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:
openPossible Character-centric Entry Pimping? Videogame
This has been a thing that bugged me for a while, but does anyone else feel that a lot of the entries under Lunafreya's folder on the Final Fantasy XV - Other Allies page come off as shoehorning? Especially considering that while she's a divisive Base-Breaking Character rather than The Scrappy, the part where she's considered to be a Flat Character with minimal screentime is largely unanimous and the divide comes down to whether she was always a shallow and uninteresting character or whether she was originally a rounder character whose depth was all cut out of the game. Hence most of the entries (which were made before the novel that finally fleshes her out was released) come on the back of what appears to be Fan Wank extrapolations rather than supported by the primary text of the game, considering she has so little dialogue, even less interacting with others.
A few of them come from the Kingsglaive movie, which is where the bulk of her screentime and character depth come from, but is also known for being basically a different character from her in-game portrayal. But others seem to be attempting to spin something meaningful out of offhand comments from the flatter in-game depiction that don't actually manifest meaningfully into tropes. I personally don't remember a lot of these entries from when I played it, and at best some of these even appear to be the result of the rather chaotic and inconsistent promotion for the game that often contradicted itself.
Edited by AlleyOopopenMisused: Villain Has a Point Example Videogame
So, the idea behind the "X has a point" tropes is when a character with negative connotations is mentioned to have a point In-Universe. So in this entry in the Visual Novel folder, we have:
- Fate/stay night: An All There in the Manual example. Gilgamesh plans to use the corrupted Grail to unleash all of humanity's sins upon the world, which will kill off ninety percent of the population, and then rule over what remains. The heroes never discuss this plan; he obviously needs to be stopped, there is no need to talk about it. But due to the way magic works, there's nothing inherently wrong with his plan. The people of Uruk were practically a Precursor race, part of the reason for humanity's decline is because magic has been spread out among too many people, and as humanity's first king Gilgamesh does have the divine right to make this sort of decision. But it never gets brought up in text because obviously he can't be allowed to kill billions of people.
Given that in the visual novel itself this never gets brought up as a good point and all characters react with disgust towards this idea, is this really a case of Villain Has a Point? From what i've observed this seems to be more of an out of universe interpretation from the user. (Specially since, again, all characters dismiss his Divine Right of Kings as a cheap excuse towards his actions)
openStyle Savvy title confusion Videogame
About a month ago, VampireBuddha did a major overhaul of the Style Savvy series and split the individual games into their own pages. Which wouldn't be an issue in itself, except the new pages are under their European names of Style Boutique. I'm fairly certain that American titles take precedence here, but even if they don't, there's a mismatch between the franchise name and the individual games. This is potentially a bigger project than I want to take on right now; does anyone else want to take a look?
openDoes Solas from Dragon Age: Inquisition count as a Greater Scope villain for the first 2 games? Videogame
For Elven characters, the evil god Fen'Harel is considered the evil god of their religion and culture, and part of the reason they suffer in the present, as they are a slave race to humans. But in Dragon Age: Inquisition, in the DLC Tresspasser, we learn that one of our companions, a mysterious elf named Solas, is really Fen'Harel himself, and that the gods of the Elves are mages so powerful, it might be safe to call them gods. We also learn that the only reason he sided with us, was to get the Eluvians so that he could use them to destroy modern Thedes and bring back a civilization he destroyed when he rebelled against his fellow mages. Solas claims he rebelled for a good cause, but in the end, he caused more harm then help as he separated Thedes from the Fade, robbing the Elves of their power, killing thousands of his own people, many of them innocents, and being the cause of the plights of the modern elves that we see in all three games. Does this qualigy him as a Greater Scope Villain? I say yes. What about you?
openHow do we handle actor pseudonyms? Videogame
On Characters.Command And Conquer Tiberian Sun, one of the character's actors (CABAL, in the Nod folder) is listed as their pseudonym, but in parenthesis, it mentions that they were credited by their real name in the manual (not sure what they're credited as in-game, never played it).
How do we handle situations like this? Do we use their real name (if known) or their credited pseudonym? The actor in question — Milton James
— had multiple pseudonyms that he used for different roles. Do we use each one as credited, or just stick with his real name for every role?
What about cases like the original Metal Gear Solid, where nearly everyone used a pseudonym but used their real names in sequels? Which names do we use there? Does popularity mean anything? David Hayter is pretty much universally known as the voice of Solid Snake (he even played himself in MGS4), but he was credited as "Sean Barker" in the original MGS1.
In some cases, actors use pseudonyms to accept non-union roles (This is actually why they used pseudonyms in MGS1). Does that affect anything?
openPaper Mario Origami King Development Speculation Videogame
So in Paper Mario The Origami King's Trivia page, I wrote this.
Troubled Production: Based on what can be inferred from interviews and clues from the game itself, there's a case to be made that during the game's development, there was quite a bit of friction between Intelligent Systems and Kensuke Tanabe.
- As mentioned above in Executive Meddling, the development staff was not allowed to create original characters based on mainline races in the Mario cast, as was possible in the first two games. Kensuke Tanabe enforced this based off of Shigeru Miyamoto's one time expression that he thought that the Paper Mario series was deviating too far from his vision of what Super Mario Bros games should be like. Tanabe took this to heart... by shutting down any and all elements that deviated from standard Mario fare that weren't completely different in the first place. This is in spite of Miyamoto having since expressed that he doesn't want the Super Mario Bros. franchise to become stagnant by only using tropes and characters that audiences are familiar with.
- Intelligent Systems were vehemently opposed to Tanabe's extremely strict meddling on how characters were allowed to be presented in the game, despite not being able to challenge the ruling. So instead they resorted to walking around the rule as much as possible. Olivia insisting on referring to Bob-Omb as Bobby, along with the Legion of Stationery all having wildly exaggerated personalities to make up for any lack of visual detail beyond each being an Animate Inanimate Object are just a few examples of the developers trying to skirt past this rule.
It was shot down as Speculative Troping, and while I want to bring attention to some of the details that I found regarding Origami King's development, I also don't want to break any wiki rules. So I asked the person who erased it if I should put this in the game's WMG page instead. He told me that he thought it was frowned upon, and that I should ask here before doing anything else.
Should this be placed on the game's WMG page as a "meta" (theory outside of the game's lore) tab, somewhere else entirely, or does this sort of stuff have no place on TV Tropes?
Edited by MetroidPeteropen Paper Mario the Horror King Videogame
Can someone tell me why Paper Mario: the Origami King DOESN'T have its own Nightmare Fuel page? The game has a bunch of horrifying things that by all means SHOULD warrant its own Nightmare Fuel page, but for some reason it doesn't. (I think for some time it actually DID have it's own Nightmare fuel page, but now I can't find it.) Am I able to add it myself, or does someone else have to do it?
Edit: Wait, why can't I reply anymore?
Edited by SpideyopenTrope Repair Shop? Videogame
Can someone tell me what constitutes trope misuse?
I noticed irregularities on the Stance System and took it to the repair shop. But unbeknowst to me, misuse is a very loaded term on this site and I didn't have a firm enough case.
When is it serious enough to warrant a new thread, and if it isn't that serious, should I just open a discussion tab on the trope itself, or is there some other forum thread?
openUpdate Zelda Character Navigation Bar? Videogame
So most of the character pages for Legend of Zelda games have a character/game navigation bar at the top of the page, like so. I saw someone put it on the character page for the upcoming Age of Calamity spin-off game, but not add the game itself to the bar. Which got me wondering if it would be a good idea to update the navigation bar on all the Zelda character pages to include the bigger spin-off games that have such pages, like the Hyrule Warriors games, Cadence of Hyrule, and the CD-i games. (I'd say Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love as well, but its character page is so lacking, I'm wondering why it even exists.) So should I go ahead and do this?
Edited by RacattackForceopenRemoved entires in FranchiseOriginalSin/WorldOfWarcraft that i feel need to be restored Videogame
While a few of those probably warranted their removal, i feel that at least three of them should be restored/re-added:
- The Night Elves Badass Decay, which started as them going from a power equivalent, if not greater, than the Horde and Alliance to being just another of the four Alliance factions, and culminated into them beign the victims of a genocide with their "vengeance" being toothless at best..
- the Forsaken's straddling of the Token Evil Teammate/Nominal Hero line from their very inception.
- The developpers' self admitted Creator Favorite attitude toward writing Horde content, which started with the world revamp of Cata being Horde-focused (i think they event wrote a blog post apologizing about that one, even), and continued all the way to the genocide of an Alliance race beign used as fodder for Horde/Saurfang story developpment.
openHaving formatting problems Videogame
Hello! Today I was attempting to edit the Fan works/Danganronpa page to add the fanfiction "ronpa and friends" to the crossovers folder and I seem to have messed up the formatting somehow? There is not a page on here for it yet so that may be the problem? If anyone could help me fix it or direct me to where I could learn how to fix it myself that would be very helpful. Sorry about the mess, I am still trying to figure out how this works.
openSamus Aran from Metroid: Soldier or Warrior? Videogame
With regards to the trope Soldier vs. Warrior there is a list of distinguished soldiers and warriors and clashing ideologies listed as examples. If I may submit a question to the more well-read and better-researched Tropers for discussion and consideration:
Is the protagonist of the Metroid series, Samus Aran, as she is currently portrayed in the playable games of the franchise, considered better fitting the Soldier archetype, or the Warrior archetype? Or neither?
I understand that part of her backstory, as depicted in titles such as Other M, as well as in media outside of video games (such as the e-Manga) does place her as a soldier in the Galactic Federation army. However, Other M also depicts that she does get to be a bit headstrong and doubting of orders, with the example given regarding the tragedy of Ian Malkovich's sacrifice by a command decision from Samus's C.O. She may have questioned his order - and her internal monologue reflects this as well - but doesn't disobey his order at all. In this regard, she does - or did - lean towards Soldier.
However, after leaving the Federation, the English canon tells us that she became a "bounty hunter", which we can interpret as just becoming a freelancer and occasional contract mercenary. In Japan, the generally-accepted "closest" translation is "Space Warrior", as she is marked among an elite class of freelancer specializing in missions few can pull off, and in being an expert combatant. However, based on what's in the Soldier vs. Warrior trope page, it doesn't seem like she fits the Warrior archetype much at all. She doesn't really do it for the glory, or to aggrandize herself, or as some test of strength or out of a sense of competition.
But at the same time, she doesn't currently still fit the Soldier role either. She says on occasion that she works alone, by choice, and hasn't worked under direct authority from military C.O.s since leaving the service, with the two exceptions being in Other M and in Metroid Fusion.
So is Samus an example of a zigzagging of this trope? Or some strange deconstruction of it? Or not in this index at all? I'd like to get a well-researched answer, as I just lack the understanding and the nuances of Tropology to really get how to go about answering this.
Thank you ahead of time!
Edited by Miles07openLego Marvel Superheores Game nightmare fuel Videogame
The fact the Norman Osborn was experimenting on innocent employees with Vemon trapping them in containers to make them into half Vemon monsters goons speaks for it self
openExpanding tropes on Insomniac's Spider-Man Videogame
Hey, guys, I realise that this message is more appropriate in a videogame forum or the like, which is where I did originally send it, but I have decided to post it here as well since I have not been garnering any responses from the videogame's forum.
So I recently added some tropes which I think apply to Insomniac's Spider-Man, Manchild, Motor Mouth, Pop-Cultured Badass and Thou Shall Not Kill, onto his folder, but can't expand upon them (as I'm a relatively inexperienced editor and have yet to write up my first official example), so if someone could please maybe write up something on my behalf, I'd very much appreciate it.
To get anyone going, here's some info you can consider and use when writing up some descriptions for these tropes.
- For Manchild, maybe someone could mention his endearingly narrating his own adventurers as Spider-Cop, constant wisecracking, etc, throughout Spider-Man PS4. And Silver Sable lampshading "You are a child." when he enthusiastically helps her calibrate her hovercraft towards the end of the Silver Lining DLC could also be noted.
- For Motor Mouth, this particular exchange between Spidey and Shocker when the former apprehends the latter's bank robbery attempt during the mission "Financial Shock" can be considered. Here's a 41 second clip of the exchange if you wanna watch it.
Spider-Man: Remember our first fight? Me, so young and stupid. You, just stupid. Shocker: You talk too much! Spider-Man: Well, that's a matter of opinion. I mean, are there any standard metrics for how much talking one should do? And who determines the ideal ratio of talking versus not-talking? Also, how would you measure it? Words per minute? Syllables per second? Or is it more about how many words one uses to express a single thought? It's all so subjective. If you ask me, some people don't talk enough. Like about who their mysterious overlord is, the person they're working for, that kinda thing. Shocker: [goaded past endurance] SHUT UP!- Of course, there are other moments where he just prattles on (even if he doesn't talk particularly fast-paced) and Silver Sable has asked him to shut up a couple times during the Silver Lining DLC. However, it may need to be noted that he tends to do this during story campaign, as outside-story gameplay, he's obviously quiet (I'm not quite sure what the trope for this is or if there's even a trope for this, maybe Gameplay and Story Segregation?) but you guys can write it however way you like, doesn't matter to me.
- For Pop-Cultured Badass, much like his MCU counterpart, Spidey makes a number of references to pop culture, of which I've compiled a list.
- Spidey greets Vulture with a friendly "Yo, Adrian!" While the Vulture yells at him to quit babbling, Electro actually responds by telling Spidey that he must break him in a strong Russian accent, much to the web-head's delight.
- Upon being attacked by Sable's jetpack troops and learning from Yuri that the mercenaries have declared martial law on the city in light of the Sinister Six's actions, Spider-Man asks if anyone else besides him is getting a Nineteen Eighty-Four vibe from the whole situation.
- When Sable Agents respond to Spider-Man fighting criminals, Spider-Man reacts by referencing a line from Milkshake
, with "milkshake" exchanged for "web."
- During a Maggia car chase, Spider-Man references It's Raining Men
.
- While going through one of Hammerhead's bases, Spider-Man says the line "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!" from The Wizard of Oz
.
- When talking about his "Spider-Cop" persona, Peter at one point says "Part man, part spider, all cop."
- During a side mission stopping the Demons' car while they have an armed bomb, Spidey may randomly say that it reminds him a lot of "that movie with the bomb on the bus," though he can't quite remember its name.
- A very subtle one occurs during the Midtown Research Mission "Chemical Leak". He follows the trail and in three separate spots he finds traces of mercury, nitric acid, and ethanol then wonders why that sounds familiar. It's familiar because that's the chemical combination used by none other than Heisenberg, the kingpin of Albuquerque drug crime himself, to blow a hole in a building during the first season of Breaking Bad.
- One type of random side mission has thugs pinning down cops with sniper rifles. After beating one, Spidey might quip that it feels like a new-age western, then say, "Yippee kiyay, mother-spider."
- When Spidey stops said heist, he quips, "I love it when a plan falls apart."
- When Spidey infiltrates an abandoned warehouse at the docks, he mentions this feels like a horror movie and asks if there are any fishermen with a grudge and a hook for a hand.
- In the Sable Lookout Crime, one of Spider-Man's quips is asking the soldiers if they should call him by say... flashing a Spider Symbol in the sky but stops himself "before he gets sued."
- And for Thou Shall Not Kill, since Spider-Man has a no-kill policy, thugs that are thrown off roofs during combat will automatically be pulled to the nearest wall and appear webbed-up. He also cites his no-killing rule when discussing how to take down Hammerhead with Silver Sable towards the end of Silver Lining.
So that's that. I hope you more experienced and talented editors can cook up something special with all this info. Write however way you want, I'm just the guy supplying some background info, which I hope will be useful. :)
Edited by gothamarkhamlordopenHostile edit reasons from troper. Videogame
On 1/01 Mr Heroes added the following meme to the Fate/Grand Order meme page:
- Muramasa is ShirouExplanation While he takes Shirou's form, Muramasa isn't Shirou. A running gag is having Muramasa mistaken/called Shirou, which is popular with fan artists.
On 1/04, Rebel Falcon removed it with an unusually hostile edit reason spread across a few minutes:
- "For the last time, Muramasa is Shiro. Muramasa is a Pseudo-Servant using Shiro as his host, and his bio quite literally says that Shiro's personality is the dominant one. He doesn't simply look like Shiro, he is Shiro."
- Saying Muramasa isn't Shiro is like saying Ishtar isn't Rin, or Jaguar Warrior isn't Taiga, or Ganesha isn't Jinako. It's literally their bodies and personalities, its just some have themselves in the drivers seat, some have the spirit, and some fuse together. Bottom line though, Muramasa is fucking Shiro Emiya.
Now in the first instance, this was done because it appears Rebel may have submitted their edit early, cutting off the message as the first of three edits has this edit reason: For the last time, ''Muramasa is Shiro".
However, the third entry was made after the second, more detailed one, and was close to ten minutes later. The meme itself is probably fine being removed but the edit reason is very hostile and leaves me concerned since this is something I've noticed seems to be a recent trend of there's.
For example, on the RWBY page, they readded an entry on 1/03 that was removed with the following edit reason: "Don't remove shit without giving a reason."
I've not had much interaction with Rebel except for once but I wanted to mention it since this hostility is concerning. Not to suspend them concern, more so just a "Hey, everything okay?" kind of concern.
Edited by keyblade333openEdit War in YMMV/FinalFantasyXV Videogame
Immortal Bear re-deleted
an entry I restored to Final Fantasy XV since their original deletion lacked an edit reason. They've provided an explanation after the fact, but most of it comes off as personal opinion and dislike of the Episode Ignis ending for reasons unrelated to what the original entry was about (that being that audience perception of its tone shifted due to Dot F), rather than an impartial collective observation of the reactions of the fandom at the time.
I've PM'd them as much, pointing out to them that they seem to take the YMMV label too literally as its actual focus is to describe audience responses to a work rather than to post personal opinions, that contrary to their belief the page is not trying to wage a war over which ending is objectively better, and I've also pointed out to them that though they claim the only people with a non-negative opinion are a Vocal Minority, other tropers have made the same observations as me regarding the state of the fandom at the time.
They seem to believe that because Dawn of the Future has an overall score of 9.0 on Good Reads (which often has a userbase culture distinct from the social media sites I frequent like Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, or imageboards, and whose score doesn't always take into account things like the specific comparative tone of the ending), while Episode Ignis rates an average of 7.0 (the score again mostly focusing on things like gameplay rather than tone), that it invalidates everything I've said above, since I don't have hard sources on hand for every tweet or social media comment I've seen regarding people being softer on Episode Ignis's ending or disliking Dawn of the Future's approach.
I don't think that makes for an effective counterargument as YMMV does not mandate sources in general, and Dawn of the Future's perception outside of GR tends to attract a lot of negativity in its own right, not to mention disregarding said potential inherent selection bias (the people posting reviews were probably accepting enough of the controversies around the book to read through the whole thing). The reviews themselves on GR are variable with many positive scores criticizing the ending, and many reviews that praise the ending having mediocre scores on the whole.
None of the arguments they've provided contradict the initial point (that people's opinions of Episode Ignis became less hostile once Dawn of the Future was announced) of nor justify the deletion of the entry describing how people's hostility to a certain alternate ending seen as overly happy, dipped off once another, even happier ending showed up. Especially since the edit reason for deleting it is focused mostly on arguing why Alternate Ending #1 is badly written and any talk of audience reactions is more about pointing out that a portion of the audience exist who liked the other newer, even happier ending, even though the original entry never claimed otherwise or to speak for the entirety of the fandom.
Update: They are now accusing me of outright lying and being biased in favor of one ending for disputing their deletions, despite the major issues here having to do with a lack of, followed by questionably irrelevant removal reasons in what is a potential edit war. Update 2: They've taken it back after I explained myself further.
Edited by AlleyOopopenDoes having your memory erased and replaced with FakeMemories count for BrainwashedAndCrazy. Videogame
So there's a character in Fire Emblem Awakening, whose backstory involves her being kidnapped as a teenager by people she hates, having her entire memory and personality erased to the point she no longer remembers her parents or even her name, and then all this being replaced with a Fake Memories magically implanted into her mind. She is then used to carry out her kidnapper's bidding.
The character describes herself as a ""A girl enslaved mind, body, and soul"
and the official sources use "pawn" and "puppet to describe her, with the Fire Emblem wiki(link
, ) describing her with the word, "brainwashed."
The reason I put this here is someone keeps contesting this example and saying she wasn't brainwashed, even though there is a similar character listed from Sailor Moon. I wanted to know what ATT thinks? Does that count as an example of Brainwashed and Crazy?
Edited by MonsundopenReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming and a Halo franchise example with possible spoilers Videogame
My main concern is how to write this so as to avert creating a Self-Fulfilling Spoiler. The Flood in Halo is very clearly named after the Genesis flood narrative, but how would I go about adding this in to the page without creating a Self-Fulfilling Spoiler since in the backstory, the Flood were effectively created as a means to purge the Forerunners, who retaliated by creating an Ark to preserve most species?
Edited by EclipseMTopenWhat kind of page do mods and fanmade songs for Friday Night Funkin go into? Videogame
So, I'm the main guy who launched and frequently checks the Friday Night Funkin' page, and as I've been looking around the edit histories, it's become evident that a few tropers would like to add examples of mods/fan created songs to pages like Awesome Music and Nightmare Fuel. I for one think that FNF has a healthy modding community ripe with lots of examples and I was hoping that these would breath new life into the page during the lulls of waiting for the game itself to be updated, so I tried making a fan works page, since you can't add examples of mods to main pages. Unfortunately, I used the page incorrectly (Accidentally. My bad.) and it got cut. I can only assume that we should use the Fanfic Recs option? I'm a little confused on the matter since I wouldn't really consider game mods fanfics.
Edited by GraysonBauer

The following contains Royal spoilers. You have been warned.
I just noticed this Paragraph from Persona 5 that seriously bugs me:
I have also been issued a request on Base Breaker Cleanup
to review this.
Basically:
I've been removed the paragraph for now, if anyone else adds it the next time, I leave it alone until further notice, because someone added it back earlier on and I don't want this to degenerate into an edit war.
Edited by Mr-ex777