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openNo Title Literature
Is there a trope for a character who only gets a point-of-view section to show their death? I'm working on articles for the Shaara American Civil War novels and it's happened in all of them (sometimes just a few pages with a nameless soldier, but it's also happened with generals with famous deaths).
I've also seen it in A Song of Ice and Fire with the unfortunates that get stuck being the prologue character. It's kind of used in the same vein as Fatal Family Photo or Red Shirt (but I don't think it quite fits the latter and it's not like Real Life had a narrative purpose in killing people, so I hesitate to use it).
Edited by eowynjediopenNo Title Literature
Is there a trope for bye forever to a place or person? This is when someone will never visit this place again, or meet this person again. This moment is the final goodbye. An example from The Lord of the Rings: "Suddenly the River swept around a bend, and the banks rose upon either side, and the light of Lórien was hidden. Never did Frodo see that fair land again."
The closest trope that I can find is Lost Forever, when someone misses the only chance to acquire some item.
openNo Title Literature
I'm adding a few entries to the Tortall Universe character page, from the Trickster books. Is there a trope for a character who is expected to be racist/sexist/prejudiced, but isn't? In this case it's a duke who married a native noblewoman, and the current duchess who is specifically mentioned to not be prejudiced despite her rank and upbringing.
openNo Title Literature
When the rerelease of a work updates some minor aspect to keep up with changing times. Example: In the original 1977 version of Daniel Pinkwater's The Hoboken Chicken Emergency a "chicken hunter"'s letterhead includes his phone number, but in a 2007 printing it has a website listed instead.
Edited by randomsurferopenNo Title Literature
Can Trilogy Creep be a good thing? I ask because I just found out that one of my favorite book series, Rangers Apprentice, is coming out with a twelfth book, after the tenth book stated it was "The Final Battle" and the eleventh book was like "Okay, really this time". Now, the eleventh book was excellent, so it's not like it's an exact example of Trilogy Creep, and I have high hopes for the twelfth book, which really does seem to be the Grand Finale.
openNo Title Literature
This isn't so much asking about what trope applies as it is if a trope is flexible enough to cover the situation in question.
Specifically, the description for Consummate Professional specifies that part of it is that the Professional in question is intolerant about a lack of professionalism in others, but otherwise the example I'm thinking of seems like it'd best fit under CP. The example, done as a trope entry for the sake of copypasta later:
- In 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, Captain Raudegen, a soldier serving in the Bavarian military, is tasked with chasing down those who fled the duke, following two of them he spotted, even after he changes his allegiance from Bavaria to Duke Bernard, a foe of Bavaria. Toward the end of the novel, the two escapees meet the captain (now a Colonel) again shortly after finally losing him, when he's assigned to escort the group the two are with instead of hunt them down. One looks suspiciously at the colonel after realizing he's the one that's been chasing them, but the colonel replies "I'm a professional, boy. I cut my teeth on the Hungarian frontier. I'm in the duke's service now. When he says capture her, I try to capture her. When he says protect her, I use everything I know to protect her. Not just until your relative from Lyons joins her. All the way to Brussels," later adding that he's against cruelty for its own sake.
(Yes, I know that's a touch long, but there's only so much it can be compressed before context is lost.)
Edited by NohbodyopenNo Title Literature
Is there a trope for novels that are written like manga? Like, punches that cause craters and Made of Iron in fights, along with Kaleidoscope Hair and other manga descriptions so it really feels like the author wanted to write a manga or at least that was their strongest inspiration?
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to figure out what the following quote describes. It's not exactly Damned by Faint Praise, but it's not a Stealth Insult or any kind of white lie either.
- Sitting in the bus shelter in which he had unrolled his sleeping bag one night, he had begun to translate key descriptive words: charming he decided, meant nondescript; scenic meant ugly but with a nice view if the rain ever lets up; delightful probably meant We've never been here and don't know anyone who has.—Shoggoth's Old Peculiar, by Neil Gaiman.
openNo Title Literature
Is there a trope for when protagonist A, following the trail of Protagonist B, travels through the same locations and meets the same people at different times? I'm specifically thinking of cases where this takes up a substantial portion of the story in question, where we get to see both protagonists interact with the same groups of characters (and perhaps deal with the aftermath of Protagonist B's passing through). Usually told in alternating chapters or series of chapters. I guess it'd be a subtype of Switching POV or Rotating Protagonist.
Book-length examples of this setup include Vonda N. Mc Intyre's "Dreamsnake" and Tanith Lee's "Vazkor, Son of Vazkor" and "Castle of Dark".
openNo Title Literature
Playing with question: An example of Fantastic Religious Weirdness in the Star Carrier book series' backstory.
In the wake of World War III, sparked in large part by radical Islam, every faith was required to ratify a pledge called the White Covenant that outlawed many religious practices. It took the "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" approach: all adherents of all faiths could believe as they wished so long as that belief did not harm others. Proselytizing, most missionary work, and conversion by threat or force were now violations of basic human rights. Naturally this didn't go over well, with some, such as the ancestors of the Muslim colonists on Mufrid, choosing to GTFO rather than ratify.
My question is, would this be a straight use, Played for Drama, Deconstructed Trope, or some other variation?
Edited by StarSwordopenNo Title Literature
Is there a specific trope for books (and other works) which clearly demarcate the different acts? Intermission doesn't really seem to be it. For instance, Malazan Book of the Fallen uses a very strict structure where each volume except for the last is divided into four "books", (the last is in seven parts) presumably a hearkening to earlier days in literature, with each such "book" being roughly equivalent to an act when the demarcation is not arbitrary. The Way of Kings is another example that does this, although with written intermissions between each part. More generally, a work which announces each of its major parts without an actual pause between them would fit as an example.
Am I just imagining having seen something like this here?
Edited by WhitecrocopenNo Title Literature
Slightly unsure about a trope example.
Princesses are just special, there's something about the title that makes people act differently around them.
Several characters in a book discuss this and eventually deliberately invoke it by setting up a princess (a fake one, it turns out) to give a newly-formed government some much-needed stability.
Is this a discussion/invocation of Everything Is Better With Princesses? It seems to fit perfectly from the trope name, after reading the actual trope page I'm not 100% sure anymore.
openNo Title Literature
I swear I've seen this before but I can't find it any place. It's when the author reveals a character to be non-white without explicitly saying it, often times this is a while after they've already been introduced, sometimes done in a way that's vague and easy to miss. For instance describing a character as having dreadlocks or brown skin.
openNo Title Literature
I am having trouble figuring out whether the following example would go under Have A Gay Old Time or a similar trope.
In the book, "Legends of Ancient Egypt" by F.H. Brooksbank (published 1914), there is one passage that states (obviously innocently for its time) that before she left Byblos, Isis kissed the queen's baby son "long and passionately". Obviously, the author didn't mean it in a romantic way, but nowadays it could be misread as such.
openNo Title Literature
Unicorns Are Sacred, but in some settings they're total assholes. Is there a trope for this?
openNo Title Literature
Is there a trope for when somebody's so quick to deny somehting that they get suspected? Like in Company, where there's a donut missing and one guy immediately says he didn't eat it, and a woman comments that this makes people more likely to suspect him?
openNo Title Literature
So in "Who Goes There?", Red-Headed Hero McReady is described as "a man of bronze". Gray-eyed Norris is described as "all steel". ... And the doctor's name is Copper.
Is this an example of a trope? Like Theme Naming, but... not? A name that goes along with an existing theme?
openNo Title Literature
We have Interspecies Romance, of course, but what would the trope be for decidedly unromantic sex between two intelligent species?
Specifically, the example I'm looking at is basically rape, and treated as such (the victim doesn't really understand at the time, but is disgusted and horrified when he thinks about it later.) The work page has Interspecies Romance for the example now, but if there's a more fitting trope, I'd like to change it to that.
openNo Title Literature
Is there a trope for confusing similar-sounding words, especially in a foreign/alien context?
I'm thinking of the scene in The Planeteers where Penton has an imperfect telepathically-acquired knowledge of the Callistan language, and he has a minor freak-out while eating Callistan food. When Blake asks him what's wrong he says, "I was trying to remember it. For a moment I thought I had. You see, there's a thing called stragth that is a kind of red sea-worm, very poisonous; it stings. These are stragath, popularly so-called because they somewhat resemble the worm. Oh, they aren't, of course, but that's what had me scared."
Is this an example of a trope?
Edited by grenekni3t

Looking for a trope concerning a particular kind of shipping. The scenario is where two people, both in their late twenties, are intellectually inclined (both are university-level teachers and academics)who are possibly still virgins and who have been just too busy doing other (largely academic) things to get emotionally involved with anyone. They meet, and realise. But out of inexperience and lack of knowledge as to how these things go, their relationship is one long embarrassed fumbling "errr...", and more knowing friends have to give both frequent pushes and prods in the right direction. I just can't find a shipping trope for this, and I have been ploughing through possibly fertile ground like the millions of tropes listed under "The Big Bang Theory." Any pointers? Thanks!