violations of Quote Potholing Videogame
The page quote for The Roottrees are Dead has been potholed to Title Drop three times by three
different
editors
, despite the initial deletion
referencing What to Put at the Top of a Page. I sent the second editor the notifier and they removed their re-potholing attempt by themself, but the third editor added it back in. Does this warrant a reversion and a commented-out warning?
openIs this work too NSFW to add?
I've been thinking about creating a page for The Penisman but I'm not entirely sure if it would be allowed or not.
The Penisman is a webcomic created in 2009 by Sui Ishida, who would later go on to create Tokyo Ghoul among other works, before he started drawing manga professionally. The Penisman follows a superhero with a penis for a head who fights enemies by ejaculating on them. Unsurprisingly, this was originally intended to be nothing more than a shitpost webcomic. However as time went on, it started taking itself surprisingly seriously with way more effort being put into the art and writing than a glorified shitpost had any right to. Despite still being about a guy with a penis for a head, you can really see the DNA of some of Ishida's future works.
Obviously there's a lot of graphic nudity and uncensored genitalia, and so several sites have it marked off as "pornographic," so I'm unsure if it would be allowed on this site or not.
Edited by ThereAintNoMountainopenWMG Editing Videogame
There's been discussion over on WMG.Marvel Rivals that's called attention to some issues people have with the page, myself included. Being a hero shooter full of marvel characters, there's a big section on the page where ppl can speculate on who the next heroes are gonna be, with some making guesses about gameplay, character interactions and what role the devs will give them. The vast majority of it, however, has just been people throwing a bunch of marvel characters' names onto the list with no further elaboration or WMG regarding the game itself. And as a result it's just created this very bloated list with zero substance to the majority of it. It elicits the same feelings for me as a regular tropes page having a ton of ZCE entries. But I don't know if mods or other editors are approaching WMG with the same scrutiny as a tropes page, so idk how to further proceed with this issue. And it's not like it's an issue unique to this one page.
Edited by IkeaHanopenTroper with pretty problematic edit reasons and poor editing behavior
I want to call attention to Tropers/liberty3's tendency to make suspicious edits that don't have a good edit reasons which can be outright rude at times.
- They removed a couple of Thor's tropes because "they didn't agree with it". No factual debunking, no reason as to why it’s not a straight or good example, they just didn’t agree with it.
That’s pretty poor if you ask me.
- This edit reason sounds incredibly aggressive and condescending
. Also, they’re incorrect as well as in the trope itself it’s literally stated that a Smug Super is "a superhero or villain who knows they've won the Super Power Lottery and won't hesitate to remind others".
- Now this is just plain biased and rude
.
- They also have a habit of removing tropes without explaining why
.
As you can seem this troper is bad at being objective, removes tropes out of personal beliefs instead of factual explanations, and can be downright disrespectful in their edit reasons.
openEdit War on Azumanga Shitposts Anime
Reporting a belatedly-realized Edit War scenario:
- Troper.Stop Hating Tv Tropes Plz 123 adds the following Condemned by History entry
to YMMV.Azumanga Daioh, subsequently tweaking the format over successive edits
- Troper.UFO Yeah deletes
the entry, citing poor formatting and complaining
- StopHatingTvTropesPlz123 re-adds
the entry, including a confusing question about YMMV.Fate Stay Night and YMMV.Oreimo's CBH entries
- After StopHating's entry is brought to attention of Condemned by History cleanup thread
, it is again deleted by myself
(not having seen the history proving this was an Edit War yet)
I apologize for unknowingly engaging in an Edit War, but what should become of StopHating's entry? And should we keep watch in case they decide to add it again?
Edited by Galileo26openPedro Pascal Roles Live Action TV
A while back, someone greatly expanded the filmography section of Creator.Pedro Pascal, with roles previously unmentioned and/or lacking their own pages. Some of these include instances of him playing himself in something nonfictional, or narrating a documentary. Do these usually go on actors' pages?
Today I removed a credit for him hosting SNL, because I noticed pages for actors who've hosted more than once don't mention it in the filmography.
openWhere do I go to propose modifications to trope definitions?
…Okay, in this case, "modify" is not quite the right word. The trope in question is Central Theme, and the thing I'm considering is adding a remark that emphasizes the word "central", i.e. the Central Theme is a broad concept that much or all of a work dedicates itself to exploring — I don't think a theme that's only prevalent in something like 2 chapters of a 60-chapter novel or 3 episodes of a 100-episode series counts as a "central theme" for the work as a whole. I'm not looking to actually change the definition of the trope — I just want to make it a bit easier to use it properly. Is this a good place for that, or is there a thread on the forums for stuff like this?
openWhy people are so mean ?
Like I just asked that more tropes were dedicated to Buffy. Thank you, I'm aware of how the site got created but that doesn't mean it's doing it justice. What I mean is that no expy is done on Buffy characters when they (Buffy herself in particular) influenced a whole lot of characters. Kim Possible and Veronica Mars were confirmed to be inspired by Buffy, however none of them has Buffy written on their Expy. It bothers and I have a right to speak. What is wrong with you people ? At what point did I express a love (or even mentions) the name of Joss Whedon ? Never so why people are bringing that up. At what point did I speak badly or insult anybody ? None, so thank you to be polite. Like, what is this ? Twitter ?
open Is there a trope for.... Videogame
Is there a trope for video games where developers seem to anticipate a player will try a certain strategy, and design the level to make that strategy more difficult to implement than it seems? Or if they design the level to punish a certain kind of play, even if it's just the player being careless and not anticipating the consequences of their actions? Kaizo Trap seems close, but it's specifically about victory or completion, I'm thinking more in the general course of gameplay. Batman Gambit works but is very broad as a trope, and it may or may not be Developer's Foresight depending on the exact example.
As two examples that would fit what I'm thinking of:
- In Hitman, the water tower on Colorado seems like the perfect spot to snipe targets from. But if you try it you'll find yourself trapped, as the AI will instantly surround the water tower and pin you down there with no hope for escape.
- In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the last level of an optional dungeon lets you challenge your Assist character to access two chests behind them. But if you do that, you'll have no Assist when fighting the boss Gabranth, and he has a very potent EX Mode build (Assists as a mechanic hard-counter EX Mode, but you just killed your Assist).
openSome Good Tropes to Add
Hi, my name is Ulises, I wanted to tell you that I really like the way how you added the Heel and Jerkass Realization tropes, I was wondering if you can add other realization tropes like Bad Parent Realization (when a character realizes that he/she wasn't being a good parent or parental figure to a younger character) and Selfishness Realization (when a character realizes that he/she was being selfish through the time).
Edited by Spider27openNeed some clarifications on what counts as "Unilateral" Large-scale changes nowadays.
I've read this Administrivia page out of curiosity at first, but then I noticed entry #34 which says the following:
:34. unilateral
- Hi there. It looks like you've made a major change to [page] without discussing it beforehand. Large-scale changes, such as splitting off subpages, rearranging content, or altering the definition of a trope, require consensus to enact. In the future, please remember to discuss these things in the proper venue, whether it be Ask The Tropers, the discussion page, or a forum thread.
Does this mean all "Large-scale changes" will risk the editor receiving a warning or a "unilateral" edit notifier? Or are there times when a troper is allowed to make Unilateral Large-Scale changes without the risk of getting reported or notified?
- AFAIK, splitting a page if it gets too long is a very common thing to do in this wiki for years now, to the point where it's "recommended" so as to avoid the page from having any difficulty loading on old browsers or devices.
- I am following a lot of pages and I've seen tropers splitting off example lists into subpages but without providing any links in the edit reasons to prove that the action was "discussed" beforehand... But now, reading the Administrivia page implies it's "mandatory" to have a discussion somewhere before doing the split? What if the troper simply fixed or re-organized the examples into a separate subpage for easier readability, surely they're exempt from receiving warnings, right? For example, a troper moved all the Memetic Mutation entries from the YMMV page
of Zenless Zone Zero into a separate subpage
... There's no edit reason nor a link to a previous discussion, but the end-result of this "unilateral" edit is a well-organized page just like the other Memes subpages of miHoYo games.
- I am following a lot of pages and I've seen tropers splitting off example lists into subpages but without providing any links in the edit reasons to prove that the action was "discussed" beforehand... But now, reading the Administrivia page implies it's "mandatory" to have a discussion somewhere before doing the split? What if the troper simply fixed or re-organized the examples into a separate subpage for easier readability, surely they're exempt from receiving warnings, right? For example, a troper moved all the Memetic Mutation entries from the YMMV page
- Here's another thing... that Adminstrivia page says consensus, discussions, or forum threads are necessary... but what if nobody is replying to a discussion?
- For example, IIRC, I tried to start discussions for suggesting large-scale reorganizations or improvements to pages of works and franchises like Devil May Cry, Arknights, Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai: Star Rail, Genshin Impact, Granblue Fantasy, Bayonetta, and so on... Sometimes a troper replies to say it's just fine if I already do the edits myself, but sometimes nobody replied to my posts for a long time, such as this one
. This often happens if the franchise or game is no longer "hyped" at the moment and thus, only few tropers here are still actively or regularly checking the pages.
- For example, IIRC, I tried to start discussions for suggesting large-scale reorganizations or improvements to pages of works and franchises like Devil May Cry, Arknights, Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai: Star Rail, Genshin Impact, Granblue Fantasy, Bayonetta, and so on... Sometimes a troper replies to say it's just fine if I already do the edits myself, but sometimes nobody replied to my posts for a long time, such as this one
- On the other hand, can I still do a Large-scale change on a page or example list even if the discussion already happened long ago but the troper(s) somehow forgot about it?
- For example years ago, there has been an agreement to re-organize a Shout-Out page so that it won't look like a massive wall of text, or an approval from a mod to move trope examples from the main work page to the Recap pages... but it just so happened that I was pre-occupied with a lot of things off-site, and was unable to do the large-scale change... Can I just simply cite a link to the discussion from years ago, or do I have to start a "new" discussion or forum post instead?
Edited by DanteVin
openStrange wording for the Adaptational Nice Guy trope under Ranma Saotome Character folder
So, I checked out the Ranma ½: Ranma Saotome page and under the Adaptational Nice Guy section, the examples seemed to be showcase in a weird way. Like there's a lot of run on sentences and the examples seem to be all over the place. Here's what the entry says:
- Adaptational Nice Guy : Zigzagged. While the 89 anime cuts out most of his teasing to Akane, it also tends to add extra insults as filler, making Ranma rattle off whole lists of insults completely unprompted and doubling down on originally silly, short comments, so that it comes across like he genuinely means the insults he tosses Akane's way. The fact that the insults often come unprompted ironically makes Ranma look meaner in the end, despite there being less of them than in the manga.
- With the "you should learn to be half as sexy as I am" comment with the pictures Nabiki sold Kunō, the '89 anime adds a scene of him going "All I did was tell her the truth!" and later, "You're following me around hoping my good looks will rub off on you." This makes Ranma call Akane ugly on top of "unsexy" and imply he means it when he says Akane's ugly, completely contradicting how it's later implied the exact opposite (as he blushes watching Akane play sports right before denying she's cute, and then tries to talk himself out of it on the way home).
- In the filler episode "Pelvic Fortune Telling", Ranma rattles off an entire list of insults completely unprompted and even starts singing about it. Note that Ranma only lists off insults in the manga twice: when they barely knew each other and he was trying to convince Kunō he wasn't interested in Akane, and when he was trying to cure Akane's Shampoo-inflicted Laser-Guided Amnesia. The '89 anime has Ranma do this far more often.
Ranma: Akane... CONGRATULATIONS! You can't cook, you're not much of a looker — the one thing you do have is brute strength! Plus, you have got the biggest pair of hips in all of Japan! You're built like a brick... Your legs are too thick... You're singing the big hip blues...
openRegarding Spoiler Policy for characters in Naruto Anime
Regarding Characters.Naruto, while checking for example, Pain's page, it shows in the description itself a lot about his past and motivations which are revealed quite late into the arc having his decisive fight, and in Madara's folder, in his description, the exact specifics of his defeat are written in great detail.
These are just two examples out of many, and in the folders, there are marked and unmarked spoilers with irregularity. Now, Naruto is an old anime, so I wanted to ask whether to remove the excruciating details in the description and spoiler out the spoilery details, or just leave them alone?
Edited by kuchiki222openAmerican / British Spelling
If a user creates a work page and uses British conventions (dd-mm-yyyy date format and British spellings) on a first come, first served basis (as noted here
), why some users try to fix it to American conventions (mm-dd-yyyy and American spellings)?
The date format topic itself was already mentioned here in this thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16448794840A29114500&page=1
openAudience Alienating Ending, last call before removing
Awhile ago I asked about these Audience-Alienating Ending examples from Pokémon Adventures, which I believe are misuse as AAE only applies to series endings not individual arcs. I'll remove these as at odds with all other examples unless I hear anything here otherwise.
- Ruby & Sapphire ends with The Reveal that Ruby owned a Celebi before the series even began, Celebi then proceeds to destroy the Blue and Red Orbs, thwarting the plans of Team Magma and Team Aqua in the process. Celebi even uses its time travel powers to bring the innocents who died throughout the apocalyptic event Back from the Dead. While the characters introduced in this story remain widely popular, the actual story is among the most contentious in the franchise for this blatant Deus ex Machina ending. I've seen enough endings that don't fit AAE as not series endings listed under Overshadowed by Controversy to deem that a valid replacement.
- The last volume of the Black & White chapter has Black sealed away in the Light Stone alongside Reshiram thanks to a Last Breath Bullet from Ghetsis. Ghetsis then proceeds to escape as the Light Stone vanishes with Black still inside. This caused many people to turn on the arc for its Cruel Twist Ending, accentuated by how popular of a character Black was. While the intention was for the cliffhanger to be resolved in the Black 2 & White 2 adaptation, that arc fell under an infamous case of Schedule Slip as a result of newer Pokémon games being given priority for publishing. What was supposed to be a short arc that started in 2013, didn't reach its conclusion until early 2020. So for about seven years fans were left with one of the most popular heroes in the series suffering a Fate Worse than Death. Thankfully, this only applies for the original readership, as with the Black 2 & White 2 arc completed new readers won't have to suffer this problem. This is Arc Fatigue instead as it wasn't the ending but the slow pace of the followup story that alienated, and notes AAE no longer applies. I'll cut this if nothing else.
This comment
I got on the matter said "i [sic] will note that Audience-Alienating Ending has individual arcs listed in the main page and the anime subpage". But I looked and the only such arcs were the series finale ones, supporting my belief it only applies to series endings. Did I miss any examples they're referring to?
The one possible example of such I found is this:
- X-Men: The climax of Grant Morrison's New X-Men run features the revelation that the newest member of the X-Men, Xorn, was actually the team's old foe Magneto, who has gone insane from a mind-controlling super-drug and whom Jean Grey sacrifices herself to stop. The final arc abruptly cuts to a Bad Future scenario, which we learn was the end result of Cyclops quitting the X-Men after his wife's death. Jean returns in the future and uses the power of the Phoenix to change the past so that Scott quickly moves on from her death, beginning a relationship with Emma Frost and leading the X-Men alongside her. Many fans found this an anticlimactic ending to such a well-regarded run, especially since Emma's previous attempts to seduce Scott were portrayed as creepy and manipulative, only for their relationship to now suddenly be treated as a good and even outright necessary thing. My impression is this is series within the greater X-Men continuity, whereas the Adventures arcs are treated as "episodes". Correct?

I'd like to create a trope page for my self-published autobiography Andy's Nature: Asperger's, Obesity and the Supernatural. Would this be allowable? If so, could I link it to my You Tube channel? The channel is linked to my website, which in turn is linked to the book's Amazon page, and I understand commercial links are forbidden on TVT.