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.
September is here. Summer is out, school is in, and soon the leaves will change their colors.
As noted in the previous issues, many wiki changes are on the horizon. The admins have created an engineer position to help with technical mod work like video management, editing locked pages, and moving pages via the page mover mod tool. Our three new engineers are War Jay 77, amathieu13, and Amonimus.
Another important wiki change that happened last month was the big rename crowner for the Trope Launch Pad/TLP. The TLP will soon allow any type of page to be created, so a new name that wasn't specific to trope creation was needed. The name the crowner decided on was Tropers' Launch Pad, so that will be TLP's new name.
There have also been major changes to well established tropes such as For Want Of A Nail, Boobs Of Steel, and Spell My Name With An S. You can read the changelog section for more information.
Happy troping!
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Tropes and Works
Trope Spotlight
Obscure Tropes
This section highlights older tropes that need a boost.- Ahoy, mateys. It is I, Long John Trope, here to teach the landlubbers about Long John Shout-Out. We take great inspiration from the pirate of old from Treasure Island, Long John Silver, and strive to be the baddest pirates the sea has seen. But alas, after we got together in 2013, we only got 26 crewmates. Rally up some more, ya hear?
- September is when many people start to go back to school. Learning can be difficult, but one way your teachers may get you to pay attention is with Education Through Pyrotechnics. A way to combine the fun of on-screen explosions and chaos with the characters enjoying an otherwise average school day, this trope has already exploded onto 81 pages since it was mixed together over a decade ago... but we could always do with more.
- Chances are, you may remember the time when your school hosted a science fair where students are encouraged to build things to teach science, whether that be papier-mâché volcanos or handcrafted Tesla coils. So what if Mad Scientists hosted their own science fair, with all of the chaos that would ensue from it? Well, then you'll get a Mad Science Fair! With all of the wacky inventions mad scientists would've shown off to their peers at such a fair, the trope was launched in 2016 but has a mere 23 wicks. Come on, show off that deadly robot at the fair and give it some more wicks!
New Tropes
This section brings attention to recently-launched tropes that could use a little help to really get rolling.- Draw Extra Cards is a gameplay mechanic allowing you to draw extra cards or make another player draw extra cards. Maybe you can draw more cards for a Mana cost, or you're playing a game where the win condition is to get rid of your cards, and you can play a card that forces more cards onto your opponent. Seems like a pretty basic and longstanding game mechanic. Our trope page for it only launched in August.
- Fear is an emotion felt by everyone. It happens during times of danger, but it can also appear in the most irrational of ways. But don't feel ashamed; Fear Is Normal. No matter how old you are or what you're afraid of, just know that it isn't embarrassing to feel a natural emotion. Many people feel insecure about this emotion, so since this trope launched on July 24, why not reassure them that it's okay and normal to feel that way?
- We all know that Saint Patrick "drove the snakes out of Ireland". Apocryphal nature of that legend asidenote , it has become the basis for numerous examples in fiction of troublesome species being exterminated or driven away by a hero Famed In-Story for the act. The Great Exterminator, launched August 25, is the place to share these stories of eradication.
Work Spotlight
New Work Page Spotlight
This section covers newer work pages that could use a little help.- Password Game is Neal.fun
's most recent outing. The game tasks the player with creating a secure password, a task that becomes more and more difficult as increasingly esoteric conditions are required. Due to its intense difficulty, the game has quickly become the site's most popular title.
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.- Mario's Time Machine is an Edutainment Game based on the Super Mario Bros. franchise, first released in 1993 for MS-DOS and SNES. Bowser has stolen some artifacts from human history for his museum, and it's up to Mario to travel back in time to return them to their correct time periods while filling out information on certain historical figures by talking to NPCs. An NES version was released later, featuring gameplay that attempts to be much more faithful to the core series, but with shallower educational content. While none of these games have been well-received, they are nonetheless pieces of history that are worth going back to.
- Isonzo, released on September 14th, 2022, is a follow-up to Verdun and Tannenberg. Developed by Blackmill Games and M2H, this title in the WWI Game Series focuses on the Italian Front of the First World War, particularly the titular 12 Battles of the Isonzo, fought between the Royal Italian Army and the Austro-Hungarian and later German Empires. Much like its predecessors, it depicts World War I in a hellish and brutal manner, complete with artillery barrages and aerial bombings, Deadly Gas, and getting bayonetted to death, only this time in a surprisingly pristine alpine setting (at least when compared to the trenches of the Western Front).
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!- Erin Is The Funny One is a podcast hosted by John "Jacksfilms" Douglass and his wife, the titular Erin, where they drink wine; quiz each other; talk about pop culture, recent news, and their lives and YouTube channel; give the listener intentionally terrible horoscopes and get sidetracked very often. For all you big boys out there who want to listen to it, it's available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
- Nursery Rhyme Comics is an anthology comic edited by Chris Duffy and published by First Second Books in 2011. Essentially, it's a collection of popular nursery rhymes, each reinterpreted in comic form by a different artist. Contributors include some notable modern cartoonists like Gene Luen Yang, Raina Telgemeier, and even Mike Mignola, along with some then-rising talent. It was popular enough to get two sequelsnote , and is different enough from the source material to be worthy of its own 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.- Little Samson is a 1992 Platform Game for the NES published by Taito. The player takes control of four characters: Samson (a human boy), Kikira (a dragon), Gamm (a golem) and KO (a mouse), all of whom have their unique abilities such as projectile attacks, flying, Wall Crawl or being immune to spikes. Despite it being a commercial failure due to its release late in the system's lifespan, it's now considered one of the greatest games on the NES thanks to its amazing music and animation, as well as its high replay value due to its branching paths.
- Every long-running series has its Early-Installment Weirdness; Touhou Reiiden ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers is no exception. Before the series became a Bullet Hell cultural phenomenon, it all started as a paddle-ball style game following the miko Reimu Hakurei finding a disturbance at her shrine. With the franchise's nineteenth installment being released on August 13, now's a good time to revisit the roots and unearth any new tropes buried within it.
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.- Last month, Hip-Hop celebrated its 50th birthday. One prominent figure that is still making waves is James Todd Smith, or more commonly, LL Cool J. He started during The Golden Age of Hip Hop, with his first album Radio in 1985. While he has expanded his repertoire with acting in film and TV, he is still active in the industry, with a station on XM satellite radio.
Image of the Month
This section brings you the best selections of the past month from Image Pickin'.
This issue's featured images are Troper-Made, and illustrate Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard.
This issue's featured images are Troper-Made, and illustrate Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard.
A Complete Monster holding a complete pack of Monster.
A Magnificent Bitch and her weapon of choice, a Magnificent Bastardnote .
Yeah, this one comes as a surprise to absolutely no one who was even mildly active this month, we know.
Once again, our choice for Image of the Month is entirely troper-made, this time being created by Kosha Vinka. Originally, in order to avoid any controversies over who "deserved" to be on the front page (especially considering the tropes' contentious natures), the page images featured puns: a pack of Monster
◊ for Complete Monster and a bastard sword
◊ for Magnificent Bastard. So, when asked when he got the idea to give these two pages completely original images, Kosha Vinka mentioned that this had been on his mind since his image for Moth Menace was approved, stating that he wanted to turn those puns into made-up characters. As for the reason, he wanted to do it "so those images could look like representatives of the trope and also because my drawings representing two huge tropes like those made me feel powerful".
He then went on to share some of his creative process for bringing these characters to life: Complete Monster used a comic book style similar to that of Hellboy, while Magnificent Bastard was much more cartoony. The character design for Complete Monster took inspiration from the Superman villain Brainiac, pointing out the way the character averts Evil Is Angular, and from Black Hiver from The Nightmare Before Christmas Who: Skellington's Revenge, notably with the triangle symbol on the character's chest. Magnificent Bastard's character features the classic supervillain look, with a Badass Cape, Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness, hood-shadowed face and plenty of angles, some of these choices being inspired by Daroach from the Kirby series. The irony that none of these characters are examples of their respective tropes was not lost on him. He also limited himself by utilizing simplified color palettes, using mostly greens and purples for Complete Monster, and reds, yellows and purples for Magnificent Bastard. The only exception to this was the sword, which was painted cyan to make it stand out, as it preserved the original image's pun.
Finally, there are the details as to how each demonstrates the trope. The Complete Monster demonstrates his evilness by showing him having set planets on fire. Per the feedback of other tropers, this was strengthened with the addition of people being burnt alive under him. The Magnificent Bastard, meanwhile, uses a more subtle and symbolic approach due to that trope being harder to demonstrate, showing her having taken over the world to show her as ambitious, as well as her controlling nature being reinforced by placing screens on several nation capitals, plus one that targets a Heroic Dog. The group of followers that accompany her show that she has leadership and charisma.
So after all the effort that went into making these two, it's no surprise that these pics would continue to be talked about for days after they had been chosen. And so, we'll leave things off by asking Kosha Vinka one last question — do you feel powerful yet?
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!
- Recently, the administration of TV Tropes hired a new coder, Kory, to help work on big changes (and smaller fixes) for the wiki. As a part of his role on the site, a thread has been started to solicit ideas for big (and long-wanted/needed) changes and improvements for the Trope Launch Pad. If you have any ideas for big changes and other things you'd like to see in the TLP, head on over and pitch your proposal(s)!
- Have you ever looked at a specific page of a troper's avatar gallery and noticed some avatars that you adore and some avatars that you dislike? Wish there was a game to express your opinions? Worry no more, there's a forum game called Make a tier list of a page from the above poster's gallery, where you can rank all the avatars on any page of the above participant's gallery!
- Image captions, despite not always being necessary, can nonetheless be very important. They allow us to credit the original artist, can provide information that might've been easily missed and, most relevant here, give us an opportunity to make jokes. The Daily Caption Contest thread is a recent Forum Game all about captioning images, where tropers compete against each other to see who among them is the funniest. If you have an image to suggest or just like to make others laugh, you should definitely head to this thread.
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.
- Belly Buttonless's definition was expanded to "human character lacking a belly button as a visual cue that they had an unusual birth, including artificial creation and non-mammalian birth". Previously, it covered only cloned characters. The trope was also renamed No Navel, Novel Birth. TRS thread here.
- Boobs Of Steel was disambiguated because the concept was determined to not be a pattern that actually exists in works. TRS thread here.
- Catharsis Factor is having a Trope Transplant done to move the original video game-specific definition to a new name, Stress-Relieving Gameplay, and reuse the original name for a new Audience Reaction about moments that relieve tension, with the new Audience Reaction being No On-Page Examples. TRS thread here.
- Creator-Chosen Casting was expanded to include other creative figures such as directors and producers, and the original requirement that the casting choice be for an adaptation was removed. TRS thread here.
- Dark Magical Girl is now limited to only examples that are Shadow Archetypes whose story arcs or theming distort, subvert, or twist the ideas of The Power of Love and The Power of Friendship. TRS thread here.
- Daylight Horror was disambiguated, partially due to it being used too broadly, and partially because the correct definition overlapped with Mood Dissonance and its subtropes. TRS thread here.
- Disabled Love Interest was redefined to refer to tragically disabled love interests and is being renamed to Tragically Disabled Love Interest accordingly. TRS thread here.
- Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite is being renamed and redefined by narrowing the definition to be about intersex characters being considered intrinsically attractive. TRS thread here.
- For Want Of A Nail will be disambiguated between Butterfly of Doom, Point of Divergence, Split Timelines Plot, and What If?, and the concept of "Minor change leads to major consequences that are shown explicitly" was sent to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard. TRS thread here.
- The Hero's Birthday was renamed to Birthday Beginning due to misuse, since the trope is about stories that begin with the protagonist's birthday, but examples often referred to parts other than the beginning. TRS thread here.
- King Koopa Copy has been cut due to an unclear description and tropeworthiness concerns that plague many other related character expy tropes. TRS thread here.
- The Last Of These Is Not Like The Others was converted into an index and renamed Odd Last Item Index. A prior TRS decision to classify it as In-Universe Examples Only did not stop misuse, plus there were some redundancy concerns. TRS thread here.
- Martial Arts Uniform was cut because articles of clothing are not tropes on their own. TRS thread here.
- Not Safe for Work was declared definition-only, since it's a preexisting term without an easily definable set of constraints as to what media would qualify. Thread
- Now Which One Was That Voice was moved to Trivia and renamed to Unspecified Role Credit, while the old name was disambiguated between the new name and Uncredited Role due to there being confusion between the two. TRS thread here.
- Pandaing To The Audience was cut due to attracting "pandas exist" examples. The concept of pandas being stereotypically cute was sent to the salvage yard. TRS thread here.
- The Rez is being reworked to be about neglected North American Native American/First Nation reservations and renamed to Neglected Rez. TRS thread here.
- Samurai Stories was cut because it was determined to be redundant with samurai-related tropes and genres. TRS thread here.
- Shark Stories was redirected to Sea Stories because the works with the former label were determined to be too loosely connected, due to the presence of sharks being the only trait they all have in common. TRS thread here.
- Spell My Name With An S was renamed Inconsistent Spelling and restricted to official and intentional spellings, and the rule against listing alternate transliterations of long vowels was removed. TRS thread here.
- The Wiki Rule was turned into a Definition-Only Page due to tropeworthiness concerns. 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.
- September's birthday is Harry McEntire, an English actor/streamer with prominent roles in The Last Kingdom, Victoria, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Unfortunately, that's all we got from the barebones description. (Hear that, tropers? Harry wants something a bit meatier.) Tropes about his roles and some links to his other works would also appreciated.
- Wobbledogs is a creature simulation game that came out of early access in 2022. In it, you care for your very own dogs, which happen to grow by pupating and which mutate based on the food they eat. Along the way, you complete various goals, such as using a game mechanic enough or doing challenges to breed your dogs to the strangest proportions. Despite being fairly popular, its trope page is fairly anemic. Want to groom this page to perfection?
- Non-Voyage Party is a trope about a character misunderstanding a party being held in their honor to be a going-away party. The trope only has 10 on-page examples (most of which aren't crosswicked), and 8 wicks despite being over a decade old.
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.
- Two's company, while good things come in threes, five in a band, and four in an ensemble. But sometimes, there are some characters or objects in ensembles that don't fit the mold. At the Ensemble Tropes Cleanup thread, we make sure that they get a proper fitting, be it in their appropriate temperament, element, or outlook in life.
- On TV Tropes, we love images that shine bright in the dark. However, there are numerous images that contrast awfully when Night Vision is turned on, especially the ones that have an unnecessary plain white background or are badly trimmed to remove them. If you would like to propose polished versions of such images, come bring them up in the Night Vision Image Quality Cleanup.
- Barbie (2023) may be one of the year's biggest blockbuster hits, but the work's article and its subpages are currently suffering from ROCEJ-violating edits over the perceptions of feminism and patriarchy expressed in the film. These pages have also attracted claims that Ken and his kind are positioned as evil monsters by the film's narrative, when really, he's just Ken. If you would like to clean up such misuse and controversial revisions, come visit us at The Barbie (2023 film) cleanup thread.
- On some occasions, all works in a series are troped under one page, even when there would be enough to trope for the individual works and/or it would make sense to consider splitting them. Given that, a discussion thread for possible splits of this type has been created. If you want to help out, please visit the Splitting merged works into separate work pages thread.
Know the Contributors
- FernandoLemon writes for Work Spotlight, Forumwatch and Image of the Month. He's saluting all the Latin Americans who are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month.
- War Jay 77 contributed to the Trope Spotlight 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 Trope Spotlight and the Changelog this month.
- plakythebirb, or Miss Morakis if you're nasty, wrote for Pages Needing Help.
- 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 Forumwatch 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 Forumwatch and Project Spotlight. Outside of Trope Report, you can find him participating in forum games.
- 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 Obscure Tropes, Work Page Spotlight, and Pages Needing Help. She also got in touch with this month's sponsor.
- GastonRabbit contributes to the Changelog, since he mostly moderates TRS, and adds changes after giving the go-ahead to make them.
- Purple Eyed Guma emerged from the hole he lives in this month to write for Work Spotlight.
- Cardboard Bot draws art for Trope Report and designed the mascot. He occasionally pops up.
- Twiddler makes sure our grammar is in order.
- Alnair 20 Aug 93 guest wrote for Project Spotlight while loafing around sleeping students' laptops.
- Beer Baron, launcher of 1,000 tropes (well, one this month) and victor at the Battle of Cremation Creek, wrote for New Trope Spotlight.
- Rmpdc, who wrote for Work Spotlight, mainly contributes to the Trope Pantheons, but also writes a number of work pages and has done at least four tropes. His main specialty is Works Set in World War II.
- Cutegirl920fire overslept on the first day of school because she was dreaming about F. Scott Fitzgerald, ran to school late with Toast of Tardiness and all, and barely submitted her assignment for Trope Spotlight just in the nick of time.
- 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 Pierre's General Store. Celebrate the harvest season with locally grown produce as well as high-quality seeds for growing pumpkins, corn, sunflowers, cranberries, and many more! Closed on Wednesdays.
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.)