Newsletter / News 2021-07

Where do you go to read the latest about new tropes?
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.

Trope Report is a monthly newsletter that intends to showcase works and tropes from all corners of this website. It also aims to keep the troper hivemind updated with pertinent trope changes and discussions.

Thanks for checking out Issue 7! In the Northern hemisphere July is known for the hot, lazy dog days of summer, so we hope you're reading this while staying hydrated and sitting somewhere cool. If the heat has got you feeling a little asocial and longing for (virtual) companionship, why not check out the discussions in Forumwatch? Or if it's got you in the mood for checking out something totally outside of your comfort zone, read our Work Spotlight section — maybe a German game centered around clicking might click for you! And as always, please take a look at the Changelog for updates on trope usage and definitions — we've got major changes for three huge pages (Famous Last Words, Not So Different, and Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped) that everyone should know.

Happy troping!

~Synchronicity, Chief Trope Report Officer

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Tropes and Works

Trope Spotlight

Obscure Tropes

This section highlights older tropes that need a boost.

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• Termite Trouble: You may have encountered termites before (in their nests, burrowing in wooden structural components, or even on your plate) and probably are aware that many species dine on wood and are thus considered pests. In fiction less oriented to reality, termites are the wood-eating pest kind, and their damaging capabilities are usually greatly magnified. In fact, they can chew through beams like sawblades and might even be shown as a giant swarm disintegrating wood in seconds. Watch out!

New Tropes

This section brings attention to recently-launched tropes that could use a little help to really get rolling.

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• You've seen it a million times in various cartoons: a saw cuts through the floor you're standing on and rhythmically hacks a perfect circle around you. If you've been staring at it instead of stepping away from that spot, prepare to fall through the newly made hole. Voila! The Circling Saw! Launched on June 9th, this trope covers a classic cartoon gag, yet could use some help to cover the large amount of examples not yet listed.
• Let's face it: whether it's on YouTube or on television, no one likes having to sit through ads. However, when we get a prize for sitting through an ad, suddenly we become much more willing. Enter the Ad Reward, launched on June 16th, in which a game developer creates a prize for watching in-game ads, whether that's an extra hint, additional content, or another life, so as to monetize their otherwise free-to-play game. A true test of just what we are willing to do for such minor rewards.
• Villains sure seem to have problems finding reliable help nowadays, don't they? It seems that everyone they can find is either weak, incompetent, or both — except for this one person, the Token Competent Minion. Launched on May 30th, this trope documents a specific form of minion: that one person who is, for one reason or another, far more capable at his job than the rest of his unit, managing to actually do some damage to the opposite side instead of just swinging their weapon in their general direction. These units tend to stand out from the crowd as a result, but the page itself could use some loving attention to find these unique minions.

Work Spotlight

New Work Page Spotlight

This section covers newer work pages that could use a little help.

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• You may know Brian David Gilbert from his work with Polygon, particularly with the Unraveled series and Gill and Gilbert. But you may not know of Dances Moving!, the seven-part musical video series Gilbert created in 2017. Dances Moving! begins as a high energy series teaching simple dance moves, but soon develops its own story arc and takes a turn for the dramatic. The work page for this series was created on June 19, making it the third work of Gilbert's to have its own page, and the only work from his pre-Polygon days thus far.
• For K-pop fans out there, the page for Astro was made on June 24. This six-member Boy Band has been active since 2016, not just putting out music, but appearing on reality television and a web drama series. The page is pretty thorough when it comes to the band and their history, but more attention to prevent things like zero-context examples would be helpful, as would adding a Trivia and YMMV page.
• Kuro to Shiro is a series of plays by Movista, where a group of Angels and Fallen Angels reincarnate as humans. The show takes an interesting approach by presenting separate stories each episode, then combining the two stories. The play series is quite new, having come out in 2020, while the page was only made on June 29th of this year. The page is lacking in examples, so if you're familiar with any of the plays, feel free to flesh out the page further.

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Older/Obscure Work Spotlight

This section is intended to highlight works that may no longer be in the zeitgeist — but that doesn't mean they're any less tropable.

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• Get Off My Lawn (2009) is an Adobe Flash game by Hot Air Raccoon. As the lawn-loving Blue Mollet, you have to defend your lawn from other mollets that hate it and will destroy it if they get on it by driving over them with your lawnmower. Every kill earns points based on your combo and cash that can be spent on upgrades and new hardware like sprinklers, serrated mower blades, and an automatic turret to improve your chances, as new varieties of enemy mollets show up every few stages and the number that has to be killed increases. It gets hectic later on, especially if you're playing on expert mode, but the artstyle and fast-paced gameplay that's easy to get into make this game worth checking out no matter your experience with lawncare.
• Brave New World is a novel by Aldous Huxley published in 1932. It's about a dystopian World State in which people have predestined abilities, roles, and jobs and are sorted into castes from Alphas to Epsilons, as well as sub-castes ranging from Alpha Pluses to Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons. The population is controlled through the usage of the drug Soma, movies called Feelies that engage touch in addition to the usual senses, and orgy porgies between everyone that aren't for procreation, just pleasure. Those who try to challenge this sort of life are sent to an island, including the novel's Decoy Protagonist Bernard Marx. It manages to show a perspective on issues that resonates with readers living during the time of this issue's release more than ever before.
• Mazogs is a game released on the ZX 81 in 1982. In it, the player has to traverse a maze to find treasure, then get back to the starting point, while making sure to avoid the bloodthirsty mazogs. The player can pick up a sword which will let them survive an encounter with a mazog and kill it, but each sword can only be used once and the player can't have both the treasure and a sword at the same time. The player may also free prisoners who will show them where to go for ten seconds with "THIS WAY" signs. Watch out for the energy meter, as every step taken, as well as opening the map, will drain it. The graphics are primitive and there may not be much to the gameplay, but it's fun and the maze is randomly generated, so there's also some replay value.

Works That Need a Page

This section takes a page from the List of Shows That Need Summary. It is intended to spotlight works that people have been talking about enough to link around the site, but don't have a page yet. If the work page link turns blue after this, then we know we've done our job!

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• We don't have a page for Love On The Spectrum, an Australian docuseries that follows autistic adults as they try to find love. Unlike most dating series, it's not exploitative, and handles the subject matter with nuance. Ccorb recommends her fellow auties to check it out.
• MC Miker G And DJ Sven are a pair of rappers from the Netherlands who were mostly active during the 1980s. They're best known for the "Holiday Rap", based on Madonna's "Holiday", but they've also made the "Celebration Rap", based on Kool & the Gang's "Celebration", and the song "And the Bite Goes On". It's a shame we don't have a page on them, as their most popular hit is perfect for getting in the mood for a holiday and there's just something enjoyable about their slightly corny style.

Non-English Work Spotlight

The wiki may be in English, but that doesn't mean non-English media are any less important! This section focuses on works that may have a language barrier to deal with — but are worth it if you do.

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• Takeshi's Challenge is an Action-Adventure video game released exclusively in Japan, made under the direction of Takeshi Kitano, otherwise known as Beat Takeshi. The player controls a salaryman whose ultimate goal is finding treasure, but before doing so, has to do a long list of esoteric actions, like divorcing his wife, singing three times at the karaoke bar, and beating up the old man who gave him the map. There are adult themes which would prevent a release outside of its home country and things you really wouldn't figure out without a guide. Unsurprising — as the intro states, this game was made by a man who hates video games. While Takeshi may have had a change of heart in the years since, seeing as he voiced and gave his resemblance to the character Toru Hirose in Yakuza 6, this unorthodox yet interesting experience makes it wise to at least accept his challenge.
• Kapitan Bomba is a Polish animated series by SPinka Film Studio. The show features the titular Captain and his crew, who he tends to call dumb dicks. They take part in missions that generally involve them saving the galaxy from aliens, and their approach to most problems is to shoot the crap out of whatever they come across. The amount of obscenities is off the charts here, with aliens designed after dicks and planets with Punny Names based on the word "kurwa" ("whore"). Still, if you want a quick burst of vulgar humor and geometric animation, it should be right up your alley.
• Idle Mine Remix is an Idle Game by German developer VeproGames, inspired by the Adobe Flash game Idle Mine by Crovie. Like in the original, you have to click on an ore or let the game click on it automatically to mine it until it runs out of HP, upon which you gain money and have a chance to find gems. Money can be spent on upgrades, while gems can be used to craft a new pickaxe that could potentially have a higher damage output to help break the next objects, which have higher HP and defense. However, the game has a more modern engine, new sets of upgrades, a simplistic storyline, endless ores and objects beyond them to mine, and well-balanced progression that makes it difficult to run into a progress wall, so it's great to run it in the background and buy stuff if needed.

Creator Page Spotlight

Works would be nothing without the people who make them. This section highlights authors, artists, actors, musicians, and everyone else responsible for trope creation and proliferation.

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• Have you seen Lupin (2021) and wondered who the debonair thief at the center of it all is? That's none other than Mauritanian-Senegalese-French actor Omar Sy. You may have seen him before in big franchise fare like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Jurassic World, but he's also known for critical darlings like Intouchables and Chocolat. Truly a guy to watch.
• New Zealander Ngaio Marsh was not just any Mystery Fiction writer: she was known as one of the four Queens of Crime during the genre's golden age, a group moniker shared with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Marsh was known for her Roderick Alleyn character, who solved many mysteries through the years.
• A rare photographer spotlight this time: Edward Burtynsky, a Ukrainian-Canadian photographer known for his striking and large-scale landscapes. His photographs aim to capture humanity's effects on a changing planet while looking like Expressionist paintings. His work's been featured all over and is always a visual treat; as a sampler, check out this photograph of waterways in Cádiz, Spain, or this photograph◊ of a saw mill in Lagos, Nigeria.

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Image/Image Caption of the Month

This section brings you the best of the recent selections from Image Pickin.

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This issue's featured image comes from real life photography, and illustrates True Art Is Incomprehensible.

"True art? Yeah, right, next you're going to tell me this isn't a square."

You probably remember the old image◊ for True Art Is Incomprehensible, showcasing the 2001 installation Work No. 227: The lights going on and off by British artist Martin Creed. The image had been on the wiki for over a decade now, and was noteworthy for being the only gif allowed to illustrate a trope page. Ultimately, that last fact was what brought its demise.

Sometime in 2021, a terrible malfunction happened: the gif stopped working. The lights turned on, but never off. Clearly, the image could not be kept in its current state, that would be like having a yin without a yang. When this issue was taken to the Image Pickin' forums, a replacement was found. The new image showcases Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square", a Russian painting from the early 20th century. At first glance, one might think this minimalist piece is nothing more than a black square. And while that is indeed what the painting shows, many people, such as the one in the image, have taken it upon themselves to try and find a deeper meaning as to what it represents, with many curators claiming it to be "the zero point of painting". Truly a masterful work of art, and well-deserving of taking our spot for Image of the Month.

Projects and Discussions

Forumwatch

Hey guys! Welcome back to Forumwatch! In this section, we'll be telling you about what's going on in the forums — interesting discussions that may be going on in Wiki Talk, some fun forum games, or lively debates going on in On-Topic Conversations, you name it!

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• As the seasons change and the years change, the rules of TV Tropes also change. What may have been restricted once is now more acceptable and vice versa. However, the Administrivia pages depicting these rules aren't always updated to reflect these rule changes. To help identify and fix outdated Administrivia pages, join the Outdated Pages thread and work with others on making these repairs. After all, pages can't edit themselves. At least, we hope not.
• Sometimes, we have a wonderful concept for an idea. It sounds ingenious. But then we realize that we don't know what to call the damn thing. And ideas without names can't become memorable enough to catch attention. If you are in need of help coming up with names for items, characters, or other ideas within your story, hop in The "What's a good name for this?" thread and see the help of other tropers willing to lend you a hand.
• Sonic the Hedgehog recently celebrated its 30th anniversary with an amazing virtual concert showcasing the decades of amazing themes that have come from this massive franchise. An Updated Re-release of Sonic Colors is on its way, as well as a brand new game set to take the franchise in a new direction! Hang in the General Sonic The Hedgehog thread to stay up to date and discuss the new developments.
• Band names are cool. Rock band names are cool (hopefully). Sometimes, we have good ideas for rock band names. Sometimes, we think we have good ideas for rock band names. If you fit in either of these two categories, visit the Good Name For A Rock Band thread and post your suggestion. Go crazy with your suggestions!

Trope/Article Changelog

This section covers renames, removals, hard-splits, merges, and wick cleaning. We'll try to keep you alerted to any major changes to the site, including perpetual projects and Wiki Talk decisions that you may have missed, but if you want to be a part of the process that affects so much of our wiki, then head over to the Trope Repair Shop on the left-hand side of the forum.

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• Best is Average, Better is Best was renamed to Parity Product Paradox and made a definition-only page per a TRS thread concerning low example count, scope, and tropeworthiness. Of note is that normally, an anemic trope would be an easy cut (or yard) candidate, but due to it being a legitimate concept and a trope in a part of the wiki that doesn't have many work pages (making wicks a problem), discussion eventually settled on an example-less page.
• Famous Last Words was made a redirect to Last Words and all its on-page examples moved to JustForFun.Famous Last Words, since the examples were mostly lists of every character's utterance before dying, with no meaning attached. Its many subpages are unaffected.
• Not So Different has been officially renamed to "Not So Different" Remark to emphasize the updated definition, which includes the requirement for the similarities to be commented on in-universe. For more information, see the TRS discussion.
• Shocking Swerve has been turned into a redirect for Ass Pull due to heavy misuse for the latter trope. Check out the TRS thread here.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped was made a redirect to Anvilicious. The latest TRS thread about the Anvil items decided that there's no need to split "heavy-handed Aesop" and "heavy-handed Aesop but good".
• Stylistic Suck now covers out-of-universe examples of suckiness, with a soft split between in-universe/out-of-universe examples. TRS here.
• Unfortunate Names is now in-universe examples only as per this TRS thread.

Pages Needing Help

This section highlights articles indexed on the Pages Needing Wiki Magic policy page and sub-pages. Such articles are, at best, under-performing and below wiki standards. At worst, these pages are in violation of the wiki's rules against stubs. If you're an editor, try checking out some of these under-performing trope and work articles to see what improvements you can make to the page.

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• July's birthday is Chiwetel Ejiofor. After a cleanup of tropes that treated him as a character in someone else's movie, we only have What Could Have Been describing his work as an actor. The description doesn't even cover that much, leaving us no information about him as an actor. On the other hand, we do have a reasonably long list of roles he's played (although why they were limited to Notable roles is unclear) and several actor indexes.
• Jet and the Pet Rangers is a fairly short streaming cartoon, but a lack of English translation seems to have put a hard stop to people adding examples to the page. We have a reasonable description and great image, but we're hurting for tropes and crosswicking. Maybe someone would like to vary their preschool television habits and binge this for costume and transformation tropes?
• The traditional Fade Out and Fade In are both... completely absent of examples. Strangely, Fade Out has over 50 wicks and Fade In has less than 20. These are some of the earliest pages on the wiki and yet we haven't managed to collect any examples? If we can't find a way to illustrate or expand on the description, then we might need a Trope Repair Shop thread to reclassify them as Definition-Only Pages.

Project Spotlight

Looking for a project to dedicate some time to, but not comfortable jumping into large threads? Here are some smaller projects, or more recent discussions, in need of a few more hands.

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• "Fanservice Tropes" have had massive problems with excessive detail, sexually-charged gushing, and shoehorning for underaged characters. The Fanservice Tropes Cleanup Thread exists to combat these problems. If you're interested, join in!
• Have you ever read a trope page, only to discover it's distractingly disorganized? Perhaps you've wanted to add an example, but didn't realize it was already there, because the page wasn't alphabetized? Most, if not all of us, have had issues like this. The Alphabetically ordering example pages thread tackles unalphabetized trope pages to make them easier to read and edit. Have a page you want to have alphabetized? Stop by the thread today!
• Unintentional Period Piece is currently in TRS due to long-term misuse and complaining issues, being frequently misused for anything dated in a work as opposed to works that are unintentionally filled with dated things. The discussion is currently trying to figure out what to do with this trivia page. If you would like to join and offer your thoughts, you can go here.
• The Power Rangers pages are undergoing an extensive cleanup to remove any invalid examples, as well as complaining and/or gushing. If you want to participate in it, please join the thread here.

Know the Contributors

• Synchronicity writes Creator Page Spotlight and oversees this whole shebang. Likes tropes and works about comedy, slice of life, and sci-fi/fantasy. For some reason, also enjoys keeping the wiki tidy.
• Piterpicher is the head honcho of Older/Obscure Work Spotlight and Non-English Work Spotlight. Those are the kinds of works he's interested in, but he's primarily a gamer. When it comes to wiki philosophy, the priorities are making it fun for readers, encompassing, and well-performing in terms of SEO. (Editor's note: he also made our snazzy new logo!) Also contributed to this issue's Works That Need a Page section.
• crazysamaritan writes for the Pages Needing Help section, keeping an eye out for stubs and crosswicking.
• Kappaclystica writes for the Image of the Month. Hates unillustrative images.
• Satoshi Bakura writes for Forumwatch. Their passive nature and busy college schedule often leaves them watching pages and forums without actually participating unless their interest has been sufficiently piqued.
• Mighty Mewtron writes for the New Work Page spotlight. She probably hasn't seen these works before coming across their pages, but she likes to be involved in the growth of the wiki. Beyond the Trope Report, she's most active in the forums, TLP, and the pages for whatever work she's obsessed with this month.
• MacronNotes writes for the Changelog section. She spends most of her time on TRS, Long/Short term projects, and TLP. She is also the herald of the Wiki Talk section on the forums.
• War Jay 77 writes for the Project Spotlight section. She is also the Herald of Projects: Long Term/Perpetual, and spends much of her time refreshing on the forums, ATT and TLP for new things to respond to.
• gjjones writes for the Project Spotlight section. He also frequently spends his time working on projects whenever they are necessary, cleaning up wiki entries and participating in the ATT and Trope Repair Shop threads.
• 𝕋𝕒𝕓𝕤 writes for the Obscure Trope Spotlight and Changelog sections. Also contributed to this issue's New Tropes section.
• ccorb writes for Works That Need a Page, and spends a lot of her time on Image Pickin', Trope Repair Shop, Trope Launch Pad, and the Projects forums, and also Wiki Walks, searching for works and tropes they find interesting. She credits this very wiki for introducing them to anime and manga they had never heard of before but now watch/read (or would like to), such as My Hero Academia, A Silent Voice and especially Hunter × Hunter.
• STARCRUSHER99 writes for the New Tropes spotlight, taking advantage of his time lurking in the TLP. Outside of Trope Report, he enjoys participating in the CM/MB threads, lurking on ATT and TLP, and editing whichever piece of fiction that he happens to be obsessed with that day, official or fan-made.
• FernandoLemon wrote for the Image of the Month section. You can most commonly find him in the Image Pickin' forums, and occasionally at the Trope Repair Shop.
• Twiddler makes sure our grammar is in order.
• The Mayor of Simpleton is participating as a guest editor. Today, he wrote for the Projects Spotlight. He mostly participates in Projects and TRS, and occasionally Image Pickin'.
• naturalironist sometimes writes for the Obscure Trope Spotlight sections. They can be found editing the wiki and on the Trope Launch Pad and Repair Shop.

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This edition of Trope Report is brought to you by WarioWare Inc., the company that makes games you can finish in four seconds or less, but they're the best games ever and there's just so many of them!

Interested in becoming a contributor, or have suggestions for works or tropes to feature? Pop by the the thread and let us know! We don't bite. (Much.)