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openIntentionally Unsympathetic but fails to convey such
UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Live Action Films
- The entire Jedi Order gets this in the prequel trilogy. They're meant to be the Big Good organization, a group of Lawful Good magic knights, but possessed of the Fatal Flaw of being too bound up by centuries-old dogma to see something terrible is about to happen until it's tragically too late to prevent it. Unfortunately, their questionable recruiting tactics (conscripting from the cradle, cutting them off from all family ties, taking command of an age-accelerated slave army of clones, and their grandmaster (Yoda) giving some astonishingly tone-deaf advice to a terrified Anakin made them look like a bunch of Church Militant jackasses instead, which is even lampshaded by Luke in The Last Jedi.
- The Old Republic as whole, really. They are meant to be presented as a flawed but mostly benevolent democracy tragically subverted from the inside by darker forces. However, they're shown to be extremely corrupt, enough so that mega-corps get senate seats. Despite apparently having sky high taxes, they don't have a functional military at the start of the series and seem perfectly happy to let injustices like slavery go unpunished outside and even sometimes inside their borders, despite being the galaxy's only superpower. It's not like it's hard to make a military in this setting; Palpatine makes two from scratch. They're just that unwilling to get blood on their hands. And it doesn't help at all that the enemy they are fighting isn't really that much more evil than them; the opening crawl of Episode III even states it outright. It leaves the "tragic fall" of the Old Republic to fall kind of flat, as you don't get the sense that they were doing a much better job of running the galaxy than the Empire. At least the Empire's currency worked.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic Cleanup brought up it wasn't unintentional as the point of the prequels were to show how this corruption, ineptitude, and hypocrisy caused their downfalls. It just does a bad job of conveying it was intentional such Star Wars: The Clone Wars was created as a Fix Fic to show the intentionality.
Does Unintentionally Unsympathetic apply if they were intended to come off as in the wrong for those reasons but came off to audiences as unintentional to failing to failing to convey it as intentional? Or is there a more appropriate trope for failing to convey that nuance?
- Misaimed Fandom: Audiences fail to realize they were not supposed to like them and thus wrongly see their unsympathetic portrayal as unintentional (though it they are uninteintionaly hated that sounds like Misaimed Hatedom, the opposite of this and too inflammatory to be a trope)?
- Misaimed Marketing: The promotional materials presented them as straight good guys causing audiences to miss that in the actual films they were deliberately flawed.
- Uncertain Audience: The need to appeal to those too young to get/didn't care for the nuance or just wanted a straight good vs. evil action film mean the nuance was lost or diluted to the point it was missed.
openEmotional Turmoil Same as Drunk
Alice makes an Anguished Declaration of Love to Bob, who is very interested in Alice. However, as Alice is going through serious emotional turmoil, Bob decides that acting on what she says would be taking advantage, much as if she'd come on to him while drunk. He gently lets her down, telling her he'd love to discuss this when things are calmer and thus establishing himself as a good guy.
openTropes about costume changes right before the "11th hour"
Are there any tropes about when the character changes into a new costume/outfit before facing the big bad or something similar?
openNearly Caught
Do we have a trope for the all-too-common scenario of someone very nearly getting caught in the act of breaking the rules or worse, only to be miraculously able to escape the situation either due to a well-timed distraction, being good at stealth, or the other character just being oblivious? It's such a common situation that I'd be surprised if we don't at least have subtropes for the concept.
openThe Metatron
Companion piece to Archangel Michael, Archangel Gabriel and the like. God's holy scribe and often shows up in mystic/esoteric work of angels. Examples include God's holy robot, the douchebag scribe, and name-wise Claudia Jerusalem is referred to as Metatron
openWorld of furries still has real-life cultures
Do we have a trope for when a World of Funny Animals still has clear racial and cultural identities rather than (or in addition to) Fantastic Racism? For example, while Brain on Arthur is a bear, his family is Senegalese and he celebrates Kwaanza, and there's a Martin Luther King Jr. poster in his room. Also on BoJack Horseman there is a Latin Kings gang and a white supremacist skinheads gang, and both gangs contain animals as well as Latin and white humans respectively.
Edited by mightymewtronopenSymbolizing Victories Won? Live Action TV
Is there a trope about symbolizing victories won? Like Daenerys/the Dothraki adding braids for victories?
openProduct Shoehorning Film
To feature product placement, even though the setting of the film is somewhere you can't buy that product. Example: Power Rangers 2017: The Zeo Crystal is hidden below a Krispy Kreme, even though the town it was filmed in does not have one.
openFiller episode has important thing but it's only small? Anime
Do we have such a trope for this:
- In a Filler episode of Dragon Ball Super or One Piece, the episode seems to be there just to fill time, but rewatching it again via Rewatch Bonus, an piece of equipment that proves to be important later on shows up in the background as an Easter Egg.
- An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit seems like Filler, but you'd have to re-watch it to understand that a throwaway remark wasn't actually filler; it was relevant to the season's Myth Arc.
Is it a Chekhov's Gun, or another trope entirely?
openCartoon Human and Real Human Contrast
When a character is supposed to be a human, but later we see other human characters... with more realistic proportioned and normal anatomy and/or facial structure.
openUnsellable Cursed Item
Someone who owns a cursed artefact or haunted house is desperately trying to sell it for obvious reasons. This is either because it is a Clingy McGuffin, or the people who said item is being sold to noticed that it was Obviously Evil.
Edited by KingOfStickersopenSingle Woes
A character almost constantly complains about being single and not having a lover as part of their character/personality. They often drink, are around their 30s+, drink and smoke a lot.
An example is Nanako from Lucky Star.
Edited by KingOfStickersopenEscalating Tiers of Science Fiction
Stage 0: Earth
Stage 1: Space
Stage 2: Time
Stage 3: Multiverse
When a series with sci-fi elements runs long enough, as part of Serial Escalation it will run up each tier.
Case in point, Dragon Ball. Goku first traveled the world, then went into space to fight Napolehitler. Back on earth, Vegeta’s son from the future came back to warn them of evil terminators. Years later, Goku and company learn that their universe is merely one of twelve, doing a fair amount of traveling between them.
Edited by CurtisMarauderopenSelf-aware story
A story that's considered self-aware and plays with the tropes you'd expect of it, like Frozen.
openGay is classy/artistic
A trope that appeared in the 70s and 80s, when gay people were just breaking into mainstream acceptability, where a gay man is considered to be more sophisticated/classy/artistic than straight men. Probably codified IRL by Liberace and Andy Warhol, this is something of a dead horse trope now that gay people are able to be seen as just normal people. May be related to Men Are Uncultured (because gay men were seen as effeminate back then) and All Gays Love Theater.
Edited by Loopytires55
A character has a dislike of neutral-aligned figures and those who don't pick a side, often they're the reason for Neutrality Backlash. For example Jreg has ideological extremes come together in their hatred of the centre, and Zapp Brannigan has an Irrational Hatred of the Neutral Planet