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openOriginally one work Literature
The Books of Samuel, the Books of Kings and the Books of Chronicles were each originally written as a single book, ultimately split due to length (in the case of Kings, at a completely arbitrary location).
openMagic tree buildings? Literature
Is there a trope for this? What's it called when there's a race of magic-using characters (like elves or unicorns) who live in a forest, and they use magic to coax or make the trees, vines, bushes, and other plants in the forest grow into the buildings and dwellings they need? Like, the walls of a building aren't made by cutting and hammering planks of wood into place, they're grown naturally (with magic) out of the existing trees and plants, and you technically are inside the still-living tree.
I think it's happened in Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle (elves), but it's also described in the "Book of Lore" entry for Oleander for the video game Them's Fightin' Herds. https://www.mane6.com/book-of-lore-archive/2525-2/
"Through the generations, they have used light magic to shape the trees into structures, spiraling to the sky in graceful, wooden columns, with branches twisted into delicate woven patterns. The most beautiful of these structures is their primary temple, The Sacred Grove."
"The young one makes her way across the room, her lion’s tail swaying groggily, to a table that seems to have grown from the ground."
https://www.mane6.com/characters/Oleander/
Is there a name for this trope, where buildings and furniture are grown out of the existing plants using magic?
openTrope for a ridiculously understaffed or underequipped outfit? Literature
I got the idea from a trope ‘One-ship Navy’ currently on the launch pad. The trope covers one heroic ship doing all the work, apparently. But it got me thinking, there must be a trope somewhere that applies to the whole ‘navy’ being literally one ship, and a pretty crappy one too…
So I am looking if there is a trope already where an outfit with a real fancy title on second look turns out to be a ridiculously understaffed or under-equipped sorry excuse for a department or assignment. May be the ‘Navy Command’ you are posted to is literally just one WWII era patrol boat, or your fancy new job title entails looking over a paper archive that no one ever uses anymore along with an archivist that has been on the job since the last century. Whatever it is, if you ever had high hopes for your new command, suddenly you realized you actually have been promoted away or even set up to fail.
Anybody knows of such a trope?
openOutgrow the need for magic Literature
Not sure how much media this is a trope in, but definitely a trope in coming-of-age novels, both realistic (Harriet the Spy) and fantasy (Narnia, etc.)
The powers/resource/tool which propels the story turns out to be a crutch, or just a teaching device, or has undesirable consequences. Maybe it just has a limited number of uses (Half-Magic, Black And Blue Magic). At the end of the story, the protagonist(s) realize that they no longer need it; they have the confidence to use Mundane Solutions or have matured enough to face their fears, etc.
NOT a Magic Feather. In this case, the thing they outgrow is very real, NOT a placebo effect.
resolved Multi-question to save on tickets Literature
- 1) SOLVED Alice starts to describe to Bob (who so far was out of the loop) The Plan. Before she goes into any further details, Bob figures out where this is heading and what he will have to do. He loudly comments on that, in tune of "Oh, I see where this is going".
- 2) SOLVED Bob writes a Self-Insert Fic. His self-insert is effectively his alter ego, the man Bob wishes to be or engaging in things Bob would like to do. Do we have anything for such fantasised alter-ego?
openComputer glitch Literature
Something goes wrong with a computer making the protagonist making protagonist have to make a hard decision
openMeet your reincarnation Literature
Do we have a trope where a character meets his previous life or posterior life, in a work that explicitly has reincarnation as a plot element?
resolved An injury to the dream version reflects in the real world/physical body Literature
Do we have a trope about when a character has a dream where they suffer an injury in the dream world, and their body shows that injury in the waking life?
resolved Pretending to Break the Fourth Wall Literature
Hiya. Is there a trope where a character appears to be breaking the fourth wall for a long period of time (e.g. referring to a 'you' in their first-person narration), only to be revealed much later that we were reading a very long letter address to someone in universe?
Would Fourth Wall Psych work even if the reveal is not made immediately after?
openTrope where a bunch of (military) events are happening simultaneously Literature
Hi,
There's a trope from a novel I'm reading that I'm looking for — in the book, a bunch of military rescue missions are happening simultaneously in the span of a short chapter, with there being a small radio confirmation of the status of each mission (e.g. "hostage confirmed rescued in Siberia", "hostage confirmed rescued in Thailand" etc.)
I don't think this is a literature exclusive trope, and I'm sure it's just a Montage of some kind, but I'm wondering if there's a more specific trope to put it under?
resolved Hate Mistaken for Love Literature
Alice hates Bob (or, just needs something bad to happen to Bob, such as death). But, she can't be open about er hatred, so people assume she cares deeply about him - why else would she be paying so much attention to him?
resolved Bumbling protagonist seen as horrifying monster by others Literature
I've seen this a few times. Most clearly in Practical Guide to Evil; see the Duchess' internal monologue in Interlude: Commanders where she assumes Catherine to be a decades-long plot by Black and the Laurean orphan story to be a "smokescreen" for the truth — even though we know the story is completely true, and she's just kept failing up. Similarly, there are some scenes in Worm where we see how terrifying Taylor has become, through others' eyes. And there are some hints of it as well in the first couple seasons of The Expanse, though I can't place anything so precisely.
Do we have anything for this sort of device? I quite like it, and would like to find more examples of it.
resolved Time flow trope Literature
I neeed a fit somewhere between Real Time and Extremely Short Timespan:
A crime story book is written in a chronological order, tracking a whole week (starting on Wednesday morning, wrapping up by next Tuesday's evening), which is just a bit too long for Extremely Short Timespan. It also isn't exactly in real time, because some days are slightly compressed and others are extended (it goes roughly chapter-per-day, most of Thursday is skipped, but Monday and Tuesday have 4 chapters each). On top of that, it keeps switching POV between characters (six of them), so we only know what happened during that time for the POV character, but not rest of the characters or, for that matter, plot events at large.
Do we have any time flow tropes that could cover for this? It's an important plot devide and also a gimmick used to both create and then market the story, so it's not there just because.
resolved Public Domain Villain Upgrade Literature
A character whose stories are in the public domain ends up being villainized by authors, because they need someone to be the bad guy in a story, and don't want to make up a new character.
openScents are always identified + identify scent means love interest Literature
Two scent-related tropes I’m looking for here.
One I imagine may be a missing supertrope, where characters in fiction can perfectly identify scents, no exceptions. This is an acceptable break from reality as books, tv, ect., cannot otherwise express scent to the audience. So when a character says their love interest smells like sandalwood, even if they live somewhere without sandalwood trees and before scents were synthesized and commercialized and thus shouldn’t know that scent, we trust that the love interest does in fact smell like it.
The second is a Trope that fits underneath, I’d call it “Attraction Smell Tell”. This is when a character notices the smell of someone they’re attracted to. It’s very common in romance novels, where the MC catches the scent of their love interest as they’re starting to show interest in them. I think at some point it was a subtle way of indicating that the MC is subliminally attracted to someone, but at this point it’s so widespread that it’s no longer subtle.
openMortals Hired by Gods Literature
Hello, Is there a trope that involves mortals working for gods? A story where a mortal has been hired by a god or gods to complete a task, to perform a service? In which the mortals are not believers but have been promised some tangible reward for their time and efforts?
I looked for this but can't find it - although I figure I was searching using the wrong terms!
thanks!
openTongueless Means Mute Literature
One thing that got left out of the film adaptation of The Hunger Games was a punishment the Capital did to certain people— Avoxes were so-called because they had their tongue removed and were made mute. Tonguelessness is often equated with mutism in fiction, despite the fact that the English language has several sounds that can be made without the tongue entirely. I know we have a trope called "Tongue Torture" or something like that, but I find it odd that for something that has been around since at least the time of Shakespeare (see Lavinia in Titus Andronicus), we don't have a trope for someone being tongueless making them mute.
openDon't know how true their statement is Literature
Ten of Jacob's sons go to Egypt and speak to one of Pharaoh's deputies, saying "we are the sons of one man". While the "we" is intended to be exclusive of "you", the person they were talking to is actually Joseph, also a son of the same man.
openSpin-off from different perspective Literature
Alice and Bob are the main characters of "A & B" series of detective novels and have their crazy, high-stake adventures. The autor writes a short story about Jim, a regular guy, who gets an adventure on his own. Half-way through, it is revealed to be a spin-off of the "A & B" series, and Alice and Bob show for a cameo to sort the resulting mess and help out Jim, then leave. What for Jim so far was an extreme, life-shattering and changing experience, from Alice and Bob perspective (and the standard fare of their own series) is just a minor altercation, something they would be dealing as a menial PI job between their typical adventures.
Effectively: the spin-off story is about the kind of mundane case the characters just mention in passing when dealing about their detective work, but from perspective of the main character of said story, this is the case of a century.

All three needed to work with Technomagia i smoki
Edited by Tropiarz