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:
openA small correction to Useful Notes' Argentina
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this question, but I have to note a small correction to the article of this post's title: The current Argentinan president (as of December 10, 2019) is not Mauricio Macri anymore, but Alberto Fernandez of the "Partido de Todos" coalition (in english the name would be "Everybody's Party", i guess).
If this topic/post/question is wrong for any reason, feel free to delete it, but I think that the article should be updated (I would update it myself, but I don't know how, and I don't feel like a proper troper to do so, though I am argentinian and I know my country) or the detail removed (because that information changes overtime, and pretty much the rest of the article's information is set in stone).
openNot sure where to ask about pages with weird grammar
I've noticed that this page
contains some grammatical errors.
I was wondering if there is some sort of place specifically for reporting pages with odd grammar.
I thought about trying to fix it myself, but there are quite a lot of mistakes, my own grammar isn't all that great, and there are some sentences which I found... confusing (For example: Is he a person who secretly works as a CIA operative and pretends to be a tourist or simply as a result of being delusional from his experience in war?).
Edited by PowogaopenPhantom wick still indexed despite removal
So, now that Hair Decorations is a disambig, I have been stripping it off indexes and pages. I removed one of its indexed wicks off TruthInTelevision.G To I but on the HD page itself the page looks like it is still indexed on that page.
openNeed Help With A Consensus Anime
There's an issue that needs some help with clearing up on Characters.Seton Academy Join The Pack. specifically, whether or not a character, Yena, should be troped as transgender vs a tomboy.
I favor transgender, for reasons I'll give in a moment. The_Spanish_Inquisitor favors tomboy, for reasons I'll let them explain. The disagreement has caused tropes like Transgender being removed in favor of The Lad-ette and Lady Looks Like a Dude. This happened once before with another troper. I replaced the tropes at the time, but now worry I'll stray too far into edit war territory, or spark one myself, if I just change it. As a result, I'm hoping for a consensus to be able to point to on the matter.
A discussion was started
but, three days later, the two of us have been the only participants.
To keep this OP from being too wall of texty, I'll give my reasons for favoring Transgender in the first reply and PM Inquisitor to let them know I started this discussion
Edited by sgamer82openAdd the Misadventures of Sonic the Hedgehog? Webcomic
Are we able to make suggestions for new works? If so, do you think add the fan webcomic, The Misadventures of Sonic the Hedgehog by Fallen Angel Cam 7? Fallen Angel Cam 7 himself said that No Context Sonic does the Sonic related stuff.
Edited by AutisticPhantomOtaku620open Bloody excessive adverts on tvt Web Original
As of today, there's a banner advert popping up at the bottom of the page that wasn't there yesterday - this is new. Seems to be organised by something called "PROPER<>" and however often you hit the X to whack it down and get rid, it keeps coming back and appears every time you switch to a new page. Click on whatever's being advertised, you get "ad closed by Google". Is this new to tvtropes, and how do you get rid of it completely, as it's annoying and intrusive? I mean - ad at the top of the page, ad on the right hand side, no problem, tvt has to get revenue - but ads spilling over into the actual content of the page itself - not acceptible.
openChristopher Priest
Found this when cleaning Boring Invincible Hero off the wiki:
Christopher Priest (comics) has a really weird example section that just flat out tropes his works as if the page itself is a work's page; it's not common tropes he uses or anything, just tropes that appear in at least one work he's written ever.
I know Creators Pages can sort of do this if the works don't have their own pages... but these works have their own pages.
Edited by WarJay77openQuestionable Deletions
Troper/Eggyolks deleted examples from Ed, Edd n Eddy and HBO Storybook Musicals. The examples deleted were everything under Accidental Innuendo and Self-Fanservice on the Ed, Edd, N' Eddy page, and Evil Is Sexy on both pages. They also removed a line referring to Double D as a Chick Magnet.
The edits to the Ed, Edd, N' Eddy page have been reverted.
My concern is the possibility the nature of the tropes had anything to do with their removal by the troper in question.
Sorry to bother you if this is nothing important.
Edited by fraggleloveropenWhat an Idiot misuse?
WhatAnIdiot.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has a folder for general examples. They're redundant With Talking Is a Free Action and Forgot About His Powers. And there's these two suspect examples:
- Equestria is a land of magic. Since magic is so prevalent, it comes as no surprise that many of its villains have figured out various ways to corrupt and/or neutralize it. Given the wildly conflicting personalities present within the Mane Six, it's not always guaranteed that they will be able to utilize The Power of Friendship until after the villain has already thrashed them, destroyed the countryside, filed the paperwork, and picked out a throne to begin his rule over Equestria. You'd Think: Our little ponies would maintain a proper military instead of relying on the untrained Mane Six, and then develop and utilize both magical and non-magical weapons and defenses. For example, outfitting Canterlot with point-defense cannons to guard against attacks by airship. Or, seeing as how every single pony with the word "princess" in her name is a priority target, posting snipers and armed security guards to cover every major event involving them. Or rocket launchers (with triggers big enough for hooves to pull) to blow Anti-Magic villains to pieces. Instead: They only ever fight using magical attacks and defenses (at many points after they've already seen that magic has zero effect on that particular villain), and rely heavily on The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love to save the day after the bad guy's all but won. You'd Then Expect: For at least one villain to just knock one or more of the Mane Six out. Problem Solved, Series Over. Instead: The villains just incapacitate them or break their spirits, an impermanent solution.
The level of violence and military logic for the former to work would be impossible to implement given the shows target demographic. I don't know of any other examples where solutions too outside the tone of the show to realistically consider are considered idiotic. The latter has the same problem as...
- While the magic of friendship is incredibly powerful, Twilight herself (unlike Rarity) has little fighting skills or experience. She's the most powerful magic caster in Equestria, but she fits into the bill of Unskilled, but Strong. You'd Think: While Twilight is giving a speech about friendship, the current villain would just confront her physically, knock her out, and abduct her away from her friends and/or the Villain-Beating Artifact, leaving her completely defenseless. Problem Solved, Series Over. Instead: While Tirek, Starlight, and Sunset DO confront Twilight physically, none of them bothers with the "abduct Twilight away from her friends or instant-win artifact" part. The only ones who do capture Twilight at different points are Queen Chrysalis (who also captured everypony else of importance) and Tempest Shadow, and even then only Chrysalis actually bothered with knocking her unconscious. Even then, refer back to the above passage to see how she failed to do the same with Starlight.
Nearly all those villains were those Locked Out of the Loop who didn't know who they are or their powers worked that way. Those who did know were those with the cunning or power such they successfully dealt with them all at once rendering that irrelevant. The described examples can go under the individual episodes/work.
Should those be removed? I also asked What An Idiot cleanup
but it looks fairly inactive.
openUnintentionally Unsympathetic misuse?
UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Western Animation
- Jesus christ, the Diamond Authority, especially White Diamond They had been set up as purely sociopathic villains with no redeeming qualities with the exception of Blue, with White Diamond in particular draining the life force of her OWN children in an attempt to fight Steven. While they were clearly intended to be villains, that alone doesn't put up the fact that they murdered millions of their own citizens, corrupted their minds, and used their OWN corpses in order to destroy one of thousands of planets they had already annihilated for resources. During the Human Zoo arc, they are depicted as being torn up for their sisters's (faked) death, and somehow depicted as sympathetic by the show, including Yellow Diamond, who is still a completely and utterly emotionally dead psychopath. It gets worse with White Diamond, who was advertised up to this point as being a Complete Monster in tier with Ragyo Kuryuin, who is explicitly meant to draw up comparisons to nazi white supremacy, and imprisoned her youngest daughter for decades at a time. Then, after nearly killing him, Steven convinces her to drop all the horrible, repulsive things she's done because she blushed a different color, revealing herself to be a hypocrite. She goes completely back on her word and willingly turns Homeworld into a republic solely because of this, and is depicted as an adorably doting grandmother for Steven in the movie. Needless to say, a lot of fans were absolutely outraged at how easily the show had rehabilitated a horrible dictator, since Jasper and Lars had been depicted as being far more realistically in that regard.
I toned down some of complaining, but I question if it's an example given it's a notoriously controversial issue. I believe it's misused (at least as written) as this trope must explain why they were supposed to be seen as sympathetic despite the circumstances . Those traits are why they were supposed be be unsympathetic as villain until they begin to redeem themselves. It's just complaining about being Easily Forgiven. From my limited understanding of the series it sounds like it exaggerating their negative personality traits.
I've asked
Unintentionally Unsympathetic cleanup but it's been inactive for the last few days and this looks like a big contentious issue.
openSeemingly Excessive SelfDemonstratingCharacter pages
Mentioned this in the fairlydead SD Character cleanup thread
and the TLP thread
, where someone suggested I bring it up here.
Basically, Roku Alhazared more or less makes a new SD page a day
, almost none of which really seem to have anything resembling a unique voice and while he clearly puts in a lot of work to them, they're little more than a first-person recap of a character. This seems excessive to me.
I haven't messaged him short of trying to ping him to the SD cleanup thread, but that might not have worked.
Edited by LarkmarnopenProofreading
Can anyone proofread the pages for these two works?
I wrote those entirely by myself - the second is my own work - so I want to check if the tropes and/or the examples are appropriate.
openUh... Two things Videogame
On the Pyramid Head section on Silent Hill
, The Anti-Villain section has a point of "He's still plenty hostile towards him, though, and if one is to follow the interpretation of him found here, he's certainly malicious as well." This reads like 'this theory is canon', which is generally looked down upon, and I still want to remove the intrerpretation bit since it feel like it doesn't belong. Should I remove? I'm not sure that he's totally malicious, since he's a manifestation of James' guilt and sense for justice and guides him along throughout the game, this is even furthered at how you can just ignore PH on his boss fights for a few minutes then he leaves or kill himself.
On the Humans are White section on Frost Punk
: "Not only is every human in the game white, but almost all of them are British. The only exceptions are the handful of Americans who survived the fall of Tesla City and the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen. Perhaps justified because all but one of the Generators was built by the British Empire, which in real life was quite racist and willing to sacrifice its non-white subjects when expedient. " The bolded section isn't about the game, like it's trying to bring up sensitive subjects just because. Should I remove?
openCaptain Marvel Film
Just a heads up, a troper has added a lot of entries for Hypocritical Fandom to Captain Marvel (2019). I'm not taking action myself, but I feel like a lot of the entries are distortions of the context for the film's criticisms (poor use of flashbacks, retcons to the timeline of the series) or bring up criticisms I haven't seen made about the movie (bad villains, use of 90s music, boycotting the military).
Given this film's "controversial" nature, and the controversial nature of the trope itself, would anyone else like to weigh in?
openRedlinking on a bluelinked page
There's some weird redlinking thing going on when I type Administrivia.Tropes Needing Examples. Is that something the mods can fix? If they don't have to, how do I fix it myself?
openquick questions
1.what is the fastest/easiest method to identify what shade of conflict a story uses
2.is there anything wrong with trying to apply tropes to myself (i've taken a test to see which character aligment describes me better,multiple times, and i always get chaotic neutral...)
open Something concerns me
Edit: Ugh, I'm sorry this is such a wall of text, but I think all the information is important, so I can't trim it too much :(
That something is related to Tropers/{{4tell0life4}}. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I'm not doing this to try and get them suspended, as I think their actual editing is fine, and no big issues have been caused by this so far. I just think it's something that needs to be resolved, as it's been grating on my nerves for a while now, and is a recurring pattern of behavior with them.
They seem to have an issue with the whole... "Consensus" thing. You don't need to take my word for it- their new signature even confirms this; but their actions do, too. Take, for instance, their old TLP record- at least twice, they'd attempted to overrule draft consensus and push their own feelings forward, once where they tried to ignore a crowner going against their opinion
, and of course, that time they threatened to change examples on a draft because they didn't want them to be there.
They were already banned for being rude on the TLP, but this isn't to do with that- it's to do with their unwillingness to accept that the wiki has to work by consensus, and that big changes need proper discussion.
Why am I bringing this up now? Well, there's been a specific trend on Trope Finder where he'll suggest an unfitting trope, myself or someone else will point out they're using that trope incorrectly, and then they'll insist that the trope itself needs to be changed. This in and of itself isn't a big deal- but they always seem to want to make these changes on the Trope Description Improvement Drive, despite that changes like this actually change the meaning of the trope, and require Trope Repair Shop.
Here's
one debate I had with them over how to fix Assumed Win, and the ensuing TDID post
where they did in fact attempt to change the trope's meaning there. Just recently, the same thing is happening with Relative Button: They're declaring the trope not broad enough
and taking it to TDID, rather than TRS
, because they think changing the description like this doesn't change the meaning of the trope, I assume because they already believe the trope's description is "wrong"- rather than that it just doesn't trope what they think it should. There are a lot of similar Trope Finder debates we've had that weren't immediately taken to the forums, and we also had similar arguments on TLP and the forums itself, where it just felt like I was arguing with a wall, who seemed to think that wiki-consensus on things like cut tropes and appearance tropes
is just bureaucracy and that the solution is more cleanup, not fixing the problem at it's source.
All in all, this just really worries me, not to mention that their new sig may actually be a shot at me; I don't want to make accusations, but I've used the term "consensus" in a lot of conversations with them, so it makes me a little wary. It all just adds up to someone whose attitude about wiki-issues is at odd with the rest of the wiki's, and someone who doesn't seem to enjoy getting proper consensus before they change things (or, alternatively, dislike what consensus produces).
Edited by WarJay77openTrope or index
Is Exotic Weapon Supremacy a trope or an index? Its description seems like a trope, similar to Heroes Prefer Swords, but one that places the Improbable Weapon User above all the rest. However, the itself page have no examples, and only lists a bunch of "related tropes" that doesn't seem to be actual subtropes.
Edited by AdeptopenNeed more voices
So the Trans To Cis Censorship
draft, spawned from the discussion over She's a Man in Japan, has only been up for about a day but is attracting a lot of controversy, as the hat-bomb ratio will let you know.
The issue is that, despite a lot of people voting on the draft, the actual discussion is going around in circles. I don't think we're going to get any resolution at the rate we're going, and we need more people to get involved in the debate. The debate itself is mostly over whether or not the trope should expand- I'm firmly on the "expand" side, but I don't care how this resolves as much as I care that it is resolved and that we don't just battle over hats and bombs without actually, properly, discussing the issue.
I'm not going to bring the debate here so I won't go through all the points, it's all on the draft itself, I'm just asking for more people to get involved and give their opinions rather than just tossing a hat or bomb.

Reposting my question here because I have the Discussion page isn't trafficked all that frequently enough to get a prompt response.
Marikusu recently made a bunch of additions
to Fire Emblem: Three Houses that I feel violate the nature of what constitutes a meme, because they seem to be expressly partisan polemics that just happen to be delivered in a cheeky/sarcastic way, rather than the kind innately self-perpetuating humor that usually constitutes a meme. Plus there isn't any meaning to them beyond the face value statements themselves. Also, memes are generally supposed to have broad appeal because of their self-perpetuating nature, hence being about a matter this controversial already limits their ability to appeal to a wide audience.
In the past we've already had to carry out major repair on the YMMV entry for Edelgard under Base-Breaking Character because it was getting too full of these polemics both for and against her, so needless to say anything regarding the grayness surrounding her morality is enough of a delicate matter that the additions are in violation of Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement. Not to mention there was a fair amount of discussion in the game thread that found the fascist label to be inaccurate (the Memes entry admits as much, but goes on to add it anyway with a handwave) and a case of Ron the Death Eater, as while she's certainly a lot of things that aren't exactly good, fascist expressly is not one of them.
Edit: I see that Marikusu nuked
a YMMV entry that explicitly explains how Fascist Edelgard came to become a Discredited Meme to the point a voice actor got involved; whether or not it still sees use in some remaining circles, I do think that treating it as a contemporary meme of worth after that incident definitely comes off as in bad taste, especially since as someone with friends who are fans of all three of the various house lords, the ones who express a liking for Edelgard are the ones who receive the brunt of harassment and personal attacks due to the way modern fandoms behave.
Edited by AlleyOop