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:
openFanfic self-recommender with numerous issues.
Bearquarter2008
has loads of editing issues. Poor grammar and formatting, he can't format tropes correctly, and he appears to be recommending his own fics on fanfic recommendation pages. I first caught him on FanficRecs.MrPeabodyAndSherman
where he recommended some Toy Story fanfic under his fanfic username "Michell Movie Productions" (said fanfic was written by him too) back in 2017, and now he's recommending his own fics again in numerous pages
under the name "anonymous" (said fanfics notably don't have their creator listed, and if clicked confirm they're written by the same guy).
He's also made pages
for
his fics: they're incorrectly formatted, incorrectly link to tropes, aren't in alphabetical order and suffer a myriad of other issues.
open Mod revert on fanfic?
Can I get a mod revert on The Boy Without a Fairy? I had added an alternate link (no pun intended) to the story and revised the description slightly but SneakyHint's edit seems to have overlapped mine, and they added a bunch of ZCEs. I don' want to re-add it myself as that'd be an edit war.
EDIT: Nevermind, the ZC Es are gone now.
Edited by lalalei2001openOutside opinions on disagreement Videogame
Cutting off a brewing edit war at Fallout 3. I'd previously removed the Idiot Plot entry and a user added it back. Here is the entry:
- Idiot Plot: While Fallout 3 is high on the lists of many people for a myriad of reasons, the main plot generally is not one of them.
- The call to action is your dad leaving to jump start his water purifier in order to give the wasteland a source of water. The problem is that this is a non-issue for virtually everyone else living in the wasteland. Aside from everyone having been able to not die of thirst in the 200 years Dad’s device was inactive, the only people you meet in the entire game who are affected by the lack of water are two homeless people that live outside major settlements. This makes his decision seem brash and shortsighted, especially because it resulted in the deaths of many.
- Imagine if you never meet or fight any dragons in Skyrim and the only way you know they exist is because a single npc asks for health potions because of dragon attacks.
- Dad is accosted by the Enclave, who want the purifier for themselves. He decides that a device with unquestionably altruistic functions should be destroyed just so that bad people couldn’t have it. It’s the equivalent of destroying all blood transfusion research so that the Central Powers wouldn’t be able to use it.
- Granted, Eden wanted to use it to kill everyone, but Dad couldn’t have possibly known that at the time.
- You’re railroaded into helping out the residents of Little Lamplight because there is a huge door in your way and children are pointing guns at you. Your only recourse is to take a sidequest or have a perk that is literally useless anywhere else.
- What makes this an example of the trope is that the quest they send you on involves assaulting a fortified base. Forcing your way into Little Lamplight is a much less daunting task but it seems the only reason you can’t do that is because the writer said so.
- You can convince Eden to kill himself in what appears to be a Call-Back to Fallout 1. However, the first Fallout requires a damning amount of evidence to prove to the Master that everything he did has been to the detriment to humanity. Here, you resort to meaningless platitudes that make the President go “Oh well, may as well kill myself.”
- Prior to the DLC, you have to commit radiation-induced suicide to get the heroic ending. Nevermind that you have a handful of companions immune to radiation, even one who retrieved a Macguffin from insurmountable radiation. The DLC mitigates this but still calls you a coward for being intelligent.
- The call to action is your dad leaving to jump start his water purifier in order to give the wasteland a source of water. The problem is that this is a non-issue for virtually everyone else living in the wasteland. Aside from everyone having been able to not die of thirst in the 200 years Dad’s device was inactive, the only people you meet in the entire game who are affected by the lack of water are two homeless people that live outside major settlements. This makes his decision seem brash and shortsighted, especially because it resulted in the deaths of many.
A lot of these points are nitpicking ("no one needs water but the beggars", "the game pulls But Thou Must! at Little Lamplight") and full of natter (most of the secondary subbullets). The only thing approaching a legitimate complaint is Dad and Eden's decisions, but Dad doesn't destroy the purifier he floods its control room with radiation to keep the Enclave away from it, and the speech check with Eden is very difficult to make and the entire idea of the Speech skill is talking people into agreeing with you, so this is less a case of idiocy on Eden's part and more the developers didn't write good dialogue. And the Heroic Sacrifice ending has been retconned away so that point is moot.
Overall this is just a misuse of Idiot Plot and not applicable.
openPossible issue with a Polanski YMMV
From YMMV.Chinatown:
- Harsher in Hindsight: The sexual abuse Noah Cross commits within the movie could be seen in a whole new light after attention was brought to a real-life court case implicating Roman Polański himself in something similar. This
article on Cracked explicitly notes the parallels between how Cross gets off scott-free for his crimes and how Polanski himself escaped jail time by fleeing the U.S.note This is technically not quite what happened, as Polanski's tvtropes page attests. Polanski confessed to his crime, and as per a plea bargain accepted to spend time in Chino Prison as part of a psychiatric evaluation. Polanski spent 42 Days in Chino, honouring his part of the plea bargain and was released early as per the recommendation of his probation officer. It was only when Judge Rittenbrand decided to back out of the plea bargain and planned to bring fresh charges that Polanski decided to flee, an action which the prosecutor of that case admitted was a justified response. In other words, unlike Cross whose crime is never unearthed and who does not admit to his crimes, Polanski both admitted to his crime and subjected himself to the justice system, only running when they backed out of the plea bargain.
Is it me or does the justifying note need changing?
Edited by Chabal2openDarkness Induced Audience Apathy in TROS?
On YMMV.The Rise Of Skywalker, I deleted an example of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, citing that it was misuse of the trope. A different example of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy was added with no edit reason. Both entries are just complaining about Happy Ending Override and Esoteric Happy Ending, without citing any hopelessness of setting or any characters being unsympathetic.
The only thing that suffers from Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is the YMMV page itself.
openAcceptable Targets in ''Survivor''?
Recently while editing YMMV.Survivor, I cut most of an entry for Acceptable Targets since I know there have been issues with misuse in the past and I wasn't convinced the listed examples fit; the only part I left behind as potentially legitimate was about people who quit the game, since "quitters" is a category that automatically gets scorned by the show.
Since then, I glanced over the Acceptable Targets page itself and saw a "This is based on opinion" warning; though I wasn't sure if it meant it was limited to YMMV or that it wasn't to be used period. Happyfrybreath also restored a couple examples and added new ones "that most people seem to agree upon".
So what's the consensus of the community at large? I'm not entirely sure what the right way to use Acceptable Targets is, if at all.
openAversion Example to Delete?
Found this entry on Anime & Manga. Should I delete it?
"Surprisingly averted in Shokugeki no Soma: While cooking is incredibly serious business within Tootsuki, it is recognized that gourmet food is a niche interest outside that limited sphere, and the people who take it seriously do so because they are within that niche, but most of the world couldn't care less. Even the most obsessive cooks never consider cooking to be a goal in itself, but always have another goal in mind and consider food to be a stepping stone towards that goal. The ones that actually do consider food to be the most important thing in existence (Eishi, Azami, young Joichirou, Akira during his tenure at Central) are seen as maladjusted at best, and teetering on the brink of insanity at worst. Soma, the most competitive of the lot, at one points stands to lose his culinary career, but rather sanguinely points out that as a driven, reasonably intelligent sixteen-year-old, he could do a lot of other things with his life than cook, and losing his chosen career would be a heavy blow but hardly a crippling one. Nearly all the main characters are shown to have hobbies and other interests. Isshiki is an organic gardener of growing repute, Yuuki a skilled hunter, Ryoko experiments with brewing, Megumi plays table tennis, Hisako and Ryou take care of their respective charges, Nene plays the zither and is a skilled calligrapher, Senzaemon works out rather obsessively, Azami takes time off to ski and practice iaido, Miyoko is the star of Tootsuki's basketball team and even Erina "God Tongue" Nakiri enjoys afternoons in bed reading romance manga."
openProblematic edit in YMMV.YandereSimulator
Recently, the troper Hashiriya R 23 made this
edit on YMMV.Yandere Simulator. Basically, he removed examples relating to YandereDev being annoyed about emails because:
"Removed all mentions of the "email issue" because it's becoming very clear at this point that the issue was a fabricated excuse from the get-go, and because the artwork that he used as an example of "kids sending in bad art" was drawn by someone that neither sent him an email, nor volunteered in the first place."
Even if this is true, these edits, from the top of the edit history, made one example not make grammatical sense, deleted an objective example, and turned an example into a ZCE.
Furthermore, Hashiriya has had a history of problematic edits on the page. In particular, he added a bunch of memes that were memeing about Yanderedev himself, instead of the game, which we have since deleted.
Edited by KappaclysticaopenGame book Pages - Cleansing Required?
I've actually brought this up with another moderator, but decide to bring it here for a ... uhm, let's say, broader opinion, shall we?
So... on the Gamebooks main page
, there is a page dedicated for the What If… (Gamebooks), and its divided into 9 sub-pages of the various instalments.
Which is fine and all if the person who started the sub-pages bothered to make it complete, however its really, really noticeable that the sub-pages are unprofessionally written, severely lacking in details, and some of them doesn't even have tropes. And if it did, each page contains at most 2 to 4 tropes, which begs the question, do we really need these pages?
All those pages are started by Sideshow Jazz 1 3 years ago, and said troper have not been updating the pages he/she started. (circa 2017)
I'm suggesting we consolidate all the books into 1 page (like this one for Give Yourself Goosebumps) and send the rest to the Cutlist. What do you think??
Edited by RobertTYLopenNobody Poops and aversions
I don't know whether to go to Trope Talk, Wiki Talk, or Trope Repair Shop, so I just went here.
So I was alphabetizing Nobody Poops and adding a few examples, when I noticed that aversions were listed on the Video Games folder despite that the page itself said that aversions (and straight examples) are too common to list, so you should only list parodies, lampshades, etc.
Also, on several works' pages like Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, they list aversions for Nobody Poops.
openCreate page button
I was thinking could we create a dedicated "Create page" button on the wiki?
I mean having to edit the url of an existing page to create a new page really doesn't make sense.
1. Creating a page is a fundamental function so there could be a fundamental button for it. Having to modify an existing page to make a new page, is like having to turn on the dishwasher to use the stove. It doesn't make any sense since couldn't the stove just have a button of its own to turn itself on rather than having to operate another appliance.
2. Having to modify the url of a an existing page can be complicated based on what characters you have to add/remove and where. Do I remove these characters? Do I add these characters? Which part to I focus on removing and adding characters.
3. Having a "Create Page" button would make it so much easier to make a url for it and make it less likely that you'll mess up the url for the new page by manually changing an old one. The create page would do all the work for you rather than "Do I change these characters or these characters?"
If this feature is implemented this would make it easier to contribute to the wiki. I mean you wouldn't have to worry about messing up a url to create a new works page. I mean if you know about a show for example that hasn't been added yet, you could right then and there add it before you forget.
Basically it'd make adding works so much more efficient.
openShould this be troped?
Found on YMMV.Metroid Prime:
- Harsher in Hindsight: The tales of developers sleeping on couches in the office and consuming massive quantities of fireball candy to get the game finished is a lot less appealing to the current industrial standards in which developers from multiple companies such as Riot and Netherrealm studios are working their staff into what can be charitably called sweatshop conditions.
I feel like this is in a gray area considering it's not talking about the game itself.
open Adjusting Your Glasses
Somebody really needs to explain to me what's going on with the Adjusting Your Glasses page. The description has an example as thesis thing going on, it's got four extra descriptions trying to make subtropes that are probably unnecessary, and because of all that most of the examples are ZCEs.
I really don't know what to do with this. There is a trope in here, but the page itself is bizarre.
open(Accidental?) Incentive to Suicide in the "Serious Business" page
So, i was looking through the Real Life section of the Serious Business page and stumbled upon this paragraph.
"Life itself. It's so much serious business because there are people who strive to give it meaning, even during hard times. It's even more serious when people will shame those who hate how their lives are and are seeking to end it for their misfortunes, whether serious or not."
Now, i THINK this is accidental, but the wording made it sound like people who want to end their lives because they hate it and/or are going through hard times are making the correct choice. Again, this might be a mistake since it specified those who are doing Suicide Shaming, and it could just be a critique to those who do that, but i still think it should be changed since one could interpret it as an outright incentive to suicide as a solution (Like i did).
Edited by LalapolpolpolopenIs it okay for me to split this character subpage?
Hi. I happen to have noticed that Characters.Skyrim Other Characters was on the Overly Long Pages list.
Having gotten into the relevant game recently, I posted a few ideas to split on the thread concerning too long pages
, from the perspective of my time zone, a couple days ago, and I have yet to get an answer. When something explicitly needs a consensus, I'm the type who'd rather drop the possible modification entirely rather than do the thing unilaterally if I don't get any feedback.
PS: please put anything directly concerning the page split itself on the "too-long page repair" thread.
Edited by NazetrimeopenManchild or Psychopathic Manchild Videogame
Over the past year, there's been a minor edit war over whether Bowser is a Manchild or a Psychopathic Manchild.
This is his entry:
Bowser is a rich and powerful king, but still shows obvious signs of immaturity on a regular basis; he has nasty mood swings that scare even his most loyal servants, he never feels responsible for his failures, always looking for someone else to blame, and is never satisfied with what he already has, always wanting more. The best showcase of this is when he meets his younger self in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time: barely anything differentiates them in personality, showing that Bowser has barely evolved mentally since infancy.
Which trope is more appropriate?
Pls stop calling everything Harsher In Hindsight
openMinmaxersDelight and SuperWeight have issues
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinmaxersDelight
I'm not sure 100% what's wrong with the ordering, but D&D is mentioned about 4 different times in the 'Tabletop games' folder at random points, and a few 5e things are mushed in with the 3.5e section. I'd fix it myself but I'm not sure how to sort them since I only play 5e (and even then not much)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperWeight
The table is incredibly messed up, no idea how to fix this.
openConsole 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 MyFinalEditsopenStyle 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?

P360360P made this change
and this change
to The Jerk Index. I know it's a Self-Demonstrating Article, but judging by the way this was written, it looks like vandalism to me.
Edited by FridgeGuy2016