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Ask the Tropers:
openTroper Ignoring Notifiers
I'm back. I would like to report that Dat Boi 10 has been ignoring any notifiers I send them. For the record, I sent them a PM about this about a couple days ago. However, I haven't gotten a response to either any my PM or any of my notifiers.
The most recent notifier I sent was for a grammar mistake, namely in Characters.Arknights Guards when they typed
"due" instead of "oue". They also used incorrect indentation at least several times, namely on
Characters.Arknights Snipers N To Z and the page
ThatOneLevel.Arknights.
I've also sent them several Administrivia.Word Cruft notifiers, like when they typed "Similarly". Now, I'm aware that that isn't WC by itself. However, when it starts a sub-bullet like in that edit
, it is. They also added
"basically" to GameBreaker.Arknights. In another edit to that page, they added
"pretty much".
I'm sorry if this isn't important. Personally, I'm unsure if this is suspensible, I just want to hear if a mod can fix this issue. Also, a couple mods told me that they prefer ATT posts rather than DMs.
EDIT: I fixed an error with a link.
Edited by RandomTroper123openProblems on Music/FallingInReverse Music
A number of examples on the page appear to be troping the frontman himself rather than either his work or performances or describing the real life history of the band using narrative tropes. Can I just remove them and rewrite the salvageable ones or is this big enough to take to a cleanup thread?
- The Atoner: Ronnie after making up with Craig in 2013 and becoming a father, seems to really want to ditch the past "Radical Ronnie" bravado he put on. He also seems incredibly regretful about the time he cheated on his girlfriend, especially as it caused him to see his daughter less. (this one's also a morality trope)
- Even the Guys Want Him: Ronnie.
(fanservice trope applied to a real person, Weblinks Are Not Examples and it's a matter of opinion)
- Jerkass: Ronnie Radke, if this video
is anything to go by. Several other people, including fans themselves, have even called him out on this. The incident where he threw a mic stand into the crowd at a show at Six Flags Great Adventure and managed to both send several people to the hospital and get heavier acts permanently banned from being booked at the park did not help matters.
- His choice of lyrical content is all you need to know Ronnie is a bit of a jerk, with lines like "They'll call me king of the music scene" (morality trope being applied to a real person and the second is both subjective and possibly complainy)
- Large Ham: Ronnie. (also zero context; could be rewritten to describe actual performances by someone who knows more about such things than I do)
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: All of them, but especially Ronnie for most fangirls.
- Mr. Fanservice: Especially Ronnie and Jacky. (these two have the same problems as Even the Guys Want Him and are also zero context)
- Parental Abandonment: Ronnie's mom left him and his brother when they were young.
- He finally met her again in November 2013. (this is just straight up real life; it could be rewritten to describe songs that talk about his mother rather than the literal events)
- Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: The focus of many of their songs, since they were apparently written by Ronnie while he was in jail and going through rehab. However, he is currently very much sober, and as much can be assumed for the other band members.
- Actually a requirement on tour. Ronnie is Straight Edge now, and doesn't trust himself around substances to the point of declaring them off limits on the bus. I See Stars were thrown off tour in 2012 when their keyboard player was arrested for weed possession. (everything past it being the subject of songs is real life)
- Start My Own: How the band was formed. Ronnie was mad at his former bandmates and swore to become bigger than they were. (For the record, they're about equal ever since.)
- Also why Max left. He'd been attempting to make a band of his own since being thrown out of ETF, and finally they debuted in 2016 as Violent New Breed.
- Jacky started a solo shred/instrumental rock project and eventually left to focus on it.
openTropers with an agenda
A couple of tropers, tsthysys09 and xxdster clearly have an editing agenda in the Final Fantasy XIII Main Party
and Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII
pages (links go to page histories), removing any and all examples that even tangentially refer to the Hope/Lightning ship and also the spoiler warning for Hope's folder (which I thought was extremely odd since that was added per the violation of spoiler policy thread and they didn't retag the spoilers).
Of note, tsthysys09 is a brand new account with only those two edits to the page and xxdster has been inactive since 2016, up until the 13th of this month, again with only edits to those pages. I think that's highly suspicious, either this is drama importation, or these two might possibly be the same person (possibly to avoid being suspended for an edit war) since xxdster would removed some tropes and then tsthysys09 would remove the exact same ones again after they were readded by another troper.
Some of these tropes were added by myself, and I don't want to stick myself in an edit war, so I'm bringing this here for attention.
openEditing quibble - HOTD Live Action TV
Hello everyone, I hope this is the correct place to ask this?
For this page https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Heartwarming/HouseOfTheDragon
(sorry I am not sure if there is a better way to link it) there has been some disagreement about it's contents.
I recently edited it to cut down some length; for example some of it went into too much paragraphs detail as opposed to a one paragraph summarization, I feel some personalised bits like "Fuck the Seven Strictures! And the Faith!" as a viewer's reaction don't fit and others are outright wrong in interpretation (while saying theirs confirms all other interpretations are wrong) as confirmed by a showrunner himself/ Word of God (Miguel Sapochnik). I didn't add anything, just removed some pieces.
I explained the reasons in the edit box as it would be improper to do such a shift without a given reason - however it has since been edited back with the following comments from the original editor;
"No-one who can't speak English properly is removing another's examples" / "Miguel Sapochnik told viewers their T Vs were at fault and not his lighting direction in 'The Long Night'. He has no right to give a carte blanche interpretation of a scene."
Can I ask what to do here? The first comment especially did feel hurtful and mean-spirited.
I would like to edit it since as I said I feel it goes off the format and it's confirmed some of it is incorrect, but I don't want to get into that with those sorts of comments to me or spark an editing scuffle which would be unfair for everyone.
openStFan and Unilateral Page Changes / Enforcing Preferred Policy
This came out of a recent ATT thread
I made asking to clarify a site policy. I'm pasting and expanding on a comment I made in that thread.
St Fan has a habit of editing pages to standardize the folders + categories which in of itself isn't bad. However, they often enforce a very particular idea of grammar and categorization that isn't necessarily based on any consensus/site policy and they will unilaterally edit the relevant pages where you would check to verify such a policy, later using that unilateral edit to justify making other edits elsewhere. See:
- This query [1]
and this one [2]
where St Fan states a "site policy" that has never existed as a fact to justify their edits
- Or this query
I made after messaging them about another page reordering they did for Mysterious Purple. In our messages, after I questioned the re-ordering, St Fan essentially told me that's how it's done on the index page, ergo that's the default policy and you can see him making the same argument in that thread here [3]
. And I find this suss b/c one glance at the page history for the Manga and anime indices would show St Fan reorganizing it going back to 2014 so of course it would reflect their personal organizing preferences. and in the end, the agreed upon ordering was what was originally there before St. Fan edited the page.
- this query
about St Fan making a unilateral edit to Media Categories. This is relevant because St Fan is "correcting" other pages based on this change they themself made, despite there being no consensus in favor of (or outright against) this change
- And this query
where they ignore the consensus built in the ATT thread to continue unilaterally editing out AC formatting for folders
I'm not sure how much if any of this is actually against site policy, but I wanted to consolidate all of this in one post because I've noticed this particular troper pop up quite a bit recently with similar issues
Edited by amathieu13openFound a 4chan forum story, is Literature the right place for it? Literature
Luke: The Plague Son of Nurgle
While doing some cleanup work, came across the above which appears to be an unstructured forum story told by multiple people in 2009 and interspersed with comments from anonymous posters. It's not referenced anywhere else on google besides tvtropes and the forum links themselves.
What is the criteria for a web original forum work being listed? Does it need to have an attributable author? Does it need to have evidence of a reader base? Is there some other criteria we use? Does it need to be something someone can actually pinpoint and consume with a clear line between the work itself and people commenting on it? Is there any kind of minimum length requirement?
When I came across this one, it didn't really seem to fit the "Literature" media space to me though I know WebSerialNovels do get classified under literature.
However, I'm not sure this forum story can even be classified as a novel so that's adding to my confusion.
The work page has 1 wick under "The Pig-Pen", 171 total inbounds, and looks to have been created on November 20, 2021 though the original 4chan threads look like they were all from November 2009.
openSelf-reporting an edit war
I just realized that I had accidentally edit warred, and wanted to self-report just to be safe.
I was on Monochrome Casting yesterday, and made an addition
; it's one that I knew I had thought about making before, but as it wasn't there I assumed that I hadn't. But then I realized today that I had made that addition before
and just forgotten, and it had since been deleted
. I've now gone back and at least addressed the issue that got it deleted
.
openHow to add self-linking table of contents?
Is it possible to create a Wikipedia/Fandom-style "table of contents" box on a page, which would let a reader jump to specific sections on the same page using anchor links, or is that not possible?
Edited by techno156openDrama Importation?
On YMMV.Genshin Impact, GRD added this questionable Fandom Rivalry entry (see here
).
- A weird one, but this also applies within subsections of the Genshin fanbase itself. As there is a strong distaste between Reddit Genshin and Twitter Genshin; forming distinct blocs due to how large the fanbase is. With the reddit base of Genshin accusing the twitter base of being the source of the majority of the toxicity and controversies as well as ruining the fandom's reputation. Expect plenty of Genshin redditors chastising twitter users for any controversy that gets brought up, whilst twitter Genshin accusing their reddit counterparts as just being as equally toxic in its own ways. To a lesser extent, the Youtube fanbase of Genshin sometimes gets flack from both sides due to clickbait issues. Whereas the fanbase powerbloc in Facebook and Hoyolab are considered to be far more chill in contrast. The fanbase is not considered 'broken' like that of Star Wars since there is still a unified passion across the board on the game and there isn't any severe breach of conduct to ignite a civil war. But there is a distinct cultural rivalry between the websites formulating into something akin to a fandom Cold War.
Reading this, it sounds to me like importation of fandom drama onto TV Tropes, and even though my experience with the Genshin fandom is short-lived, they are prone to drama spats every now and again. What do you think?
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
open A possible issue with some picture captions
In Characters.Spookys Jump Scare Mansion, each of the character pictures have a caption with a quote that doesn’t actually reference the work itself, but serves as a Shout-Out to another work maybe tangentially related to the picture (for example, the caption for Specimen 2, a slime monster, references Ghostbusters (1984)). Is this acceptable, or should they be removed on account of having nothing to do with the actual work?
openConcerning Edit History
I first noticed Caesar 44 commenting on a review for the new LOTR show, complaining that it's inaccurate to the original work and the like which while technically true is also somewhat of a dogwhistle, so I dug further... And found some bizarre things. Some of them pointing at an agenda... Others just showing sloppy and problematic behaviors in general. Note that I have not sent a notifier... I wouldn't even know where to begin.
- Deleting an entry from CommonKnowledge.MythsAndReligion without reason
, made worse by it being about the belief that the bible bans homosexuality when it doesn't actually.
- Adding natter as a note tag?
- Doing it again, but ~politically~?
- And again
- Doing that again but then removing it?
- More natter... but as a parabomb this time
, to shake it up, I guess.
- She-Hulk Whining, because obviously
- As it might be obvious by now they have some sloppy behaviors like not putting a space in between the trope and the bullet, and not always starting with capitalization.
- They also got into a weird dispute on WesternAnimation.The Incredibles over the Artistic License – Law entry? Getting all the receipts is hard because of the link glitch and the fact that it's like 6 AM here and I want to end this report preferably before the sun comes up? Anyway what happened was that they added an entry about the early-movie lawsuit which was deemed to not count by consensus, and the entry was eventually hidden with a large tag saying "don't add", and then they removed the comment markup but not the note itself????
And this has been my deep-dive into a concerning troper. Thoughts? Should I try sending a notifier? I mean the editing issues are all bad, sure, but what concerns me most is the clear political wonkery they're engaging in, and that can't be solved with a PM, nor do I want to see them flame out.
openContentious issue, but: Columbus Whitewashing
So, uh. UsefulNotes.Christopher Columbus. I'm gonna try not to dive into the deep end of the modern discourse about him but skimming the page it does feel like it engages in some degree of objective misrepresentation/falsehoods about his activities.
The one that stands out to me is it claiming that the mistreatment of natives in his colony occurred without his knowledge after he left his brother in charge to continue his exploration, and the subsequent implication that he was rightly exonerated for it - AFAIK while there's arguments to be made about the degree of mistreatment he's responsible for it's accepted as historical fact that he was personally responsible for much of it (particularly the slavery); his brother simply escalated it to the point of outright brutality.
I'd just correct it myself but this is a highly contentious issue and it's entirely possible that I myself am wrong or misinformed in some way on some of this. I suspect that a deeper reading of the article to account for omitted details, bias, etc may be warranted. Not to mention an on-the-record discussion to show that the matter was handled with consideration rather than being knee-jerk Righting Great Wrongs.
For what it's worth, I checked the discussion page and there seems to have been a very brief discussion of the matter in 2012... where it was seemingly decided to stick with the "he was innocent and simply couldn't control his men" portrayal, which like I said is AFAIK considered factually incorrect regardless of one's opinions on him personally.
Edited by Dirtyblue929openWriter Conflicts With Canon Misuse? (repost)
Asked prior ATT
and Is this an example?
about these but got no feedback.
- The Rise of Skywalker establishes that Supreme Leader Snoke was actually a failed clone created by Palpatine, with several other Snokes visible in vats on Exegol. This directly contradicts previous declarations that Snoke had been around for many decades, and that Palpatine only learned about his existence shortly before his death at the end of Return of the Jedi.
WCWC is when Word of God conflicts with canon. I believe this was All There in the Manual material that was contradicted as opposed to out of work creator statements. What to do?
- According to the Sonic 4 web site, Sonic and Knuckles' levels and stories take place at the exact same time in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Fans noted that there was tons of evidence within the game itself that Knuckles' story is after Sonic's story. Examples include Angel Island Zone Act 1 showing only the sky in the background instead of the ocean, Eggman's Death Egg is missing in the background for Launch Base Zone and Lava Reef Zone Act 2, the ghosts in Sandopolis Zone Act 2 are already wandering around at the start (you later find the container that held them was already broken by Sonic), and Mecha Sonic appears to fight Knuckles at the end of the game since he didn't explode when Sonic defeated him previously. This was rectified by later material stating that it indeed took place after Sonic's campaign.
Would a official website be All There in the Manual as opposed to Word of God?
Anyplace else to ask?
Edited by Ferot_DreadnaughtopenAccidental edit war instigated by me
I was checking the history of Jekyll & Hyde and noticed that an entry on Pure Is Not Good where Hyde declares himself pure and Jekyll the true "Hyde" had been deleted 9 months ago: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Theatre.JekyllAndHyde#edit31680077
"He says "I am you", not "I am pure""
This is true of the Broadway recording, but in the 1994 version
◊ he does say
◊ "I am pure", which you can also hear
in the audio itself. Obviously this isn't true of every version (there's a lot) so I adjusted the deleted entry to clarify which recording it was while also adding more context to said entry, then re-added it when I was done. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Theatre.JekyllAndHyde#edit34301267
Unfortunately I forgot that I had added the original entry back in 2017, which I'm pretty sure means that I did an edit war: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Theatre.JekyllAndHyde#edit17931303
I apologize for the accidental edit war on my part and accept full responsibility for anything that may occur as a result.
Edited by lalalei2001openEdit warring in YMMV Dragon Ball Super Anime
I removed a bunch of entries from the YMMV page of the Granolah's arc from Dragon Ball Super, since they were violations of policy (adding a Broken Base entry just days after the arc had ended, for example, alongside a It Was His Sled entry, and an Audience-Alienating Ending entry when the entire arc is days old). I also removed some entries that read as too much complaining instead of actually showing an audience reaction, particularly concerning Narm, Ass Pull, Franchise Original Sin and Fan-Disliked Explanation.
troper AMassiveOvereditor
(Which originally added most of these entries) added a bunch of entries back, with the exception of the entries that negated policy. What should be done in this case? I feel that rather than reflecting the views of the audience itself, the page just merely centers on the views of this specific troper. Not to say that there isn't examples of Narm and Ass Pull (I left some of those and after some days I thought that maybe I should have added back the Black Frieza entry in Ass Pull), but I feel that the page as a whole is too negative, which is a common problem in the Dragon Ball Super manga pages.
openToo Bleak misuse
- The Joker is often criticized for being too bleak a villain. Many writers treat him as less a person and more of an unpredictable, seemingly unstoppable force of chaos who commits acts of gruesome torture (of both the physical and psychological formats) and mass murder, with an ever increasing body count that's often in the four to five digits, often forgetting the comedic angle that made him such a Love to Hate character in the first place. This renders Batman's no-kill policy absolutely pointless and a little Secretly Selfish, as it becomes less about him keeping Gotham safe and more about him staying true to his personal code no matter the consequences.
TBSC is about stories that cause such, so it seems misuse to apply to a specific character, especially one who's remained iconic and popular despite. I say cut as while this might apply to some specific stories it doesn't apply in general/overall as it's too successful to count. Any objections?
Asking here as TBSC cleanup hasn't had any activity in over a month.
openReporting a Misnamed Page?
If I see a page that's been moved to have the wrong name, with redirects now adding to the problem, where would I report that? For the case I'm seeing, it isn't obvious how I'd fix it myself.
openRestoring a Deleted Entry Western Animation
When I found out a character in The Dragon Prince was inspired by C-3PO, I added an Expy entry to their folder which was deleted soon after by another troper.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Characters.TheDragonPrinceXadia#edit33992672
I messaged them with a link to the interview
that states C-3PO was an influence but they haven't replied or reversed the edit themselves. What should be done? Do I just restore it myself, or should another, since I'm unsure if that might qualify as an edit war?
open Contradicting entires/Mis-blamed misuse?
YMMV.Pokemon S 21 E 6 Mission Total Recall
- Designated Hero: Gladion is the brave older brother who went out of his way to protect Lillie by becoming strong enough to stop Nihilego...while also disregarding that since he knew everything that happened that night, that he could've prevented a lot of Lillie's traumas if he just told his mother sooner.
- Mis-blamed: Gladion's actions or lack thereof appear to have caused a rift in his overall view in the fandom for the anime, but an obvious roadblock pretty much shoots down any of the normal methods Gladion could've done to get the message through about Lillie's abuse to Lusamine; unless he dealt with Faba first and foremost, nothing was stopping Faba from continuing to enforce a fake status quo he had kept preserved for four years straight with help of his Hypno and other Psychic Type Pokémon altering and manipulating their memories in-order to save his own skin. If anything, Gladion should consider himself lucky he even managed to escape at all in any capacity, as Faba would've more than likely erased his memories too if he had managed to catch him sooner. By all accounts, Faba is the biggest obstacle for this entire arc, and even with Ash's help, Faba wasn't easy to bring down, and he still tried to make a counterattack in the following episode to make up for the misstep of being ganged up on by two trainers did to him.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The fact that Gladion kept everything quiet and never went to tell Lusamine about what happened to Lillie sooner makes him less altruistic and more selfish, especially since he chews her out for not paying attention yet he knew yet ran away from his sister.
These argue with themselves over Gladion. I'm inclined to cut Mis-blamed as the narrative never presented that aspect and it's about real life creators, not in-work characters, being such. But there's this from Misblamed.Anime And Manga:
- Porygon being the Pokémon that caused the infamous seizure-inducing imagery present in the banned episode "Electric Soldier Porygon"
. It wasn't. While Porygon and its evolutions have certainly never appeared in any anime adaptation ever since outside brief blink-and-you'll-miss cameos, this is purely due to the unfortunate association its name has with the incident. The imagery was actually caused by Pikachu, who was attacking incoming missiles being shot at Porygon and the rest of the group.
This was previously removed citing "About creators being mis-blamed. This is Common Knowledge." But was added back without explanation. Thoughts?

I find myself with a trope that I want to add to a page—but one in which, in my opinion, the trope was attempted but failed at. How should such a thing be approached...?
To be a little more specific:
In the game ShadowCaster, the player has access to a number of forms into which they can shapeshift, each having benefits and drawbacks. One form might be fast and strong, another slow but with ranged attacks, etc.
So, Multiform Balance has been implemented, one might note.
Except... that the forms are, in my opinion, not actually particularly balanced. For example, the above-mentioned "slow-but-ranged" character does have some good ranged abilities... but they rely on and quickly consume a somewhat-hard-(or-slow)-to-recover resource. What's more, that resource is shared between forms, so that one form consuming it means that it's less available for other forms to use. What's more, the form is, as mentioned, slow—painfully slow, I find.
But all of that is, of course, YMMV. Perhaps there are others out there who find the forms well-balanced!
So I'm not sure of how to proceed. My instinct is to note the attempt, and also note that it didn't work. But on the other hand, that's perhaps insufficiently objective for a main-page trope. On the third hand, however, to not mention it might suggest that the forms actually are balanced...
Hence my uncertainty! So: What do you advise?