What about old tropes with new names?
How can you find the best but least linked tropes out there?
Worry no more: Trope Report is here.
Because no one should have to work on the second full week of July the entire Trope Report staff went on vacation! Beaches and waves for us, whoo! Duty calls though and we return to bring you this week's news from around the site. First of all though, due to time constraints we are officially moving our publication day to Friday. So come here at the beginning of the weekend to get the latest on what is going on. With that out of the way let us proceed to the real meat!
Forumwatch:
Since last week was a vacation, we have twice as many new forum users to introduce. More people to say hello to! To start off, say hi to:
rac 216, thawkins, Bundleof Joy, Ch♦kwa (!?),Blindone 230, Handsome Rob, The Dog Sage, Shadow Knux 372, Uniswift 87, Scrittah, Voltech 44, Zero Potential, Chaostryke, cheese.com, Go Ask Alice, Outrageous, sca punk, Roflcopter 419, Nasty Butler, Chief Chef, lys, El Saico, Bored Malek, Teh Hurrz, zam, spasticgecko, Assistant Gaiste, Rosa Rugosa, snailbait, jcruz, Marioguy 128, zoeymoe, and Cream!
That seems to be a lot even for two weeks. Oh, well. Welcome one and all to the forums!
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes:
The most important part of the newsletter, the changes! The cuts and merges and splits and rewrites we love to argue over. Here they are.
- Magical Angel Creamy Mami and Creamy Mami are like identical twins separated at birth. They are same work but for some reason were made independently. This has been fixed and the later name is now a redirect for the former.
- The Ages Of Super Hero Comics is now an index for the different periods in Comic Book history. Long live the Silver Age.
- Summers Family Tree is finally renamed to Tangled Family Tree. Now that didn't take long.
- Go On Without Me was somehow made a redirect of No One Gets Left Behind, which is supposed to come after this trope in invoked. It has been corrected to I Will Only Slow You Down
- Animal Wrongs Group has been pruned (to an extent) in order to control the natter levels. Hopefully this will actually work.
- The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction has had the algerbra from its description cleaned out and the description itself cleaned up. The letters and numbers were making people think they were back in Math class and forcing people into sleep is not a good thing.
- Lets Get The Hell Out Of Here has been gotten the hell out of here but left its examples behind in the care of Let's Get Out of Here.
- The Straight Will And Grace ad Like Brother and Sister are having their examples sorted out between each other. Aid can be given at the Sorting Will And Grace Are Like Brother And Sister page.
- Hell Is Coming With Me… Or not. I'll leave that to the new name for this trope, the Harbinger of Impending Doom.
- Little Big Man has been renamed to Sizeshifter. Sizeshifter. Sizeshifter. Whatever.
- Brian Blessed is the main page. BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! is the self demonstrating article.
- To better reflect the trope, Whats My Line has been changed to Emotionally Tongue-Tied.
- Called it! Whedon Thyndrome has been renamed to Fang Thpeak.
- Rape Of The Lock has been renamed to Traumatic Haircut.
- Why Does Everyone Think Im Deadpool had the problem of not everyone knowing who Deadpool is. It has been renamed to Counterpart Comparison.
- The Battletech page has had the Mech Warrior and Mech Commander games split off from the main series page. The games as well as the novels and animated series are listed on the new Battletech Expanded Universe page.
- Boring Invincible Villain was too boring a name for a villain. So we fired him and brought in this Generic Doomsday Villain as a replacement. He's not boring! Not interesting either but at least not boring!
- Due to having the same name as a work The Poseidon Adventure trope has been renamed to Sinking Ship Scenario.
- The PSP article has undergone a rewrite to sound less negative and bashing-ive(?).
- Rust Old Junk Sword does not reveal the Hidden Depths of the artifact in question. It has been renamed to Excalibur in the Rust.
- Encyclopedia Browned has been renamed to Conviction by Counterfactual Clue.
- Crouching Asskicking Badass Ti - Oh forget it. The point is this trope has been cut. No, I'm not quite sure what it was supposed to be.
- For those of you who don't know, the Administrivia page is in Troperville. The Adminstrivia page is the place to go for the ins and outs of the site. The index for the rules, guidelines, the tips, and everything else you might need to know. It is recommended all Tropers read over the list at least once in their lives.
- Concerning the locked and example purged articles that have been a problem, the Redrafting and clean-up Sandboxes have been set up to make these pages open and easier on the eyes again. As Madrugada put it, "Two of those pages so far (Sonichu and Asperchu) have been cleaned up, restored, then relocked to prevent a return to their former state. If you want to work on any of the others, make a Sandbox.Cleaning(tropename) page to do so. The page contents from before the chopping can be found on the page history for copying." Once a page is cleaned in the Sandbox it can be put in place of the article that needs the clean-up. A list of current clean-up projects and further instructions can be found here.
Spotlight Stealing Trope:
There are many environments that people don't like. Plains and meadows are boring, deserts are unbearably hot, cities are loud, you get the idea. But swamps are different, Swamps Are Evil. There are few other areas in the world that people dread going into like a swamp. The dark, wet, foggy, slimy swamp where alligators and zombies lurk in more fantastical works and alligators and mosquitoes in the more mundane.
That is the trope Swamps Are Evil. Swamps are indeed filled with all sorts of nasty and dangerous critters and getting lost in one is hardly the hardest thing to do. It does not take much more to make the place even creepier. Voodoo witches, the undead, and the bones of those who never got out seem to do the trick though. Thus, this trope is mainly one of fear and being uncomfortable and on edge.
This is the prime place for the heroes of a story to end up. Everyone has to go through a swamp at some point for dangerous mishaps either to get somewhere or to avoid someone. The Lord Of The Rings has Frodo go through a swamp to get to Mordor (Out of the frying pan and into the fire on that one). The Patriot has the militia led by the "Ghost" hiding in the swamp to avoid the British Army they harass. Expect old legends of monsters to be told by an elderly hermit before entering.
Common is just about every media save music. This is Swamps Are Evil. Remember those wooden signs that say "Stay Out of The Swamp!"? Better listen to them.
Needs More Love:
The Analysis/Analysis section needs more love! You know about the Analysis section, right? It’s the one with the little magnifying glass
◊ as its icon. From the page, Analysis pages are, "Thoughtful essays on how certain works were constructed and how they employed tropes to get the job done. The usual light TV Tropes style and tone are used, with less emphasis on silliness and more on balanced examination."
This is just like It Just Bugs Me, Wild Mass Guessing, and all those other extra sections but this one seems neglected. Not even 40 works have Analysis pages. Compared to the hundreds or so for the other sub-wikis? Really, Tropers? We can do better! Flex those critically dissecting eyes and minds of your and get busy!
Add More Here:
That’s a wrap for the beginning of our Friday schedule. Bwaaahh! They Changed It, Now It Sucks!! The staff has to get up on Fridays now! And they have to eat lunch on a schedule! What about our cartoons? What about our freedom? What about our needs?
See you next week!
