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.
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.
It's August and here's our 32nd Trope Report issue!
Wiki editing improvements, TLP improvements, and emoji suggestions are currently being workshopped at the Wiki Talk subforum.
Other notable changes that have happened over the course of last month are major TRS decisions that have completely overhauled well-established tropes like Evil Is Sexy, Trope Namers, Hurting Hero, Easily Forgiven, and Cloning Blues. More info regarding those changes can be found in our Changelog section.
As summer in the Northern Hemisphere slowly comes to a close, we hope that you will enjoy your time here, as well as the many upcoming changes the wiki has in store for the future.
Happy troping!
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Tropes and Works
Trope Spotlight
Obscure Tropes
This section highlights older tropes that need a boost.- The summer heat can be a slog to get through, but sometimes, heat and fire can actually be quite cool! A Flaming Emblem is a way many characters signal their presence by making a fiery version of their usual logo, running on Rule of Cool and making many antagonists sweat. This trope needs more space to catch fire on the wiki, as it currently sits at only 38 wicks from over the course of a decade.
- August 8 is International Cat Day, a day that we honor our feline friends, even if they declare themselves the real masters. Just be careful if someone decides to weaponize them into fluffy projectiles! Enter the Cat-apult, a device that utilizes them as Abnormal Ammo. Though it was launched in 2013, it has amassed a mere 28 wicks. Load up some more, aim, and fire! MRROWR!
New Tropes
This section brings attention to recently-launched tropes that could use a little help to really get rolling.- Possession Levitation is one of the many symptoms of possession. When someone's body is hijacked by a foreign entity, there's a chance of the body hovering a few feet above the ground, an obvious indicator of something very wrong happening to the victim. With this information officially confirmed on June 24, please don't hesitate to call in your local exorcist when you see anyone inexplicably floating. The sooner those pesky demons and ghosts are removed, the better!
Work Spotlight
New Work Page Spotlight
This section covers newer work pages that could use a little help.- Century is a trilogy of Euro Games from the 2010s that come in both historical and fantasy theming. Though each game uses different mechanics, each centers around building a system that can be used to make trades with the bank as fast as possible to score points before the game comes to an end. Uniquely, any game in the trilogy can be combined with any of the others to build another game entirely, leading to seven Official Game Variants for those owning all three games. While the page is off to a good start, it could use more love, including Trivia, YMMV, and a page quote.
- With several ongoing efforts to split pages for individual video games off from pages for video game series, including Mario Party and WarioWare, this year finally saw Pac-Mania be promoted from a redirect to its own page! A huge step forward in its series, this game features more ghosts, more theming, Isometric Projection, and the ability to jump. Come help this page make up for lost time in the spotlight.
- The Love of the Last Tycoon is the final novel by the same guy who brought you The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story follows Hollywood studio manager Monroe Star, who gets himself in a romance with his business partner's daughter, Cecilia, and has things end up going pretty wrong for him. Fitzgerald died before he could finish the novel, leading to it being posthumously published by his friend and fellow writer, Edmund Wilson. The page for the work itself was published somewhat recently, in May 25th of this year, and could use some more work, such as additional tropes and a longer description.
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.- The House on Mango Street is a 1984 novel by Sandra Cisneros. Told as a series of short vignettes, it covers a year in the life of Esperanza, a pre-teen Chicana girl who recently moved along with her family to a new home in Chicago. It describes the people she meets; the friends she makes; her experiences at home, at school and while doing some odd jobs to help her family; and the ways she wishes her life could be better. The novel also explores some darker themes such as sexual abuse and prejudice, especially how they affect members of the lower class.
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!- Microsoft Entertainment Pack is a series of compilation discs released between 1990 and 1992 for Microsoft Windows, consisting of four entries with seven games each. Among the included games are classics such as SkiFree and Jezzball and ports of games like Chip's Challenge and Pipe Mania!!. Two of the games in the packs, Minesweeper and Freecell, would go on to be bundled with most versions of Windows. Wrapping the first three packs was IdleWild, a screensaver program. A spin-off, The Puzzle Collection, was also released in 1997. While some of the individual games have pages, the packs as a whole could do with one.
- Robocar Poli is a South Korean animated preschool show about an emergency service in the city of Brooms Town, where accidents are commonplace. The rescue team, run by a girl named Jin and consisting of police car Poli, fire truck Roy, ambulance Amber, and helicopter Helly, must help rescue the victims and the population in response. The work once had a page on this wiki, but it was cut for being a stub. Nonetheless, there's no danger in recreating the page properly.
- Search is a science fiction series from 1972 that lasted only one season. The series follows agents referred to as Probes who solve missions for World Securities Corporation. In World Securities, personnel led by V.C.R. Cameron will assist the Probes if needed. Currently, the show and its pilot program Probe are undocumented on the wiki, so if you accept this mission, please help give the show its own page.
- Remember when we shone the spotlight on Murder for the Modern Girl by Kendall Kulper in a couple of past issues? Well, it has a shiny new spin-off novel called A Starlets Secret To A Sensational Afterlife! Taking place in 1934 Hollywood, aspiring actress and younger sister of the female lead from the first book, Henrietta Newhouse, takes the lead alongside a brooding co-star, Declan Collins, to investigate a series of disappearances within L.A. As it turns out, Declan is Nigh Invulnerable and was hired by a missing girl's family, while Henrietta can see ghosts. Together, can they use their abilities to solve the disappearances? Well, like its predecessor, A Starlet's Secret to a Sensational Afterlife sounds very much like an engaging Historical Fiction novel and thus deserves to be in the spotlight as well with a sparkling work page!
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.- To many who studied Spanish as a second language, the name La Catrina may ring a bell as a telenovela (Soap Opera) used to ease non-speakers into the language. When Jamie Gonzalez comes to Queretaro, Mexico for an exchange program, she meets new friends, gets caught up in a scandal, and seeks to learn more about her bisabuela (great-grandmother), who was known as "La Catrina". What the series lacks in polish, it makes up for in accessibility, though a page image and expanding on examples would be a nice touch.
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.- Todd in the Shadows is a music critic who has been posting reviews on YouTube since 2009. His content is split across three main series: Todd's Pop Song Reviews, where he provides commentary on current hit songs on the Billboard Hot 100; Trainwreckords, an analysis of specific records that ended their artist's careers in one way or another; and One Hit Wonderland, a retrospective on famous One-Hit Wonders and what happened to them after the big hit. His channel can be found here
, and his video on The Top Ten '90s Buses here.
Image of the Month
This section brings you the best selections of the past month from Image Pickin'.
This issue's featured image comes from NPR, and illustrates True Art Is Incomprehensible.
This issue's featured image comes from NPR, and illustrates True Art Is Incomprehensible.
Déjà vu?
Yes, this is now the second time we've covered this trope on Image of the Month. You might ask yourself how anyone would dare to change an image that was a previous winner, considering its inclusion here implies it's of an astonishing high quality, and the answer is actually fairly mundane: the Trope Repair Shop restricted the trope to be In-Universe Examples Only, so the previous image didn't fit the definition anymore.
Every once in a while, you might come across a mini-comic dedicated to explaining a particular trope, like the ones featured on Dead Man's Hand or Shell-Shocked Veteran, and that's also the case for this image. The artist for this piece is Malaka Gharib, an Egyptian-Filipino-American comic artist who also works as an illustrator and editor for NPR, and this one comes from an article that she wrote on how to understand art. Using a watercolor style, the comic paints the situation in its most basic way: two people look at an abstract painting—Untitled (Red) by Mark Rothko; one gets a strong emotional response from it, while the other doesn't get it.
Such articles benefit from having images in much the way that our wiki does: not only do they help exemplify the point and make it easier for the reader to understand, they also provide a visual element that makes the reading experience much more engaging. Art may be difficult for some to understand, but it's not difficult at all to understand why this, once again, is our 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!
- One important part of writing is to get into the minds of your characters and understand how they would react to certain situations. Would they scream? Would they grab a gun? Would they throw a pizza party and invite all their friends? You, and only you, truly know the answer. Play around with various fun scenarios and let your characters express themselves by visiting the What would your character do in the above situation? thread.
- Have you ever accidentally made, or feared making, a very common mistake while editing? Do you ever wish there were a page detailing these common mistakes, so you can have a basic idea of what to avoid? Over in Wiki Talk, the "Most Common Mistakes" page? thread is proposing an Administrivia page titled Common Troping Mistakes. This page would list typical editing mistakes made on the wiki, such as Zero-Context Examples, natter, bad indentation, complaining, and so on, and some basic information on how to avoid them. If you'd like to pitch in and help this page become a reality, head on over to the link and pitch in!
- The ability to gift badges will be returning for moderators, allowing them to hand out new badges to non-moderators who strive for and excel in intelligence and skill, but we would like some help on proposing these badges for these special tropers. The old thread, NEW BADGES!, has been revived starting here, so tropers can continue to share their ideas, like a badge for the wisest in Image Pickin' or Trope Repair Shop, or maybe even a badge for those who officially work for Trope Report. Come discuss!
- After ten years of going unchanged, the opening post/header of the Edit Banned thread has been revised for the sake of clarity and thoroughness, and to give suspended users a better idea of the thread's posting etiquette.
Trope/Article Changelog
This section covers renames, removals, redefinitions, 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.
- Baby Boomers was cut due to heavy misuse and having only a few correct examples, meaning that cleaning up the trope would leave it starving. TRS thread here.
- The Barber was merged with Chatty Hairdresser (which was adjusted to be gender-neutral) because barbers are not a trope on their own, and tropeworthy concepts were determined to already be covered elsewhere. TRS thread here.
- Cloning Blues has been renamed to Clone Angst because it was frequently misused as "character is clone" without the clone feeling angst about being a clone. TRS thread
- Easily Forgiven is being renamed to Acknowledged Absolution and made In-Universe Examples Only, and the trope will no longer require the character being forgiven to be a villain. TRS thread here.
- Evil Is Sexy's examples were discovered to be mostly written around design choices intentionally used in works, with very few examples being written subjectively despite the YMMV designation, so it is being retooled into an objective trope called Sexy Villains, Chaste Heroes, which focuses on the contrast between provocative, sensual, and immodest villains and modest heroes, and the index is being moved to a separate page called These Evil Tropes Are Sexy. TRS thread here.
- Extraverted Nerd was disambiguated because of heavy misuse, and because of redundancy with other tropes. TRS thread here.
- Face Of The Band was disambiguated due to inconsistent usage. TRS thread here.
- Fashion Designer was redirected to Fashion and Modeling Tropes due to tropeworthiness concerns. TRS thread here.
- Furry Comic and Furry Webcomics were merged with Furry Fandom and their examples moved to that page, with the added requirement that any listed works be produced by self-identified furries. This was partly due to the previous lack of said requirement creating redundancy with tropes like World of Funny Animals, and partly due to the two indexes not being long enough to warrant being on separate pages. TRS thread here.
- Game Gourmet was disambiguated because "game has variety of food" was determined to be chairs, and most of the meaningful uses of the trope were misuse fitting other tropes. TRS thread here.
- Girls Are Really Scared of Horror Movies is having a broader trope spun off: Girls Are Scared Boys Are Unafraid, which goes beyond situations involving horror movies into the general concept of "women scare easily, men don't". In addition, the original trope is being renamed to Intimacy Via Horror, getting rewritten to clarify the romance aspect and expanded to allow sources of entertainment other than movies, and having the need for a Security Cling between the couple removed. TRS thread here.
- Guttural Growler is being renamed to Raspy And Tough and retooled to refer to a raspy voice being used to symbolize a character being tough, with the trope being unisex and referring to the general "raspy = tough" idea. TRS thread here.
- Hollywood Dateless was renamed to Allegedly Dateless due to misuse. TRS thread here.
- Hurting Hero was disambiguated due to redundancy with other tropes. TRS thread here.
- Just For Pun was moved to the JustForFun/ namespace and renamed to Punny Trope Names because it's an index of tropes with Punny Names, but it's often misused as a Pothole Magnet for puns in general. TRS thread here.
- Law Of One was cut due to a lack of wicks. TRS thread here.
- Memetic Hand Gesture was disambiguated because it was redundant with many tropes, chiefly Character Tics. TRS thread here.
- Misaimed Marketing is being renamed to Misaimed Merchandising due to misuse. TRS thread here.
- Mix And Match was disambiguated due to redundancy with other pages, such as X Meets Y, Recycled In Space, Recycled with a Gimmick, Genre Mashup, and Genre-Busting. TRS thread here.
- Paused Interrupt was cut since it described occurrences which were happenstance rather than intentional narrative elements. TRS thread here.
- Sci-Fi was merged with Science Fiction because while the former was supposed to be a disambiguation page, it was instead laid out like a Definition-Only Page, and it was also determined to be redundant. The former's contents were moved to an Analysis subpage for the latter. TRS thread here.
- Sibling Switch Squick was cut after being determined to be Too Rare to Trope. TRS thread here.
- Sudden Death was renamed to Tiebreaker Round and expanded to include tiebreaker rounds in general instead of just sudden death rounds. TRS thread here.
- Sweater Girl was renamed to Sexy Sweater Girl due to misuse for any girl wearing a sweater, rather than the specific fanservice-based archetype. TRS thread here.
- Teens Are Short was renamed to Short Teens, Tall Adults due to misuse. TRS thread here.
- Testing The Love Interest was sent back to TLP due to a lack of wicks. TRS thread here.
- Trope Namers is no longer considered Trivia, meaning examples are no longer allowed on Trivia/ subpages. TRS thread here.
- Will They or Won't They? was turned into a Definition-Only Page because it was already covered by other tropes, but since the term is preexisting Fanspeak, a page defining the term was determined to be worth keeping. TRS thread here.
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.
- August's birthday is Alan Walker, a DJ/musician whose songs have swept YouTube by storm. Currently, the one-sentence description feels "Alone" without a bio of the artist, and his presence on the wiki appears "Faded" with a low number of tropes. One could also help "Ignite" a complete list of songs he's done.
- Of all of comedian Hosea Jan "Ze" Frank's works, True Facts has likely become one of the most famous. With a title that has became more accurate over time, the series has blossomed into a valuable source of being able to learn about animals while also getting a good laugh in the process. Its quotable nature, however, has led to some editors forgetting to add context other than the quote to some examples. Do as the tropers do, and please rewrite these examples to have full context.
- Spot the Victim is a YMMV item about a game that murder mystery fans play with works where the creators give the audience room to guess who the victim is before the murder happens. The trope was formerly known as "Where is Deado", and was renamed because the name was obscure and the page was not thriving at five wicks. Fast-forward over a decade later and the page is still struggling, with 13 on-page examples (most of which appear to not be crosswicked) and only 10 wicks.
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.
- Have you ever seen an entry on TV Tropes making a claim that you know isn't true? Has an entry made an assertion that doesn't seem to be correct? If you're not sure, head on over to the Fact Checking Thread, where you can check to see if the claims made in an entry are inaccurate or false, and where you can likewise get help fixing said entries.
- Our pages for RuPaul's Drag Race and the wider Drag Race franchise seem to be fucked up, as they have issues regarding trope misuse, Fan Myopia, Real Life Troping, non-character tropes on Characters subpages, spoilers, and translations for non-English spinoffs. Please join the Drag Race cleanup if you would like to help resolve the issues. Don't worry, because we wish you good luck.
- Under TV Trope's Real Life Troping policy, websites on their own cannot be troped unless they contain content that can be deemed tropable. With 436 articles currently under the Website/ namespace, some of which have just been brought up in the cleanup thread, we would like your help with clearing, cleaning, moving, and cutting these pages; if you wish to assist us, come visit the Websites cleanup.
- Last year, we determined that Let's Players are not inherently tropable; they need to provide some sort of narrative, characters, or story to be allowed here. This also extends to VTubers. If you would like to help with the cleanup efforts, please join the VTubers cleanup thread.
Know the Contributors
- FernandoLemon writes for Work Spotlight and Image of the Month. He's secure and he's sure he'll endure on this August day.
- War Jay 77 contributed to the Trope Spotlight and Forum Watch section, and is doing her best to stay cool in her room without an AC.
- 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 wrote for the Changelog this month.
- plakythebirb, who wants to waste away in Margaritaville but doesn't have the money to, usually writes for Works That Need a Page.
- Excessive-Menace writes for the New Tropes section. They mainly spend their time lurking and editing the wiki, as well as participating in ATT and writing for the Trope Pantheons project.
- The Mayor of Simpleton wrote for Projects Spotlight this edition. He mostly participates in the Project Threads, TRS, Trope and Wiki Talk, sometimes ATT, and occasionally Image Pickin'.
- callmeamuffin wrote for this month's Works That Need a Page, Forumwatch, and Project Spotlight. Outside of Trope Report, you can find him participating in forum games. Outside of TV Tropes, he will be enjoying the final month of summer relaxing on the streets across the beach.
- MacronNotes contributed to the description and Pages Needing Help this month. She spends most of her time on Wiki Talk, TRS, and other parts of the site.
- Berrenta assisted with Works That Need a Page, Obscure Tropes, and Pages Needing Help. She's gotten busy trying to clear out some big TRS projects and outside the site as well.
- GastonRabbit contributes to the Changelog, since he mostly moderates TRS, and adds changes after giving the go-ahead to make them.
- August is the birthday month of the local F. Scott Fitzgerald enthusiast, Cutegirl920fire! Naturally, she wrote an entry related to that author plus an unrelated one in the Work Spotlight section. Her birthday's on the 10th, so wish her a happy birthday and take her out to a fancy 1920s' dock where she can stare into the green light!
- Cardboard Bot drew the image of this issue.
- Twiddler makes sure our grammar is in order.
- A Nonagon 9 wrote spotlights for New and Non-English Works. Sadly, they have to work on August 10th, National Lazy Day.
- Trope Reporter (real name Taylor Von Trope) is the mascot for Trope Report whose TV head is used as this edition's image.
This edition of Trope Report is brought to you by Hotel California, a lovely place where you can dance in the courtyard, gather for a feast, and generally live it up. You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.
Interested in becoming a contributor, or have suggestions for works or tropes to feature? Pop by the thread and let us know! We don't bite. (Much.)
and let us know! We don't bite. (Much.)