Trope Finder

greatest superpower Literature

unworthy Literature

What is the trope where a character (usually due to past trauma)believes deeply that they are unworthy of love?

Eldritch Shopkeeper Literature

There is a fairly ordinary shop where something magical can be obtained, but the shopkeeper is marked as just "other" enough to be slightly uncanny.

I checked in Shopkeeper, but nada.

• The bookshop keeper in The Neverending Story
• The toyshop keeper in The Ogre Downstairs
• The costume shop keeper in Mr. Benn
• Mr Wing in Gremlins

Character emotionally overwhelmed from learning too much too quickly? Literature

Is there a trope for a character becoming emotionally overwhelmed by learning too much too quickly? Sort of like a much milder version of My Skull Runneth Over?

Absurd text that forces the reader to use their imagination Literature

This is a trope that really can only apply in literature and other text mediums

The basic idea is that the narration says something absurd and the reader has to piece together what it actually means.

An example could be in a novel where the text says "Sally clapped with one hand loud enough to wake up John"

I plan on doing an YKTTW post if this is not uncovered.

Any tropes regarding the frustration of military deployment and being absent from family? Literature

I have a page I'm editing for a Halo fanfic saga called the Natalie Cooper series. There are moments in the stories with the two main characters feel frustrated about being sent to combat deployments and having to leave their children behind.

I know there are shows or even books that are military-focused, so I wonder if there's a trope for what I mentioned above.

Letter Literature

a story about a letter and a horror movie where the main characters are trying to fight

Successful technology prediction Literature

Is there any particular trope when a writer successfully predicts development (or even creation from a scratch) of some new technology, or cites a purely theoretical situation that later is proven correct by research?

Foreword spoiler Literature

There is Trailers Always Spoil and Spoiler Cover, for, well, what the name says. Is there any specific trope when a foreword for a book tells the whole story, rendering it pointless? And no, foreword is not on the cover, which would greatly simplify my life

Oblivious to fraud? Literature

What trope is this? Specifically the part where the colleagues can't see the obvious falsehood and assume he's just being humble:

Of course, Tiberius couldn’t resist embellishing his sermons with wild stories of his exploits and grandiose claims of his own divine power. But to his shock, the crowd ate it up. They believed every word he said and soon he found himself elevated to the highest ranks of the church.

Despite his best efforts, Tiberius couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a fraud. But every time he tried to confess to his colleagues, they simply smiled and said, “That’s just your humility talking, brother. Embrace your gifts and keep preaching the good word.”

everyone shares the author's fetishes? Literature

something weird and fetish-y happens, and characters would be expected to react negatively because most people would, but go along with it because the author wants to see those things happen and therefore everyone either shares their fetish or doesn't see anything kinky with whatever's going on.

Not specifically a negative trope, if that's what the audience is there to see. I'd expect to see it as a sub-trope of "Author Appeal" or "Fanservice" but can't find it in either place? I swear I saw a page for it once, years ago, on another computer...

Never Let Your Guard Down Literature

A stock lesson that often appears early in a Training from Hell scenario: never, ever let your guard down, because an enemy could attack you at any moment. It often comes in handy later in the story, when a character detects a surprise attack precisely because they were taught to be on watch every minute.

Example: in the Riftwar Cycle novel Shadow of a Dark Queen, Erik von Darkmoor and his comrades are being trained as special-forces-type soldiers in a secret army camp. After a day of very hard manual work, the Drill Sergeant Nasty lines them all up and asks how they feel — tired? maybe more tired than they've ever been? Next thing they know they're all hit from behind and taken down, all except a trainee named Sho Pi. His attacker is the one on the ground.

Sergeant: How did you do that?

Sho Pi: By never for one moment assuming that I'm safe, Sergeant.

Long span of the story, very short finale Literature

Is there any trope to descrive a plot structure that goes on for months or even years, but the third act or the finale suddenly happens within hours/single day in-universe, with all the build-up resolving in very short order? At first I was thinking about Extremely Short Timespan as a description of just the finale, but that would clash with the fact rest of the story takes place over a year

Choose your destination with a fossil Literature

A series of books features 2 kids who find a cave which allows them to go back to the Cretacious period. One day the magic fails. Turns out the reason is that one of them, who had previously had a perfectly normal fossil of an Ammonite (the Ammonites being a real group of Cephalopods, which went extinct at the end of the Cretacious), no longer had it. He ends up picking a different Ammonite, which brings them to the Jurasic. It should be noted that there is no magic in the fossils, only in the cave. What trope would apply to these Ammonite fossils?

Three separate inquires: Literature

More from Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, the story "Abuse, Interrupted."

First: the action enters the main character's perspective when an injured female Predator busts into the cabin, the Xenomorph she was hunting close behind. The Xenomorph is rather quickly dealt with, leaving the main character's abusive boyfriend as the last hurdle, and he's no match for even an injured Predator. Which tropes, if any, would be best? Disc-One Final Boss (for the Alien), Hero of Another Story or Offscreen Moment of Awesome (for the Predator, since the battle has clearly been going awhile before Jazz, our POV character, gets into it?)

Second: Jazz kills the Alien with a shotgun. The Predator takes its head as a trophy. Normally this is only done for the very best kills, the prey that proved most challenging to hunt. Jazz killed for her, but the Predator takes the trophy anyway. Is there a trope for that?

Third: after dealing with Jazz's abusive boyfriend, Jazz shooting him with the shotgun, the Predator takes his skull and spinal columns, and offers them to Jazz. Jazz, not understanding what these trophies mean in Predator society (to say nothing of the complications of carrying her dead abusive boyfriend's severed head around) declines. Is there a trope for that?

Offering the final blow Literature

Reading and troping the anthology Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. In one story, the Predator character eavesdrops on the main human character talking about her Missing Mom, and as he has a similar experience, feels some bond with her. At the climax, he's subdued his Xenomorph prey, but offers the killing blow to her, feeling that, as he hunts to erase the shame of his family history, she might want to do the same.

This really feels like a trope, but I have no idea which one.

Terminology based on an insult Literature

In The Twilight Saga, the vampires use various insults for the werewolves, including "dog". Is there a trope for a vampire using the word "puppy" to refer to a werewolf's baby?

Officially Neurodiverse in the Translation Literature

In the Chinese novel Decoded, the protagonist is definitively very weird (a minimum of Ditzy Genius), but he wasn't officially ascribed of any neurotype (it'd be factually correct, since the novel is set in 1950s China). However, the English translation confirms he is autistic. What kind of Adaptation Deviation is this—or would tat be a case of Diagnosis of God (despite it's more "Diagonsis of St. Paul")?

Assumed connection Literature

Having heard a friend died, a character calls the father of the friend. The father was at a funeral of someone else entirely; however, the person who answers the phone says (totally truthfully) that the father is at a funeral, and the caller thinks the friend died.