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:
openWhy are people just arbitrarily removing red links for work pages?
I've been noticing this happening lately in pages I made. Even though the Red Link page says to leave red links for works in so that it's easier to crosswick later, people keep editing them out.
For instance, in the Spiritual Crossover page, a Red Link for Hawkgirl was removed, and then in the Split-Personality Switch Trigger page, two links for Outlaw Kid - a character with 45 issues to his name - were removed, with the only justification being that it was a red link. One of them even linked to the Red Link page itself in the edit reason, despite the fact that this action would seem to indicate they didn't actually read said page.
Either that, or the policy changed and no one bothered to update the Red Link page.
Edited by DBZfan102openWeird sandbox
Imperial Majesty XO created Sandbox.Gay Draft Sandbox on October 8th. It doesn't appear to be that discussion happened to result in its creation, and the sandbox itself doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. That, and it's related to the TLP incident.
Edited by GoldenCityBirdopen Was Donald Trump tempting fate?
OK, so I realize that just about any discussion related to Donald Trump is a ROCEJ land-mine, and should be approached with extreme caution. But I wanted to bring this up because it seemed fairly straightforward.
Would this be an OK example for Tempting Fate?
- Over the course of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Donald Trump spent a significant amount of time claiming that COVID-19 was not a serious threat to the American People. He ignored it by holding in-person rallies and discouraged the use of masks. Ultimately, he caught it himself, and more than 200,000 American citizens died as a result of the virus.
openShould the "Giant's Dream" have spoiler tags? Western Animation
A recent ATT thread
discussed The Iron Giant which had been made "spoilers off" 2 years ago and the consensus was that should be "spoilers on" again.
There's a little debate over what story details should be spoiler tagged. The obvious consensus was the nuclear strike on Rockwell and the Giant's sacrifice to save it as well as the reveal that the Giant survived and was re-assembling itself in Iceland.
However, there's some contention about whether the contents of the "Giant's Dream" should be tagged as well. As a quick recap, after the encounter with the hunters, deer and rifle, the Giant has a dream that night that reveals glimpses about his origin... that he was created to be one of an army of robots who were designed to be a planetary invasion force and had the firepower to physically tear a planet apart.
The dream sequence was cut because of financial constraints due to WB Animation shutting down their animation department even as the production team was frantically trying to get The Iron Giant finished.
It was never included in the theatrical release nor in the early waves of dvds & bluray releases. It wasn't until the 2015 "Signature Edition" that the scene was completed and restored into the film.
As such, for a majority of readers who aren't big Iron Giant fans then this is a plot point that is not widely known and, in my opinion, worthy of spoiler tags.
If the majority of viewers aren't aware of the Giant's sacrifice at the end such that it warrants spoiler tags, then they surely aren't going to know about the Giant's Dream and I feel it deserves the same consideration.
Edited by rva98014openStrawman Has a Point query
Recently, I noticed that an instance of Strawman Has a Point in Calvin and Hobbes was deleted, with this being the stated edit reason:
I personally disagree with this removal. For context, the entry was about a Story Arc where Calvin is presented as wholly in the wrong for not reacting well to an assignment; but while he does handle it in about the worst way possible, the narrative never addresses that the assignment itself (gathering fifty leaves, each from a different species of tree, then putting them in a collection and labeling each one with both its tree's common and scientific names) is downright unreasonable to expect a first-grader to do, which vindicates at least some of Calvin's resentment at having to do it.
openCommented-out notes on Dream. Web Original
Dream has a lot of commented-out notes at the top of the page. While commented-out notes are usually related to cleanups and image picking, these ones are not. For ease of access:
%%Thanks to all the people that contributed to LetsPlay.Dream! %% List of contributors here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/editors.php?entry=LetsPlay.Dream
%% Feel free to add yourself to this list
(List of some people who contributed to the page, currently at 13 editors)
%% THINGS THAT NEED TO BE WORKED ON: %% More examples (let's get to a thousand!)
%% ''[[LetsPlay/{{Dream}} Dream's]]'' %% ''LetsPlay/{{Dream}}:''
%% The two lines above are for easy copy and pasting when crosswicking
The commented-out notes have been discussed by two people at the page's discussion page
, but I feel like some other opinions are needed. Are these commented-out notes OK?
openProblematic Review Web Original
Kelekona
left a review for Protectors of the Plot Continuum
, which is basically them importing personal drama from their interactions with the authors and not actually reviewing the work itself.
I flagged the review for drama importation, and Very Melon left a couple comments criticizing the review for that. Kelekona then decided to make a YMMV page for them, accusing them of being "pro-bullying". So now, this has descended into personal attacks against other users on the site.
Edited by chasemaddiganopenIs there any restrictions on what can be considered as a character or not? (Vtuber/hololive) Web Original
So over at Characters/Hololive, we had a debate
on whether we should include a particular character in our Characters page, where each character we have there at the moment is a hololive member & a vtuber in their own right (with the exception of one), each having their own Youtube channel.
A while ago somebody added an entry for a non-vtuber character (Anemachi), who is the sister of one of the hololive vtubers (Suisei). Despite not being a vtuber herself, Anemachi has a character portrait and occasionally makes appearances in Suisei's livestream at an average rate of about "once every few months". So you can say she's a somewhat recurring character on Suisei's channel.
Now, a troper had a problem with the inclusion of Anemachi with their reasoning being that she's not a hololive member. What I would like to know is that if there are any rules on TV Tropes that state who should be "worthy" of having a Characters entry or not. Because otherwise I don't see any problem with adding what is essentially a Minor Character into the Characters/Hololive page (with the hololive members themselves being Main Characters), seeing as even one-off characters from all sort of works get entries deliciated to them on TV Tropes.
Edited by AsoktencheaopenComplaints Magnet? Film
The Critical Research Failure section under Mulan (2020) is getting quite long and nitpicky, in excess of even what the most flexible interpretations of the trope allow. While a lot of people have correctly called the film out for failing to get basic aspects of Chinese culture correct despite advertising itself as more authentic, a lot of these examples come off as less informed criticisms and more an excuse for certain users to kick the film while it's down by parroting criticisms they saw elsewhere, some of which may misunderstand the actual reason for why the mistake was such an issue in the first place, or introduce Critical Research Failure of their own.
This despite scholars of Chinese culture and people of Chinese descent themselves pointing out that these aspects of Chinese culture get subjected to Artistic License within Chinese-created media all the time, and are not as clear-cut or even the worst crimes the film commits.
Edited by AlleyOopopenConsole wars
I really didn't want to resort to this, because since I edited this page for the first time I thought I could keep it clean to the largest extent possible, but in the midst of... certain controversies (such as Microsoft's buyout of Bethesda), it's no longer something I'll be able to handle alone.
Right now, the Console Wars page has a problem of what Wikipedia calls "undue weight". Whereas the first seven generations, and to a lesser extent the eighth, are covered appropiately, with each important aspect of them being touched upon with the necessary-yet-measured weight, the section for the ninth generation is already a big mess before the generation itself even started. The way I see it, at this early point only the most entirely general aspects should be covered, and any other details can wait until the generation starts to wind down. As of now, there's a recently added large paragraph just about Microsoft having bought Bethesda.
This wouldn't be a problem if all generation sections had this much detail, but that's not the case. Every single thing is being lumped in the 9th gen section as if we were sure it's going to be an absolute game changer. For one, it's too soon for us to truly gauge the impact of Bethesda being sold to Microsoft.
I propose a major trim to that section, only covering the truly relevant things, and the rest can come when we can definitely see the evolution of things. What do you guys think?
EDIT: I had submitted this query because I think the Bethesda thing was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it also gives undue weight to the whole controversy over the sequels to Spider Man and Horizon. Are we sure this will be something to be relevant over the years for the generation? It might cause some uproar, but it still looks like it'll be something purely situational, and of little-to-no importance to the widespread scope of the page's subject.
Edited by MyFinalEditsopen Troper possibly adding YMMV to her own work
I noticed that PrincessPandaTrope added a trope entry
where she wrote about the art of GothNebula in the first person, saying "Most of my Amy Rose's and Blaze the Cat's alternate outfits" bare the midriff.
This indicates that she is GothNebula. Not a problem in itself, of course; adding tropes to your own creator page is allowed. But she's been adding YMMV tropes to the same creator's page, so we need an IP check, is what I'm saying.
EDIT: Pierpitcher pointed out, correctly, that since GothNebula has no account, an IP check won't help much. Ridiculous of me not to realize that myself, really...
Edited by MichaelKatsuroopenPage split: Characters.SentinelsOfTheMultiverseVillains feedback
- Link: Characters.Sentinels Of The Multiverse Villains
- Discussion: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.php?trope=Characters.SentinelsOfTheMultiverseVillains#comment-121611
So there's a bit of dispute over how this page split should be done, you can see the debate between Spectral Time and myself on the Discussion page. It's currently listed alphabetically, and I just feel like there should be subcategorization, because there's 30+ folders, and depending on how the franchise develops beyond the original card game, there could potentially be more to come.
I think there are a few somewhat natural break points — the original game was divided into expansions, and in the mechanics of the card game some of the villains are fought on their own with their own minions while others are fought as part of a team of other villains. Some villains have decks for both, but the latter only appear in the second-to-last two expansions. Similarly, OblivAeon and his Scions are fought as a kind of massive Final Boss for the game as a whole, and have some very different rules as well. And then there are Nemeses, which are one-off cards which appear in other team villains' decks but don't have decks of their own so far (and aren't likely to get them, as the card game is officially complete at this time).
Spectral Time doesn't like the above ideas, as he thinks they require readers to possess additional information. I feel like it's just the opposite, though — it's information we're giving them, not information they need to have in advance. There were two other editors who had voted to split by expansion, but I felt like maybe it would be better to put this to ATT and get some more opinions/suggestions and then put it to a vote of sorts.
So the suggestions so far:
- Leave the page in alphabetical order
- Reorganize the page by expansion
- Move the team villains, nemeses, and OblivAeon to their own page, leaving the solo villains sorted alphabetically
- Some combination/variation of the above
Spectral is not necessarily in favour of alphabetical order but hasn't liked any of the other ideas so far. Any other suggestions or ideas based on how other Characters pages do it are welcome. Thanks for your help. Please feel free to ask for clarification.
Edited by UnsungopenDistrict 9 Complete Monster entry
The YMMV.District 9 page lists under Complete Monster:
- Obesandjo, The Evil Cripple wheelchair bound leader of the Nigerian gangsters, sets up his racket in District 9 and distributes cat food to the aliens, which is like a drug that keeps them hooked. He also operates "interspecies prostitution" rings, offering the prawns human women. The worst, however, is when he has innocent aliens butchered, so he can eat their flesh and gain their power. When he captures Wikus, he fully plans to cut off his Prawn parts and eat them himself.
As far as I can tell, the character being disabled is not relevant to the story. Can that part be removed?
openI think Kizuna Ai's YMMV and Trivia pages need help
So I decided to take a look at Kizuna Ai's subpages after a long time of not having them updated personally. I had already edited the pages because in retrospect, a lot of the information regarding the 2019 upd8/activ8/"clones" debacle and the official confirmation of her voice actress became a Wall of Text and/or were placed in the wrong tropes.
However, some tropes and examples in those pages might still need second-hand confirmation from fellow tropers who are also into Vtubers, especially from other Kizuna Ai fans who know a lot of facts from the 2019 upd8/activ8/"clones" debacle. (Such questionable sentences and concerns are highlighted in bold-text).
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The channel has several notable fanbases outside of its origin country of Japan. Only time will tell if this repairs the damage done by the managing company.
(I feel like this statement can be rewritten, because it comes off as if the trope is now averted because of a controversy. Heck, is this last sentence even needed?)
- "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: Kizuna Ai Codified the VTuber trend and gained rapid popularity as a result. Come the creation of multiple other standalone Vtubers and companies such as hololive and Nijisanji with their diverse cast of characters makes Kizuna suffer from standing out among other fans. The Ai clones debacle (including the loss of the original VA for Kizuna Ai) alienating pre-existing fans making matters worse.
(What is "the loss of the original VA for Kizuna Ai" referring to here? AFAIK, her original voice actress didn't retire, and in fact, even returned to voice her again. We need some further confirmation on this, because as it currently stands, that statement reeks of fake news.)
- Follow the Leader: Going in the other direction, the success of large VTuber groups like hololive, Nijisanji, Game Club Project and many others prompted a change in format to the channel by introducing Kizuna Ai clones voiced by different voice actresses (and, in the Chinese channel's case, a different language entirely). However, the drastic changes have just pushed fans towards the two groups.
(The last sentence is potholed to Epic Fail. Isn't Epic Fail supposed to be In-Universe only? What do we do here, Remove the entire sentence or just the link?)
- Money, Dear Boy: GUMI, the majority investor of Activ8 (the company managing the Kizuna Ai IP), are collectively of the opinion
that it ultimately doesn't matter who plays Kizuna Ai as long as the franchise and merchandise keep the money rolling in. This is ultimately due to the fact that the management company and investors get a bigger cut of the profits than if Nozomi Kasuga (Ai's first voice actor) had made her debut as a real person rather than a Virtual YouTuber. Ironically, the reverse was true in the early days of the channel, which may have contributed to GUMI's views in the first place. Their mentality might have actually worked had they not subtly tried to spurn Nozomi from doing her usual Let's Play content — perhaps unsurprisingly, Activ8 ended up publicizing a loss of ¥675 million
a few months after this came to light. VTuber projects that sprung up afterwards, such as hololive and Nijisanji, learned not to be so hostile to their talent for success.
(If this talked about the time when the company lost millions of Yen, I think the "afterwards" part is misleading or false because hololive and Nijisanji existed before that time when activ8 suffered deficit. Also, can this be trimmed down?)
- Reclusive Artist: The whole gimmick is that Kizuna Ai is supposedly an artificial intelligence that makes vlogs, skits and Let's Play videos in order to connect with humans, so the existence and identities of the humans behind it are kept secret to maintain the illusion. However, some incidents play with this trope.
- Ai sounded like Luna and vice-versa in their respective April Fool's videos, and only those videos.
- This even carried into the Azur Lane collab where all the splash art of her playable versions only had "Kizuna Ai" under voice actor.
- Averted with the English dub of Ingress, where Ai-chan's brief cameo was played by Cristina Vee.
- She sometimes mentions that she has staff members. In her Let's Play for Resident Evil 2 (Remake), fans think that Ai's staff plays the game because her aim significantly improved, but she, explains that even if she has a staff, she herself plays the games. In Ai-chan's "I have an assistant now!!
" vlog, she even casually mentions having a staff team and some of them can be heard laughing offscreen.
- On 24 April 2020, it's officially confirmed that Nozomi Kasuga is the original voice for Ai-chan, and she's now on advisory role
for the new Kizuna AI Co., Ltd.
(I trimmed the Reclusive Artist examples already but I think Kizuna Ai is an odd example of this after all the incidents that happened. As stated in the first part, the whole gimmick of a Vtuber is that the streamer's real identity is a secret. However, as stated in the last bullet, Kizuna Ai herself revealed her real identity. Now, does she still count for the trope, or not?)
openWhy?
I've seen some tropers send "Your English is poor" notifiers to me even though I'm fluent in English and tried to write the most grammatically I can. Is this because of the Grammar Nazi mindset they have? I've received these notifiers for AwesomeMusic.Nate Wants To Battle and AwesomeMusic.Club Penguin.
Edited by PrincessPandaTropeopenDo Bathroom Search Excuse and Women's Mysteries really overlap?
Perhaps this should be in Is This an Example?, but I'm not talking about a specific example.
On the new trope Bathroom Search Excuse (which is when someone either asks to go to the bathroom but instead goes somewhere else or lies that they were just looking for the bathroom), it says that it can overlap with Women's Mysteries.
But the Women's Mysteries page says that it's defined as "stories, rituals, secrets, etc. which, for reasons of either magic or tradition, only women are permitted to know".
I know that women sometimes enter bathrooms to change tampons (being a woman myself) and I know about the Wondrous Ladies Room and that maybe she's implying she has Morning Sickness? Still odd, though.
Edited by UnicorndanceopenRedeem trope and in-universe YMMV or trivia tropes Anime
I'm searching for a trope where the finale of a show (in-universe btw, the series is about acting) basically was hated by the audience, but redeemed itself with a good final episode.
And since it's a show about acting, I found other tropes that would fit, if only they weren't marked as YMMV or trivia tropes. Can they still be added to the main page then, since they are in-universe?
open 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 SpideyopenNo Edit Reason Western Animation
The four most recent edits of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/el.php?findfor=cristian1234
have just been deletions without any edit reasons which I would have just contented myself on sending them a message if two of those edits weren't big edits and all of them didn't seem to have a discernible reason behind it.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.DarkwingDuck
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.DuckTales2017
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Funny.DuckTales2017Season3#edit27064396
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Funny.Ducktales2017Season2#edit27064636

So, in effect, I am a Promoted Fanboy who has gone on to also become a variation of Teasing Creator for a web original. I'm certainly not the only Promoted Fanboy, so I can be pretty vague on that one, but the Teasing Creator part is unique to me and one other person involved in the work. I want to avoid accidentally adding anything to the page that could be read as self-promotion, since I know that is against the rules, but I also seem to be the only person maintaining the work's page. Would it be appropriate for me to add these facts to the work's trivia page?