Tropes Needing TRS cleanup and discussion thread

Okay I'm tired so I don't know the correct thread for this so I'm saying this here: I happened to read through Stations of the Canon and saw this at the end of the description:

Doesn't that go against the "No general examples rule"? All of the examples on that page are general, and some use it being general as an excuse to complain (such as the RWBY one). It also makes any example on a regular works page (of which there are a lot) inherently misuse, as it only describes one work.

That's an odd form of Tropes in Aggregate where an example is not in the work but because other works do it (like Referenced by...), which to me is nonsense and I'd rather it do apply to individual fics instead.

I think the idea is that it tropes the fandom tendency and frequency to repeat specific canon plot points, which is not an instance of general examples. But if that's the case it should be YMMV.

YMMV is also fine.

I don't think this is the correct thread for this conversation since this thread was made for cleaning up the Administrivia.Tropes Needing TRS page instead of general discussion about whether something should be taken to TRS. Generally, people ask those questions in the TRS meta thread, but Trope Talk would be better if more in-depth discussion is needed.

Edit: The lack of mod hat is intentional because I'm worn out myself (though in my case it's from being sick instead of lacking sleep), so I'm not completely sure myself, so I'm just giving my $0.02 here and not making an official policy statement.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 24th 2023 at 11:51:39 AM

The Stations of the Canon was already added to Tropes Needing TRS in 2022 with the same reasoning, so this question may have been unnecessary.

But yes, this isn't a good place to find problems with tropes themselves.

Oh wow, I didn't even know it was there.

...how would a wick check for this trope even work? All examples on work and subpages are for singular works, not fandom in general.

Well, maybe verify exactly that.

This question should be here.

That just seems like a compelling case for misuse. I know I'd personally support redefining it to be about specific examples in the first place (I hate the "general fandom trends" fanfic tropes).

EDIT: Not the right place, sorry

Edited by PhiSat on Aug 24th 2023 at 2:31:30 AM

Let's rerail a little; FTR I agree with checking Stations of the Canon, but this isn't really the place to discuss it.

There's an entry on VideoGame.Game Genie and VideoGame.Game Shark under the "really a useful note" section, but if you notice the red link you may already guess what my issue is: UsefulNotes.Game Genie has since been made, and being that these are work pages and not trope pages I really don't think this fix requires TRS anyway.

Yeah, someone can just make Game Shark, it doesn't need TRS to move

GameShark isn't a trope and it's just namespaced incorrectly.

Removed it.

Given the determination that a lot of Personal Appearance Tropes were People Sit on Chairs, I'm wondering if Anime Hair is even a trope, considering it's defined as "Drawn characters have spiky, exotic, or improbable hair," without any consideration to how it fits into a story. It doesn't help that it probably falls under fan speak, and such terms are typically not considered tropes in themselves.

UPDATE ON 9/13/2023 (because I didn't want to double post):

I've also noticed that Dead End Job has existed since 2009, but it's only got around 40 wicks. Likely because it's a pun on a real-world term that is not this trope, and some of the existing wicks, from what I can see, reflect that definition, which I believe is covered by other existing tropes (such as Soul-Crushing Desk Job or Burger Fool, which are specific examples of dead-end jobs), as well as the implication that leaving it requires the character to die, which isn't actually the case.

Edited by MadMan400096 on Sep 13th 2023 at 5:44:17 AM

Hermaphrodite is in the "People Sit on Chairs/Really a Useful Note" folder on Tropes Needing TRS, but I don't think it should be.

• Hermaphrodite: This trope basically boils down to "a character is intersex" with no further requirements for story context or characterization. It could probably be turned into a useful note about the definition of intersex, given that most of the story-significant applications already fit on other tropes like Non-Human Non-Binary and Intersex Tribulations.

However, a 2020-2021 thread voted to "Define Hermaphrodite as including any character or species that has exactly two functional sets of genitalia, one male and one female." This isn't PSOC because it's impossible for real-life humans, and remaining examples of intersex characters can just be removed as misuse.

As I was writing this I realized that Laconic.Hermaphrodite is just "Someone who's intersex." This is clearly wrong, but we have the Laconic Description Improvement thread for that. Can I just change it back to the pre-2016 "An individual who is both male and female."? My point is, TRS has already made a decision on Hermaphrodite so we don't need another thread.

Edited by rjd1922 on Oct 29th 2023 at 5:47:39 AM

"male and female" sounds gender-y when we want to talk about genitals?

Then maybe "A character with both male and female sex organs."?

EDIT: I changed it to that.

Edited by rjd1922 on Oct 29th 2023 at 2:05:55 PM

That's better, but waters it down a bit.

Still, I agree that at the moment it's not untropeworthy. I wonder if that was added before the TRS thread? Maybe it just never got removed.

I don't know if it's poor form to suggest TRS for a newly launched trope, but I can't help but feel this one is in desperate need of some.

My issues with it are the same as they were in the YKTTW thread — this feels more like a bunch of unrelated tropes and concepts that are only put together on this page because they happen to involve penguins.

For example, the Tuxedo Gin example doesn't really contain anything that subverts the usual penguin stereotype, at least not in the sense that him being a penguin is essential to the joke. He could be any kind of animal, and the essential premise of a human trapped in a non-human body would still work.

We also already have Flying Flightless Bird for examples of penguins flying, so it seems redundant to put them here. In any case, "penguins flying" and "penguins wanting to be warm" or "penguins being ugly/scary" aren't one coherent concept. They're a bunch of little ones that all rely on subverting different ideas associated with penguins.

And that's the issue this page has. It's not one trope. It's a bunch of smaller, occasionally redundant, concepts. The only one that seems consistent enough to warrant a page in its own right is the idea of penguins who like warm weather. That's already what the page image shows, and I'm sure we could find more examples of that and get rid of the ones that don't fit. There's potential for a trope page here, but it's not the one we're seeing.

Edited by Booplesnoot on Nov 10th 2023 at 10:13:13 AM

If you have concerns over a TLP launch you go to Crash Rescue, not TRS.

In any case, this thread is about the Tropes Needing TRS page specifically, not deciding on what should go to the TRS but just maintaining the page's list.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 10th 2023 at 1:06:15 PM

May I remove Hermaphrodite from Tropes Needing TRS since TRS has already decided it's not "a character is intersex"?

Edited by rjd1922 on Nov 21st 2023 at 10:34:51 AM

Pfff 133 added an extremely lengthy entry on Monster Mash, and even self-nattered (first-person included) within it. They also added a second-bullet commentary about the other tropes they added. I'm pretty sure none of this is kosher for an Administrivia page, is it? (Even if Monster Mash has an issue, the added entry is struggling to elaborate on what's going on; it even reads like an OP for the would-be TRS thread)

Yeah, that's absurdly long. TNTRS is for brief descriptions of the problem, not... that.

Would it be good for me to remove the additions, citing this thread in the edit reason?

EDIT: TO reiterate, even if the added page has an issue, the argument needs to be much shorter, and I think it's easier to write a new one from scratch than trying to trim down the current entry.

Edited by MyFinalEdits on Nov 26th 2023 at 8:00:48 AM